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 Trash (1988)

  No pity. Not allowed. I reached to rock a ball myself. “Want to play?” I tried looking up into her eyes again. It was too close. Both of us looked away. “I’ll play myself.” She set about racking up the balls. Her mouth was still set in that tight line. I dragged a kitchen stool in and sat in the doorway out of her way, telling myself I had to play this casually, play this as family, and wait and see what the point was. “Where’s Uncle Bill?” I was rubbing my head again and trying to make conversation. “What do you care? I don’t think Bill said ten words to you in your whole life.” She rolled the rack forward and back, positioning it perfectly for the break. “ ’Course he didn’t say many more to anybody else either.” She grinned, not looking at me, talking as if she were pouring tea at her own kitchen table. “Nobody can say I married that man for his conversation.” She leaned into her opening shot, and I leaned forward in appreciation. She had a great stance, her weight centered over her massive thighs. My family runs to heavy women, gravy-fed workingwomen, the kind usually seen in pictures taken at mining disasters. Big women, all of my aunts move under their own power and stalk around telling everybody else what to do. But Aunt Alma was the prototype, the one I had loved most, starting back when she had given us free meals in the roadhouse she’d run for a while. It had been one of those bad times when my stepfather had been out of work and he and Mama were always fighting. Mama would load us all in the Pontiac and crank it up on seventy-five cents’ worth of gas, just enough to get to Aunt Alma’s place on the Eustis Highway. Once there, we’d be fed on chicken gravy and biscuits, and Mama would be fed from the well of her sister’s love and outrage. You tell that bastard to get his ass out on the street. Whining don’t make money. Cursing don’t get a job. . . . Bitching don’t make the beds and screaming don’t get the tomatoes planted. They had laughed together then, speaking a language of old stories and older jokes. You tell him. I said. Now girl, you listen to me. The power in them, the strength and the heat! How could anybody not love my mama, my aunts? How could my daddy, my uncles, ever stand up to them, dare to raise hand or voice to them? They were a power on the earth.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Cipolla’s capacity for thinking and talking on his feet, comparable, according to the narrator, to the oratorical skills of Cicero and Quintilian, is not the result of a refined upbringing and education, but is simply an inborn and natural gift which he exploits to the full in persuading a not very discerning audience that his flights of fancy are nothing less than gospel truth. In his handling of the provincials who flock to hear his annual sermon, he displays all the qualities associated with a market salesman and many more besides. His triumphant escape from a precarious position, sealed by his daubing of black crosses on the clothes of his hearers, is made possible only because of the lack of sophistication of an audience whose lives ‘still conformed to the honest precepts of an earlier age’. As in the case of the holy friar who is taken in by Ciappelletto’s confession (I, 1), there is no real criticism, either open or implied, of the victims of the deception, but rather a sneaking admiration for the ingenuity of its perpetrator. Quickness of wit is the distinguishing quality, also, of most of the adulterous wives whose escapades are recounted in the stories of the Seventh Day. Although several of the narratives are traceable to other literatures, notably the French fabliaux , Boccaccio’s elaborate re-working of his source materials renders them distinctively Italian in tone and atmosphere. With the exception of the ninth story, a version of a medieval Latin text, which Boccaccio sets in ancient Greece, the locations of these tales are representative of the flourishing commercial life and prosperous bourgeoisie of fourteenth-century Italy: Florence, Naples, Siena, Arezzo, Rimini, Bologna. One recent commentator has argued that the stories of the Seventh Day reflect the ‘battle for the control of domestic space’ 68 that inevitably arose in a society where arranged marriages were the norm and where a woman’s only way of preserving the status she had brought to the marriage with her dowry (which passed at once into the hands of the husband) was to establish herself as mistress of her own household. The battle for the control of domestic space is vividly illustrated in the story (VII, 4) of the wife who, having put her husband to bed thinking him drunk and incapable, finds herself locked out of the house on returning in pitch darkness from an assignation with her young lover. The husband, who on this occasion has merely pretended to be drunk so as to discover his wife’s reasons for packing him off to bed, tells her to go away, and threatens to make an example of her in front of her neighbours and kinsfolk. Having pleaded in vain to be let into the house, the woman, who ‘had all her wits about her’, picks up an enormous stone and flings it down a nearby well, giving her husband the impression that she is committing suicide.

