Man’s Savior must be God and Man Hypostatically United (1)

There is a beauty to correct theology that is difficult to express. We may put it best by saying that it is a harmonious unity of parts. All portions connect to and mutually prove the others. If we surrender one point, we lose everything. Such is the case with our present topic. If we consider what sin is and what it means to make satisfaction for sins, we will see how the Hypostatic Union is the only live option. Conversely, if we reject the Hypostatic Union, we thereby either destroy all hope of salvation or reveal a secret commitment to the religion of Cain.

All creatures, by virtue of their creaturehood, owe to God, as their Creator and Sustainer, perfect conformity to His will. Sin, then, is nothing else than to not render to God His due. Every thought of a rational creature should be subject to God’s will. This is what man and angel owe to God. Everyone who does not do this, sins. When a person sins, he robs God of the honor of perfect obedience. Consequently, everyone who sins ought to pay back the honor of which he has robbed God. This is the satisfaction that every sinner owes to God. Moreover, the satisfaction should be proportionate to the guilt.

What payment would we make for our sins: Repentance, a broken and contrite heart, self-denial, various bodily sufferings, pity in giving and forgiving, and obedience? But what do we give God in all these things that we do not already owe Him as His creatures? Nothing. How will we then be saved?

If we suppose that our contrite heart and repentant feelings are enough to blot out our sin, this is only because we have not considered aright what the true nature and burden of sin is. In his classic work, Cur Deus Homo, Anselm of Canterbury asks: “If you should find yourself in the sight of God, and someone said to you: ‘Look over there;’ and God, on the other hand, should say: ‘It is not my will that you should look;’ ask your own heart what there is in all of existence which would make it right for you to give that look contrary to the will of God.[i] Of course, we would all answer that there is absolutely no motive that would make it right. Anselm continues by asking, “what if it were necessary either that the whole universe, except God himself, should perish and fall back into nothing, or else that you should do so small a thing against the will of God?”[ii] The deed, which seems so insignificant, when viewed as contrary to God’s will, becomes the worst deed imaginable.

This is precisely the case of man. In Adam we have all given the look God forbade. It is contrary to God’s honor that man be reconciled to Him while this reproach is still heaped upon God. Man still owes God the perfect obedience required of Adam before the Fall. But man is no longer capable of this because he is conceived in and born in sin. Man has a two-fold plight: His depravity makes him unable to render to God the obedience God demands, and he stands under the just wrath of God for this violation.

God must recover His right. Supreme justice cannot forego this. Therefore it is an absolute perversion of justice for man to receive from God what God designed to give him, unless he return to God everything which he took from him. But this cannot be achieved except in this way: In the fall of man all humanity was corrupted and tainted with sin. God will not choose one of this nature to fill up the number in his heavenly kingdom. But, if man gained this victory, as many men as are needed to complete the number which man was made to fill, could be justified from sin. But a sinner cannot do this: a sinner cannot justify a sinner. Only God can do what man needs done. But that serves no purpose, since God is the offended party. Man must pay what only God can afford. God cannot pay the debt owed to Himself. This is surely the mother of all quandaries and an enigma that only the mind of God could unravel.

Hence when we look at the state of fallen man in Original Sin, we see that no other solution will prevail but that which God has actually given in His Son, Jesus Christ. The only solution to this dilemma is if God could become a man, and, as a man could pay man’s debt to God. Enter Jesus Christ - very God and very man, hypostatically united as our Mediator!

One of the finest New Testament passages describing for us the Hypostatic Union is Luke 1:35:

kai; ajpokriqei;" oJ a[ggelo" ei\pen aujth'/, Pneu'ma a{gion ejpeleuvsetai ejpi; sev, kai; duvnami" uJyivstou ejpiskiavsei soi: dio; kai; to; gennwvmenon a{gion klhqhvsetai, uiJo;" qeou'.

