Saturday, January 12, 2013

"The theology of the Church is no random combination of various opinions, but a diligent, patient working out of one doctrine out of many materials."

     John Henry Newman, An essay on the development of Christian doctrine: the edition of 1845, ed. J. M. Cameron (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1974), 363 (VI.ii.2).

"nothing is more alien to the nature of a sacrament than to set before the people an empty spectacle, unaccompanied with explanation of the mystery."

     John Calvin, The necessity of reforming the church . . . (1544).  Tracts and treatises, trans. Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids, MI:  Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1958 [Edinburgh:  Calvin Translation Society, 1844]), vol. 1, p. 166.  = Supplex exhortatio ad invictissimum Caesarem Carolum quintum et illustrissimus principes. . . . / Supplication et remonstrance sur la faict de la chrestienté, et de la réformation de l'église. . . .  See Wulfert de Greef, The writings of John Calvin, expanded ed., trans. Lyle D. Bierma (Louisville, KY:  Westminster John Knox, 2008), 147 ff.

“Nihil autem magis alienum a sacramentis natura, quam inane spectaculum populo, absque mysterii enarratione, exhiberi” (CO 6, 488, ll. 15 ff.).

“Il n’y a rien plus repugnant à la nature des Sacremens, que de mettre en auant vn spectacle au people, sans declaration du mystere” (Recueil des opuscules (1566), 534, ll. 35 ff.).


     I wouldn't want the quote-sleuthing to go to waste, though there is also, of course, the danger of burying the mystery under a mountain of ennaratio.