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| The Similarity of Circumstances Between the First and the Second Adam, as to the Derivation of Their Flesh. An Analogy Also Pleasantly Traced Between Eve and the Virgin Mary.
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Chapter XVII.—The Similarity of Circumstances Between the
First and the Second Adam, as to the Derivation of Their Flesh. An
Analogy Also Pleasantly Traced Between Eve and the Virgin
Mary.
But, leaving Alexander with his syllogisms, which
he so perversely applies in his discussions, as well as with the hymns
of Valentinus, which, with consummate assurance, he interpolates as the
production of some respectable7180
author, let us
confine our inquiry to a single point—Whether Christ received
flesh from the virgin?—that we may thus arrive at a certain proof
that His flesh was human, if He derived its substance from His
mother’s womb, although we are at once furnished with clear
evidences of the human character of His flesh, from its name and
description as that of a man, and from the nature of its constitution,
and from the system of its sensations, and from its suffering of death.
Now, it will first be necessary to show what previous reason there was
for the Son of God’s being born of a virgin. He who was going to
consecrate a new order of birth, must Himself be born after a novel
fashion, concerning which Isaiah foretold how that the Lord Himself
would give the sign. What, then, is the sign? “Behold a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son.”7181
Accordingly, a virgin did conceive and bear “Emmanuel, God with
us.”7182
This is the new
nativity; a man is born in God. And in this man God was born, taking
the flesh of an ancient race, without the help, however, of the ancient
seed, in order that He might reform it with a new seed, that is, in a
spiritual manner, and cleanse it by the re-moval of all its ancient
stains. But the whole of this new birth was prefigured, as was the case
in all other instances, in ancient type, the Lord being born as man by
a dispensation in which a virgin was the medium. The earth was still in
a virgin state, reduced as yet by no human labour, with no seed as yet
cast into its furrows, when, as we are told, God made man out of it
into a living soul.7183
As, then, the first
Adam is thus introduced to us, it is a just inference that the second
Adam likewise, as the apostle has told us, was formed by God into a
quickening spirit out of the ground,—in other words, out of a
flesh which was unstained as yet by any human generation. But that I
may lose no opportunity of supporting my argument from the name of
Adam, why is Christ called Adam by the apostle, unless it be that, as
man, He was of that earthly origin? And even reason here maintains the
same conclusion, because it was by just the contrary7184
operation that God recovered His own image
and likeness, of which He had been robbed by the devil. For it was
while Eve was yet a virgin, that the ensnaring word had crept into her
ear which was to build the edifice of death. Into a virgin’s
soul, in like manner, must be introduced that Word of God which was to
raise the fabric of life; so that what had been reduced to ruin by this
sex, might by the selfsame sex be recovered to salvation. As Eve had
believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel.7185
The delinquency which the one occasioned by
believing, the other by believing effaced. But (it will be said)
Eve did not at the devil’s word conceive in her womb. Well, she
at all events conceived; for the devil’s word afterwards became
as seed to her that she should conceive as an outcast, and bring forth
in sorrow. Indeed she gave birth to a fratricidal devil; whilst
Mary, on the contrary, bare one who was one day to secure salvation to
Israel, His own brother after the flesh, and the murderer of Himself.
God therefore sent down into the virgin’s womb His Word, as the
good Brother, who should blot out the memory of the evil brother. Hence
it was necessary that Christ should come forth for the salvation of
man, in that condition of flesh into which man had entered ever
since his condemnation.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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