And the angel answered and said unto her, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”

These words contain a brief description of the supernatural conception. They not only show us that Christ’s humanity was sinless, but also that it was never in Adam’s covenant. The second clause more fully describes what is affirmed in the first clause. (We are all familiar with the exegetic rule that in corresponding members of this type the darker is to be explained by the clearer.) The significance of both clauses is this: The Holy Spirit was the former of Christ’s human nature; and that the Son by assuming it into personal union, made it His own by a right unique to Himself – that is, by a union that is personal and incommunicable to the other Persons of the Godhead.* It was united to Him in such a sense that it also (kai9) is the Son of God. That Holy Thing began to be at the conception of the Spirit.  And these words are important to refute those who dislike the idea that our Lord’s flesh was formed by the Spirit from Mary’s substance, and imagine to themselves a certain heavenly flesh brought with Him from above.

*(The words “of thee” (en sou~), deleted by many in the phrase, should probably be retained in the text. They are found in such a number of Fathers (Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Epiphanius, Jerome) that the balance of authority from this source alone goes far to counterbalance the evidence of faulty manuscripts against them.)

There are two poles of error regarding the union of natures in Christ. There is the heresy of Nestorius - Nestorianism, the rejection of the “hypostatic union” meaning that Christ was two persons, one human and one divine. Nestorianism denies any union between the two natures, making Christ a split personality, in fact, a dual personality. Christ becomes something of a schizophrenic whose actions cannot be clearly attributed to His humanity or His deity.

Springing from the same source, the opposite error is Eutychianism, the heresy of Eutychus (d. 454). His doctrine that the incarnate Christ had only a single, divine nature, clad in human flesh is sometimes called monophysitism. Incumbent in the heresy of Eutychus is the denial that Christ’s flesh derived from the virgin Mary.

We can expose the fallacy of this thinking quite simply. Christ either did or did not take human flesh from Mary. If He did not take it from her, then we must inquire what manhood He put on when He came among us. If His flesh did not come from the seed of Abraham and David and finally of Mary, then we must show what man's flesh he descended from, since, after the first man, all human flesh is derived from human flesh. If we name anybody beside Mary the virgin as the cause of the conception of Christ Savior, we will have stamped deception on the Godhead for shifting to others the promise of the prophecies made to Abraham and David that from their seed salvation would arise for the world. On the other hand, if it was not a truly human body, the Godhead is likewise convicted of falsehood for displaying to men a body that was not real and thus deceiving those who thought it real. If it was not a truly human body, the result is in essence no different than Docetism. But if flesh had been formed new and real but not taken from man, what was the purpose of the whole drama of the conception? Where is the value of His passion? The error of Eutyches takes its rise from the same source as that of Nestorius. Therefore, it ends the same way: the human race has not been saved, since man who was dead in sin and needed salvation was not taken into Godhead.

Returning to our text we note that the words dio; kai indicate that there is both: an eternal generation, and a holy thing begotten - created when assumed and assumed when created. And the result is not two Persons, but one; for the holy thing to which Mary gave birth is also called the Son of God.

Therefore it is abundantly clear from Scripture that the Lord’s humanity was produced by the Holy Spirit in a supernatural way, which at once prevented the possibility of contracting guilt from Adam and which, by an act of infinite wisdom and power, put Him within the human family as a kinsman-Redeemer, and yet exempted Him from being in Adam’s covenant; for He was the second Adam, the Son of man.

The mother did not need an immaculate nature. The question, “How could pure humanity be derived from a defiled source which unanimously entails corruption on others?” is a difficulty that has confounded many: the Valentinians, the Anabaptists, the Quakers and some of the Plymouth Brethren on the one side, and the entire Church of Rome on the other. The sects named attempted to meet the difficulty by representing Mary as but a pipe or channel (swlh9n) through which a heavenly body or flesh, immediately created by the Holy Spirit, but not formed from her substance, was introduced into the world. But on this principle the Lord Jesus would belong to another order of beings and would not be our brother, born into our family[iii]. Redemption was only possible when affected by a goel, or kinsman-Redeemer.[iv]

The Romish church met this difficulty (in the Papal Bull of Dec. 10, 1854) by affirming the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary and her exemption from all taint of original sin before she was born. Of this theory, the presupposition (or, as the theologians express it, the prw~ton yeu~dov) can be nothing else but the theory of Flacius on the subject of original sin, viz., that sin had become the very essence of man. The theologians who confuted Flacius immediately saw that on such a supposition the Incarnation would have been impossible. They saw that human nature, corrupted as it was by the sin of Adam, was still, as a work of God, good, and was therefore capable of redemption. We can distinguish in idea between the good work of God and the vitiating taint superinduced upon it. We cannot separate these elements. God can do both – redeem His creature, and separate sin.

