in terms which more strongly negative the idea of personality than those he has adduced imply it? True it is that the Church is called the bride, the Lamb's wife, in the Apocalypse; but there she is also called, in the same breath, the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem. So also, in the Ephesians, the Church is called the body of Christ in the first chapter; but in the second it is called "an holy temple in the Lord, in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit" (ii. 22). And various other inanimate objects are used to illustrate the various aspects of the Church-such as the vine, the sheepfold, the candlestick, &c.; and all these are to be regarded as symbolical of some feature of the Church, or of its relationship to the Lord therefore, all alike are figurative, and none are to be taken in a literal sense; and still less may we take the literal sense of one or two of these figures and impute qualities to the Church which all the other figures concur in rendering untenable or positively contradict: : "Our blessed Lord took our nature, not only that he might in that nature, by suffering and dying for us, redeem us from the sentence which stood against us; but also that, by his human nature, he might unite us to himself-God as well as man-in such an union as we could not apparently be capable of, except by being united to his human nature. Now, this union is commenced by an instrument appointed by Christ himself—namely, baptism. We are baptised into his body:' by some supernatural and mysterious operation, we, our bodies and souls, are in baptism united to the body and soul of Christ and thereby to the Godhead; and the Holy Spirit it is by whom we have this union-an union which makes us to be as truly in the lineage of the second Adam as we are naturally in the lineage of the first Adam. This is our new birth-the being born of the Spirit. The union of all so born again' is called in Scripture the Church, which is said to be the body of Christ, and Christ the Head of the Church-one body-not merely a metaphorical or even politic body, but a real though mystical body-having that which is common to Christ, its Head, and to us as the principle of oneness-namely, the one Spirit. Now this mystical body is, as we have seen, repeatedly called in Scripture by names indicating personality" (32). In this statement there are but two points of doctrine correctly put the first, that our blessed Lord took our nature both to redeem us and unite us to God: the last, that the principle of union is the Holy Spirit. For all the intermediate points are distorted and marred by confounding physical and spiritual union in as gross a manner as Nicodemus did in his interview with our Lord. Our blessed Lord took our nature into personal union with his own divine nature: consequently, his human nature and our nature being the same, it is nonsense to talk of our body and soul being united to the body and soul of Christ by baptism, for the union has been already effected in this sense by the incarnation; and no further physical union is possible without destroying his personality or our own. If corporeal union be insisted on, it draws with it the consequence of the death and resurrection of the sixth of Romans being physical and corporeal also; and we must affirm that we are personally risen with Christ already, and seated in heavenly places, according to the texts in Ephesians and Colossians; and that we are come to Mount Zion according to the epistle to the Hebrews, and many other things equally absurd and contradictory. Our union with Christ, as members of his body, will never be of that gross material nature which language like the above indicates, or such as to merge our personality in his; and local separation from our Lord, while he is in heaven and we are on the earth, renders such corporeal union an impossibility. Nor are our vile bodies, in the present mortal and corruptible condition of this fallen creation, capable of such an union with his glorified and incorruptible body; for, pure and holy as it now is, his immaculate Person would not endure the contact of a fallen thing, but reject it as loathsome and poisonous. Our union now is only spiritual and by the Holy Spirit, who is called the Spirit of Christ; yet a time is coming when it shall be local also, but it is when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality. For the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed; and so shall we be ever with the Lord. One of those creeds which the Bishop of Exeter receives as "the pure word of God" declares it to be necessary to everlasting salvation that we believe rightly the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ-"For the right faith is that we believe and confess, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man of the substance of his mother, born in the world: perfect God and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. And we hold the bishop to this in proof of our assertion that we are already "united to the body and soul of Christ" by his assuming our nature, and that to talk of such an union being effected in baptism is a virtual denial of the true doctrine concerning the incarnation. But we are not sure that the Bishop of Exeter holds correct doctrine even concerning the personality of our Lord; for the creed we have referred to declares that, "although he be God and Man, yet he is not two but one Christ." But we find in this "Letter" of the bishop the following astounding paragraph : -- "The declaration at the end of the order for the holy communion, concerning the direction that the communicants should receive kneeling, while it disclaims all adoration of any corporal presence of Christ's natural flesh and blood, and says that his natural body and blood are in heaven, and not here,' defines nothing with regard to the spiritual presence of Christ's glorified body" (47). Are we then come to this pass, that one who sets himself up as the champion of orthodoxy gravely and deliberately maintains that Christ has two bodies-the one being a natural body which is in heaven and not here, the other a glorified body which is spiritually present in the consecrated element when the holy communion is administered upon the earth? We can comprehend the meaning of transubstantiation, because it sets forth a possibility, although it involves false doctrine and leads to idolatry. We can conceive the possibility of the bread being changed into some third substance like the body of our Lord; but