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TOPIC: Post-Nicene Fathers Vol 09 (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 29.01.09 Introduction Part 9
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We may now turn to the Atonement, by which Christ has overcome sin. Hilary's language concerning it is, as a rule, simply Scripturalhyperlink . He had no occasion to discuss the doctrine, and his teaching is that which was traditional in his day, without any such anticipations of future thought as we found in his treatment of sin. Since the humanity of Christ is universal, His death was on behalf of all mankind, 'to buy the salvation of the whole human race by the offering of this holy and perfect Victimhyperlink .' His last cry upon the cross was the expression of His sorrow that some would not profit by His sacrifice; that He was not, as He had desired, bearing the sins of allhyperlink . He wasable to take them upon Him because He had both natures. His manhood could do what His Godhead could not; it could atone for the sins of men. Man had been overcome by Satan; Satan, in his turn, has been overcome by Man. In the long conflict, enduring through Christ's life, of which the first pitched battle was the Temptation, the last the Crucifixion, the victory has been won by the Mediator in the fleshhyperlink . The devil was in the wrong throughout. He was deceived, or rather deceived himself, not recognising what it was for which Christ hungeredhyperlink . The same delusion as to Christ's character led him afterwards to exact the penalty of sin from One Who had not deserved ithyperlink . Thus the human sufferings of Christ, unjustly inflicted, involve His enemy in condemnation and forfeit his right to hold mankind enslaved. Therefore we are set freehyperlink , and the sinless Passion and death are the triumph of the flesh over spiritual wickedness and the vengeance of God upon ithyperlink . Man is set free, because he is justified in Christ, Who is Man. But the fact that Christ could do the works necessary to this end is proof that He is God. These works included the endurance of such suffering-in the sense, of course, which Hilary attaches to the word-as no one who was not more than man could bear. Hence he emphasises the Passion, because in so doing he magnifies the Divine nature of Him Who sustained ithyperlink . He sets forth the sufferings in the light of deeds, of displays of powerhyperlink , the greatest wonder being that the Son of God should have made Himself passible. Yet though it was from union with the Godhead that His humanity possessed the purity, the willingness, the power to win this victory, and thought, in Hilary's words, it was immortal God Who died Upon the Cross, still it was a victory won not by God but by the fleshhyperlink . But the Passion must not be regarded simply as an attack, ending in his own overthrow, made by Satan upon Christ. It is also a free satisfaction offered to God by Christ as Man, in order that His sufferings might release us from the punishment we had deserved, being accepted instead of ourshyperlink . This latter was a thought peculiarly characteristic of the West, and especially of St. Cyprian's teaching; but Hilary has had his share in giving prominence to the propitiatory aspect of Christ's self-sacrificehyperlink . Yet it must be confessed that the death of Christ is somewhat in the background; that Hilary is less interested in its positive value than in its negative aspect, as the cessation from earthly life and the transition to glory. Upon this, and upon the evidential importance of the Passion as a transcendent exertion of power, whereby the Son of God held Himself down and constrained Himself to suffer and die, Hilary chiefly dwells. The death has not, in his eyes, the interest of the Resurrection. The reason is that it does not belong to the course of the Incarnation as fore-ordained by God, but is only a modification of it, rendered necessary by the sinful self-will of man. Had there been no Fall, the visible, palpable flesh would still have been laid aside, though not by death upon the Cross, when Christ's work in the world was done; and there would have been some event corresponding to the Ascension, if not to the Resurrection. 'line body, laid aside on earth, would have been resumed in glory; and human flesh, unfallen and therefore not corrupt, yet free and therefore corruptible, would have entered into perfectly harmonious union with His Divinity, and so have been rendered safe from all possibility of evil. The purpose of raising man to the society of God was anterior to the beginnings of sin; and it is this broader conception that renders the Passion itself intelligible, while relegating it to a secondary place. But Hilary, though as a rule he mentions the subject not for its own sakebut in the course of argument, has as firm a faith in the efficacy of Christ's death and of His continued intercession in His humanity for mankindhyperlink as he has in His triumphant Resurrection.
