Chapter 5 (54)
76 | THE SENTENCES, BOOK 3
nature as happened at the resurrection, and he could also have manifested his name to men in some other way; but he could not have been a passible man as he was and come to that glory without merit.
2. But he could indeed have come to it without the merit of the passion because, after using up his mortality, he could have become clothed in the glory of immortality; yet he could not have done so without the merit of justice, charity, and the other virtues. For Christ could not have been a man in whom there would not have been the fullness of virtues and grace; nor could the virtues have been in him, once he had taken on the sackcloth of mortality, without his acquiring merit by them. Therefore, since he had these virtues according to his being a passible and mortal man, he could not but have merited the glory of immortality. And so, after becoming mortal, he could not without merit have achieved the glory of impassibility and immortality and the manifesting of the name of God. But he could have obtained these without the merit of the passion, because through his passion he merited nothing for himself which he had not already merited earlier through his virtues.
Chapter 5 (54) 1. ON THE CAUSE OF THE DEATH AND PASSION OF CHRIST. To what end, then, did he will to suffer and die, if his virtues were sufficient for him to merit those things? For your sake, not for his own. How for my sake? So that his passion and death should be a model and cause to you: the model of virtue and humility, the cause of glory and liberty;' the model of being obedient to God even unto death,' and the cause of your liberation and blessedness. For by his bearing his death and passion, he merited for us what he had not merited by the foregoing, namely entrance to paradise, and redemption from sin, punishment, and the devil.> And through his death we have acquired these things, namely redemption and adoption as children of glory.* Indeed, by his death, he was made the victim offered for our liberation.
2. HOW HE REDEEMED US BY HIS DEATH AND OPENED THE ENTRANCE
TO THE KINGDOM, AND FIRST, OF THE OPENING OF THE ENTRANCE. But
how did he, through his death, redeem us from the devil and sin, and open the entrance to glory? God had decreed "in mystery," as Ambrose says, that man, because of the first sin, should not be allowed into paradise, that is, should not be admitted to the contemplation of God, unless
Cf. dm. 8.36.
Phil. 2, 8.
>OipColle 1 3s14° Heb 55.0:
"Ci Rom: §, 15; Galas.
°Ambrosiaster, on Rom. 5, 14.
Distinction XVIII | 77 so much humility should be found in one man which might suffice for all who follow him, just as in the first man was found such pride as to harm all who followed him. Among men, none was found through whom this might be fulfilled, except the lion of the tribe of Juda,' who opened the book and broke the seals, fulfilling a// justice in himself,' that is, the most complete humility, than which there can be no greater. Other men were debtors, and each one's virtue and humility was scarcely sufficient for himself. And so none of them could offer a sacrificial victim sufficient for our reconciliation. But the man Christ was a sufficient and perfect victim; he was much more humbled in tasting the bitterness of death® than Adam had become proud in his guilty pleasure through his eating of the forbidden tree.' And so, if the latter's pride was ruin to all, expelling him from paradise and closing its doors to others,'® much more able was
Christ's humility, by which he tasted death, to open the entrance of the heavenly kingdom to all who follow him, by the fulfillment of God's degree, for it cancelled the chirograph of the decree.''
3. AMBROSE ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. For as Ambrose says, "So great was our sin, that we could not be saved, unless the only-begotten
Son of God should die for us, who were debtors of death; but in this way, he made us worthy of the covenant and of the promised inheritance."!*—
This is not to be understood as if he could not have saved us in any other way, except through his death, but that through no other victim could the entrance of the kingdom be opened to us and our salvation achieved, except through the death of the only-begotten, whose humility and patience, as has been said, were so great that by his merit the entrance of the kingdom should lie open to those who believe in him. And so great things were granted to us in the death of the only-begotten, so that we should be allowed to return to the fatherland, just as formerly, at the death of the high priest, those who had fled to the city of refuge could now safely return to their own lands.''—See, we have seen to some extent how entry to the kingdom was readied for us by Christ's death.
°Apoc. 5, 5.
"Che Mte33'15.
SOL i Hep; 2-9.
°Cf. Gen. 3, 6. lOCf. Gen. 3, 23-24. sad Orn) pPAR '2 mbrosiaster (rather Alcuin), /n Hebraeos 9.15.
Cf. Num. 35, 25 and 28; Jos. 20.6.