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 Another Country (1962)

  Be careful.” “I know. They really are getting behind the book, though; they have great hopes for it. You haven’t seen it yet, have you?” She walked over to the sofa, where books and papers were scattered and picked the book up, thoughtfully. She crossed the room again. “Here it is.” She put the book down on the bar between Ida and Vivaldo. “It’s had great advance notices. You know, ‘literate,’ ‘adult,’ ‘thrilling’— that sort of thing. Richard’ll show them to you. It’s even been compared to Crime and Punishment—because they both have such a simple story line, I guess.” Vivaldo looked at her sharply. “Well. I’m only quoting.” The sun broke free of a passing cloud and filled the room. They squinted down at the book on the bar. Cass stood quietly behind them. The book jacket was very simple, jagged red letters on a dark blue ground: The Strangled Men. A novel of murder, by Richard Silenski. He looked at the jacket flap which described the story and then turned the book over to find himself looking into Richard’s open, good-natured face. The paragraph beneath the picture summed up Richard’s life, from his birth to the present: Mr. Silenski is married and is the father of two sons, Paul (II) and Michael (8). He makes his home in New York City. He put the book down. Ida picked it up. “It’s wonderful,” he said to Cass. “You must be proud.” He took her face between his hands and kissed her on the forehead. He picked up his drink. “There’s always something wonderful about a book, you know?—when it’s really, all of a sudden, a book, and it’s there between covers. And there’s your name on it. It must be a great feeling.” “Yes,” said Cass. “You’ll know that feeling soon,” said Ida. She was examining the book intently. She looked up with a grin. “I bet I just found out something you never knew,” she said to Vivaldo. “Impossible,” said Vivaldo. “I’m sure I know everything Richard knows.” “I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Cass. “I bet you don’t know Cass’s real name.” Cass laughed. “He does, but he’s forgotten it.” He looked at her. “That’s true, I have. What is your real name—? I know you hate it, that’s why nobody ever uses it.” “Richard just did,” she said. “I think he did it just to tease me.” Ida showed him the book’s dedication page, which read for Clarissa, my wife. “That’s cute, isn’t it?” She looked at Cass. “You sure had me fooled, baby; you just don’t seem to be the Clarissa type.” “As it turned out,” said Cass, with a smile. Then she looked at Vivaldo. “Ah,” she said, “did you happen to note a very small note in today’s theatrical section?” She went to the sofa and picked up one of the newspapers and returned to Vivaldo. “Look.

• From Don't Feed the Monkey Mind: How to Stop the Cycle of Anxiety, Fear, and Worry (2017)

  Contents Contents Foreword Introduction Chapter 1: Perception of Threat Chapter 2: The Three Assumptions Chapter 3: Feeding the Monkey Chapter 4: Playing It Safe Chapter 5: The World Is Round Chapter 6: Necessary Feelings Chapter 7: Monkey Chatter Chapter 8: Purpose and Plan Chapter 9: Lowering the Stakes Chapter 10: Practicing Praise Chapter 11: The Expanding Life Key Takeaways Foreword What makes a great self-help book? Over these many years I have searched for the answer, and now I’ve found it in this book. The formula comes down to three things: expert knowledge, a unique spin on the subject, and most importantly, a deep understanding, beyond the professional, about the subject —in this case, anxiety, and what it is like to struggle with it. By her own admission, Jennifer Shannon knows her way around the subject. Through her own personal struggle with anxiety, and her years of professional practice, she has learned a few things that she is eager to pass along to her readers. Her message is timely, perfectly suited for the anxiety-- ridden society we live in. In this her third book, Jennifer presents her own unique spin on the problem of anxiety and its treatment in straightforward, inspiring language. Her central metaphor for the source of anxiety, the monkey mind, is an ancient one, but in her hands, it feels both original and fresh. In the first chapter she introduces the three basic tricks the monkey mind plays on us, and the book takes off from there, describing a host of strategies that you can use to break the cycle of anxiety and calm that frisky creature within. Do not assume, however, that because Jennifer presents anxiety management strategies in a way that is fun and accessible that they are less powerful. We have over thirty years of research that tell us that these techniques are not smoke and mirrors. They are the real deal. This book lays out a clear and consistent message that will help you overcome any kind of anxiety. If you are suffering, it will touch you. Here is an author who mastered her own monkey mind and who now wishes to help you master yours. —Michael Tompkins, PhD

