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| He Explains the Divine Image (Ver. 26) of the Renewal of the Mind. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter XXII.—He Explains the
Divine Image (Ver. 26) of the Renewal of the Mind.
32. For behold, O Lord our God, our Creator,
when our affections have been restrained from the love of the
world, by which we died by living ill, and began to be a “living
soul” by living well;1369
1369 As Origen has it: “The good man is he who truly
exists.” See p. 190, note 6, above; and compare the use made of
the idea in Archbishop Thomson’s Bampton Lectures, lect.
i. | and Thy word which Thou spakest by
Thy apostle is made good in us, “Be not conformed to this
world;” next also follows that which Thou presently subjoinedst,
saying, “But be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,”1370 —not now
after your kind, as if following your neighbour who went before
you, nor as if living after the example of a better man (for Thou
hast not said, “Let man be made after his kind,” but, “Let us
make man in our image, after our likeness”),1371 that we may prove what Thy will
is. For to this purpose said that dispenser of Thine,—begetting
children by the gospel,1372 —that he might not always have
them “babes,” whom he would feed on milk, and cherish as a
nurse;1373 “be ye
transformed,” saith He, “by the renewing of your mind, that he
may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of
God.”1374 Therefore
Thou sayest not, “Let man be made,” but, “Let us make man.”
Nor sayest Thou, “after his kind,” but, after “our image”
and “likeness.” Because, being renewed in his mind, and
beholding and apprehending Thy truth, man needeth not man as his
director1375 that he
may imitate his kind; but by Thy direction proveth what is that
good, and acceptable, and perfect will of Thine. And Thou teachest
him, now made capable, to perceive the Trinity of the Unity, and
the Unity of the Trinity. And therefore this being said in the
plural, “Let us make man,” it is yet subjoined in the singular,
“and God made man;” and this being said in the plural, “after
our likeness,” is subjoined in the singular, “after the image
of God.”1376 Thus is
man renewed in the knowledge of God, after the image of Him that
created him;1377 and being
made spiritual, he judgeth all things,—all things that are to be
judged,—“yet he himself is judged of no man.”1378
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