Tillyard: temptation to despair

Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Meditation:
    [The LORD] determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.
    —Psalm 147:4 (NIV)
Quotation:
    When Christianity was young and growing, there was general terror of the stars and a wide practice of astrology. The terror was mainly superstitious, and the only way of mitigating the stars’ enmity was through magic. It was one of the Church’s main tasks to reduce the license of... astrological superstition to her own discipline: there was no question of cutting it out altogether. Naturally, she did not wholly succeed, and her task could never be completed. In the Elizabethan as in earlier ages, the orthodox belief in the stars’ influence, sanctioned but articulated and controlled by the authority of religion, was not always kept pure from the terrors of primitive superstition... The superstitious terrors... have little specifically to do with the Elizabethan age. But it is worth reflecting (as is not always done) that even these were not all horror and loss. If mankind had to choose between a universe that ignored him and one that noticed him to do him harm, he might well choose the second. Our own age need not begin congratulating itself on its freedom from superstition till it defeats a more dangerous temptation to despair.
    ... E. M. W. Tillyard (1889-1962), The Elizabethan World Picture [1943], 9th ed., Vintage Books, 1960, p. 53-54 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, free us to receive Your revelation. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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