p. 14There Was a Plan

As the value of the plan depends subjectively on belief in the Incarnation of our Lord, it is well, in the opening portion of this chapter, to direct attention to some of His Divine attributes, particularly those which, to a mind enlightened by faith, seem to have closest connection with or most intimate bearing upon it. If we make allusion at the outset to these ineffable perfections, it is that without a knowledge of and true belief in them, a Divine design of a Church—in the sense in which we speak of it—would remain dim and comparatively unintelligible. We do not mean, however, to treat this branch of the subject in a controversial tone, but rather to state plainly what our separated brethren in common with ourselves are bound to believe. And lest we should be suspected of anti-Anglican bias in handling the matter, we shall choose as the starting-point the Second of the Thirty-nine Articles in which the religion of the Church of England is formulated. We can safely take it as a text, as it enunciates the dogma of the Incarnation accurately, explicitly and emphatically.

Here it is:—

Article II.

Of the Word or Son of God which was made very man.

The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took man’s nature in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect natures, that is to say the Godhead and manhood, were joined together in one Person never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very man, who truly suffered, was crucified, dead and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for all actual sins of men.¹1The Book of Common Prayer.

Jesus Christ Is God

The above article, as we have intimated, expresses this dogma in language clear and concise, and so far we are at one with the members of the Church of England.

Jesus Christ is God, “the very and eternal God”. The statement is brief, but it is comprehensive, transcendently, illimitably comprehensive. What a shoreless ocean of truth it implies! Who can measure that ocean? who can sound its depths?

Jesus Christ is God. He “took man’s nature in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, of her substance … very God and very man”.

As God, everything in Him is equal, because everything in Him is infinite. In His Divine nature there cannot be anything which is not infinite. He is infinite in the range of His Divine attributes—those attributes which He always had, has now, and can never lose.

The remotest ages of the past, the immediate present, and the most distant years of the future are equally clear to His eye. Everything which is in His mind now has been in His mind from unbeginning ages; and everything which is in His mind now will remain there through endless duration.

All professing Christians must allow that the whole of this is true of Jesus Christ; for if it be not true of Him, He is not God; and if He is not God, Christianity is a fable. But it is true to the letter, both in substance and in detail.

His knowledge which has no circumference, from which nothing can be concealed, which holds within its grasp everything visible and invisible, which cannot be mistaken in its forecast, cannot become imperfect through forgetfulness, and can never be anything else but transcendently and essentially infallible, embraces all things that have taken place in the years gone by, all things that are taking place now, and all things that will take place in the years to come.

In that immensity by which He fills all space, He is present wholly and entirely at every point of space. In Him “we live, move and have our being”. He is present in Heaven where He unveils His perfections in the fulness of their beauty to his chosen ones; present in the region of eternal pain to see that deadly sin, unrepented of, be justly punished; present too on earth, to see everything which is done, to hear everything which is said, to witness every omission of duty, and to record in His book of remembrance every human act, either for reward or for chastisement.

In that strength which is Almighty, which reaches to the highest heights, and descends to the deepest depths, that strength of which the vivid lightning-flash, and the deafening thunder-peal, the mountain-like breakers of the ocean when lashed by a hurricane, the giant planets that hang in space, the devouring fire that devastates the forest, the resistless whirlwind, and the terrific shock of the earthquake, are but feeble images; in that boundless strength which no earthly force can withstand, and in whose presence all created power is like the bubble on the water, He creates and He sustains, holds the earth and the sea in the hollow of His hand, and controls and sways the whole of this visible universe.

“In the beginning was the Word … and the Word was God. … All things were made by Him, and without Him was made nothing that was made. … He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. … And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us.”²2Gospel St. John i. 1, 3, 10, 14.

His wisdom too is boundless. In its light there can be no dimness. It penetrates above, below and around. It is not limited by the veils that bound human and even angelic vision. Through it He arranges and plans all things; He sees His object in the cloudless clearness of His all-seeing vision, and chooses with unerring precision the means by which that object is to be attained. “She” (wisdom) “reacheth,” says the Scripture, “from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly.”³3Wisd. viii. 1.

This is the Divine attribute which is so sublimely described in the book of Proverbs in the following words: “When He prepared the heavens, I was present: when with a certain law and compass He enclosed the depths. When He established the sky above, and poised the fountains of waters: When He compassed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits: When He balanced the foundations of the earth. I was with Him forming all things.”⁴4Prov. viii. 27, 28, 29, 30.

