HKB
absolute and universal; and in the love of the creature, as far as it is opposed to the love which is one with the reason, namely, the love of God.
Thus, then, to conclude. Faith subsists in the synthesis of the Reason and the individual Will. By virtue of the latter, therefore, it must be an energy, and, inasmuch as it relates to the whole moral man, it must be exerted in each and all of his constituents or incidents, faculties and tendencies;--it must be a total, not a partial--a continuous, not a desultory or occasional--energy. And by virtue of the former, that is, Reason, Faith must be a Light, a form of knowing, a beholding of Truth. In the incomparable words of the Evangelist, therefore,--Faith must be a Light originating in the Logos, or the substantial Reason, which is co-eternal and one with the Holy Will, and which Light is at the same time the Life of men.* Now, as *Life is here the sum or collective of all moral and spiritual acts, in suffering, doing, and being, so is Faith the source and the sum, the energy and the principle of the fidelity of Man to God, by the subordination of his human Will, in all provinces of his nature, to his Reason, as the sum of spiritual Truth, representing and manifesting the Will Divine.
[183] There are four kinds of Theses, Θεσεις, puttings or placings.
A and B are said to be thesis and antithesis, when if A be the thesis, B is the antithesis to A, and if B be made the thesis, then A becomes the antithesis. Thus making me the thesis, you are thou to me, but making you the thesis, I become thou to you. Synthesis is a putting together of the two, so that a third something is generated. Thus the synthesis of hydrogen and oxygen is water, a third something, neither hydrogen nor oxygen. But the blade of a knife and its handle when put together do not form a synthesis, but still remain a blade and a handle. And as a synthesis is a unity that results from the union of two things, so a prothesis is a primary unity that gives itself forth into two things.
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.
PRAYER.
A man may pray night and day, and yet deceive himself; but no man can be assured of his sincerity, who does not pray. Prayer is faith passing into act; a union of the will and the intellect realizing in an intellectual act. It is the whole man that prays. Less than this is wishing, or lip-work; a charm or a mummery. Pray always, says the Apostle;--that is, have the habit of prayer, turning your thoughts into acts by connecting them with the idea of the redeeming God, and even so reconverting your actions into thoughts.
THE SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST.