The Formation of Christendom, Volume II

Now, looking at this polytheistic idolatry simply as a fact, without for the moment any attempt to give a solution of it from authority, looking at it just as modern science would regard the facts of geology or astronomy, there is one thing, we may suppose, which it proves with a superabundance of evidence not found to belong to any other fact of history; and that is, the intrinsic corruption of man as a moral being. That which in theological language is called the Fall of man is, apart from all revealed doctrine on the subject, brought in upon the mind with irresistible force by the mere enumeration of the gods which heathendom worshipped, and of the worship paid by it to them; a force which is indefinitely increased by every inquiry into the moral and religious state of man as he lived under this worship.

Now, then, let us consider what solution the Christian faith does give of this fact, which exists, be it remembered, independently of this solution, and would exist with all its force undiminished, if this were rejected.

I. The Christian faith, as a solution of this wonderful maze of polytheistic idolatry, with all its accompaniments and consequences, carries us back to the first father of the race, whose development we have been following in it. This, it says, is nothing else49 but the body of Adam carried out through thousands of years, the body of Adam fallen under a terrible captivity. Not only does the Christian faith set before us man as one race descended from one, but because he is this one race, descended from one, it represents him as having come into such a state. To understand this we must contemplate the original creation, the fall of man, and its consequences, in their several bearings on each other, which will then lead us on to the nature and mode of the restoration.

In speaking of the creation of man we may first consider the union of the soul and body simply by themselves; that is, in order to obtain a clear view of our subject, we may form to ourselves a purely ideal state of simple nature. Such a state would include two things; one positive, the other negative.50 Positively, human nature in this condition would have all natural faculties in their essential perfection, and the assistance and providence of God naturally due to it: negatively, it would have nothing superadded to nature, nothing not due to it, whether evil or good, that is, neither sin on the one hand, and what follows sin, the guilt which entails punishment, nor on the other hand any gifts of grace, or perfections not due to nature.

Human nature, if created in such a state, would have no supernatural end; its end would be to love God with a natural love, as the Author and Ruler of the world.

Of such a state it is requisite for our present purpose to say only two things further. The first, that it is not contrary to any attribute of God to have created human nature in such a state. The gift of eternal beatitude, arising from the vision of God, which such a creature would not have had for its end, is simply and absolutely a gratuitous gift of the divine bounty, which God is not bound to bestow on any creature as such. Secondly, God did not in fact so create man.

Going on from this state of simple nature, we may consider another state in man, in which, beyond all his natural faculties,51 he would have a certain special perfection, consisting in the absence of immoderate concupiscence, or in the perfect subjection of the sensitive to the rational appetite, so that the inferior appetite should not be allowed to set itself in motion against the superior, or to anticipate reason. For human nature, regarded in itself as the union of a spirit and a body, is as it were divided in its natural affections, which tend in diverse directions, and thus totters, so to say, in its gait; when, therefore, it receives an inward peace in its own proper faculties, it is said to be supplemented, or to receive its integrity.

Now it is much to be noted that this special gift of integrity would not be connatural to man, that is, not given to him by force of his nature itself. It is true indeed that as such a gift perfects nature in regard to all natural acts, and supplies a sort of natural deficiency arising out of the combination of a spiritual with a material substance, wherein a conflict is engendered, in such a sense it may be called natural: but strictly speaking it is a gift superadded to nature.

It must further be noted that this state of nature in its integrity, however high and beautiful, is not only entirely distinct from but of an inferior order to the state of human nature raised to the gift of Divine Sonship. Between human nature in this condition and human nature raised to the gift of sonship, there would be more than the difference52 that with us exists between the kindly-treated servant and the adopted son: for human nature in this integrity would still not by virtue of it possess sanctifying grace, or, in consequence, have God and His vision for its supernatural end.

But, thirdly, it was not merely in this state that God created man, but in a state which not only included this, but had grace for its basis,53 that is to say, every perfection which it had sprang out of this, that it was united to God by grace. This is a state of far superior order, absolutely gratuitous, and beyond anything which is due to nature. The first man, Adam, then, was not only a union of soul and body, not only did he possess this nature in its integrity, but he was created in grace, so that there was a union of the Holy Spirit with him, whereby he was exalted to the condition of a supernatural end and adopted Sonship, and in this union was rooted the integrity of his nature, and the supernatural power of so ruling all the lower faculties of his soul that the higher could mount undisturbedly to God: and certain other gifts over and above, such as immunity from error or deception, so long as he did not sin, immunity from even venial fault, immunity from death, and from all pain or sorrow. Such was the original condition which grace bestowed on human nature, wherein man had not only a supernatural end, but the power to attain it easily.54

