II.

11.]

LED BY THE SPIRIT TO HIS TEMPTATION.

49

the trials against which the faithful, thus prepared, have to strive, are no proof that they are without the Holy Spirit, but the contrary; as, on the other hand, the carnal and worldly dispositions which so many Christians are content to admit without struggle, prove not that baptismal grace had never been imparted, but that the Spirit once theirs has been grieved by their contemptuous neglect, and His gifts, that lead to salvation, are decayed and in danger of perishing in consequence. For even thus, as S. Paul argues on the same question, were all the fathers of Israel baptized to Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all eat in the desert the same spiritual food, and all drank of the sacramental rock, which was Christ; yet their own lusts overthrew them in the wilderness. It is the example he propounds to us also under the Gospel, to prove that neither the external nor the internal leadings of the Spirit avail unless we dutifully comply with His dictates. "Where is He," says the Prophet, "that brought him out of the sea, with the Shepherd of His flock? that put His Holy Spirit within him?...As the beast goeth down into the valley, the Spirit of the Lord caused him to rest so didst Thou lead thy people, to make Thyself a glorious name:" yet, he adds, they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit;

66

therefore He was turned to be their enemy, and He fought against them." That memorable example of human disobedience exhibited in God's firstborn Israel, which the Psalm in our daily morning office sets before us for our warning, is best contrasted with the obedience of that better Son of God, whom, in Hosea's language, as applied by the Evangelist, God called out of Egypt to be our Guide and Redeemer. The forty years' provocation and temptation of God in the wilderness was the great specimen of that sin of the world which our Lord's Quadragesimal Fast went to expiate: and the Spirit who, according to the Prophet's pathetic expostulation, had fled from the disobedient Israel, as though never redeemed or called by the name of the Lord, was brought back in richer effusion to the earth, than had ever been since the first disobedience, by the mediation of that One promised seed of Abraham, who now followed the same Spirit's guidance to the preliminary scene of His earthly trial1.

But the consideration of the adversary He then encountered, as well as that of the forty days' fast, and the first temptation founded on it, must be reserved to the following Sunday. Let us meanwhile treasure up the practical

1

1 Cor. x. 1-10. Psalm xcv. 7-11 (coll. Heb. iii. 7-iv. 16). Isaiah Ixiii. 9-16. Hosea xi. 1. Matt. ii. 15; iv. 1.

conclusion in which our present discussion terminates; that our aid in all temptation and trial be sought in Him alone, who at His Baptism received the plenary unction of the Holy Spirit as our Deliverer; and through whom, as the One Christ, the One Incarnate tried Mediator, that Holy Spirit is bestowed by the Father for every hour of need.

Almighty God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves; Keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls ; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

SERMON III.

THE TEMPTATION OF SENSUAL DISTRUST.

(Preached on Mid-Lent Sunday, March 17, 1844).

LUKE IV. 1—4.

And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days He did eat nothing: and when they were ended, He afterward hungered. And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.

OUR consideration of the first part of this memorable passage, has, I trust, helped to fix on our minds certain great truths of our Catholic Christian faith, without which it cannot be truly understood. We have seen that our Lord's obnoxiousness to temptation was the result of an assumption of human nature; an assumption ever represented as voluntary, implying infinite condescension on His part, infinite bounty to mankind on the part of His Father, implying, therefore, nothing less than a pre-existent nature in Him absolutely divine, co-essential with that of the Father, by whom He was begotten before the worlds. Again,

we have seen in this transaction how real and entire was His assumption of humanity in our behalf, not limited either to outward semblance or to bodily accidents, but extending to an human soul with its sentiments and affections; neither quenching the humanity by the divinity, nor mingling it with what allows not of such commixture, but leaving it in all its proper operations entire; neither, on the other hand, admitting any division in the one person of Him, who, as man, was tempted, and, as God, can save. We further remarked, that this susception of humanity implied no assumption of sin, either original or actual, in Him who came to cleanse us from both that sin, which lies not in the substance of our faculties, (as old heresies, newly revived, would teach,) but in their disorder and dislocation, is not in the least degree involved in the capacity of temptation; His possession of all the properties of perfect humanity necessarily leading to the result that He was in all points tempted as we are, though without sin. Lastly, we have seen that the same Holy Spirit which sanctified Adam in his state of innocence, was to the second Adam alone imparted without measure, for the complete sanctification of our humanity in Him; that as by that Spirit He was miraculously engendered of a pure virgin, so by that same Spirit was He