Exivi a patre et veni in mundum (Joh. ICgg)- I quote from the Gospel of St John. Our Lord says, ‘ I came forth from the Father and am come into the world and again I leave the world and return to my Father.’ Another of his sayings is, ‘ Amen, Verily I say unto you whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name the same shall be yours.’ Scholars say the word amen is an expression for stability. Our Lord says, ‘ Heaven and earth shall pass away before my word shall pass away,’ which never changes. The heavens which are manifold and the unnumbered stars are all self-coloured. The moon alone is pied, thick and clear, dark and light. That is due to the neighbourhood of earth. And our doctors teach that in God there is no yesterday nor morrow, it is to-day and now all the time in God. Augustine observes that the architect who builds a house therein displays his art ; though it may fall to ruin the art within his soul neither ages nor decays. And again Augustine says, All things are immutable in the eternal Word, nor do they wear away albeit in themselves they are corruptible, apt to be in some sort or not to be at all.
He says, ‘ Verily ’ {i.e, without fail or invariably), ‘ whatsoever ye ask of my Father in my name the same shall be yours.’ According to St Augustine, ‘ To pray to God for aught save God is not to pray at all.’ John Damascene declares that ‘seeing herself the soul sees spirit ; seeing an angel she sees spirit, yet, beholding God, she and the angel are but corporal things compared with him.’ Their mind is as matter to God. Angelic light is darkness as compared with him. Our Lord says, ‘ Verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye ask in my name the same shall be yours,’ meaning, what is in man’s name is man ; what is in light’s name is light ; what is in God’s name is fixed and immutable. The name of God belongs to none but him who stands in this light. No man can say Father except he be Son and none is called Son unless he be one with the one-begotten Word. Whoso asks in God’s name may demand of the Father whatever he will. Words have enormous power and have gotten it from the emanation of the eternal Word.
Our Lord says, ‘ I am come into the world.’ The Father comes into his Son with all he is, he comes into his Son with all he has, he comes into his Son with all that he affords and, fourthly, he comes in an intellectual act. It is proper to the Son to dwell in the Father and it is proper to the Father to dwell in his Son and in the Holy Ghost. The full promise of the Father is brought forth in the Son to the end that the Son may transmit it to the soul. To use a favourite simile of mine. When a stone is thrown into a pond the impact starts a circle, small but energetic, which sets up other circles, the second being larger than the first albeit not so potent and the third one bigger still ; one is gotten from another without stopping ; and if the throw was hard enough the water’s edge is reached before the ripples are exhausted. One unique throw with the world a sheet of water and the water would fail ere the circles died away.
Now mark the application. First, out of the Father there leaps forth the Son, small, but so puissant in his godly strength that it is he who causes the whole emanation. The second sally is the premier angel, following hard upon the first event. It speeds apace, and though less energetic than the first and fully small, it is endowed with so much force that its superfluous energy supplies the lower angels while its successors, yet more widely flung, are bigger in circumference than the second or the first. They keep on brimming out the one behind the other, all busy pouring themselves forth from the highest to the lowest of the angels ; but however far it be from the initial sally of the eternal Word to the first angel, this latter is too high to be affected by any eori)oral thing. Further. Our master claims for the lowest of the angels that in view of his energy projecting into God, the very basest of the inferior angels has so much of God’s might that the smallest fraction (a chip as it were from the carpenter’s axe), the minutest trace, of his activity makes all things grow and flourish. If this chip does not fall from his work, everything instantly perishes. They spread far and wide, reproducing so far as they may the first welling out of the Son from the Father ; but this first emanation was so charged with power that given a thousand or more worlds they would be wanting in capacity ere the first issue had been spent, just as the water’s edge was reached before the ripples were exhausted that arose from the impact of the stone.
Our Lord says, ‘ I came forth from the Father and am come into the world.’ fV orld meaning pure or virgin. He is referring to the soul. Boethius says the world of the soul is called pure because she is fashioned like the fair and virgin world in God. And God is that soul which has gotten her into the perfect image of the divine world and wholly there abides, not peering forth but, all aloof from the outside world, standing still in the light-world in God. Into this soul comes the Son, begotten there in all the panoply of God : Father, Son and Holy Ghost, all together in one perfect being. The soul that has gotten in her the Son, has in one perfect entity the entire promise of the Godhead. One thing more. Creatures communicate themselves so far as they are good. It is peculiar to God as being wholly good that into whomsoever does partake of him he empties himself wholly in his Son. Which is another argument for the soul who has gotten the Son receiving the Godhead altogether. Thirdly, the Father is performing, in his Son, an intellectual operation. According to the philosophers, man’s highest happiness consists in the mental exercise of wisdom. And the Father’s whole delight, his perfect bliss, is this intellectual wont which is the birth of his Son. This birth he so enjoys that he puts his whole might into it and his entire nature. Accordingly the soul having gotten the Son by a feat of understanding, in him possesses all that God can give, in one perfect joy and bliss.
Our Lord says, ‘ I came forth from the Father and am come into this world,’ into the light-world, that is. The soul, true reflection of the divine world, into her enters the Son ; just as he falls from the Father he is born in the soul. In this very same birth he is born in the world, in the soul, and bearing her up brings her to birth in the Father. As he says, ‘ again I leave the world,’ the outer world, ‘ and rc-ascend to my Father,’ with the lightworld of the soul, copy of the world divine, made on the same last, in the same likeness. He carries her up to his Father, into the first, into the ground whence the Son comes out and strikes down from the Father.
There is another meaning in his words, ‘ I came forth from the Father,’ which is this : the Father goes into his Son in all his deity, for he is wholly intellectual. He goes clean into his Son. Had he more sons they would get naught ; he could never have but one Son for he is none other than his understanding. Had he a thousand sons they must needs be all the same Son.
Our Lord says, ‘ I came forth from the Father and am come into the world. Again I leave the world and return to my Father.’ He implies that his going out is his going into the soul. But her going in is her going out. The soul goes out of her outermost into her innermost, out of her own into the Son’s. Her being caught up to the Father is his quitting the outer world and, with the soul, ascending once more to his Father. Mark tells of someone addressing our Lord as ‘ Good Master.’ He replied, ‘ There is none good but God,’ for in coming forth he falls clean into the soul with all he is. No creature exists that can give itself whole ; it goes out in kindness and work but itself stays at home. His exit is his entrance. His passage out of the Father is his passage into the soul. Ilis emanation verily is God giving himself once for all in his Son. We say : the only-begotten Son who proceeds from the Father is the same as himself. From the moment the Father launches forth in all his might in the Son, he (the Father) reverts to pure essence. He has no other course seeing he has spent all his substance on his Son. Were there no time nor place nor matter, nothing left at all, the begetter would be as the begotten. It follows that the Son so called, must be the only Son and be one with the Father who utters in one single Word the whole of what he knows, the whole of what he can afford, in one single instant, and that instant is eternal.
Now our doctors say : natural acts make for unity. God vouchsafes himself, gives himself, as a whole to the soul in order that she may be one with him. Moreover, his first issue is his only Son. Again, our doctors teach that the highest of the angels is pure yet he forms a part of nature. But the only Son never entered any nature, he remained superior to nature : in pure being he went into the Father. The second eruption into nature, so our masters say, the highest spirit, remained by nature simplex, one in proportion to the nearness of his nature (to its origin). He broke in to let us out : his exit thence is his entrance here. TIcncc his words, ‘ Let. . . .’