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

  So I hurried in and spoke about Paul’s death. Was he a disappointed man at the end? He had really expected Jesus to return in glory in his own lifetime, and the new faith to spread to the ends of the earth. But he had died an obscure, anonymous death, and none of those extravagant hopes had been realized. If he had been able to foresee the next two thousand years of church history, which he had set in motion, he would, I was certain, have come close to despair. I stood in the flickering light for a moment after Yossi had yelled, “It’s a wrap!” and realized that this had been another important journey. Paul, a difficult, prickly genius, had stormed his way into my affections, and I now felt so much at one with him that I could almost share his convictions. Almost—but not quite. When The First Christian was screened in January 1984, it was a minor success. People liked the raw quality of the film, which, many felt, had freshness and originality. In secular Britain, my criticism of organized religion was also popular, and though, as expected, I received a lot of hate mail, a significant number of people wrote to tell me that after seeing the series, they felt that they could go back to church. I did not understand this. Had I not shown conclusively that the very foundations of Christian doctrine had been undermined by modern biblical scholarship? Why did people feel that their beliefs had been renewed by this onslaught? Again, I recalled Hyam Maccoby’s insistence that intellectual assent was not the same as faith, and that theology was not very important for Jews. I still could not see how this would work in practice, yet it appeared that some of my Christian audience had come to a similar conclusion. John had predicted that The First Christian would make me a television star. It did not. I was not sufficiently photogenic, and though the series got good ratings, religion could only be of minority interest in England. Even my friends rarely bothered to tune in. “How can you be interested in this stuff?” they would ask in bewilderment. “Who cares about it?” But I was finding it increasingly interesting—though strictly as a detached observer. After my return to London, I made two interview series. The first was called Varieties of Religious Experience. I talked to ten people from very different religious backgrounds about their faith. Tongues of Fire focused on poetry. Six poets—Craig Raine, D. M. Thomas, Seamus Heaney, Czeslaw Milosz, Derek Walcott, and Peter Levi—read their favorite religious poems and discussed them with me.

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

  Hodgson’s magisterial work The Venture of Islam. It seemed to sum up my experience during the last year and showed me how a religious historian should proceed. I immediately copied out the passage and pinned it to the notice board beside my desk. I tried to read it every day, especially when I felt weary or jaded with the effort of penetrating minds that sometimes seemed light-years from my own circumstances. Hodgson is discussing the esoteric tradition in Islam, and cautions his readers not to approach it patronizingly, from a position of enlightened rationality. He cites what the eminent Islamist Louis Massignon had called the psychosociological “science of compassion”: The scholarly observer must render the mental and practical behavior of a group into terms available in his own mental resources, which should remain personally felt, even while informed with a breadth of reference which will allow other educated persons to make sense of them. But this must not be to substitute his own and his readers’ conventions for the original, but to broaden his own perspective so that it can make a place for the other. Concretely, he must never be satisfied to cease asking “but why?” until he has driven his understanding to the point where he has an immediate, human grasp of what a given position meant, such that every nuance in the data is accounted for and withal, given the total of presuppositions and circumstances, he could feel himself doing the same. 5 Compassion does not, of course, mean to feel pity or to condescend, but to feel with. This was the method I had found to be essential while writing Muhammad. It demanded what Saint Paul had called a kenosis, an emptying of self that would lead to enlargement and an enhanced perspective. And I liked Hodgson’s emphasis on the importance of feeling and emotion. It was not enough to understand other people’s beliefs, rituals, and ethical practices intellectually. You had to feel them too and make an imaginative, though disciplined, identification. This became my own method of study. Henceforth I tried not to dismiss an idea that seemed initially alien, but to ask repeatedly, “Why?” until, finally, the doctrine, the idea, or the practice became transparent and I could see the living kernel of truth within—an insight that quickened my own pulse. I would not leave an idea until I could to some extent experience it myself, and understand why a Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim felt in this way. I found that one of my new luminaries, the late Canadian scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith, himself a Christian minister, had made his students live according to Muslim law when he was teaching Islamic studies at McGill University. They had to pray five times a day, prostrating themselves in the direction of Mecca, observe the fasts and dietary laws, and give alms. Why?

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

  I was, moreover, discovering that many of the great theologians and mystics whose work I was studying would have found the idea of a purely academic degree in theology rather odd. In the Greek Orthodox tradition, you could not be a theologian unless you were also a contemplative and participated daily in the liturgy. In Islam, after the formative career of the eleventh-century theologian al-Ghazzali, philosophy and theology became inseparable from spirituality. In Judaism, the study of Torah and Talmud had never been as goal directed as some modern scholarship. Yeshiva education was not a matter of acquiring information about Judaism; the process of study itself was just as important as the content, and was itself transforming: the heated arguments, the intensive interaction with a teacher, the question-and-answer methodology all propelled students into a heightened awareness of the divine presence. Indeed, studying English literature at university may have been a fruitful preparation, because increasingly I was coming to see that theology, like religion itself, was really an art form. In every tradition, I was discovering, people turned to art when they tried to express or evoke a religious experience: to painting, music, architecture, dance, or poetry. They rarely attempted to define their apprehension of the divine in logical discourse or in the scientific language of hard fact. Like all art, theology is an attempt to express the inexpressible. As T. S. Eliot said of poetry, it is a “raid on the inarticulate.” Until art was made accessible to the masses— in the printed book, the gramophone record, the compact disc, or the public museum—most people would have experienced the ecstasy of art only in a religious context. Like great art, the best theology tends to be universalistic. Ethnic, tribal, or ideological polemic is as out of place in theology as in Soviet Realist art. If you are bent on proving that your own tradition alone is correct, and pour scorn on all other points of view, you are interjecting self and egotism into your study, and the texts will remain closed. I found this idea beautifully expressed by the influential twelfth-century Muslim mystic and philosopher Ibn al-Arabi: Do not attach yourself to any particular creed exclusively, so that you may disbelieve all the rest; otherwise you will lose much good, nay, you will fail to recognize the real truth of the matter. God, the omnipresent and omnipotent, is not confined to any one creed, for, he says, “Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah.” Everyone praises what he believes; his god is his own creature, and in praising it he praises himself. Consequently he blames the beliefs of others, which he would not do if he were just, but his dislike is based on ignorance.4

