The Formation of Christendom, Volume II. Allies Thomas William

the toes mixed of iron and clay. This is the form of the first Adam, seen in his race; and over against it likewise is the one man Christ, forming through the ages, gathering His members in a mightier unity. This is the Word made flesh, the Second Adam, “so that the whole human race is, as it were, two men, the First and the Second.”88

      So much, then, is the creation of the Church superior to the creation of a single Christian as the creation of a body is superior to that of a single bone or muscle. This superiority belongs to the nature of a body as such. It is another thought, which we only suggest here, whose body it is. And here it appears in two very different conditions, the one as it is seen by us now, the other as it will be seen hereafter. There is, I conceive, no subject in all human history comparable in interest to that which the divine commonwealth as such, when traced through the eighteen centuries which it has hitherto run, presents. What nation can be compared to this nation? what people to this people? what labours to its labours? what sufferings to its sufferings? what conflicts to those which it has endured? what triumphs to those which it has gained? what duration to that portion only of its years which is as yet run out? what promise to its future? what performance to its past? What is the courage and self-denial, what is the patience and generosity, what the genius, the learning, the sustained devotion to any work, shown by any human race, compared to those which are to be found in this race of the Divine Mother? How do those who are enamoured of nationalities fail to see the glories of this nation, before which all others pale their ineffectual fires? How do those with whom industry is a chief virtue, and stubborn perseverance the crowning praise, not acknowledge her whose work is undying and whose endurance never fails? These men admire greatness and worship success. Let them look back fourteen hundred years, when that great world-statue seemed to be breaking up into the iron and clay which ran through its feet. Then this kingdom was already great and glorious, and crowned with victory, and filled the earth. The toes of that statue have meanwhile run out into ten kingdoms, and the islands which were forest and swamp when this kingdom commenced have become the head of a dominion which can be mentioned beside that of old Rome; but still in undiminished grandeur the great divine republic stands over against all these kingdoms, penetrates through them, stretches beyond them, and while they grow, mature, and decay, and power passes from one to the other, her power ceases not, declines not, changes not, but shows the beauty of youth upon the brow of age, and amid the confusion of Babel her pentecostal unity. If success be worshipful, worship it here; if power be venerable, bow before its holiest shrine.

      But if this be the Body of Christ here in its state of humiliation, during which it repeats the passion of its Head, if these be the grains of wheat now scattered among the chaff,89 what is that one mass to be which these shall make when the threshing-floor is winnowed out? We see the Body in its preliminary state of suffering, where it has a grandeur, a duration, and a beauty like nothing else on earth. What it shall be in its future state S. John saw when he called it the great City invested with the glory of God, the Bride adorned for her husband; and S. Paul hints, when he speaks of the perfect man compacted and fitly framed together by what every joint supplies, and grown up to full stature in the Head. There is in the redeemed, not only the exceeding greatness of the quality of their salvation, that is, the gift of divine sonship; nor, again, that this gift is heightened by its being the purchase of the Son of God, so that He is not ashamed to call those brethren whom He has first washed in His own blood: but over and above all this, one thing more, that the whole mass of the redeemed and adopted are not so many souls, but the Body of Christ. Faint shadows, indeed, to our earthly senses are House and Temple, Kingdom and City paved with precious stones of that mighty unity of all rational natures, powers, and virtues, each with the perfection of his individual being, each with the superadded lustre of membership in a marvellous whole, under the Headship of Christ. The exceeding glory of this creation, which will be the wonder of all creation through eternity, is that God the Word made flesh, the Head and His Body, make one thing, not an inorganic, but an organised unity, the glorified Body of a glorified Head.

      Once more let us note the consistency and unbroken evolution of the divine plan.

      In the first creation of the human race the Body of Christ is not only foretold but prefigured, not only prefigured but expressed in the very words uttered by Adam in his ecstasy, the words of God delineating that act of God, the greatest of all His acts of power, wisdom, and goodness, whereby becoming man, and leaving His Father and His Mother,90 He would cleave to the wife He so took, the human nature which in redeeming He espoused. This, and no other, was the reason why Eve was formed out of Adam. It is the beginning of the divine plan, which is coherent throughout, which was designed in the state of innocency, which remains intended through the state of guilt, which is unfolded in the state of grace, which is completed in the state of glory, when what that forming of Eve from the side of Adam, and of the Church from the side of her Lord, what that growth through thousands of years, through multitudinous conflicts, through unspeakable sorrows, through immeasurable triumphs, shall finally issue in, shall be seen by those whom the Second Adam has made worthy of that vision, and by whom it is seen enjoyed.

      Chapter IX. The Second Man Verified In History

      “Magnum principium, et regni ejus non erit finis. Deus fortis, dominator, princeps pacis.”

