CHAPTER VII.

DISCOURSE WITH NICODEMUS.

THIS regards those who at first believed in him, but whose inconstancy, known clearly to him before whose eyes all is naked and uncovered, obliged him to take certain precautions with them. Others had even then openly declared against him, and his miracles and doctrine had already produced the double effect always produced by great merit when signalized by great actions, viz.: esteem and veneration in upright hearts; in perverse hearts, envy and hatred. These two passions ever persecuting, and at last accomplishing the death of the Saviour, were inflamed at the sight of his first successes, and thenceforth menaced those who ventured to declare themselves in his favor. This appears by the conduct (a) “Of a man then of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews;" already faithful, yet timid, anxious for instruction, still dreading persecution, "He came to Jesus by night, and said to him: Rabbi, we know that thou art come a teacher from God, for no man can do these signs which thou dost, unless God be with him."

This introduction expressed the object of his visit; he came to be instructed. Jesus stated to him in a few words the entire plan of Christianity, and commencing by regeneration, which is the groundwork, "Answered him: Amen, amen, I say to thee, unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." This reply surprised Nicodemus, who, aware of but one way of being born, could imagine no other. "How can a man be born, saith he, when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born again?" He asked for an explanation, which Jesus immediately gave him. "Amen, amen, he answered, I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water (1) and the Holy Ghost, he cannot en(a) St. John, iii. 1–13.

(1) This water is that of baptism; for it is not allowable to seek here for another

ter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Wonder not that I said to thee: You must be born again. The spirit breatheth where he will (2); and thou hearest his voice; but thou knowest not whence he cometh, and whither he goeth: so is every one that is born of the spirit." Which is tantamount to the known maxim, Every thing produces its kind. The production of the spirit is, therefore, spiritual, like its principal, wherefore it falls not under the senses. Yet it has effects which hinder us from doubting its reality, like the air or wind, which, though not perceptible to the eyes of the body, is known by sound or other peculiar effects.

The mystery had been explained as clearly as it could be: still "Nicodemus answered: How can these things be done? Art thou, said Jesus to him, a master in Israel, and knowest not these things! Amen, amen, I say to thee, that we speak what we know, and we testify what we have seen, and you receive not our testimony. If I have spoken to you earthly things, and you believe not, how will you believe when I speak to you heavenly things? No man bath ascended into heaven but he that descended from heaven-the Son of man who is in heaven (3)

These words, all full of depth, signify, 1st, That faith in mysteries

meaning after the decision of the Council of Trent, Sess. 7, Can. 2: Should any one say that very and natural water is not necessary in baptism, and consequently if he gives a metaphorical sense to those words of our Saviour Jesus Christ. Unless a man be born again of water and of the Holy Ghost, &c., let him be anathema.

(2) This expression signifies here properly either the breath or the wind. This does not hinder an appropriate application of the expression to the free and independent operation of the Holy Ghost in our souls.

(3) Yet the humanity of the Saviour had not descended from heaven, but only ascended there on the day of the ascension. This is explained by the personal union of the Word with human nature. By this ineffable union, the Sovereign God who reigns in the highest heavens is truly the Son of man; in this sense he could have said that the Son of man hath ascended into heaven, since he who is in heaven became the Son of man, which he was not previously. He might also have said that he descended from heaven, because this Son of man, who conversed on earth with man, was the same person with the Sovereign God who reigns in the highest heaven. He could have added that he was still in heaven, because his immensity renders him present everywhere, and his persevering union with humanity makes him who is everywhere present be everywhere and always with the character of Son of man, although his humanity be not everywhere present, as the Lutherans say, by an error, the absurdity of which equals at least its impiety.

is not grounded on the evidence of the object, but on the authority of the testimony of Jesus Christ, a proposition which Nicodemus could not gainsay, he having just recognized the divinity of a mission proved manifestly by miracles; 2d, that the explanation just given to him was the most proper to make him comprehend the mystery which Jesus Christ had proposed to him; I say, to make him comprehend it in such a way as it can be comprehended, at least in this life, he clothed it in sensible and corporal images, such as birth, the wind, and its effects. Whence the Saviour concluded that, if he did not place faith in him when speaking such language as he calls earthly, because proportioned to the human intellect ever cleaving to that earth to which it is bound, much less would he believe had expressions been used as sublime as the things themselves that were proposed, viz.: such expressions as no mortal man could understand, and such apparently as human language could not furnish. What Jesus Christ adds, "no man hath ascended unto heaven but he that descended from heaven," relates to two parts of his answer, and signifies that, both as to mysteries and the manner of proposing them, we must refer alone to him who, having descended from that heaven which he always continues to inhabit, and having alone seen them in their origin, is the only person who knows them, and who is in a position to speak of them; which we find similarly expressed in these words of the first chapter of Saint John: (a) "No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."

