Admiration

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  But Kitty could have worn anything - a string of bottle-tops about her neck - and still, I thought, look like a queen.Helping Kitty with her buttons made me slow with my own dressing; I said that she should go on down without me. When she had done so I pulled on the lovely gown that she had given me, then stepped to the glass to study myself - and to frown at what I saw. The dress was so transforming it was practically a disguise. In the half-light it was dark as midnight; my eyes appeared bluer above it than they really were, and my hair paler, and the long skirt, and the sash, made me seem taller and thinner than ever. I did not look at all like Kitty had, in her pink frock; I looked more like a boy who had donned his sister’s ball-gown for a lark. I loosened my plait of hair, then brushed it - then, because I had no time to tie and loop it, twisted it into a knot at the back of my head, and stuck a comb in it. The chignon, I thought, brought out the hard lines of my jaw and cheek-bones, made my wide shoulders wider still. I frowned again, and looked away. It would have to do - and would have the merit, I supposed, of making Kitty look all the daintier at my side.I went downstairs to join her. When I pushed at the parlour door I found her chatting with the others; they were all still at supper. Tootsie saw me first - and must have nudged Percy, beside her, for he glanced up from his plate and, catching sight of me, gave a whistle. Sims turned my way, then, and looked at me as if he had never seen me before, a forkful of food suspended on its journey to his open mouth.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  But during the research and writing, something else happened. Rather to my surprise, I found myself as strongly drawn to Muhammad as I had been to Saint Paul. “Your book is a love story,” the Pakistani scholar Akbar Ahmed told me years later. “If you had met the Prophet, you would have consented to be his fifteenth wife!” I am not sure about that, but I did find real pathos in his story. Muhammad lived in a dark and violent time, not dissimilar to our own. Because we know more about him than about the founder of almost any other major tradition, he emerges from the sources as far more human than either Jesus or the Buddha. We see him laughing, carrying his grandchildren on his shoulders, and weeping over the death of his friends. Above all, we see him struggling, sometimes literally sweating with the effort of bringing his people out of an apparently hopeless situation. We see his doubts, his grief, his moments of despair and terror. All this reminded me that religion is born of desperation, horror, and vulnerability as well as from moments of sublime insight. Even though I did not realize it fully at the time, my research was taking on a more “religious” character. I was working at top speed, with one eye on the clock, yet I was approaching my subject in an entirely different spirit. This time, there were no witty, sophisticated friends around telling me that it was all bonkers. I was working entirely on my own. With the plight of poor Rushdie constantly before us, Liz and I were acutely aware that the subject was highly sensitive, even explosive, and must not be approached with anything that could be construed as levity. There must be no slick remarks this time, no witty, biting polemic—as in The First Christian. When I was writing television tie-ins, it had always been essentially “my” show. I was not an established scholar, after all, so my books and programs were always presented as a highly personalized view. “I”—a contentious and hopefully entertaining personality—was very much to the fore. That would not work for Muhammad. In this dangerous climate, “I” had to stay in the background. This was not a policy adopted for idealistic reasons but was an editorial necessity. Yet editing out ego is—I now realize—an essential prerequisite for religious experience. Again, I had unwittingly started to practice one of the most universal religious principles, one that is central to all the world faiths. Further, I had to make a daily, hourly effort to enter into the ghastly conditions of seventh-century Arabia, and that meant that I had to leave my twentieth-century assumptions and predilections behind. I had to penetrate another culture and develop a wholly different way of looking at the world.

• From Wild (2012)

  “I mean serious. Like actual literature worth your time,” I replied. “Well, my time has never been worth all that much, you might like to know, since I’ve never made more than minimum wage and more often than not, I’ve slaved away for free.” She laughed lightly and swatted my arm with her hand, slipping effortlessly away from my judgment, the way she always did. When my mother died and the woman Eddie eventually married moved in, I took all the books I wanted from my mother’s shelf. I took the ones she’d bought in the early 1980s, when we’d first moved onto our land: The Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening and Double Yoga. Northland Wildflowers and Quilts to Wear. Songs for the Dulcimer and Bread Baking Basics. Using Plants for Healing and I Always Look Up the Word Egregious. I took the books she’d read to me, chapter by chapter, before I could read to myself: the unabridged Bambi and Black Beauty and Little House in the Big Woods. I took the books that she’d acquired as a college student in the years right before she died: Paula Gunn Allen’s The Sacred Hoop and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa’s This Bridge Called My Back. