repentance are the conditions on which God gives it; water, sanctified by our LORD's Baptism, the womb of our new birth; love, good works, increasing faith, renovated affections, heavenly aspirations, conquest over the flesh, its fruits in those who persevere; but it itself is the gift of GoD, a gift incomprehensible, and not to be confounded with or restrained to any of its fruits, (as a change of heart, or conversion,) but illimitable and incomprehensible, as that great mystery from which it flows, the incarnation of our REDEEMER, the Ever-blessed Son of GOD.

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Thus, then, we are sons of GOD, because He, in Whom and of Whom we are made, is the Son of GOD, not by any figure or likeness, but actually,-parts of the Second Adam, as we were by nature of the first; by nature, of the earthy, by grace, of the LORD from heaven, GOD, Blessed for ever ;—and thus being made sons of GOD, we have "our fellowship (kotvoría) with the FATHER and the Son" (St. John i. 3), because we are made "par"takers (kovovoi) of the Divine nature." (2 Pet. i. 4.) This overwhelming mystery the Antient Church would in a measure express when she spake of our being "Christophori," "Theophori ;" and however strange these words may seem to our degenerate Theology, so cold and heedless of its highest privileges and the highest doctrines, she spake and could speak no more than the HOLY GHOST had in the written word set down.

The words of our LORD, then "birth from above of water and "the SPIRIT," are a key to other Scripture; they are in themselves a high revelation, not to be closed up when we come to read other Scripture, and their fulness restrained within themselves, (as if, like the heretics of old, we looked upon different portions of Scripture, as the work of another GoD,) but flowing over into other parts, and imparting to them the light which they contain concentrated within them. Thus when we read the words "to them that received Him gave He power to become "the sons of GOD, to them that believe in His name, who were "born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will "of man, but of GOD," we are not to take this in a figurative way, as if it were a distinct statement, that through faith we are accounted as it were sons of GOD, but, as it stands, in connexion

with the Incarnation; as it there follows, "and the Word was "made flesh, and dwelt among us ;" and both, in union with that mystery, whereby we are made partakers of the Incarnation, being "baptized into one Body," the Body of our Incarnate LORD, being actually "born from above of water and the Spirit of God."

It is instructive to see how the old Church combined this declaration of St. John (i. 12-14.) with the teaching (iii. 5,) and ordinance of his LORD, the Sacrament of Baptism, and both with the Incarnation; and so, in consequence, how much more they seem to have felt that mystery. They then contemplated God's majesty in all the mysteries which He had revealed; we have made them all so systematically to bear upon one, the Death on the Cross, as well nigh to efface out of our minds the rest, except in so far as they have this bearing,

To take one instance only out of an antient sermon on our LORD's nativity'.

"The earthly birth neither added to nor diminished the majesty "of the Son of God; for an unchangeable Substance can neither "be diminished nor increased. For that the Word was made "flesh' signifieth not that the Nature of God was changed into "flesh, but that flesh was taken by the Word into an unity of "Person, and therein the whole man was taken, with whom

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(within the bowels of the Virgin, quickened by the HOLY "SPIRIT and ever-virgin) the Son of GOD is so inseparably united, "that He Who, before time was, was begotten of the Essence of "the FATHER, now, in time, is born of the Virgin's womb. For no otherwise could we be freed from the chains of eternal "death, than by His becoming humbled among us, Who with "His Own was abiding Almighty. Our LORD JESUS CHRIST, "then, being born very man, but ceasing not to be Very God, "made in Himself the commencement of a new creation, and in "the mould of His birth gave to the human race a spiritual beginning, so that, to abolish the infection of a carnal genera"tion, they who were to be re-born might have an origin without

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any seed of sin; of whom it is said, who were born not of

1 Leo, Serm. 7. de Nativ. Dom.

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"blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of men, but "'of GOD.' What mind can comprehend this mystery? what tongue declare this grace? Unrighteousness restored to inno"cence; decay to freshness; aliens adopted; foreigners made "heirs! The ungodly righteous; the covetous bountiful; the "incontinent chaste; from earthly they begin to be heavenly. "What is this change, but the right hand of the Most High? "Since the Son of GoD came to destroy the works of the devil, " and so incorporated us into Himself, and Himself into us, that "the descent of GOD to the things of man, shall be the advance "of man to the things of GOD."

In this passage, Leo, as the holy festival led him, dwelt on the connexion of our privilege of sonship to God, and this declaration of it by St. John, with the Incarnation; in others, on that of both with Baptism. Thus he says in another place1 :

"All things, then, which the Son of God did and taught for "the reconciling of the world, we not only know in the history "of past actions, but we feel in the power of present deeds. He "it is, Who, born of the HOLY SPIRIT from a virgin-mother, quickens His undefiled Church with the same infused SPIRIT, "that so by the birth of Baptism an innumerable multitude of sons of God may be born, of whom it is spoken, who are born "'not of blood,' ," &c.

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And again, in a treatise on Christian Humility' (against the Pelagians):

"Although all the portions of the same mystery meet together "in one, what is enacted visibly is one thing, what is realized "invisibly is another; nor in the Sacrament are the form and the

power the same, for the form is ministered by the obedience of "human agency, the power is operated by the effectualness of "the Divine working, For to His might alone is it to be referred, "that while the outward man is washed, the inward man is

changed; and of the old a new creature is formed; vessels of "wrath are transformed into vessels of mercy; and the sinful "flesh is changed into the body of Christ; for unholy, they are

1 Serm. 63. de Passione Dom. c. 6.

2 Epist. ad Demetriad. c. 11. He quotes it again of Baptism, Ep. 16. c. 6.

"made holy; for captives, free; for sons of men, sons of GOD, "who are born not of blood, &c., but of God.''

