Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 585

CiiAP. 11]

THE WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

561

more captivated by a power, whose centrum camiot be accepted without demanding and then compelling all unobservedly an ever more general consent for its entire appearance, and all its utterances. Thus it ends as Scripture by imposing sacred obligations upon us, as Holy Book by exercising over us moral compulsion and spiritual power. And in the end the connection between its form and content appears so inseparable, that even the exceptional parts of its form appeal to us, and, in form and content both, the Scripture comes to stand before us as an authority from God. But this process of conviction worked in us by the Spirit, is always a spiritual work, which has nothing in common it is moreover incapable with the learning of the schools and of continuing itself theoretically of maintaining itself itself it tends no further By according to a definable system. ;

than to bear spiritual testimony to our personal, regenerated ego concerning the Divine character of everything the Holy Scripture teaches and reveals and without more, the truth, ;

for instance, of graphic inspiration can never be derived

from

however, an absolute certainty concerning this Divine character of the content of the Scripture has been sealed in

it.

If,

the personal consciousness of

man by

Holy

goes back to the two former

Spirit, the effect of this

stages of the public opinion

ing to Christ.

With

good and always,

he,

this witness

of

the

(communis fides), and the cleavwhich is now his own for

this conviction,

who

has been set free from the veil that

darkly hung between, does not stand alone, but feels himself assimilated by the illuminated consciousness which in the

communion

of the saints

is

consciousness of the world.

distinguished from the natural

This assimilation becomes the

stronger, according to the greater vitality of the child of

by which he is evermore being changed into the Son of God. Thus there originates a communion of consciousness not merely with those round about us, but also with the generation of saints of former ages, affinity of life with the saints that have gone before, unity of soulconceptions with the martyrs, with the fathers of the Church,

God

in him,

image

of the

with the apostles, and so at length with Christ Himself and

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