The following quotation (which I have posted here before) from Bishop Horsley’s sermons will serve to elucidate the position we have affirmed here: “Neither of the two natures was absorbed in the other, but both remained in themselves perfect, notwithstanding the union of the two in one person, the Divine Word, to which the humanity was united, was not, as some ancient heretics imagined, instead of a soul to inform the body of the man; for this could not have been without a diminution of the divinity, which upon this supposition must have become obnoxious to all the perturbations of the human soul, - to the passions of grief, fear, anger, pity, joy, hope, and disappointment, - to all which our Lord without sin was liable. The human nature in our Lord was complete in both its parts, consisting of a body and a rational soul. The rational soul of our Lord’s human nature was a distinct thing from the principle of divinity to which it was united; and being so distinct, like the souls of other men, it owed the right use of its faculties, in the exercise of them upon religious subjects, and its uncorrupted rectitude of will, to the influence of the Holy Spirit of God. Jesus indeed ‘was anointed with this holy oil above His fellows,’ inasmuch as the intercourse was uninterrupted, - the illumination by infinite degrees more full, and the consent and submission, on the part of the man, more perfect than in any of the sons of Adam; insomuch that He alone of all the human race, by the strength and light imparted from above, was exempt from sin, and rendered superior to temptation. To Him the Spirit was given not by measure. The unmeasured infusion of the Spirit into the Redeemer’s soul was NOT THE MEANS, BUT THE EFFECT, of its union to the second person of the Godhead. A union of which this had been the means had differed only in degree from that which is, in some degree, the privilege of every believer, - which, in an eminent degree, was the privilege of the apostles, who, by the visible descent of the Holy Ghost upon them on the day of Pentecost, were, in some sort, like the Lord, anointed with the unction from on high. But in Him the natures were united, and the uninterrupted perfect commerce of His human soul with the Divine Spirit was the effect and privilege of that mysterious conjunction.”[v]

---

[i]Anselm, Cur Deus Homo

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Heb. 2:14

[iv] Ruth 2:20

[v] (Sermon IX) cited by Smeaton

How Justin Martyr Proves That Infant Baptism Is Of Apostolic Origins

In many previous posts, we have tackled the subject of infant baptism. In those articles, I have ardently defended this practice as truly rooted in Scripture. For that reason, I will not go over all the Scriptural defenses of the doctrine of infant baptism. If one is interested, all my other posts on the subject can be found here on my blog.

A secondary defense, however, is a legitimate appeal to the practice of the early church. When I say “early church,” I am not referring to the 4^th or 5^th Centuries, either. I’m talking about the period within a generation or so of the Apostles. If we can determine the Church’s practice during this era, it will be very instructive for us.

You may wonder about the legitimacy of such an appeal, but let me demonstrate how I intend to use it. Right now, there are hundreds of thousands of living veterans of WWII. There are indeed perhaps one or two living veterans of WWI. If and when a discussion arises about details and circumstances of life during this period of time, we have direct access to people who can either verify or falsify various opinions about that era. If someone makes a faulty or inaccurate assertion about that time period, one of the thousands of people who were there can correct the false statement beyond question, because they were eyewitnesses.

Similarly, if we go back far enough into Church history and see something that was not taught by the Apostles being claimed to have been of Apostolic origin, we should expect to find protest from any other writer of the time who lived during any part of the Apostolic era. I said all that to say this: If we find infant baptism early enough in Church history, and we find no opposition to it at all from any quarter, then we may safely assume that the practice ruffled no feathers among those who belonged to the older generation and had actually been later contemporaries of the Apostles.

