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THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
By the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin is meant the
great revealed truth that she was conceived in the womb of her
mother, St. Anne, without original sin.[1] . . . to her grace
came,[2] . . from the first moment of her being, as it had been
given to Eve.[2]
([1] II p.lO, [2]I p.50).
* * *
It is so difficult for me to enter into the feelings of a person
who understands the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and
yet objects to it, that I am diffident about attempting to speak
on the subject.
Does not the objector consider that Eve was created, or born,
without original sin? Why does not this shock him? Would he have
been inclined to worship Eve in that first estate of hers? Why,
then, Mary?
Does he not believe that St. John Baptist had the grace of God-i.e.
was regenerated, even before his birth? What do we believe of
Mary, but that grace was given her at a still earlier period?
All we say is, that grace was given her from the first moment
of her existence.
We do not say that she did not owe her salvation to the death
of her Son. Just the contrary, we say that she, of all mere children
of Adam, is in the truest sense the fruit and the purchase of
His Passion. He has done for her more than for anyone else. To
others He gives grace and regeneration at a point in their earthly
existence; to her from the very beginning.
We do not make her nature different from others. …A
More abundant gift of grace made her what she was from the first…
She and we are both simply saved by the grace of Christ. (II
p. 115-118).
* * *
. . . I ask, was not Mary as fully endowed as Eve? is it any
violent inference, that she, who was to co-operate in the redemption
of the world, at least was not less endowed with power from on
high, than she who, given as a helpmate to her husband, did in
the event but co-operate with him for its ruin? If Eve was raised
above human nature by that indwelling moral gift which we call
grace, is it rash to say that Mary had a greater grace? And this
consideration gives significance to the Angel's salutation of
her as "full of grace",-an interpretation of the original
word which is undoubtedly the right one, as soon as we resist
the common Protestant assumption that grace is a mere external
approbation or acceptance, answering to the word "favour",
whereas it is, as the Fathers teach, a real inward condition
or superadded quality of soul. And if Eve had this super-natural
inward gift given her from the first moment of her personal existence,
is it possible to deny that Mary too had this gift from the very
first moment of her personal existence? I do not know how to
resist this inference: -well, this is simply and literally the
doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. I say the doctrine of
the Immaculate Conception is in its substance this, and nothing
more or less than this (putting aside the question of degrees
of grace); and it really does seem to me bound up in that doctrine
of the Fathers, that Mary is the Second Eve. (I p.48-49).
It is to me a most strange phenomenon that so many learned and
devout men stumble at this doctrine, and I can only account for
it by supposing that in matter of fact they do not know what
we mean by the Immaculate Conception; . . . It is a great consolation
to have reason for thinking so,-for believing that in some sort
the persons in question are in the position of those great Saints
in former times, who are said to have hesitated about it, when
they would not have
hesitated at all, if the word "Conception" had been
clearly explained in that sense in which now it is universally
received. I do not see how anyone who holds with Bull the Catholic
doctrine of the supernatural endowments of our first parents,
has fair reason for doubting our doctrine about the Blessed Virgin.
It has no reference whatever to her parents, but simply to her
own person; it does but affirm that, together with the nature
which she inherited from her parents, that is, her own nature,
she had a superadded fullness of grace, and that from the first
moment of her existence. Suppose Eve had stood the trial, and
not lost her first grace; and suppose she had eventually had
children, those children from the first moment of their existence
would, through divine bounty, have received the same privilege
that she had ever had; that is, as she was taken from Adam's
side, in a garment, so to say, of grace, so they in turn would
have received what may be called an immaculate conception. They
would have been conceived in grace, as in fact they are conceived
in sin. What is there difficult in this doctrine? What is there
unnatural? Mary may be called a daughter of Eve unfallen. You
believe with us that St. John Baptist had grace given to him
three months before his birth, at the time that the Blessed Virgin
visited his mother. He accordingly was not immaculately conceived,
because he was alive before grace came to him; but our Lady's
case only differs from his in this respect, that to her grace
came, not three months merely before her birth, but from the
first moment of her being, as it had been given to Eve.