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

  Yeshiva education was not a matter of acquiring information about Judaism; the process of study itself was just as important as the content, and was itself transforming: the heated arguments, the intensive interaction with a teacher, the question-and-answer methodology all propelled students into a heightened awareness of the divine presence. Indeed, studying English literature at university may have been a fruitful preparation, because increasingly I was coming to see that theology, like religion itself, was really an art form. In every tradition, I was discovering, people turned to art when they tried to express or evoke a religious experience: to painting, music, architecture, dance, or poetry. They rarely attempted to define their apprehension of the divine in logical discourse or in the scientific language of hard fact. Like all art, theology is an attempt to express the inexpressible. As T. S. Eliot said of poetry, it is a “raid on the inarticulate.” Until art was made accessible to the masses— in the printed book, the gramophone record, the compact disc, or the public museum—most people would have experienced the ecstasy of art only in a religious context. Like great art, the best theology tends to be universalistic. Ethnic, tribal, or ideological polemic is as out of place in theology as in Soviet Realist art. If you are bent on proving that your own tradition alone is correct, and pour scorn on all other points of view, you are interjecting self and egotism into your study, and the texts will remain closed. I found this idea beautifully expressed by the influential twelfth-century Muslim mystic and philosopher Ibn al-Arabi : Do not attach yourself to any particular creed exclusively, so that you may disbelieve all the rest; otherwise you will lose much good, nay, you will fail to recognize the real truth of the matter. God, the omnipresent and omnipotent, is not confined to any one creed, for, he says, “Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah.” Everyone praises what he believes; his god is his own creature, and in praising it he praises himself. Consequently he blames the beliefs of others, which he would not do if he were just, but his dislike is based on ignorance. 4 This was becoming my own experience. I was writing about the three Abrahamic faiths, but could not see any one of them as superior to any of the others. Indeed, I was constantly struck by their profound similarity. I was equally delighted by the insights of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian thinkers: none of them had a monopoly of truth. Working in isolation from one another, and often in a state of deadly hostility, they had come up with remarkably similar conclusions. This unanimity seemed to suggest that they were onto something real about the human condition. At quite an early stage in my research, I was fortunate to come across a phrase that sprang out at me from a footnote in Marshall G. S.

• From Wild (2012)

  Now that I was officially among the Three Sisters, I didn’t have the trail to myself anymore. On the high rocky meadows I passed day hikers and short-term backpackers and a Boy Scout troop out for an overnight. I stopped to talk to some of them. Do you have a gun? Are you afraid? they asked in an echo of what I’d been hearing all summer. No, no, I said, laughing a little. I met a pair of men my age who’d served in Iraq during Desert Storm and were still in the army, both of them captains. They were clean-cut, strapping, and handsome, seemingly straight off a recruitment poster. We took a long afternoon break together near a creek, into which they’d placed two cans of beer to cool. It was their last night out on a five-day trip. They’d hauled those two cans the whole time so they could drink them on the final night to celebrate. They wanted to know everything about my trip. How it felt to walk all those days; the things I’d seen and the people I’d met and what in the hell had happened to my feet. They insisted on lifting my pack and were stupefied to find that it was heavier than either of theirs. They got ready to hike away and I wished them well, still lounging in the sun on the creek’s bank. “Hey, Cheryl,” one of them turned to holler once he was almost out of sight on the trail. “We left one of the beers for you in the creek. We did it this way so you can’t say no. We want you to have it ’cause you’re tougher than us.” I laughed and thanked them and went down to the creek to retrieve it, feeling flattered and lifted. I drank the beer that night near Obsidian Falls, which was named for the jet-black glass shards that wondrously cover the trail, making each step an ever-shifting clatter beneath me, as if I were walking across layers upon layers of broken china. I was less wonder-struck the next day as I walked over McKenzie Pass into the Mount Washington Wilderness, and the trail became rockier still as I crossed the basalt flows of Belknap Crater and Little Belknap. These weren’t pretty shiny shards of rock among spring green meadows. Now I was walking over a five-mile swath of black volcanic rocks that ranged in size from baseball to soccer ball, my ankles and knees constantly twisting. The landscape was exposed and desolate, the sun searing relentlessly down on me as I struggled along in the direction of Mount Washington. When I made it to the other side of the craters, I walked gratefully among the trees and realized the crowds had disappeared. I was alone again, just the trail and me.

