affirmed of his whole indivisible Person. The Son of God is said to be born of Mary, because his human nature is derived from her substance; for the same reason, Elizabeth regards her with reverence, as the mother of the Lord of heaven; the wise men adore, as God, him who is also the new-born child of Mary. God is said to have purchased the church with his blood, because the human part of his Divine Person bled and died for it; "Emmanuel, God with us," is the Son of Mary, because his Divine nature cannot be separated from the humanity which he took from her.

Neither is there any better ground, in reason, for denying this title to Mary.

"As a rational soul and flesh is a man, so God and man is one Christ;" the words form part of the Creed of St Athanasius, so called.

But it is argued, that Mary is not the mother of his Divinity; and therefore is not the mother of God.

She is not the mother of his Divinity: certainly not.

Neither is the mother of any man the author of his soul; but only of his body. His soul is breathed into it by God,

to whom it returns at death.-Eccles. xii. 7.

If, then, it were absurd to deny that a woman is the mother of the being to whom she gives birth, because he derives his body only from her, and not his soul; it is equally unreasonable to deny that Mary is the mother of the Divine Person of Jesus, or of God, because the Divine Being who was born of her did not derive from her his Divinity, but only his humanity. The two natures form one Person, as intimately and inseparably, as the soul and body of a man. Nay, much more so; for these are separated at death; but those never, in life, or in death. And hence, it is the more unreasonable to deny to Mary her title of the mother of God.

There remains one difficulty more: the fear of confounding the glory of Mary with her Creator's; of making her equal or superior to God. If such a fear has any real foundation, the antidote must be, not in denying the dignity of Mary altogether, for that were injustice in any one who believes the mystery of the Incarnation; but in well defining the limits of the honour due to God, and of that which he

has conferred on the first of his creatures. A consistent and systematic belief in the nature and attributes of God, such as the church proposes to us, is our encouragement and safeguard in magnifying the name and the prerogatives of Mary. Without that, there would be no security against the danger which is feared. Separate the devout practices of the Catholic church in regard to Mary, from its dogmatic teaching, and there might be serious grounds for entertaining such a fear. And it is for those who are ever shrinking from speaking of the Blessed Mother of God, without qualifying and contradicting what Scripture itself hath said, in their turn to fear lest their faith in the unapproachable Majesty of the Supreme Creator may not fall short of what he hath revealed; lest their boasted emancipation from dogma may not unconsciously, perhaps, to themselves, have reduced their idea of his eternal, immense, unchangeable essence within the limits of a finite being; lest in their anxiety to avoid idolatry, they may not be tending towards an insidious infidelity. There is a growing inclination in this country to speak with doubt and disparagement of such doctrines as the Eternal Generation

of the Son of God, and of the union of his human and divine natures in one Divine Person. The temper of the times is opposed to dogmatic definition; it influences many who would disclaim any intention of denying revealed religion; and it disqualifies them from appreciating the nicely adjusted relations of all the parts of revealed truth to each other, as they are exhibited in the sum of Catholic theology.

Again, the ancient heretics, who denied that Jesus is God, attributed to him far higher prerogatives than the church has ever claimed for his Blessed Mother. They admitted that he had existed before the world; some of them even allowed that he was of like substance with God. And yet they fell short of confessing the identity of substance, and equality of perfection with his Eternal Father, which the church justly vindicated for the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. They were condemned, and rejected from Catholic communion. But the most glowing panegyrics on the Holy Virgin never attribute an existence to her, till nearly 4,000 years after the creation of the world, except in the divine counsel; never assign her a substance more than human; indeed, she

could not have any other, if she was to be the mother of Christ; for it was to be made man, that he became her Son.

If the honour, therefore, that we pay to Mary is such as is due to God alone, then the Arians, who paid far higher honour to Christ, were unjustly condemned. But if they were fairly convicted of refusing divine honour to Christ, then we do not offer it to Mary; for our homage to her falls very far short of the dignity which they ascribed to Christ. In other words; the Arians were condemed, because, underneath their ascription of high-sounding titles to Christ, there lurked a denial of his Divinity, in the fatal assertion that he was, after all, only a creature of God. For the very same reason, we ought not to be condemned because, underneath far inferior titles of honour, ascribed by us to Mary, there remains the unquestioned fact, that she was a creature of God; the first, indeed, and most glorious, but no more than a creature, still.*

Thus, at the very outset of our inquiries, we draw a line of demarcation between the divine attributes, and the very highest dig

* See this argument more fully urged, in F. Newman's work on "Development.