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

  Luther was not the first, but by far the greatest translator of the German Bible, and is as inseparably connected with it as Jerome is with the Latin Vulgate. He threw the older translation into the shade and out of use, and has not been surpassed or even equaled by a successor. There are more accurate versions for scholars (as those of De Wette and Weizsäcker), but none that can rival Luther’s for popular authority and use. The civilization of the barbarians in the dark ages began with the introduction of Christianity, and the translation of such portions of the Scriptures as were needed in public worship. The Gothic Bishop Wulfila or Wölflein (i.e., Little Wolf) in the fourth century translated nearly the whole Bible from the Greek into the Gothic dialect. It is the earliest monument of Teutonic literature, and the basis of comparative Teutonic philology.427 During the fourteenth century some unknown scholars prepared a new translation of the whole Bible into the Middle High German dialect. It slavishly follows the Latin Vulgate. It may be compared to Wiclif’s English Version (1380), which was likewise made from the Vulgate, the original languages being then almost unknown in Europe. A copy of the New Testament of this version has been recently published, from a manuscript in the Premonstratensian convent of Tepl in Bohemia.428 Another copy is preserved in the college library at Freiberg in Saxony.429 Both are from the fourteenth century, and agree almost word for word with the first printed German Bible, but contain, besides the New Testament, the apocryphal letter of St. Paul to the Laodiceans, which is a worthless compilation of a few sentences from the genuine writings of the apostle.430 After the invention of the printing-press, and before the Reformation, this mediaeval German Bible was more frequently printed than any other except the Latin Vulgate.431 No less than seventeen or eighteen editions appeared between 1462 and 1522, at Strassburg, Augsburg, Nürnberg, Cöln, Lübeck, and Halberstadt (fourteen in the High, three or four in the Low German dialect). Most of them are in large folio, in two volumes, and illustrated by wood-cuts. The editions present one and the same version (or rather two versions,—one High German, the other Low German) with dialectical alterations and accommodations to the textual variations of the MSS. of the Vulgate, which was in a very unsettled condition before the Clementine recension (1592). The revisers are as unknown as the translators.

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

  In a different spirit Hans Sachs, the pious poet-shoemaker of Nürnberg,408 wrote many ephemeral compositions in prose and poetry for the cause of Luther and the gospel. He met Luther at Augsburg in 1518, collected till 1522 forty books in his favor, and published in 1523 a poem of seven hundred verses under the title: "Die Wittenbergisch Nachtigall, Die man jetzt hört überall," and with the concluding words: "Christus amator, Papa peccator." It was soon followed by four polemical dialogues in prose. Among the most popular pamphleteers on the Protestant side were a farmer named "Karsthans," who labored in the Rhine country between Strassburg and Basel, and his imitator, "Neukarsthans." Many pamphlets were anonymous or pseudonymous. It is a significant fact, that the Reformation was defended by so many laymen. All the great German classics who arose in more recent times (Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Uhland, Rückert), as well as philosophers (Leibnitz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, Lotze), are Protestants, at least nominally, and could not have grown on papal soil. The newness and freshness of this fugitive popular literature called out by the Reformation, and especially by the edict of Worms, made it all the more effective. The people were hungry for intellectual and spiritual food, and the appetite grew with the supply. The polemical productions of that period are usually brief, pointed, and aimed at the common-sense of the masses. They abound in strong arguments, rude wit, and coarse abuse. They plead the cause of freedom against oppression, of the laity against priestcraft and monkery. A favorite form of composition was the dialogue in which a peasant or a laboring-man defeats an ecclesiastic. The Devil figures prominently in league with the Pope, sometimes as his servant, sometimes as his master. Very often the Pope is contrasted with Christ as his antipode. The Pope, says one of the controversialists, proclaimed the terrible bull of condemnation of Luther and all heretics on the day commemorative of the institution of the holy communion; and turned the divine mercy into human wrath, brotherly love into persecuting hatred, the very blessing into a curse. St. Peter also appears often in these productions: he stands at the gate of heaven, examining priests, monks, and popes, whether they are fit to enter, and decides in most cases against them. Here is a specimen: A fat and drunken monk knocks at the gate, and is angry that he is not at once admitted; Peter tells him first to get sober, and laughs at his foolish dress. Then he catechises him; the monk enumerates all his fasts, self-mortifications, and pious exercises; Peter orders that his belly be cut open, and, behold! chickens, wild game, fish, omelets, wine, and other contents come forth and bear witness against the hypocrite, who is forthwith sent to the place of punishment.

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

  Melanchthon had no popular talent, but he employed his scholarly pen in a Latin apology for Luther, against the furious decree of the Parisian theologasters."404 The Sorbonne, hitherto the most famous theological faculty, which in the days of the reformatory Councils had stood up for the cause of reform, followed the example of the universities of Louvain and Cologne, and denounced Luther during the sessions of the Diet of Worms, April 15, 1521, as an arch-heretic who had renewed and intensified the blasphemous errors of the Manichaeans, Hussites, Beghards, Cathari, Waldenses, Ebionites, Arians, etc., and who should be destroyed by fire rather than refuted by arguments.405 Eck translated the decision at once into German. Melanchthon dared to charge the faculty of Paris with apostasy from Christ to Aristotle, and from biblical theology to scholastic sophistry. Luther translated the Apology into German at the Wartburg, and, finding it too mild, he added to it some strokes of his "peasant’s axe."406

