I am dead unto myself,
but I live in the Infinite. The finite Me is no more, only the Infinite,
the Eternal, is.
At the Renaissance this great half-truth overcame the other great
half-truth. The Christian Infinite, reached by a process of abnegation,
a process of being absorbed, dissolved, diffused into the great
Not-Self, supplanted the old pagan Infinite, wherein the self like a
root threw out branches and radicles which embraced the whole universe,
became the Whole.
There is only one Infinite, the world now cried, there is the great
Christian Infinite of renunciation and consummation in the not-self. The
other, that old pride, is damnation. The sin of sins is Pride, it is the
way to total damnation. Whereas the pagans based their life on pride.
And according to this new Infinite, reached through renunciation and
dissolving into the Others, the Neighbour, man must build up his actual
form of life. With Savonarola and Martin Luther the living Church
actually transformed itself, for the Roman Church was still pagan. Henry
VIII simply said: 'There is no Church, there is only the State.
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