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. But I did not take the books by James Michener, the ones my mother loved the most. “Thank you,” I said now to Jeff, holding The Novel. “I’ll trade this for the Flannery O’Connor if you’d like. It’s an incredible book.” I stopped short of mentioning that I’d have to burn it that night in the woods if he said no. “Absolutely,” he replied, laughing. “But I think I’m getting the better deal.” After lunch, Christine drove me to the ranger station in Quincy, but when we got there, the ranger I spoke to seemed only dimly aware of the PCT. He hadn’t been on it this year, he told me, because it was still covered with snow. He was surprised to learn I had. I returned to Christine’s car and studied my guidebook to get my bearings. The only reasonable place to get back on the PCT was where it crossed a road fourteen miles west of where we were. “Those girls look like they might know something,” said Christine. She pointed across the parking lot to a gas station, where two young women stood next to a van with the name of a camp painted on its side.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But equally sublime and significant are the intellectual and spiritual victories of the church in this period over the science and art of heathenism, and over the assaults of Gnostic and Ebionitic heresy, with the copious vindication and development of the Christian truth, which the great mental conflict with those open and secret enemies called forth. The church of this period appears poor in earthly possessions and honors, but rich in heavenly grace, in world-conquering faith, love, and hope; unpopular, even outlawed, hated, and persecuted, yet far more vigorous and expansive than the philosophies of Greece or the empire of Rome; composed chiefly of persons of the lower social ranks, yet attracting the noblest and deepest minds of the age, and bearing, in her bosom the hope of the world; "as unknown, yet well-known, as dying, and behold it lives;" conquering by apparent defeat, and growing on the blood of her martyrs; great in deeds, greater in sufferings, greatest in death for the honor of Christ and the benefit of generations to come.2

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  33 While kings routinely confiscated other people’s possessions, Abraham was always meticulously respectful of property rights. He would not even keep the booty he acquired in a raid he had fought simply to rescue his nephew Lot, who had been kidnapped by four marauding kings. 34 His kindness and hospitality to three passing strangers stand in stark contrast to the violence they experienced in civilized Sodom. 35 When Yahweh told Abraham that he planned to destroy Sodom, Abraham begged him to spare the city, because unlike rulers who had scant respect for human life, he had a horror of shedding innocent blood. 36 When the biblical authors tell us about Jacob on his deathbed blessing his twelve sons and prophesying their future, they are asking what kind of leader is needed to create a viable egalitarian society in such a ruthless world. Jacob rejected Simeon and Levi, whose reckless violence meant that they should never control territory, populations, and armies. 37 He predicted that Judah, who could admit and correct his mistakes, would make an ideal ruler. 38 But no state could survive without Joseph’s political savvy, so when the Israelites finally escaped from Egypt, they took Joseph’s bones with them to the Promised Land. Then there were occasions when a nation might need Levi’s radicalism, because without the aggressive determination of the Levite Moses, Israel would never have left Egypt. The book of Exodus depicts Egyptian imperialism as an extreme example of systemic oppression. The pharaohs made the Israelites’ lives “unbearable,” compelling them to “work with clay and with brick, all kinds of work in the fields; [forcing] on them every kind of labour.” 39 To stem their rising birthrate, Pharaoh even ordered the midwives to kill all Israelite male babies, but the infant Moses was rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter and brought up as an Egyptian aristocrat. One day in instinctive revulsion from state tyranny, Moses, a true son of Levi, killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew slave. 40 He had to flee the country, and Yahweh, who had not revealed himself to Moses the Egyptian aristocrat, first spoke to him when he was working as a shepherd in Midian. 41 During the Exodus, Yahweh could liberate Israel only by using the same brutal tactics as any imperial power: terrorizing the population, slaughtering their children, and drowning the entire Egyptian army. Peaceful tactics were of no avail against the martial might of the state.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In general the excellences of the church fathers are very various. Polycarp is distinguished, not for genius or learning, but for patriarchal simplicity and dignity; Clement of Rome, for the gift of administration; Ignatius, for impetuous devotion to episcopacy, church unity, and Christian martyrdom; Justin, for apologetic zeal and extensive reading; Irenaeus, for sound doctrine and moderation; Clement of Alexandria, for stimulating fertility of thought; Origen, for brilliant learning and bold speculation; Tertullian, for freshness and vigor of intellect, and sturdiness of character; Cyprian, for energetic churchliness; Eusebius, for literary industry in compilation; Lactantius, for elegance of style. Each had also his weakness. Not one compares for a moment in depth and spiritual fulness with a St. Paul or St. John; and the whole patristic literature, with all its incalculable value, must ever remain very far below the New Testament. The single epistle to the Romans or the Gospel of John is worth more than all commentaries, doctrinal, polemic, and ascetic treatises of the Greek and Latin fathers, schoolmen, and reformers. The ante-Nicene fathers may be divided into five or six classes: (1.) The apostolic fathers, or personal disciples of the apostles. Of these, Polycarp, Clement, and Ignatius are the most eminent. (2.) The apologists for Christianity against Judaism and heathenism: Justin Martyr and his successors to the end of the second century. (3.) The controversialists against heresies within the church: Irenaeus, and Hippolytus, at the close of the second century and beginning of the third. (4.) The Alexandrian school of philosophical theology: Clement and Origen, in the first half of the third century. (5.) The contemporary but more practical North African school of Tertullian and Cyprian. (6.) Then there were also the germs of the Antiochian school, and some less prominent writers, who can be assigned to no particular class. Together with the genuine writings of the church fathers there appeared in the first centuries, in behalf both of heresy and of orthodoxy, a multitude of apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Apocalypses, under the names of apostles and of later celebrities; also Jewish and heathen prophecies of Christianity, such as the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Books of Hydaspes, Of Hermas Trismegistos, and of the Sibyls. The frequent use made of such fabrications of an idle imagination even by eminent church teachers, particularly by the apologists, evinces not only great credulity and total want of literary criticism, but also a very imperfect development of the sense of truth, which had not yet learned utterly to discard the pia fraus as immoral falsehood. Notes.