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

  Lecky, a very able and impartial historian, justly censures the unfeeling chapter of Gibbon on persecution. "The complete absence," he says (History of European Morals, I. 494 sqq.), "of all sympathy with the heroic courage manifested by the martyrs, and the frigid, and in truth most unphilosophical severity with which the historian has weighed the words and actions of men engaged in the agonies of a deadly, struggle, must repel every generous nature, while the persistence with which he estimates persecutions by the number of deaths rather than the amount of suffering, diverts the mind from the really distinctive atrocities of the Pagan persecutions .... It is true that in one Catholic country they introduced the atrocious custom of making the spectacle of men burnt alive for their religious opinions an element in the public festivities. It is true, too, that the immense majority of the acts of the martyrs are the transparent forgeries of lying monks; but it is also true that among the authentic records of Pagan persecutions there are histories, which display, perhaps more vividly than any other, both the depth of cruelty to which human nature may sink, and the heroism of resistance it may attain. There was a time when it was the just boast of the Romans, that no refinement of cruelty, no prolongations of torture, were admitted in their stern but simple penal code. But all this was changed. Those hateful games, which made the spectacle of human suffering and death the delight of all classes, had spread their brutalising influence wherever the Roman name was known, had rendered millions absolutely indifferent to the sight of human suffering, had produced in many, in the very centre of an advanced civilisation, a relish and a passion for torture, a rapture and an exultation in watching the spasms of extreme agony, such as an African or an American savage alone can equal. The most horrible recorded instances of torture were usually inflicted, either by the populace, or in their presence, in the arena. We read of Christians bound in chains of red-hot iron, while the stench of their half-consumed flesh rose in a suffocating cloud to heaven; of others who were torn to the very bone by, shells or hooks of iron; of holy virgins given over to the lust of the gladiator or to the mercies of the pander; of two hundred and twenty-seven converts sent on one occasion to the mines, each with the sinews of one leg severed by a red-hot iron, and with an eye scooped from its socket; of fires so slow that the victims writhed for hours in their agonies; of bodies torn limb from limb, or sprinkled with burning lead; of mingled salt and vinegar poured over the flesh that was bleeding from the rack; of tortures prolonged and varied through entire days. For the love of their Divine Master, for the cause they believed to be true, men, and even weak girls, endured these things without flinching, when one word would have freed them from their sufferings, No opinion we may form of the proceedings of priests in a later age should impair the reverence with which we bend before the martyr’s tomb.

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

  "Calvin is an instructive and learned theologian, with a higher purity and elegance of style than is expected from a theologian. The two most eminent theologians of our times are John Calvin and Peter Martyr; the former of whom has treated sound learning as it ought to be treated, with truth and purity and simplicity, without any of the scholastic subtleties. Endued with a divine genius, he penetrated into many things which lie beyond the reach of all who are not deeply skilled in the Hebrew language, though he did not himself belong to that class." "O how well Calvin apprehends the meaning of the Prophets! No one better … O what a good book is the Institutes! ... Calvin stands alone among theologians (Solus inter theologos Calvinus)." This judgment of the greatest scholar of his age, who knew thirteen languages, and was master of philology, history, chronology, philosophy, and theology, is all the more weighty as he was one of the severest of critics. Florimond De Ræmond (1540–1602). Counseiller du Roy au Parlement de Bordeaux. Roman Catholic. From his L’histoire de la naissanse, progrez, et decadence de l’hérésie de ce siècle, divisé en huit livres, dedié à nôtre saint Père le Pape Paul cinquième. Paris, 1605. bk. VII. ch. 10. "Calvin had morals better regulated and settled than N., and shewed from early youth that he did not allow himself to be carried away by the pleasures of sense (plaisirs de la chair et du ventre) … With a dry and attenuated body, he always possessed a fresh and vigorous intellect, ready in reply, bold in attack; even in his youth a great faster, either on account of his health, and to allay the headaches with which he was continually afflicted, or in order to have his mind more disencumbered for the purposes of writing, studying, and improving his memory. Calvin spoke little; what he said were serious and impressive words (et n’estoit que propos serieux et qui portoyent coup); he never appeared in company, and always led a retired life. He had scarcely his equal; for during twenty-three years that he retained possession of the bishopric (l’evesché) of Geneva, he preached every day, and often twice on Sundays. He lectured on theology three times a week; and every Friday he entered into a conference which he called the Congregation. His remaining hours were employed in composition, and answering the letters which came to him as to a sovereign pontiff from all parts of heretical Christendom (qui arrivoyent à luy de toute la Chrétienté hérétique, comme au Souveraine Pontife).... "Calvin had a brilliancy of spirit, a subtlety of judgment, a grand memory, an eminent erudition, and the power of graceful diction.... No man of all those who preceded him has surpassed him in style, and few since have attained that beauty and facility of language which he possessed." Etienne Pasquier (1528–1615). Roman Catholic. Consellier et Avocat Général du Roy an la Chambre des Comptes de Paris.

