'A most gracious and merciful design': a Christmas sermon by Tillotson

In these days before Christmas Day, laudable Practice will follow on from the short Advent series on sermons on the Last Things by Tillotson, Bull, and Clarke by sharing extracts from sermons on the Incarnation by these three divines of the 18th century Church of England.

Today's extract is from Tillotson's 1680 sermon 'Concerning the Incarnation of Christ', preached on 21st December in the Church of St. Lawrence Jewry, London, on the text John 1:14. Note how this sermon was delivered before Christmas. Tillotson described the time as the "Occasion of the Annual Commemoration of the Incarnation and Nativity of our B. Lord and Saviour".

Tillotson's text, of course, has significance as the Prayer Book's appointed Gospel for Christmas Day. He was, in other words, preparing the congregation for the proclamation of this Gospel at Christmas Communion. 

Pointing to the Evangelist's account of the Incarnation as a setting forth of God's "most gracious and merciful design" for our salvation - not only a restoration but also a greater glory (hinting at our participation in the divine nature by means of the Incarnate Word) - Tillotson's sermon is a declaration of the wonderful exchange at the heart of the Incarnation of the Everlasting Word:

The Word was made flesh: What a step is here made in order to the reconciling of Men to God? From Heaven to Earth; from the top of Glory and Majesty to the lowest gulf of meanness and misery: The Evangelist seems here to use the word 'flesh', which signifies the meanest and vilest part of Humanity, to express to us how low the Son of God was contented to stoop for the Redemption of Man. The Word was made flesh: Two terms, at the greatest distance from one another, are here brought together: The Son of God is here expressed to us by one of his highest and most glorious Titles, the Word, which imports both Power and Wisdom; Christ the Power of God, and the Wisdom of God, as the Apostle calls him: human Nature is here described by its vilest part, flesh; which imports frailty and infirmity: The Word became flesh, that is, submitted to that from which it was at the greatest distance: He who was the Power of God, and the Wisdom of God, submitted not only to be called, but really to become a frail and miserable Man; not only to assume our Nature, but to put on all the Infirmities, and which is the greatest of all, the Mortality of it.

And this is the great Mystery of Godliness, that is, of the Christian Religion, that God should be manifested in the flesh, and become Man, with a most gracious and merciful design to bring Man back again to God: That he should become a miserable and a mortal Man to save us from eternal death, and to make us partakers of everlasting life: That the Son of God should condescend to habit our vile Nature, to wear Rags and to become a Beggar for our sakes; and all this not only to repair those dismal Ruins which Sin had made in it, and to restore us to our former estate; but to better and advance our condition, and by degrees, to bring us to a state of much greater perfection and happiness than that from which we fell.

And that he should become Man on purpose that he might dwell among us, and converse with us, and thoroughly instruct us in our Duty, and shew us the way to eternal life by his heavenly Doctrine, and as it were take us by the hand and lead us in that way by the perfect and familiar Example of a most blameless and holy life; shewing us how God himself thought fit to live in this World, when he was pleased to become Man.

(The photograph is of St Lawrence Jewry. Tillotson was appointed Lecturer in this church in 1662, a post he held for almost thirty years.)