Section CV

By that will through which God denies to none of mortals the benefit of immortality and is the guide of all that they may enter upon the way of life and felicity, he also sent the Only-begotten Son to taste death for all, redeem all, and withdraw all from the most wretched necessity of perishing.

Lactantius speaks excellently, who, treating expressly of the cause of the incarnate Word¹, writes among other things:

Therefore, when God had determined to send to men a teacher of virtue², he commanded him to be born anew in the flesh and to be made like the man whose guide, companion, and master he was to be. Yet because God is clement and merciful³ toward his own, he sent him to those very men whom he hated⁴, lest he should close to them forever the way of salvation, but might give them the free faculty of following God, so that they might obtain the reward of life if they had followed—which very many of them do and have done—and might by their own fault incur the punishment of death if they had repudiated their King. Therefore he commanded him to be born again among them and from their seed, lest, if he had been a foreigner, they could plead as a just excuse from the law that they had not received him; and at the same time, that there might be no nation at all on earth to which the hope of immortality was denied.

Wherefore⁵,

when previously we sat in darkness like blind men and as though enclosed in the prison of foolishness, ignorant of God and truth, we were illuminated by him who adopted us by his testament⁶ and, having freed us from evil bonds and led us forth into the light of wisdom, admitted us to the inheritance of the heavenly kingdom.

There is reason, therefore, for men to learn and understand⁷

why the supreme God, when he sent his legate and messenger to instruct mortality by the precepts of his justice, willed him to be clothed in mortal flesh, afflicted by torment, and punished by death. For when there was no justice on earth, he sent a teacher as though a living law⁸, that he might establish a new name and temple and sow true and pious worship throughout the whole earth by words and example.

For accomplishing these things it was necessary

that he be God and man, established as a mediator between God and man. Hence the Greeks call him μεσίτην⁹, so that he might lead man to God, that is, to immortality; because if he had been God alone, he could not have furnished man examples of virtue; if man alone, he could not have compelled men to justice unless authority and power greater than man were added.—For since man consists of flesh and spirit, and the spirit must merit through works of justice that it become eternal, the flesh, because it is earthly and therefore mortal, draws with itself the spirit joined to it and leads it from immortality to death. Therefore flesh without spirit could in no manner be a guide to immortality for man, because flesh impedes the spirit from following God. For it is fragile and subject to sin, while sin is the nourishment¹⁰ of death.

Therefore, for this reason the Mediator came, that is, God in the flesh, so that the flesh might be able to follow him and he might rescue from death man, over whose flesh death has dominion. Therefore he clothed himself with flesh so that, after the desires of the flesh had been subdued, he might teach that sinning is not of necessity but of purpose and will. For our one great and principal combat is with the flesh, whose infinite desires press down the soul and do not permit it to retain dominion, but, enslaving it to pleasures and sweet allurements, affect it with everlasting death. That we might be able to resist these, God both opened and showed us the way of overcoming the flesh. This virtue, perfect and complete in every respect, bestows upon those who conquer the crown and the reward of immortality.

He repeats these things again and inculcates them more vehemently when, treating¹¹ of the cross of Jesus and the other torments, he proceeds:

But as to the cross, there is great force and rationale in it, which I shall now attempt to show. For when God had determined to free man, he sent a master of virtue to earth, who by salutary precepts might form men unto innocence and by present works and deeds lay open the way of justice, along which man, walking and following his teacher, might come to eternal life. Therefore he was embodied¹² and clothed in the garment of flesh, that he might furnish to the man whom he had come to teach both examples and incentives of virtue. But when in all the duties of life he had furnished a specimen of justice, in order also to hand on to man the endurance of pain and contempt of death, by which virtue is made perfect and consummate, he came into the hands of an impious nation, although he could both have avoided it by the knowledge of the future which he possessed and repelled it by the same power by which he performed miracles. Therefore he endured torments, scourges, and thorns. Finally, he did not refuse even to undergo death, so that man, with him as guide, might triumph over death subdued and bound together with its terrors. But why the supreme Father chose especially that kind of death with which he permitted him to be affected, the rationale is this—

—that he who had come humble, to bring aid to the humble and lowly and to show to all the hope of salvation, had to be affected by that kind of death with which the humble and lowly are accustomed to be affected, lest there be anyone at all who could not imitate him.