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

  An impartial comparison between the Roman Catholic and the Reformed Cantons reveals the same difference as exists between Southern and Northern Ireland, Eastern and Western Canada, and other parts of the world where the two Churches meet in close proximity. The Roman Catholic Cantons have preserved more historical faith and superstition, churchly habits and customs; the Protestant Cantons surpass them in general education and intelligence, wealth and temporal prosperity; while in point of morality both are nearly equal. § 52. Zwingli. Redivivus. The last words of the dying Zwingli, "They may kill the body, but cannot kill the soul," have been verified in his case. His body was buried with his errors and defects, but his spirit still lives; and his liberal views on infant salvation, and the extent of God’s saving grace beyond the limits of the visible Church, which gave so much offence in his age, even to the Reformers, have become almost articles of faith in evangelical Christendom. Ulrich Zwingli is, next to Martin Luther and John Knox, the most popular among the Reformers.299 He moved in sympathy with the common people; he spoke and wrote their language; he took part in their public affairs; he was a faithful pastor of the old and young, and imbedded himself in their affections; while Erasmus, Melanchthon, Oecolampadius, Calvin, Beza, and Cranmer stood aloof from the masses. He was a man of the people and for the people, a typical Swiss; as Luther was a typical German. Both fairly represented the virtues and faults of their nation. Both were the best hated as well as the best loved men of their age, according to the faith which divided, and still divides, their countrymen. Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli have been honored by a fourth centennial commemoration of their birth,—the one in 1883, the other in 1884. Such honor is almost without a precedent, at least in the history of theology.300 The Zwingli festival was not merely an echo of the Luther festival, but was observed throughout the Reformed churches of Europe and America with genuine enthusiasm, and gave rise to an extensive Zwingli literature. It is in keeping with the generous Christian spirit which the Swiss Reformer showed towards the German Reformer at Marburg, that many Reformed churches in Switzerland, as well as elsewhere, heartily united in the preceding jubilee of Luther, forgetting the bitter controversies of the sixteenth century, and remembering gratefully his great services to the cause of truth and liberty.301

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

  But a part of me wondered how true that was. Certainly the film was iconoclastic. It demolished the assumptions of many Christians and was ruthless in its denunciation of what the churches had done with Paul’s teaching. Yet as the project developed, I found that I felt very close to Paul. Michael Goulder’s meticulous scholarship had disabused me of my early antipathy, and living with Paul day by day, and following (roughly) in his footsteps, I started to love the genius and pathos of the man. I was moved by his passion, his brilliance, his inventiveness, and the affection that he clearly felt for his converts. The second epistle to the Corinthians showed his extraordinary vulnerability, and when we finally got to Tre Fontane, just outside Rome, where—legend has it—Paul was executed by the emperor Nero, I found that I was almost tearful. We were filming in a tiny, dark little chapel—a national monument and a place of pilgrimage—and there was no time for sentiment. The crew had rigged up some temporary and highly dangerous lighting for me. “Karen! This really has to be one take only!” Joel shouted. “We’ve got to get out of here before the whole place explodes!” So I hurried in and spoke about Paul’s death. Was he a disappointed man at the end? He had really expected Jesus to return in glory in his own lifetime, and the new faith to spread to the ends of the earth. But he had died an obscure, anonymous death, and none of those extravagant hopes had been realized. If he had been able to foresee the next two thousand years of church history, which he had set in motion, he would, I was certain, have come close to despair. I stood in the flickering light for a moment after Yossi had yelled, “It’s a wrap!” and realized that this had been another important journey. Paul, a difficult, prickly genius, had stormed his way into my affections, and I now felt so much at one with him that I could almost share his convictions. Almost—but not quite.

• 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 Council was asked by Farel to provide a suitable support for their new minister, but they were slow to do it, not dreaming that he would become the most distinguished citizen, and calling him simply "that Frenchman."470 He received little or no salary till Feb. 13, 1537, when the Council voted him six gold crowns.471 Calvin accompanied Farel in October to the disputation at Lausanne, which decided the Reformation in the Canton de Vaud, but took little part in it, speaking only twice. Farel was the senior pastor, twenty years older, and took the lead. But with rare humility and simplicity he yielded very soon to the superior genius of his young friend. He was contented to have conquered the territory for the renewed Gospel, and left it to him to cultivate the same and to bring order out of the political and ecclesiastical chaos. He was willing to decrease, that Calvin might increase. Calvin, on his part, treated him always with affectionate regard and gratitude. There was not a shadow of envy or jealousy between them. The third Reformed preacher was Courault, formerly an Augustinian monk, who, like Calvin, had fled from France to Basel, in 1534, and was called to Geneva to replace Viret. Though very old and nearly blind, he showed as much zeal and energy as his younger colleagues. Saunier, the rector of the school, was an active sympathizer, and soon afterwards Cordier, Calvin’s beloved teacher, assumed the government of the school and effectively aided the ministers in their arduous work. Viret came occasionally from the neighboring Lausanne. Calvin’s brother, and his relative Olivetan, who joined them at Geneva, increased his influence. The infant Church of Geneva had the usual trouble with the Anabaptists. Two of their preachers came from Holland and gained some influence. But after an unfruitful disputation they were banished by the large Council from the territory of the city as early as March, 1537.472

