p. 31 Introduction to the Treatise Incarnation of the Word. The
tract against the Gentiles leaves the reader face to face with
the necessity of restoration by the Divine Word as the remedy
for corrupt human nature. How this necessity is met in the
Incarnation is shewn in the pages which follow. The general
design of the second tract is to illustrate and confirm the
doctrine of the Incarnation by shewing (1) its necessity and
end, (2) the congruity of its details, (3) its truth, as against
the objections of Jews and Gentiles, (4) its result. He begins
by a review (recapitulating c. Gent. 2–7) of the doctrine of
creation and of mans place therein. The abuse by man of his
special Privilege had resulted in its loss. By foregoing the
Divine Life, man had entered upon a course of endless undoing,
of progressive decay, from which none could rescue him but the
original bestower of his life (2–7). Then follows a description
in glowing words of the Incarnation of the Divine Word and of
its efficacy against the plague o