An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of AssentNewman, John Henry
Religion
An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent
Newman, John Henry
Faith; Theism
I sum up then to the same effect as in the preceding Section. Religion
has to do with the real, and the real is the particular; theology
has to do with what is notional, and the notional is the general and
systematic. Hence theology has to do with the dogma of the Holy Trinity
as a whole made up of many propositions; but Religion has to do with
each of those separate propositions which compose it, and lives and
thrives in the contemplation of them. In them it finds the motives for
devotion and faithful obedience; while theology on the other hand forms
and protects them by virtue of its function of regarding them, not
merely one by one, but as a system of truth.
One other remark is in place here. If the separate articles of the
Athanasian Creed are so closely connected with vital and personal
religion as I have shown them to be, if they supply motives on which a
man may act, if they determine the state of mind, the special thoughts,
affections, and habits, which he carries with him from this world to
the next, is there cause to wonder, that the Creed should proclaim
aloud, that those who are not internally such as Christ, by means
of it, came to make them, are not capable of the heaven to which He
died to bring them? Is not the importance of accepting the dogma the
very explanation of that careful minuteness with which the few simple
truths which compose it are inculcated, are reiterated, in the Creed?
And shall the Church of God, to whom “the dispensation” of the Gospel
is committed, forget the concomitant obligation, “Woe is unto me if I
preach not the Gospel”? Are her ministers by their silence to bring
upon themselves the Prophet’s anathema, “Cursed is he that doth the
work of the Lord deceitfully”? Can they ever forget the lesson conveyed
to them in the Apostle’s protestation, “God is faithful, as our
preaching which was among you was not Yea and Nay.... For we are a good
odour of Christ unto God in them that are in the way of salvation, and
in them that are perishing. For we are not as the many, who adulterate
the word of God; but with sincerity, but as from God, in the presence
of God, so speak we in Christ”?
§ 3. Belief in Dogmatic Theology.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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