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

  "The greatest exegete and theologian of the Reformation was undoubtedly Calvin. He is not an attractive figure in the history of that great movement. The mass of mankind revolt against the ruthless logical rigidity of his ’horrible decree.’ They fling it from their belief with the eternal ’God forbid!’ of an inspired natural horror. They dislike the tyranny of theocratic sacerdotalism [?] which be established at Geneva. Nevertheless his Commentaries, almost alone among those of his epoch, are still a living force. They are far more profound than those of Zwingli, more thorough and scientific, if less original and less spiritual, than those of Luther. In spite of his many defects—the inequality of his works, his masterful arrogance of tone, his inconsequent and in part retrogressive view of inspiration, the manner in which he explains away every passage which runs counter to his dogmatic prepossessions—in spite, too, of his ’hard expressions and injurious declamations’—he is one of the greatest interpreters of Scripture who ever lived. He owes that position to a combination of merits. He had a vigorous intellect, a dauntless spirit, a logical mind, a quick insight, a thorough knowledge of the human heart, quickened by rich and strange experience; above all, a manly and glowing sense of the grandeur of the Divine. The neatness, precision, and lucidity of his style, his classic training and wide knowledge, his methodical accuracy of procedure, his manly independence, his avoidance of needless and commonplace homiletics, his deep religious feeling, his careful attention to the entire scope and context of every passage, and the fact that he has commented on almost the whole of the Bible, make him tower above the great majority of those who have written on Holy Scripture. Nothing can furnish a greater contrast to many helpless commentaries, with their congeries of vacillating variorum annotations heaped together in aimless multiplicity, than the terse and decisive notes of the great Genevan theologian.... A characteristic feature of Calvin’s exegesis is its abhorrence of hollow orthodoxy. He regarded it as a disgraceful offering to a God of truth. He did not hold the theory of verbal dictation. He will never defend or harmonize what he regards as an oversight or mistake in the Sacred writers. He scorns to support a good cause by bad reasoning.... But the most characteristic and original feature of his Commentaries is his anticipation of modern criticism in his views about the Messianic prophecies. He saw that the words of psalmists and prophets, while they not only admit of but demand ’germinant and springing developments,’ were yet primarily applicable to the events and circumstances of their own days." Scotch Tributes. ln Scotland, the land of John Knox, who studied at the feet of Calvin, his principles were most highly appreciated and most fully carried out. Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856).

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  § 55. Antistes Breitinger (1575–1645). In the same year in which Bullinger died (1575), Johann Jakob Breitinger was born, who became his worthy successor as Antistes of Zürich (1613–1645).320 He called him a saint, and followed his example. He was one of the most eminent Reformed divines of his age. Thoroughly trained in the universities of Herborn, Marburg, Franeker, Heidelberg, and Basel, he gained the esteem and affection of his fellow-citizens as teacher, preacher, and devoted pastor. During the fearful pestilence of 1611 he visited the sick from morning till night at the risk of his life. He attended as one of the Swiss delegates the Synod of Dort (1618 and 1619). He was deeply impressed with the learning, wisdom, and piety of that body, and fully agreed with its unjust and intolerant treatment of the Arminians.321 On his return (May 21, 1619) he was welcomed by sixty-four Zürichers, who rode to the borders of the Rhine to meet him. Yet, with all his firmness of conviction, he was opposed to confessional polemics in an intensely polemic age, and admired the good traits in other churches and sects, even the Jesuits. He combined with strict orthodoxy a cheerful temper, a generous heart, and active piety. He had an open ear for appeals from the poor and the numerous sufferers in the murder of the Valtellina (1620) and during the Thirty Years’ War. At his request, hospitals and orphan houses were founded and collections raised, which in the Minster alone, during eight years (1618–1628), exceeded fifty thousand pounds. He was in every way a model pastor, model churchman, and model statesman. Although be towered high above his colleagues, he disarmed envy and jealousy by his kindliness and Christian humility. Altogether he shines next to Zwingli and Bullinger as the most influential and useful Antistes of the Reformed Church of Zürich.322 § 56. Oswald Myconius, Antistes of Basel. I. Correspondence between Myconius and Zwingli in Zwingli’s Opera, vols. VII. and VIII. (28 letters of the former and 20 of the latter).—Correspondence with Bullinger in the Simler Collection.—Antiqu. Gernl., I. The Chronicle of Fridolin Ryff, ed. by W. Vischer (son), in the Basler Chroniken (vol. 1, Leipzig, 1872), extends from 1514 to 1541. II. Melchior Kirchofer (of Schaffhausen): Oswald Myconius, Antistes der Baslerischen Kirche. Zürich, 1813 (pp. 387). Still very serviceable.—R. Hagenbach: Joh. Oecolampad und Oswald Myronius, die Reformatoren Basels. Elberfeld, 1859 (pp. 309–462). Also his Geschichte der ersten Basler Confession. Basel, 1828.—B. Riggenbach, in Herzog2, X. 403–405.