But it may be said, How does this enable us to say that she was
conceived without original sin? If Anglicans knew what we mean
by original sin, they would not ask the question. Our doctrine
of original sin is not the same as the Protestant doctrine. "Original
sin", with us, cannot be called sin, in the ordinary sense
of the word "sin"; it is a term denoting the imputation
of Adam's sin, or the state to which Adam's sin reduces his children;
but by Protestants it is understood to be sin, in the same sense
as actual sin. We, with the Fathers, think of it as something
negative, Protestants as something positive. Protestants hold
that it is a disease, a change of nature, a poison internally
corrupting the soul, and propagated from father to son, after
the manner of a bad constitution; and they fancy that we ascribe
a different nature from ours to the Blessed Virgin, different
from that of her parents, and from that of fallen Adam. We hold
nothing of the kind; we consider that in Adam she died, as others;
that she was included, together with the whole race, in Adam's
sentence; that she incurred his debt, as we do; but that, for
the sake of Him who was to redeem her and us upon the Cross,
to her the debt was remitted by anticipation, on her the sentence
was not carried out, except indeed as regards her natural death,
for she died when her time came, as A others. All this we teach,
but we deny that she had original sin; for by original sin we
mean, as I have already said, something negative, viz., this
only, the deprivation of that supernatural unmerited grace which
Adam and Eve had on their creation-deprivation and the consequences
of deprivation. Mary could not merit, any more than they, the
restoration of that grace; but it was restored to her by God's
free bounty, from the very first moment of her existence, and
thereby, in fact, she never came under the original curse, which
consisted in the loss of it. And she had this special privilege,
in order to fit her to become the Mother of her and our Redeemer,
to fit her mentally, spiritually for it; so that, by the aid
of the first grace, she might so grow in grace, that when the
Angel came, and her Lord was at hand, she might be "full
of grace", prepared, as far as a creature could be prepared,
to receive Him into her bosom.
I have drawn the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, as an
immediate inference, from the primitive doctrine that Mary is
the Second Eve. . . . If controversy had in earlier days so cleared
the subject as to make it plain to all, that the doctrine meant
nothing else than that, in fact, in her case the general sentence
on mankind was not carried out, and that, by means of the indwelling
in her of divine grace from the first moment of her being (and
this is all the decree of 1854 has declared), I cannot believe
that the doctrine would have ever been opposed; for an instinctive
sentiment has led Christians jealously to put the Blessed Mary
aside when sin comes into discussion. This is expressed in the
well-known words of St. Augustine, All have sinned "except
the Holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom, for the honour of the
Lord, I wish no question to be raised at all, when we are treating
of sins." (de Nat. et Grat. 42);
(I p.49-53).
* * *
Now, as to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, it was
implied in early times, and never denied. In the Middle Ages
it was denied by St. Thomas and by St. Bernard, but they took
the phrase in a different sense from that in which the Church
now takes it. They understood it with reference to Our Lady's
mother, . . . whereas we do not speak of the Immaculate Conception
except as relating to Mary; and the other doctrine (which St.
Thomas and St. Bernard did oppose) is really heretical. (II p.120).
* * *
Many, many doctrines are far harder than the Immaculate Conception.
The doctrine of Original Sin is indefinitely harder. Mary just
has not this difficulty. It is no difficulty to believe that
a soul is united to the flesh without original sin; the great
mystery is that any, that millions on millions, are born with
it. Our teaching about Mary has just one difficulty less than
our teaching about the state of mankind generally. (II p.125).
We, as the children of Adam, are heirs to the consequences of
his sin, and have forfeited in him that spiritual robe of grace
and holiness which he had given him by his Creator at the time
that he was made. In this state of forfeiture and disinheritance
we are all of us conceived and born; and the ordinary way by
which we are taken out of it is the Sacrament of Baptism.