Now it is evident that man, by being created in grace, was raised to an astonishing height of dignity, to which not only his nature, but any created nature whatsoever had no claim. All that the justice and goodness of God required him to do in creating such a being as man of two substances, soul and body, was to bestow on the compound being so united such perfections as made the several substances complete in their own order. Such would be the ideal state of simple nature as delineated above. It was a gift beyond nature, such as nature in its first beginning could not claim, to bestow on it the integrity which in the second place we considered. But how far beyond this, passing it by an unmeasured chasm, was that dower of sonship rooted in sanctifying grace which God actually bestowed on His favoured child? It is obvious at first sight that the divine gift here intended, being in Adam's actual creation the root of all which was over and above the natural faculties of body and soul in their union, was bestowed absolutely by the pure goodness of God, and therefore could be bestowed with such conditions attached to it as pleased the Giver. In all that is beyond the mere faculties and needs of nature – in forming which God's own being is a sort of rule to Him – He is absolutely free to give as pleases Himself, to what degree He pleases, on what terms He pleases. What, then, were the conditions on which He invested Adam with the gift of Sonship, and created Him in grace as its foundation? He created him, not only as the individual Adam, but as the Head of his race, so that his race was summed up in him, and a unity was founded in him attaching his whole race as members to his body, in such manner that the supernatural gift of sonship bestowed on him was to descend from him by virtue of natural propagation to every member of that body, which thus became a supernatural race from a supernatural father. So absolute was this unity that the order maintained in the case of every other creature put under the dominion of the man so formed was not followed in his case. For whereas they were created with the difference of sex, each a male and a female, he was created alone, as the Head, and then she, by whose coöperation the race was to be continued, was formed out of him. It was not a second man who was so formed from the first, but one made with reference to him, in dependence on him, to be a help meet for him, not for herself, with an independent being, but for him. This formation of Eve from Adam, which has a meaning of unfathomable depth in the development of the race, is an essential part of the original design. “Therefore,” says Adam, speaking in an ecstasy sent upon him by God, the words of God, “this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.” First, the Eve so formed from him is one flesh with him; secondly, the race springing from both is one flesh likewise with him. The consequence intended by that one flesh was the transmission of that magnificent inheritance in which Adam was standing when he so spoke. In this he was Father and Head, for this created alone, then Eve built up from him, from whom afterwards was to issue their joint race. On the further condition of his personal obedience to God and fidelity to his grace, he held the whole supernatural gift of grace conferring sonship, both for himself and for his race: on these terms it was bestowed by the charter of God, the original Giver. Thus, the greatness of his Headship was visible in two things, the power of transmitting his quality of divine sonship to his race by propagation, and the dependence of that quality, in them as well as in himself, on his personal fidelity to God.

But the First Man, the Father and Head of the race, did not stand in his inheritance. He broke the divine command, and lost the gift of sonship, and with it all the prerogatives attendant on that gift, which were above nature and rooted in grace, and which the eminent goodness of God had bestowed upon him: and by the terms of the original charter lost the gift, not only for himself, but for his race. But he did not, therefore, destroy that relation between the Head and the Race, which was part of the original foundation of God. This continued; but whereas it had been intended to communicate the blessing of adoption, it now served to communicate the demerit of adoption lost, the guilt, and with it the punishment incurred by that loss. This is the original sin, the sin of the nature, not of the person, inherited by the members of Adam's body; and as there can be no sin without free-will, the sin of the whole nature included in Adam as its Root and Head, which sinned by Adam's abuse of his free-will.

Let us try to determine as accurately as we can the position into which Adam and his race fell.

