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 Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  The bishop rose to power in the church not by virtue of his teaching, but because he managed the funds and controlled the extensive executive apparatus of the church. The man who held the purse-strings finally ruled the church. It was only toward the close of the second century that the bishops added the control of the teaching functions to their other growing powers. It is the outcome of the close investigation which has been given to this subject in recent years that the framework of organization in the primitive churches was devised, not for the conduct of worship, nor for teaching and preaching, but for the administration of the common life. The first step in organization was the appointment of the Seven at Jerusalem, and they were appointed to administer the fraternal help of the church with greater fairness. It has usually been assumed that these Seven were the first “deacons.” It now seems more probable that the deacons were a later contrivance for the purpose of rendering subsidiary assistance to the bishops, and that the Seven were the first elders. In that case the original purpose of the presbyterate was not teaching, but organized helpfulness. The bishops of the early centuries were first of all great executive officers. They became teachers and theologians when doctrine and theology became so essential a part of church life. If these results of modern historical investigation are to any extent correct, they furnish a powerful proof of the fact that in the early Christian communities the administration of mutual helpfulness was a very important part of their existence, and that their common life must have extended far beyond their common religious worship. If we inquire in what directions this fraternal helpfulness manifested itself, our information is far richer about the third century than about the first and second. By that time the organization of the churches had been centralized and perfected, and the charitable help was administered through this machinery. In the first century the methods were crude and more spontaneous, but the spirit of it was probably purer than later, more democratic and less debased by the desire to win merit by ascetic almsgiving. From the outset widows and orphans were extensively cared for. The social conditions of the ancient world and the impulses inherited from Judaism laid this duty upon the churches. About a.d. 250, the church at Rome had fifteen hundred dependents of that kind under its care. When Christians were in prison for their faith or exiled to the mines, the churches cared for their needs and comfort, often in lavish degree. It was not uncommon to ransom Christians imprisoned for debt.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  Has it not lifted woman to equality and companionship with man, secured the sanctity and stability of marriage, changed parental despotism to parental service, and eliminated unnatural vice, the abandonment of children, blood revenge, and the robbery of the shipwrecked from the customs of Christian nations? Has it not abolished slavery, mitigated war, covered all lands with a network of charities to uplift the poor and the fallen, fostered the institutions of education, aided the progress of civil liberty and social justice, and diffused a softening tenderness throughout human life? It has done all that, and vastly more. The influence of Christianity in taming selfishness and stimulating the sympathetic affections, in creating a resolute sense of duty, a stanch love of liberty and independence, an irrepressible hunger for justice and a belief in the rights of the poor, has been so subtle and penetrating that no one can possibly trace its effects. We might as well try to count up the effect in our organism of all the oxygen we have inhaled since our first gasp for breath. In so far as humanity has yet been redeemed, Christianity has been its redemption. Many of us have made test of that regenerating power in our personal lives. Many, too, have marked the palpable difference in the taste of life between some social circle really affected by Christian kindliness and a similar circle untouched by Christian motives and affections. What is true within such small spheres of social life has been true in the large area of Western civilization. And yet human society has not been reconstituted in accordance with the principles of Jesus Christ. In the first place, it is necessary to remind ourselves that Christian writers who describe the influence of Christianity on human life are always tempted to emphasize the contrast between heathenism and Christian society by selecting the darkest aspects of the former and the brightest sides of the latter. The witticisms of heathen satirists and the sombre invectives of Christian moralists are quoted to characterize heathen life.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  When the machinery of imperial administration broke down in the provinces under the invasion of the barbarians in the fifth century, the machinery of the Church remained unbroken. The provincial cities rose like islands of the old Roman civilization amid the flood of barbarian life that covered the provinces, and in the cities the bishops were the leaders, the protectors of the poor, and the organizers of the forces of law and order. Amid the general disorder and insecurity the Church offered the stable points and thereby gathered power to itself. Ancient families became extinct and the Church became the heir of their lands and slaves and serfs. Small proprietors sought security by committing their lands to the Church and becoming its tenants. The landed wealth of the Church alone sufficed to make it a power of the highest rank in the feudal system of the Middle Ages, in which all power finally rested on the possession of the land. Bishops and abbots became feudal dignitaries, sometimes almost sovereign princes in their own domains, and always with a potent voice in the government of their nations. The pope became a sovereign over a large part of Italy, and his material power and spiritual influence were so vast that he could wrestle on even terms for supremacy with the emperors. The Church was the preserver of the remnants of intellectual culture, the sole schoolmistress of the raw peoples. Her clergy long had almost a monopoly of education, and were the secretaries of the nobles, the chancellors and prime ministers of kings. The Church had its own law code and its own courts of law which were supreme over the clergy, and had large rights of jurisdiction even over the laity, so that it could develop and give effect to its own ideas of law and right. Throughout the Middle Ages the sway of the Church over the moral and spiritual life of the people, her power to inspire and direct their enthusiasms and energies, her chance for moulding their conceptions of life, were amazing and unparalleled by any other force. In modern life the relation between Church and State has grown looser, the reverence for the Church has sensibly waned, and other intellectual and spiritual forces have risen by her side and successfully claimed part of the field which she formerly held alone. But the potential efficiency of the Church in affecting public opinion and custom is still almost incalculable, even in the least religious countries of Europe. In our own country, if the Church directed its full available force against any social wrong, there is probably nothing that could stand up against it. Here, then, is a vast force which by all the tradition of its origin and by its very essence is committed to the moral reconstruction of human society.