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It is here to be considered, first of all, that Christianity spread freely among the slaves, except where they were so rude and degraded as to be insensible to all higher impressions. They were not rarely (as Origen observes) the instruments of the conversion of their masters, especially of the women, and children, whose training was frequently intrusted to them. Not a few slaves died martyrs, and were enrolled among the saints; as Onesimus, Eutyches, Victorinus, Maro, Nereus, Achilleus, Blandina, Potamiaena, Felicitas. Tradition makes Onesimus, the slave of Philemon, a bishop. The church of St. Vital at Ravenna—the first and noblest specimen of Byzantine architecture in Italy—was dedicated by, Justinian to the memory of a martyred slave. But the most remarkable instance is that of Callistus, who was originally a slave, and rose to the chair of St. Peter in Rome (218–223). Hippolytus, who acquaints us with his history, attacks his doctrinal and disciplinarian views, but does not reproach him for his former condition. Callistus sanctioned the marriages between free Christian women and Christian slaves. Celsus cast it up as a reproach to Christianity, that it let itself down so readily to slaves, fools, women, and children. But Origen justly saw an excellence of the new religion in this very fact, that it could raise this despised and, in the prevailing view, irreclaimable class of men to the level of moral purity and worth. If, then, converted slaves, with the full sense of their intellectual and religious superiority still remained obedient to their heathen masters, and even served them more faithfully than before, resisting decidedly only their immoral demands (like Potamiaena, and other chaste women and virgins in the service of voluptuous masters)—they showed, in this very self-control, the best proof of their ripeness for civil freedom, and at the same time furnished the fairest memorial of that Christian faith, which raised the soul, in the enjoyment of sonship with God and in the hope of the blessedness of heaven, above the sufferings of earth. Euelpistes, a slave of the imperial household, who was carried with Justin Martyr to the tribunal of Rusticus, on being questioned concerning his condition, replied: "I am a slave of the emperor, but I am also a Christian, and have received liberty from Jesus Christ; by his grace I have the same hope as my brethren." Where the owners of the slaves themselves became Christians, the old relation virtually ceased; both came together to the table of the Lord, and felt themselves brethren of one family, in striking contrast with the condition of things among their heathen neighbors as expressed in the current proverb: "As many enemies as slaves."624 Clement of Alexandria frequently urges that "slaves are men like ourselves," though he nowhere condemns the institution itself. That there actually were such cases of fraternal fellowship, like that which St. Paul recommended to Philemon, we have the testimony of Lactantius, at the end of our period, who writes in his Institutes, no doubt from life: "Should any say: Are there not also among you poor and rich, servants and masters, distinctions among individuals? No; we call ourselves brethren for no other reason than that we hold ourselves all equal. For since we measure everything human not by its outward appearance, but by its intrinsic value we have notwithstanding the difference of outward relations, no slaves, but we call them and consider them brethren in the Spirit and fellow-servants in religion."625 The same writer says: "God would have all men equal .... With him there is neither servant nor master. If he is the same Father to all, we are all with the same right free. So no one is poor before God, but he who is destitute of righteousness; no one rich, but he who is full of virtues."626

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  When the apologists indignantly repel the heathen calumnies, and confidently point to the unfeigned piety, the brotherly love, the love for enemies, the purity and chastity, the faithfulness and integrity, the patience and gentleness, of the confessors of the name of Jesus, they speak from daily experience and personal observation. "We, who once served lust," could Justin Martyr say without exaggeration, "now find our delight only in pure morals; we, who once followed sorcery, have now consecrated ourselves to the eternal good God; we, who once loved gain above all, now give up what we have for the common use, and share with every needy one; we, who once hated and killed each other; we, who would have no common hearth with foreigners for difference of customs, now, since the appearance of Christ, live with them, pray for our enemies, seek to convince those who hate us without cause, that they may regulate their life according to the glorious teaching of Christ, and receive from the all-ruling God the same blessings with ourselves." Tertullian could boast that he knew no Christians who suffered by the hand of the executioner, except for their religion. Minutius Felix tells the heathens601: "You prohibit adultery by law, and practise it in secret; you punish wickedness only in the overt act; we look upon it as criminal even in thought. You dread the inspection of others; we stand in awe of nothing but our own consciences as becomes Christians. And finally your prisons are overflowing with criminals; but they are all heathens, not a Christian is there, unless he be an apostate." Even Pliny informed Trajan, that the Christians, whom he questioned on the rack respecting the character of their religion, had bound themselves by an oath never to commit theft, robbery, nor adultery, nor to break their word and this, too at a time when the sins of fraud, uncleanness and lasciviousness of every form abounded all around. Another heathen, Lucian, bears testimony to their benevolence and charity for their brethren in distress, while he attempts to ridicule this virtue as foolish weakness in an age of unbounded selfishness.