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
First, that of the relation between the soul and body. The soul is the
life of the body; the body, as it were, the mansion and home of the soul,
its bearer. Through the body the qualities of the soul become visible and
known; its powers exercise themselves, and personal unity so binds the two
together that we love or hate, admire or despise, the one for the sake of
the other; the grief of the soul acts upon the body, the sickness of the
body depresses the soul. Through the acts of the body we learn the very
existence of the soul, and in these acts it portrays itself. Human nature
has been so made by its Creator that the qualities of soul and body, of
spirit and matter, are imputed in the individual man to each other. Now to
the Body we have been considering the Spirit of Christ is, as it were, the
soul. It is nothing strange, then, if it was His will to create such a
Body, if it be the result of His Incarnation, that the like effects which
exist in the case of every human soul and body should take place here. To
this Body also the power and virtue of its soul are communicated; and,
since Christ by His Spirit animates it, in honouring it He is honoured; in
despising it, He is despised. There is an imparting to it of the qualities
which He has; and thus it is that unity and sanctity, truth and charity
dwell in it as the operation of His mind. Thus every man contains in
himself, in the union of soul and body, an image of that tie by which
Christ and His Church are one.
Secondly, because God has created man for society, He has implanted in him
an irrepressible instinct of communion with his brother men. This instinct
it is which, under circumstances of every possible variety, results in one
end, the State. The human commonwealth, whatever external shape it wear,
whatever division of its powers it make, springs from this. In virtue of
this original formation of man, that he is made to live together, and
gregariously, not separately, the supreme power of government, the power
of life and death, dwells in the community, and obedience to it has a
divine sanction. Thus, the commonwealth has a variety of powers which the
individual has not, and not only so, but it also has powers which do not
arise from the mere aggregation of individuals, rather which belong to it
as a community, as a whole, for instance, sovereignty in all the details
of its exercise. But now the very object for which Christ became Incarnate
was to constitute a divine commonwealth. He is the King: it is the
tenderness of a God Incarnate that He calls and makes His Kingdom His
Body. The powers, then, which belong to the earthly commonwealth belong,
with the changes which the change of subject carries, to the Divine. They
who have so great a reverence for human government, who respect in the
nation an ultimate irresponsible power, ought, if they were consistent,
when they acknowledge Christ as having come in the flesh, to acknowledge
His government in the kingdom which He has set up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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