'To our own amazement and the admiration of angels': Bishop Bull on the saving nature of the Incarnation

On this Christmas Eve, we turn to Bishop Bull's sermon 'The blessed Virgin's low and exalted Condition' on the text Luke 1:48-49 - "For He hath regarded the low estate of His handmaiden; for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For He that is mighty hath done for me great things; and holy is His name". Bull declares "that both it [i.e. the text] and the whole Magnificat, or song of the blessed Virgin, is applicable to, and may be made use of by, all true Christians". 

There is something of an echo here of Bede's statement that the use of the Magnificat at Evening Prayer is a "meditating upon the incarnation". Even more significantly, Bull is also following Augustine:

it means more for Mary to have been a disciple of Christ than to have been the mother of Christ. It means more for her, an altogether greater blessing, to have been Christ's disciple than to have been Christ's mother.

There is, then, solid patristic precedent in interpreting the Magnificat as the Blessed Virgin proclaiming not blessings unique to her, but as reflecting the grace in which we all share by virtue of the Incarnation of the Word. To say or sing the Magnificat at Evening Prayer, therefore, is to give voice to "our own amazement and the admiration of the angels" that God has wrought "our common salvation" in the Incarnate Word:

The nature which the Son of God assumed of his virgin mother is our common nature, which is by that assumption transcendently, to our own amazement and the admiration of angels, dignified and advanced. The eternal Word, by his incarnation, or being made flesh, intended not directly to honour the blessed Virgin in particular, but mankind in general. He intended thereby to declare us his brethren, by being made of the same flesh and blood that we are, as the divine author of the Epistle to the Hebrews assures us, chap. ii.14. Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same. And verse 17. Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren. In a word, the Son of God therefore honoured the blessed Virgin so far, as in and from her to become man, that he might advance human nature, by assuming it into the unity of his divine person; and that being born of her, he might procure, not only hers, but our common salvation. So that every one of us may sing the Magnificat, and bear a part in this divine anthem, and, mutatis mutandis, say, "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the low estate of us vile and mortal men, his poor servants and vassals. For behold from henceforth, and upon the account of the incarnation of the Son of God, the whole creation, yea the very angels themselves, shall and do proclaim us blessed. For he that is mighty hath magnified us in the highest degree, by uniting himself to our nature, and therefore holy is, and for ever blessed be, his name."

(The photograph is of St. Davids Cathedral, Pembrokeshire. Bull was Bishop of St. Davids 1705-10.)