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "Calvin’s work was national, and more; he gave to the Reformation a universality like that of the gigantic system with which they [the Reformers] all were at war. Calvin, more than any other man that has ever lived, deserves to be called the Pope of Protestantism. While he was still living his opinions were deferred to by kings and prelates, and even after he was dead his power was confessed by his enemies. The papists called his Institutes The Heretics’ Koran.... He set up authority against authority, and maintained and perpetuated what he set up by the inherent clearness and energy and vigor of his own mental conceptions. The authority of the Romish Pope was based upon the venerable tradition of the past that had grown up by the accretion of ages; the authority of the Protestant Pope rested upon a logical structure which he himself built up, out of blocks hewn from alleged Scripture assertion and legitimate inferences therefrom.... "The man himself is one of the wonders of all time, and his work was admirable, beyond any words of appreciation that it is possible for me to utter. For while he himself tolerated no differences of theological opinion, and would have bound all thought by his own logical chain, this nineteenth century is as much indebted to his work as it is to that of Luther. That work constituted the world’s largest step towards democratic freedom. It set the individual man in the presence of the living God, and made the solitary soul, whether of prince or pauper, to feel its responsibility to, and dependence upon, Him alone who from eternity has decreed the sparrow’s flight or fall. Out of this logical conception of the equality of all men in the presence of Jehovah, he deduced the true republican character of the Church; a theory to which all Americans, and especially we of New England, owe our rich inheritance. He gave to the world, what it had not before, a majestic and consistent conception of a kingdom of God ruling in the affairs of men; of the beauty and the blessedness of a true Christian state; of the possibility of the city of God being one day realized in the universal subordination of human souls to divine authority...." For testimonies bearing upon Calvin’s system of discipline, see below, § 110. CHAPTER IX.FROM FRANCE TO SWITZERLAND.§ 69. Calvin’s Youth and Training. Calvini Opera, vol. XXI. (1879).—On Noyon and the family of Calvin, Jacques Le Vasseur (Dr. of theology, canon and dean of the cathedral of Noyon): Annales de l’église cathédrale de Noyon. Paris, 1633, 2 vols. 4°.—Jacques Desmay(Dr. of the Sorbonne and vicar-general of the diocese of Rouen): Remarques sur la vie de Jean Calvin tirées des Registres de Noyon, lieu de sa naissance. Rouen, 1621. Thomas M’Crie (d. 1835): The Early Years of Calvin. A Fragment. 1509–1536. Ed. by William Ferguson. Edinburgh, 1880 (199 pp.). A posthumous work of the learned biographer of Knox and Melville.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Heathenism, on the contrary, just because of its own degradation of woman, and its low, sensual conception of marriage, frequently includes celibacy in its ideal of morality, and associates it with worship. The noblest form of heathen virginity appears in the six Vestal virgins of Rome, who, while girls of from six to ten years, were selected for the service of the pure goddess, and set to keep the holy fire burning on its altar; but, after serving thirty years, were allowed to return to secular life and marry. The penalty for breaking their vow of chastity was to be buried alive in the campus sceleratus. The ascetic depreciation of marriage is thus due, at least in part, to the influence of heathenism. But with this was associated the Christian enthusiasm for angelic purity in opposition to the horrible licentiousness of the Graeco-Roman world. It was long before Christianity raised woman and the family life to the purity and dignity which became them in the kingdom of God. In this view, we may the more easily account for many expressions of the church fathers respecting the female sex, and warnings against intercourse with women, which to us, in the present state of European and American civilization, sound perfectly coarse and unchristian. John of Damascus has collected in his Parallels such patristic expressions as these: "A woman is an evil." "A rich woman is a double evil." "A beautiful woman is a whited sepulchre." "Better is a man’s wickedness than a woman’s goodness." The men who could write so, must have forgotten the beautiful passages to the contrary in the proverbs of Solomon; yea, they must have forgotten their own mothers. On the other hand, it may be said, that the preference given to virginity had a tendency to elevate woman in the social sphere and to emancipate her from that slavish condition under heathenism, where she could be disposed of as an article of merchandise by parents or guardians, even in infancy or childhood. It should not be forgotten that many virgins of the early church devoted their whole energies as deaconesses to the care of the sick and the poor, or exhibited as martyrs a degree of passive virtue and moral heroism altogether unknown before. Such virgins Cyprian, in his rhetorical language, calls "the flowers of the church, the masterpieces of grace, the ornament of nature, the image of God reflecting the holiness of our Saviour, the most illustrious of the flock of Jesus Christ, who commenced on earth that life which we shall lead once in heaven." The excessive regard for celibacy and the accompanying depreciation of marriage date from about the middle of the second century, and reach their height in the Nicene age.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He made such progress in learning that he occasionally supplied the place of the professors. He was considered a doctor rather than an auditor.398 Years afterwards, the memory of his prolonged night studies survived in Orleans and Bourges. By his excessive industry he stored his memory with valuable information, but undermined his health, and became a victim to headache, dyspepsia, and insomnia, of which he suffered more or less during his subsequent life.399 While he avoided the noisy excitements and dissipations of student life, he devoted his leisure to the duties and enjoyments of friendship with like-minded fellow-students. Among them were three young lawyers, Duchemin, Connan, and François Daniel, who felt the need of a reformation and favored progress, but remained in the old Church. His letters from that period are brief and terse; they reveal a love of order and punctuality, and a conscientious regard for little as well as great things, but not a trace of opposition to the traditional faith. His principal teacher in Greek and Hebrew was Melchior Volmar (Wolmar), a German humanist of Rottweil, a pupil of Lefèvre, and successively professor in the universities of Orleans and Bourges, and, at last, at Tübingen, where he died in 1561. He openly sympathized with the Lutheran Reformation, and may have exerted some influence upon his pupil in this direction, but we have no authentic information about it.400 Calvin was very intimate with him, and could hardly avoid discussing with him the religious question which was then shaking all Europe. In grateful remembrance of his services he dedicated to him his Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Aug. 1, 1546).401 His teachers in law were the two greatest jurists of the age, Pierre d’Estoile (Petrus Stella) at Orleans, who was conservative, and became President of the Parliament of Paris, and Andrea Alciati at Bourges, a native of Milan, who was progressive and continued his academic career in Bologna and Padua. Calvin took an interest in the controversy of these rivals, and wrote a little preface to the Antapologia of his friend, Nicholas Duchemin, in favor of d’Estoile.402 He acquired the degree of Licentiate or Bachelor of Laws at Orleans, Feb. 14, 1531 (1532).403 On leaving the university he was offered the degree of Doctor of Laws without the usual fees, by the unanimous consent of the professors.404 He was consulted about the divorce question of Henry VIII., when it was proposed to the universities and scholars of the Continent; and he gave his opinion against the lawfulness of marriage with a brother’s widow.405 The study of jurisprudence sharpened his judgment, enlarged his knowledge of human nature, and was of great practical benefit to him in the organization and administration of the Church in Geneva, but may have also increased his legalism and overestimate of logical demonstration.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The patristic literature in general falls considerably below the classical in elegance of form, but far surpasses it in the sterling quality of its matter. It wears the servant form of its master, during the days of his flesh, not the splendid, princely garb of this world. Confidence in the power of the Christian truth made men less careful of the form in which they presented it. Besides, many of the oldest Christian writers lacked early education, and had a certain aversion to art, from its manifold perversion in those days to the service of idolatry and immorality. But some of them, even in the second and third centuries, particularly Clement and Origen, stood at the head of their age in learning and philosophical culture; and in the fourth and fifth centuries, the literary productions of an Athanasius, a Gregory, a Chrysostom, an Augustin, and a Jerome, excelled the contemporaneous heathen literature in every respect. Many fathers, like the two Clements, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Tertullian, Cyprian, and among the later ones, even Jerome and Augustin, embraced Christianity after attaining adult years; and it is interesting to notice with what enthusiasm, energy, and thankfulness they laid hold upon it. The term "church-father" originated in the primitive custom of transferring the idea of father to spiritual relationships, especially to those of teacher, priest, and bishop. In the case before us the idea necessarily includes that of antiquity, involving a certain degree of general authority for all subsequent periods and single branches of the church. Hence this title of honor is justly limited to the more distinguished teachers of the first five or six centuries, excepting, of course, the apostles, who stand far above them all as the inspired organs of Christ. It applies, therefore, to the period of the oecumenical formation of doctrines, before the separation of Eastern and Western Christendom. The line of the Latin fathers is generally closed with Pope Gregory I. (d. 604), the line of the Greek with John of Damascus (d. about 754). Besides antiquity, or direct connection with the formative age of the whole church, learning, holiness, orthodoxy, and the approbation of the church, or general recognition, are the qualifications for a church father. These qualifications, however, are only relative. At least we cannot apply the scale of fully developed orthodoxy, whether Greek, Roman, or Evangelical, to the ante-Nicene fathers. Their dogmatic conceptions were often very indefinite and uncertain. In fact the Roman church excludes a Tertullian for his Montanism, an Origen for his Platonic and idealistic views, an Eusebius for his semi-Arianism, also Clement of Alexandria, Lactantius, Theodoret, and other distinguished divines, from the list of "fathers" (Patres), and designates them merely "ecclesiastical writers" (Scriptores Ecclastici).