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

  Among the most potent causes which defeated the ban of the empire, and helped the triumph of Protestantism, was the teeming ephemeral literature which appeared between 1521 and 1524, and did the work of the periodical newspaper press of our days, in seasons of public excitement. In spite of the prohibition of unauthorized printing by the edict of Worms, Germany was inundated by a flood of books, pamphlets, and leaflets in favor of true and false freedom. They created a public opinion which prevented the execution of the law. Luther had started this popular literary warfare by his ninety-five Theses. He was by far the most original, fertile, and effective controversialist and pamphleteer of his age. He commanded the resources of genius, learning, courage, eloquence, wit, humor, irony, and ridicule, and had, notwithstanding his many physical infirmities, an astounding power of work. He could express the deepest thought in the clearest and strongest language, and had an abundant supply of juicy and forcible epithets.402 His very opponents had to imitate his German speech if they wished to reach the masses, and to hit the nail on the head. He had a genial heart, but also a most violent temper, and used it as a weapon for popular effect. He felt himself called to the rough work of "removing stumps and stones, cutting away thistles and thorns, and clearing the wild forests." He found aid and comfort in the severe language of the prophets. He had, as he says, the threefold spirit of Elijah,—the storm, the earthquake, and the fire, which subverts mountains and tears the rocks in pieces. He thoroughly understood the wants and tastes of his countrymen who preferred force to elegance, and the club to the dagger. Foreigners, who knew him only from his Latin writings, could not account for his influence. Roman historians, in denouncing his polemics, are apt to forget the fearful severity of the papal bull, the edict of Worms, and the condemnatory decisions of the universities.403 His pen was powerfully aided by the pencil of his friend Lucas Cranach, the court-painter of Frederick the Wise.

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

  It is to the credit of Charles, that in spite of contrary counsel, even that of his former teacher and confessor, Cardinal Hadrian, who wished him to deliver Luther to the Pope for just punishment, he respected the eternal principle of truth and honor more than the infamous maxim that no faith should be kept with heretics. He refused to follow the example of his predecessor, Sigismund, who violated the promise of safe-conduct given to Hus, and ordered his execution at the stake after his condemnation by the Council of Constance.390 The protection of Luther is the only service which Charles rendered to the Reformation, and the best thing, in a moral point of view, he ever did.391 Unfortunately, he diminished his merit by his subsequent regret at Yuste.392 He had no other chance to crush the heretic. When he came to Wittenberg in 1547, Luther was in his grave, and the Reformation too deeply rooted to be overthrown by a short-lived victory over a few Protestant princes. It is interesting to learn Aleander’s speculations about Luther’s intentions immediately after his departure. He reported to Rome, April 29, 1521, that the heretic would seek refuge with the Hussites in Bohemia, and do four "beastly things" (cose bestiali): 1, write lying Acta Wormaciensia, to incite the people to insurrection; 2, abolish the confessional; 3, deny the real presence in the sacrament; 4, deny the divinity of Christ.393 Luther did none of these things except the second, and this only in part. To prevent his entering Bohemia, Rome made provision to have him seized on the way. § 58. The Ban of the Empire. May 8 (26), 1521. After Luther’s departure (April 26), his enemies had full possession of the ground. Frederick of Saxony wrote, May 4: "Martin’s cause is in a bad state: he will be persecuted; not only Annas and Caiaphas, but also Pilate and Herod, are against him." Aleander reported to Rome, May 5, that Luther had by his bad habits, his obstinacy, and his "beastly" speeches against Councils, alienated the people, but that still many adhered to him from love of disobedience to the Pope, and desire to seize the church property. The Emperor commissioned Aleander to draw up a Latin edict against Luther.394 It was completed and dated May 8 (but not signed till May 26). On the same day the Emperor concluded an alliance with the Pope against France. They pledged themselves "to have the same friends and the same enemies," and to aid each other in attack and defense.

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

  Conscience is the voice of God in man. It is his most sacred possession. No power can be allowed to stand between the gift and the giver. Even an erring conscience must be respected, and cannot be forced. The liberty of conscience was theoretically and practically asserted by the Christians of the ante-Nicene age, against Jewish and heathen persecution; but it was suppressed by the union of Church and State after Constantine the Great, and severe laws were enacted under his successors against every departure from the established creed of the orthodox imperial Church. These laws passed from the Roman to the German Empire, and were in full force all over Europe at the time when Luther raised his protest. Dissenters had no rights which Catholics were bound to respect; even a sacred promise given to a heretic might be broken without sin, and was broken by the Emperor Sigismund in the case of Hus.383 This tyranny was brought to an end by the indomitable courage of Luther. Liberty of conscience may, of course, be abused, like any other liberty, and may degenerate into heresy and licentiousness. The individual conscience and private judgment often do err, and they are more likely to err than a synod or council, which represents the combined wisdom of many. Luther himself was far from denying this fact, and stood open to correction and conviction by testimonies of Scripture and clear arguments. He heartily accepted all the doctrinal decisions of the first four oecumenical Councils, and had the deepest respect for the Apostles’ Creed on which his own Catechism is based. But he protested against the Council of Constance for condemning the opinions of Hus, which he thought were in accordance with the Scriptures. The Roman Church itself must admit the fallibility of Councils if the Vatican decree of papal infallibility is to stand; for more than one oecumenical council has denounced Pope Honorius as a heretic, and even Popes have confirmed the condemnation of their predecessor. Two conflicting infallibilities neutralize each other.384 Luther did not appeal to his conscience alone, but first and last to the Scripture as he understood it after the most earnest study. His conscience, as he said, was bound in the word of God, who cannot err. There, and there alone, he recognized infallibility. By recanting, he would have committed a grievous sin.