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

  Respecting St. Symeon, or Simeon Stylites, we have accounts from three contemporaries and eye witnesses, Anthony, Cosmas, and especially Theodoret (Hist. Relig. c. 26). The latter composed his narrative sixteen years before the death the saint. Evagrius: H. E. i. c. 13. The Acta Sanctorum and Butler, sub Jan. 5. Uhlemann: Symeon, der erste Säulenheilige in Syrien. Leipz. 1846. (Comp. also the fine poem of A. Tennyson: St. Symeon Stylites, a monologue in which S. relates his own experience.) It is unnecessary to recount the lives of other such anchorets; since the same features, even to unimportant details, repeat themselves in all.326 But in the fifth century a new and quite original path327 was broken by Symeon, the father of the Stylites or pillar saints, who spent long years, day and night, summer and winter, rain and sunshine, frost and heat, standing on high, unsheltered pillars, in prayer and penances, and made the way to heaven for themselves so passing hard, that one knows not whether to wonder at their unexampled self-denial, or to pity their ignorance of the gospel salvation. On this giddy height the anchoretic asceticism reached its completion. St. Symeon the Stylite, originally a shepherd on the borders of Syria and Cilicia, when a boy of thirteen years, was powerfully affected by the beatitudes, which he heard read in the church, and betook himself to a cloister. He lay several days, without eating or drinking, before the threshold, and begged to be admitted as the meanest servant of the house. He accustomed himself to eat only once a week, on Sunday. During Lent he even went through the whole forty days without any food; a fact almost incredible even for a tropical climate.328 The first attempt of this kind brought him to the verge of death; but his constitution conformed itself, and when Theodoret visited him, he had solemnized six and twenty Lent seasons by total abstinence, and thus surpassed Moses, Elias, and even Christ, who never fasted so but once. Another of his extraordinary inflections was to lace his body so tightly that the cord pressed through to the bones, and could be cut off only with the most terrible pains. This occasioned his dismissal from the cloister. He afterward spent some time as a hermit upon a mountain, with an iron chain upon his feet, and was visited there by admiring and curious throngs. When this failed to satisfy him, he invented, in 423, a new sort of holiness, and lived, some two days’ journey (forty miles) east of Antioch, for six and thirty years, until his death, upon a pillar, which at the last was nearly forty cubits high;329 for the pillar was raised in proportion as he approached heaven and perfection. Here he could never lie nor sit, but only stand, or lean upon a post (probably a banister), or devoutly bow; in which last posture he almost touched his feet with his head—so flexible had his back been made by fasting.

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

  It is by the combination of a severe creed with severe self-discipline that Calvin became the father of the heroic races of French Huguenots, Dutch Burghers, English Puritans, Scotch Covenanters, and New England Pilgrims, who sacrificed the world for the liberty of conscience. "A little bit of the worlds history," says the German historian Häusser,364 "was enacted in Geneva, which forms the proudest portion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A number of the most distinguished men in France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain professed her creed; they were sturdy, gloomy souls, iron characters cast in one mould, in which there was an interfusion of Romanic, Germanic, mediaeval, and modern elements; and the national and political consequences of the new faith were carried out by them with the utmost rigor and consistency." A distinguished Scotch divine (Principal Tulloch) echoes this judgment when he says:365 "It was the spirit bred by Calvin’s discipline which, spreading into France and Holland and Scotland, maintained by its single strength the cause of a free Protestantism in all these lands. It was the same spirit which inspired the early and lived on in the later Puritans; which animated such men as Milton and Owen and Baxter; which armed the Parliament of England with strength against Charles I., and stirred the great soul of Cromwell in its proudest triumphs; and which, while it thus fed every source of political liberty in the Old World, burned undimned in the gallant crew of the ’Mayflower,’ the Pilgrim Fathers,—who first planted the seeds of civilization in the great continent of the West."366 Calvin was intolerant of any dissent, either papal or heretical, and his early followers in Europe and America abhorred religious toleration (in the sense of indifference) as a pestiferous error; nevertheless, in their conflict with reactionary Romanism and political despotism, they became the chief promoters of civil and religious liberty based upon respect for God’s law and authority. The solution of the apparent inconsistency lies in the fact that Calvinists fear God and nothing else. In their eyes, God alone is great, man is but a shadow. The fear of God makes them fearless of earthly despots. It humbles man before God, it exalts him before his fellow-men. The fear of God is the basis of moral self-government, and self-government is the basis of true freedom.367