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Donaldson: A Critical Hist. of Christian Liter., etc. Lond., 1866, II 126 sqq. He was inclined to assume that Henry Stephens, the first editor, manufactured the Ep., but gave up the strange hypothesis, which was afterwards reasserted by Cotterill in his Peregrinus Proteus, 1879. Franz Overbeck: Ueber den pseudo-justinischen Brief an Diognet. Basel 1872. And again with additions in his Studien zur Geschichte der alten Kirche (Schloss-Chemnitz, 1875), p. 1–92. He represents the Ep. (like Donaldson) as a post-Constantinian fiction, but has been refuted by Hilgenfeld, Keim, Lipsius, and Dräseke. Joh. Dräseke: Der Brief an Diognetos. Leipz. 1881 (207 pp.). Against Overbeck and Donaldson. The Ep. was known and used by Tertullian, and probably composed in Rome by a Christian Gnostic (perhaps Appelles). Unlikely. Heinr. Kihn (R.C.): Der Ursprung des Briefes an Diognet. Freiburg i. B. 1882 (XV. and 168 pages). Semisch: art. Diognet, in Herzog2 III. 611–615 (and in his Justin der Märt., 1840, vol. I. 172 sqq.); Schaff, in McClintock and Strong, III. 807 sq., and Birks, in Smith and Wace, II. 162–167. The Ep. to D. has also been discussed by Neander, Hefele, Credner, Möhler, Bunsen, Ewald, Dorner, Hilgenfeld, Lechler, Baur, Harnack, Zahn, Funk, Lipsius, Keim (especially in Rom und das Christhum, 460–468). 1. The short but precious document called the Epistle to Diognetus was unknown in Christian literature1310 until Henry Stephens, the learned publisher of Paris, issued it in Greek and Latin in 1592, under the name of Justin Martyr.1311 He gives no account of his sources. The only Codex definitely known is the Strassburg Codex of the thirteenth century, and even this (after having been thoroughly compared by Professor Cunitz for Otto’s edition), was destroyed in the accidental fire at Strassburg during the siege of 1870.1312 So great is the mystery hanging over the origin of this document, that some modern scholars have soberly turned it into a post-Constantinian fiction in imitation of early Christianity, but without being able to agree upon an author, or his age, or his nationality. Yet this most obscure writer of the second century is at the same time the most brilliant; and while his name remains unknown to this day, he shed lustre on the Christian name in times when it was assailed and blasphemed from Jew and Gentile, and could only be professed at the risk of life. He must be ranked with the "great unknown" authors of Job and the Epistle to the Hebrews, who are known only to God.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "Calvin’s Commentaries, although they too are almost entirely doctrinal and practical, taking little note of critical and philosophical questions, keep much closer to the text [than Luther’s], and make it their one business to bring out the meaning of the words of Scripture with fulness and precision. This they do with the excellence of a master richly endowed with the word of wisdom and with the word of knowledge, and from the exemplary union of a severe masculine understanding with a profound insight into the spiritual depths of the Scriptures, they are especially calculated to be useful in counteracting the erroneous tendencies of an age, when we seem about to be inundated with all that was fantastical and irrational in the exegetical mysticism of the Fathers, and are bid to see divine power in all allegorical cobwebs, and heavenly life in artificial flowers. I do not mean to imply an adoption or approval of all Calvin’s views, whether on doctrinal or other questions. But we may happily owe much gratitude and love, and the deepest intellectual obligations, to those whom at the same time we may, deem to be mistaken on certain points." Thomas H. Dyer. The Life of John Calvin. London, 1850, p. 533 sq. "That Calvin was in some respects a really great man, and that the eloquent panegyric of his friend and disciple Beza contains much that is true, will hardly be denied. In any circumstances his wonderful abilities and extensive learning would have made him a shining light among the doctors of the Reformation; an accidental, or, as his friends and followers would say, a providential and predestinated visit to Geneva, made him the head of a numerous and powerful sect. Naturally deficient in that courage which forms so prominent a trait in Luther’s character, and which prompted him to beard kings and emperors face to face, Calvin arrived at Geneva at a time when the rough and initiatory work of Reform had already been accomplished by his bolder and more active friend Farel. Some peculiar circumstances in the political condition of that place favored the views which he seems to have formed very shortly after his arrival.... "The preceding narrative has already shown how, from that time to the hour of his death, his care and labor were constantly directed to the consolidation of his power, and to the development of his scheme of ecclesiastical polity. In these objects he was so successful that it may be safely affirmed that none of the Reformers, not even Luther himself, attained to so absolute and extensive an influence." Archdeacon Frederic W. Farrar, D. D., F. R. S. History of Interpretation. London, 1886, pp. 342–344.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In the same year the Elector Frederick made such a manly and noble defence of his faith before the Diet at Augsburg, that even his Lutheran opponents were filled with admiration for his piety, and thought no longer of impeaching him for heresy. The Helvetic Confession is the most widely adopted, and hence the most authoritative of all the Continental Reformed symbols, with the exception of the Heidelberg Catechism. It was sanctioned in Zürich and the Palatinate (1566), Neuchâtel (1568), by the Reformed Churches of France (at the Synod of La Rochelle, 1571), Hungary (at the Synod of Debreczin, 1567), and Poland (1571 and 1578). It was well received also in Holland, England, and Scotland as a sound statement of the Reformed faith. It was translated not only into German, French, and English, but also into Dutch, Magyar, Polish, Italian, Arabic, and Turkish. In Austria and Bohemia the Reformed or Calvinists are officially called "the Church of the Helvetic Confession," "the Lutherans, the Church of the Augsburg Confession." THIRD BOOK.THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND or THE CALVINISTIC MOVEMENT.