It was in reference to this Divine perfection, and with the thought of it possessing and absorbing his mind, that Cardinal Newman spoke, in his sermon on the Mystery of Divine Condescension, words which may be appropriately cited here: “In His eternal decrees,” he remarks, “and infallible foreknowledge, there is nothing contingent, nothing uncertain, nothing which is not part of one vast plan, as fixed in its issue, and as unchangeable as His own Essence”.⁵5Discourses to Mixed Congregations, p. 292. And it is to the same sublime subject that Bishop Hedley alludes in his book, A Retreat, when he says: “He” (God) “is true—nay, the very truth; because all things that are were primarily mirrored in His intelligence before they began to exist: and they exist only because they are faint copies of Him; and thus their truth means their being conformed to His image”.⁶6A Retreat, chap. iv., p. 34.

With God then there is no such thing as chance. The doctrine of chance may find a place in the philosophy of Atheists and Infidels, but it never has found a place and never can find a place in Christian philosophy or in Christian theology. Christian philosophy, as well as Christian theology, teaches now, has always taught, and will continue to teach to the consummation of the world, that all things on earth, as in heaven, are directed and governed by the all-guiding, all-controlling action of His all-wise Providence.

This is true of God; and it is therefore true of Jesus Christ, otherwise, Christianity is a myth.

To return then to the original statement: Jesus Christ is God. When He stood on the mountain of Galilee to issue the commission of teaching His revelation, and to continue the external building up of an institution which was to teach it always and everywhere, He stood there not as mere man, He was God as well, “begotten from everlasting of the Father” (as the Formulary quoted above expresses it), “the very eternal God, and of one substance with the Father”. Although He appeared in visible, human form, yet as God He was in full possession of all the Divine perfections. The plenitude of the Divinity was hidden within Him. He was the fountain of light, the giver and preserver of life, the great Creator who had called this visible universe into being, the everlasting source of unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable truth, that truth to which, according to His own emphatic declaration, He came into the world to bear testimony.

Yes, He was as truly God then as He was in that memorable early hour of time, when He united with the Father and the Divine Spirit in speaking the Creative word: “Let us make man to our image and likeness.”⁷7Gen. i. 26.

This allusion to the Divine attributes of the Redeemer may be thought uncalled for, and may seem irrelevant to the scope of this Chapter. The matter, however, is easily explained. It is only necessary to add to the reason already given that, if we have dwelt a little on a subject of such transcendent sacredness, it is owing to the conviction—a conviction which deepens with passing years—that, if those outside the true Church kept it in more vivid recollection, if they tried to look at our Divine Lord with a feeling of profound, reverential awe, and allowed their minds to be possessed and swayed by the thought of His overwhelming Majesty, they would be less disposed to tamper and trifle with His truth, and would attach much more importance to the duty of finding out the right meaning of His revelation.

He stood on the mountain of Galilee to continue the visible building up of His Church, the Church which was to be the depository and teacher of His Gospel throughout all time, and which was to promulgate to the world the faith by which the Creator was to be worshipped and His creatures were to be saved.

We have said “the building up of His Church”. The foundation had been already arranged for, by the weighty and irrevocable words which He addressed to St. Peter at Cæsarea Philippi: “Thou art Peter; and on this rock I will build My Church: and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”.⁸8St. Matt. xvi. 18. And now, while His face shone bright with the effulgence of His risen Humanity, He was to speak other words of equally momentous import, words which would have reference to the commencement of the superstructure. He said to His Apostles who were gathered around Him by Divine appointment: “Going, therefore, teach ye all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world”.⁹9St. Matt. xxviii. 19-20.

We ask: Had He, when He spoke these words, a plan in His mind according to which that Church was to be formed, or, did He mean to leave the formation of her to the private judgment, the individual taste of His Apostles and their successors? If He meant the latter, then He meant to found eleven, nay, a multitude of Churches, instead of one and one only. But surely it will be admitted that He cannot form things at random, cannot do things by impulse, can never act without knowing with fullest knowledge, and without determining in His wisdom what He intends to do.

