Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/469

 all-good God, who has created them all, cast down for ever legions of evil angels, and all men after Adam, but has not ceased caring for them in a natural and even in a supernat ural manner. This supernatural manner of his care consists in this, that when five thousand years had passed, he found a means for paying himself for Adam’s sin, whom he himself had made such as he was. This means consisted in this, that among the persons of the Trinity one is the Son. He, that person, has always been the Son. So this Son issued from a virgin, without impairing her virginity; he entered into the Virgin Mary as her husband, the Holy Ghost, and came out as a Son, Jesus Christ, and this Son was called Jesus, and he was God, and man, and a person of the Trinity.

This God-man has saved men. This is the way he saved them. He was a prophet, a high priest, and a king. As a prophet, he gave a new law; as a high priest he sacrificed himself by dying on the cross, and as a king he performed miracles and went down into hell, let out from it all the righteous, and destroyed sin, and the curse and death in men.

But this means, however strong it was, did not save all men. Legions of legions of devils remained devils, and men must know how to take advantage of that salvation.

In order to take advantage of this means, a man must become sanctified, but only the church may sanctify, and the church is all those people who say about themselves that certain men have laid their hands on them, men upon whom other men have laid hands, and so forth, upon whom hands were laid by the disciples of the God Jesus himself, upon whom hands were laid by God the Son, the Saviour, himself. When God himself laid his hands upon them, he blew, and with that blowing he gave to them, and to those to whom they would transmit it, the power to sanctify men, and that very sanctification is necessary in order to be saved. What sanctifies man and saves him