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

  But other contemporary reports give the whole sentence, though in different order of the words. See the comparative table of Burkhardt, I.c. pp. 525–529. A German report (reprinted in the Erl. -Frkf. ed., vol. LXIV. p. 383) gives as the last words of Luther (in reply to Eck): "Gott kumm mir zu Hilf! Amen. Da bin ich." The words "Da bin ich" (Here I am) are found also in another source. Mathesius reports the full sentence as coming from the lips of Luther in 1540. In a German contemporary print and on a fly-leaf in the University library of Heidelberg (according to Köstlin), the sentence appears in this order: "Ich kann nicht anders; hier steh’ ich; Gott helfe mir." In the first edition of Luther’s Latin works, published 1546, the words appear in the present order: "Hier steh’ ich," etc. In this form they have passed into general currency. Köstlin concludes that the only question is about the order of words, and whether they were spoken at the close of his main declaration, or a little afterwards at the close of the Diet. I have adopted the latter view, which agrees with the contemporary German report above quoted. Kolde, in his monograph on Luther at Worms (p. 60), agrees substantially with Köstlin, and says: "Wir wissen nicht mehr, in welchem Zusammenhang diese Worte gesprochen worden sind, auch können sie vielleicht etwas anders gelautet haben; bei der herrschenden Unruhe hat der eine Berichterstatter den Ausspruch so, der andere ihn so verstanden; sicherlich drückten sie zu gleicher Zeit seine felsenfeste Überzeugung von der Wahrheit seines in sich gewissen Glaubens aus, wie das Bewusstsein, dass hier nur Gott helfen könne." § 56. Reflections on Luther’s Testimony at Worms. Luther’s testimony before the Diet is an event of world-historical importance and far-reaching effect. It opened an intellectual conflict which is still going on in the civilized world. He stood there as the fearless champion of the supremacy of the word of God over the traditions of men, and of the liberty of conscience over the tyranny of authority. For this liberty, all Protestant Christians, who enjoy the fruit of his courage, owe him a debt of gratitude. His recantation could not, any more than his martyrdom, have stopped the Reformation; but it would have retarded its progress, and indefinitely prolonged the oppressive rule of popery. When tradition becomes a wall against freedom, when authority degenerates into tyranny, the very blessing is turned into a curse, and history is threatened with stagnation and death.382 At such rare junctures, Providence raises those pioneers of progress, who have the intellectual and moral courage to break through the restraints at the risk of their lives, and to open new paths for the onward march of history. This consideration furnishes the key for the proper appreciation of Luther’s determined stand at this historical crisis.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 1 (1000 BCE – 100 CE) (2009)

  seen, by a coalition of Greek city-states led by Athens. Greek democracy and the culture that went with it were saved. One Greek from Asia Minor, Herodotos of Halikarnassos, decided to write a work which would climax in an account of these Persian Wars, the greatest known clash between Greek and non-Greek, but it would also encompass all that he could find out about other peoples and places, which he would try to visit in person (often he succeeded). He called this enterprise a historia: an inquiry, in which any form of knowledge he could gather might contribute towards the great whole. Hesiod and the ‘mythographers’ had developed the method to understand the stories of the gods, but we know of no one before Herodotos who had tried to gather memories and documents together on such a scale to tell a connected story about the past. It was a very brave undertaking: the Persian Wars had finished around the time of his birth and had been over for more than a generation by the time he was writing. We owe Herodotos so much that, for all his unreliability and untidiness, it would be unjust to pick up the gibe made about him by some ancient authors who, following the lead of a prolonged and peevish attack on him by the later historian Plutarch, claimed that he was the Father of Lies rather than the Father of History.22 Plutarch’s anger with him stemmed from the fact that Herodotos was too entranced by the glorious mess of history to turn it into edifying and improving stories for the young. Modern historians should sympathize with Herodotos’s engaging unwillingness to ignore the inconvenient, or to mistake moralizing for morality. Herodotos’s work in history was taken further by Thucydides, a leading Athenian whose career in his city’s affairs was ruined by a further round of warfare during the later fifth century BCE, this time among the Greeks themselves. This ‘Peloponnesian War’ was as great a disaster for Athenian confidence and self-respect as the Persian Wars had been a triumph, and it ultimately destroyed their power. The defeat of Persia left Athens at the head of a victorious group of city-states, the Delian League. The Athenians yielded to the temptation of using their leading role to turn the League into an empire for themselves. Their sudden access of wealth and power stimulated and funded some of their most striking achievements in art, but it also attracted jealousy and resentment, especially from the rival polis of Sparta. Sparta was very different from Athens: a small minority of its people ruled a conquered and cowed population through military force and deliberately sustained terror, keeping themselves in permanent armed readiness by means of a tradition of brutal training for their male elite.23 When Plato, an Athenian alienated from his own democratic culture, portrayed his authoritarian and supposedly ‘beautiful city’ in The Republic, his Athenian readers would have recognized his mixture of

• From When Breath Becomes Air (2016)

