Hi all,
I know Jim has in a sense prevented this, gracefully, but I just thought I
would chip in that I'm not that exercised about 'such', as grace could do
different things at different stages on the road to salvation, and one of
those stages (not the final one, by any means) was obviously the process
that resulted in contemptus mundi. I was thinking about Donne's 'Oh my
black soule!':
Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lacke;
But who shall give thee that grace to beginne?
The grace that brings you to repentance is different from the grace you
receive as a consequence of repentance.
It will be obvious that I interpret 'all heavenly grace' to mean 'really
souped-up heavenly grace', rather than 'every single heavenly kind of
heavenly grace'. And it will also be obvious that I hold Redcrosse's sin
responsible for his ongoing deathwish, and not grace itself. In the same
way that a surgeon has to make some initial cuts before she can perform
the necessary operation, grace here makes the problem worse before it can
improve it; but that's not to be laid at grace's door.
If I am manifesting some serious misunderstandings about heavenly grace,
my errant soul would be very grateful for a charitable correction (or
two).
andrew
Andrew Zurcher
Queens' College
Cambridge CB3 9ET
United Kingdom
+44 1223 335 572
hast hast post hast for lyfe
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