Did, then, Adam simply lose with the forfeiture of sanctifying grace the gift of sonship, the supernatural inheritance, all which God had bestowed on him beyond that ideal state of pure nature which we described in the first instance? God, we said, might have created man originally in this condition, and man so created, that is, in virtue of this creation, would not have been under any sin, nor exposed to the anger of God. Did man, by Adam's sin, fall back into it? Not so. His state after his fall differed from such a state of pure nature in that he had upon him the guilt of lost adoption, of adoption lost by the first Adam's fault, and in proportion to the greatness of the loss, and the gratuitousness of the gift originally bestowed, was the anger with which, on the donor's part, the loss was regarded. How would a king, a man like ourselves, regard one whom he had raised out of the dust to be his adopted child, and who had been unfaithful to the parent who had so chosen him with more than natural affection? Such an anger we can indeed understand when felt against the person sinning; but we fail to enter into it as resting on the race, because the secret tie which binds the head and the race into one is not discerned by us; because too the greatness of the divine majesty, the awfulness of His sovereignty, and the wrath of that majesty slighted, are feebly appreciated by us. But this image may at least give us some notion of the nature of that divine anger which pressed upon Adam and his race after the fall. Not only, therefore, was the gift of sonship and the prerogatives attending it withdrawn, but this withdrawal was a punishment, which their absence in the presumed case of an original state of simple nature would not have been. Thus death was a punishment to Adam and his race; the body's weakness and disease, the soul's sorrows and pains, the disobedience of the inferior appetites to the reason, the resistance of the reason to the law of God, were all punishments, and a remarkable point of the punishment is to be seen in this. Adam, as the head of his race, was in virtue of natural propagation to have bestowed on the children of his flesh, the members of his body, his own supernatural inheritance. Thus a singular honour was conferred on the fathership of Adam. But now when, in virtue of this natural propagation, he, continuing to be the head of his race, transmitted to it the guilt of adoption lost instead of the blessing of adoption conferred, a peculiar shame was set by God upon this fathership of Adam, and upon all the circumstances attending it: so that henceforth in the disinherited race the bride veiled her head, and the act of being a father became an act of shame.

The condition, therefore, of Adam and his posterity after his fall differed from the condition which would have been that of simple nature by the whole extent of the guilt incurred by the nature in its fall from sonship.

And herein lies one peculiarity, and one strangely distressing condition of his state, in that while he lost by the fall the grace in which, as an indwelling gift, his whole supernatural state had been rooted, he yet did not lose that condition of being formed and intended for a supernatural end which grace alone could enable him to attain. For the supernatural vision and love of God he had been created, and in his fall he did not sink to be merely a natural man; but his original end was still held out before him as that which he might reach supported by that grace the aids of which were in a different measure promised to him in order to lead a life of penance, and as the earnest of a future restoration.

This, however, is far from being a complete statement of his case, and we must go back to the circumstances of his fall in order to add that further still more peculiar and remarkable condition which, added to the one just described, made up the whole of his fall.

Adam had not disobeyed the divine command, and so broken the covenant of his sonship, by the simple promptings of his own will. Another had intervened; had suggested to the woman doubts against her Maker and Father. She had yielded to these doubts, and disobeyed; and then Adam had suffered himself to be drawn with her in her disobedience. Who was this other? He was the prince and leader of spirits created good, but fallen into enmity with God. Thus, the favourite son of God had listened to the persuasion of God's chief enemy, and his fall from sonship had been, by the judgment of the offended Parent, not a simple fall from his supernatural estate, but a fall likewise into servitude to that enemy. This servitude also, with the guilt of the nature in which he had sinned, Adam transmitted to the members of his body in and by their nature. Adam with his race was the captive taken in war by the enemy of God, and the life which he was allowed to live had the condition of this servitude impressed on it, with this alleviation only, that the assistance of the divine grace offered to him by the mercy of God in his state of penance could protect those who accepted it from the effects of this servitude, and ultimately deliver them.

Here, then, is the condition of Adam's posterity in consequence of his fall; members of a Head who had broken his allegiance to his Creator and Father, and so inheriting with their nature the disinherited state into which he had cast himself; captives, moreover, of that powerful spirit, God's antagonist, who had tempted Adam, seduced him, and led him to his fall.

Now the heathenism which we have been contemplating is the carrying out in time and space of this body of Adam in those who, by their personal fault, fell away from the aids of grace which were accorded to man after his fall – aids given first to Adam for the whole race, and then renewed to Noah for the whole race; and the false worship, so blent and mingled with heathenism, which seemed as if it were the soul of its body, is the sign and stamp of that captivity to the evil spirit which the first man's sin inaugurated.

How powerful was the bond between Adam and his race, how great and influential the headship which the Divine choice had vested in him, we see in that mysterious transmission of guilt which passed from him to his children. And it must be expressly noted that it was not a transmission of punishment alone. Rather, the divine justice cannot punish where there is no guilt; and as in this case Adam's fall, and that of his posterity with him, was not merely a loss but a punishment, so it had the special nature of guilt, not only in him but in his posterity, and was a sin both of the person and of the nature in him, of the nature only in them. We see the force and range of the divine endowment of Adam here, though it be in the tenacity of the calamity which ensued to his race; but it must be remembered that such in this respect as the punishment was, the blessing would have been. Adam was created both an individual and a race. In him were two things – the single man and the head; but of these two things the headship was peculiar to himself, while such as the individual Adam was, his race was to be. He had it in his power to break the covenant of his sonship with God, but not the tie between himself and his race.