  In my fourth year, I began work in a Stanford lab dedicated to basic motor neuroscience and the development of neural prosthetic technology that would allow, say, paralyzed people to mentally control a computer cursor or robot arm. The head of the lab, a professor of electrical engineering and neurobiology, a fellow second-generation Indian, was affectionately called “V” by everyone. V was seven years older than I, but we got on like brothers. His lab had become a world leader in reading out brain signals, but with his blessing I embarked on a project to do the reverse: to write signals into the brain. After all, if your robot arm can’t feel how hard it’s grasping a wineglass, you will break a lot of wineglasses. The implications of writing signals into the brain, or “neuromodulation,” however, were far more wide-reaching than that: being able to control neural firing would conceivably allow treatment of a host of currently untreatable or intractable neurological and psychiatric diseases, from major depression to Huntington’s to schizophrenia to Tourette’s to OCD…the possibilities were limitless. Putting surgery aside now, I set to work learning to apply new techniques in gene therapy in a series of “first of its kind” experiments. After I’d been there for a year, V and I sat down for one of our weekly meetings. I had grown to love these chats. V was not like other scientists I knew. He was soft-spoken and cared deeply about people and the clinical mission, and he often confessed to me that he wished he’d been a surgeon himself. Science, I had come to learn, is as political, competitive, and fierce a career as you can find, full of the temptation to find easy paths. One could count on V to always choose the honest (and, often, self-effacing) way forward. While most scientists connived to publish in the most prestigious journals and get their names out there, V maintained that our only obligation was to be authentic to the scientific story and to tell it uncompromisingly. I’d never met someone so successful who was also so committed to goodness. V was an actual paragon. Instead of smiling as I sat down across from him, he looked pained. He sighed and said, “I need you to wear your doctor hat right now.” “Okay.” “They tell me I have pancreatic cancer.” “V…okay. Tell me the story.” He laid out his gradual weight loss, indigestion, and his recent “precautionary” CT scan—a truly nonstandard procedure at this point—which showed a pancreatic mass. We discussed the way forward, the dreaded Whipple operation in his near future (“You are going to feel like a truck hit you,” I told him), who the best surgeons were, the impact the illness would have on his wife and children, and how to run the lab during his prolonged absence. Pancreatic cancer has a dismal prognosis, but of course there was no way to know what that meant for V.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  The Christian is the learner and the listener who must listen to the words of Jesus, and who must follow their thread, so that day by day he may learn more of the wisdom which Jesus is ever wishing to teach him. The Christian is always in the position of one who needs and desires the favour and the grace and the help which Jesus Christ can give to him, and who follows Christ because in Christ alone he finds his need supplied. We now turn to the use of akolouthein in the NT itself It is very frequent there. (i) It is used of the disciples who left their various trades and occupations and followed Jesus. So it is used of Peter and Andrew (Mark 1.18; cp. Matt. 4.20). It is used of the two disciples of John the Baptist who followed Jesus when John pointed at Jesus as the Lamb of God (John 1.37). It is used of the reaction of the disciples after the miraculous catch of fishes; they forsook all and followed Jesus (Luke 5.11). It is the claim of the disciples towards the end that they have left everything to follow Jesus (Matt. 19.27). It is used of the would-be disciples whom Jesus told to think again before they launched out on the adventure of following him (Matt. 8.19; cp. Luke 9.59, 61). (ii) It is the word which Jesus used to summon men to himself. On Jesus’ lips it is the word of challenge. His commandment to Matthew is: Follow me (Mark 2.14; cp. Luke 5.27; Matt. 9.9). It is Jesus’ command to Philip (John 1.43). It is his final command to Peter (John 21.19, 22). It is his unaccepted command to the Rich Young Ruler (Matt. 19.21; cp. Luke 18.22). His command to all his would-be followers is that they should take up their cross and follow him (Mark 8.34; 10.21; Matt. 10.38; 16.24; Luke 9.23) . (iii) Most commonly of all this word is used of the crowds who followed Jesus (Matt. 4.25; 8.1; 12.15; 14.13; 19.2; 20.9; 21.9; Mark 3.7; 5.24; 11.9; John 6.2). This use is very closely connected with the usage of the verb in the papyri to describe the act of attaching oneself to someone until a request is granted. Sometimes the crowds followed Jesus to experience his healing power; sometimes they followed him to listen to his words; and sometimes, towards the end, they followed him in wondering admiration to see what was going to happen to him. Another instance of this use of akolouthein in the sense of following to receive a favour is Matt. 9.27, when the two blind men are said to follow Jesus in order that he might heal them.