But Mary never was in this state; she was by the eternal decree
of God exempted from it. From eternity, God, the Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost, decreed to create the race of man, and, foreseeing
the fall of Adam, decreed to redeem the whole race by the Son's
taking flesh and suffering on the Cross. In that same incomprehensible,
eternal instant, in which the Son of God was born of the Father,
was also the decree passed of man's redemption through Him. He
who was born from Eternity was born by an eternal decree to save
us in Time, and to redeem the whole race; and Mary's redemption
was determined in that special manner which we call the Immaculate
Conception. It was decreed, not that she should be cleansed from
sin, but that she should, from the first moment of her being,
be preserved from sin; so that the Evil One never had any part
in her. Therefore she was a child of Adam and Eve as if they
had never fallen;. . . (II p.11-12).
* * *
EXALTATION
Here let us suppose that our first parents had overcome in their
trial; and had gained for their descendants for ever the full
possession, as if by right, of the privileges which were promised
to their obedience, -grace here and glory hereafter. Is it possible
that those descendants, pious and happy from age to age in their
temporal homes, would have forgotten their benefactors? Would
they not have followed them in thought into the heavens, and
gratefully commemorated them on earth? The history of the temptation,
the craft of the serpent, their steadfastness in obedience, -the
loyal vigilance, the sensitive purity of Eve,-the great issue,
salvation wrought out for all generations,-would have been never
from their minds, ever welcome to their ears. This would have
taken place from the necessity of our nature.
. . . The Saints are ever in our sight, and not as mere ineffectual
ghosts, but as if present bodily in their past selves. It is
said of them, "Their works do follow them"; what they
were here, such are they in heaven and in the Church. As we call
them by their earthly names, so we contemplate them in their
earthly characters and histories. Their acts, callings, and relations
below, are types and anticipations of their mission above. Even
in the case of our Lord himself, whose native home is the eternal
heavens, it is said of Him in His state of glory, that He is
"a Priest for ever"; and when He comes again, He will
be recognised by those who pierced Him, as being the very same
that He was on earth. The only question is, whether the Blessed
Virgin had a part, a real part, in the economy of grace, whether,
when she was on earth, she secured by her deeds any claim on
our memories; for, if she did, it is impossible we should put
her away from us, merely because she is gone hence, and not look
at her still, according to the measure of her earthly history,
with gratitude and expectation. If, as St. Irenaeus says, she
did the part of an Advocate, a friend in need, even in her mortal
life, if, as St. Jerome and St. Ambrose say, she was on earth
the great pattern of Virgins, if she had a meritorious share
in bringing about our redemption, if her maternity was earned
by her faith and obedience, if her Divine Son was subject to
her, and if she stood by the Cross with a mother's heart and
drank in to the full those sufferings which it was her portion
to gaze upon, it is impossible that we should not associate these
characteristics of her life on earth with her present state of
blessedness; and this surely she anticipated, when she said in
her hymn that all generations should call her blessed. (I p.53-56).
* * *
. . . it is to the point to inquire, whether the popular astonishment,
excited by our belief in the Blessed Virgin's present dignity,
does not arise from the circumstance that the bulk of men, engaged
in matters of the world, have never calmly considered her historical
position in the gospels, so as rightly to realise what that position
imports. . . . I shall take what perhaps you may think a very
bold step,-I shall find the doctrine of our Lady's present exaltation
in Scripture.
I mean to find it in the vision of the Woman and Child in the
twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse. . . .
(I p. 5&57).
* * *
The Virgin and Child is not a mere modern idea; on the contrary,
it is represented again and again, as every visitor to Rome is
aware, in the paintings of the Catacombs. Mary is there drawn
with the Divine Infant in her lap, she with hands extended in
prayer, He with His hand in the attitude of blessing. No representation
can more forcibly convey the doctrine of the high dignity of
the Mother, and, I will add, of her power over her Son. Why should
the memory of His time of subjection be so dear to Christians,
and so carefully preserved? The only question to be determined,
is the precise date of these remarkable monuments of the first
age of Christianity. That they belong to the centuries of what
Anglicans call the "undivided Church" is certain; but
lately investigations have been pursued, which place some of
them at an earlier date than anyone anticipated as possible.
