Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/316

 precisely what his intercession before the Father is. For, looking at it, the Father recalls his love for men, for the sake of which his Son assumed the body, and is inclined to charity and mercy.’” (p. 158.)

By the way, as one reads similar passages, it becomes evident that the whole mysterious, incomprehensible Trinity represented itself in the imagination of the holy fathers in the form of three distinct, quite well defined anthropomorphic beings. And finally:

“(4) The redemption extends over the whole world.” The world of the angels was separated before, but now men unite with it. Nature was cursed and did not produce of itself; now this curse no longer exists, so that the redemption extends over everything, except the devils, because the devils were so infuriated. Some Christians assume that the devils, too, were redeemed: “The opinion of the ancient Gnostics, Marcionites, and Origenists, who extended the action of the redemption to the fallen angels themselves, was rejected by the teachers of the church and solemnly condemned by the whole church at the Fifth Ecumenical Council.”

All that is confirmed by Holy Scripture and forms part of a dogma.

155. The consequence of the deserts of the cross of Jesus Christ in regard to himself: the condition of his glorification. Christ is glorified as a reward for having come down into the world.

156. The relation of the sacerdotal ministration of Jesus Christ to his prophetic ministration. “Although the chief aim of the sacerdotal ministration of Jesus Christ, that is, of his whole exhaustion and especially of his death on the cross, was to achieve our redemption, he at the same time subjected himself to this exhaustion also for other purposes.” (p. 162.)

The chief aim is the redemption, but in addition there were also the following purposes: (1) to give us an ex-