Faith and Words

We have on the one side auoided the scrupulositie of the Puritanes . . .; as also on the other side we haue shunned the obscuritie of the Papists, in their Azimes, Tutiike, Rational, Holocausts, Praepuce, Pasche, and a number of such like.'. . . [Catholic] correspondence of a singular freshness, authentic eighteenth-century, and authentic English, mere English, indeed, and utterly free from the stereotyped halfforeign jargon that later generations were to experience.''The fruits of the bloody sacrifice are superabundantly applied by the unbloody sacrifice.''I saw Pfuff's "Interrelated Harmony" described in the catalogue as a neo-amorphist experiment in intra-abstractionism. It is also an embodiment of universal mode-concepts, and the absence of stress emphasizes the integral tranquillity. Whirlpools of space would be a more accurate description of these non-emotional facets of dynamic passivity.'The first of these quotations is from the address to the reader of the translators of the Authorized Version of the Bible; the second is from a review in The Times Literary Supplement; the third is a contemporary theologian quoting from cap. 2 of session xxii of the Council of Trent; the fourth is from a satirical jape of 'Beachcomber'. They are part of the harvest of a little desultory reading, and serve well enough as an indication of what I want to talk- or rather, muse-about: words.Everything, however small, that can be a hindrance to faith is of importance; and as an experienced missioner has said, 'language can in fact be a pretty effective hindrance

Citation · Faith · Library science · Theology · Computer Science · Early Modern Women Writers · Medieval Literature and History · Moravian Church and William Blake · Philosophy