Against these, the expressions of Hilary's usual opinion, must be set others in which he anticipates the language of St. Augustine in the Pelagian controversy. But certain deductions must be made, before we can rightly judge the weight of his testimony on the side of original sin. Passages where he is merely amplifying the words of Scripture must be excluded, as also those which are obviously exhibitions of unguarded rhetoric. For instance such words as these, Ever since the sin and unbelief of our first parent, we of later generations have had sin for the father of our body and unbelief for the mother of our soul [367] ,' contradicting as they do Hilary's well-known theory of the origin of the soul, cannot be regarded as giving his deliberate belief concerning sin. Again, we must be careful not to interpret strong language concerning the body (e.g. Tr. in Ps. cxviii, Caph, 5 fin.), as though it referred to our whole complex manhood. But after all deductions a good deal of strong Augustinianism remains. In the person of Adam God created all mankind, and all are implicated in his downfall, which was not only the beginning of evil but is a continuous power [368] . Not only as a matter of experience, is no man sinless, but no man can, by any possibility, be free from sin [369] . Because of the sin of one sentence is passed upon all [370] ; the sentence of slavery which is so deep a degradation that the victim of sin forfeits even the name of man [371] . But Hilary not only states the doctrine; he approaches very nearly, on rare occasions, to the term original sin [372] .' It follows that nothing less than a regeneration, the free gift of God, will avail [373] ; and the grace by which the Christian must be maintained is also His spontaneous and unconditional gift. Faith, knowledge, Christian life, all have their origin and their maintenance from Him [374] . Such is a brief statement of Hilary's position as a forerunner of St. Augustine. The passages cited are scattered over his writings, from the earliest to the latest, and there is no sign that the more modern view was gaining ground in his mind as his judgment ripened. He had no occasion to face the question, and was content to say whatever seemed obviously to arise from the words under discussion, or to be most profitable to his audience. His Augustinianism, if it may be called so, is but one of many instances of originality, a thought thrown out but not developed. It is a symptom of revolt against the inadequate views of older theologians; but it had more influence upon the mind of his great successor than upon his own. Dealing, as he did, with the subject in hortatory writings, hardly at all, and only incidentally, in his formal treatise on the Trinity, he preferred to regard it as a matter of morals rather than of doctrine. And the dignity of man, impressed upon him by the great Alexandrians, seemed to demand for humanity the fullest liberty.
We may now turn to the Atonement, by which Christ has overcome sin. Hilary's language concerning it is, as a rule, simply Scriptural [375] . He had no occasion to discuss the doctrine, and his teaching is that which was traditional in his day, without any such anticipations of future thought as we found in his treatment of sin. Since the humanity of Christ is universal, His death was on behalf of all mankind, to buy the salvation of the whole human race by the offering of this holy and perfect Victim [376] .' His last cry upon the cross was the expression of His sorrow that some would not profit by His sacrifice; that He was not, as He had desired, bearing the sins of all [377] . He was able to take them upon Him because He had both natures. His manhood could do what His Godhead could not; it could atone for the sins of men. Man had been overcome by Satan; Satan, in his turn, has been overcome by Man. In the long conflict, enduring through Christ's life, of which the first pitched battle was the Temptation, the last the Crucifixion, the victory has been won by the Mediator in the flesh [378] . The devil was in the wrong throughout. He was deceived, or rather deceived himself, not recognising what it was for which Christ hungered [379] . The same delusion as to Christ's character led him afterwards to exact the penalty of sin from One Who had not deserved it [380] . Thus the human sufferings of Christ, unjustly inflicted, involve His enemy in condemnation and forfeit his right to hold mankind enslaved. Therefore we are set free [381] , and the sinless Passion and death are the triumph of the flesh over spiritual wickedness and the vengeance of God upon it [382] . Man is set free, because he is justified in Christ, Who is Man. But the fact that Christ could do the works necessary to this end is proof that He is God. These works included the endurance of such suffering--in the sense, of course, which Hilary attaches to the word--as no one who was not more than man could bear. Hence he emphasises the Passion, because in so doing he magnifies the Divine nature of Him Who sustained it [383] . He sets forth the sufferings in the light of deeds, of displays of power [384] , the greatest wonder being that the Son of God should have made Himself passible. Yet though it was from union with the Godhead that His humanity possessed the purity, the willingness, the power to win this victory, and thought, in Hilary's words, it was immortal God Who died upon the Cross, still it was a victory won not by God but by the flesh [385] . But the Passion must not be regarded simply as an attack, ending in his own overthrow, made by Satan upon Christ. It is also a free satisfaction offered to God by Christ as Man, in order that His sufferings might release us from the punishment we had deserved, being accepted instead of ours [386] . This latter was a thought peculiarly characteristic of the West, and especially of St. Cyprian's teaching; but Hilary has had his share in giving prominence to the propitiatory aspect of Christ's self-sacrifice [387] . Yet it must be confessed that the death of Christ is somewhat in the background; that Hilary is less interested in its positive value than in its negative aspect, as the cessation from earthly life and the transition to glory. Upon this, and upon the evidential importance of the Passion as a transcendent exertion of power, whereby the Son of God held Himself down and constrained Himself to suffer and die, Hilary chiefly dwells. The death has not, in his eyes, the interest of the Resurrection. The reason is that it does not belong to the course of the Incarnation as fore-ordained by God, but is only a modification of it, rendered necessary by the sinful self-will of man. Had there been no Fall, the visible, palpable flesh would still have been laid aside, though not by death upon the Cross, when Christ's work in the world was done; and there would have been some event corresponding to the Ascension, if not to the Resurrection. The body, laid aside on earth, would have been resumed in glory; and human flesh, unfallen and therefore not corrupt, yet free and therefore corruptible, would have entered into perfectly harmonious union with His Divinity, and so have been rendered safe from all possibility of evil. The purpose of raising man to the society of God was anterior to the beginnings of sin; and it is this broader conception that renders the Passion itself intelligible, while relegating it to a secondary place. But Hilary, though as a rule he mentions the subject not for its own sake but in the course of argument, has as firm a faith in the efficacy of Christ's death and of His continued intercession in His humanity for mankind [388] as he has in His triumphant Resurrection.