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  GLOSS. (non occ.) From the words then, which have been quoted, we can infer two things; first, the divine virtue which was in Christ, by which He was able to lighten the Gentiles; for it is said, My God shall be my strength. (2 Cor. 5:19) God therefore was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, as the Apostle says to the Corinthians; whence also the Gospel, by which believers are saved, is the power of God unto salvation, to every one who believeth, (Rom. 1:16) as the same Apostle says to the Romans. The second thing is, the enlightening of the Gentiles, and the salvation of the world, fulfilled by Christ, according to the will of the Father; for it is said, I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles. Wherefore the Lord after His resurrection, that He might fulfil the will of the Father, sent His disciples to preach, saying, Go ye, and teach all nations; some He sent to the Jews, some received the ministry of preaching to the Gentiles. But because it was right that the Gospel should not only be preached for those who then lived, but also be written for those who were to come, the same distinction is observed in the writers of the Gospel. For Matthew wrote the Gospel to the Jews in Hebrew, and Mark was the first to write a Gospel amongst the Gentiles. EUSEBIUS. (Hist. Eccles. 2.15) For when the glorious light of the word of God had arisen over the city of Rome, the doctrine of truth and of light, which Peter was then preaching to them, so shone upon the minds of all, by their patience in listening, that they heard him daily without ever being weary. Whence also they were not content with hearing only, but they earnestly beg of Mark his disciple, to commit to writing those things which he preached by word of mouth, that they might have a perpetual memorial of them, and might continue both at home and abroad in meditations of this sort upon the word. And they did not leave off their importunities, till they obtained what they had requested. This then was the cause of the writing of the Gospel of Mark. But Peter, when by the Holy Ghost he discovered the pious theft which had been put upon him, was filled with joy, for he saw by this, their faith and devotion; and he gave his sanction to what was done, and handed down the writing to the Churches, to be read for ever. PSEUDO-JEROME. (sup. Marc. in Præfat.) He begins at once with the announcement of the more perfect age of Christ, nor does he spend his labour on the birth of Christ as a little child, for he speaks of his perfection as the Son of God.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The next day Luther and his friends traveled on to Eisenach, where Luther preached again. Luther believed and declared that the Word of God could not be bound, so as far as he was concerned, he could not obey any man who wished to bind it, and his first obedience was due to God. In smaller matters, Luther felt differently, but as he made clear in his letter to the emperor and many other times, the Word of God was sacrosanct, and his duty to declare it wherever he went trumped any man-made constrictions.* He knew that he was endangering his life by doing this, but now and at other times Luther seems genuinely to have trusted God. But the pastor in Eisenach was not willing to go as far as his Hersfeld counterpart. He let Luther preach, but realizing this could put his own life in danger, he hedged his bet by proactively lodging a protest with the city notary. Because Luther had relatives nearby, south of Eisenach, whom he wished to visit, he sent Justus Jonas on ahead to Wittenberg, along with Schurff and Swawe. Luther was now alone with his fellow monk Petzensteiner and with his friend Amsdorf as he traveled on to nearby Möhra, the village where his father, Hans, had been born. The three of them stayed there overnight with Luther’s relatives and departed the next day. But after they had traveled about five miles—just as they were passing through a ravine near Schloss Altenstein—the three of them were violently set upon by a group of armed horsemen. Whether Petzensteiner was in on the ruse, we don’t know, but we do know that seeing the armed horsemen approaching, he leaped off the wagon and fled on foot, arriving in Waltershausen that evening. The kidnappers—for such they now revealed themselves to be—pointed their fearsome crossbows at the wagon driver, demanding with rough curses to know whom he was carrying. Certainly not privy to what was going on and fearing for his life, the driver blabbed what they surely already knew. Amsdorf too was in on the ruse, but to keep up appearances with the driver, he shouted angrily at the armed men. Nonetheless, the men rather roughly grabbed Luther, but not before he had grabbed his New Testament and the Hebrew Bible. They likely forced him to run alongside their horses until they were out of sight. When the coast was clear, they could reveal themselves as friendly, which Luther had certainly suspected. They now stripped him of his monk’s habit and dressed him in a knight’s cloak, so that anyone seeing him would have no idea that he was a monk, and at this point probably let Luther mount one of their horses. Because they didn’t want anyone to be able to follow them or trace their path, they took a wildly circuitous, serpentine route toward their mysterious destination, deep in the Thuringian forest.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  Most of the “road” to Mount Sinai was hard-packed sand, and our caravan stopped every half hour to make certain that the last car was still back there in the dust cloud. We had permission to stay overnight in a dormitory inside the sixth-century Greek Orthodox monastery of St. Catherine’s at the foot of Mount Sinai. Our leader was a Zorba the Greek look-alike who had brought along and would cook all our food during that stay at the monastery. I remember sleeping that night with all my clothes on under the blankets—and still doing a lot of shivering. We arrived outside the monastery between three and four in the afternoon after a twelve-hour trip from Suez. The sun was already disappearing behind the mountains, and the hot desert day was becoming cold desert night. As we waited for all the cars to arrive, a few of us decided to revisualize the burning bush, when “Moses…led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb [or Sinai], the mountain of God” (Exod. 3:1). We set a nearby bush on fire. It burned and was consumed. And I move now from the ridiculous to the sublime. First, when Moses came to Mount Sinai for the first time, he came alone. And what he saw there was a visual paradox, a miraculous contradiction in terms, which, for emphasis, is mentioned twice in the story: There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside [from my flock] and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” (Exod. 3:2–3) And that is, of course, the point. It was not just a burned bush—as our silliness had so easily created. It was a burned but not burned bush. It was a visual paradox or contradiction in terms. If the bush is burned, it is consumed; if the bush is not burned, it is not consumed. But how can the bush be burned and not consumed, be burned and not burned at the same time? That’s like a square circle. Next, God tells Moses: “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (3:5). That command is given between the preceding visual paradox of the mysterious bush and the succeeding verbal one of the mysterious name. Then God is identified in three ways. First, with regard to the past of the Israelites, God is the God of their ancestors, the Lord of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (3:6, 15, 16). Second, with regard to the present, God is the God who will deliver them from “misery” and “sufferings” by taking them “out of Egypt” (3:7–10). Finally, with regard to the future, God promises to bring them “into a land flowing with milk and honey” (3:8, 17).

