526 Note C. On Our Lord's Temptation. therefore Scripture speaks of His perfect assimilation to us, to our condition, our trials, our experiences, this language must be understood of physical and mental pain in all their forms. It cannot be understood of any moral assimilation ; He is, according to Scripture, the absolutely Sinless One; we are, by nature, corrupt. 2. Is this account consistent with the exigencies of our Lord's Redemptive Work?' Did He conquer sin for us, when His victory was won under conditions differing from our own? Certainly. He is not less truly representative of our race, because in Him it has recovered its perfection. His victory is none the less real and precious, because, morally speaking, it was inevitable. Nay, this perfect internal sinlessness, which rendered Christ inaccessible to direct temptation to evil, was itself essential to His redemptive relationship to the human family. It accordingly was deliberately secured to Him by His Virgin-Birth, which cut off the entail of inward corruption. He could not have been the Sinless Victim, offered freely for a sinful world, díkαιos vπèp ảdíkov (1 St. Pet. iii. 18), unless He had been thus superior to the moral infirmities of His brethren. 3. But does not such an account impair the full force of our Lord's example? Certainly an example is in a sense more powerful when it is set by one who is under exactly the same moral circumstances as ourselves. And, if Christ our Lord had been a sinner, or at any rate had had sinful dispositions within Him, He would so far have been more entirely what we really are; although He would have been unable to redeem us. If, like His apostle, He had beheld another law in His members warring against the law of His mind,' He would have come not in the likeness of sinful flesh,' but in flesh that was actually sinful, and so exactly like our own. But then He took our nature upon Him, precisely in order to expel sin altogether from it, and thus to shew us of what it was capable, by shewing us Himself. The absence of an absolute identity of moral circumstances between Him and ourselves, is more than compensated by our possession of what else we could not have had, a Perfect Model of Humanity. We gain in the perfection of the Moral Ideal thus placed before us, to say nothing of the perfection of the Mediator between God and Man, more than we can lose in moral vigour, upon discovering Note D. Unity of the Father and the Son. 527 own in the one point of absolute purity. And by His grace, we ourselves are supernaturalized, and 'can do all things.' 4. But does not such an account reflect upon the moral greatness of our Lord? Is not an obedience which could not but be,' less noble than an obedience which triumphs over pronounced disinclination to obey? In other words, does not this account practically deny Christ's moral liberty? No. The highest liberty does not imply the moral capacity of doing wrong. God is the one perfectly free Being; yet God cannot sin. The free movement of a moral being, who has not fallen, is not an oscillation between sin and moral truth; it is a steady adherence to moral truth. To God sin is impossible. To created natures sin is not impossible; but it is always, at first, a violation of the law of their being; they must do violence to themselves in order to sin. So it was in Eden; so it is, in its degree, with the first lie a man tells now. Our Lord's inaccessibility to sin was the proof and glory of His Moral Perfection. Nonne de Spiritu Sancto et Virgine Mariâ Dei Filius unicus natus est, non carnis concupiscentiâ sed singulari Dei munere? Numquid metuendum fuit, ne accedente ætate homo ille libero peccaret arbitrio? An ideo in illo non libera voluntas erat; ac non tantò magis erat, quantò magis peccato servire non poterat?' (S. Aug., De Prædestinatione Sanctorum, c. 15, n. 30.) The real temptation of a sinless Christ is not less precious to us than the temptation of a Christ who could have sinned, would be. It forms a much truer and more perfect contrast to the failure of our first parent. It occupies a chief place in that long series of acts of condescension which begins with the Nativity, and which ends on the Cross. It is a lesson for all times as to the true method of resisting the tempter. Finally, it is the source of that strength whereby all later victories over Satan have been won: Christ, the sinless One, has conquered the enemy in His sin-stained members. By Thy Temptation, good Lord, deliver us.' NOTE D, ON LECTURE IV. ON 'Moral' explanations of the Unity of the Father Referring to a passage which is often quoted to destroy the dogmatic significance of St. John x. 30, Professor Bright has well observed that 528 Note E. The Presbyter John and the Apostle. But unity of Christians with each other in the Son has sometimes been abused in the interests of heresy.' 