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

  § 11. Protestantism and Religious Liberty. Comp. Ph. Schaff: The Progress of Religious Freedom as shown in the History of Toleration Acts, N. York, 1889. (126 pages.) The Reformation was a grand act of emancipation from spiritual tyranny, and a vindication of the sacred rights of conscience in matters of religious belief. Luther’s bold stand at the Diet of Worms, in the face of the pope and the emperor, is one of the sublimest events in the history of liberty, and the eloquence of his testimony rings through the centuries.41 To break the force of the pope, who called himself and was believed to be, the visible vicar of God on earth, and who held in his hands the keys of the kingdom of heaven, required more moral courage than to fight a hundred battles, and it was done by an humble monk in the might of faith. If liberty, both civil and religious, has since made progress, it is due in large measure to the inspiration of that heroic act. But the progress was slow and passed through many obstructions and reactions. "The mills of God grind slowly, but wonderfully fine." It seems one of the strangest inconsistencies that the very men who claimed and exercised the right of protest in essentials, should have denied the same right to others, who differed from them in nonessentials. After having secured liberty from the yoke of popery, they acted on the persecuting principles in which they had been brought up. They had no idea of toleration or liberty in our modern sense. They fought for liberty in Christ, not from Christ, for liberty to preach and teach the gospel, not to oppose or pervert it. They were as intensely convinced of their views as their Roman opponents of theirs. They abhorred popery and heresy as dangerous errors which should not be tolerated in a Christian society. John Knox feared one Romish mass in Scotland more than an army of ten thousand French invaders. The Protestant divines and princes of the sixteenth century felt it to be their duty to God and to themselves to suppress and punish heresy as well as civil crimes. They confounded the law with the gospel. In many cases they acted in retaliation, and in self-defense. They were surrounded by a swarm of sects and errorists who claimed to be the legitimate children of the Reformation, exposed it to the reproach of the enemies and threatened to turn it into confusion and anarchy. The world and the church were not ripe for a universal reign of liberty, nor are they even now.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 4 (300 – 1300, Rome) (2009)

  wrote admiringly of Christianity’s great enemy the Emperor Julian (see p. 217), paying generous tribute in his boyhood memory of a ‘brave leader in arms, a lawgiver, famous for speech and action, one who cared for his country’s welfare, but not for maintaining true religion’.23 His most extended work was his Peristephanon, a roll call of Christian martyrs, singing of their terrible deaths and the places where pilgrims could now pursue their cults. Damasus’s verse creations of a Roman and Christian history were put in the shade. In all Prudentius’s verse, whose Latin has the sonorous clarity of some great monumental inscription on one of Rome’s ancient buildings, there is not one mention of the new Rome, Constantinople. Provincial administrators did not only become Christian poets; increasingly, they or their relatives became bishops, taking with them the mitres which were part of the uniform of officials at the imperial Court in Byzantium. The Church, particularly after the terminal crisis of the Western Empire in the early fifth century, became a safer prospect than the increasingly failing civil service for those aspiring to serve or direct their communities; often Roman noblemen would become bishops because they saw the office as the only way to protect what survived of the world they loved. Their prime role model came from the late fourth century, in the form of the imperial governor who became Bishop of Milan: Ambrose. Brought up a Christian but very much a gentleman, he was the son of the Praetorian Prefect (Governor-General) of the vast imperial province which included the modern France, England and Spain. This great aristocrat predictably embarked on a military career, equally predictably ending up as governor of the Italian province whose capital, Milan, was the chief imperial headquarters in the West. Here, in 373 or 374, matters took an unexpected turn. The Christian population gathered to choose a new bishop and were bitterly divided between Nicenes and supporters of the Homoean compromise (see pp. 216–17). That is interesting proof that Christian communities still had genuine choices of leadership to make even in a key strategic city, but it also meant that the occasion threatened to turn into the sort of murderous riot which had marred Damasus’s election as pope. Ambrose came along at the head of a detachment of troops to keep order and, as he was delivering some crisp military sentiments to the crowd, a child’s voice pierced the church: ‘Ambrose for Bishop!’It was the perfect solution; the mob took up the shout.24 Consecrated bishop after an indecently hasty progress through baptism and ordination, Ambrose proved a remarkable success, at least in political terms. He was ruthless in dealing both with the opponents of Nicaea and with a series of Christian emperors. It was an extraordinary transformation of fortunes for Christianity that a man who might

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

  Luther’s view of inspiration was both strong and free. With the profoundest conviction of the divine contents of the Bible, he distinguished between the revealed truth itself and the human wording and reasoning of the writers. He says of one of the rabbinical arguments of his favorite apostle: "My dear brother Paul, this argument won’t stick."28 Luther was, however, fully aware of the subjective and conjectural character of these opinions, and had no intention of obtruding them on the church: hence he modified his prefaces in later editions. He judged the Scriptures from an exclusively dogmatic, and one-sidedly Pauline standpoint, and did not consider their gradual historical growth. A few Lutheran divines followed him in assigning a subordinate position to the seven Antilegomena of the New Testament;29 but the Lutheran church, with a sound instinct, accepted for popular use the traditional catholic Canon (not even expressly excluding the Jewish Apocrypha), yet retained his arrangement of the books of the New Testament.30 The Rationalists, of course, revived, intensified, and carried to excess the bold opinions of Luther, but in a spirit against which he would himself raise the strongest protest. The Reformed divines were more conservative than Luther in accepting the canonical books, but more decided in rejecting the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. The Reformed Confessions usually enumerate the canonical books. Zwingli objected only to the Apocalypse and made no doctrinal use of it, because he did not deem it an inspired book, written by the same John who wrote the fourth Gospel.31 In this view he has many followers, but the severest critical school of our days (that of Tübingen) assigns it to the Apostle John. Wolfgang Musculus mentions the seven Antilegomena, but includes them in the general catalogue of the New Testament; and Oecolampadius speaks of six Antilegomena (omitting the Hebrews), as holding an inferior rank, but nevertheless appeals to their testimony.32 Calvin had no fault to find with James and Jude, and often quotes Hebrews and Revelation as canonical books, though he wrote no commentary on Revelation, probably because he felt himself incompetent for the task. He is silent about Second and Third John. He denies, decidedly, the Pauline authorship, but not the canonicity, of Hebrews.33 He is disposed to assign Second Peter to a pupil of Peter, who wrote under the auspices and by direction of the Apostle; but he guards in this case, also, against unfavorable inferences from the uncertainty of origin.34

