My new friend Kelly Foster just emailed this to me.
It’s a quote from John Milton’s Areopagitica, which I haven’t read since 1991, so it’s time to revisit it:
He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat… We boast our light; but if we look not wisely on the sun itself, it smites us into darkness.
Excellent and appropriate quote. It makes me want to re-read Areopagitica.
That is killer, I need to read this.
Milton’s talking specifically about theological discussion, but he still has a points worth considering in wider contexts.