• From Trash (1988)

  Just like that, we were friends. Anna treated me like an ambassador from a foreign nation. Baby-dyke-politicos, she named us, after I started going to all the meetings at the Women’s Center. I was twenty-four and had been dating women for more than seven years, long enough to resent being labeled a baby dyke, but Anna had been out for almost twenty years and joked that she’d had her first orgasm while wearing her Girl Scout uniform. I liked her better than any other women in the building: liked her slow, stoned drawl; her sharp, witty glances; and her invariably good-natured acid remarks when people started talking about the “women’s revolution.” Most of all I liked her stories. She’d been going to Panama City where there was a real gay bar with a drag show since she’d come to Tallahassee as a freshman in 1963. There wasn’t a dyke in town she didn’t know and no legendary piece of gossip she hadn’t already heard, or been the subject of. Ten years ago, she’d been arrested with two dozen others out in front of the blackened ruins of the town’s short-lived gay bar. All their names had been printed in the paper, and she’d lost her teaching fellowship in the English department. “That was enough politics for me. I’ve had the longest graduate school career in history as a result. You know this is the first year they’ve let me teach again?” She offered me a brownie with one hand, a joint with the other. “And still, every time somebody opens a gay bar in this town, some local firebombs it. It’s got to where it’s easier around here for a faggot to get a liquor license than fire insurance.” “There’s that pool hall over on College.” “Yeah, after one o’clock in the morning, and then only if you’re real discreet, and real careful, and real young. I an’t none of that, and I prefer Panama City myself. ’Course, you probably like those sweaty girls in tank tops that go in there and pose under those sling lamps, sneaking whiskey in their soda bottles when it an’t their turn to play.” “You have been there.” “Hell, I’ve been everywhere in this town. I could tell you stories would keep you awake nights. Like the name of the boy who firebombed the last two gay bars, and exactly what year his daddy got appointed sheriff.” “Damn!” I shook my head. “Uh uh. ’Course you got a few stories yourself. Don’t play pool worth a damn, do you? But you bring ’em home, those sweaty girls?” “Bar dykes.” I said it flatly. “You know how it is. They got those stringy muscles in their arms, and they all grin like those old pictures of Elvis Presley getting ready to shake his butt where the camera can’t see. Gets to me every time.”

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

  Luther was incomparably the stronger man of the two, and differed from Melanchthon as the wild mountain torrent differs from the quiet stream of the meadow, or as the rushing tempest from the gentle breeze, or, to use a scriptural illustration, as the fiery Paul from the contemplative John. Luther was a man of war, Melanchthon a man of peace. Luther’s writings smell of powder; his words are battles; he overwhelms his opponents with a roaring cannonade of argument, eloquence, passion, and abuse. Melanchthon excels in moderation and amiability, and often exercised a happy restraint upon the unmeasured violence of his colleague. Once when Luther in his wrath burst out like a thunderstorm, Melanchthon quieted him by the line, — "Vince animos iramque tuam qui caetera vincis." Luther was a creative genius, and pioneer of new paths; Melanchthon, a profound scholar of untiring industry. The one was emphatically the man for the people, abounding in strong and clear sense, popular eloquence, natural wit, genial humor, intrepid courage, and straightforward honesty. The other was a quiet, considerate, systematic thinker; a man of order, method, and taste, and gained the literary circles for the cause of the Reformation. He is the principal founder of a Protestant theology, and the author of the Augsburg Confession, the chief symbol of the Lutheran Church. He very properly represented the evangelical cause in all the theological conferences with the Roman-Catholic party at Augsburg, Speier, Worms, Frankfort, Ratisbon, where Luther’s presence would only have increased the heat of controversy, and widened the breach. Luther was unyielding and uncompromising against Romanism and Zwinglianism: Melanchthon was always ready for compromise and peace, as far as his honest convictions would allow, and sincerely labored to restore the broken unity of the Church. He was even willing, as his qualified subscription to the Articles of Smalcald shows, to admit a certain supremacy of the Pope (jure humano), provided he would tolerate the free preaching of the gospel. But Popery and evangelical freedom will never agree. Luther was the boldest, the most heroic and commanding; Melanchthon, the most gentle, pious, and conscientious, of the Reformers. Melanchthon had a sensitive and irritable temperament, though under good control, and lacked courage; he felt, more keenly and painfully than any other, the tremendous responsibility of the great religious movement in which he was engaged. He would have made any personal sacrifice if he could have removed the confusion and divisions attendant upon it.232 On several occasions he showed, no doubt, too much timidity and weakness; but his concessions to the enemy, and his disposition to compromise for the sake of peace and unity, proceeded always from pure and conscientious motives. The two Wittenberg Reformers were brought together by the hand of Providence, to supply and complete each other, and by their united talents and energies to carry forward the German Reformation, which would have assumed a very different character if it had been exclusively left in the hands of either of them.

