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
The fourth gift which He bestows upon the Body is sanctification, and it
may be said to be the result of the other three. This, again, is His own
name and nature, and many have thought and said, His personal attribute,
to make holy; and that, as Fathership indicates the First Person, and
Sonship the Second, so the making holy names the Third, the bond of the
most blessed Trinity. But this, at least, may be said to be the final
cause of the body which He animates, the imparting of holiness. In virtue
of this gift, all the means and aids and rules of holiness are stored up
in the Body. And this does not mean that there is not a continual falling
away from the rule and practice of holiness in particular members, but it
means that while these, in spite of the Body’s nurture and solicitude,
fall away from it and perish, the Body lasts for ever, the rules and aids
and means of holiness lasting for ever within it, because it is the Body
of the Spirit of holiness.
Now these four gifts, Unity, Verity, Charity, and Sanctity, can none of
them exist in the Body without the other, and all of them exist together
there, because they have one divine root, that indwelling of the Holy
Spirit which is the fruit of the Incarnation, and whereby the mystical
Body of Christ corresponds to His natural Body. Of this Body the beginning
is Unity, the substance Truth, the bond Charity, the end Sanctity.
Countless heresies and schisms have sought to break up the coinherence of
these gifts, but in vain. The only success which the indwelling Spirit
allows them is to detach from the Body those who are unworthy to remain in
it, and to prolong for a time their maimed existence by some portion of
some of His gifts. Truth, for instance, has such a vitality that many a
heresy will live for ages on that fragment which it has detached from the
mass; unity and charity have such force that even their shadow, that is,
the joint possession of a fragmentary truth, and the good-will thence
proceeding, will prolong for a time a sort of corporate existence.
Holiness has so attractive a power, that zeal and self-denial, which
present the seeming of it, will make the fortune of a sect for a time. But
in the union and the completeness of these four gifts, the great Body of
Christ stands out through all the ages inimitable and unapproachable.
Alone it dares to claim them thus united and complete, for alone it can
present their realisation.
These four gifts, then, dwell in the Body in a higher degree than that in
which they adorn the members of the Body, as in it, by force of the
Spirit’s indwelling, they ever exist together. Let us now see the
qualities which the Spirit imparts to the members of the Body, by virtue
of their incorporation into it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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