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  He plants himself firmly on the immovable rock of the Word of God, as the only safe guide in matters of faith and duty. He exhibits on every page a thorough, well-digested knowledge of Scripture which is truly astonishing. He does not simply quote from it as a body of proof texts, in a mechanical way, like the scholastic dogmaticians of the seventeenth century, but he views it as an organic whole, and weaves it into his system. He bases the authority of Scripture on its intrinsic excellency and the testimony of the Holy Spirit speaking through it to the believer. He makes also judicious and discriminating use of the fathers, especially St. Augustin, not as judges but as witnesses of the truth, and abstains from those depreciatory remarks in which Luther occasionally indulged when, instead of his favorite dogma of justification by faith, he found in them much ascetic monkery and exaltation of human merit. "They overwhelm us," says Calvin, in the dedicatory Preface, "with senseless clamors, as despisers and enemies of the fathers. But if it were consistent with my present design, I could easily support by their suffrages most of the sentiments that we now maintain. Yet while we make use of their writings, we always remember that ’all things are ours,’ to serve us, not to have dominion over us, and that ’we are Christ’s alone’ (1 Cor. 3:21–23), and owe him universal obedience. He who neglects this distinction will have nothing certain in religion; since those holy men were ignorant of many things, frequently at variance with each other, and sometimes even inconsistent with themselves." He also fully recognizes the indispensable use of reason in the apprehension and defence of truth and the refutation of error, and excels in the power of severe logical argumentation; while he is free from scholastic dryness and pedantry. But he subordinates reason and tradition to the supreme authority of Scripture as he understands it. The style is luminous and forcible. Calvin had full command of the majesty, dignity, and elegance of the Latin Ianguage. The discussion flows on continuously and melodiously like a river of fresh water through green meadows and sublime mountain scenery. The whole work is well proportioned. It is pervaded by intense earnestness and fearless consistency which commands respect even where his arguments fail to carry conviction, or where we feel offended by the contemptuous tone of his polemics, or feel a shudder at his decretum horribile. Calvin’s system of doctrine agrees with the (ecumenical creeds in theology and Christology; with Augustinianism in anthropology and soteriology, but dissents from the mediaeval tradition in ecclesiology, sacramentology, and eschatology. We shall discuss the prominent features of this system in the chapter on Calvin’s Theology.

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  seventh century, and reappeared in the Euchites and Bogomiles of the middle age. § 40. Monasticism in the West. Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, Martin of Tours. I. Ambrosius: De Virginibus ad Marcellinam sororem suam libri tres, written about 377 (in the Benedictine edition of Ambr. Opera, tom. ii. p. 145–183). Augustinus (A.D. 400): De Opere Monachorum liber unus (in the Bened. ed., tom. vi. p. 476–504). Sulpitius Severus (about A.D. 403): Dialogi tres (de virtutibus monachorum orientalium et de virtutibus B. Martini); and De Vita Beati Martini (both in the Bibliotheca Maxima vet. Patrum, tom. vi. p. 349 sqq., and better in Gallandi’s Bibliotheca vet. Patrum, tom. viii. p. 392 sqq.). II. J. Mabillon: Observat. de monachis in occidente ante Benedictum (Praef. in Acta Sanct. Ord. Bened.). R. H. Milman: Hist. of Latin Christianity, Lond. 1854, vol. i. ch. vi. p. 409–426: "Western Monasticism." Count de Montalembert: The Monks of the West, Engl. translation, vol. i. p. 379 sqq. In the Latin church, in virtue partly of the climate, partly of the national character,338 the monastic life took a much milder form, but assumed greater variety, and found a larger field of usefulness than in the Greek. It produced no pillar saints, nor other such excesses of ascetic heroism, but was more practical instead, and an important instrument for the cultivation of the soil and the diffusion of Christianity and civilization among the barbarians.339 Exclusive contemplation was exchanged for alternate contemplation and labor. "A working monk," says Cassian, "is plagued by one devil, an inactive monk by a host." Yet it must not be forgotten that the most eminent representatives of the Eastern monasticism recommended manual labor and studies; and that the Eastern monks took a very lively, often rude and stormy part in theological controversies. And on the other hand, there were Western monks who, like Martin of Tours, regarded labor as disturbing contemplation. Athanasius, the guest, the disciple, and subsequently the biographer and eulogist of St. Anthony, brought the first intelligence of monasticism to the West, and astounded the civilized and effeminate Romans with two live representatives of the semi-barbarous desert-sanctity of Egypt, who accompanied him in his exile in 340. The one, Ammonius, was so abstracted from the world that he disdained to visit any of the wonders of the great city, except the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul; while the other, Isidore, attracted attention by his amiable simplicity. The phenomenon excited at first disgust and contempt, but soon admiration and imitation, especially among women, and among the decimated ranks of the ancient Roman nobility. The impression of the first visit was afterward strengthened by two other visits of Athanasius to Rome, and especially by his biography of Anthony, which immediately acquired the popularity and authority of a monastic gospel. Many went to Egypt and Palestine, to devote themselves there to the new mode of life; and for the sake of such, Jerome afterward translated the rule of Pachomius into Latin.

