Saint Bernard on Consideration

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ...resists the power withstandeth the ordinance of God, '2 even if this mainly makes for you, it does not apply to you exclusively. In short, the same writer says, 'Let every soul be subject to the higher powers.'3 He does not say 'to the higher power ', as if all power belonged to one man, but 'to the higher powers ', since it resides in many. Your power, therefore, is not the only power from the Lord; there are middle and lower powers. And as those whom God hath conjoined are not to be put asunder,4 so those whom God hath subjoined are not to be put on a footing of equality. If you cut off a finger, attach it to your head, and let it hang side by side with your arm, as a hand for the upper parts of the body, you create a monstrosity. Something like this happens if you place the members in the body of Christ otherwise than He Himself arranged them. Unless you suppose it was not He, but another, who ' set some in the church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly evangelists, then teachers and pastors, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ'/' And yet it is this body which Paul sets before you with his own true apostolic eloquence, most admirably uniting it to the Head, and representing it as ' from Him 1 Rom. xiii. I. 2 Rom. xiii. 2. 3 Rom. xiii. i. 4 St. Matt. xix. 6. e 1 Cor. xii. 28. fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, making the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love '.1 And do not despise the mould on which you are to fashion yourself because it is the Church on earth; the pattern is derived from heaven. For not even the Son can do anything except what..