      In order to complete the view taken in the preceding chapter of the work of Christ as the second Adam over against the work of the first Adam, it is necessary to dwell at greater length upon a point of which only cursory mention was made therein. It was our object there to bring out the relation of Christ to the Church, but this cannot be done without fully exhibiting the relation to the same Church of the Holy Spirit. To the Incarnation the Fathers in general give the title of the Dispensation of the Son, and as the equivalent, the result, the complement and crown of this Dispensation, they put the Giving of the Spirit.91 This Giving of the Spirit occupies the whole region of grace, and is coextensive with the whole action of the Incarnate God upon men whom He has taken to be His brethren. The Holy Spirit in this Giving is He who represents the Redeemer, and executes His will, not as an instrument, not as one subordinate, but as the very mind of Christ between whom and Christ there can far less enter any notion of division or separation than between a man and his own spirit. He is that other Paraclete, abiding for ever, who replaces to the disciples the visible absence of the first Paraclete, the Redeemer Himself: He is the Power constituting the Kingdom of Christ; the Godhead inhabiting His Temple; the Soul animating His mystical Body; the Charity, kindling into a living flame the heart of His Bride; the Creator and Father of His Race.

      This connection between the Dispensation of the Son and the Giving of the Spirit was delineated by our Lord himself when He first appeared to His assembled disciples after His resurrection. As they were gazing in wonder and trembling joy on that Body which had undergone His awful passion, as He showed them the wounds in His hands and His feet, He told them how His sufferings were the fulfilment of all that in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms had been written concerning Him. And thereupon it is said, He opened their mind to the understanding of these Scriptures. It was thus that the Christ was to suffer, it was thus that He was to rise again on the third day. Hitherto He has dwelt upon His own dispensation, as the fulfilment of all prophecy, now He proceeds to its fruit: that in the name of this Christ repentance and remission of sins should be proclaimed to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. “And you,” He says, “are the witnesses of these things. And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but stay you in the city of Jerusalem until you be endued with power from on high.” Again, at another occasion of equal solemnity, when He was with His assembled disciples in visible form for the last time, at the moment preceding His ascension, He uses the same emphatic words, charging them not to depart from the city, but to await there that promise of the Father, the baptism in the Holy Ghost, which they were to receive in common together, which was to be the power in virtue of which they should be His witnesses for all time unto the ends of the earth: the power which instead of restoring a local kingdom to Israel, as was in their thoughts when they questioned Him, was to create an universal kingdom to Him in the hearts of men. It is then as the result of His passion, and the token of His resurrection, that the Son sends down upon His disciples the promise of the Father,

88

S. Aug. Op. imp. contr. Julian. lib. ii. tom. x. p. 1018 d.

89

“Grana illa quæ modo gemunt inter paleas, quæ massam unam factura sunt, quando area in fine fuerit ventilata.” S. Aug. in Ps. cxxvi. tom. iv. p. 1429.

90

See Origen on Matt. xiv. 17. καὶ ὁ κτίσας γε ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς τὸν κατ᾽ εἰκόνα ὃς ἐν μορφῇ Θεοῦ ὑπάρχων ἄῤῥεν αὐτὸν ἐποίησε, καὶ θῆλυ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, ἓν τὸ κατ᾽ εἰκόνα ἀμφοτέροις χαρισάμενος; καὶ καταλέλοιπέ γε διὰ τὴν ἐκκλήσιαν κύριος ὁ ἀνὴρ πατέρα ὃν ἑώρα, ὅτε ἐν μορφῇ Θεοῦ ὑπῆρχε, καταλέλοιπε δὲ καὶ τὴν μητέρα καὶ αὐτὸς υἱὸς ὢν τῆς ἂνω Ἱερουσαλὴμ, καὶ ἐκολλήθη τῇ ἐνταῦθα καταπεσούσῃ γυναικὶ αὐτοῦ, καὶ γεγόνασιν ἐνθάδε οἱ δύο εἰς σάρκα μίαν. διὰ γὰρ αὐτὴν γέγονε καὶ αὐτὸς σὰρξ, ὅτε ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ οὐκέτι γέ εἰσι δύο, ἀλλὰ νῦν μία γέ ἐστι σὰρξ, ἔπει τῇ γυναικὶ λέγεται τὸ, ὑμεῖς δέ ἐστε σῶμα Χριστοῦ καὶ μέλη ἐκ μέρους, οὐ γάρ ἐστί τι ἰδιᾳ Χριστοῦ σῶμα ἕτερον παρὰ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν οὖσαν σῶμα αὐτοῦ, καὶ μέλη ἐκ μέρους. καὶ ὁ Θεός γε τούτους τοὺς μη δύο ἀλλὰ γεγομένους σάρκα μίαν συνέζευζεν, ἐντελλόμενος ἵνα ἄνθρωπος μὴ χωρίζη τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἀπὸ τοῦ κυρίου.

91

As S. Irenæus, v. 20. “Omnibus unum et eundem Deum Patrem præcipientibus, et eamdem dispositionem incarnationis Filii Dei credentibus, et eamdem donationem Spiritus scientibus;” and S. Aug. tom. v. app. p. 307 f. “Ecce iterum humanis divina miscentur, id est, Vicarius Redemtoris: ut beneficia quæ Salvator Dominus inchoavit peculiari Spiritus Sancti virtute consummet, et quod ille redemit, iste sanctificet, quod ille acquisivit, iste custodiat.” This striking sermon is quoted by Petavius as genuine, but placed by the Benedictines in the appendix.