did not admit of this interpretation, but which, without ceasing to belong to Him, might seem more directly applicable to a creature than to the Creator. He indeed was really the "Wisdom in whom the Father eternally delighted," yet it would be but natural, if, under the circumstances of Arian misbelief, theologians looked out for other than the Eternal Son to be the immediate object of such descriptions. And thus the controversy opened a question which it did not settle. It discovered a new sphere, if we may so speak, in the realms of light, to which the Church had not yet assigned its inhabitant. Arianism had admitted that our Lord was both the God of the Evangelical covenant, and the actual Creator of the Universe; but even this was not enough, because it did not confess Him to be the One, Everlasting, Infinite, Supreme Being, but to be made by Him. It was not enough with that heresy to proclaim Him to be begotten ineffably before all worlds; not enough to place Him high above all creatures as the type of all the works of God's Hands; not enough to make Him the Lord of His Saints, the Mediator between God and man, the Object of worship, the Image of the Father; not enough, because it was not all, and between all, and anything short of all, there was an infinite interval. The highest of creatures is levelled with the lowest in comparison of the One Creator Himself. That is, the Nicene Council recognised the eventful principle, that, while we believe and profess any being to be a creature, such a being is really no God to us, though honoured by us with whatever high titles and with whatever homage. Arius or Asterius did all but confess that Christ was the Almighty; they said much more than St. Bernard or St. Alphonso have since said of St. Mary; yet they left Him a creature and were found wanting. Thus there was "a wonder in heaven:" a throne was seen, far above all created powers, mediatorial, intercessory; a title archetypal; a crown bright as

the morning star; a glory issuing from the Eternal Throne; robes pure as the heavens; and a sceptre over all; and who was the predestined heir of that Majesty? Who was that Wisdom, and what was her name, "the Mother of fair love, and fear, and holy hope," "exalted like a palm-tree in Engaddi, and a rose-plant in Jericho," "created from the beginning before the world" in God's counsels, and "in Jerusalem was her power"? The vision is found in the Apocalypse, a Woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. The votaries of Mary do not exceed the true faith, unless the blasphemers of her Son came up to it. The Church of Rome is not idolatrous, unless Arianism is orthodoxy.

I am not stating conclusions which were drawn out in the controversy, but of premisses which were laid, broad and deep. It was then shown, it was then determined, that to exalt a creature was no recognition of its divinity. Nor am I speaking of the Semi-arians, who, holding our Lord's derivation from the Substance of the Father, yet denying His Consubstantiality, really did lie open to the charge of maintaining two Gods, and present no parallel to the defenders of the prerogatives of St. Mary. But I speak of the Arians who taught that our Lord's Substance was created; and concerning them it is true that St. Athanasius' condemnation of their theology is a vindication of the Medieval. Yet it is not wonderful, considering how Socinians, Sabellians, Nestorians, and the like, abound in these days, without their even knowing it themselves, if those who never rise higher in their notions of our Lord's Divinity than to consider Him a man singularly inhabited by a Divine Presence, that is, a Catholic Saint,-if such men should recognise, in the honour paid by the Church to St. Mary, the very honour which, and which alone, they offer to her Eternal Son.

I have said that there was in the first ages no public and ecclesiastical recognition of the place which St. Mary holds in the Economy of grace; this was reserved for the fifth century, as the definition of our Lord's proper Divinity had been the work of the fourth. There was a controversy contemporary with those already mentioned, I mean the Nestorian, which brought out the complement of the development, to which they had been subservient; and which, if I may so speak, supplied the subject of that august proposition of which Arianism had provided the predicate. In order to do honour to Christ, in order to defend the true doctrine of the Incarnation, in order to secure a right faith in the manhood of the Eternal Son, the Council of Ephesus determined the Blessed Virgin to be the Mother of God. Thus all heresies of that day, though opposite to each other, tended in a most wonderful way to her exaltation; and the School of Antioch, the fountain of primitive rationalism, led the Church to lay down first the conceivable greatness of a creature, and then the incommunicable dignity of St. Mary.

