lowest Subject of obedience be born, seemingly by human means, but really by divine?  Why should there not be found some unspotted holy virgin, betrothed to a just man and soon to be his wife, who, by the creative power of Divinity, should miraculously conceive the shape divine, which God himself resolved to dwell in?  Why should she not come of a lineage and family which for centuries before had held such expectation?  Why should not the just man, her affianced, who had never known her yet, being warned of God in a dream of this strange, immaculate conception, “fear not to take unto him Mary his wife,” lest the unbelieving world should breathe slander on her purity, albeit he should really know her not until after the Holy Birth.  There is nothing unreasonable here; every step is previously credible:  and invention’s self would be puzzled to devise a better scheme.  The Virgin-born would thus be a link between God and man, the great Mediator:  his natures would fulfil every condition required of their double and their intimate conjunction.  He would have arrived at humanity without its gross beginnings, and have veiled his Godhead for a while in a pure though mortal tenement.  He would have participated in all the tenderness of woman’s nature, and thus have reached the keenest sensibilities of men.

Themes such as these are inexhaustible:  and I am perpetually conscious of so much left unsaid, that at every section I seem to have said next to nothing.  Nevertheless, let it go; the good seed yet shall germinate.  “Cast thy bread upon the waters, and thou shall find it after many days.”

It may to some minds be a desideratum, to allude to the anterior probability that God should come in the flesh.  Much of this has been anticipated under the head of Visible Deity and elsewhere; as this treatise is so short, one may reasonably expect every reader to take it in regular course.  For additional considerations:  the Benevolent Maker would hardly leave his creatures to perish, without one word of warning or one gleam of knowledge.  The question of the Bible is considered further on:  but exclusively of written rules and dogmas, it was likely that Our Father should commission chosen servants of his own, orally to teach and admonish; because it would be in accordance with man’s reasonable nature, that he should best and easiest learn from the teaching his brethren.  So then, after all lesser ambassadors had failed, it was to be expected that He should send the highest one of all, saying, “They will reverence my Son.”  We know that this really did occur by innumerable proofs, and wonderful signs posterior:  and now, after the event, we discern it to have been anteriorly probable.