Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/196

48 The more ordinary and common-place, the more like vulgar life, the more carnal the history of the Eternal Son of is made, the more does this writer exult in it. He exults in sinking the higher notion of Christ, and in making the flesh the of a Divine Essence. Even a prophet or apostle might be conceived to subdue the innocent enjoyments of His lower nature to the sovereignty of faith, and enjoy this world as an emblem and instrument of the unseen. But it is the triumph of Rationalism to level every thing to the lowest and most tangible form into which it can be cast, and to view the Saviour Himself, not in His mysterious greatness, acting by means of human nature, and ministered unto by Angels in it, but as what I dare not draw out, lest profane words be necessary,—as akin to those lower natures which have but an animal existence.

One seems to incur some ceremonial pollution by repeating such miserable words.

Surely such passages as these are direct evidence of Socinian-