THE PENTAD OF OPERATIVE CHRISTIANITY
| 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.