In regard to the manner in which man is to profit by the Atonement, Hilary shews the same inconsistency as in the case of sin. On the one hand, he lays frequent stress on knowledge concerning God and concerning the nature of sin as the first conditions of salvation; on the other, he insists, less often yet with equal emphasis, upon its being God's spontaneous gift to men, to be appropriated only by faith. We have already seen that one of Hilary's positions is that man must take the first step towards God; that if we will make the beginning He will give the increasehyperlink . This increase is the knowledge of God imparted to willing mindshyperlink , which lifts them up to piety. He states strongly the superiority of knowledge to faith;-" There is a certain greater effectiveness in knowledge than in faith. Thus the writer here did not believe; he knewhyperlink . For faith has the reward of obedience, but it has not the assurance of ascertained truth. The Apostle has indicated the breadth of the interval between the two by putting the latter in the lower place in his list of the gifts of graces. 'To the first wisdom, to the next knowledge, to the third faith ' is his messagehyperlink ; for he who believes may be ignorant even while he believes, but he who has come to know is saved by his possession of knowledge from the very possibility of unbeliefhyperlink ." This high estimation of sound knowledge was due, no doubt, to the intellectual character of the Arian conflict, in which each party retorted upon the other the charge of ignorance and folly; and it must have been confirmed by the observation that some who were conspicuous for the misinterpretation of Scripture were notorious also for moral obliquity. There was, however, that deeper reason which influenced all Hilary's thought; the conviction that if there is to be any harmony, any understanding between God and the soul of man, it must be a perfect harmony and understanding. And knowledge is pre-eminently the sphere in which this is possible, for the revelation of God is clear and precise, and unmistakeable in its importhyperlink . But there was another, a directly practical reason for this insistence. Apprehension of Divine truths is the unfailing test of a Christian mind; conduct changes and faith varies in intensity, but the facts of religion remain the same, and the believer can be judged by his attitude towards them. Hence we cannot be surprised that Hilary maintains the insufficiency of 'simplicity of faith,' and ranks its advocates with heathen philosophers who regard purity of life as a substitute for religion. God, he says, has provided copious knowledge, with which we cannot dispensehyperlink . But this knowledge is to embrace not only the truth concerning God, but also concerning the realities of human life. It is to be a knowledge of the fact that sins have been committed and an opening of the eyes to their enormityhyperlink , This will be followed by confession to God, by the promise to Him that we will henceforth regard Sill as He regards it, and by the profession of a firm purpose to abandon it. Here again the starting-point is human knowledge. When the right attitude towards sin, intellectually and therefore morally, has been assumed, when there is the purpose of amendment and an earnest and successful struggle against sensual and worldly temptations, then we shall become 'worthy of the favour of Godhyperlink .' In this light confession is habitually regardedhyperlink ; it is a voluntary moral act, a self-enlightenment to the realities of sin, necessarily followed by repugnance and the effort to escape, and antecedent to Divine pardon and aid. But in contrast to this,Hilary's normal judgment, there are passages where human action is put altogether in the background. Forgiveness is the spontaneous bounty of God, overflowing from the riches of His loving-kindness, and faith the condition of its bestowal and the means by which it is appropriatedhyperlink . Even the Psalmist, himself perfect in all good works, prayed for mercy; he put his whole trust in God, and so must wehyperlink . And faith precedes knowledge also, which is unattainable except by the believerhyperlink . Salvation does not come first, and then faith, but through faith is the hope of salvation; the blind man believed before he sawhyperlink . Here again, as in the case of sin, we have two groups of statements without attempt at reconciliation; but that which lays stress upon human initiative is far more numerous than the other, and must be regarded as expressing Hilary's underlying thought in his exhortations to Christian conduct, to his doctrine of which we may now turn.
We must first premise that Christ's work as our Example as well as our Saviour is fully recognised. Many of his deeds on earth were done by way of dispensation, in order to set us a pattern of life and thoughthyperlink . Christian life has, of course, its beginning in the free gift of Baptism, with the new life and the new faculties then bestowed, which render possible the illumination of the soulhyperlink . Hilary, as was natural at a time when Baptism was often deferred by professed Christians, and there were many converts from paganism, seems to contemplate that of adults as the rule; and he feels it necessary to warn them that their Baptism will not restore them to perfect innocence. In fact, by a strange conjecture tentatively made, he once suggests that our Baptism is that wherewith John baptized our Lord, and that the Baptism of the Holy Ghost awaits us hereafter, in cleansing fires beyond the grave or in the purification of martyrdomhyperlink . Hilary nowhere says in so many words that while Baptism abolishes sins previously committed, alms and other good deeds perform a similar office for later offences, but his view, which will be presently stated, concerning good works shews that he agreed in this respect with St. Cyprian; neither, however, would hold that the good works were sufficient in ordinary cases without the further purification. Martyrdoms had, of course, ceased in Hilary's (lay throughout the Roman empire, but it is interesting to observe that the old opinion, which had such power in the third century, still survived. The Christian, then, has need for fear, but he has a good hope, for all the baptized while in this world are still in the land of the living, and can only forfeit their citizenship by wilful and persistent unworthinesshyperlink . The means for maintaining the new life of effort is the Eucharist, which is equally necessary with Baptismhyperlink . But the Eucharist is one of the many matters of practical importance on which Hilary is almost silent, having nothing new to say, and being able to assume that his readers and hearers were well informed and of one mind with himself. His reticence is never a proof that he regarded them with indifference.