Either He had before Him, when He issued that great commission to teach, the design of the essential structure of the Church or He had not. If he had not, He was not God: and if He was not God, Christianity collapses. We repeat: if he had not, He was not God. For we cannot conceive that a God of infinite knowledge and infinite wisdom, who must have an end in everything He does, meant to establish a Church for His own adoration, and for the salvation of His people, without seeing and decreeing in His thought what form that Church was to have. No passages from Scripture are required to prove this proposition; nor are any elaborate arguments from either reason or revelation needed.

Granted that He was God; and granted also that He intended to institute a Church, the statement follows as a necessary and indisputable conclusion.

We shall take writers outside the Church according to their admissions. All sections of the Church of England believe a certain amount of doctrine; most of them believe in sacraments, at least in some sacraments; believe that the Church of Christ is and was meant from the outset of Christianity to be an organised body; believe in a hierarchy or priesthood of some kind; and practise a certain form of worship. And the reason their belief extends thus far, and their worship has assumed the form in which it is now clothed, is, that the Primitive Church, which they concede was the genuine realisation of Christ’s design, contained these various elements of religion.

We go quite as far. The Catholic Church, as well as the Anglican, embraces all these elements of Christianity. We are not at present, however, discussing which Church is in the right, and which in the wrong, with regard to these all-important matters. That question will be treated later. But this we maintain, and hope to prove, that whatever doctrine Christ meant His Church to teach, whatever Sacraments He wished her to possess and administer, whatever worship He wished her to practise, whatever organisation He meant her to have and to retain, whatever hierarchy He meant her to set up and to perpetuate, all these things were clearly mirrored in His mind when He issued the great commission for establishing her.

(1) The revelation or doctrine which He commanded to be taught to the world was then either definite in His mind, or it was vague. If it was vague, He was not God; for nothing vague can find a place in a mind which is Divine.

(2) Either the image of the Sacraments, whatever they were in nature or in number, which He willed to give to the world, was then definite in His mind, or vague; if vague, He was not God.

(3) Either the image of the essential worship which He meant the nations should be bound to pay to the Godhead was then definite in His mind, or it was vague; if vague, He was not God.

(4) Either the image of the organisation or essential government of His Church was then definite in His mind, or it was vague; if vague, He was not God.

For, we repeat, no cloud of vagueness or of indecision can ever hang over an intelligence which is infinite. Indecision or indefiniteness may be the imperfection of the creature; it can never coexist with the boundless knowledge and boundless wisdom of the Creator.

Hence, to deny that there was then before Him a definite and distinct design, embracing the various elements of His Church, which we have here enumerated, is either to deny His Divinity in toto, or to blaspheme gravely against it. Let it be remembered, however, that when we speak of a plan of His Church we mean nothing more and nothing less than this image. With Him, in the measureless sea of His incomprehensible perfections, plan, image, design, intention, decree, pattern, exemplar, signify one and the same thing. This must be constantly and carefully kept in view. And now, while our eyes are still fixed upon the light of these ineffable attributes, let us ask: p. 20Could He, being God, institute a Church without such exemplar?

Can He create anything without having present to His eye beforehand the pattern of the thing to be created? Can He even develop anything from something He has already made without having before Him the form which such development is to take? Whoever says that He can, strips Him of His Divine perfections and makes Him a God of chance, who acts by impulse and at random.

Should there be any who find it difficult to realise the truth of this, we recommend them to read carefully the history of the six days’ creation, as given in the opening chapters of Genesis.

There the impress of the Divine order becomes visible at once. In that inspired narrative may be seen a series of creations—each and all of which were evidently moulded according to a Divine archetype.

Before, however, pointing in detail to these manifestations of Almighty power, we think it well to premise that, whether the six days meant brief periods of time, or cycles of years, whether the beings that were made came into existence in their perfect and full-grown proportions instantaneously, or reached their maturity through a prolonged process of evolution and development, and whether God spoke in articulate tones as He did on the mountain of the Transfiguration, does not affect the force of the argument, so long as we are arguing with those who believe that all things existing, visible and invisible, owe their origin and conservation to the Omnipotence of Him who is called the Creator. By this remark, we wish to remind the reader, that the reasoning which follows is in no sense weakened by the advanced and hypothetical theories of the men who are named higher critics. We, as Christians, must look at Divine power in the work of creation, in the light of the language it is spoken of in that record which they, as well as ourselves, believe to be inspired.

From the moment God first exercised His Omnipotence over chaos—when He made the light—till the moment when He finished His work on the sixth day by the formation of man, every creature that came into being corresponded to His Omnipotent command; and that command was but the expression or reflection of the Divine exemplar. It could not be otherwise. The thing produced could not be by possibility different, in the least item, from what He designed it to be before He brought it forth.

