STRICTURES*

ON ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCE'S

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.

THE incarnation of Jesus Christ-that act of the Deity, whereby the human and divine natures were united, and yet kept distinct, in the Person of our Blessed Lord-presents a subject, which should never be approached without caution by human reasoners. It is a revealed mystery,-not in the sense merely of some of the truths spoken of by St. Paul, which were announced for ages, but not understood till cleared up in the Gospel-such as the call of the Gentiles; but in the sense of a truth mysterious in itself, and which must always be

* The Substance, much enlarged, of a Review in the "Christian Observer" of April 1850. (The references are to the 1st Edition of the Archdeacon's book.)

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inscrutable to our finite faculties-like the kindred doctrine of the Trinity. To pry curiously into such a mystery,—to draw from it deductions, not demonstrably inevitable-and to make those deductions binding on men's faith, equally with the mystery itself—is a proceeding fraught with danger, and one which no man will be in haste to adopt, who feels it to be his true wisdom to sit as a little child at the feet of the Great Teacher, and not to venture, without absolute necessity, beyond the precincts of express Revelation.

§ 1. TREATMENT BY ENGLISH DIVINES.

It is remarkable, how uniformly our most celebrated divines have exhibited this childlike wisdom, with regard to the mysterious subject of which we speak.

We look in vain for a Treatise on it, amongst the volumes produced by our greatest writers.

Waterland, in his numerous writings devoted to cognate subjects, has no such Treatise. He mentions the Incarnation, only to defend it, as the Athanasian Creed defends it, from the heretical deductions or explanations, which destroyed the revealed verity. Bishop Bull, in his equally numerous writings, similar in cha

racter takes the same cautious course. Bishop Pearson, in his invaluable Exposition of the Creed, launches out into no such speculations. In Hooker's great work, there is but one short chapter, belonging to the Fifth Book, which gives any ground for theorizing on the subject; and the language of that chapter may be explained, as we shall hereafter shew, by collating it with the language of preceding chapters. Bishop Beveridge, in his Expositions of the Church Articles, the Catechism, and the Creed, touches briefly and reverently on the Incarnation. Even in Bishop Stillingfleet's six folio volumes-the ornament of a Theological library, as he himself was of our Church-we discover no treatise on this subject. Of course, that learned Bishop speaks of the humanity of Christ on several occasions--particularly in the treatise entitled, "the Doctrine of the Trinity and Transubstantiation Compared," but this he does in no metaphysical or theoretical manner. Barrow, who so singularly combined mathematical ability of the highest order with an extraordinary "copia fandi," did not indulge himself in any excursion into this wide and thorny field. We search Bishop Jeremy Taylor's works in vain for a professed treatise. The same may be said of Hammond's

works. Need we add that we know of no such treatise existing in the long row of volumes which the Parker Society has published, the works of the Reformers? Why continue this enumeration of our most eminent Divines, who with one consent have shrunk from handling the doctrine of the Incarnation "in extenso?” We have named a sufficient number to warrant the inference, that such a consent is not accidental. The phenomenon, that so many masters in our Israel should have pursued so cautious a course, when, from their consciousness of the possession of transcendent powers, they must have been tempted to pursue a bolder one, admits of but one solution. Like Socrates of old, they "knew their own ignorance." They knew that no powers of man in his present state are adequate to fathom the mighty depth.

What says Dr. Donne; metaphysical as he is -according to Dr. Johnson, even in his poetry? Quoting Basil, in his Sermons on the Nativity, he says of the "Incarnation : "-" Silentio honoretur; immo potius ne cogitationibus permittatur." He adduces still higher authority for such caution: "That is enough which we have in St. John, Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus is come in the flesh, is of God.""

What says Barrow? "It becometh us rather to adore the depth of God's wisdom, than to sound it, or hope by searching to find the bottom of it." (Sermon on the " Incarnation.")

The distinguished Divines of whom we have spoken, treated the subject, when it fell in their way, practically-not considering the Incarnation, as it is in itself, but as it is to us, and therefore they subordinated it to Christ's Death, to which it was absolutely necessary as a step; according to his own words: "For this cause came I into the world." They first shewed the value of that Death, and thence inferred the value of the Incarnation,-and the duty of thankfulness to Him "who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich!

These great and wise men had not only a seasonable sense of the weakness of the human faculties, and that preference of the practical to the speculative, which characterises Englishmen, and is our chief safeguard against the influx of Neology; but they had also a perfect knowledge of the perilous contests which agitated the early church, concerning our Lord's Human Nature. They were well aware, moreover, of the Scholastic disputes which raged between the Realists and Nominalists in