The Christian life is thus a life of hope and of high possibilities. But Hilary frankly and often recognises the serious short-comings of the average believers of his dayhyperlink . Sometimes, in his zeal for their improvement and in the wish to encourage his flock, he even seems to condone their faults, venturing to ascribe to God what may almost be styled mere good-nature, as when he speaks of God, Himself immutable, as no stern Judge of our changefulness, but rather appeased by the wish on our part for better things than angry because we cannot perform impossibilities. But in this very passagehyperlink he holds up for our example the high attainment of the Saints, explaining that thePsalmist's words, 'There is none that doeth good, no not one,' refer only to those who are altogether gone out of the way and become abominable, and not to all mankind. Indeed, holding as he does that all Christians may have as much grace from God as they will takehyperlink , and that the conduct which is therefore possible is also necessary to salvation, he could not consistently maintain the lower position. In fact, the standard of life which Hilary sets in the Homilies on the Psalms is very high. Cleanness of hand and heart is the first object at which we must aimhyperlink , and the Law of God must be our delight. This is the lesson inculcated throughout his discourses on Psalm cxix. He recognises the complexity of life, with its various duties and difficulties, which are, however, a privilege inasmuch as there is honour to be won by victory over themhyperlink ; and he takes a common-sense view of our powers and responsibilitieshyperlink . But though his tone is buoyant and life in his eyes is well worth living for the Christianhyperlink , he insists not merely upon a general purity of life, but upon renunciation of worldly pleasures. Like Cyprian, he would apparently have the wealthy believer dispose of his capital and spend his income in works of charity, without thought of economyhyperlink . Like Cyprian, again, he denounces the wearing of gold and jewelleryhyperlink , and the attendance at public places of amusement. Higher interests, spiritual and intellectual, must take the place of such dissipation. Sacred melody will be more attractive than the immodest dialogue of the theater, and study of the course of the stars a more pleasing pursuit than a visit to the racecoursehyperlink . Yet strictly and even sternly Christian as Hilary is, he does not allow us altogether to forget that his is an age with another code than ours. Vengeance with him is a Christian motive. He takes with absolute literalness the Psalmist's imprecationshyperlink . Like every other emotion which he expresses, that of delight at the punishment of evil doers ought to have a place in the Christian soul. This was an inheritance from the days of persecution, which were still within the memory of living men. Cyprian often encourages the confessors to patience by the prospect of seeing the wrath of God upon their enemies; but he never gives so strong expression to the feeling as Hilary does, when he enforces obedience to our Lord's command to turn the other cheek by the consideration that fuller satisfaction will be gained if the wrong be stored up against the Day of Judgementhyperlink . There is something hard and Puritan in the tone which Hilary has caught from the men of the times of persecution; and his conflict with heretics gave him ample opportunity for indulgence in the thought of vengeance upon them. This was no mere pardonable excitement of feeling; it was a Christian duty and privilege to rejoice in the future destruction of his opponents. But there is an even stranger difference between his standard and ours. Among the difficulties of keeping in the strait and narrow way he reckons that of truthfulness. A lie, he says, is often necessary, and deliberate falsehood sometimes usefulhyperlink . We may mislead an assassin, and so enable his intended victim to escape; our testimony may save a defendant who is in peril in the courts; we may have to cheer a sick man by making light of his ailment. Such are the cases in which the Apostle says that our speech is to be 'seasoned with salt.' It is not the lie that is wrong; the point of conscience is whether or no it will inflict injury upon another. Hilary is not alone in taking falsehood lightlyhyperlink , and allowance must be made for the age in which he lived. And his words cast light upon the history of the time. The constant accusations made against the character and conduct of theologicalopponents, which are so painful a feature of the controversies of the early centuries, find their justification in the principle which Hilary has stated. No harm was done, rather a benefit was conferred upon mankind, if a false teacher could be discredited in a summary and effective manner; such was certainly a thought which presented itself to the minds of combatants, both orthodox and heterodox. Apart from these exceptions, which, however, Hilary would not have regarded as such, his standard of life, as has been said, is a high one both in faith and in practice, and his exhortation is full of strong common sense. It is, however, a standard set for educated people; there is little attention paid to those who are safe from n the dangers of intellect and wealth. The worldliness which he rebukes is that of the rich and influential; and his arguments are addressed to the reading class, as are his numerous appeals to his audience in the Homilies on the Psalms to study Scripture for themselves. Indeed, his advice to them seems to imply that they have abundant leisure for spiritual exercises and for reflection. But he does not simply ignore the illiterate, still mostly pagans, for the work of St. Martin of Tours only began, as we saw, in Hilary's last days; in one passage at least he speaks with the scorn of an ancient philosopher of 'the rustic mind,' which will fail to find the meaning of the Psalmshyperlink .