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  ATHANASIUS. (de Inc. Verb. Dei.) Now our Saviour came to accomplish not His own death, but that of man, for He experienced not death who is Life. Therefore not by His own death did He put off the body, but He endured that which was inflicted by men. But although His body had been afflicted, and was loosed in the sight of all men, yet was it not fitting that He who should heal the sicknesses of others should have His own body visited with sickness. But yet if without any disease He had put off His body apart in some remote place, He would not be believed when speaking of His resurrection. For death must precede resurrection; why then should He openly proclaim His resurrection, but die in secret? Surely if these things had happened secretly, what calumnies would unbelieving men have invented? How would the victory of Christ over death appear, unless undergoing it in the sight of all men He had proved it to be swallowed up by the incorruption of His body? But you will say, At least He ought to have devised for Himself a glorious death, to have avoided the death of the cross. But if He had done this, He would have made Himself suspected of not having power over every kind of death. As then the champion by laying prostrate whomsoever the enemy has opposed to him is shewn to be superior to all, so the Life of all men took upon Him that death which His enemies inflicted, because it was the most dreadful and shameful, the abominable death upon the cross, that having destroyed it, the dominion of death might be entirely overthrown. Wherefore His head is not cut off as John’s was; He was not sawn asunder as Isaiah, that He might preserve His body entire, and indivisible to death, and not become an excuse to those who would divide the Church. For He wished to bear the curse of sin which we had incurred, by taking upon Him the accursed death of the cross, as it is said, Cursed is he that hangeth upon a tree. He dies also on the cross with outstretched hands, that with one indeed He may draw to Him the ancient people, with the other the Gentiles, joining both to Himself. Dying also on the cross He purges the air of evil spirits, and prepares for us an ascent into heaven. THEOPHYLACT. Because also by a tree death bad entered, it must needs be that by a tree it should be abolished, and that the Lord passing unconquered through the pains of a tree should subdue the pleasures which flow from a tree. GREGORY OF NYSSA. (Orat. 1. de Res. Christ.) But the figure of the cross from one centre of contact branching out into four separate terminations, signifies the power and providence of Him who hung upon it extending every where.

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

  A few weeks before his fifth and last journey to Jerusalem, Paul sent, as a forerunner of his intended personal visit, a letter to the Christians in the capital of the world, which was intended by Providence to become the Jerusalem of Christendom. Foreseeing its future importance, the apostle chose for his theme: The gospel the power of God unto salvation to every believer, the Jew first, and also the Gentile (Rom. 1:16, 17). Writing to the philosophical Greeks, he contrasts the wisdom of God with the wisdom of man. To the world-ruling Romans he represents Christianity as the power of God which by spiritual weapons will conquer even conquering Rome. Such a bold idea must have struck a Roman statesman as the wild dream of a visionary or madman, but it was fulfilled in the ultimate conversion of the empire after three centuries of persecution, and is still in the process of ever-growing fulfilment. In the exposition of his theme the apostle shows: (1) that all men are in need of salvation, being under the power of sin and exposed to the judgment of the righteous God, the Gentiles not only (1:18–32), but also the Jews, who are still more guilty, having sinned against the written law and extraordinary privileges (2:1–3:20); (2) that salvation is accomplished by Jesus Christ, his atoning death and triumphant resurrection, freely offered to all on the sole condition of faith, and applied in the successive acts of justification, sanctification, and glorification (3:21–8:17); (3) that salvation was offered first to the Jews, and, being rejected by them in unbelief, passed on to the Gentiles, but will return again to the Jews after the fulness of the Gentiles shall have come in (Rom. 9–11); (4) that we should show our gratitude for so great a salvation by surrendering ourselves to the service of God, which is true freedom (Rom. 12–16). The salutations in Rom. 16, the remarkable variations of the manuscripts in 15:33; 16:20, 24, 27, and the omission of the words "in Rome," 1:7, 15, in Codex G, are best explained by the conjecture that copies of the letter were also sent to Ephesus (where Aquila and Priscilla were at that time, 1 Cor. 16:19, and again, some years afterwards, 2 Tim. 4:19), and perhaps to other churches with appropriate conclusions, all of which are preserved in the present form.1142