. . . the earliest . . to the very age of the Apostles. . . .
it is lawful for me, though I have not the positive words of
the Fathers on my side, to shelter my own interpretation of the
Apostle's vision under the fact of the extant pictures of Mother
and Child in the Roman Catacombs. . . . when we speak of a doctrine
being contained in Scripture, we do not necessarily mean that
it is contained there in direct categorical terms, but that there
is no other satisfactory way of accounting for the language and
expressions of the sacred writers, concerning the subject-matter
in question, than to suppose that they held upon it the opinion
which we hold,-that they would not have spoken as they have spoken,
unless they held it. For myself I have ever felt the truth of
this principle, as regards the Scripture proof of the Holy Trinity;
I should not have found out that doctrine in the sacred text
without previous traditional teaching; but when once it is suggested
from without, it commends itself as the one true interpretation,
from its appositeness, -because no other view of doctrine, which
can be ascribed to the inspired writers, so happily solves the
obscurities and seeming inconsistencies of their teaching. And
now to apply what I have said to the passage in the Apocalypse.
If there is an Apostle on whom, a priori, our eyes would be fixed,
as likely to teach us about the Blessed Virgin, it is St. John,
to whom she was committed by our Lord on the Cross;-with whom,
as tradition goes, she lived at Ephesus till she was taken away.
This anticipation is confirmed a posteriori; for, as I have said
above, one of the earliest and fullest of our informants concerning
her dignity, as being the Second Eve, is Irenaeus, who came to
Lyons from Asia Minor, and had been taught by the immediate disciples
of St. John. The Apostle's vision is as follows:
-"A great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with
the
Sun, and the Moon under her feet; and on her head a crown of
twelve stars. And being with child, she cried travailing in birth,
and was in pain to be delivered. And there was seen another sign
in heaven; and behold a great red dragon . . . And the dragon
stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered, that, when
she should be delivered, he might devour her son. And she brought
forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with an iron rod;
and her son was taken lip to God and to His throne. And the woman
fled into the wilderness." Now I do not deny of course,
that, under the image of the Woman, the Church is signified;
but what I would maintain is this, that the Holy Apostle would
not have spoken of the Church under this particular image, unless
there had existed a Blessed Virgin Mary, who was exalted on high,
and the object of veneration to all the faithful.
No one doubts that the "man-child" spoken of is an
allusion to our Lord: why then is not "the Woman" an
allusion to His Mother? This surely is the obvious sense of the
words; of course it has a further sense also, which is the scope
of the image; doubtless the Child represents the children of
the Church, and doubtless the Woman represents the Church; this,
I grant, is the real or direct sense, but what is the sense of
the symbol? who are the Woman and the Child? I answer, They are
not personifications but Persons. This is true of the Child,
therefore it is true of the Woman.
But again: not only Mother and Child, but a serpent is introduced
into the vision. Such a meeting of man, woman, and serpent has
not been found in Scripture, since the beginning of Scripture,
and now it is found in its end. Moreover, in the passage in the
Apocalypse, as if to supply, before Scripture came to an end,
what was wanting in its beginning, we are told, and for the first
time, that the serpent in Paradise was the evil spirit. If the
dragon of St. John is the same as the serpent of Moses, and the
man-child is "the seed of the woman", why is not the
woman herself she, whose seed the man-child is? And, if the first
woman is not an allegory, why is the second? if the first woman
is Eve, why is not the second Mary?
But this is not all. The image of the woman, according to Scripture
usage, is too bold and prominent for a mere personification.
Scripture is not fond of allegories. We have indeed frequent
figures there, as when the sacred writers speak of the arm or
sword of the Lord; and so too when they speak of 3erusalem or
Samaria in the feminine; or of the mountains leaping for joy;
or of the Church as a bride or as a vine; but they are not much
given to dressing up abstract ideas or generalisations in personal
attributes. This is the classical rather than the Scriptural
style. Xenophon places Hercules between Virtue and Vice, represented
as women; Aeschylus introduces into his drama Force and Violence;
Virgil gives personality to public rumour or Fame, and Plautus
to Poverty. So on monuments done in the classical style, we see
virtues, vices, rivers, renown, death and the like, turned into
human figures of men and women. I do not say there are no instances
at all of this method in Scripture, but I say that such poetical
compositions are strikingly unlike its usual method. Thus we
at once feel its difference from Scripture, when we betake ourselves
to the Pastor of Hermes, and find the Church a woman; to St.