Hilary is not content with setting a standard which his flock must strive to reach. He would have them attain to a higher level than is commanded, and at the same time constantly remember that they are failing to perform their duty to God. This higher life is set before his whole audience as their aim. He recognises the peculiar honour of the widow and the virginhyperlink , but has singularly little to say about these classes of the Christian community, or about the clergy, and no special counsel for them. The works of supererogation-the word is not his-which he preaches are within the reach of all Christians. They consist in the more perfect practice of the ordinary virtues. King David 'was not content henceforth to be confined to the express commands of the Law, nor to be subject to a mere necessity of obedience.' 'The Prophet prays that these free-will offerings may be acceptable to God, because the deeds done in compliance to the Law's edict are performed under the actual compulsion of servitudehyperlink . As an instance he gives the character of David. His duty was to be humble; he made himself humble exceedingly, thus doing more than he was legally bound to do. He spared his enemies so far as in him lay, and bewailed their death; this was a free service to which he was bound by no compulsion. Such conduct places those who practice it on the same level with those whose lives are formally consecrated; the state of the latter being regarded, as always in early times, as admirable in itself, and not as a means towards higher things. Vigils and fasts and acts of mercy are the methods advocated by Hilary for such attainment. But they must not stand alone, nor must the Christian put his trust in them. Humility must have faith for its principle, and fasting be combined with charityhyperlink And the Christian must never forget that though he may in some respects be doing more than he need, yet in others he is certainly falling short. For the conflict is unceasing; the devil, typified by the mountains in the Psalm, has been touched by God and is smoking, but is not yet burning and powerless for mischiefhyperlink . Hence there is constant danger lest the Christian fall into unbelief or unfruitfulness, sins equally fatalhyperlink ; he must not trust in himself, either that he can deserve forgiveness for the past or resist future temptationshyperlink . Nor may he dismiss his past offences from his memory. It can never cease to be good for us to confess our former sins, even though we have become righteousSt. Paul did not allow himself to forget that he had persecuted the Church of Godhyperlink . But there is a further need than that of penitence. Like Cyprian before him and Augustine after him, Hilary insists upon the value of alms in the sight of God. The clothing of the naked, the release of the captive plead with God for the remission of our sinshyperlink ; and the man who redeems his faults by alms is classed among those who win His favour, with the perfect in love and the blameless in faithhyperlink .
Thus the thought of salvation by works greatly preponderates over that of salvation by grace. Hilary is fearful of weakening man's sense of moral responsibility by dwelling too much upon God's work which, however, he does not fail to recognise. Of the two great dangers, that of faith and that of life, the former seemed to him the more serious. God's requirements in that respect were easy of fulfilment; He had stated the truth and He expected it to be unhesitatingly accepted. But if belief, being an exertion of the will, was easy, misbelief must be peculiarly and fatally wicked. The confession of St. Peter, the foundation upon which the Church is built, is that Christ is Godhyperlink ; the sin against the Holy Ghost is denial of this truthhyperlink . These are the highest glory and the deepest shame of man. It does not seem that Hilary regarded any man, however depraved, as beyond hope so long as he did not dispute this truth; he has no code of mortal sins. But heresy concerning Christ, whatever the conduct and character of the heretic, excludes all possibility of salvation, for it necessarily cuts him off from the one Faith and the one Church which are the condition and the sphere of growth towards perfection; and the severance is just, because misbelief is a wilful sin. Since, then, compliance or non-compliance with one of God's demands, that for faith in His revelation, depends upon the will, it was natural that Hilary should lay stress upon the importance of the will in regard to God's other demand, that for a Christian life. This was, in a sense, a lighter requirement, for various degrees of obedience were possible. Conduct could neither give nor deny faith, but only affect its growth, while without the frank recognition of the facts of religion no conduct could be acceptable to God. Life presents to the will a constantly changing series of choices between good and evil, while the Faith must be accepted or rejected at once and as a whole. It is clear from Hilary's insistence upon this that the difficulties, apart from heresy, with which he had to contend resembled those of Mission work in modern India. There were many who would accept Christianity as a revelation, yet had not the moral strength to live in conformity with their belief. Of such persons Hilary will not despair They have the first essential of salvation, a clear and definite acceptance of doctrinal truth; they have also the offer of sufficient grace, and the free will and power to use it. And time and opportunity are granted, for the vicissitudes of life form a progressive education; they are, if taken aright, the school, the training-ground for iimmortalityhyperlink . This is because all Christians are in Christ, by virtue of His Incarnation. They are, as St. Paul says, complete in Him, furnished with the faith and hope they need. But this is only a preparatory completeness; hereafter they shall be complete in themselves, when the perfect harmony is attained and they are conformed to his gloryhyperlink . Thus to the end the dignity and responsibility of mankind is maintained. But it is obvious that Hilary has failed to correlate the work of Christ with the work of the Christian. The necessity of His guidance and aid, and the manner in which these are bestowed, is sufficiently stated, and the duty of the Christian man is copiously and eloquently enforced. But the importance of Christ's work within Himself, in harmonising the twonatures, has withdrawn most of Hilary's attention from His work within the believing soul; and the impression which Hilary's writings leave upon the mind concerning the Saviour and redeemed mankind is that of allied forces seeking the same end but acting independently, each in a sphere of its own.