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  Priscillianists. He refuted these heretics point by point, and on the basis of his exposition the Spaniards drew up an orthodox regula fidei with eighteen anathemas against the Priscillianist error. But in Gaul he met, as we have already, seen, with a strenuous antagonist in Hilary of Arles, and, though he called the secular power to his aid, and procured from the emperor Valentinian an edict entirely favorable to his claims, he attained but a partial victory.592 Still less successful was his effort to establish his primacy in the East, and to prevent his rival at Constantinople from being elevated, by the famous twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon, to official equality with himself.593 His earnest protest against that decree produced no lasting effect. But otherwise he had the most powerful influence in the second stage of the Christological controversy. He neutralized the tyranny of Dioscurus of Alexandria and the results of the shameful robber-council of Ephesus (449), furnished the chief occasion of the fourth ecumenical council, presided over it by his legates (which the Roman bishop had done at neither of the three councils before), and gave the turn to the final solution of its doctrinal problem by that celebrated letter to Flavian of Constantinople, the main points of which were incorporated in the new symbol. Yet he owed this influence by no means to his office alone, but most of all to his deep insight of the question, and to the masterly tact with which he held the Catholic orthodox mean between the Alexandrian and Antiochian, Eutychian and Nestorian extremes. The particulars of his connection with this important dogma belong, however, to the history of doctrine. Besides thus shaping the polity and doctrine of the church, Leo did immortal service to the city of Rome, in twice rescuing it from destruction.594 When Attila, king of the Huns, the "scourge of God," after destroying Aquileia, was seriously threatening the capital of the world (A. D. 452), Leo, with only two companions, crozier in hand, trusting in the help of God, ventured into the hostile camp, and by his venerable form, his remonstrances, and his gifts, changed the wild heathen’s purpose. The later legend, which Raphael’s pencil has employed, adorned the fact with a visible appearance of Peter and Paul, accompanying the bishop, and, with drawn sword, threatening Attila with destruction unless he should desist.595 A similar case occurred several years after (455), when the Vandal king Genseric, invited out of revenge by the empress Eudoxia, pushed his ravages to Rome. Leo obtained from him the promise that at least he would spare the city the infliction of murder and fire; but the barbarians subjected it to a fourteen days’ pillage, the enormous spoils of which they transported to Carthage; and afterward the pope did everything to alleviate the consequent destitution and suffering, and to restore the churches.596 Leo died in 461, and was buried in the church of St. Peter.

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  It conduced to the abolition, or at least the mitigation of slavery.305 It showed hospitality to the wayfaring, and liberality to the poor and needy. It was an excellent school of meditation, self-discipline, and spiritual exercise. It sent forth most of those catholic, missionaries, who, inured to all hardship, planted the standard of the cross among the barbarian tribes of Northern and Western Europe, and afterward in Eastern Asia and South America. It was a prolific seminary of the clergy, and gave the church many of her most eminent bishops and popes, as Gregory I. and Gregory VII. It produced saints like Anthony and Bernard, and trained divines like Chrysostom and Jerome, and the long succession of schoolmen and mystics of the middle ages. Some of the profoundest theological discussions, like the tracts of Anselm, and the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, and not a few of the best books of devotion, like the "Imitation of Christ," by Thomas a Kempis, have proceeded from the solemn quietude of cloister life. Sacred hymns, unsurpassed for sweetness, like the Jesu dulcis memoria, or tender emotion, like the Stabat mater dolorosa, or terrific grandeur, like the Dies irae, dies illa, were conceived and sung by mediaeval monks for all ages to come. In patristic and antiquarian learning the Benedictines, so lately as the seventeenth century, have done extraordinary service. Finally, monasticism, at least in the West, promoted the cultivation of the soil and the education of the people, and by its industrious transcriptions of the Bible, the works of the church fathers, and the ancient classics, earned

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  The Catholics regarded it as a travesty of the adoration of the host.1012 The endura, which has been called the most cruel practice the history of asceticism has to show, was a voluntary starvation unto death by those who had received the consolamentum. Sometimes these rigorous religionists waited for thirteen days for the end to come,1013 and parents are said even to have left their sick children without food, and mothers to have withdrawn the breast from nursing infants in executing the rite. The reports of such voluntary suicide are quite numerous. Our knowledge of the form of Church government practised by the Cathari is scant. Some of the groups of Italy and Languedoc had bishops. The bishop had as assistants a "major" and a "minor" son and a deacon, the two former taking the bishop’s place in his absence.1014 Assemblies were held, as in 1241, on the banks of the Larneta, under the presidency of the heretical bishop of Albi, Aymeri de Collet. A more compact organization would probably have been adopted but for the measures of repression everywhere put in force against the sect. The steadfast endurance of the Catharan dissenters before hostile tribunals and in the face of death belong to the annals of heroism and must call forth our admiration as it called forth the wonder of contemporaries like Bernard.1015 We live, said Everwin of Steinfeld,1016 — "A hard and wandering life. We flee from city to city like sheep in the midst of wolves. We suffer persecution like the Apostles and the martyrs because our life to holy and austere. It is passed amidst prayers, abstinence, and labors, but everything is easy for us because we are not of this world." Dr. Lea, the eminent authority on the Inquisition, has said (I. 104) that no religion can show a more unbroken roll of victims who unshrinkingly and joyfully sought death in its most abhorrent form in preference to apostasy than the Cathari. Serious as some of the errors were which they held, nevertheless their effort to cultivate piety by other methods than the Church was offering calls for sympathy. Their rupture with the established organization can be to a Protestant no reason for condemnation; and their dependence upon the Scriptures and their moral tendencies must awaken within him a feeling of kinship. He cannot follow them in their rejection of baptism and the eucharist. In the repudiation of judicial oaths and war, they anticipated some of the later Christian bodies, such as the Quakers and Mennonites. § 81. Peter de Bruys and Other Independent Leaders.