This was the general interpretation of the Antient Church : these who quote the text' of Baptism, go not about to prove its reference to it; they assume it, see it; others, again, though they name not Baptism, speak of these privileges in terms which they

1e. g. S. Clem. Alex. Strom. ii. 13. p. 460. S. Chrysostom, ad loc. St. Athanasius, sup. S. Cyril of Jerus. (in connexion with St. John iii. 5.) Cat. xi. § 9. S. Cyril of Alex. ad loc., and the other Greek Commentators.

2 e. g. St. Augustine, Serm. 121. de verb. Ev. Joh. i. § 5. uses language the same as he had employed in Joann. Tract. xi. n. 6. on our LORD's words, "Ex"cept a man be born of water and the SPIRIT," see above, p. 44. n. 1. He also, as well as Tertullian, de Orat. c. 2. explains the text of that relation of God as our FATHER, in which "the Church is our mother;" "The first birth is of male and "female; the second of GOD and the Church;" and this is notoriously Baptism: Theodoret, as describing our "regeneration in Christ," (ad Ep. 1, ad Cor. c. 1. ult.); Jerome (adv. Jovinian, ii. 29.) as declaring us to be members of the body of CHRIST; but again, they conceive of us as in CHRIST, members of CHRIST'S body, by Baptism, and by that only. "Seest thou," says St. Jerome, "that our "being taken into the participation of His substance, is not of nature but of grace; and He therefore loves us, because the FATHER loved the SON; and "the members are loved, namely in the body. For as many as received HIM,' "&c. The Word was made flesh, that we from the flesh might pass into the "Word." And so St. Augustine at length. The connexion with the following words he thus points out: "So when he had said born of GOD,' lest we should "marvel, and shrink from favour so great, so that it should seem incredible to us, that men are born of GOD,' as if to reassure them, he adds, and the " "Word was made flesh.' Why then marvellest thou, that men are born of GOD? "Hearken, that GOD HIMSELF was born of men. And the WORD was made "'flesh.'" St. Irenæus (v. 18. 2.) connects it with the Incarnation (as St. Aug. above, and St. Chrys.), and so likewise Origen (Fragm. in Joann. Opp. t. iv. p. 99), and St. Hilary, de Trin. l. i. c. 10. Origen again (de Orat. § 22), and Eusebius speak of it, as something distinct from Jewish privileges. "Joh. i. was read as a baptismal lesson in the African Church, as appears from "S. Augustine, Serm. 119, 120." Admon. in Serm. 8. App. ad S. Leon. t. i. p. 418. ed. Ven. see above, p. 35. note 1. In the sermon itself, the text (Joh. i. 13.) is explained of the birth in baptism, " Ye then have now been born, not of the conception of the flesh, but begotten of GOD the FATHER. It remains that by "a holy life and conversation, ye preserve the dignity of that holy origin." It is quoted also in the exposition of the LORD's Prayer in the Office for Catechumens in the Liturgy of Gelasius, "Wherefore, most beloved, show yourselves "worthy of the Divine adoption, since it is written, Whoso believeth in Him, "to them gave He power to become the sons of GOD.'" (Ass. i. 15.)

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elsewhere use of Baptism: both on the same ground; the one need not prove it, the other need not express it, because in those days men knew of no other way whereby a man might become a son of God, than by being born in Baptism of the HOLY SPIRIT, Who is God. Hence St. Athanasius and others employ the fact as a proof of the divinity of the HOLY SPIRIT. Having quoted the words "who were born not, &c., but of GOD," he infers 1, as many then as were born of the HOLY SPIRIT, were born of God; "and as many as were baptized into CHRIST, were baptized into "the FATHER and HOLY SPIRIT." The very argument implies the complete identification of the two passages (St. John i. 13. iii. 5); for in the one Christians are said to be born in Baptism "of the "SPIRIT," in the other "of GOD;" therefore, St. Athanasius argues, the HOLY SPIRIT is GOD 2. Not only also are St. John's words so interpreted by the several Fathers of the Greek and Latin Church; they are (as was stated)3 read as the Gospel in the several branches of the Latin Church, and incorporated into the exposition of the Creed in a very antient Baptismal Liturgy.

"Ye then, dearly beloved, are to be re-created from the old "into the new man; and for carnal ye begin to be spiritual, for "earthly to be heavenly; believe with a firm and unshaken faith "that the resurrection which took place in CHRIST, shall be ful"filled in all of us; and that what went before in the Head, shall "follow in the whole body. Inasmuch as this very Sacrament "of Baptism, which you are about to receive, furnishes an em"blem of this hope. For there a sort of death and resurrec"tion are enacted. The old man is laid aside, the new taken.

1 De Incarnat. et cont. Arian. t. i. p. 880. he quotes the text also, after the manner of Leo, ib. § 8. p. 876, and (in connexion with the Incarnation) Orat. i. c. Arian. § 43. p. 447. Orat. ii. § 59. p. 527. "These are they, who having "received the Word, received power to become children of GOD; for no "otherwise could they, being by nature creatures, become sons, unless by "receiving the Spirit of HIM who is by nature and indeed THE SON." Add Orat. iii. § 19. p. 569.

2 The sort of argument is the same as we are wont to use from Acts v. 3, which follows here in St. Athanasius.

3 See above, p. 35. n. 2.

4 Sacramentary of Gelasius, from MS. of the seventh century. (Ass. i. 13.)