There still remains to be considered Hilary's account of the future state. The human soul, being created after the image of God, is imperishable; resurrection is as inevitable as deathhyperlink . And the resurrection will be in the body, for good and bad alike. The body of the good will be glorified, like that of Christ; its substance will be the same as in the present life, its glory such that it will be in all other respects a new bodyhyperlink . Indeed, the true life of man only begins when this transformation takes placehyperlink . No such change awaits the wicked; we shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed, as St. Paul sayshyperlink . They remain as they are, or rather are subjected to a ceaseless ptocess of deterioration, whereby the soul is degraded to the level of the body, while this in the case of others is raised, either instantly or by a course of purification, to the level of the soulhyperlink . Their last state is vividly described in language which recalls that of Virgil; crushed to powder and dried to dust they will fly for ever before the wind of God's wrathhyperlink . For the thoroughly good and the thoroughly bad the final state begins at the moment of death. There is no judgment for either class, but only for those whose character contains elements of both good and evilhyperlink . But perfect goodness is only a theoretical possibility, and Hilary is not certain of the condemnation of any except wilful unbelievers. Evil is mingled in varying proportions with good in the character of men at large; God can detect it in the very best. All therefore need to be purified after death, if they are to excape condemnation on the Day of Judgment. Even the Mother of our Lord needs the purification of pain; this is the sword which should pierce through her soulhyperlink . All who are infected by sin, the heretic who has erred in ignorance among themhyperlink , must pass through cleansing fires after death. Then comes the general Resurrection. To the good it brings the final change to perfect glory; the bad will rise only to return to their former placehyperlink . The multitude of men will be judged, and after the education and purification of suffering to which, by God's mercy, they have been submitted, will be accepted by Him. Hilary's writings contain no hint that any who are allowed to present themselves on the Day of judgment will then be rejected.
We have now completed the survey of Hilary's thoughts. Many of these were strange and new to his contemporaries, and his originality' we may be sure, deprived him of some of the influence he wished to exert in the controversies of his day. Yet he shared the spirit and entered heartily into the interests and conflicts of his age, and therefore his thoughts in many ways were different from our own. To this we owe, no doubt, the preservation of his works; writings which anticipated modern opinion would have been powerless for good in that day, and would not have survived to ours. Thus from his own century to ours Hilary has been somewhat isolated and neglected, and even misunderstood. Yet he is one of the most notable figures in the history of the early Church, and must be numbered among those who have done most to make Christian thought richer and more exact. If we would appreciate him aright as one of the builders of the dogmatic structure of the Faith, we must omit from the materials of our estimate a great part of trig writings, and a part which has had a wider influence than any other. His interpretation of the letter, though not of the spirit, of Scripture must be dismissed; interesting asit always is, and often suggestive, it was not his own and was a hindrance, though he did not see it, to the freedom of his thought. Yet his exegesis in detail is often admirable. For instance, it would not be easy to overpraise his insight and courage in resisting the conventional orthodoxy, sanctioned by Athanasius in his own generation and by Augustine in the next, which interpreted St. Paul's ' first-bom of every creature' as signifying the Incarnation of Christ, and not His eternal generationhyperlink . We must omit also much that Hilary borrowed without question from current opinion; it is his glory that he concentrated his attention upon some few questions of supreme importance, and his strength, not his weakness, that he was ready to adopt in other matters the best and wisest judgments to which he had access. An intelligent, and perhaps ineffective, curiosity may keep itself abreast of the thought of the time, to quote a popular phrase; Hilary was content to survey wide regions of doctrine and discipline with the eyes of Origen and of Cyprian. This limitation of the interests of a powerful mind has