"the creature without the Creator melts into thin air"

Philip Halling

"If by the autonomy of earthly affairs we mean that created things and societies themselves enjoy their own laws and values which must be gradually deciphered, put to use, and regulated by men, then it is entirely right to demand that autonomy. . . . For by the very circumstance of their having been created, all things are endowed with their own stability, truth, goodness, proper laws and order. Man must respect these as he isolates them by the appropriate methods of the individual sciences or arts. . . .
     "But if the expression 'the independence of temporal affairs' is taken to mean that created things do not depend on God, and that man can use them without any reference to their Creator, anyone who acknowledges God will see how false such a meaning is [(nemo qui Deum agnoscit non sentit quam falsa huiusmodi placita sint)]. For without the Creator the creature would disappear [(Creatura enim sine creatore evanescit, For the creature without the Creator melts into thin air)]. . . ."

     Gaudium et spes 36, as trans. Liturgy of the hours.  Tanner, vol. 2, pp. 1090-1091:  "And all believers of whatever religion have always sensed the voice and manifestation of the creator in the utterances [(loquela)] of creatures.  If God is ignored the creature itself is impoverished [(Immo, per oblivionem Dei ipsa creatura obscuratur, So no, by [its] forgetfulness of God the creature itself is rendered indistinct)]."

"those who in this our generation speak where many listen, and write what many read"

1940:  Book of common order of the Church of Scotland by authority of the General Assembly (Edinburgh:  Oxford University Press, 1940), 299:

"For arts and letters"

"DIRECT and bless, we beseech Thee, Lord, those who in this our generation speak where many listen, and write what many read; that they may do their part in making the heart of the people wise, its mind sound, and its will righteous; to the honour of Jesus Christ our Lord.  AMEN."

1979:  Book of common prayer (New York:  Church Publishing Incorporated, 1979), 827:

"For those who influence public opinion"

"Almighty God, you proclaim your truth in every age by many voices:  direct, in our time, we pray, those who speak where many listen and write what many read; that they may do their part in making the heart of the people wise, its mind sound, and its will righteous; to the honor of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen."

"Dominus illuminatio mea"

"We should then in the fullest sense not only with our voice but with our very soul cry out, The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? If he enlightens and saves me, whom shall I fear? Even though the dark shadows of evil suggestions crowd about, The Lord is my light [(Veniant caligines suggestionum, Dominus illuminatio mea)]. They can approach, but cannot prevail; they can lay siege to our heart, but cannot conquer it. Though the blindness of concupiscence assails us, again we say: The Lord is my light [(Veniat caecitas cupiditatum, Dominus illuminatio mea)].  For he is our strength. . . ."

     St. John the Serene (sometimes Peacemaker; Giovanni Scriba or Giovanni d'Acquarola?), Bishop of Naples (Iohannes Mediocris episcopus Neapolitanus, CPL no. ), late 8th century-17 December 849, Sermon 7 =PLS 4, cols. 785-786, as trans. Office of readings for the Thursday of Week Three in Ordinary time, Liturgy of the hours.

"Motivations for positing 'Celtic Christianity'"

Source

 "[2] A vision of 'Celtic Christianity' which was not so [1] determined by denominational politics was promulgated by the Breton scholar Ernest Renan, . . . in an essay published in 1854.  Renan, estranged from his Roman Catholic roots, held that 'to the Celts . . . Christianity did not come from Rome; they had their native clergy, their own particular usages, their faith at first hand.'  Furthermore,

The Church did not feel herself bound to be hard on the caprices of religious imagination, but gave fair scope to the instincts of the people, and from this liberty there resulted a cult perhaps the most mythological and the most analogous to the mysteries of antiquity to be found in the annals of Christianity.

Allowing for the nuances of of individual expression, Renan's conception has survived virtually unmodified down to the present day, and doubtless has a long future still before it:  the progress of scholarship has, however, rendered it increasingly unacceptable to most specialists.  For others, such a conception of 'Celtic Christianity' offers an alternative to aspects of actual Christian practice and belief with which they have become disenchanted, and draws added strength from deeply entrenched romantic ideas concerning the 'Celtic character' more generally."

     John Carey, with Thomas O'Loughlin, "Christianity, Celtic. §4. Motivations for positing 'Celtic Christianity," in Celtic culture: a historical encyclopedia, ed. John T. Koch, 5 vols. (Santa Barbara:  ABC-CLIO, 2006), vol. 2, pp. 434-435.

"little of what was once thought distinctive about the nature of the church in Celtic lands is any longer accepted"

University of Glasgow

"The idea of a Celtic church has its roots in the Reformation.  For Protestants, the early Celtic saints embodied evangelical purity and a church wholly independent of Rome; the Reformation represented a return to the values of the indigenous British Christianity of a golden age.  This interpretation came to dominate historical perceptions in the succeeding centuries, and from it was born, in the 19th century, the concept of the 'Celtic church'. . . . [But] The concept of the Celtic church can no longer easily be defended. . . .  little of what was once thought distinctive about the nature of the church in Celtic lands is any longer accepted. . . .  All this being said, we may nevertheless notice a number of striking common features among the churches of the Celtic peoples. . . ."

     John Reuben Davies, Oxford dictionary of the Middle Ages, sv Celtic church (vol. 1 (2010), pp. 358-359, with starter bibliography).

"When some one inquired which were more in number, the living or the dead, [Anacharsis] rejoined, 'In which category, then, do you place those who are on the seas?'"

     Diogenes Laertius, Lives of eminent philosophers I.8 (Anacharsis).103-105, trans., R. D. Hicks, Loeb classical library, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 1959), 109.  Jan Fredrik Kindstrand, Anacharsis:  the Legend and the Apophthegmata, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis:  Studia Graeca Upsaliensis 16 (Stockholm:  Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1981), 145 (A33) on 116 (A33A-D):  "This apophthegma is also attributed to Dio of Prusa (Gnom. Bas. p. 177 and cod. Pal. Gr. 122 f. 157r) and in a very similar form to Bias (Ps-Plato Axiochus 368 B and Stobaeus Flor. 4.34.75).  Moreover the same question recurs in a dialogue between Alexander the Great and a Gymnosophist, although the answer is different . . . (Plutarch Alexander 64.2; more cases will be found in Sternbach's note on Gnom. Vat. 130)."
     Image:  Diogenis Laertii De vitis, dogmatibus et apophthegmatibus clarorum philosophorum libri x, vol. 1, ed. M. Meibom (Amsterdam:  apud Henricum Wetstenium, 1692), 64.

"'Think of all the great songs and epics you have known and the men who wrote them. And think how few of them, how very few, were ever worthy of what they sang or said. Far away upon the terraces of Antiquity, the voice of our father Ovid cries aloud for all the poets, his children: Video meliora proboque; deteriora sequor—"The better things I see and I approve them; but it is the baser that I follow". The sin I would not, that I do—and through the ages there have been prophets prophesying and poets testifying to eternal truths; but hardly ever a man behind them; hardly ever a strong, sane, balanced, complete man to follow them. The poets sit in the throne of Dante; whatsoever they command you to do, that do; but do not after their works. For they say and do not.'"

     The poet in G. K. Chesterton's The surprise (1932; first pub. 1952), act 2, scene 3; The collected works of G. K. Chesterton 11, Plays and Chesterton on Shaw, compiled and introduced by Denis J. Conlon (San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 1989), 330 (52 in the original, New York:  Sheed & Ward, 1952).  I have not yet read the whole play.