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
and in the second there is a like influx from Christ the Head into His
Body the Church, so that he who hears the Church hears Christ, and he who
persecutes the Church, as Saul before the gate of Damascus, persecutes
Christ. Fifthly, in the first the Head, through the manhood as His
instrument, fulfilled all the economy of redemption, dwelt among men,
taught them, redeemed them, bestowed on them the gifts of holiness and the
friendship of God; and in the second, what He began in His manhood He
continues through the Church as His own Body,(77) and bestows on men what
He merited in His flesh, showing in and by the Church His presence among
men, teaching them holiness, preserving them from error, and leading them
to the eternal inheritance.
It is also by this one “power of the Holy Ghost coming upon men” that we
learn how the Head and the Body make one Christ. As in the human frame the
presence of the soul gives it life and unity, binding together every
member by that secret indivisible force, from the least to the greatest,
from the heart and brain to the minutest portion of the outward skin, so
in this divine Body, which makes the whole Christ, it is the presence of
the Holy Ghost, as of the soul, which gives it unity and life. The
conclusion was drawn by a great Saint, and no less great a genius,
fourteen hundred years ago, and I prefer S. Augustine’s words to any which
I can use myself: “Our spirit by which the whole race of man lives is
called the soul; our spirit, too, by which each man in particular lives is
called the soul; and you see what the soul does in the body. It quickens
all the limbs: through the eyes it sees, through the ears it hears,
through the nostrils smells, through the tongue speaks, through the hands
works, through the feet walks; it is present at once in all the limbs that
they may live; life it gives to all, their functions to each. The eye does
not hear, nor the ear nor the tongue see, nor the ear nor the eye speak,
but both live; the functions are diverse, the life common. So is the
Church of God. In some saints it works miracles; in others gives voice to
the truth; in others, again, maintains the virginal life; in others keeps
conjugal fidelity; in these one thing, in those another; each have their
proper work, but all alike live. Now, what the soul is to the human body,
that is the Holy Spirit to the body of Christ, which is the Church: what
the soul does in all the limbs of an individual body, that does the Holy
Spirit in the whole Church. But see what you have to avoid, what to
observe, and what to fear. It happens that, in the human body, or in any
other body, some member may be cut off, hand, finger, or foot. Does the
soul follow it when cut off? As long as it was in the body it lived: when
cut off, it loses life. So too the Christian man is a Catholic while he
lives in the body; when cut off, he becomes a heretic; the Spirit does not
follow the amputated limb.”(78)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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