and disciples daily looking on. But let us descend to those more principal particulars which so much trouble the curious wits: these I take to be the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and Trinity.
For the first, that man should be made without man, why should we wonder more at it in that time of the world, than in the beginning? Much easier, certainly, it was here, because nearer the natural way, woman being a more prepared matter than earth. Those great truths and mysteries of salvation would never have been received without miracles; and where could they more opportunely be shown than at His entrance into the world, where they might give credit to His following actions and doctrine? So far it is from being against my reason to think Him thus born, that it would be against it to believe Him otherwise, it being not fit that the Son of God should be produced like the race of men. That humane nature may be assumed by a deity, the enemy of Christians, Julian, confirms, and instances (himself) in Æsculapius, whom he will have descend from heaven in mortal shape, to teach us here below the art of physick. Lastly, that God has lived with men, has been the general fancy of all nations, every particular having this tradition, that the Deity at some time or other conversed amongst men. Nor is it contrary to reason to believe Him residing in glory above, and yet incarnate here. So, in man himself, the soul is in heaven when it remains in the flesh, for it reacheth with its eye the sun: why may not God then, being in heaven, be at the same time with us in the flesh? since the soul without the body would be able to do much more than with it, and God much more than the soul, being the soul of the soul. But it may be urged as more abstruse, how all in heaven, and all in earth? Observe man speaking (as you have done seeing). Is not the same speech, at the instant it is uttered, all in every place? Receives not each particular ear alike the whole? and shall not God be much more ubiquitary than the voice of man? For the Passion (to let alone the necessity of satisfying divine justice this way, which, whosoever reads more particularly our divines, shall find rationally enforced), we find the heathen had something near to this (though as in the rest, imperfect), for they sacrificed single men for the sins of the whole city or country. Porphyrius, having laid this foundation, that the supreme happiness of the soul is to see God, and that it cannot see Him unpurified, concludes that there must be a way for the cleansing of mankind; and proceeding to find it out, he tells that arts and sciences serve but
