I visited an Anglican parish in central Illinois last Saturday that has an icon of the once Anglican John Henry Newman. Inscribed beneath his likeness stood the famous line from St Augustine, so important to Newman's ultimate conversion to Roman Catholicism: securus iudicat orbis terrarum, 'the whole world judges securely.' If nothing else, this incident proves just how important it is that the Anglo-Catholic cultivate a sense of humor, and make self-deprecation a virtue. Anyway, I stumbled on this line from Newman in a book about Roman Catholic moral theology, and I thought I'd pass it along:
"Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk. Then may you hope to see with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason how to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man."