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

  Luther was the bold pioneer of a higher criticism, which was indeed subjective and arbitrary, but, after all, a criticism of faith. He made his central doctrine of justification by faith the criterion of canonicity.22 He thus placed the material or subjective principle of Protestantism above the formal or objective principle, the truth above the witness of the truth, the doctrine of the gospel above the written Gospel, Christ above the Bible. Romanism, on the contrary, places the church above the Bible. But we must remember that Luther first learnt Christ from the Bible, and especially, from the Epistles of Paul, which furnished him the key for the understanding of the scheme of salvation. He made a distinction, moreover, between the more important and the less important books of the New Testament, according to the extent of their evangelic purity and force, and put Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation at the end of the German Bible.23 He states his reason in the Preface to the Hebrews as follows: "Hitherto we have had the right and genuine books of the New Testament. The four that follow have been differently esteemed in olden times." He therefore appeals to the ante-Nicene tradition, but his chief objection was to the contents. He disliked, most of all, the Epistle of James because he could not harmonize it with Paul’s teaching on justification by faith without works,24 and he called it an epistle of straw as compared with the genuine apostolic writings.25 He objected to the Epistle to the Hebrews because it seems to deny (in Heb. 6, 10 and 12) the possibility of repentance after baptism, contrary to the Gospels and to Paul, and betrays in 2:3, a post-apostolic origin. He ascribed the authorship to Apollos by an ingenious guess, which, though not supported by ancient tradition, has found great favor with modern commentators and critics,26 chiefly because the authorship of any other possible writer (Paul, Barnabas, Luke, Clement) seems to offer insuperable difficulties, while the description of Apollos in Acts 18:24–28, compared with the allusions in 1 Cor. 1:12; 3:6; 4:6; 16:12, seems to fit exactly the author of this anonymous Epistle. He called the Epistle of Jude an "unnecessary epistle," a mere extract from Second Peter and post-apostolic, filled with apocryphal matter, and hence rejected by the ancient fathers. He could at first find no sense in the mysteries of the Apocalypse and declared it to be "neither apostolic nor prophetic," because it deals only with images and visions, and yet, notwithstanding its obscurity, it adds threats and promises, "though nobody knows what it means"; but afterwards he modified his judgment when the Lutheran divines found in it welcome weapons against the church of Rome. The clearest utterance on this subject is found at the close of his preface to the first edition of his German version of the New Testament (1522), but it was suppressed in later editions.27

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

  Luther assigned to his solifidian doctrine of justification the central position in the Christian system, declared it to be the article of the standing or falling (Lutheran) church, and was unwilling to yield an inch from it, though heaven and earth should collapse.11 This exaggeration is due to his personal experience during his convent life. The central article of the Christian faith on which the church is built, is not any specific dogma of the Protestant, or Roman, or Greek church, but the broader and deeper truth held by all, namely, the divine-human personality and atoning work of Christ, the Lord and Saviour. This was the confession of Peter, the first creed of Christendom. The Protestant doctrine of justification differs from the Roman Catholic, as defined (very circumspectly) by the Council of Trent, chiefly in two points. Justification is conceived as a declaratory and judicial act of God, in distinction from sanctification, which is a gradual growth; and faith is conceived as a fiducial act of the heart and will, in distinction from theoretical belief and blind submission to the church. The Reformers derived their idea from Paul, the Romanists appealed chiefly to James (2:17–26); but Paul suggests the solution of the apparent contradiction by his sentence, that "in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love." Faith, in the biblical and evangelical sense, is a vital force which engages all the powers of man and apprehends and appropriates the very life of Christ and all his benefits. It is the child of grace and the mother of good works. It is the pioneer of all great thoughts and deeds. By faith Abraham became the father of nations; by faith Moses became the liberator and legislator of Israel; by faith the Galilean fishermen became fishers of men; and by faith the noble army of martyrs endured tortures and triumphed in death; without faith in the risen Saviour the church could not have been founded. Faith is a saving power. It unites us to Christ. Whosoever believeth in Christ "hath eternal life." "We believe," said Peter at the Council of Jerusalem, "that we shall be saved through the grace of God," like the Gentiles who come to Christ by faith without the works and ceremonies of the law. "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved," was Paul’s answer to the question of the jailor: "What must I do to be saved?"