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  17 & 18. Demonic desert temptations for the long-suffering 4th-century ascetic Antony of Egypt: by an Ethiopian boy and – more dramatically – by some enthusiastic ladies. As envisaged in a Parisian volume of the Golden Legend , 1404 ( first above ) and by the Parisian artist Hippolyte Delaroche, c .1832 ( above ). 19. John’s Gospel features the special relationship between Jesus and the ‘Beloved Disciple’: a charged theme, here sculpted by Master Heinrich of Konstanz, c .1285. 20. David and Jonathan, depicted in Christian art relatively infrequently, appear at St Mark’s Episcopal Church in the genteel Edinburgh watering-place of Portobello. Glass commemorates George Frederick Paterson, d. 1890, young bachelor laird of Castle Huntly, Longforgan (Perthshire); the gift of his mother. 21. ‘ Sacra Conversazione ’ (the Holy Family informally grouped) here includes Joseph, Mary Magdalen and infant John the Baptist; painting by Marco Palmezzano, c .1494. 22. A formidable St Anne teaches her daughter Mary from an even more formidable book, with grandson Jesus also featuring: South Netherlandish sculpture, c .1500–25. 23. Joseph, newly promoted to Protector of Spain (1679), is transformed into an Inka Prince with his stepson Jesus by an artist of the Cuzco school ( c .1700). 24. The Wittenberg Town Church altarpiece by Lucas Cranach father and son (1547–8) memorializes the late Martin Luther preaching Christ crucified (and dressed in windblown loincloth, a common late medieval and Lutheran artistic motif). The attentive congregation highlights the preacher’s own wife, Katharina von Bora, and family: the clerical family sacralised. 25. Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer (1549) stipulated holy communion following a wedding. English church chancel areas, now reserved for communions and therefore mostly wedding communions, were demarcated by redeployed rood screens and even new screens. Vowchurch screen (Herefordshire, 1613) depicts naked though decorously half-length carvings of the archetypal married couple Adam and Eve. 26. Lot’s wife, disobediently looking back at Sodom’s destruction or drowning in fire (‘ Summertio Sodome ’), is turned into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19.26), in this case a saline statue: mosaic, Monreale Cathedral, Sicily (late 12th century). 27. Our Lady and her infant Son rescue a youthful participant in same-sex activity from burning at the stake in Avignon, 1320: the older participant has already vanished in the flames (mid-14th-century MS illustrated by Simone Martini). 28. A generously bearded St Wilgefortis (Uncumber) is crucified: sculpture of 1646 in her chapel, St Martin’s parish church, Velzeke (Belgium). 29. Mary (Charles) Hamilton is pilloried in four West Country Market towns for marrying Mary Price in the role of a man: the local parson supervises this flogging with discreet enthusiasm. Cruickshank’s frontispiece to the 1813 edition of Henry Fielding’s sensationalist The Surprising Adventures of a Female Husband (1746). 30. Engraving of the ‘miraculous medal’ envisaged by Catherine Labouré, 1830, already captioned ‘ Immaculée Conception ’.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  FOURTH STORY Tofano locks his wife out of the house one night, and his wife, having pleaded with him in vain to let her in, pretends to throw herself down a well, into which she hurls an enormous stone. Tofano emerges from the house and rushes to the well, whereupon she steals inside, bolts the door on her husband, and rains abuse upon him at the top of her voice . No sooner did the king perceive that Elissa’s story was at an end, than he turned towards Lauretta, indicating that he wanted her to speak next; and without hesitation she began as follows: O Love, how manifold and mighty are your powers! How wise your counsels, how keen your insights! What philosopher, what artist could ever have conjured up all the arguments, all the subterfuges, all the explanations that you offer spontaneously to those who nail their colours to your mast? Every other doctrine is assuredly behindhand in comparison with yours, as may clearly be seen from the cases already brought to our notice. And to these, fond ladies, I shall now add yet another, by telling you of the expedient adopted by a woman of no great intelligence, who to my way of thinking could only have been motivated by Love. In the city of Arezzo, 1 then, there once lived a man of means, Tofano by name, who, having taken to wife a woman of very great beauty, called Monna Ghita, promptly grew jealous of her without any reason. On perceiving how jealous he was, the lady took offence and repeatedly asked him to explain the reason, but since he could only reply in vague and illogical terms, she resolved to make him suffer in good earnest from the ill which hitherto he had feared without cause. Having observed that a certain young man, a very agreeable sort of fellow to her way of thinking, was casting amorous glances in her direction, she secretly began to cultivate his acquaintance. And when she and the young man had carried the affair to the point where it only remained to translate words into deeds, she once again took the initiative and devised a way of doing it. She had already discovered that one of her husband’s bad habits was a fondness for drink, and so she began not only to commend him for it, but to encourage him deliberately whenever she had the chance. With a little practice, she quickly acquired the knack of persuading him to drink himself into a stupor almost as often as she chose, and once she saw that he was blind drunk, she put him to bed and forgathered with her lover. This soon became a regular habit of theirs, and they met together in perfect safety.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  He said the crowd in Chattanooga was so hot, they warmed him up. He and the audience fed off each other, tossing the lines of song back and forth until the words gradually ebbed and music took over.In the Holy Roller lexicon, “shouting” is another word for dancing in the spirit. Believers clap their hands and sway, stamping one foot and then the other as the organ, trombone, drums, guitars, and tambourines pull them into an ecstatic dance that wipes out the conscious mind and leaves the body with little control over its movements. The crowd was in full shouting mode that night, churning the sawdust and the dirt under it into the air. Floodlights filtered through the dust, casting the scene in an otherworldly haze as Brother Terrell’s wife threaded her way through the flailing bodies and herded Pam and Randall and Gary and me under the packed tent. Betty Ann’s job was to keep the four of us kids corralled and quiet during a service that lasted from two to five hours, depending on how the spirit moved on a particular night. Given that our ages ranged from one to seven, she may have pulled the toughest tent duty of all. Jostled by the clapping, stomping people, Betty Ann pulled Gary from Randall’s arms and shifted him onto her hip. She peered through the crowd to point out a row of chairs, and that’s when Randall made his escape. She called after him, then looked around and smiled apologetically at whomever happened to notice. People held the Terrell offspring to a higher standard than other kids, and when they fell short, it was her failing, not Brother Terrell’s. She shrugged and steered Pam and me to our seats. We joined the singing just as Brother Terrell walked onto the platform and took the microphone from Brother Cotton. He finished off the chorus with the audience and raised his hands in prayer. Mama slowed the tempo of the music and brought the volume down.Brother Terrell spoke in a low, quiet voice. “Put your hands up with me and tell Jesus how much you love him. We looooove you, Lord. We magnify your holy name, God. We ask you to look down and bless us tonight, Lord. Open our hearts that we might hear what you have to say. Ooooooooh, God.”In a matter of seconds the mood went from celebratory to somber. Hands were raised across the tent. Hundreds of people, maybe a thousand or more, raised their voices in an orchestration of prayer and unknown tongues that gained in volume and momentum, then drifted to a close. Brother Terrell walked over to the podium and opened his Bible. “I feel like we need to carve deep into the meat of the Word tonight.”Three hours later he was still carving, explicating scripture after scripture.