And this is precisely what we find! Justin Martyr claimed that "many" male and female Christians had been "illuminated through the Name of Christ." Such "had been disciples to Christ from childhood" (1^st Apology 15:6). These people had obviously been 'sexually pure' when infants and little children. Justin is asserting that they had remained sexually pure thereafter -- and were continuing to "remain pure" even "at the age of sixty or seventy years."

The passive verb “made disciples” - (ematheteuthesan), in this place, as everywhere else in Justin’s writings, means "to become a disciple," that is, 'taught' follower of Jesus. This passive word was also used by Justin elsewhere -- to refer to baptism. Justin's word "illuminated," of course, was his regular cryptogram for "baptized," which was a device for evading persecution. A.C. Barnard remarks in his book I Have Been Baptized, writes: "This refers to the time when they received their status of discipleship -- i.e. at [and indeed right before] their baptism. Thus, they must have been baptized circa 80-90 A.D." (Cf. Justin's 1st Ap. chs. 15:6 and 61 & 65 with A.C. Barnard's I Have Been Baptized, DRC Bookroom, Pretoria, 1984, p. 78.)

Barnard places their baptism in 80 or 90 AD because he dates Justin’s 1^st Apology to 150 AD. So, according to Barnard's understanding of Justin’s words in the quotation above, those lifelong 70 year-old disciples had been baptized when they were infants. That, believes Barnard, would have been around 80 AD, which is still during the apostolic era.

Barnard assumes a late date for the writing of the New Testament. Nevertheless, even had it been written a decade or so earlier, Justin's testimony would still suggest that infant baptism was an Apostolic practice; because at least some Apostles were still alive around 80 A.D!

More than this, the Anglican author William Wall has pointed out something extremely important: Justin's word ematheteuthesan -- 'were discipled' or 'made disciples' -- is the exact same word that Matthew used in expressing Christ's command in the Great Commission. This is Christ's injunction to His ministers to "'disciple' all the nations" - and to make them into His followers. We must ask: What nation has no children?

But Wall continues: "Justin wrote but ninety years after St. Matthew [28:19], who wrote about fifteen years after Christ's ascension...They that were seventy years old at this time [when Justin wrote], must have been disciples to Christ in their childhood...in the midst of the apostles' times -- and within twenty years after St. Matthew's writing." (Wall's History of Infant Baptism, Vol. I pp. 66-171) So, when Justin was writing around 150 A.D., some of his acquaintances had been Christ's disciples already since their childhood -- and for "sixty or seventy years." This means they had already become Christian disciples or 'taught ones' around 80 A.D., and thus during the apostolic age itself.  

Had infant baptism been an innovation of the later post-Apostolic age, it seems very peculiar, to say the least, that we do not hear of complaints against this innovation by older Christians who knew the Apostles and had witnessed their actual practice regarding baptism. Thus it is safe to assume that Origen was correct when he asserted that infant baptism was an Apostolic practice. 

In case that wasn't clear enough, let me state it again. Justin tells us of people who were baptized as infants during to Apostolic era; no one living during the Apostolic era complains about this as an innovation. Therefore, we may conclude that the practice originated with the Apostles themselves. It is from them that the Church learned this practice.

The First Temptation of Christ, A Sermon By John Knox (Part 5)

