45. But the Apostle does not neglect to say with what manner of confession we should bear witness of God. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past tracing out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been His counsellor? Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto him? For of Him, and through Him, and in Him are all things. To Him be the glory for ever and ever [1300] . No earthly mind can define God, no understanding can penetrate with its perception to sound the depth of His wisdom. His judgments defy the searching scrutiny of His creatures: the trackless paths of His knowledge baffle the zeal of all pursuers. His ways are plunged in the depths of incomprehensibility: nothing can be fathomed or traced to the end in the things of God. No one has ever been taught to know His mind, no one besides Himself ever permitted to share His counsel. But all this applies to us men only, and not to Him, through Whom are all things, the Angel of mighty Counsel [1301] , Who said, No one knoweth the Son save the Father: neither doth any one know the Father save the Son, and him to whom the Son hath willed to reveal Him [1302] . It is to curb our own feeble intellect, when it strains itself to fathom the depth of the divine nature with its descriptions and definitions, that we must re-echo the language of the Apostle's exclamation, lest we should attempt by rash conjecture to snatch from God more than He has been pleased to reveal to us.
46. It is a recognised axiom of natural philosophy, that nothing falls within the scope of the senses unless it is subjected to their observation, as for instance an object placed before the eyes, or an event posterior to the birth of human sense and intelligence. The former we can see and handle, and therefore the mind is qualified to pass a verdict upon it, since it can be examined by the senses of touch and sight. The latter, which is an event in time, produced or constituted since the origin of man, falls within the limits in which the discerning sense may claim to pass judgment, since it is not prior in time to our perception and reason. For our sight cannot perceive the invisible, since it only distinguishes the seen; our reason cannot project itself into the time when it was not, because it can only judge of that, to which it is prior in time. And even within these limits, the infirmity which is bound up with its nature robs it of absolutely certain knowledge of the sequence of cause and effect. How much less then can it go back behind the time when it had its origin, and comprehend with its perception things which existed before it in the realms of eternity?
47. The Apostle then recognised that nothing can fall within our knowledge, except it be posterior in time to the faculty of sense. Accordingly when he had asserted the depth of the wisdom of God, the infinity of His inscrutable judgments, the secret of His unsearchable ways, the mystery of His unfathomable mind, the incomprehensibility of His uncommunicated counsel, he continued, For who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of Him, and through Him, and in Him are all things. The eternal God is neither subject to limitation, nor did human reason and intelligence exercise their functions before He had His being. His whole being is therefore a depth, which we can neither examine nor penetrate. We say His whole being, not to define it as limited, but to understand it in its unlimited boundlessness: because of no one has He received His being, no antecedent giver can claim service from Him in return for a gift bestowed: for of Him and through Him and in Him are all things. He does not lack things that are of Him and through Him and in Him. The Source and Maker of all, Who contains all, Who is beyond all, does not need that which is within Him, the Creator His creatures, the Possessor His possessions. Nothing is prior to Him, nothing derived from any other than Him, nothing beyond Him. What element of fulness is still lacking in God, which time will supply to make Him all in all? Whence can He receive it, if outside Him is nothing, and while nothing is outside Him, He is eternally Himself? And if He is eternally Himself, and there is nothing outside Him, with what increase shall He be made full, by what addition shall He be made other than He is? Did He not say, I am and I change not [1303] ? What possibility is there of change in Him? What scope for progress? What is prior to eternity? What more divine than God? The subjection of the Son will not therefore make God to be all in all, nor will any cause perfect Him, from Whom and through Whom and in Whom are all causes. He remains God as He ever was, and He needs nothing further, for what He is, He is eternally of Himself and for Himself.
48. But neither is it necessary for the Only-begotten God that He should change. He is God, and that is the name of full and perfect divinity. For, as we said before, the meaning of the repeated glorifying, and the cause of the subjection is that God may be all in all: but it is a Mystery, not a necessity, that God is to be all in all. Christ abode in the form of God when He assumed the form of a servant, not being subjected to change, but emptying Himself; hiding within Himself, and remaining master of Himself though He was emptied. He constrained Himself even to the form and fashion of a man, lest the weakness of the assumed humility should not be able to endure the immeasurable power of His nature. His unbounded might contracted itself, until it could fulfil the duty of obedience even to the endurance of the body to which it was yoked. But since He was self-contained even when He emptied Himself, His authority suffered no diminution, for in the humiliation of the emptying He exercised within Himself the power of that authority which was emptied.
49. It is therefore for the promotion of us, the assumed humanity, that God shall be all in all. He Who was found in the form of a servant, though He was in the form of God, is now again to be confessed in the glory of God the Father: that is, without doubt He dwells in the form of God, in Whose glory He is to be confessed. All is therefore a dispensation only, and not a change of His nature; for He abides still in Him, in Whom He ever was. But there intervenes a new nature, which began in Him with His human birth, and so all that He obtains is on behalf of that nature which before was not God, since after the Mystery of the Dispensation God is all in all. It is, therefore, we who are the gainers, we who are promoted, for we shall be conformed to the glory of the body of God. Further the Only-begotten God, despite His human birth, is nothing less than God, Who is all in all. That subjection of the body, by which all that is fleshly in Him, is swallowed up into the spiritual nature, will make Him to be God and all in all, since He is Man also as well as God; and His humanity which advances towards this goal is ours also. We shall be promoted to a glory conformable to that of Him Who became Man for us, being renewed unto the knowledge of God, and created again in the image of the Creator, as the Apostle says, Having put off the old man with his doings, and put on the new man, which is being renewed unto the knowledge of God, after the image of Him that created him [1304] . Thus is man made the perfect image of God. For, being conformed to the glory of the body of God, he is exalted to the image of the Creator, after the pattern assigned to the first man. Leaving sin and the old man behind, he is made a new man unto the knowledge of God, and arrives at the perfection of his constitution, since through the knowledge of his God he becomes the perfect image of God. Through godliness he is promoted to immortality, through immortality he shall live for ever as the image of his Creator.