• 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)

  THE DEVELOPMENT OF CATHOLIC THEOLOGY IN CONFLICT WITH HERESY. § 137. Catholic Orthodoxy. I. Sources: The doctrinal and polemical writings of the ante-Nicene fathers, especially Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Clement Of Alex., and Origen. II. Literature: The relevant sections in the works on Doctrine History by Petravius, Münscher, Neander, Giesler, Baur, Hagenbach, Shedd, Nitzsch, Harnack (first vol. 1886; 2d ed. 1888). Jos. Schwane (R.C.): Dogmengeschichte der vornicänischen Zeit. Münster, 1862. Edm. De Pressensé: Heresy and Christian Doctrine, transl. by Annie Harwood. Lond. 1873. The special literature see below. Comp. also the Lit. in Ch. XIII. By the wide-spread errors described in the preceding chapter, the church was challenged to a mighty intellectual combat, from which she came forth victorious, according to the promise of her Lord, that the Holy Spirit should guide her into the whole truth. To the subjective, baseless, and ever-changing speculations, dreams, and fictions of the heretics, she opposed the substantial, solid realities of the divine revelation. Christian theology grew, indeed, as by inward necessity, from the demand of faith for knowledge. But heresy, Gnosticism in particular, gave it a powerful impulse from without, and came as a fertilizing thunder-storm upon the field. The church possessed the truth from the beginning, in the experience of faith, and in the Holy Scriptures, which she handed down with scrupulous fidelity from generation to generation. But now came the task of developing the substance of the Christian truth in theoretical form 934fortifying it on all sides, and presenting it in clear light before the understanding. Thus the Christian polemic and dogmatic theology, or the church’s logical apprehension of the doctrines of salvation, unfolded itself in this conflict with heresy; as the apologetic literature and martyrdom had arisen through Jewish and heathen persecution. From this time forth the distinction between catholic and heretical, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, the faith of the church and dissenting private opinion, became steadily more prominent. Every doctrine which agreed with the holy scriptures and the faith of the church, was received as catholic; that is, universal, and exclusive.935 Whatever deviated materially from this standard, every arbitrary notion, framed by this or that individual, every distortion or corruption of the revealed doctrines of Christianity, every departure from the public sentiment of the church, was considered heresy..936 Almost all the church fathers came out against the contemporary heresies, with arguments from scripture, with the tradition of the church, and with rational demonstration, proving them inwardly inconsistent and absurd. But in doing this, while they are one in spirit and purpose, they pursue two very different courses, determined by the differences between the Greek and Roman nationality, and by peculiarities of mental organization and the appointment of Providence. The Greek theology, above all the Alexandrian, represented by Clement and Origen, is predominantly idealistic and speculative, dealing with the objective doctrines of God, the incarnation, the trinity, and christology; endeavoring to supplant the false gnosis by a true knowledge, an orthodox philosophy, resting on the Christian pistis.

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

  Edessa, the outer citadel of the Crusader’s conquests, fell, December, 1144. Jocelyn II., whose father, Jocelyn I., succeeded Baldwin as proprietor of Edessa, was a weak and pleasure-loving prince. The besiegers built a fire in a breach in the wall, a piece of which, a hundred yards long, cracked with the flames and fell. An appalling massacre followed the inrush of the Turks, under Zengi, whom the Christians called the Sanguinary.398 Eugenius III. rightly regarded Zengi’s victory as a threat to the continuance of the Franks in Palestine, and called upon the king of France to march to their relief. The forgiveness of all sins and life eternal were promised to all embarking on the enterprise who should die confessing their sins.399 The pope also summoned Bernard to leave his convent, and preach the crusade. Bernard, the most conspicuous personage of his age, was in the zenith of his fame. He regarded the summons as a call from God,400 and proved to be a leader worthy of the cause. At Easter tide, 1146, Louis, who had before, in remorse for his burning the church at Vitry with thirteen hundred persons, promised to go on a crusade, assembled a great council at Vézelai. Bernard was present and made such an overpowering impression by his address that the bearers pressed forward to receive crosses. He himself was obliged to out his robe to pieces to meet the demand.401 Writing to Eugenius, he was able to say that the enthusiasm was so great that "castles and towns were emptied of their inmates. One man could hardly be found for seven women, and the women were being everywhere widowed while their husbands were still alive." From France Bernard proceeded to Basel and Constance and the cities along the Rhine, as far as Cologne. As in the case of the First Crusade, a persecution was started against the Jews on the Rhine by a monk, Radulph. Bernard firmly set himself against the fanaticism and wrote that the Church should attempt to gain the Jews by discussion, and not destroy them by the sword. Thousands flocked to hear the fervent preacher, who added miraculous healings to the impression of his eloquence. The emperor Konrad himself was deeply moved and won. During Christmas week at Spires, Bernard preached before him an impassionate discourse. "What is there, O man," he represented Christ as saying, seated in judgment upon the imperial hearer at the last day,—"What is there which I ought to have done for thee and have not done?" He contrasted the physical prowess,402 the riches, and the honors of the emperor with the favor of the supreme judge of human actions. Bursting into tears, the emperor exclaimed: "I shall henceforth not be found ungrateful to God’s mercy. I am ready to serve Him, seeing I am admonished by Him." Of all his miracles Bernard esteemed the emperor’s decision the chief one. Konrad at once prepared for the expedition.