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil. Matt. 4:1

In this answer of Christ we may perceive what weapons are to be used against our adversary the devil, and how we may confute his arguments, which craftily, and of malice, he makes against God's elect. Christ might have repulsed Satan with a word, or by commanding him to silence, as He to whom all power was given in heaven and earth; but it pleased His mercy to teach us how to use the sword of the Holy Ghost, which is the word of God, in battle against our spiritual enemy. The Scripture which Christ brings is written in the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy. It was spoken by Moses a little before His death, to establish the people in God's merciful providence. For in the same chapter, and in certain others that go before, He reckons the great travail and divers dangers with the extreme necessities that they had sustained in the desert the space of forty years, and yet, notwithstanding how constant God had been in keeping and performing His promise, for throughout all perils He had conducted them to the sight and borders of the promised land. And so this Scripture more directly answers to the temptation of Satan; for thus does Satan reason, as before is said, "Thou art in poverty and hast no provision to sustain thy life. Therefore God takes no regard nor care of Thee, as He doth over His chosen children." Christ Jesus answered: "Thy argument is false and vain; for poverty or necessity precludes not the providence or care of God; which is easy to be proved by the people of God, Israel, who, in the desert, oftentimes lacked things necessary to the sustenance of life, and for lack of the same they grudged and murmured; yet the Lord never cast away the providence and care of them, but according to the word that He had once pronounced, to wit, that they were His peculiar people; and according to the promise made to Abraham, and to them before their departure from Egypt, He still remained their conductor and guide, till He placed them in peaceable possession of the land of Canaan, their great infirmities and manifold transgressions notwithstanding."

Thus are we taught, I say, by Christ Jesus, to repulse Satan and his assaults by the Word of God, and to apply the examples of His mercies, which He has shown to others before us, to our own souls in the hour of temptation, and in the time of our trouble. For what God doth to one at any time, the same appertains to all that depend upon God and His promises. And, therefore, however we are assaulted by Satan, our adversary, within the Word of God is armor and weapons sufficient. The chief craft of Satan is to trouble those that begin to decline from his obedience, and to declare themselves enemies to iniquity, with divers assaults, the design whereof is always the same; that is, to put variance betwixt them and God into their conscience, that they should not repose and rest themselves in His assured promises. And to persuade this, he uses and invents divers arguments. Sometimes he calls the sins of their youth, and which they have committed in the time of blindness, to their remembrance; very often he objects their unthankfulness toward God and present imperfections. By sickness, poverty, tribulations in their household, or by persecution, he can allege that God is angry, and regard them not. Or by the spiritual cross which few feel and fewer understand the utility and profit of, he would drive God's children to desperation, and by infinite means more, he goeth about seeking, like a roaring lion, to undermine and destroy our faith. But it is impossible for him to prevail against us unless we obstinately refuse to use the defense and weapons that God has offered. Yea, I say, that God's elect cannot refuse it, but seek for their Defender when the battle is most strong; for the sobs, groans, and lamentations of such as fight, yea, the fear they have lest they be vanquished, the calling and prayer for continuance, are the undoubted and right seeking of Christ our champion. We refuse not the weapon, although sometimes, by infirmity, we cannot use it as we would. It suffices that your hearts unfeignedly sob for greater strength, for continuance, and for final deliverance by Christ Jesus; that which is wanting in us, His sufficiency doth supply; for it is He that fighteth and overcometh for us. But for bringing of the examples of the Scriptures, if God permit, in the end we shall speak more largely when it shall be treated why Christ permitted Himself thus to be tempted. Sundry impediments now call me from writing in this matter, but, by God's grace, at convenient leisure I purpose to finish, and to send it to you. I grant the matter that proceeds from me is not worthy of your pain and labor to read it; yet, seeing it is a testimony of my good mind toward you, I doubt not but you will accept it in good part. God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, grant unto you to find favor and mercy of the Judge, whose eyes and knowledge pierce through the secret cogitations of the heart, in the day of temptation, which shall come upon all flesh, according to that mercy which you (illuminated and directed by His Holy Spirit) have showed to the afflicted. Now the God of all comfort and consolation confirm and strengthen you in His power unto the end. Amen.

