Again. The Incarnation, wherein God has united Himself (directly, without intermediary), to man, has made clear to man that God is His sole End, and has thus taught him to appreciate the excellence of his own nature. It has so far enlightened the human race, that men, at the sight of this wonderful union between God and man, have abandoned the worship of idols. Then, in their quest of true religion and unalloyed happiness, they have despised all earthly wealth and dignity and pleasure.
We must further remember that, as the happiness, whereunto we were created, far exceeds the capacity of our understanding, it would have been impossible for us to have had any sure knowledge or hope of it. Even the investigations instituted by the most learned philosophers would have been in vain. Befitting therefore was it, that God, in His special Providence over man, should take flesh, in order to assure man of his future blessedness and to confirm his hopes of it. Hence, by the Incarnation, mankind has a far more complete and clear knowledge of beatitude and of Divine things.
We know, likewise, that man, before the Incarnation, was entangled in affection for many temporal things. By His Incarnation, God took the surest means possible to raise him from earth to the love of eternal things. For, who, seeing this great love of God towards man, will not be moved to love Him in return? And, in fact, since God’s love for man has been known upon earth, men have been so much inflamed with desire for Divine things, that they have entered into friendship with God, and with His saints; and they have despised all earthly ties.
Again. Certain means are necessary to enable man to gain happiness. These means are virtue and spiritual perfection. These graces have, by the Incarnation, been abundantly poured out upon mankind. The proof of this lies in the fact that, since the coming of Christ, the world has been so fertile in examples of virtue and perfection, that none, save the blind, can doubt that the teaching of Christ is the one sure road to blessedness. Thus, we see, that the Catholic faith teaches, in the dogma of the Incarnation, nothing either incredible or unreasonable.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BELIEF IN THE VIRGINAL BIRTH OF CHRIST IS CONSISTENT WITH REASON, AND HIS LIFE BEFITTED, IN ALL RESPECTS, HIS DIGNITY.
Hitherto we have undertaken to prove the credibility and congruity of our belief in the more difficult articles of the Christian creed. We will now proceed to discuss such as are easier. First then, if God was able to become Man, He was also able to be born of a virgin. For generation signifies the production of a person, not of a nature; and birth means the entrance into the world, not of human nature, but of an individual man or woman, subsisting in that nature. Now, as the Person of the Son of God subsisted in human nature, it was possible for God to be born of a woman, from whom He took that nature. God might, certainly, have formed the body of Christ from the earth, or from some other material. He might have done so; but He did not, because it was more fitting that it should have been born of a woman, in order that the sight of the Father of all things deigning to have an earthly mother and kinsfolk and country, and to suffer the infirmities of human life for love of us, should excite us to deeper humility.
It was, likewise, most seemly that He who in Heaven had no mother, and whose Father was the God of all Purity, should choose for His earthly mother a spotless virgin, and that He should have no earthly father.[21]
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