Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 582

658

§ 86.

which agrees

TESTIMONIUM SPIRITUS SANCTI, OR what we seek

defend

[Div. Ill

the

combat

against the naturalistic consciousness of the workl.

Hence

Avith

here involved.

to

in

The more deeply we

by knowledge of ourselves as sinners, of the unreality of the world, and of the reality of the Divine, the more intense becomes this struggle, and the more evident grows the affinity between the work of the Holy Spirit in us and in that Holy Scripture. Thus the veil is gradually being pushed aside, the eye turns toward the Divine light that radiates from the Scripture, and now our inner ego sees a process

the

Holy

is

are led

Spirit into the

imposing superiority. We see it as one born blind, who being healed, sees the beauty of colors, or as one deaf, whose hearing being restored, catches the melodies from the world of its

sounds, and with his whole soul delights himself in them.

In this connection the so-called internal proof for the

Divine character of the Holy Scripture must also be underIn a later period it has been made to appear that the stood.

"heavenly majesty of the doctrines, the marvellous completeness of the prophecies, the wonderful miracles, the consent of all its parts, the divineness of the discourse," and so much more, formed a system of outward proofs able to convince the reason without enlightenment ; but our first theologians, They at least, did not attach such a meaning to them. taught that these inner relations of the Scripture were understood, and thus were able to serve their real purpose only when, by enlightening, the spiritual understanding had been clarified and purified. He only, who in palingenesis had experienced a miracle in his

own

person, ceased to react

against miracles, but rather invoked them himself.

He who

had observed the fulfilment of several prophecies in his own spiritual life, understood the relation between prophecy and

He who heard the music of the Divine redemption in his own soul was rapt in wonder (rapiebatur in admirationem), as they expressed it, in listening to the Oratorio of Salvation proceeding from the heavenly majesty of doctrine in the Holy Scripture. As the Confessio Belgica states in Art. 9, that we even believe the mystery of the Trinity " from their operations, and chiefly by those we

its

fulfilment.

melody

of

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