The First Temptation of Christ, A Sermon By John Knox (Part 4)

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil. Matt. 4:1

Many words have I used here, dearly beloved, but I cannot express the thousandth part of the malicious despite which lurked in this one temptation of Satan. It was a mocking of Christ and of His obedience. It was a plain denial of God's promise. It was the triumphing voice of him that appeared to have gotten victory. Oh, how bitter this temptation was no creature can understand but such as feel the grief of such darts as Satan casts at the tender conscience of those that gladly would rest and repose in God, and in the promises of His mercy. But here is to be noted the ground and foundation. The conclusion of Satan is this: Thou art none of God's elect, much less His well-beloved Son. His reason is this: Thou art in trouble and findest no relief. There the foundation of the temptation was Christ's poverty, and the lack of food without hope of remedy to be sent from God. And it is the same temptation which the devil objected to Him by the princes of the priests in His grievous torments upon the cross; for thus they cried, "If he be the Son of God, let him come down from the cross and we will believe in him; he trusted in God, let him deliver him, if he have the pleasure in him." As though they would say, God is the deliverer of His servants from troubles; God never permits those that fear Him to come to confusion; this man we see in extreme trouble; if He be the Son of God, or even a true worshiper of His name, He will deliver Him from this calamity. If He deliver Him not, but suffer Him to perish in these anguishes, then it is an assured sign that God has rejected Him as a hypocrite, that shall have no portion of His glory. Thus, I say, Satan takes occasion to tempt, and moves also others to judge and condemn God's elect and chosen children, by reason that troubles are multiplied upon them.

But with what weapons we ought to fight against such enemies and assaults we shall learn in the answer of Christ Jesus, which follows: But He, answering, said "It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God." This answer of Christ proves the sentence which we have brought of the aforesaid temptation to be the very meaning of the Holy Ghost; for unless the purpose of Satan has been to have removed Christ from all hope of God's merciful providence toward Him in that His necessity, Christ had not answered directly to his words, saying, "Command that these stones be made bread." But Christ Jesus, perceiving his art and malicious subtility, answered directly to his meaning, His words nothing regarded; by which Satan was so confounded that he was ashamed to reply any further.

But that you may the better understand the meaning of Christ's answer, we will express and repeat it over in more words. "Thou laborest, Satan," would Christ say, "to bring into my heart a doubt and suspicion of My Father's promise, which was openly proclaimed in My baptism, by reason of My hunger, and that I lack all carnal provision. Thou art bold to affirm that God takes no care for Me, but thou art a deceitful and false corrupt sophister, and thy argument, too, is vain, and full of blasphemies; for thou bindest God's love, mercy, and providence to the having or wanting of bodily provision, which no part of God's Scriptures teach us, but rather the express contrary. As it is written, 'Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proeeedeth out of the mouth of God,' that is, the very life and felicity of man consists not in the abundance of bodily things, or the possession and having of them makes no man blest or happy; neither shall the lack of them be the cause of his final misery; but the very life of man consists in God, and in His promises pronounced by His own mouth, unto which whoso cleaves unfeignedly shall live the life everlasting. And although all creatures in earth forsake him, yet shall not his bodily life perish till the time appointed by God approach. For God has means to feed, preserve, and maintain, unknown to man's reason, and contrary to the common course of nature. He fed His people Israel in the desert forty years without the provision of man. He preserved Jonah in the whale's belly; and maintained and kept the bodies of the three children in the furnace of fire. Reason and the natural man could have seen nothing in these cases but destruction and death, and could have judged nothing but that God had cast away the care of these, His creatures, and yet His providence was most vigilant toward them in the extremity of their dangers, from which He did so deliver them, and in the midst of them did so assist them, that His glory, which is His mercy and goodness, did more appear and shine after their troubles than it could have done if they had fallen in them. And therefore I measure not the truth and favor of God by having or by lacking of bodily necessities, but by the promise which He has made to me. As He Himself is immutable, so is His word and promise constant, which I believe, and to which I will adhere, and so cleave, whatever can come to the body outwardly."