Methodius, and find Virtue a woman; and to St. Gregory's poem,
and find Virginity again a woman. Scripture deals with types
rather than personifications. Israel stands for the chosen people,
David for Christ, Jerusalem for heaven.
Coming back then to the Apocalyptic vision, I ask, If the Woman
must be some real person, who can it be whom the Apostle saw,
and intends, and delineates, but that same Great Mother to whom
the chapters in the Proverbs are accommodated? And let it be
observed, moreover, that in this passage, from the allusion in
it to the history of the fall, she may he said still to be represented
under the character of the Second Eve. I make a further remark:
it is sometimes asked, Why do not the sacred writers mention
our Lady's greatness? I answer, She was, or may have been, alive,
when the Apostles and Evangelists wrote;-there was just one book
of Scripture certainly written after her death, and that book
does (if I may so speak) canonise her.
But if all this be so, if it is really the Blessed Virgin whom
Scripture represents as clothed with the sun, crowned with the
stars of heaven, and with the moon as her footstool, what height
of glory may we not attribute to her? and what are we to say
of those who, through ignorance, run counter to the voice of
Scripture, to the testimony of the Fathers, to the traditions
of East and West, and speak and act contemptuously towards her
when her Lord delighteth to honour? (I p.59-66).
THEOTOCOS
It is then an integral portion of
the Faith fixed by Ecumenical Council . . . that the Blessed
Virgin is Theotocos, Deipara, or Mother of God; and this word,
when thus used, carries with it no admixture of rhetoric, no
taint of extravagant affection,-it has nothing else but a well-weighed,
grave, dogmatic sense, which corresponds and is adequate to its
sound. It intends to express that God is her Son, as truly as
any one of us is the son of his own mother. If this be so, what
can be said of any creature whatever, which may not be said of
her? what can be said. too much, so that it does not compromise
the attributes of the Creator? He indeed might have created a
being more perfect, more admirable, than she is; He might have
endued that being, so created, with a richer grant of grace,
of power, of blessedness: but in one respect she surpasses all
even possible creations, viz., that she is Mother of her Creator.
. . It is the issue of her sanctity; it is the source of her
greatness. What dignity can be too great to attribute to her
who is as closely bound up, as intimately one, with the Eternal
Word, as a mother is with a son? What outfit of sanctity, what
fullness and redundance of grace, what exuberance of merits must
have been hers, on the supposition, which the Fathers justify,
that her Maker regarded them at all, and took them into account,
when he condescended not to abhor the Virgin's womb? Is it surprising
then that on the one hand she should be immaculate in her Conception?
or on the other that she should be honoured with an Assumption,
and exalted as a queen with a crown of twelve stars, with the
rulers of day and night to do her service? Men sometimes wonder
that we call her Mother of life, of mercy, of salvation; what
are all these titles compared to that one name, Mother of God?
(I p. 6&67).