The earth with its rivers, lakes, seas, oceans, mountains, valleys, was but the exact fulfilment of His preexisting conception of it. Even the green herb and the fruit tree, nay, the very seeds, and the manner in which they were to bud forth, develop and expand, were all imaged separately and minutely in His preconceived plan of their creation. When He made a greater light to rule the day and a lesser to rule the night, He had the image of the material and shape of both in His thought before they rose in luminous form to take their place in the upper firmament.

When He decreed that the fowls of the air should be made, it was not the fishes of the waters that came into existence at the exercise of His creative power. And when He willed the beasts of the earth to be created, it was not the fruit trees and the green herb that appeared instead.

If the inspired record tells us with such minute detail, and with even triple repetition of the same phrase, that He made the moving creatures of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts and creeping things of the earth, according to their kinds, it clearly means to convey that each kind and each species was reflected in His intelligence before He employed His Omnipotence in bringing it into life. And then on the sixth day, when the masterpiece of His visible creation was to come forth from His hand, when the frame of man was to be formed from the dust of the earth, and the spark of life, the living soul, was to be breathed into it, was there no Divine pattern according to which that crowning work of the six days was to be executed? Did not the Divine voice itself, the voice of the Ever-Blessed Three, declare emphatically beforehand the design which was to be followed in that highest and noblest of all earth’s material formations? “Let us make man to our own image and likeness.” These were the solemn words which heralded the advent of the first man into that world which had been moulded and made ready for his habitation. No words could make it clearer that that soul was made after an eternal exemplar; that it was stamped with the indelible impress of the Divinity, had upon it the image of Him who had given it being; and was then, and was to be for ever, the reflex of its Creator.

It is evident then that each creature, as it came from the Almighty’s hand, had the substance and the potential shape He had intended to give it before it rose into actual existence. Consequently, that substance and that shape were imaged in His intention before He gave it concrete being. “And God saw all things that He had made, and they were very good.”¹⁰10Gen. i. 31. The Fathers generally take these words to mean that all things or creatures fulfilled exactly the Divine ideal. So expressly St. Augustine.¹¹11St. Aug., De Gen., lib. imperf.; De Gen., ad litt., i., 8; De Gen. Contra Manichaeos, i., 8.

We are not going out of the beaten path of reasoning. Is not the argument of design one of the strongest arguments produced, either in philosophy or in theology, to prove the existence of a Divine Being? Do not Anglicans themselves—at least many of them—wield it as one of their most powerful weapons when they engage in controversy with Atheists and Agnostics?

But if they hold that when the Almighty looked upon the face of the deep, and stretched His hand of light over the darkness and the void, He had an ideal according to which the material world was to be created, and an ideal, too, of the physical laws which were to guide and govern as well as keep it in its orbit, how can they hesitate to hold that, when He established His Church, He had present to His eye the form of her framework, and the conditions and influences that were to sustain her in existence, to guide her course, and make her apt and adequate to the end of her institution? The establishment of His Church was a thing immeasurably more important in His eyes than the creation of the world of matter. The end for which He made the one was to be quite subservient to the end for which He made the other. The one was perishable, a thing of limited duration, where earthly life was to be preserved during a period of probation; the other was destined to guide immortal souls into that ineffably higher and happier life which was to be everlasting.

The measure of the importance of the former was time; that of the latter was eternity. This is but the teaching of the catechism. The earth was moulded into its present shape to be nothing more than a temporary human dwelling-place. But for man it had never been drawn forth from primeval chaos; nay, only for man that chaotic mass or formless matter, from which it was evolved, had never found a place in space. It is only for the sake of man’s soul it is still kept moving in its course. And one soul—one single soul—immortal in its destiny, and bearing upon it the special impress of the Divine nature and of the Divine personality, is of unspeakably more value before the eye of heaven than all that is visible in the firmament above, and all we see on earth below. To deny the inference is to deny the faith; for to deny it is to hold that He, in whose eyes the human soul is so precious, is unconcerned about the nature of the thing by which that soul is to attain the end of its creation.

But with some this reasoning may come out in clearer light and with more force by referring to the Divine intercourse with Noe in regard to the deluge and the ark.