–––––––––– CHAPTER VII.THE PREPARATORY WORK. FROM 1526 TO 1536. § 58. Literature on Calvin and the Reformation in French Switzerland. Important documents relating to the Reformation in French Switzerland are contained in the Archives of Geneva and Bern. Many documents have been recently published by learned Genevese archaeologists, as Galiffe, father and son, Grénus, Revilliod, E. Mallet, Chaponnière, Fick, and the Society of History and Archaeology of Geneva. The best Calvin libraries are in the University of Geneva, where his MSS. are preserved in excellent order, and in the St. Thomasstift at Strassburg. The latter was collected by Profs. Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, the editors of Calvin’s Works, during half a century, and embraces 274 publications of the Reformer (among them 36 Latin and 18 French editions of the Institutio), many rare contemporary works, and 700 modern books bearing upon Calvin and his Reformation. The Society of the History of French Protestantism in Paris (64 rue des saints pères) has a large collection of printed works. I. Correspondence of the Swiss Reformers and their Friends. Letters took to a large extent the place of modern newspapers and pamphlets; hence their large number and importance. *A. S. Herminjard: Correspondance des réformateurs dans les pays de langue française, etc. Genève et Paris (Fischbacher, 33 rue de Seine), 1866–’86, 7 vols. To be continued. The most complete collection of letters of the Reformers of French Switzerland and their friends, with historical and biographical notes. The editor shows an extraordinary familiarity with the history of the French and Swiss Reformation. The first three volumes embrace the period from 1512 to 1536; vols. IV.–VII. extend from 1536 to 1642, or from the publication of Calvin’s Institutes to the acceptance of the ecclesiastical ordinances at Geneva. For the following years to the death of Calvin (1564) we have the correspondence in the Strassburg-Brunswick edition of Calvin’s works, vols. X.–XX. See below.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  With spiritual exercises manual labor was united, agriculture, boat building, basketmaking, mat and coverlet weaving, by which the monks not only earned their own living, but also supported the poor and the sick. They were divided, according to the grade of their ascetic piety, into four and twenty classes, named by the letters of the Greek alphabet. They lived three in a cell. They ate in common, but in strict silence, and with the face covered. They made known their wants by signs. The sick were treated with special care. On Saturday and Sunday they partook of the communion. Pachomius, as abbot, or archimandrite, took the oversight of the whole; each cloister having a separate superior and a steward. Pachomius also established a cloister of nuns for his sister, whom he never admitted to his presence when she would visit him, sending her word that she should be content to know that he was still alive. In like manner, the sister of Anthony and the wife of Ammon became centres of female cloister life, which spread with great rapidity. Pachomius, after his conversion never ate a full meal, and for fifteen years slept sitting on a stone. Tradition ascribes to him all sorts of miracles, even the gift of tongues and perfect dominion over nature, so that he trod without harm on serpents and scorpions, and crossed the Nile on the backs of crocodiles!333 Soon after Pachomius, fifty monasteries arose on the Nitrian mountain, in no respect inferior to those in the Thebaid. They maintained seven bakeries for the benefit of the anchorets in the neighboring Libyan desert, and gave attention also, at least in later days, to theological studies; as the valuable manuscripts recently discovered there evince. From Egypt the cloister life spread with the rapidity of the irresistible spirit of the age, over the entire Christian East. The most eminent fathers of the Greek church were either themselves monks for a time, or at all events friends and patrons of monasticism. Ephraim propagated it in Mesopotamia; Eustathius of Sebaste in Armenia and Paphlagonia; Basil the Great in Pontus and Cappadocia. The latter provided his monasteries and nunneries with clergy, and gave them an improved rule, which, before his death (379), was accepted by some eighty thousand monks, and translated by Rufinus into Latin. He sought to unite the virtues of the anchorite and coenobite life, and to make the institution useful to the church by promoting the education of youth, and also (as Athanasius designed before him) by combating Arianism among the people.334 He and his friend Gregory Nazianzen were the first to unite scientific theological studies with the ascetic exercises of solitude. Chrysostom wrote three books in praise and vindication of the monastic life, and exhibits it in general in its noblest aspect.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Nevertheless, this forerunner of modern investigation may by common verdict, though unhonored in his own age, come to be placed higher as a benefactor of mankind than the master of metaphysical subtlety, Duns Scotus, who spoke to his age and its immediate successors with authority.