St Anthony
17/January/2008 Filed in:
JottingsHow many people think today's saint is the gentle Franciscan from Padua rather than the mighty man of the desert? I like everything about the hermit Anthony (except his having put his sister into some sort of religious community when he disposed of the ancestral property) and I think Newman's summing up of him one of the best: "His doctrine surely was pure and unimpeachable; and his temper is high and heavenly, without cowardice, without gloom, without formality, without self-complacency. Superstition is abject and crouching, it is full of thoughts of guilt; it distrusts God, and dreads the powers of evil. Anthony at least had nothing of this, being full of confidence, divine peace, cheerfulness, and valorousness, be he (as some men may judge) ever so much an enthusiast". The sting in the tail reminds me of Benjamin Whichcote, the Cambridge Platonist: "If Christianity be ever exterminated, it will be because of enthusiasm." I wonder.