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

  Erasmus shines in the front rank of the humanists and forerunners of the Reformation, on the dividing line between the middle ages and modern times. His great mission was to revive the spirit of classical and Christian antiquity, and to make it a reforming power within the church. He cleared the way for a work of construction which required stronger hands than his. He had no creative and no organizing power. The first period of his life till 1524 was progressive and reformatory; the second, till his death, 1536, was conservative and reactionary. He did more than any of his contemporaries to prepare the church for the Reformation by the impulse he gave to classical, biblical, and patristic studies, and by his satirical exposures of ecclesiastical abuses and monastic ignorance and bigotry. But he stopped half way, and after a period of, hesitation he openly declared war against Luther, thereby injuring both his own reputation and the progress of the movement among scholars. He was a reformer against reform, and in league with Rome. Thus he lost the respect and confidence of both parties. It would have been better for his fame if he had died in 1516, just after issuing the Greek Testament, a year before the Reformation. To do justice to him, we must look backward. Men of transition, like Staupitz, Reuchlin, and Erasmus, are no less necessary than bold leaders of a new departure. They belong to the class of which John the Baptist is the highest type. Protestants should never forget the immense debt of gratitude which they owe to the first editor of the Greek Testament who enabled Luther and Tyndale to make their translations of the word of life from the original, and to lead men to the very fountain of all that is most valuable and permanent in the Reformation. His edition was hastily prepared, before the art of textual criticism was born; but it anticipated the publication of the ponderous Complutensian Polyglot, and became the basis of the popularly received text. His exegetical opinions still receive and deserve the attention of commentators. To him we owe also the first scholarly editions of the Fathers, especially of Jerome, with whom he was most in sympathy. From these editions the Reformers drew their weapons of patristic controversy with the Romanists, who always appealed to the fathers of the Nicene age rather than to the grandfathers of the apostolic age. Erasmus was allied to Reuchlin and Ulrich von Hutten, but greater and far more influential than both. All hated monasticism and obscurantism. Reuchlin revived Hebrew, Erasmus Greek learning, so necessary for the cultivation of biblical studies. Reuchlin gave his nephew Melanchthon to Wittenberg, but died a good Catholic. Hutten became a radical ultra-reformer, fell out with Erasmus, who disowned him when he was most in need of a friend, and perished in disgrace. Erasmus survived both, to protest against Protestantism.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  To be sure, breeding remained paramount in considerations of identity. In 1994, one irate journalist insisted that the Georgia politician Newton Leroy Gingrich was no redneck: he was born in Pennsylvania, had no southern accent, had served as a college professor, and got elected to Congress by suburbanites of Atlanta, many of them Yankees. This newsman’s expertise came from the fact that he was “kin to a great many of that breed.” Besides, he chided, “Gingrich wouldn’t last half an hour in a room of genuine rednecks.” You were a dyed-in- the-wool redneck or you weren’t. By this measure, neither Gingrich nor David Duke, the former Klan member who ran for governor of Louisiana in 1991, was a redneck. Duke was disqualified because he loved un-American Nazi salutes. Submitting to plastic surgery to make himself too pretty was also out of character. “No good ole Southern boy would dream of such a thing. It’s unmasculine, un-Southern.” This was the view of Jeffrey Hart, a conservative intellectual from Dartmouth College and former speechwriter for Presidents Nixon and Reagan. 4 • • • Redneck was no longer the exclusive province of country singers. It had become part of the cultural lingua franca, a means of sizing up public men, and a strangely mutated gender and class identity. Nor were women silent in this debate. Two prominent female writers earned acclaim in the modern genre of white trash fiction. In the tradition of William Faulkner and James Agee, Dorothy Allison and Carolyn Chute offered unsparing accounts of rural poverty. Allison creatively reconstructed the conditions she knew from her early years in Bastard Out of Carolina (1992), while Chute, a working-class, college-educated writer from Portland, told of trailer trash in rural Maine in her breakout book, The Beans of Egypt, Maine (1985). What set these writers apart was that they wrote from within their class, not as outside observers; they were outing themselves, and knew precisely how to describe poor women’s experiences. Class and sexuality remained their dominant themes, and neither sugarcoated her subjects as good ol’ girls. What they showed instead was that women cannot wear “white trash” or “redneck” as a badge of honor. 5 Allison is the better writer. That said, a spare prose may have been intentional for Chute. She captures events as they are happening, offering few insights into the inner life of her white trash subjects. The Beans are a sprawling extended tribe who take over the underbelly of Egypt. They are an assorted lot.

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

  All honor to the Catholic Church and her inestimable services to humanity. But Christianity is far broader and deeper than any ecclesiastical organization. It burst the shell of mediaeval forms, struck out new paths, and elevated Europe to a higher plane of intellectual, moral and spiritual culture than it had ever attained before. § 2. Protestantism and Romanism. Protestantism represents the most enlightened and active of modern church history, but not the whole of it. Since the sixteenth century Western Christendom is divided and runs in two distinct channels. The separation may be compared to the Eastern schism of the ninth century, which is not healed to this day; both parties being as firm and unyielding as ever on the doctrinal question of the Filioque, and the more important practical question of Popery. But Protestantism differs much more widely from the Roman church than the Roman church differs from the Greek, and the Protestant schism has become the fruitful mother of minor divisions, which exist in separate ecclesiastical organizations. We must distinguish between Catholicism and Romanism. The former embraces the ancient Oriental church, the mediaeval church, and we may say, in a wider sense, all the modern evangelical churches. Romanism is the Latin church turned against the Reformation, consolidated by the Council of Trent and completed by the Vatican Council of 1870 with its dogma of papal absolutism and papal infallibility. Mediaeval Catholicism is pre-evangelical, looking to the Reformation; modern Romanism is anti-evangelical, condemning the Reformation, yet holding with unyielding tenacity the oecumenical doctrines once sanctioned, and doing this all the more by virtue of its claim to infallibility. The distinction between pre-Reformation Catholicism and post-Reformation Romanism, in their attitude towards Protestantism, has its historical antecedent and parallel in the distinction between pre-Christian Israel which prepared the way for Christianity, and post-Christian Judaism which opposed it as an apostasy. Catholicism and Protestantism represent two distinct types of Christianity which sprang from the same root, but differ in the branches. Catholicism is legal Christianity which served to the barbarian nations of the Middle Ages as a necessary school of discipline; Protestantism is evangelical Christianity which answers the age of independent manhood. Catholicism is traditional, hierarchical, ritualistic, conservative; Protestantism is biblical, democratic, spiritual, progressive. The former is ruled by the principle of authority, the latter by the principle of freedom. But the law, by awakening a sense of sin and exciting a desire for redemption, leads to the gospel; parental authority is a school of freedom; filial obedience looks to manly self-government. The characteristic features of mediaeval Catholicism are intensified by Romanism, yet without destroying the underlying unity. Romanism and orthodox Protestantism believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and in one divine-human Lord and Saviour of the race. They accept in common the Holy Scriptures and the oecumenical faith. They agree in every article of the Apostles’ Creed. What unites them is far deeper, stronger and more important than what divides them.

