To be near unto God - pagina 313

knowledge of God, on wiiich the knowledge the Father is built, comes to us from the Eternal Word. The knowledge of the Father is not a flower, that has been wafted down from the heavenly regions, and has been tied by Christ to the withered stem of human nature; but the withered state of our sinful nature has been revived by him with a new life, and the knowledge of the Father has been engrafted upon the knowledge of God that comes to us through nature, and through the conscience, by virtue Hence of our creation from the Eternal Word. these are not two kinds of knowledge, without an inner relation, standing externally side by side and joined together. But it is one knowledge of God, which comes to us fiom the Eternal Word, which arises in us through the instrumentality of nature and of the conscience, and which in and through the redemptive work of the Messiah is elevated and carried up to the knowledge of the Father. It is a detriment to the faith, therefore, which avenges itself bitterly, when he who is converted rests content with the work of redemption, as though it comprises the sole glory of Christ, and abandons the knowledge of God from nature and the conscience to the world. He who, reconciled of

in

Christ,

kneels

as

God's

child

before

his

Heavenly Father, must let the light that has appeared to him in Christ, operate reflexively upon the revelation of God in nature and upon of God in human nature, both which have their origin in Christ. St. John begins his Gospel by pointing out the relation which Christ sustains to the creation of the world,

the revelation of

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