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

  Innocent pronounced the number of heretics in Southern France innumerable.963 According to the statement of Neumeister, a heretical bishop who was burnt, the number of Waldensian heretics in Austria about 1300 was eighty thousand.964 The writer, usually designated "the Passau Anonymous," writing about 1315, said there was scarcely a land in which the Waldenses had not spread. The Cathari in Southern France mustered large armies and were massacred by the thousands. Of all these sects, the only one which has survived is the very honorable body, still known as the Waldenses. The mediaeval dissenters have sometimes been classed with the Protestants. The classification is true only on the broad ground of their common refusal to be bound by the yoke of the Catholic hierarchy. Some of the tenets of the dissenters and some of their practices the Protestant Reformation repudiated, fully as much as did the established Church of the Middle Ages. Interesting as they are in themselves and by reason of the terrible ordeals they were forced to undergo, the sects were side currents compared with the great stream of the Catholic Church, to which, with all its abuses and persecuting enormities, the credit belongs of Christianizing the barbarians, developing learning, building cathedrals, cultivating art, furnishing hymns, constructing theological systems, and in other ways contributing to the progress of mankind. That which makes them most interesting to us is their revolt against the priesthood, in which they all agreed, and the emphasis they laid upon purity of speech and purity of life. Their history shows many good men, but no great personality. Peter Waldo is the most notable among their leaders. A clear classification of the mediaeval heretics is made difficult if not impossible by the uncertainty concerning the opinions held by some of them and also by the apparent confusion of one sect with another by mediaeval writers. The Cathari, or Manichaean heretics, form a class by themselves. The Waldenses, Humiliati, and probably the Arnoldists, represent the group of evangelical dissenters. The Amauricians and probably the Ortlibenses were pantheistic. he isolated leaders, Peter de Bruys, Henry of Lausanne, Eudo, and Tanchelm, were preachers and iconoclasts—using the term in a good sense—rather than founders of sects. The Beguines and Beghards represented a reform movement within the Church, one wing going off into paths of doctrinal heresy and lawlessness, and incurring thereby the anathemas of the ecclesiastical authorities. § 80. The Cathari. The most widely distributed of the heretical sects were the Cathari. The term comes from the Greek katharos, meaning pure, and has given to the German its word for heretic, Ketzer. It was first used by the Cathari themselves.965 A grotesque derivation, invented by their enemies, associated the sect with the cat, whose form it was the pleasure of the devil to assume.966 From their dualistic tenets they were called New Manichaeans.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  She’d clip on her hosiery. I’d pick through her box of jewelry while she patted on her Max Factor makeup and drew on her red lipstick picked from the lineup of lipsticks on her dresser. When she put on her heels, my short, feisty mother became tall and elegant. She would then spray on White Shoulders perfume. “How do I look, baby?” I adored my mother. She was beautiful in jeans and a crisp-ironed blouse. She was beautiful dressed like the movie stars she and her friends admired. As I would walk out of my mother’s bedroom, I might hear Patsy Cline singing “I Fall to Pieces.” My mother would sing along with Patsy as my father would take his keys out of his jacket and hold open the door for her. He’d carry a fifth from the bootlegger next door. He’d take a swig while my mother gave instructions to the babysitter. I remember whimpering because I knew that the magic of beauty is dangerous. It is easily taken apart and destroyed. I had seen it happen other times when my parents came home, bringing the party with them. I had seen her dresses ripped. I had seen the jewelry and lipsticks scattered and broken by my father’s rage. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] Once my mother recorded one of her original songs, “Weeping Willow,” on vinyl. I remember the day she shared it with her friends in the neighborhood. I can see her holding the circle of pressed dreams in her hands. I hear the crackle of her singing on the phonograph after she has set the needle down on the spinning disk. Ice clinks in glasses as her friends fill their drinks, the smoke from their cigarettes twining around their heads while they gather at the kitchen table to celebrate and to share what they’ve gleaned while story-gathering, so many stories of the loss and gain of power through family. My mother’s story of the pressing of one of her songs was unusual, something to take note of in the field of the domestically ordinary. I was proud for her. I wanted to make music like my mother. I liked that you could hold music in your hands. It was like holding a spinning world. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] My mother was born with a caul over her face, which meant that she had second sight. She did have an uncanny sense of knowing, especially when it came to the fortune of others. She said she could always pick a hit song when she heard the melody. When I was about ten years old, I was given a Ouija board as a gift. When my mother and I touched the planchette, a triangular board with an opening to see letters or numbers beneath, it flew. It spelled out names, dates, and answers. And the answers were right.