But the spontaneous or traditional feeling of Christians, as we saw in the foregoing Chapter, had in great measure anticipated the formal ecclesiastical decision. Thus the title Theotocos, or Mother of God, was familiar to Christians from primitive times, and is used, among other writers, by Origen, Eusebius, St. Alexander, St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Gregory Nyssen, and St. Nilus. She had been called Ever-Virgin by St. Epiphanius, Didymus, and others. By others, "the Mother of all living," as being the antitype of Eve; for, as St. Epiphanius observes, "in truth," not in shadow, "from Mary was Life itself brought into the world, that Mary might bear things living, and might become Mother of living things. St. Augustine says that all have sinned "except

1 Hær. 78, 18.

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." "She was alone and wrought the world's salvation," says St. Ambrose, alluding to her conception of the Redeemer. She is signified by the Pillar of the cloud which guided the Israelites, according to the same Father; and she had "so great grace, as not only to have virginity herself, but to impart it to those to whom she came;"-"the Rod out of the stem of Jesse,' says St. Jerome, and "the Eastern gate through which the High Priest alone goes in and out, yet is ever shut;"-the wise woman, says St. Nilus, who "hath clad all believers, from the fleece of the Lamb born from her, with the clothing of incorruption, and delivered them from their invisible nakedness;"-"the Mother of Life, of beauty, of majesty, the Morning Star," according to Antiochus;—" the mystical new heavens," "the heavens carrying the Divinity," "the fruitful vine by whom we are translated from death unto life," according to St. Ephraim; "the manna which is delicate, bright, sweet, and virgin, which, as though coming from heaven, has poured down on all the people of the Churches a food pleasanter than honey," according to St. Maximus.

St. Proclus calls her "the unsullied shell which contains the pearl of price," "the sacred shrine of sinlessness," "the golden altar of holocaust," "the holy oil of anointing," "the costly alabaster box of spikenard," "the ark gilt within and without," "the heifer whose ashes, that is, the Lord's Body taken from her, cleanses those who are defiled by the pollution of sin," "the fair bride of the Canticles," " the stay (orpeyua) of believers," the Church's diadem," "the expression of orthodoxy." These are oratorical expressions; but we use oratory on great subjects, not on small. Elsewhere he calls her "God's only bridge to man;" and elsewhere

he breaks forth, "Run through all creation in your thoughts, and see if there be equal to, or greater than, the Holy Virgin Mother of God."

Theodotus too, one of the Fathers of Ephesus, or whoever it is whose Homilies are given to St. Amphilochius:"As debtors and God's well-affected servants, let us make confession to God the Word and to His Mother, of the gift of words, as far as we are able... Hail, Mother, clad in light, of the light which sets not; hail all-undefiled mother of holiness; hail most pellucid fountain of the life-giving stream!" After speaking of the Incarnation, he continues, "Such paradoxes doth the Divine Virgin Mother ever bring to us in her holy irradiations, for with her is the Fount of Life, and breasts of the spiritual and guileless milk; from which to suck the sweetness, we have even now earnestly run to her, not as in forgetfulness of what has gone before, but in desire of what is to come."

St. Fulgentius of the same date says, "Mary became the window of heaven, for through her God poured the True Light upon the world; the heavenly ladder, for through her did God descend upon earth.

Come, Virgin, to a Virgin, come ye who conceive to one who did conceive, ye who bear to one who bore, mothers to a Mother, ye who give suck to one who suckled, young women to the Young." Lastly, "Thou hast found grace," says St. Peter Chrysologus, "how much? he had said above, Full. And full indeed, which with full shower might pour upon and into the whole creation."1

Aug. de Nat. et Grat. 42. Ambros. Ep. 1. 49, § 2, in Psalm 118; v. 3. de Instit. Virg. 50. Hier. in Is. xi. 1, contr. Pelag. ii. 4. Nil. Ep. i. p. 267. Antioch. ap. Cyr. de Rect. Fid. p. 49. Ephr. Opp. Syr. t. 3, p. 607. Max. Hom. 45. Procl. Orat. vi. pp. 225—228, p. 60, p. 179, 180, ed. 1630. Theodot. ap. Amphiloch. pp. 39, &c. Fulgent. Serm. 3, p. 125. Chrysol. Serm. 142. A striking passage from another Sermon of the last-mentioned author, on the words "She cast in her mind what manner of salutation," &c., may be added: Quamtus sit Deus satis ignorat ille, qui hujus Virginis mentem non