The First Temptation of Christ, A Sermon By John Knox (Part 3)

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil. Matt. 4:1

There remains yet to be spoken of the time when our Lord was tempted, which began immediately after His baptism. Whereupon we have to note the mark, that although the malice of Satan never ceases, but always seeks for means to trouble the godly, yet sometimes he rages more fiercely than others, and that is commonly when God begins to manifest His love and favor to any of His children, and at the end of their battle, when they are nearest to obtain final victory. The devil, no doubt, did at all times envy the humble spirit that was in Abel, but he did not stir up the cruel heart of Cain against him till God declared His favor toward him by accepting his sacrifice. The same we find in Jacob, Joseph, David, and most evidently in Christ Jesus. How Satan raged at the tidings of Christ's nativity! what blood he caused to be shed on purpose to have murdered Christ in His infancy! The evangelist St. Matthew witnesses that in all the coasts and borders of Bethlehem the children of two years old and less age were murdered without mercy. A fearful spectacle and horrid example of insolent and unaccustomed tyranny! And what is the cause moving Satan thus to rage against innocents, considering that by reason of their imperfections they could not hurt his kingdom at that instant? Oh, the crafty eye of Satan looked farther than to the present time; he heard reports by the three wise men, that they had learned by the appearance of a star that the King of the Jews was born; and he was not ignorant that the time prophesied of Christ's coming was then instant; for a stranger was clad with the crown and scepter of Judah. The angel had declared the glad tidings to the shepherds, that a Savior, which was Christ the Lord, was born in the city of David. All these tidings inflamed the wrath and malice of Satan, for he perfectly understood that the coming of the promised Seed was appointed to his confusion, and to the breaking down of his head and tyranny; and therefore he raged most cruelly, even at the first hearing of Christ's birth, thinking that although he could not hinder nor withstand His coming, yet he could shorten his days upon earth, lest by long life and peaceable quietness in it, the number of good men, by Christ's doctrine and virtuous life, should be multiplied; and so he strove to cut Him away among the other children before He could open His mouth on His Father's message. Oh, cruel serpent! in vain dost thou spend thy venom, for the days of God's elect thou canst not shorten! And when the wheat is fallen on the ground, then doth it most multiply.

But from these things mark, what hath been the practise of the devil from the beginning--most cruelly to rage against God's children when God begins to show them His mercy. And, therefore, marvel not, dearly beloved, although the like come unto you.

If Satan fume or roar against you, whether it be against your bodies by persecution, or inwardly in your conscience by a spiritual battle, be not discouraged, as though you were less acceptable in God's presence, or as if Satan might at any time prevail against you. No; your temptations and storms, that arise so suddenly, argue and witness that the seed which is sown is fallen on good ground, begins to take root and shall, by God's grace, bring forth fruit abundantly in due season and convenient time. That is it which Satan fears, and therefore thus he rages, and shall rage against you, thinking that if he can repulse you now suddenly in the beginning, that then you shall be at all times an easy prey, never able to resist his assaults. But as my hope is good, so shall my prayer be, that so you may be strengthened, that the world and Satan himself may perceive or understand that God fights your battle. For you remember that being present with you and treating of the same place, I admonished you that Satan could not long sleep when his kingdom was threatened. And therefore I willed you, if you were in mind to continue with Christ, to prepare yourselves for the day of temptation. The person of the speaker is wretched, miserable, and nothing to be regarded, but the things that were spoken are the infallible and eternal truth of God; without observation of which, life neither can or shall come to mankind. God grant you continuance to the end.