The title of Theotocos begins with ecclesiastical writers of
a date hardly later than that at which we read of her as the
Second Eve. It first occurs in the works of Origen (185-254);
but he, witnessing for Egypt and Palestine, witnesses also that
it was in use before his time; for, as Socrates informs us, he
"interpreted how it was to be used, and discussed the question
at length" (Hist. vii. 32). Within two centuries (431) in
the General Council held against Nestorius, it was made part
of the formal dogmatic teaching of the Church. At that time,
Theodoret, who from his party connections might have been supposed
disinclined to its solemn recognition, owned that "the ancient
and more than ancient heralds of the orthodox faith taught the
use of the term according to the Apostolic tradition." At
the same date John of Antioch, who for a while sheltered Nestorius,
whose heresy lay in the rejection of the term, said, "This
title no ecclesiastical teacher has put aside. Those who have
used it are many and eminent; and those who have not used it,
have not attacked those who did." Alexander, again, one
of the fiercest partisans of Nestorius, witnesses to the use
of the word, though he considers it dangerous; "That in
festive solemnities", he says, "or in preaching or
teaching, theotocos should be unguardedly said by the orthodox
without explanation is no blame, because such statements were
not dogmatic, nor said with evil meaning." If we look for
those, in the interval, between Origen and the Council, to whom
Alexander refers, we find it used again and again by the Fathers
in such of their works as are extant; by Archelaus of Mesopotamia,
Eusebius of Palestine, Alexander of Egypt, in the third century;
in the fourth by Athanasius many times with emphasis, by Cyril
of Palestine, Gregory Nyssen of Cappadocia, Gregory Nazianzen
of Cappadocia, Antiochus of Syria, and Ammonius of Thrace: -not
to speak of the Emperor Julian, who, having no local or ecclesiastical
domicile, speaks for the whole of Christendom. Another and earlier
Emperor, Constantine, in his speech before the assembled Bishops
at Nicaea, uses the still more explicit title of "the Virgin
Mother of God"; which is also used by Ambrose of Milan,
and by Vincent and Cassian in the south of France, and then by
St. Leo. . . .
"Our God was carried in the womb of Mary", says Ignatius,
who was martyred A.D. 106. "The Word of God", says
Hippolytus, "was carried in that Virgin frame." "The
Maker of all", says Amphilochius, "is born of a Virgin."
"She did compass without circumscribing the Sun of justice,-the
Everlasting is born", says Chrysostom. "God dwelt in
the womb", says Proclus. "When thou hearest that God
speaks from the bush", asks Theodotus, "in the bush
seest thou not the Virgin?" Cassian says, "Mary bore
her Author." "The One God only-begotten", says
Hilary, "is introduced into the womb of a Virgin."
"The Everlasting", says Ambrose, "came into the
Virgin." "The closed gate", says Jerome, "by
which alone the Lord God of Israel enters, is the Virgin Mary."
"That man from heaven", says Capriolus, "is God
conceived in the womb." "He is made in thee",
says Augustine, "who made thee."
This being the faith of the Fathers about the Blessed Virgin,
we need not wonder that it should in no long time be transmuted
into devotion. No wonder if their language should become unmeasured,
when so great a term as "Mother of God" had been formally
set down as the safe limit of it. No wonder if it became stronger
and stronger as time went on, since only in a long period could
the fullness of its import be exhausted. . . . "She was
alone, and wrought the world's salvation and conceived the redemption
of all", says Ambrose; "she had so great grace, as
not only to preserve virginity herself, but to confer it upon
those whom she visited." "The rod out of the stem of
Jesse", says Jerome, "and the Eastern gate through
which the High Priest alone goes in and out, yet is ever shut."
(I p.68-71).
* * *
Mary is called the Gate of Heaven, because it was through her
that our Lord passed from heaven to earth. The Prophet Ezechiel,
prophesying of Mary, says, "The gate shall be closed, it
shall not be opened, and no man shall pass through it, since
the Lord God of Israel has entered through it-and it shall be
closed for the Prince, the Prince Himself shall sit in it."
Now this is fulfilled, not only in our Lord's having taken flesh
from her, and being her Son, but moreover, in that she had a
place in the economy of Redemption; it is fulfilled in her spirit
and will, as well as in her body.... (II p.51-52).
It was no light lot to be so intimately near to the Redeemer
of men, as she experienced afterwards when she suffered with
Him. Therefore, weighing well the Angel's words before giving
her answer to them-first she asked whether so great an office
would be a forfeiture of that Virginity which she had vowed.
When the Angel told her no, then, with the full consent of a
full heart, full of God's love to her and her own lowliness,
she said, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord,
be it done unto me according to Thy word." It was by this
consent that she became the Gate of Heaven.
(II p.53-54).
* * *
She is invoked by us as the Mother of Christ. What is the force
of thus addressing her? It is to bring before us that she it
is who from the first was prophesied of, and associated with
the hopes and prayers of all holy men, of all true worshippers
of God, of all who "looked for the redemption of Israel"
in every age before that redemption came.