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

  In his equally popular "Colloquies" (Colloquia Familiaria), begun in 1519, and enlarged in numerous editions, Erasmus aims to make better scholars and better men, as he says in his dedication to John Erasmius Froben (the son of his friend and publisher).526 He gives instruction for Latin conversation, describes the good and bad manners of the times, and ventilates his views on a variety of interesting topics, such as courtesy in saluting, rash vows a soldier’s life, scholastic studies, the profane feast, a lover and maiden, the virgin opposed to matrimony, the penitent virgin, the uneasy wife, the shipwreck, rich beggars, the alchemist, etc. The "Colloquies" are, next to the "Praise of Folly," his most characteristic work, and, like it, abound in delicate humor, keen irony, biting satire. He pays a glowing tribute to Cicero, and calls him "sanctum illud pectus afflatum coelesti numine;" and in the same conversation occurs the famous passage already referred to, "Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis." He shows his sympathy with the cause of Reuchlin in the dialogue Apotheosis Reuchlini Capnionis, by describing a vision in which the persecuted Hebrew scholar (who died June 22, 1522) was welcomed in heaven by St. Jerome, and, without leave of the Pope, enrolled in the number of saints. But during Reuchlin’s life he had kept neutral in the Dominican quarrel about Reuchlin’s orthodoxy. He is very severe on "the coarse, over-fed monks," and indulges too freely in insinuations which offend modern taste.527 He attacks war, which he hated even more than monkery; and in his description of a reckless, extravagant, debauched, sick, poor and wretched soldier, he took unchristian revenge of Ulrich von Hutten after his miserable death. In the dialogue, "Unequal Marriage," he paints him in the darkest colors as an abandoned roué. He gives an amusing description of a German inn, which makes one thankful for the progress of modern civilization. The bedrooms, he says, are rightly so called; for they contain nothing but a bed; and the cleanliness is on a par with the rest of the establishment and the adjoining stable. The "Ichthyophagia" is a dialogue between a butcher and a fishmonger, and exposes the Pharisaical tendency to strain out a gnat and to swallow a camel, and to lay heavy burdens on others. "Would they might eat nothing but garlic who imposed these fish-days upon us!" "Would they might starve to death who force the necessity of fasting upon free men!" The form of the dialogue furnished the author a door of escape from the charge of heresy, for he could not be held responsible for the sentiments of fictitious characters; moreover, he said, his object was to teach Latin, not theology. Nevertheless, the Sorbonne condemned the "Colloquies," and the Inquisition placed them in the first class of prohibited books.

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

  The historical or inner criticism (which the Germans call the "higher criticism," höhere Kritik) deals with the origin, spirit, and aim of the New Testament writings, their historical environments, and organic place in the great intellectual and religious process which resulted in the triumphant establishment of the catholic church of the second century. It assumed two very distinct shapes under the lead of Dr. Neander in Berlin (d. 1850), and Dr. Baur in Tübingen (d. 1860), who labored in the mines of church history at a respectful distance from each other and never came into personal contact. Neander and Baur were giants, equal in genius and learning, honesty and earnestness, but widely different in spirit. They gave a mighty impulse to historical study and left a long line of pupils and independent followers who carry on the historico-critical reconstruction of primitive Christianity. Their influence is felt in France, Holland and England. Neander published the first edition of his Apostolic Age in 1832, his Life of Jesus (against Strauss) in 1837 (the first volume of his General Church History had appeared already in 1825, revised ed. 1842); Baur wrote his essay on the Corinthian Parties in 1831, his critical investigations on the canonical Gospels in 1844 and 1847, his "Paul" in 1845 (second ed. by Zeller, 1867), and his "Church History of the First Three Centuries" in 1853 (revised 1860). His pupil Strauss had preceded him with his first Leben Jesu (1835), which created a greater sensation than any of the works mentioned, surpassed only by that of Renan’s Vie de Jésus, nearly thirty years later (1863). Renan reproduces and popularizes Strauss and Baur for the French public with independent learning and brilliant genius, and the author of "Supernatural Religion" reëchoes the Tübingen and Leyden speculations in England. On the other hand Bishop Lightfoot, the leader of conservative criticism; declares that he has learnt more from the German Neander than from any recent theologian ("Contemp. Review" for 1875, p. 866. Matthew Arnold says (Literature and Dogma, Preface, p. xix.): "To get the facts, the data, in all matters of science, but notably in theology and Biblical learning, one goes to Germany. Germany, and it is her high honor, has searched out the facts and exhibited them. And without knowledge of the facts, no clearness or fairness of mind can in any study do anything; this cannot be laid down too rigidly." But he denies to the Germans "quickness and delicacy of perception." Something more is necessary than learning and perception to draw the right conclusions from the facts: sound common sense and well-balanced judgment. And when we deal with sacred and supernatural facts, we need first and last a reverential spirit and that faith which is the organ of the supernatural. It is here where the two schools depart, without difference of nationality; for faith is not a national but an individual gift. The Two Antagonistic Schools.

