Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/194

46 I put aside the utter unreasonableness of this last remark; but let us think seriously, is, or is He not? if so, can we dare talk of Him as having "a taste for nature?" It is true Mr. A. does speak in this way of the Almighty Father also; so that it may be said rather to prove that He has a grovelling conception of than of. Perhaps it will be more truly said that his irreverence towards the Saviour, has led on to the other more direct profaneness. Yet a "taste for beauty of art!" This of the Eternal Son of, the Creator; will it be said that He is man also? true;—but His personality is in His Godhead, if I may express myself in theological language. He did not undo what He was before, He did not cease to be the Infinite, but He added to Him the substance of a man, and thus participated in human thoughts and feelings, yet without impairing ( forbid) His divine perfection. The Incarnation was not "a conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but a taking of the manhood into ." It seems there is need of the Athanasian creed in these dangerous times. A mystery, indeed, results from this view, for certain attributes of Divinity and of manhood seem incompatible; and there may be some revealed instances in our Lord's history on earth of less than divine thought and operation: but because of all this we never must speak, we have utterly no warrant to speak, of the Person of the Eternal Word as thinking and feeling like a mere man, like a child, or a boy, as simply ignorant, imperfect, and dependent on the creature, which is Mr. A.'s way. In saying this, I am quite aware that the sensitiveness of a Christian mind will at once, without argument, shrink from a passage such as that commented on, but I say it by way of accounting for its aversion, which, perhaps, it may not be able to justify to others. To proceed:—

The Son of God made flesh, though a man, is beyond comparison with other men; His person is not human; but to say "most of all men" is to compare.