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

  He breathes the spirit of Paul, and only lacks his depth, wisdom, and discrimination, Paul, in Galatians and Colossians, likewise takes an uncompromising attitude against Jewish circumcision, sabbatarianism, and ceremonialism, if made a ground of justification and a binding yoke of conscience; but nevertheless he vindicated the Mosaic law as a preparatory school for Christianity. Barnabas Ignores this, and looks only at the negative side. Yet he, too, acknowledges the new law of Christ. He has some profound glances and inklings of a Christian philosophy. He may be called an orthodox Gnostic. He stands midway between St. Paul and Justin Martyr, as Justin Martyr stands between Barnabas and the Alexandrian school. Clement and Origen, while averse to his chiliasm, liked his zeal for higher Christian knowledge and his allegorizing exegesis which obscures every proper historical understanding of the Old Testament. The Epistle of Barnabas has considerable historical, doctrinal, and apologetic value. He confirms the principal facts and doctrines of the gospel. He testifies to the general observance of Sunday on "the eighth day," as the joyful commemoration of Christ’s resurrection, in strict distinction from the Jewish Sabbath on the seventh. He furnishes the first clear argument for the canonical authority of the Gospel of Matthew (without naming it) by quoting the passage: "Many are called, but few are chosen," with the solemn formula of Scripture quotation: "as it is written."1268 He introduces also (ch. 5) the words of Christ, that he did not come "to call just men, but sinners," which are recorded by Matthew 9:13. He furnishes parallels to a number of passages in the Gospels, Pauline Epistles, First Peter, and the Apocalypse. His direct quotations from the Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and Isaiah, are numerous; but he quotes also IV. Esdras and the Book of Enoch.1269 2. Authorship. The Epistle was first cited by Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, as a work of the apostolic Barnabas, who plays so prominent a part in the early history of the church.1270 Origen seems to rank it almost with the inspired Scriptures. In the Sinaitic Bible, of the fourth century, it follows as the "Epistle of Barnabas," immediately after the Apocalypse (even on the same page 135, second column), as if it were a regular part of the New Testament. From this we may, infer that it was read in some churches as a secondary ecclesiastical book, like the Epistle of Clement, the Epistle of Polycarp, and the Pastor of Hermas. Eusebius and Jerome likewise ascribe it to Barnabas but number it among the "spurious," or "apocryphal" writings.1271 They seem to have doubted the authority, but not the authenticity of the epistle.

• From Trash (1988)

  Shannon froze. Her mouth fell open, and as I watched, her whole face seemed to cave in. Her eyes shrank to little dots and her mouth became a cup of sorrow. I pushed myself up. “You bastard!” I staggered forward and he backed up, rocking on his little silver heels. “You goddamned gutless son of a bitch!” His eyes kept moving from my face to Shannon’s wilting figure. “You think you so pretty? You ugly sack of shit! You shit-faced turd-eating . . .” “SHANNON PEARL!” Mrs. Pearl was coming round the tent. “You girls . . .” She gathered Shannon up in her arms. “Where have you been?” The man backed further away. I breathed through my mouth, though I no longer felt so sick. I felt angry and helpless and I was trying hard not to start crying. Mrs. Pearl clucked between her teeth and stroked Shannon’s limp hair. “What have you been doing?” Shannon moaned and buried her face in her mama’s dress. Mrs. Pearl turned to me. “What were you saying?” Her eyes glittered in the arc lights from the front of the tent. I wiped my mouth again and said nothing. Mrs. Pearl looked to the man in the purple shirt. The confusion on her face seemed to melt and quickly became a blur of excitement and interest. “I hope they weren’t bothering you,” she told him. “Don’t you go on next?” “Uh, yeah.” He looked like he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t take his eyes off Shannon. He shook himself. “You Mrs. Pearl?” “Why, that’s right.” Mrs. Pearl’s face was glowing. “I’d heard about you. I just never met your daughter before.” Mrs. Pearl seemed to shiver all over but then catch herself. Pressed to her mama’s stomach, Shannon began to wail. “Shannon, what are you going on for?” She pushed her daughter away from her side and pulled out a blue embroidered handkerchief to wipe her face. “I think we all kind of surprised each other.” The man stepped forward and gave Mrs. Pearl a slow smile, but his eyes kept wandering back to Shannon. I wiped my mouth again and stopped myself from spitting. Mrs. Pearl went on wiping her daughter’s face but looking up into the man’s eyes. “I love it when you sing,” she said and half giggled. Shannon pulled away from her and stared up at them both. The hate in her face was terrible. For a moment I loved her with all my heart. “Well,” the man said. He rocked from one boot to the other. “Well ...”

