Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 383

Chap.

THIS PRINCIPIUM

II]

reproaclies

upon

yourself,

All this does not touch

This

is

only touched,

t\\Q

AND OUR CONSCIOUSNESS

359

and whet the sword against

sin.

principium of the knowledge of Grod.

when you

yourself

know

that a breach

has taken place; and that sin has so broken you, that the channels, through which the knowledge of

God

flowed to

have been stopped up and and that thus it is an assured fact to you, otherwise injured, that from this natural principium, however good in itself, because once broken and injured, no real knowledge of God can any more come to you. Then only will your consciousness

you in virtue

of yovir creation,

be disposed to look upon a second, a different, a temporarily auxiliary, principium as natural and with this disposition ;

only will your consciousness be able to grasp the guarantee of the Divine witness in this witness itself.

hand,

it is

On

the other

equally true that this deep sense of sin, by which

you learn to know your state as broken before God, does not come to you from the natural principium, but only from this special principium. There is an interaction here. The more powerful youT conviction of sin is, the more readily you grasp the special principium, as suited to your condition and also, the more decided you are in your acceptance of the knowledge of God from this special principium, the ;

deeper the sense of being a sinner before Crod will strike root in you. Later on it will be shown, how this wittiess of the

Holy Spirit

Here, however,

in its structure is also ethical in its nature. let it

be said, that this witness of the Holy

Spirit always roots in the conviction of sin,

and in degree

of

certainty runs parallel with the certainty of your sense of guilt.

What if

is

said above

would not

lightly rouse contradiction,

this inspiration of Crod into the

place individually.

Even

those

mind of

who stand

the sinner

took

outside of this

would then acknowledge that they can deny the But, and this is the difficulty, this principium does not work in this way. To speak plainly, there is no inspiration which goes out inspiration

reality of it for themselves, but not for others.

directly from

God

to the soul's consciousness of every one

of the elect separately,

and

offers the

same content

to

all,

one

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