And this sheds a light upon the darkest part of that terrible picture which collected heathenism presents to us. Man, as a social animal, is incessant in his action on his fellow-man; the parent and the family form the child; the companion and the neighbourhood lead forth the child into manhood. This work is perpetually going on in all its parts, and society is the joint result. When, therefore, we see this society once fallen into the possession of a false worship, which perverts the very foundations of morality, and instils deadly error into the child with the mother's milk, no thoughtful mind can gaze without horror upon beings involved in such a maze,55 yet intended for an eternal duration. Man's nature, as a race, seems turned against him; and in addition to the guilt under which each individual of the race is born, and the nature which each inherits, wherein the internal harmony of peace is broken, and neither the appetites obey the reason nor the reason is obedient to God, comes the force of habit, of education, of culture, of companionship, of man's business and leisure, his play and his earnest, the force of his language, the expression of his thoughts upon himself and others, the whole force, in fact, of man's social being when it is put under possession of an evil power, man's adversary. But this social nature was to have been to him the means of the greatest good. As by his natural descent from Adam unfallen would have come the grace of sonship, so the whole brotherhood of those who shared that gift would have helped and supported each in the maintenance of it. The human family would have had a beauty and a unity of its own as such; an order and a lustre would have rested on the whole body, confirming each member in the possession of his own particular gift. The concatenation of evil in the corrupt society is the most striking contrast to the fellowship of good in the upright; and while it is distinct from that guilt which descends to man as the sin of his nature, yet springs like it from the original constitution of that nature as a race. It is the invasion of evil upon good carried to its utmost point, wherein we discern most plainly “the prince of this world” wielding that “power of darkness” by which the Apostle described the whole state of the world, out of which these nations, which made the empire of Augustus, were a part.

We have thus contemplated four distinct pictures. The first of these was human nature bare and naked by itself, a merely ideal view of man, as a being compounded of soul and body, each possessing only the faculties which belong to them as spiritual and corporeal natures, the result of which is a substantial union, because the spiritual substance becomes the form of the corporeal, not by making the body, when already animated by another principle, to participate of spiritual life, but by becoming itself the principle first animating it. And we set forth this condition of human nature in order to throw light upon our second picture – the first man as he was actually created, possessing, as a gift superadded by the purest divine bounty to this his natural constitution, a divine sonship founded in grace; which transcendant union of the Holy Spirit with his soul kept the soul with all its faculties in a loving obedience to God, and the body in obedience to the soul; and added even to this state the further gratuitous prerogatives of immunity from error, fault, pain, distress, and death. Our third picture was man in this same state, but constituted besides by the divine will, whose good pleasure was the sole source of all this state of sonship, to be father of a race like to himself, receiving from him, with its natural generation, the transmitted gift of sonship; that is, from our view of him as an individual person we went on to consider him as the head of a body – the root of a tree. Fourthly, we have looked on the same man stripped by a fault, personal to himself but natural to his race, of this divine sonship – reduced to a state like that which the first would have been, but altered from it by two grave conditions, one of guilt lying on himself and his race on account of this gratuitous gift of sonship lost, another of captivity to that enemy of his Creator and Father who had seduced him to fall. And this picture included in it the double effect of guilt transmitted through a whole race from its head and father, and of the personal sins of each individual of the race: which, moreover, had a tendency to be perpetually heightened by the social nature of man – that part of his original condition which, as it would have supported his highest good in the state of innocence, so came to make his corruption intense and more complicated in the state of fall. It has not been our purpose in this sketch to dwell upon those who, like Adam himself after his fall, accepted the divine assistance offered to them, and the promise of a future Restorer, and who, living a life of penance, kept their faith in God. Such an assistance was offered not only to Adam but to his whole race, and such a line of men there always was; of whom Abel was the type in the world before the flood; Noah after the flood, as the second father of the whole race; Abraham, the friend of God and father of the faithful, in whose son Isaac a people was to be formed, which, as the nations in their apostasy fell more and more away from the faith and knowledge of the true God, should maintain still the seed of promise out of which the Restorer should spring. But before that Restorer came, the heathenism – of which we have been speaking in the former chapter, and of which we have been giving the solution above – was in possession of all but the whole earth, and the captivity of man to his spiritual foe, on account of which that foe is called “the Ruler” and “the God” “of this world,” which is said “to lie in the malignant one,”56 was all but universal. This universality denoted that the fulness of the time57 marked out in the providence of God was come.

For Adam, in his first creation, and in the splendour of that robe of sonship58 in which he was invested, had been the figure of One to come: his figure as an individual person, his figure as father and head of a race; his figure likewise, when the race itself is viewed as summed up in one, as one body. Let us take each of these in their order.