Sterne on the clergy

"like French politicians in this respect, what they gain in the cabinet they lose in the field."

     Walter Sterne on pulpit delivery in the Church of England, in Laurence Sterne, The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., II.17 (GBWW, 1st ed., 1952, vol. 36, p. 266). "I should have read it ten times better, Sir, answered Trim, but that my heart was so full.—That was the very reason, Trim, replied my father, which has made thee read the sermon as well as thou hast done; and if the clergy of our church, continued my father, addressing himself to Dr. Slop [(a Catholic)], would take their part in what they deliver a deeply as this poor fellow has done,—as their compositions are fine;—[I deny it, quoth Dr. Slop]—I maintain it,—that the eloquence of our pulpits, with such subjects to enflame it, would be a model for the whole world:—But alas! continued my father, and I own it, Sir, with sorrow, that, like French politicians in this respect, what they gain in the cabinet they lose in the field."

Sterne on the subordination of conscience

"'your conscience is not a law:—No, God and reason made the law, and have placed conscience within you to determine;—not, like an Asiatic Cadi, according to the ebbs and flows of his own passions,—but like a British judge in this land of liberty and good sense, who makes no new law, but faithfully declares that law which he knows already written.'"

     Yorick's Sermon on conscience; Laurence Sterne, The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., II.17 (GBWW, 1st ed., 1952, vol. 36, p. 266).

Sterne on the New atheists?

"'Whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions, which have got the better of his creed. A bad life and a good belief are disagreeable and troublesome neighbors, and where they separate, depend upon it, 'tis for no other cause but quietness' sake.'"

     Yorick's Sermon on conscience; Laurence Sterne, The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., II.17 (GBWW, 1st ed., 1952, vol. 36, p. 266).

Levy on a crucial principle of complementarity

"the West and the East. . . . manifestly designate the same state-of-thing under wordings that merely sound mutually exclusive. 'The vision of God according to essence,' as Augustine conceives it, does not designate a vision of God that would comprehend uno intuitu the wholeness of the divine Being. Yet this type of vision is precisely what the Eastern Fathers reject when they say that no created mind will ever be able to contemplate the essence of God. Correlatively, the 'vision of God according to the energeiai,' as conceived by the Greek Fathers, does not designate the vision of an entity numerically different from the divine essence (God is uncomposed). Yet this type of vision is precisely what Augustine rejects when he states that operations and essence are one in God. Once again, it is worthwhile emphasizing, in opposition to Bradshaw, that this difference in the wordings is not due to Augustine's ignorance of the philosophical patterns that inspired the Greek Fathers, but to his original way of reassuming these patterns. The fact that the interpretations of Augustine and of the Eastern Fathers, despite their difference of approach, coincide from a doctrinal point of view, is probably the best tribute possible to the idea that dogmatic unity within Christianity does not imply theoretical uniformity."

Antoine Levy, O.P., "An introduction to divine relativity: beyond David Bradshaw's Aristotle east and west," Thomist 72, no. 2 (April 2008): 219-220. The Orthodox distinction between the ousia and the energeiai is what one must stress when one theologizes from that (or God's) side of "the divine relativity". But their unity (and therefore the visio Dei, i.e. essentiae) is what one must stress when one theologizes from this (or man's) side. "there is no third point of view" from which these two complementary, yet "mutually exclusive" perspectives can both be embraced simultaneously: "one must choose [either] one system of reference or the other", either the East or the West. Yet doctrinally, they are identical (229). Constitutive of this complementarity is what Levy calls "the Porphryian Principle" (196 ff.): the asymetricality of the cosmological relation grounded in the utter (but therefore immanence-enabling) transcendence of God ("a relationship from B to A, but no relationship from A to B" (200); "created beings are in-a-state-of-relationship, en skehesei, whereas God is foreign-to-any-relationship, askhetos" (209); etc.). And an insistence upon this asymetricality is as fundamental to the East as it is to the West. Or so Levy.