135. Even so. Just as I confess the
unity of celestial Life subsisting in Father and Son by reason of the
unity of the substance of the Godhead, so too, save as concerns the
prerogatives of the Divine Nature or those which are the effect of the
Incarnation of our Lord, I affirm of the Son a participation of
spiritual life with us by virtue of the unity of His Manhood with ours,
for “as is the heavenly, such are they also that are
heavenly.” 1 Cor. xv. 40. On this place H. observes:
“As the Son, by reason of a nature numerically identical with the
Father’s, lives together with Him the same Divine Life, so we by
virtue of a manhood specifically the same as Christ’s have power
to live the life which the Man Christ lives; which life indeed resides
in its greatest fulness in Him as its Head and Fountain, and from His
Person overflows into us, His members—yet not without a certain
difference, for the comparison is incomplete, by reason, namely, of the
reservation of prerogatives attaching to the Divine Nature or to the
Lord’s Incarnation. The Godhead is numerically One, the
Life of the Father and the Life of the Son is numerically one, but
Christ’s Life and ours are not so. Moreover, this (Divine)
Life subsistent in the Son is united to His Manhood in and by the unity
of His Person, but is not communicated to us in so close an alliance,
overflowing rather into us only by a certain participation.…But
perhaps the sainted Doctor’s meaning here is that we live and
abide in Christ by a corporal unity, because, Christ having Manhood
specifically the same as ours, whatsoever is fittingly predicted of
manhood as existing in Christ is applicable to all His
fellow-men. The first construction, however, explains St.
Ambrose’s analogy more fully.” Further,
even as in Him we sit at the right hand of the Father, not in the sense
that we share His throne, but that we rest in the Body of
Christ—even as, I say, we have part in Christ’s session by
reason of corporal unity, so too we live
in Christ by reason of unity of our bodies with
His Body.