A SERMON OF THE VENERABLE BISHOP HERBERT, YE have come together, dearly beloved brethren, to the Holy Church. Ye have come together to your Mother. Ye have come together to the joyful solemnity of the Lord's Birthday. A rare spectacle, if faith be with you, and if the inner chambers of your minds be enlightened by the bright shining of the truth. The table of salvation is spread for you; the balm of redemption is prepared for you; death is overthrown; and to-day a new order of things is begun. Ye are sitting down at the board of the Almighty King: give diligent heed to the things which are set before you, knowing that it behoves you [for your part] to prepare the like things. There is set before you the conception of a Virgin, the delivery of a Virgin; and while the purity of the Virgin is preserved, a Man is born of a woman, and, according to the oracle of the Prophet; She who knew not a man brings forth a man, and See St. Luke i. 34. "a maiden, who was never embraced by husband, re"joices in her offspring." The Holy Ghost cometh upon the Virgin, and purgeth from sin, original and actual©, indicates only a loose and general connexion, and he is thinking of Isaiah "Purgeth from sin, original and actual, her," &c. It will be observed that the doctrine here set forth, though at variance with Holy Scripture, is totally different from the new Papal dogma of the Immaculate Concep quam sua impleturus erat gratia. Clamat angelus. Ne timeas inquit maria. Ecce concipies et paries filium. et vocabitur nomen ejus Ihesus. Ihesus salutaris. qui et corporum et animarum nostrarum procuravit salutem. utrumque sui generis resurrectione reformans. Nam corpus a corruptione et mortalitate. animam vero nostram resuscitabit ab omni passibilitate. Merito igitur salutaris dicitur. qui humanæ infirmitati sufficientem sumministrat salutem. Unde evangelista. Et verbum Fol. 217, inquit caro factum est et habitavit in nobis. Sed quod verbum? Verbum transitorium? Absit. Set verbum manens quod erat ab initio. quod audivimus et vidimus. et manus nostræ tractaverunt de verbo vitæ. Queris. hoc videre verbum? Vide deum. et videbis verbum dei. Sic enim veritas protestatur. Philippe qui videt me videt et patrem. et omnia quæ habet pater habet filius. et sine filio nichil operatur pater. Pater principium. col. 2. * The asterisk here (and elsewhere) over a line which has Fol. standing against it, indicates the exact point at which the new Fol. commences in the MS. tion (solemnly made de fide, Dec. 8, 1854), according to which Mary herself was conceived without sin. Bishop Herbert, on the other hand (who died some thirty or forty years before that dogma took a definite shape), holds that she was purged both of original and actual sin at the moment when by the Holy Ghost she conceived our Lord. Erroneous as this view is, it was no doubt adopted originally as an escape from a difficulty, which often perplexes thoughtful minds, namely, how a perfectly sinless Humanity, like that of our blessed Lord, could be drawn out of the sinful humanity of the Virgin. The answer probably is, that the Holy Spirit did indeed purge the Lord's human nature in the womb, which needed such purgation, as being taken from a sinner. Herbert's doctrine seems the same with that taught by Gregory Nazianzen (A.D. 350, Oratio 38, c. 13), where, speaking of the Nativity of our Lord, he says, "He became a man in all things, except sin, being conceived of the Virgin who was previously purified (πрока@aрleions) by the Spirit both in soul and body." (If purified then, she must have been impure before). d 66 refashioning." The word reformo, which we have thus translated, is The i. 14. her whom He was about to fill with His grace. Angel cries [to her], Fear not, Mary, . . . Behold thou St. Luke i. shalt conceive [in thy womb] and bring forth a son, and 30, 31. shalt call His Name Jesus,-JESUS the Saviour, Who hath procured the salvation both of our bodies and souls, refashioning d by His resurrection both [body and soul], each after its own kind. For the body He will raise from corruption and mortality, but our soul from all subjection to suffering. Justly therefore is He called Saviour, Who ministereth to human infirmity a sufficient salvation. Whence the Evangelist; And St. John the Word, saith he, was made flesh and dwelt among us. But what Word? A word that passeth away? God forbid, but the abiding Word, which was from the beginning, which we have heard and seen, and our 1 John i. 1. hands have handled of the Word of life. Dost thou seek to see this Word? See God, and thou shalt see the Word of God. For so the Truth protesteth; Philip, he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; St. John and all things which the Father hath the Son hathe; St. John and without the Son the Father worketh nothing. xvi. 15. The Father is the beginning, in which beginning was of frequent occurrence in these Sermons. Here it is used with great precision of the re-constitution of body and soul, which shall take place at the Resurrection, the same basis (constituting personal identity) being preserved in both cases, but developed under a new form or condition of existence. It is the "making all things new" of Rev. xxi. 5. "all things which the Father hath, the Son hath," &c. Taking the edition of the Vulgate authorized by Clement VIII. in 1593 as representing the version of it current in Bp. Herbert's days (about 500 years before), we find that his quotations are sometimes verbally accurate, and sometimes give the sense of the original in other words. of the latter kind of quotation : Vulg. of 1593. Omnia quæcunque habet Pater, mea sunt. (John xvi. 15.) Here we have an instance Herbert's Quotation. Omnia quæ habet Pater, habet Filius. The next words, although they look like a text, are nowhere found in Holy can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do," John v. xiv. 9. |