Against these, the expressions of Hilary’s usual opinion, must be set others in which he anticipates the language of St. Augustine in the Pelagian controversy. But certain deductions must be made, before we can rightly judge the weight of his testimony on the side of original sin. Passages where he is merely amplifying the words of Scripture must be excluded, as also those which are obviously exhibitions of unguarded rhetoric. For instance such words as these, ‘Ever since the sin and unbelief of our first parent, we of later generations have had sin for the father of our body and unbelief for the mother of our soul,’ contradicting as they do Hilary’s well-known theory of the origin of the soul, cannot be regarded as giving his deliberate belief concerning sin. Again, we must be careful not to interpret strong language concerning the body (e.g. Tr. in Ps. cxviii, Caph, 5 fin.), as though it referred to our whole complex manhood. But after all deductions a good deal of strong Augustinianism remains. In the person of Adam God created all mankind, and all are implicated in his downfall, which was not only the beginning of evil but is a continuous power.
Not only as a matter of experience, is no man sinless, but no man can, by any possibility, be free from sin. Because of the sin of one sentence is passed upon all; the sentence of slavery which is so deep a degradation that the victim of sin forfeits even the name of man. But Hilary not only states the doctrine; he approaches very nearly, on rare occasions, to the term ‘original sin.’ It follows that nothing less than a regeneration, the free gift of God, will avail; and the grace by which the Christian must be maintained is also His spontaneous lxxxvii and unconditional gift. Faith, knowledge, Christian life, all have their origin and their maintenance from Him. Such is a brief statement of Hilary’s position as a forerunner of St. Augustine. The passages cited are scattered over his writings, from the earliest to the latest, and there is no sign that the more modern view was gaining ground in his mind as his judgment ripened. He had no occasion to face the question, and was content to say whatever seemed obviously to arise from the words under discussion, or to be most profitable to his audience.
His Augustinianism, if it may be called so, is but one of many instances of originality, a thought thrown out but not developed. It is a symptom of revolt against the inadequate views of older theologians; but it had more influence upon the mind of his great successor than upon his own. Dealing, as he did, with the subject in hortatory writings, hardly at all, and only incidentally, in his formal treatise on the Trinity, he preferred to regard it as a matter of morals rather than of doctrine. And the dignity of man, impressed upon him by the great Alexandrians, seemed to demand for humanity the fullest liberty. We may now turn to the Atonement, by which Christ has overcome sin. Hilary’s language concerning it is, as a rule, simply Scriptural. He had no occasion to discuss the doctrine, and his teaching is that which was traditional in his day, without any such anticipations of future thought as we found in his treatment of sin. Since the humanity of Christ is universal, His death was on behalf of all mankind, ‘to buy the salvation of the whole human race by the offering of this holy and perfect Victim.’
His last cry upon the cross was the expression of His sorrow that some would not profit by His sacrifice; that He was not, as He had desired, bearing the sins of all. He was able to take them upon Him because He had both natures. His manhood could do what His Godhead could not; it could atone for the sins of men. Man had been overcome by Satan; Satan, in his turn, has been overcome by Man. In the long conflict, enduring through Christ’s life, of which the first pitched battle was the Temptation, the last the Crucifixion, the victory has been won by the Mediator in the flesh. The devil was in the wrong throughout. He was deceived, or rather deceived himself, not recognising what it was for which Christ hungered. The same delusion as to Christ’s character led him afterwards to exact the penalty of sin from One Who had not deserved it. Thus the human sufferings of Christ, unjustly inflicted, involve His enemy in condemnation and forfeit his right to hold mankind enslaved. Therefore we are set free, and the sinless Passion and death are the triumph of the flesh over spiritual wickedness and the vengeance of God upon it.
Man is set free, because he is justified in Christ, Who is Man. But the fact that Christ could do the works necessary to this end is proof that He is God. These works included the endurance of such suffering—in the sense, of course, which Hilary attaches to the word—as no one who was not more than man could bear. Hence he emphasises the Passion, because in so doing he magnifies the Divine nature of Him Who sustained it. He sets forth the sufferings in the light of deeds, of displays of power, the greatest wonder being that the Son of God should have made Himself passible. Yet though it was from union with the Godhead that His humanity possessed the purity, the willingness, the power to win this victory, and thought, in Hilary’s words, it was immortal God Who died upon the Cross, still it was a victory won not by God but by the flesh.
But the Passion must not be regarded simply as an attack, ending in his own overthrow, made by Satan upon Christ. It is also a free satisfaction offered to God by Christ as Man, in order that His sufferings might release us from the punishment we had deserved, being accepted instead of ours. This latter was a thought peculiarly lxxxviii characteristic of the West, and especially of St. Cyprian’s teaching; but Hilary has had his share in giving prominence to the propitiatory aspect of Christ’s self-sacrifice. Yet it must be confessed that the death of Christ is somewhat in the background; that Hilary is less interested in its positive value than in its negative aspect, as the cessation from earthly life and the transition to glory. Upon this, and upon the evidential importance of the Passion as a transcendent exertion of power, whereby the Son of God held Himself down and constrained Himself to suffer and die, Hilary chiefly dwells. The death has not, in his eyes, the interest of the Resurrection.
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