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

  He drew more upon the threatenings of the divine wrath than upon the refreshing springs of the divine compassion. Tender descriptions of the divine love and mercy were not wanting in his sermons, but the woes pronounced upon the sinfulness of his time exceeded the gentle appeals. He was describing his own method, when he said, "I am like the hail. Cover thyself lest it come down upon thee, and strike thee. And remember that I said unto thee, Cover thy head with a helmet, that is clothe thyself with virtue and no hail stone will touch thee."1176 In the time of his greatest popularity, the throngs waited hours at the doors of the cathedral for the preacher’s arrival and it has been estimated by Villari, that audiences of 10,000 or 12,000 hung on his discourses. Like fields of grain under the wind, the feelings of his audiences were swayed by the preacher’s voice. Now they burned with indignation: now they were softened to tears. "I was overcome by weeping and could not go on." So wrote the reporter while taking down a sermon, and Savonarola himself felt the terrible strain of his efforts and often sank back into his seat completely exhausted. His message was directed to the clergy, high and low, as well as to the people and the flashes of his indignation often fell upon the palace of Lorenzo. The clergy he arraigned for their greed of prebends and gold and their devotion to outer ceremonies rather than to the inner life of the soul. Florence he addressed in endearing terms as the object of his love. "My Florence," he was wont to exclaim. Geneva was no more the city of Calvin or Edinburgh of Knox than was Florence the city of Savonarola. Portraying the insincerity of the clergy, he said: — In these days, prelates and preachers are chained to the earth by the love of earthly things. The care of souls is no longer their concern. They are content with the receipt of revenue. The preachers preach to please princes and to be praised by them. They have done worse. They have not only destroyed the Church of God. They have built up a new Church after their own pattern. Go to Rome and see! In the mansions of the great prelates there is no concern save for poetry and the oratorical art. Go thither and see! Thou shalt find them all with the books of the humanities in their hands and telling one another that they can guide mens’ souls by means of Virgil, Horace and Cicero ... The prelates of former days had fewer gold mitres and chalices and what few they possessed were broken up and given to relieve the needs of the poor. But our prelates, for the sake of obtaining chalices, will rob the poor of their sole means of support. Dost thou not know what I would tell thee! What doest thou, O Lord!

• From The Power of Myth (1988)

  MOYERS: But a man said to me once after years of standing on the platform of the subway, “I die a little bit down there every day, but I know I am doing so for my family.” There are small acts of heroism, too, that occur without regard to the notoriety that you attract for it. For example, a mother does it by the isolation she endures on behalf of the family. CAMPBELL: Motherhood is a sacrifice. On our veranda in Hawaii the birds come to feed. Each year there have been one or two mother birds. When you see a mother bird, plagued by her progeny for food, with five baby birds, some of them bigger than she is, flopping all over her—“Well,” you think, “this is the symbol of motherhood, this giving of your substance and every damn thing to your progeny.” That is why the mother becomes the symbol of Mother Earth. She is the one who has given birth to us and on whom we live and on whose body we find our food. MOYERS: As you talk, I think of another figure in The Way of the Animal Powers that struck me as Christlike. Do you remember that savior figure from the creation legend of the Pima Indians? CAMPBELL: Yes. It is an instructive story. He is the classic savior figure who brings life to mankind, and mankind then tears him to pieces. You know the old saying: Save a man’s life and make an enemy for life. MOYERS: When the world is created, he emerges from the center of the earth and later leads his people from underground, but they turn against him, killing him not once but several times— CAMPBELL: —even pulverizing him. MOYERS: But he always returns to life. At last he goes into the mountains where the trails become so confused, no one can follow him. Now, that is a Christlike figure, isn’t it? CAMPBELL: Yes, it is. And here also is the labyrinth motif. The trails are deliberately confused, but if you know the secret of the labyrinth, you can go and pay its inhabitant a visit. MOYERS: And if you have faith, you can follow Jesus. CAMPBELL: You can. Very often one of the things that one learns as a member of the mystery religions is that the labyrinth, which blocks, is at the same time the way to eternal life. This is the final secret of myth—to teach you how to penetrate the labyrinth of life in such a way that its spiritual values come through. That is the problem of Dante’s Divine Comedy, too. The crisis comes in the “middle of the way of our life,” when the body is beginning to fade, and another whole constellation of themes comes breaking into your dream world. Dante says that, in the middle year of his life, he was lost in a dangerous wood. And he was threatened there by three animals, symbolizing pride, desire, and fear.

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

  Irenaeus bears testimony to his character as "the Son of Thunder" when he relates, as from the lips of Polycarp, that, on meeting in a public bath at Ephesus the Gnostic heretic Cerinthus,601 who denied the incarnation of our Lord, John refused to remain under the same roof, lest it might fall down. This reminds one of the incident recorded in Luke 9:49, and the apostle’s severe warning in 2 John 10 and 11. The story exemplifies the possibility of uniting the deepest love of truth with the sternest denunciation of error and moral evil.602 Jerome pictures him as the disciple of love, who in his extreme old age was carried to the meeting-place on the arms of his disciples, and repeated again and again the exhortation, "Little children, love one another," adding: "This is the Lord’s command, and if this alone be done, it is enough." This, of all the traditions of John, is the most credible and the most useful. In the Greek church John bears the epithet "the theologian (qeolovgo"), for teaching most clearly the divinity of Christ (th;n qeovthta tou' lovgou). He is also called "the virgin" (parqevno"),603 for his chastity and supposed celibacy. Augustin says that the singular chastity of John from his early youth was supposed by some to be the ground of his intimacy with Jesus.604 The story of John and the huntsman, related by Cassian, a monk of the fifth century, represents him as gently playing with a partridge in his hand, and saying to a huntsman, who was surprised at it: "Let not this brief and slight relaxation of my mind offend thee, without which the spirit would flag from over-exertion and not be able to respond to the call of duty when need required." Childlike simplicity and playfulness are often combined with true greatness of mind. Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, at the close of the second century, relates (according to Eusebius) that John introduced in Asia Minor the Jewish practice of observing Easter on the 14th of Nisan, irrespective of Sunday. This fact entered largely into the paschal controversies of the second century, and into the modern controversy about the genuineness of the Gospel of John. The same Polycrates of Ephesus describes John as wearing the plate, or diadem of the Jewish high-priest (Ex. 28:36, 37; 39:30, 31). It is probably a figurative expression of priestly holiness which John attaches to all true believers (Comp. Rev. 2:17), but in which he excelled as the patriarch.605 From a misunderstanding of the enigmatical word of Jesus, John 21:22, arose the legend that John was only asleep in his grave, gently moving the mound as he breathed, and awaiting the final advent of the Lord. According to another form of the legend he died, but was immediately raised and translated to heaven, like Elijah, to return with him as the herald of the second advent of Christ.606