Our Lord was called the Christ, or the Messias, by the Jewish
prophets and the Jewish people. The two words Christ and Messias
mean the same. They mean in English the "Anointed".
In the old time there were three great ministries or offices
by means of which God spoke to His chosen people, the Israelites,
or, as they were afterwards called, the Jews, viz., that of Priest,
that of King, and that of Prophet. Those who were chosen by God
for one or other of these offices were solemnly anointed with
oi1-oil signifying the grace of God, which was given to them
for the due performance of their high duties. But our Lord was
all three, a Priest, a Prophet, and a King-a Priest, because
He offered Himself as a sacrifice for our sins; a Prophet, because
He revealed to us the Holy Law of God; and a King, because He
rules over us. Thus He is the one true Christ.
It was in expectation of this great Messias that the chosen people,
the Jews, or Israelites, or Hebrews (for these are different
names for the same people), looked out from age to age. He was
to come to set all things right. And next to this great question
which occupied their minds, namely, When was He to come, was
the question, Who was to be His Mother? It had been told them
from the first, not that He should come from heaven, but that
He should be born of a woman.
. . . Who, then, was to be that Woman thus significantly pointed
out to the fallen race of Adam? At the end of many centuries,
it was further revealed to the Jews that the great Messias, or
Christ, the seed of the Woman, should be born of their race,
and of one particular tribe of the twelve tribes into which that
race was divided. From that time every woman of that tribe hoped
to have the great privilege
of herself being the Mother of the Messias, or Christ; for it
stood to reason, since He was so great, the Mother must be great,
and good, and blessed too. Hence it was, among other reasons,
that they thought so highly of the marriage state, because, not
knowing the mystery of the miraculous conception of the Christ
when He was actually to come, they thought that the marriage
rite was the ordinance necessary for His coming.
Hence it was, if Mary had been as other women, she would have
longed for marriage, as opening on her the prospect of bearing
the great King. But she was too humble and too pure for such
thoughts. She bad been inspired to choose that better way of
serving God which had not been made known to the Jews - the state
of Virginity. She preferred to be His Spouse to being His Mother.
Accordingly, when the Angel Gabriel announced to her her high
destiny, she shrank from it till she was assured that it would
not oblige her to revoke her purpose of a virgin life devoted
to her God.
Thus was it that she became the Mother of Christ, not in that
way which pious women for so many ages had expected Him, but,
declining the grace of such maternity, she gained it by means
of a higher grace. And this is the full meaning of St. Elizabeth's
words, when the Blessed Virgin came to visit her, which we use
in the Hail Mary: "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed
is the fruit of thy womb." (11 p 59-63).
* * *
Mother of the Creator. This is a title which, of all others,
we should have thought it impossible for any creature to possess.
At first sight we might be tempted to say that it throws into
confusion our primary ideas of the Creator and the creature,
the Eternal and the temporal, the Self-subsisting and the dependent;
and yet on further consideration we shall see that we cannot
refuse the title to Mary without denying the Divine Incarnation-that
is, the great and fundamental truth of revelation, that God became
man.
And this was seen from the first age of the Church. Christians
were accustomed from the first to call the Blessed Virgin "The
Mother of God", because they saw that it was impossible
to deny her that title without denying St. John's words, "The
Word" (that is, God the Son) "was made flesh."
And in no long time it was found necessary to proclaim this truth
by the voice of an Ecumenical Council of the Church. For, in
consequence of the dislike which men have of a mystery, the error
sprang up that our Lord was not really God, but a man, differing
from us in this merely-that God dwelt in Him, as God dwells in
all good men, only in a higher measure; as the Holy Spirit dwelt
in Angels and Prophets, as in a sort of Temple; or again, as
our Lord now dwells in the Tabernacle in church. And then the
bishops and faithful people found there was no other way of hindering
this false, bad view being taught but by declaring distinctly,
and making it a point of faith, that Mary was the Mother, not
of man only, but of God. And since that time the title of Mary,
as Mother of God, has become what is called a dogma, or article
of faith, in the Church.