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  Being historically minded and realistic in its interest^ the social gospel is less concerned in the metaphysical problems involved in the trinjtarian and christological 148 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL doctrines. The speculative problem of christological dogma was how the divine and human natures united in the one person of Christ; the problem of the social gospel is how the divine life of Christ can get control of human society. The social gospel is concerned about a progressive social incarnation of God. The social gospel is believed by trinitarians and Uni- tarians alike, by Catholic Modernists and Kansas Pres- byterians of the most cerulean colour. It arouses a fresh and warm loyalty to Christ wherever it goes, though not always a loyalty to the Church. All who be- lieve in it are at one in desiring the spiritual sovereignty of Christ in humanity. Their attitude to the problems of the creeds will usually be determined by other influ- ences. Yet there are certain qualities in the social gospel which may create a feeling of apathy toward the specu- lative questions. It is modern and is out for realities. It is ethical and wants ethical results from theology. It is solidaristic and feels homesick in the atomistic desert of individualism. The social gospel joins with all modern thought in the feeling that the old theology does not give us a Christ who is truly personal. Just as the human race, when it appears in theology, is an amorphous metaphys- ical conception which could be more briefly designated by an algebraic symbol, in the same way the personality of Jesus is not allowed to be real under theological in- fluence. If it does stand out vital and resolute, it is in spite of theology and not because of it. Some of the INITIATOR OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 149 greatest theologians, men who wrote epoch-making treatises about Christ, such as Athanasius, give no indi- cation that the personality of Jesus was live and real to them. When those who have been trained under the old religious beliefs come under the influence of his- torical teaching, the realization that Jesus was actually a person, and not merely part of a scheme of redemp- tion,’’ often comes as a great and beneficent shock. He has been made part of a scheme of salvation, the second premise in a great syllogism. The social gospel wants to see a personality able to win hearts, dominate situa- tions, able to bind men in loyalty and make them think like himself, and to set revolutionary social forces in motion.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  INITIATOROF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 165 in his life, he would be simply one of a group of brilliant Russian novelists. Since he received something of the mindof Jesus into his mind, he became one of the pro- pheticfigures of our age and noone cantell howmuch he contributed, through others, toenable Russia, newly free, to make the one sincere and penetrating utterance made on behalf of democracy and peace inthe Spring and Summerof 1917. In the same way those religious movements in which the distinctiveideasand spirit of Jesus havebroken forth again, have beenthe fruitful and prophetic movementsin religion. Their power of attack can bestbe measured by the ferocity withwhich the Kingdom of Evil has trampled on them. The Kingdom of God is nota concept nor an ideal merely, but an historical force. It isa vital and organ- izing energy now atwork in humanity. Its capacity to savethe social order depends on its pervasivepresence within the social organism. Every institutional foot- hold gainedgives a purchase for attacking the next van- tage-point. Wherea really Christian type of religious life is created, the intellectand its educationareset free, and this in turn aids religion to emancipate itself from su- perstition and dogmatism. Where religion and intellect combine, the foundation islaid for political democracy. Where the people have the outfit and the spirit of democracy, they can curb econornic exploitation. Where predatory gain andthe resultant inequality are lessened, fraternal feeling and understanding become easier and the sense of solidaritygrows. Where men livein the consciousness of solidarity andinthe actual practice of

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  est is all for a real personality who could set a great historical process in motion; it wants his work interpreted by the purposes which ruled and directed his active life; it would have more interest in basing the divine quality of his personality on free and ethical acts of his will than in dwelling on the passive inheritance of a divine essence. The fundamental first step in the salvation of man- kind was the achievement of the personality of Jesus. Within him the Kingdom of God got its first foothold in humanity. It was by virtue of his personality that he became the initiator of the Kingdom. His personality was an achievement, not an effort- less inheritance. His temptations and struggles were not stage-combats. At every point of his life he had to see his way through the tangle of moral questions which invited to errors and misjudgments ; his clarity of judg- ment was an achievement. Not only in the desert but all the way he had to re-affirm his unity with the will of God and make all aims subservient to the Kingdom of God. The inclination early set in to eliminate the ele- ment of temptation, of effort, of vigorous action and re- action, and to show him calm, majestic, omniscient, the effortless master of all forces. This was supposed to be the proper demonstration of divinity in human form ; in fact it was a demonstration of feeble imagination and of Gnostic tendencies in his interpreters. Possibly God might be revealed in a life wholly placid and complete; certainly the Kingdom of God could not be initiated by such a life, for the Kingdom of God means battle. In 152 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL all Other cases we judge the ethical worth of a man by the character he achieves by will and effort. If he has any unusual outfit of nature we deduct it in our esti- mate. How can we claim high ethical value for the personality and character of Jesus if no effort of will was necessary to achieve it? Jesus lived out his own life. Like every other Ego he existed for himself as well as for others. He was as- serting and defending his right to be himself when he stood up for others. The problems of human life were not simply official problems to him, but personal prob- lems. But unlike others, he did not fall into the sin of selfishness, because he succeeded in uniting the service of the common good with the affirmation of his self- hood.