In regard to the manner in which man is to profit by the Atonement, Hilary shews the same inconsistency as in the case of sin. On the one hand, he lays frequent stress on knowledge concerning God and concerning the nature of sin as the first conditions of salvation; on the other, he insists, less often yet with equal emphasis, upon its being God's spontaneous gift to men, to be appropriated only by faith. We have already seen that one of Hilary's positions is that man must take the first step towards God; that if we will make the beginning He will give the increase [389] . This increase is the knowledge of God imparted to willing minds [390] , which lifts them up to piety. He states strongly the superiority of knowledge to faith;--"There is a certain greater effectiveness in knowledge than in faith. Thus the writer here did not believe; he knew [391] . For faith has the reward of obedience, but it has not the assurance of ascertained truth. The Apostle has indicated the breadth of the interval between the two by putting the latter in the lower place in his list of the gifts of graces. To the first wisdom, to the next knowledge, to the third faith' is his message [392] ; for he who believes may be ignorant even while he believes, but he who has come to know is saved by his possession of knowledge from the very possibility of unbelief [393] ." This high estimation of sound knowledge was due, no doubt, to the intellectual character of the Arian conflict, in which each party retorted upon the other the charge of ignorance and folly; and it must have been confirmed by the observation that some who were conspicuous for the misinterpretation of Scripture were notorious also for moral obliquity. There was, however, that deeper reason which influenced all Hilary's thought; the conviction that if there is to be any harmony, any understanding between God and the soul of man, it must be a perfect harmony and understanding. And knowledge is pre-eminently the sphere in which this is possible, for the revelation of God is clear and precise, and unmistakable in its import [394] . But there was another, a directly practical reason for this insistence. Apprehension of Divine truths is the unfailing test of a Christian mind; conduct changes and faith varies in intensity, but the facts of religion remain the same, and the believer can be judged by his attitude towards them. Hence we cannot be surprised that Hilary maintains the insufficiency of simplicity of faith,' and ranks its advocates with heathen philosophers who regard purity of life as a substitute for religion. God, he says, has provided copious knowledge, with which we cannot dispense [395] . But this knowledge is to embrace not only the truth concerning God, but also concerning the realities of human life. It is to be a knowledge of the fact that sins have been committed and an opening of the eyes to their enormity [396] . This will be followed by confession to God, by the promise to Him that we will henceforth regard sin as He regards it, and by the profession of a firm purpose to abandon it. Here again the starting-point is human knowledge. When the right attitude towards sin, intellectually and therefore morally, has been assumed, when there is the purpose of amendment and an earnest and successful struggle against sensual and worldly temptations, then we shall become worthy of the favour of God [397] .' In this light confession is habitually regarded [398] ; it is a voluntary moral act, a self-enlightenment to the realities of sin, necessarily followed by repugnance and the effort to escape, and antecedent to Divine pardon and aid. But in contrast to this, Hilary's normal judgment, there are passages where human action is put altogether in the background. Forgiveness is the spontaneous bounty of God, overflowing from the riches of His loving-kindness, and faith the condition of its bestowal and the means by which it is appropriated [399] . Even the Psalmist, himself perfect in all good works, prayed for mercy; he put his whole trust in God, and so must we [400] . And faith precedes knowledge also, which is unattainable except by the believer [401] . Salvation does not come first, and then faith, but through faith is the hope of salvation; the blind man believed before he saw [402] . Here again, as in the case of sin, we have two groups of statements without attempt at reconciliation; but that which lays stress upon human initiative is far more numerous than the other, and must be regarded as expressing Hilary's underlying thought in his exhortations to Christian conduct, to his doctrine of which we may now turn.
We must first premise that Christ's work as our Example as well as our Saviour is fully recognised. Many of his deeds on earth were done by way of dispensation, in order to set us a pattern of life and thought [403] . Christian life has, of course, its beginning in the free gift of Baptism, with the new life and the new faculties then bestowed, which render possible the illumination of the soul [404] . Hilary, as was natural at a time when Baptism was often deferred by professed Christians, and there were many converts from paganism, seems to contemplate that of adults as the rule; and he feels it necessary to warn them that their Baptism will not restore them to perfect innocence. In fact, by a strange conjecture tentatively made, he once suggests that our Baptism is that wherewith John baptized our Lord, and that the Baptism of the Holy Ghost awaits us hereafter, in cleansing fires beyond the grave or in the purification of martyrdom [405] . Hilary nowhere says in so many words that while Baptism abolishes sins previously committed, alms and other good deeds perform a similar office for later offences, but his view, which will be presently stated, concerning good works shews that he agreed in this respect with St. Cyprian; neither, however, would hold that the good works were sufficient in ordinary cases without the further purification. Martyrdoms had, of course, ceased in Hilary's day throughout the Roman empire, but it is interesting to observe that the old opinion, which had such power in the third century, still survived. The Christian, then, has need for fear, but he has a good hope, for all the baptized while in this world are still in the land of the living, and can only forfeit their citizenship by wilful and persistent unworthiness [406] . The means for maintaining the new life of effort is the Eucharist, which is equally necessary with Baptism [407] . But the Eucharist is one of the many matters of practical importance on which Hilary is almost silent, having nothing new to say, and being able to assume that his readers and hearers were well informed and of one mind with himself. His reticence is never a proof that he regarded them with indifference.