enabled him to penetrate further into the mysteries of the Faith than any of his predecessors; to points, in fact, where his successors have failed to establish themselves. We cannot blame him that later theologians, starting where he left off, have in some directions advanced further still. The writings of Hilary are the quarry whence many of the best thoughts of Ambrose and of Leo are hewn. Eminent and successful as these men were, we cannot rank them with Hilary as intellectually his equals; we may even wonder how many of their conclusions they would halve drawn had not Hilary supplied the premisses. It is a greater honour that the unrivalled genius of Augustine is deeply indebted to him. Nor may we blame him, save lightly, for some rashness and error in his speculations. He set out, unwillingly, as we know, but not half-heartedly, upon his novel journey of exploration. He had not, as we have, centuries of criticism behind him, and could not know that some of the avenues he followed would lead him astray. It may be that we are sober because we are, in a sense, disillusioned; that modern Christian thought which starts from the old premisses tends to excess of circumspection. And certainly Hilary would not have earned his fame as one of the most original and profound of teachers, whose view of Christology is one of the most interesting in the whole of Christian antiquityhyperlink , had he not been inspired by a sense of freedom and of hope in his quest. Yet great as was his genius and reverent the spirit in which he worked, the errors into which he fell, though few, were serious. There are instances in which he neglects his habitual balancing of corresponding infinities; as when he shuts his eyes to half the revelation, and asserts that Christ could not be ignorant and could not feel pain. And there is that whole system of dispensations which he has built up in explanation of Christ's life on earth; a system against which our conscience and our common sense rebel, for it contradicts the plain words of Scripture and attributes to God 'a ptocess of Divine reserve which is in fact deceptionhyperlink .' We may compare Hilary's method in such cases to the architecture of Gloucester and of Sherborne, where the ingenuity of a later age has connected and adorned the massive and isolated columns of Norman date by its own light and graceful drapery of stonework. We cannot but admire the result; yet there is a certain concealment of the original design, and perhaps a perilous cutting away of the solid structure. But, in justice to Hilary, we must remember that in these speculations he is venturing away from the established standards of doctrine. When he is enunciating revealed truths, or arguing onward from them to conclusions towards which they point, he has the company of the Creeds, or at least they indicate the way he must go. But in explaining the connectionbetween doctrine and doctrine he is left to his own guidance. It is as though a traveller, not content to acquaint himself with the highroads, should make his way over hedge and ditch from one of them to another; he will not always hit upon the best and straightest course. But at least Hilary's conclusions, though sometimes erroneous, were reached by honest and reverent reasoning, and neither ancient nor modern theology can afford to reproach him. The tendency of the former, especially offer the rise of Nestorius, was to exaggerate some of his errors; and the latter has failed to develope and enforce some of his highest teaching.
This is, indeed, worthy of all admiration. On the moral side of Christianity we see him insisting upon the voluntary character of Christ's work; upon His acts of will, which are a satisfaction to God and an appeal to ushyperlink . On the intellectual side we find the Unity in Trinity so luminously declared that Bishop French of Lahore, one of the greatest of missionaries, had the works of Hilary constantly in his hands, and contemplated a translation of the De Trinitate into Arabic for the benefit of Mohammedanshyperlink . This was not because Hilary's explanation of our Lord's sufferings might seem to commend the Gospel to their prejudices; such a concession would have been repugnant to French's whole mode of thought. It was because in the central argument on behalf of the Godhead of Christ, where he had least scope for originality of thought, Hilary has never suffered himself to become a mere mechanical compiler. The light which he has cast Upon his subject, though clear, is never hard; and the doctrine which, because it was attractive to himself, he has made attractive to his readers, is that of the unity of God, the very doctrine which is of supreme importance in Mohammedan eyeshyperlink .
