The Formation of Christendom, Volume IIAllies, T. W. (Thomas William)
Religion
The Formation of Christendom, Volume II
Allies, T. W. (Thomas William)
Christianity; Christianity -- Miscellanea
2. This perpetual possession and announcement of the truth is indicated by
another image which is of constant recurrence,(66) wherein Christ is the
Inhabitant, His people the Inhabited, while both are the House or Temple,
for that in which God dwells is at once His House and Temple. Thus Moses
is said to have been “faithful in all his house as a servant, but Christ
as a Son over His own house, whose house are we.” Here the King who bears
witness to the truth is the God who sanctifies the faithful people by
dwelling in them and building them in the truth. It is not merely the
individual believer, but the whole mass of the faithful which grows up to
be a holy temple; and the ever-abiding Spirit of truth, whose presence is
the guarantee of truth, is the equally abiding Spirit of sanctity, whose
presence imparts holiness. The Son dwells in His own house by His Spirit
for ever: as He ceases not to be incarnate, He ceases not to dwell in His
house, and could falsehood be worshipped in His temple, it would cease to
be His. That was the work of heathenism, when a false spirit had caused
error to be worshipped for truth; the specific victory of the Word
incarnate was to set up a temple in which the truth should be worshipped
for ever, “the inhabitation of God in the Spirit.” But living stones make
up this temple, that is, individual spirits, endued with their own reason
and will, yet no less fitted in and cemented together by His grace, and so
forming a structure which has an organic unity of its own, being the House
and Temple of One. It is in virtue of this inhabitation that the Church is
termed the House of God, the pillar and ground of the truth, inasmuch as
it contains, as between walls,(67) the faith and its announcement and
proclamation, that is, the law of the King of Truth declared by His
heralds. “We speculate,” says S. Augustine, “that we may attain to vision;
yet even the most studious speculation would fall into error unless the
Lord inhabited the Church herself that now is.”(68) And again: “In earthly
possessions a benefit is given to the proprietor when he is given
possession; not so is the possession which is the Church. The benefit here
lies in being possessed by such a one.”—“Christ’s Body is both Temple and
House and City, and He who is Head of the Body is Inhabiter of the House,
and Sanctifier of the Temple, and King of the City.—What can we say more
acceptable to Him than this, Possess us?”(69)
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