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

  He set a limit to his own exclusive catholic principle of tradition by the truly Protestant maxims: "Consuetudo sine veritate vetustas erroris est, and, Non est de consuetudine praescribendum, sed ratione vincendum." In him the idea of the old catholic hierarchy and episcopal autocracy, both in its affinity and in its conflict with the idea of the papacy, was personally embodied, so to speak, and became flesh and blood. The unity of the church, as the vehicle and medium of all salvation, was the thought of his life and the passion of his heart. But he contended with the same zeal for an independent episcopate as for a Roman primacy; and the authority of his name has been therefore as often employed against the papacy as in its favor. On both sides he was the faithful organ of the churchly spirit of the age. It were great injustice to attribute his high churchly principle to pride and ambition, though temptations to this spirit unquestionably beset a prominent position like his. Such principles are, entirely compatible with sincere personal humility before God. It was the deep conviction of the divine authority, and the heavy responsibility of the episcopate, which lay it the bottom both of his first "nolo episcopari, " and of subsequent hierarchical feeling. He was as conscientious in discharging the duties, as he was jealous in maintaining the rights, of his office. Notwithstanding his high conception of the dignity of a bishop, he took counsel of his presbyters in everything, and respected the rights of his people. He knew how to combine strictness and moderation, dignity and gentleness, and to inspire love and confidence as well as esteem and veneration. He took upon himself, like a father, the care of the widows and orphans, the poor and sick. During the great pestilence of 252 he showed the most self-sacrificing fidelity to his flock, and love for his enemies. He forsook his congregation, indeed, in the Decian persecution, but only, as he expressly assured them, in pursuance of a divine admonition, and in order to direct them during his fourteen months of exile by pastoral epistles. His conduct exposed him to the charge of cowardice. In the Valerian persecution he completely washed away the stain of that flight with the blood of his calm and cheerful martyrdom. He exercised first rigid discipline, but at a later period—not in perfect consistency—he moderated his disciplinary principles in prudent accommodation to the exigencies of the times. With Tertullian he prohibited all display of female dress, which only deformed the work of the Creator; and he warmly opposed all participation in heathen amusements,—even refusing a converted play-actor permission to give instruction in declamation and pantomime. He lived in a simple, ascetic way, under a sense of the perishableness of all earthly things, and in view of the solemn eternity, in which alone also the questions and strifes of the church militant would be perfectly settled.

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

  When asked to explain the mystery of Christ, he replied: "I am too little to say something great of him." His last words were: "We desire nothing more than to suffer for our Lord Jesus Christ; for this gives us salvation and joyfulness before his dreadful judgment seat, at which all the world must appear." Justin is the first among the fathers who may be called a learned theologian and Christian thinker. He had acquired considerable classical and philosophical culture before his conversion, and then made it subservient to the defense of faith. He was not a man of genius and accurate scholarship, but of respectable talent, extensive reading, and enormous memory. He had some original and profound ideas, as that of the spermatic Logos, and was remarkably liberal in his judgment of the noble heathen and the milder section of the Jewish Christians. He lived in times when the profession of Christ was a crime under the Roman law against secret societies and prohibited religious. He had the courage of a confessor in life and of a martyr in death. It is impossible not to admire his fearless devotion to the cause of truth and the defense of his persecuted brethren. If not a great man, he was (what is better) an eminently good and useful man, and worthy of an honored place in "the noble army of martyrs."1340 II. Writings. To his oral testimony Justin added extensive literary labors in the field of apologetics and polemics. His pen was incessantly active against all the enemies of Christian truth, Jews, Gentiles, and heretics. (1) His chief works are apologetic, and still remain, namely, his two Apologies against the heathen, and his Dialogue with the Jew Trypho The First or larger Apology (68 chapters) is addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius (137–161) and his adopted sons, and was probably written about A.D. 147, if not earlier; the Second or smaller Apology (25 chapters) is a supplement to the, former, perhaps its conclusion, and belongs to the same reign (not to that of Marcus Aurelius).1341 Both are a defense of the Christians and their religion against heathen calumnies and persecutions. He demands nothing but justice for his brethren, who were condemned without trial simply as Christians and suspected criminals. He appeals from the, lower courts and the violence of the mob to the highest tribunal of law, and feels confident that such wise and philosophic rulers as he addresses would acquit them after a fair hearing. He ascribes the persecutions to the instigation of the demons who tremble for their power and will soon be dethroned. The Dialogue (142 chapters) is more than twice as large as the two Apologies, and is a vindication of Christianity from Moses and the prophets against the objections of the Jews. It was written after the former (which are referred to in ch. 120), but also in the reign of Antoninus Pius, i.e., before A.D. 161 probably about A.D.