[1224] Eph. iv. 4-6.
[1225] The text is very corrupt here, but the meaning seems to be that, while we have the authority of the Bible to speak of God, if we do not attach its full meaning to the word (e.g. Psalm lxxxii. 6, "I have said, Ye are Gods,'"), yet if we use the name in its proper significance it is blasphemous to call Christ God. The reading of the earlier editions and some mss., duos dici irreligiosum est, et Deum non intelligi,' is probably a gloss to soften the difficulty.
[1226] Reading unus est, si filius sit, si Deus sit.'
[1227] Cf. Col. i. 15, and Phil. ii. 6.
[1228] i.e. the occasions when Christ was speaking of His humanity and those when He was referring to His divine nature.
[1229] St. John xx. 17.
[1230] 1 Cor. xv. 27, 28.
[1231] 1 Tim. iii. 16.
[1232] I.e. the Incarnation is the Mystery of godliness, not the infirmity of necessity.
[1233] St. John xx. 17.
[1234] Ps. xlv. 7. The general reading is, "Therefore God, thy God, &c." (R.V.).
[1235] St. John xiv. 9.
[1236] Ib. 10.
[1237] Ib. x. 29.
[1238] Ib. 30.
[1239] Ib. v. 22, 23.
[1240] Ib. xiv. 11; cf. x. 38.
[1241] Ib. xiv. 28.
[1242] Ib. v. 19.
[1243] Ps. xxii. 6.
[1244] Ib. 22.
[1245] Col. i. 18.
[1246] Rom. viii. 29.
[1247] St. John i. 14.
[1248] Eph. i. 16, 17.
[1249] St. Matt. i. 21; St. Luke i. 31.
[1250] I.e. divine.
[1251] By Spirit' Hilary means God considered as a spiritual (as opposed to a material) Being: cf. in the previous chapter, "to the prophets Christ the Lord is Spirit.'"
[1252] Ps. xlv. 7.
[1253] Acts iv. 27.
[1254] Ib. x. 37, 38.
[1255] Ps. ii. 7. The last words occur in neither in St. Matt. (iii. 17), nor St. Mark (i. 11), nor St. Luke (iii. 22) : but there is evidence of the existence of such a reading. See Tischendorf, Nov. Test. Græc., on St. Matt. iii. 17, and St. Luke iii. 22.
[1256] Col. i. 16, 17.
[1257] Reading quam' instead of quâ.
[1258] 1 Cor. xv. 21-28.
[1259] Cf. Gal. i. 1.
[1260] Cf. 2 Cor. xii. 2, 4.
[1261] Cf. 2 Tim. i. 5; iii. 15.
[1262] 2 Tim. ii. 7.
[1263] 1 Tim. v. 11.
[1264] Ib. i. 2.
[1265] Phil. iii. 15, 16.
[1266] Rom. x. 4.
[1267] St. Matt. v. 17.
[1268] St. Matt. x. 22; cf. St. Mark xiii. 13.
[1269] Phil. iii. 19, 20. The Greek paraphrased expectation' is , citizenship' (R.V.), or commonwealth' (marg.).
[1270] St. Luke x. 22.
[1271] St. Matt. xxviii. 18.
[1272] St. John vi. 38.
[1273] Cf. ib. viii. 29.
[1274] Cf. St. Matt. xxvi. 39, 42; St. Mark xiv. 36; St. Luke xxii. 42.
[1275] Phil. ii. 8.
[1276] Eph. i. 19 b-22 a.
[1277] St. Matt. xxv. 41.
[1278] St. John xviii. 36.
[1279] Ib. xvi. 11. "The prince of this world hath been judged."
[1280] Ib. vi. 44.
[1281] Ib. xiv. 6.
[1282] Rom. xi. 28.
[1283] Ib. 25-27.
[1284] Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 26.
[1285] Ib. 53-55. The reading strife' instead of victory' arose from the confusion of neikos (=strife) and nikos (=victory) in the original Greek.
[1286] Phil. iii. 21.
[1287] 1 Cor. xv. 27, 28.
[1288] St. Matt. xvi. 28-xvii. 2.
[1289] Ib. xiii. 40-43.
[1290] 1 Cor. xv. 24.
[1291] St. Matt. xxv. 34.
[1292] St. Matt. v. 8.
[1293] St. Luke xvii. 21.
[1294] 1 Cor. xv. 20, 21.
[1295] 2 Tim. ii. 8.
[1296] 1 Cor. xv. 24, 25.
[1297] Ib. 28.
[1298] The humanity is eternal, although He is no longer man.
[1299] St. John xiii. 31, 32. There is another reading in the text of Hilary, glorificabit, "shall glorify Him in Himself," and though it is not well supported by ms. authority, and in ix. 40 all the mss. agree in the perfect honorificavit, the future is favoured by the last two sentences of this chapter. The variation between honoured and glorified shews the confusion of texts which preceded the Vulgate and caused it to be welcomed.
[1300] Rom. xi. 33-36.
[1301] Isai. ix. 6 in the LXX and Old Latin.