Matt.x.42.

a cup of cold water and good-will only shall suffice for See St. our redemption. The poor cry before your doors; but it is Christ Who is taken in when we take them in. See St. S. Gregory tells how a certain rich man was full of Matt. xxv. 35, 38, 40. compassion, and had his whole delight in the ministering of alms. He called to him a stranger whom he found in the way, and received him in his palace. When according to custom he had set a table before his guest, and was about to give him water for his hands, the stranger vanished, and all of a sudden withdrew his presence from the attendants who stood around. On the following night the Lord appeared in a vision to the good man of the house, and spake graciously to him in his sadness with these comfortable words. "On other days, My son," saith He, "thou didst minister to Me in My members, but on this day thou hast received Me in Mine own Person." See, dearly-beloved brethren, how great is the mercy of your Saviour. Be ye merciful, as St. Luke vi. 36. your Father also is merciful, Who maketh the sun to rise St. Matt. on the good and on the evil, and sendeth rain on the just v. 45. and on the unjust. Ye were sold to the devil, but the

e

e Such passages as these occurring in mediæval Divines are to be taken not for a philosophical theory of the Atonement, but as figures of speech, which of course must not be pressed too closely.

Archbishop Thomson, in his Essay on the Death of Christ (Aids to Faith, p. 342), quotes from Irenæus a more detailed statement of this view of the Atonement, as having been a price paid to the Devil, under whose power sin had brought us:

Since," (says Irenæus,) "the Apostasy [the Devil] unjustly got the dominion over us, and though we belonged by nature to the Omnipotent God, alienated us against nature and made us his own disciples, the Word of God [Christ], powerful in all things and perfect in justice, acted justly in regard to the Apostasy [the Devil], redeeming from it that which was His own; not by force, in the way that it got dominion over us from the beginning, when it carried off insatiably that which belonged not to it, but by persuasion (secundum suadelam), as it became God to receive what He would, by the use of persuasion, not of force, that justice should not be infringed, nor yet that which God created of old should perish." (Iren. Adv. Hær., lib. v. c. i. s. 1).

The Archbishop tells us that "in certain modern writers who have touched the subject, an undue prominence is given to one feature of Patristic teaching, the notion that the ransom paid by our Lord was paid

mit vos mediator dei et hominum homo Christus

*

Ihesus. Qui cum patre et spiritu sancto. vivit f. 221, b. et regnat deus? per omnia sæcula sæculorum. Amen.

to the Devil, into whose power man had passed through sin. Thus what is for the most part rhetorical playing with words is put forward as if it were the sole and the serious belief of these writers. But the story bears a very different telling." And he then produces evidence that the Fathers support the ordinary view of the Atonement.

Anselm, (whom Herbert joined in consecrating to the see of Canterbury, and of whose Cur Deus Homo it is impossible to say whether it was written before or after these Sermons of Herbert), rejects the above

5. See

I

Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, 1 Tim. ii. hath redeemed you with the price of His own Blood, pet. i. Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit liveth and 18, 19. reigneth God for ever and ever. Amen.

view (as a philosophical statement) in the seventh chapter of that treatise. In Abp. Thomson's words; "The argument that God gave His Son as a ransom of man from the power of Satan, because it was just and right to recover by fair means a race who had freely and voluntarily given themselves over to his power, is at once dismissed" [by Anselm] "for the true reasons, viz. that the Devil cannot properly have either merit, or power, or right over man; that the power which in one sense he exerts against mankind was only permissive, and that it expired when the permission was withdrawn."

In red

letters.

III.
SERMO.

VENERABILIS. HERBERTI EPISCOPI.

DE PURIFICATIONE. SANCTE. MARIE.

Dominicæ nativitatis et sancti (sic) theophaniæ præterita solennia karissimi fratres præsentis diei præclara repræsentat solennitas. que tanto devotius est celebranda? quanto excellentiori humilitatis gratia tota redundat. Hodie namque beatissima virgo maria suæ speluncæ ergastulo egreditur. Hodie sanctam civitatem ingreditur. non satellitum constipata cohortibus. set angelorum comitata agminibus. Hodie sanctum procedit ad templum? regales hostias oblatura pro filio. Occurrit anna vidua. mulier prophetissa. que post mortem viri prolixa consenuerat castitate. Annosa agnoscit parvulum. exitura de mundo recognoscit intrantem. et multa de salvatore prophetatur (sic) omnibus qui expectabant redemptionem israel. Occurrit simeon dierum plenus. set virtutum plenior. Is homo a spiritu sancto acceperat responsum quod non sentiret mortem. nisi prius videret

a See below, note o.

b "from the prison-house of her cave"-suæ speluncæ ergastulo. Ergastulum in classical Latin was a private prison, attached to Roman farms, where the slaves were made to work in chains. It was lighted by narrow windows, so high as to preclude the possibility of escape from them. These prison-houses were often tyrannically used; and the Emperor Hadrian abolished them. (See Dict. of Rom. and Greek Ant., sub voce Ergastulum.) In the lower Latin the word came to mean an instrument of confinement used in prisons,—“shackles," "fetters." See Ducange, sub voce.

III.

A SERMON

OF

THE VENERABLE BISHOP HERBERT,

ON THE PURIFICATION OF ST. MARY a.

THE high festival of the present day, brethren, brings back [to the mind] the past solemnities of our Lord's Nativity and of the holy Theophany. And it is to be celebrated so much the more devoutly, as it abounds in every part with the more excellent grace of humility. For to-day the most blessed Virgin Mary comes forth from the prison-house of her cave. To-day she enters the holy city, not compassed with troops of guards, but accompanied by hosts of angels. To-day she goeth to the holy Temple to offer royal sacrifices for her Son. There the widow Anna meets her,—a prophetess who See St. after the death of her husband had grown old in a long 36, 38. widowhood. The aged woman acknowledges the little child; she who was about to leave the world confesses Him Who is entering it, and prophesies d many things respecting the Saviour to all who are looking for redemption in Israel. There meets her also Simeon full of days, but fuller still of graces. That man had re- St. Luke ceived an oracle from the Holy Ghost that he should ii. 26. not taste of death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.

Luke ii.

"The widow Anna meets her ;" and again below, "There meets her also Simeon." The name of the Festival in the Greek Church was Tажаvτ (the Meeting) from this meeting with Simeon and Anna. See below, note o, p. 86.

"Simeon had prophesied ; a woman united in marriage" (Elizabeth) "had prophesied ; a virgin had prophesied; it was meet also that a widow should prophesy, that there might lack no sex or condition of life; and therefore it is said, And there was one Anna a prophetess." AMBROSE, as quoted in the Catena Aurea, in loc.