"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.

Creative single agency, redemptive double agency

   "Obj. 6: Further, man is justified by virtue. But Augustine commenting on Jn. 15:11: He shall do greater things than these, says: He who created thee without thee, will not justify thee without thee [(qui . . . fecit te sine te, non te iustificat sine te)]. It is therefore unsuitable to say that God works virtue in us, without us. . . .

   Reply Obj. 6: Infused virtue is caused in us by God without any action on our part, but not without our consent. This is the sense of the words, which God works in us without us. As to those things which are done by us, God causes them in us, yet not without action on our part, for He works in every will and in every nature."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II.55.4, trans. Aquinas Institute, but with the Latin of Augustine, Sermon 169.13, supplied by the Past Masters version of CAG, which has fecit rather than Aquinas' creauit, following (strangely) PL 38, p. 923 ll. 17-18, not CCSL 41Bb (2016), pp. (400-425), as given in Clavis Clavium.

"in us love is set in order by virtue"

"per virtutem enim ordinatur amor in nobis."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, following St. Augustine, Summa theologiae I-II.55.1.ad 4, trans. FEDP (i.e. Shapcote).