_Prothesis_
Christ, the Word.
_Thesis_ _Mesothesis_, _Antithesis_
or the Indifference,
The Scriptures. The Holy Spirit. The Church.
_Synthesis_
The Preacher.[170]
The Scriptures, the Spirit, and the Church, are co-ordinate; the
indispensable conditions and the working causes of the perpetuity, and
continued renascence and spiritual life of Christ still militant. The
Eternal Word, Christ from everlasting, is the _Prothesis_, or
identity;--the Scriptures and the Church are the two poles, or
_Thesis_ and _Antithesis_; and the Preacher in direct line under the
Spirit, but likewise the point of junction of the Written Word and the
Church, is the _Synthesis_.
This is God's Hand in the World.
[170] Coleridge gives this same "Pentad" in his "Notes on Donne,"
"Literary Remains," v. iii. pp. 92-153.--ED.
Seven Letters to a Friend concerning the bounds between the right, and
the superstitious, use and estimation of the Sacred Canon; in which
the Writer submissively discloses his own private judgment on the
following Questions:--
I. Is it necessary, or expedient, to insist on the belief of the
divine origin and authority of all, and every part of the Canonical
Books as the Condition, or first principle, of Christian Faith?--
II. Or, may not the due appreciation of the Scriptures collectively be
more safely relied on as the result and consequence of the belief in
Christ; the gradual increase--in respect of particular passages--of
our spiritual discernment of their truth and authority supplying a
test and measure of our own growth and progress as individual
believers, without the servile fear that prevents or overclouds the
free honour which cometh from love? 1 John iv. 18.