But, above all, it is Hilary's doctrine concerning the Incarnation as the eternal purpose of God for the union of the creature with the Creator, that must excite our interest and awaken our thoughts. He renders it, on the one hand, impossible to rate too highly the dignity of man, created to share the nature and the life of God; impossible, on the other hand, to estimate highly enough the condescension of Christ in assuming humanity. It is by His humiliation that we are saved; by the fact that the nature of man was taken by his Maker, not by the fact that Christ, being man, remained sinless. For sin began against God's will and after His counsel was formed; it might deflect the march of His purpose towards fulfilment, but could no more impede its consummation than it could cause its inception. The true salvation of man is not that which rescues him, when corrupt, from sin and its consequences, but that which raises him, corruptible, because free, even though he had not become corrupt, into the safety of union with the nature of God. Human life, though pure from actual sin, would have been aimless and hopeless without the Incarnation. And the human body would have had no glory, for its glory is that Christ has taken it, worn it awhile in its imperfect state, laid it aside and finally resumed it in its perfection. All this He must have done, in accordance with God's purpose, even though the Fall had never occurred. Hence the Incarnation and the Resurrection are the facts of paramount interest; the death of Christ, corresponding as it does to the hypothetical laying aside of the unglorified flesh, loses something of its usual prominence in Christian thought. It is represented as being primarily for Christ the moment of transition, for the Christian the act which enables him to profit by the Incarnation; but it is the Incarnation itself whereby, in Hilary's words, we are saved into the nature and the name of God. But though we may feel that this great truth is not stated in its full impressiveness, we must allow that the thought which has taken the foremost place is no mere academic speculation. And, after all, sin and the Atonement are copiouslytreated in his writings, though they do not control his exposition of the Incarnation. Yet even in this there are large spaces of his argument where these considerations have a place, though only to give local colour, so to speak, and a sense of reality to the description of a purpose formed and a work done for man because he is man, not because he is fallen. But if Hilary has somewhat erred in placing the Cross in the background, he is not in error in magnifying the scope of the reconciliationhyperlink which includes it as in a wider horizon. Man has in Christ the nature of God; the infinite Mind is intelligible to the finite. The Creeds are no dry statement of facts which do not touch our life; the truths they contain are the revelation of God's self to us. Not for the pleasure of weaving theories, but in the interests of practical piety, Hilary has fused belief and conduct into the unity of that knowledge which Isaiah foresaw and St. John possessed; the knowledge which is not a means towards life, but life itself.
Footnotes
375 E.g. Trin. ix. 10; Tr. in Ps. cxxix. 9.
376 Tr. in. ps. liii. 13 fin.
377 Comm. in Matt. xxxiii.6.
378 Ib. iii.2
379 Ib. iii. 3.
380 Tr.in.ps lxviii.8.
381 Tr.in ps. lxi.2.
382 Trin. ix. 7.
383 E.g. Trin. x.23,47 in.
384 E.g. Ib. x. 11.
385 Comm. in Matt. iii.2
386 E.g. Tr. in Ps. liii. 12,13 (translated in this volume) lxiv. 4.
387 Cf. Harnack, ii. 177; Schwane, ii. 271.
388 E.g. Tr. in Ps. liii. 4.
389 Cf. p. Ixxxv. fin. In Tr. in Ps. cxviii., Nun, 20, Hilary says `the reward of the consummation attained depends upon the initiative of the will ;
0' so also Trin. i. 11.
390 Tr. in ps. ii. 40.
391 Hilary is commenting on the words, `I know, O Lord, that Thy judgments are right.
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392 1 Cor. xii. 8.
393 Tr. in ps. cxviii., Iod, 12.
394 E.g. Trin. x. 70, xi. 1.
395 Tr. in Ps. cxviii., prolog. 4.
396 Ib. cxxxv. 3; cofessio is paraphrased by professa cognitio. Similar language is used in cxxxvii. 2 f.
397 Ib. ii. 38; cf lii. I2in., cxix. 11(4).
398 It is always confession to God directly. There is no hint of public or ceremonial confession, or of absolution. But Hilary's aabstinence from allusion to the practical system of the Church is so complete that no argurnent can ever be drawn from his silence as to the existence, or the importance in his eyes, of her instiyutions.
399 Tr. in Ps. Ixvi. 2, Ivi. 3.
400 Ib. cxviiii koph, 6.
401 Trin. i. 12.
402 Comm. in Matt. ix. 9.
403 E.g. Tr. in Ps. Iiii. 7.
404 E.g. Trin. I. 18.
405 Tr. in Ps. cxviii., Gimel. 5. Hilary never mentions Confirmation.
406 Tr. in Ps. Ii. 16, 17.
407 E.g. ib. cxxxi. 23; Trin. viii. 13. The latter is the only passage in Hilary s writings in which the subject is discussed at length: and even here it is not introduced for its own sake.
408 E.g. Tr. in Ps. i. 9 f., cxviii., Koph, 6. Conduct in church was not more exemplary than outside. The most innocent employment which he attributes to many of his people during the reading of the lessons is the casting up of their business accounts, Tr. in Ps. cxxxv. I.
