Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/471



CHRIST OUR REDEEMER. 465

kingdom which should endure forever. By these titles, and under these images and prophetic utterances, various in kind, but agreeing in sense, He was designated as the One who for the exceeding love wherewith He loved us should one day give His hfe for our salvation. Accord- ingly, when the time of the divine counsel was ripe, the only-begotten Son of God, being made man, offered an abundant and complete satisfaction for men to His of- fended Father, and by so great a price redeemed and made the human race His own. You are not redeemed loith corruptible things as gold and silver. . . but vnth the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled. Accordingly, although all men -wathout ex- ception were already subject to His power and sway, because He is the Creator and Preserver of all, He made them His a second time by redeeming them in the truest and most literal sense. You are not your oum, for you are bought with a great price? Hence all things are re-estab- lished in Christ by God. The mystery of His vnll, accord- ing to His good pleasure, which He hath purposed in Him, in the dispensation of the fulness of times, to re-establish all things in Christ.^ So that when Jesus had blotted out the handwriting which was contrary to us, and fastened it to the cross, the wrath of heaven was immediately appeased; the disordered and erring race of man had the bonds of their ancient slavery loosed, the will of God was reconciled to them, grace restored, the way to eternal happiness opened, and the title to possess and the means of attaining it both given back. Then, as though awakened from a long-lingering and deadly lethargy, man beheld the light of truth so long desired, but for generations sought in vain; he recognized, in particular, that he was bom for much higher and more splendid things than the frail and fleeting objects of sense, to which he had for- merly confined his thoughts and pursuits, and that this was

Â» 1 Peter i. 18, 19. Â« 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20.

SEph. i. 9, 10.