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| How We are Rendered Apt for the Perception of Truth Through the Incarnate Word.
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Chapter
2.—How We are Rendered Apt for the Perception of Truth Through
the Incarnate Word.
4. But “the light shineth in
darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” Now the
“darkness” is the foolish minds of men, made blind by vicious
desires and unbelief. And that the Word, by whom all things were
made, might care for these and heal them, “The Word was made
flesh, and dwelt among us.” For our enlightening is the partaking
of the Word, namely, of that life which is the light of men. But
for this partaking we were utterly unfit, and fell short of it, on
account of the uncleanness of sins. Therefore we were to be
cleansed. And further, the one cleansing of the unrighteous and of
the proud is the blood of the Righteous One, and the humbling of
God Himself;448
that we
might be cleansed through Him, made as He was what we are by
nature, and what we are not by sin, that we might contemplate God,
which by nature we are not. For by nature we are not God: by nature
we are men, by sin we are not righteous. Wherefore God, made a
righteous man, interceded with God for man the sinner. For the
sinner is not congruous to the righteous, but man is congruous to
man. By joining therefore to us the likeness of His humanity, He
took away the unlikeness of our unrighteousness; and by being made
partaker of our mortality, He made us partakers of His divinity.
For the death of the sinner springing from the necessity of
comdemnation is deservedly abolished by the death of the Righteous
One springing from the free choice of His compassion, while His
single [death and resurrection] answers to our double [death and
resurrection].449
| 449 [This singleness and doubleness is
explained in chapter 3.—W.G.T.S.] | For this
congruity, or suitableness, or concord, or consonance, or whatever
more appropriate word there may be, whereby one is [united] to two,
is of great weight in all compacting, or better, perhaps,
co-adaptation, of the creature. For (as it just occurs to me) what
I mean is precisely that co-adaptation which the Greeks call
ἁρμονία. However
this is not the place to set forth the power of that consonance of
single to double which is found especially in us, and which is
naturally so implanted in us (and by whom, except by Him who
created us?), that not even the ignorant can fail to perceive it,
whether when singing themselves or hearing others. For by this it
is that treble and bass voices are in harmony, so that any one who
in his note departs from it, offends extremely, not only trained
skill, of which the most part of men are devoid, but the very sense
of hearing. To demonstrate this, needs no doubt a long discourse;
but any one who knows it, may make it plain to the very ear in a
rightly ordered monochord.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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