409 Tr. in Ps. Iii. 9-I2.
410 Trin. ii. 35.
411 Tr. in Ps. cxviii., Aleph, 1.
412 Ib. Phe, 9.
413 Ib. I 12.
414 E.g. Trin. i. 14, vi. I9.
415 Ib. 1i. 21.
416 Ib. cxviii., Ain, 16, 17.
417 Ib., He, 14.
418 E.g. ib. Iiii. 10.
419 Tr. in Ps. cxxxvii. 16. Cf. Trin. x. 55, where he refuses to believe that it was with real sorrow that our Lord wept over Jerusalem, that godless and murdetous city. His tears were a dispensa-tion.
420 Tr. in ps. xiv. 10, est enirn necessariurn plerumque mendacium, et nonnunquam falsitas utilis est. The latter apparently refers to his second example.
421 Hermas, Mand. iii. 3, confesses to wholesale Iying; he had never heard that it was wrong. But the writer of the Shepherd does not represent his mouthpiece as a model of virtue. It is more significant that Tertullian, Pud. 19, classes breach of trust and lying among slight sins which may happen to anyone any day. This was in his strictest and most censorious period. There are grave difficulties in reconciling some of Cyprian's statements concerning his opponents with one another and with probability, but he has not ventured upon any general extenuation of the vice.
422 Tr. in Ps. cxxxiv. 1.
423 Ib. cxxxi. 24, cxxvii. 7, and especially cxviii., Nun, 14.
424 Tr. in Ps. cxviii., Nun, 13, 15. It is in this passage that Hilary gives his views most fully. His aneithesis is between legitima and voluntaria.
425 l.c. Nun, 14, Comm. in Matt, v. 2. In the latter passage there is a piece of practical advice which shews that public fasts were generally recognised. Hilary tells his readers that they must not take literally our Lord's command to anoint themselves when they fast. If they do, they will render themselves conspicuous and ridiculous. The passage, Comm. in Matt. xxvii. 5, 6, on the parables of the Virgins with their lamps and of the Talents cannot be taken, as by Forster, as evidence that Hilary rejected the later doctrine of the supererogatory righteousness of the Saints. He is speaking of the impossibility of contemporaries conveying righteousness to one another in the present life, and his words have no bearing on that doctrine.
426 Tr. in Ps. cxliii. II.
427 Ib. Ii. 16.
428 E.g. ib. lxi. 6, cxviii., He, 12, Nun, 20, Koph, 6.
429 Ib. cxxxv. 4.
430 Ib. 1i. 21.
431 Ib. cxviii, Lamed, 15. Similar passages are fairly numerous; e.g. Comm. in Matt. iv. 26.
432 Trin. vi. 36.
433 Comm. in Matt. xii. 17, xxxi. 5.
434 Trin. i. 14.
435 Ib. ix. 8, commenting on Col. ii. 10
436 Tr. in Ps. Ii. 18, Lxiii. 9,
437 Ib. ii. 41.
438 Ib. cxviii, Gimel, 3.
439 Ib. Iii. 17.
440 Comm. in Matt. x. 19.
441 Tr. in Ps. 19.
442 Ib. I. 19ff ., translated in volume. For the good, see also ib. lvii. 5, Trin. vi 3.
443 Tr. in Ps. cxviii., Gimel, 12.
444 Trin. vi. 3.
445 Tr. in. lii. 17, Ixix. 3.
446 Trin. viii. 50; Tr. in ps. ii. 28. Cf. Lightfoot on Col. I. 15.
447 Dorner, 1. ii. 399.
448 Gore, Dissertations, p. 151.
449 Schwane, ii. 271, says, `Though we reject that part of it which attributes a natural impassibility to the body of Christ, yet Hilary's exposition presents one truth more clearly than the earlier Fathers had stated it, by giving to the doctrine of the representative satisfaction of Christ its reasonable explanation as a free service of satisfaction. He conceives rightly of the Lord's whole life on earth, with all its troubles and infirmities, as a sacrifice of free love on the part of the God-Man; it is only his closer definition of this sacrifice that is inaccurate.... Hilary lays especial stress upon the freedom of the Lord s acceptance of death.
0' He quotes Trin. x. 11.
450 He had evidently been long familiar with it (Life, i. 155), but the first mention of its use for missionary purposes is in 1862 (ib. I. 137). He began the translation into Arabic at Tunis in 1890, after his resignation of the bishopric of Lahore (ii. 333), but it seems doubtfill whether he was able to make any progress with it at Muscat. His biographer says nothing of the amount actually accomplished.
451 For Bishop French's view of the importance of this doctrine, see his Life, I. 84.
452 Compare Bishop Lightfoot' comprehensive words on Col. I. 20 The reconciliation of mankind implies `a restitution to a state from which they had fallen, or for which they were destined.
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