The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord - A paper read (in substance) before the confraternity of the Holy - Trinity at Cambridge by B. W. Randolph
page 36 of 40 (90%)
page 36 of 40 (90%)
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the race of men save by way of example. His death can never
effect our redemption, for it does not differ in kind from the death of a martyr. Being only a great saint himself, he cannot represent mankind either on the Cross or before the Throne. One man has been assumed into heaven. But this is wholly a different thing from the Faith of Christendom, which is that God has taken human nature into union with His Divine Person, in that nature God died upon the Cross, and in that nature He pleads before the Throne for the race of men. It is because Christ's Person is Divine, that His life means to us Christians what it does. "No person," says Hooker, "was born of the Virgin but the Son of God, no person but the Son of God baptized, the Son of God condemned, the Son of God and no other person crucified; which one only point of Christian belief, the infinite worth of the Son of God, is the very ground of all things believed concerning life and salvation by that which Christ either did or suffered as man in our behalf."* "That," says Bishop Andrewes, "which setteth the high price upon this sacrifice is this, that He which offereth it to God is God."+ -- * Eccl. Pol., v. 52. 3. + Second Sermon on the Passion. -- "Marvel not," says St. Cyril of Jerusalem, "if the whole world has been redeemed; for He who has died for us is no mere man, but the Only Begotten Son of God."^ "Christ," says St. Cyril of Alexandria, "would not have been equivalent [as a sacrifice] |
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