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

  A still nearer approach to the views of the Reformers was made by Wessel Gansfort, commonly called John Wessel,1171 born in Groningen, 1420, died 1489. In his Preface to Wessel’s writings, 1522, Luther said, "If I had read Wessel earlier, my enemies might have said that Luther drew everything from Wessel, so well do our two minds agree." Wessel attended school at Zwolle, where he met Thomas à Kempis of the neighboring convent of Mt. St. Agnes. The story ran that when Thomas pointed him to the Virgin, Wessel replied, "Father, why did you not rather point me to Christ who calls the heavy-laden to himself?" He continued his studies in Cologne, where he took Greek and Hebrew, in Heidelberg and in Paris. He declined a call to Heidelberg. In 1470, we find him in Rome. The story went that, when Sixtus IV. invited him to follow the common custom of visitors to the Vatican and make a request, the German student replied that he would like to have a Hebrew or Greek manuscript of the Bible from the Vatican. The pope, laughing, said, "Why did you not ask for a bishopric, you fool?" Wessel’s reply was "Because I do not need it." Wessel spent some time in Basel, where he met Reuchlin. In 1473, the bishop of Utrecht wrote that many were seeking his life and invited him back to Holland. His last years, from 1474 on, Wessel spent with the Brothers of the Common Life at Mt. St. Agnes, and in the nuns’ convent at Groningen. There, in the place of his birth, he lies buried. His last words were, "I know no one save Jesus, the Crucified." Wessel enjoyed a reputation for great learning. He escaped arraignment at the hands of the Inquisition, but was violently attacked after his death in a tract on indulgences, by Jacob Hoeck, Dean of Naaldwyk. None of Wessel’s writings were published till after the outbreak of the Reformation. Although he did not reach the doctrine of justification by faith, he declared that pope and councils may err and he defined the Church to be the communion of the saints. The unity of the Church does not lie in the pope—unitas ecclesiae sub uno papa tantum accidentalis est, adeo ut non sit necessaria. He laid stress upon the faith of the believer in partaking of the eucharist or, rather, upon his hunger and thirst after the sacrament. But he did not deny the sacrifice of the mass or the validity of the communion under one kind. He gave up the judicial element in priestly absolution.1172 There is no such thing as works of supererogation, for each is under obligation to do all he can and to do less is to sin. The prerogative of the keys belongs to all believers. Plenary indulgences are a detestable invention of the papacy to fill its treasury.

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

  Believing that the papal priesthood had been corrupt since Constantine’s donation to Sylvester, the Brethren, at the synod of 1467, chose Michael, pastor of Senftenburg, "presbyter and bishop," and sent him to the Waldensian bishop Stephen for sanction or consecration.718 It seems probable that Stephen had received orders at Basel from bishops in the regular succession. On his return, Michael consecrated Matthias of Kunwald, while he himself, for a time and for a reason not known, was not officially recognized. The synod had resorted to the lot and placed the words "he is" on 3 out of 12 ballots, 9 being left blank. Matthias chose one of he printed ballots.719 Matthias, in turn, ordained Thomas and Elias bishops, men who had drawn the other two printed ballots. By 1500, the Bohemian Brethren numbered 200,000 scattered in 300 or 400 congregations in Bohemia and Moravia. They had their own confession, catechism and hymnology.720 Of the 60 Bohemian books printed 1500–1510, 50 are said to have been by members of the sect. A new period in their history was introduced by Lucas of Prag, d. 1528, a voluminous writer. He gave explanations of the Brethren’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper to Luther. Brethren, including Michael Weiss, the hymnwriter, visited the German Reformer, and in 1521 he had in his possession their catechism. The merciless persecutions of the Brethren and the other remaining Hussite sectarists were opened under the Austrian rule of Ferdinand I. in 1549, and continued, with interruptions, till the Thirty Years’ War when, under inspiration of the Jesuits, the government resorted to measures memorable for their heartlessness to blot out heresy from Bohemia and Moravia. The Church of the Brethren had a remarkable resurrection in the Moravians, starting with the settlement of Christian David and other Hussite families in 1722 on land given by Count Zinzendorf at Herrnhut. They preserve the venerable name of their spiritual ancestry, Unitas Fratrum, and they have made good their heritage by their missionary labors which have carried the Gospel to the remotest ends of the earth, from Greenland to the West Indies and Guiana, and from the leper colony of Jerusalem to Thibet and Australia. In our own land, David Zeisberger and other Moravian missionaries have shown in their labors among the Indian tribes the godly devotion of John Huss, whose body the flames at Constance were able to destroy, but not his sacred memory and influence. CHAPTER VI.THE LAST POPES OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 1447–1521§ 48. Literature and General Survey.