God did not leave Noe to his own limited and therefore necessarily unreliable resources, or to the suggestions of his personal ingenuity in framing the ark, which was to save him and his family from those avenging waters wherein so many others were to be swept away. Noe had but to execute the plan which was given him; and that plan was at once comprehensive and definite. The material, the length, breadth, height, the lower and middle chambers, the third stories, the window, the door and its very place, the coating with pitch within and without—everything in and about that marvellous vessel was made known to him with as much definite detail, as if the design had been traced upon parchment, or carved by the Divine Hand upon stone. And be it observed, in the fulfilment of that design no margin or latitude was allowed. Had Noe deviated from the revealed original, had he changed it entirely or changed it even in part, had he increased or diminished the length or breadth or height, had he arranged the compartments in a manner different from that Divinely prescribed, had he, on his own responsibility and in deliberate defiance or neglect of the Divine directions, changed the least item, there was no guarantee that the vessel would rise with the rising flood, that it would ride the waters in safety, that it would have an All-seeing Eye to guide it, and an Almighty Hand to sustain it; and without that unerring guidance and the help of that Omnipotent Hand, it must have perished inevitably in the common wreck.

Are we not justified here again in an inference similar to that drawn above? When He was so careful and painstaking (if we may use that phrase) in designing a thing for the preservation of the life of the body, would He or could He be less so in designing the spiritual ark which was meant to save redeemed souls from eternal wreck and guide them into the harbour of everlasting rest?

But perhaps the matter may be brought home better to the minds of others by summarising the foregoing reasoning in the following parallel: We find in the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis these words: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth”. Now, suppose we were to say as an inference: Therefore, there must have existed in His mind before that “beginning” (nay before the beginning of time) a design, distinct and definite, according to which heaven and earth were to be created—could any man who professes to be a Christian consistently contradict the statement? Similarly, then, when the Redeemer says “on this rock I will build My Church,” may we not as boldly, and with as little fear of reasonable contradiction, draw the conclusion: Therefore, there pre-existed in His intention an exemplar in conformity with which that Church was to be built. It comes then to this,—either there was before Him from everlasting a plan—not in rough sketch and meagre outline, but in fixed, definite detail, so far as matters of essential constitution, or matters of strict obligation were concerned—how His Church was to be constructed, or there was no Church in the century of His ascension, or in any century since. For if He did not mean her to have visible form, to be something concrete and definite, He must have meant her to be a babel of confusion, a mass of contradictory opinions, a tangled heap of conflicting religious systems; and this would land us at the awkward inference that a God, infinitely knowing and infinitely wise, abandoned to accident, to human option, to the erring counsels of man, the form of the institution which was to preserve and protect His revelation, to regulate the service due to Himself, and to safeguard to the end of time the eternal interests of the souls made to His likeness. Common-sense shrinks from such idea.

Reason itself, on the barest premises of faith, must tell us that, if He intended to establish a Church on definite lines at all (and many dissenting brethren admit this intention), He could not have left to human caprice to determine what kind of hierarchy she was to set up, what sacramental system, if any, she was to have, what creed or doctrine she was to profess, what species of worship she was to put forward, sanction and practise. And the same reason, if faithfully followed, will tell us, moreover, that He who was so definite in prescribing creed, precept and priesthood in the Old Dispensation, would be, to say the least, equally careful with regard to those of the New—the New, which was the one that He came personally to establish, the one that was to make perfect in the future what had been incomplete in the past, the one too that was to be perpetual and unchangeable.

In fact the denial of a pre-existing definite ideal, when pressed to its furthest consequences, would hurry us to the inference that He was more concerned about the irrational and even inanimate beings of creation than about the immortal soul made to His image, set more value upon the form of the world of matter than upon the eternal welfare of man, on whose account all worldly things had been created, attached more importance to the shape and material substance of the sun which was to give light to the eyes of the body, than He did to the nature of the hallowed institution, which He had meant from the beginning to be a spiritual pharos to enlighten every man coming into the world; and which He had also meant to be the one reliable source of supernatural illumination that was for ever to give testimony to His truth. For it would compel us to the conclusion that while He had a distinct pattern before Him when He made all that we see in the firmament above, and all that is visible on earth below, He had not, did not deign to have, in plain language, did not think it worth while to have before Him any pattern of, but left to arbitrary opinion, the formation of that very institution which He came down expressly from heaven to establish, and which He meant to be the climax of all His earthly external works.