we cannot conceive how Christ in his one person can have two bodies-a natural and a glorified body; and these two bodies in such different conditions that the natural body is limited to one place, being "in heaven and not here," while the glorified body is present in many places at the same time wheresoever the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is administered. It is not possible to reason on such unreasonable assertions as these we can only point out the erroneous premises from which they originate, which seem to be something like the following. It is supposed by the Bishop of Exeter that, by being baptized into the body of Christ, we become united to his manhood or human nature (31, 71); and, therefore, that the personality, which is justly predicable of his natural body, is also applicable to his mystical body the Church; and, therefore, e contra, because the mystical body is scattered throughout the earth, that so also his personal bodily presence accompanies them by virtue of this physical union between him and them effected at baptism. To this we answer that it is an error to suppose that personality resides in the body of Christ. He was a Person in the Godhead before he assumed bodily form; and it was not merely a body, it was a nature, that he took of mankind, in order to become the God-Man, two natures in one Person. We cannot be united to him in the gross literal sense, for it would be like a deifi cation of the Church, and a despoiling of Christ, the only God-Man, of that which is his singular glory and distinction. Therefore, it is only by a spiritual and mystical union, wrought in us by the Holy Spirit, that we are united to him, which is no physical or literal incorporation into his material substance. And, on the other hand, Christ, by assuming the human nature, brought himself under the limitations inseparable from the nature which he assumed; and he, as the GodMan, can no more be present in many places at the same time than any individual of the human race can be present in many places at the same time. For he has not a divisible personality, though by his essential union with the Father and the Holy Spirit he is personally cognizant of all things, not only on earth but throughout the universe. And, if men will insist upon a personal presence in the sacraments, they ought to carry it still further: for Christ hath said, Wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Yet the Bishop of Exeter would have us believe that, whenever the mystical or sacramental body is spoken of, there Christ is to be understood as being present in the literal and personal sense! The natural body of Christ is his glorified body. In the same body which he at the incarnation assumed, and in which he suffered death upon the cross, he also arose from the dead, and now sitteth at the right hand of God. It is the same body, though now glorified; of which change in its condition a sign was given on the mount of transfiguration even while he was still on earth; and the identity of the risen body was established by our Lord's showing both his hands, his feet, and his side, saying, "Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have (Luke xxiv. 39). A few sentences from Hooker will express what we mean in terms more forcible than our own:-- "As God hath in Christ unspeakably glorified the nobler so likewise the meaner part of our nature, the very bodily substance of man......yea, in this respect, the very glorified body of Christ retained in it the scars and marks of former mortality. But, shall we say, that in heaven his glorious body, by virtue of the same cause, hath now power to present itself in all places, and to be everywhere at once present? We nothing doubt but God hath many ways, above the reach of our capacities, exalted that body which it hath pleased him to make his own......Notwithstanding, a body still it continueth-a body consubstantial with our bodies-a body of the same both nature and measure which it had on earth.........There is no proof in the world strong to enforce that Christ had a true body but by the true and natural properties of his body; amongst which properties definite or local presence is chief......If his majestical body have now any such new property, by force whereof it may everywhere, even in substance, present itself, or may at once be in many places, then hath the majesty of his estate extinguished the verity of his nature" (Ecc. Pol. v. 54, 55). But we fear that the bishop is holding some error very similar to that of transubstantiation-an error which, bad as it is, seems to be his only escape from absurdity. For he thinks "that there is some special effect wrought on the bread and wine in the prayer of consecration" (47), which, being coupled with his contending for the "spiritual presence of Christ's glorified body," can really mean nothing less than transubstantiation, or its cousin-german consubstantiation. The sacred elements would then be entitled to "adoration," which the bishop grants that the Church "disclaims." And the difference in the mode of dealing with the consecrated and unconsecrated elements, on which the bishop grounds his inference that some change has been wrought, really means nothing more than decent respect and reverence due to any thing which has been set apart for a sacred use; and it would be shown by all reverent persons towards the patten or the chalice in which the sacred elements have been consecrated, though no one would assert that there is any change in the silver. The only body which our Lord has is a human body—the body which he assumed at the incarnation and which was then in the same condition as our bodies are at the present time; but which was glorified when he ascended into heaven, as our bodies shall be at the resurrection. As Son of God our Lord had no bodily form; but was, like the Father and the Holy Ghost, pure spirit. And he became incarnate to accomplish the purpose of God which was declared at the creation of man and never spoken of any other creature"God said, let us make man in our image." This purpose seemed to fail when Adam fell; and to show that it had not failed, but was still sufficient to attain the end for which God had created it, Christ came; and, laying hold of the fallen creature, first atoned for its sin by dying the death which it had incurred, and then raised it to a higher glory than that in which it had been originally created: since it is invariably the course of God's proceedings, not merely to remedy an evil, |