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

  He was successful in bringing many eminent heathens and heretics to the Catholic church; among them a wealthy Gnostic, Ambrosius, who became his most liberal patron, furnishing him a costly library for his biblical studies, seven stenographers, and a number of copyists (some of whom were young Christian women), the former to note down his dictations, the latter to engross them. His fame spread far and wide over Egypt. Julia Mammaea, mother of the Emperor Alexander Severus, brought him to Antioch in 218, to learn from him the doctrines of Christianity. An Arabian prince honored him with a visit for the same purpose. His mode of life during the whole period was strictly ascetic. He made it a matter of principle, to renounce every earthly thing not indispensably necessary. He refused the gifts of his pupils, and in literal obedience to the Saviour’s injunction he had but one coat, no shoes, and took no thought of the morrow. He rarely ate flesh, never drank wine; devoted the greater part of the night to prayer and study, and slept on the bare floor. Nay, in his youthful zeal for ascetic holiness, he even committed the act of self-emasculation, partly to fulfil literally the mysterious words of Christ, in Matt. 19:12, for the sake of the kingdom of God, partly to secure himself against all temptation and calumny which might arise from his intercourse with many female catechumens.1466 By this inconsiderate and misdirected heroism, which he himself repented in his riper years, he incapacitated himself, according to the canons of the church, for the clerical office. Nevertheless, a long time afterwards, in 228, he was ordained presbyter by two friendly bishops, Alexander of Jerusalem, and Theoctistus of Caesarea in Palestine, who had, even before this, on a former visit of his, invited him while a layman, to teach publicly in their churches, and to expound the Scriptures to their people. But this foreign ordination itself, and the growing reputation of Origen among heathens and Christians, stirred the jealousy of the bishop Demetrius of Alexandria, who charged him besides, and that not wholly without foundation, with corrupting Christianity by foreign speculations. This bishop held two councils, A.D. 231 and 232, against the great theologian, and enacted, that he, for his false doctrine, his self-mutilation, and his violation of the church laws, be deposed from his offices of presbyter and catechist, and excommunicated. This unrighteous sentence, in which envy, hierarchical arrogance, and zeal for orthodoxy joined, was communicated, as the custom was, to other churches. The Roman church, always ready to anathematize, concurred without

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Titled “The Book of Immanuel David Isaiah,” it purported to be a divine manifesto, as revealed to Immanuel/Mitchell, announcing the inauguration of a new fundamentalist church, the Seven Diamonds Plus One, which would serve as “a brilliant shining diadem of truth.” The tract identified Immanuel/Mitchell as the “one . . . mighty and strong,” and proclaimed that God had ordained him to lead the new church—the “true and living Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in its purified and exalted state.” “The Book of Immanuel David Isaiah” also explained that God had transferred the “keys and powers and ordinances of the Holy Priesthood for the salvation of mankind . . . through a succession of prophets.” The booklet traced this divinely ordained lineage from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Moses to Jesus “unto Joseph Smith, Jr. and from Joseph Smith, Jr. unto Immanuel David Isaiah and from Immanuel David Isaiah unto the end of the earth.” To comprehend Brian David Mitchell—or to comprehend Dan Lafferty, or Tom Green, or the polygamous inhabitants of Bountiful and Colorado City—one must first understand the faith these people have in common, a faith that gives shape and purpose to every facet of their lives. And any such understanding must begin with the aforementioned Joseph Smith Jr., the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. More than a century and a half after his passing, the sheer force of Joseph’s personality still holds extraordinary sway over Mormons and Mormon Fundamentalists alike. “I admire Joseph Smith,” affirms Dan Lafferty, his eyes burning. “I admire nobody else as much.” Whether one believes that the faith he spawned is the world’s only true religion or a preposterous fable, Joseph emerges from the fog of time as one of the most remarkable figures ever to have breathed American air. “Whatever his lapses,” Harold Bloom argues in The American Religion, “Smith was an authentic religious genius, unique in our national history. . . . In proportion to his importance and his complexity, he remains the least-studied personage, of an undiminished vitality, in our entire national saga.” Joseph was born on December 23, 1805, in the Green Mountains of Vermont. His father, Joseph Smith Sr., was a tenant farmer, perpetually on the lookout for his main chance, who had lost all his money a short while earlier in a failed scheme to export ginseng root to China. Finding himself broke and saddled with a crushing debt, Smith père was reduced to scraping out a meager living from a plot of rocky, barely cultivable farmland rented in ignominy from his father-in-law. New England was then in the midst of an extended economic depression, and penury dogged the Smith family throughout the childhood of Joseph Junior. Constantly searching for better prospects, the family moved five times during the boy’s first eleven years before settling in Palmyra, a town of four thousand in western New York beside the Erie Canal, which at that time was under construction.