Nicodemus, thus disposed, was prepared to listen with docility to the other truths in which Jesus Christ was going to instruct him; the Saviour continued in these terms: (b)" As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him (4) may not perish, but may have life ever(a) St. John, i. 18.

(b) St. John, iii. 14–21.

(4) Here faith alone is spoken of: Doth faith, then, suffice, without works? No more than good works can suffice without faith, although in many places of Scripture salvation is attributed to works, without mention being at all made of faith. Join these texts, and in their union you will find the Catholic truth; separate them, or merely consider them in their apparent opposition, and you evidently come in col

lasting. For God so loved the world as to give his only begotten Son (5), that whosoever believeth in him may not perish, but may have life everlasting: for God sent not his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world may be saved by him. He that believeth in him is not judged; but he that doth not believe is already judged, because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the judgment; because the light is come into the world, and men have loved darkness rather than the light, for their works were evil: for every one that doth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, that his works may not be reproved; but he that doth truth (6) cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they are done in God."

Such is the discourse which the Saviour made to this learned man of the synagogue. It comprises, as I have said, the entire plan of Christianity, and its principal mysteries are here clearly proposed. We see here the three persons of the adorable Trinity, and the part which each of them condescended to take upon himself in the re. demption. The Father gives his only Son; the Son consents to be immolated; and the regenerating Spirit, uniting with the water of baptism his all-mighty action, transforms the old man into a new creature, gives brothers to the Son, and adopted children to the Father. The motive of so great a gift is, on the part of the Father, immense, we may say, excessive love, actuating him to deliver up his only Son, the object of all his complacency, for the salvation of an impious and perverse world: in the Son there is a voluntary immolation upon the tree of the cross; and in regenerated man a lively faith replete with confidence in him whose charity was so extreme

lision with one of these two stumbling-blocks: You will think that works suffice without faith, which annihilates all religion; or with some Protestant sects, that faith suffices without works, which opens the road to every crime.

(5) A Jew might think that God had only given his Son for the salvation of Jews. Jesus Christ anticipates this error, by declaring that the Son was given for the salvation of the world, and of every man, saith e'sewhere the beloved disciple, I. John, 22. (6) It may be, as some have thought, that the original believers in Jesus Christ were the best class among the Jews, although this was not without exception; or it may be that the expression he that doth truth, or to do truth, significs in sinners the knowledge and detestation of sin, according to this thought of Saint Augustine: the confession of crime is the beginning of virtue.

as to suffer for him torment and death. The brazen serpent is given here as a figure of the Old Testament, representing in the most natural manner many wonderful things therein detailed. It resembles the serpent, though without its venom, thus shadowing him forth who, himself without a blemish, assumed the semblance of sin; its elevation in the desert typifies the cross raised on high, and exposed to all eyes. Faith in Him crucified, which may be called the glance of the soul, produces an effect in souls similar to that produced in bodies on corporeally beholding the brazen serpent. Yet, as the brazen serpent, although salutary to many, and injurious to none, hindered not those from perishing who, when mortally wounded by the serpents of fire, refused thus to seek recovery by so easy a remedy, so also those who shall be saved are to be saved by him alone whom the serpent prefigured, and the damned shall be condemned by their own fault. The Saviour goes so far as to declare that the latter are already condemned, inasmuch as, in the sin of their first father and their own personal iniquities, they carry with them the manifest cause of their condemnation; as the Israelites stung by the serpents carried, in the venom which they had received, the impending cause of inevitable death. Those who perish, therefore, perish merely because they choose to do so; and from themselves alone originates the judgment which condemns them. The Messiah's first coming had salvation, not the condemnation, of the world for its object. But this fearful and eternal condemnation only comes upon them for having shunned another transient and salutary condemnation, that which they themselves should have passed upon their own crimes, had they wished to open their eyes to the startling light which disclosed to them their enormity. Still the same fund of corruption which wedded them to their vices made them love the darkness which concealed their enormity, and hate the light which would have revealed it to them; that light which is earnestly sought after and beheld with joy by those who are pure in heart and of virtuous life. An upright mind is always cheered by the light which irradiates it, and virtue must always experience the highest satisfaction from the favorable testimony of such a witness. The grace with which the Saviour accompanied the instruction he imparted to Nicodemus made that proselyte a faithful disciple.