This much have I briefly spoken of the temptation of Christ Jesus, who was tempted; and of the time and place of His temptation. Now remains to be spoken how He was tempted, and by what means. The most part of expositors think that all this temptation was in spirit and in imagination only, the corporeal senses being nothing moved. I will contend with no man in such cases, but patiently will I suffer every man to abound in his own knowledge; and without prejudice of any man's estimation, I offer my judgment to be weighed and considered by Christian charity. It appears to me by the plain text that Christ suffered this temptation in body and spirit. Likewise, as the hunger which Christ suffered, and the desert in which He remained, were not things offered to the imagination, but that the body did verily remain in the wilderness among beasts, and after forty days did hunger and faint for lack of food; so the external ear did hear the tempting words of Satan, which entered into the knowledge of the soul, and which, repelling the venom of such temptations, caused the tongue to speak and confute Satan, to our unspeakable comfort and consolation. It appears also that the body of Christ Jesus was carried by Satan from the wilderness unto the temple of Jerusalem, and that it was placed upon the pinnacle of the same temple, from whence it was carried to a high mountain and there tempted. If any man can show to the contrary hereof by the plain Scriptures of God, with all submission and thanksgiving I will prefer his judgment to my own; but if the matter stand only in probability and opinion of men, then it is lawful for me to believe as the Scripture here speaks; that is, that Satan spake and Christ answered, and Satan took Him and carried Him from one place to another. Besides the evidence of the text affirming that Satan was permitted to carry the body of Christ from place to place, and yet was not permitted to execute any further tyranny against it, is most singular comfort to such as are afflicted or troubled in body or spirit. The weak and feeble conscience of man under such temptations, commonly gathers and collects a false consequence. For man reasons thus: The body or the spirit is vexed by assaults and temptations of Satan, and he troubles or molests it, therefore God is angry with it, and takes no care of it. I answer, tribulations or grievous vexations of body or of mind are never signs of God's displeasure against the sufferer, neither yet does it follow that God has cast away the care of His creatures because He permits them to be molested and vexed for a time. For if any sort of tribulation were the infallible sign of God's displeasure, then should we condemn the best beloved children of God. But of this we may speak hereafter. Now to the temptation.

Verse 2. "And when he fasteth forty days and forty nights, He was afterwards an hungered." Verse 3. 'Then came to Him the tempter,' and said, 'If you be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread,' etc. Why Christ fasted forty days and would not exceed the same, without sense and feeling of hunger, is before touched upon, that is, He would provoke the devil to battle by the wilderness and long abstinence, but He would not usurp or arrogate any more to Himself in that case than God had wrought with others, His servants and messengers before. But Christ Jesus (as St. Augustine more amply declares), without feeling of hunger, might have endured the whole year, or to time without end, as well as He did endure the space of forty days. For the nature of mankind was sustained those forty days by the invisible power of God, which is at all times of equal power. But Christ, willing to offer further occasion to Satan to proceed in tempting of Him, permitted the human nature to crave earnestly that which it lacked, that is to say, refreshing of meat; which Satan perceiving took occasion, as before, to tempt and assault. Some judge that Satan tempted Christ to gluttony, but this appears little to agree with the purpose of the Holy Ghost; who shows us this history to let us understand that Satan never ceases to oppugn the children of God, but continually, by one mean or other, drives or provokes them to some wicked opinions of their God; and to have them desire stones to be converted into bread, or to desire hunger to be satisfied, has never been sin, nor yet a wicked opinion of God. And therefore I doubt not but the temptation was more spiritual, more subtle, and more dangerous. Satan had respect to the voice of God, which had pronounced Christ to be His well-beloved Son, etc. Against this voice he fights, as his nature is ever to do against the assured and immutable Word of God; for such is his malice against God, and against His chosen children, that where and to whom God pronounces love and mercy, to these he threatens displeasures and damnation; and where God threatens death, there is he bold to pronounce life; and for this course is Satan called a liar from the beginning. And so the purpose of Satan was to drive Christ into desperation, that he should not believe the former voice of God His Father; which appears to be the meaning of this temptation: "Thou hast heard," would Satan say, "a voice proclaimed in the air, that Thou wast the beloved Son of God, in whom His soul was pleased; but mayst Thou not be judged more than mad, and weaker than the brainless fool if Thou believest any such promise? Where are the signs of His love? Art Thou not cast out from comfort of all creatures? Thou art in worse case than the brute beasts, for every day they hunt for their prey, and the earth produces grass and herbs for their sustenance, so that none of them are pined and consumed away by hunger; but Thou hast fasted forty days and nights, ever waiting for some relief and comfort from above, but Thy best provision is hard stones! If Thou dost glory in thy God, and dost verily believe the promise that is made, command that these stones be bread. But evident it is that so Thou canst not do; for if Thou couldst, or if Thy God would have showed Thee any such pleasure, Thou mightest long ago have removed Thy hunger, and needest not have endured this languishing for lack of food. But seeing Thou hast long continued thus, and no provision is made for Thee, it is vanity longer to believe any such promise, and therefore despair of any help from God's hand, and provide for Thyself by some other means!"