'The second unity,' it has been said, 'is simply moral; therefore the first is so.' the second is not simply moral; it is, in its basis, essential, for we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones; it is the mysterious incorporation into His Sacred Manhood which causes the oneness of affections and of will. Thus also in the higher sphere, the Father and the Son are one in purpose, because They are consubstantial. Those,' says Olshausen on St. John x. 30, 'who would entertain the hypothesis at once Arian, Socinian, and Rationalistic—that ev eiva refers only to unity of will, not of nature, should not forget that true unity of will without unity of nature is something inconceivable. Hence, if Christ speaks of unity of will between Himself and His people, this can subsist only so far as such unity of will has been rendered possible to them by a previous communication of His nature' (Eighteen Sermons of St. Leo, p. 132). NOTE E, ON LECTURE V. 'The Presbyter John' and the Apostle. Who was the author of the Second and Third Epistles attributed to St. John the Evangelist in the present Canon of the New Testament? I. The existence of a 'Presbyter John,' a contemporary of the Apostle, depends on the following evidence: (i.) Papias in Eus. iii. 39 names him with Aristion separately from St. John, as a disciple of the Lord. Eusebius adds that this confirms the report of (a) two Johns in Asia who had been in close relations with our Lord, (3) two tombs at Ephesus both bearing the name of John. (ii.) Dionysius of Alexandria, in Eus. vii. 25, ascribes the authorship of the Apocalypse to 'the Presbyter John,' as Eusebius himself was inclined to do. Dionysius repeats the story of the two tombs. (iii.) According to the 'Apostolical Constitutions' (vii. 47) a second John was made Bishop of Ephesus by the Apostle St. John. (iv.) St. Jerome (Catal. Script. c. 9 and 18) makes a state Note E. The Presbyter John and the Apostle. 529 tomb is still shewn at Ephesus, although some maintained that both tombs were memorials of St. John the Evangelist. Dr. Döllinger admits that temporary of the Evangelist, Ephesus next to St. John's. Eng. trans., 2nd edit.) the Presbyter John lived as a conand that his grave could be seen at (First Age of the Church, p. 113, II. But this admission would not necessarily involve the further admission that the Presbyter John was the author of the Second and Third Epistles ascribed to the Apostle. All that can be advanced in favour of the Presbyter's authorship is stated by Ebrard (Einleitung); the ordinary belief being defended by Lücke, Huther, Wordsworth, Alford and Westcott. Among reasons for it are the following: i. The argument from style. The differences upon which Ebrard lays such stress may fairly be accounted for by the distinct character and object of the two Epistles; while their general type of language and thought is unmistakeably Johannean. Bretschneider denied that the Apostle had written any one of the three Epistles. Yet he had no doubt of the fact that all three had been written by a single author. ii. Church-tradition. (a) The great authority, in this matter especially, of St. Ire- (7) On the other hand, Origen was doubtful about the 530 Note F. The Worship of Jesus Christ that one was addressed to a woman; (3) the amount of matter in them common to the first Epistle (?). The verdict of the Muratorian Fragm. is doubtful. The Peschito probably did not contain either. Eusebius reckons them among the Antilegomena; yet his own opinion appears in Dem. Ev. iii. 5. (See Alford.) iii. Nothing against the apostolic authorship can be inferred from the title ὁ πρεσβύτερος. St. Paul calls himself ὁ πρεσβύτης (Philem. 9), and St. Peter & σνμпреσВúтeроs (1 Pet. v. 1). Probably 'the Presbyter' John did not assume the title until after the death of the Apostle. St. John may have used it in his private correspondence, either to hint at his age, or as a formal title the force of which was at once recognized and admitted. Surely the Presbyter would have added to ó πρeσβύτερος, his name Ιωάννης. An Apostle could afford to omit his name. The authority too, of which the writer of the third Epistle is conscious in his reference to Diotrephes, seems inconsistent with the supposition of a non-apostolical authorship. NOTE F, ON LECTURE VII. The worship of Jesus Christ as prescribed by the Authorized Services of the Church of England. 6 A. In a letter to the Editor of the Times,' dated August 9, and published in that journal on September 26, 1866, Dr. Colenso writes as follows: 'I have drawn attention to the fact that out of 180 collects and prayers contained in the Prayer-book, only three or four at most are addressed to our Lord, the others being all addressed through Christ to Almighty God. I have said that there are also ejaculations in the Litany and elsewhere addressed to Christ. But I have shewn that the whole spirit and the general practice of our Liturgy manifestly tend to discourage such worship and prayer, instead of making it the "foundation-stone of common worship.' 'It appears,' Dr. Colenso further observes, 'that the practice in question is not based on any Scriptural or Apostolical authority, but is the development of a later age, and has very greatly increased within the Church of England during the last century, beyond what (as the Prayer-book shews) was the rule at the time of the Reformation-chiefly, as I believe, |