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

  We serve God also by taking holiday and rest." If we look at the contents, Luther is the primary, Melanchthon the secondary, author; but the form, the method, style, and temper are altogether Melanchthon’s. Nobody else could produce such a work. Luther would have made it more aggressive and polemic, but less effective for the occasion. He himself was conscious of the superior qualification of his friend for the task, and expressed his entire satisfaction with the execution. "It pleases me very well," he wrote of the Confession, "and I could not change or improve it; nor would it be becoming to do so, since I cannot tread so softly and gently."971 He would have made the tenth article on the real presence still stronger than it is; would have inserted his sola in the doctrine of justification by faith, as he did in his German Bible; and rejected purgatory, and the tyranny of popery, among the abuses in the second part. He would have changed the whole tone, and made the document a trumpet of war. The Augsburg Confession proper (exclusive of preface and epilogue) consists of two parts,—one positive and dogmatic, the other negative and mildly polemic or rather apologetic. The first refers chiefly to doctrines, the second to ceremonies and institutions. The order of subjects is not strictly systematic, though considerably improved upon the arrangement of the Schwabach and Torgau Articles. In the manuscript copies and oldest editions, the articles are only numbered; the titles were subsequently added. I. The first part presents in twenty-one articles—beginning with the Triune God, and ending with the worship of saints—a clear, calm, and condensed statement of the doctrines held by the evangelical Lutherans: (1) in common with the Roman Church; (2) in common with the Augustinian school in that church; (3) in opposition to Rome; and (4) in distinction from Zwinglians and Anabaptists. (1) In theology and Christology, i.e., the doctrines of God’s unity and trinity (Art. I.), and of Christ’s divine-human personality (III.), the Confession strongly re-affirms the ancient catholic faith as laid down in the oecumenical creeds, and condemns (damnamus) the old and new forms of Unitarianism and Arianism as heresies. (2) In anthropology, i.e., in the articles on the fall and original sin (II.), the slavery of the natural will and necessity of divine grace (XVIII.), the cause and nature of sin (XIX.), the Confession is substantially Augustinian, in opposition to the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heresies. The Donatists are also condemned (damnant, VIII.) for denying the objective virtue of the ministry and the sacraments, which Augustin defended against them. (3) The general evangelical views more or less distinct from those of Rome appear in the articles on justification by faith (IV.), the Gospel ministry (V.), new obedience (VI.), the Church (VII., VIII.), repentance (XII.), ordination (XIV.), ecclesiastical rites (XV.), civil government (XVI.), good works (XIX.), the worship of saints, and the exclusive mediatorship of Christ (XX.).

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, As stated above [3724](A[2]), a thing may belong to the contemplative life in two ways: principally, and secondarily, or dispositively. That which belongs principally to the contemplative life is the contemplation of the divine truth, because this contemplation is the end of the whole human life. Hence Augustine says (De Trin. i, 8) that “the contemplation of God is promised us as being the goal of all our actions and the everlasting perfection of our joys.” This contemplation will be perfect in the life to come, when we shall see God face to face, wherefore it will make us perfectly happy: whereas now the contemplation of the divine truth is competent to us imperfectly, namely “through a glass” and “in a dark manner” (1 Cor. 13:12). Hence it bestows on us a certain inchoate beatitude, which begins now and will be continued in the life to come; wherefore the Philosopher (Ethic. x, 7) places man’s ultimate happiness in the contemplation of the supreme intelligible good. Since, however, God’s effects show us the way to the contemplation of God Himself, according to Rom. 1:20, “The invisible things of God . . . are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,” it follows that the contemplation of the divine effects also belongs to the contemplative life, inasmuch as man is guided thereby to the knowledge of God. Hence Augustine says (De Vera Relig. xxix) that “in the study of creatures we must not exercise an empty and futile curiosity, but should make them the stepping-stone to things unperishable and everlasting.” Accordingly it is clear from what has been said ([3725]AA[1],2,3) that four things pertain, in a certain order, to the contemplative life; first, the moral virtues; secondly, other acts exclusive of contemplation; thirdly, contemplation of the divine effects; fourthly, the complement of all which is the contemplation of the divine truth itself. Reply to Objection 1: David sought the knowledge of God’s works, so that he might be led by them to God; wherefore he says elsewhere (Ps. 142:5,6): “I meditated on all Thy works: I meditated upon the works of Thy hands: I stretched forth my hands to Thee.” Reply to Objection 2: By considering the divine judgments man is guided to the consideration of the divine justice; and by considering the divine benefits and promises, man is led to the knowledge of God’s mercy or goodness, as by effects already manifested or yet to be vouchsafed.