To properly prepare a soul for God, one must "qualify it, cleanse it, strip it, and denude it of all opinion, belief, inclination, make it like a white sheet of paper, dead to itself and the world, so that God may live and operate in it."
— Charron, Pierre (1541-1603)
Author
Work Title
Date
1606
Metaphor
To properly prepare a soul for God, one must "qualify it, cleanse it, strip it, and denude it of all opinion, belief, inclination, make it like a white sheet of paper, dead to itself and the world, so that God may live and operate in it."
Metaphor in Context
But to press [these Roman Catholic critics of Skepticism] further and show them that they do not well understand their business, I will inform them that this principle of mine, which it pleases them to call Pyrrhonism, is something more serviceable to piety and divine working than any other whatever, and very far from clashing with them, serviceable, I say, as much for the generation and propagation of piety as for conversion. Theology, even like mysticism, teaches us that to prepare the soul properly for God and his working, and to qualify it, cleanse it, strip it, and denude it of all opinion, belief, inclination, make it like a white sheet of paper, dead to itself and the world, so that God may live and operate in it.
(p. 35)
(p. 35)
Categories
Provenance
Reading Bredvold, Louis. The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962. p. 35.
Theme
Blank Slate
Date of Entry
04/06/2005