(II p.55-57).
. . . few Protestants have any real perception of the doctrine
of God and man in one Person. They speak in a dreamy, shadowy
way of Christ's divinity; but, when their meaning is sifted,
you will find them very slow to commit themselves to any statement
sufficient to express the Catholic dogma. . . . Then when they
comment on the Gospels, they will speak of Christ, not simply
and consistently as God, but as a being made up of God and man,
partly one and partly the other, or between both, or as a man
inhabited by a special divine presence. . . . and they are shocked,
and think it a mark both of reverence and good sense to be shocked,
when they hear the Man spoken of simply and plainly as God. They
cannot bear to have it said, except as a figure or mode of speaking,
that God had a human body, or that God suffered; they think that
the "Atonement", and "Sanctification through the
Spirit", as they speak, is the sum and substance of the
Gospel, and they are shy of any dogmatic expression which goes
beyond them. . .
Now, if you would witness against these unchristian opinions,
if you would bring out, distinctly and beyond mistake and evasion,
the simple idea of the Catholic Church that God is man, could
you do it better than by laying down in St. John's words that
"God became" man? and could you express this again
more emphatically and Unambiguously than by declaring that He
was born a man, or that He had a Mother? The world allows that
God is man; the admission costs it little, for God is everywhere;
and (as it may say) is everything; but it shrinks from confessing
that God is the Son of Mary. It shrinks, for it is at once confronted
with a severe fact, which violates and shatters its own unbelieving
view of things; the revealed doctrine forthwith takes its true
shape, and receives an historical reality; and the Almighty is
introduced into His own world at a certain time and in a definite
way. Dreams are broken and shadows depart; the truth of God is
no longer a poetical expression, or a devotional exaggeration,
or a mystical economy, or a mythical representation. "Sacrifice
and offering", the shadows of the Law, "Thou wouldest
not, but a body has Thou fitted to Me." "That which
was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen
with our eyes, which we have diligently looked upon, and our
hands have handled", "That which we have seen and have
heard, declare we unto you"; such is the record of the Apostle,
in opposition to those "spirits" which denied that
"Jesus Christ had appeared in the flesh", and which
"dissolved" Him by denying either His human nature
or His divine. And the confession that Mary is Deipara, or the
Mother of God, is that safe-guard wherewith we seal up and secure
the doctrine of the Apostle from all evasion, and that test whereby
we detect all the pretences of those bad spirits of "Antichrist
which have gone out into the world." It declares that He
is God; it implies that He is man; it conveys to us that He is
God still, though He has become man, and that He is true man
though He is God. By witnessing to the process of the union,
it secures the reality of the two subjects of it, of the divinity
and of the manhood. If Mary is the Mother of God, Christ is under-stood
to be Emmanuel, God with us. And hence it was, that, when time
went on, and the bad spirits and false prophets grew stronger
and bolder and found a way into the Catholic body itself, then
the Church, guided by God, could find no more effectual and sure
way of expelling them, than that of using the word Deipara against
them;
. . . (III p.402-405).
The Prophet says, "There shall come forth a rod out of the
root of 3esse, and a flower shall rise out of his root."
Who is the flower but our Blessed Lord? Who is the rod, or beautiful
stalk or stem or plant out of which the flower grows, but Mary,
Mother of our Lord, Mary, Mother of God?
It was prophesied that God should come upon earth. When the time
was now full, how was it announced? It was announced by the Angel
coming to Mary. "Hall, full of grace", said Gabriel,
"the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women."
(II p. ~5).
* * *
And so of the great Mother of God, as far as a creature can be
like the Creator; her ineffable purity and utter freedom from
any shadow of sin, her Immaculate Conception, her ever-virginity-these
her prerogatives (in spite of her extreme youth at the time when
Gabriel came to her) are such as to lead us to exclaim in the
prophetic words of Scripture, both with awe and with exultation,
"Thou art the glory of 3erusalem and the joy of Israel;
thou art the honour of our people; therefore hath the hand of
the Lord strengthened thee, and therefore art thou blessed for
ever." (II p.35-36).
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