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

  Lightfoot: S. Ign. and S. Polycarp, (1885), vol. I. 417–704. Polycarp, born about A.D. 69 or earlier, a disciple of the apostle John, a younger friend of Ignatius, and the teacher of Irenaeus (between 130 and 140), presided as presbyter-bishop over the church of Smyrna in Asia Minor in the first half of the second century; made a journey to Rome about the year 154, to adjust the Easter dispute; and died at the stake in the persecution under Antoninus Pius A.D. 155, at a great age, having served the Lord six and eighty years.1243 He was not so original and intellectually active as Clement or Ignatius, but a man of truly venerable character, and simple, patriarchal piety. His disciple Irenaeus of Lyons (who wrote under Eleutherus, 177–190), in a letter to his fellow-pupil Florinus, who had fallen into the error of Gnosticism) has given us most valuable reminiscences of this "blessed and apostolic presbyter," which show how faithfully he held fast the apostolic tradition, and how he deprecated all departure from it. He remembered vividly his mode of life and personal appearance, his discourses to the people, and his communications respecting the teaching and miracles of the Lord, as he had received them from the mouth of John and other eye-witnesses, in agreement with the Holy Scriptures.1244 In another place, Irenaeus says of Polycarp, that he had all the time taught what he had learned from the apostles, and what the church handed down; and relates, that he once called the Gnostic Marcion in Rome, "the first-born of Satan."1245 This is by no means incredible in a disciple of John, who, with all his mildness, forbids his people to salute the deniers of the true divinity and humanity of the Lord;1246 and it is confirmed by a passage in the epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians,1247 where he says: "Whoever doth not confess, that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is antichrist,1248 and whoever doth not confess the mystery of the cross, is of the devil; and he, who wrests the words of the Lord according to his own pleasure, and saith, there is no resurrection and judgment, is the first-born of Satan. Therefore would we forsake the empty babbling of this crowd and their false teachings, and turn to the word which hath been given us from the beginning, watching in prayer,1249 continuing in fasting, and most humbly praying God, that he lead us not into temptation,1250 as the Lord hath said: ’The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ "1251 This epistle to the Philippians consists of fourteen short chapters, and has been published in full since 1633. It is the only, document that remains to us from this last witness of the Johannean age, who wrote several letters to neighboring congregations.

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

  One more great Crusader, one in whom genuine piety was a leading trait, was yet to set his face towards the East and, by the abrupt termination of his career through sickness, to furnish one of the most memorable scenes in the long drama of the Crusades. The Sixth and Seventh Crusades owe their origin to the devotion of Louis IX., king of France, usually known as St. Louis. Louis combined the piety of the monk with the chivalry of the knight, and stands in the front rank of Christian sovereigns of all times.468 His religious zeal showed itself not only in devotion to the confessional and the mass, but in steadfast refusal, in the face of threatened torture, to deviate from his faith and in patient resignation under the most trying adversity. A considerate regard for the poor and the just treatment of his subjects were among his traits. He washed the feet of beggars and, when a Dominican warned him against carrying his humility too far, he replied, "If I spent twice as much time in gaming and at the chase as in such services, no man would rise up to find fault with me." On one occasion, when he asked Joinville if he were called upon to choose between being a leper and committing mortal sin, which his choice would be, the seneschal replied, "he would rather commit thirty mortal sins than be a leper." The next day the king said to him, "How could you say what you did? There is no leper so hideous as he who is in a state of mortal sin. The leprosy of the body will pass away at death, but the leprosy of the soul may cling to it forever." The sack of Jerusalem by the Chorasmians,469 who were being pushed on from behind by the Mongols, was followed by the fall of Gaza and Ascalon. It was just one hundred years since the news of the fall of Edessa had stirred Europe, but the temper of men’s minds was no longer the same. The news of disasters in Palestine was a familiar thing. There was now no Bernard to arouse the conscience and give directions to the feelings of princes and people. The Council of Lyons in 1245 had for one of its four objects the relief of the holy places. A summons was sent forth by pope and council for a new expedition, and the usual gracious offers were made to those who should participate in the movement. St. Louis responded. During a sickness in 1245 and at the moment when the attendants were about to put a cloth on his face thinking he was dead, the king had the cross bound upon his breast. On June 12, 1248, Louis received at St. Denis from the hand of the papal legate the oriflamme, and the pilgrim’s wallet and staff. He was joined by his three brothers, Robert, count of Artois, Alphonso, count of Poitiers, and Charles of Anjou.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘My lord, I must begin by telling you that Primas3 was a very great grammarian and had no equal as a quick and gifted versifier. These two qualities made him so famous and respected, that even though he was not known everywhere by sight, his name and reputation were such that there was hardly anybody who did not know who Primas was. ‘Now it happened that once, while living in Paris in a state of poverty (which was the way he mostly lived, for his abilities were little appreciated by those who were rich enough to help him), he heard mention of a certain abbot of Cluny,4 who was believed to have a higher revenue from his estates than any other prelate in God’s Church, with the exception of the Pope. He heard people saying wonderful and magnificent things about this Abbot, for instance that he always held open court and that nobody who called upon him was ever refused food and drink, provided only that he asked for it while the Abbot was at table. When Primas heard this, he decided, being a man who enjoyed seeing gentlemen and princes, that he would go and discover for himself how splendidly the Abbot lived, and he inquired how far it was from Paris to his residence. On being told it was a distance of about six miles, Primas calculated that by setting out early in the morning he could reach the place in time for breakfast. ‘He ascertained which road he should take, but since nobody else appeared to be going there, he was afraid that he might be unlucky enough to lose his way, and arrive at some spot where a meal would not be so easy to come by. So in order to be on the safe side, he decided, by way of insuring himself against total lack of sustenance, to take along three loaves, reflecting at the same time that he would always be able to find water to drink, although this commodity was not much to his taste. And so he set out, with the loaves stuffed inside his tunic, and made such excellent progress that he arrived before breakfast at the place where the Abbot was living. Once inside, he took a good look round, and saw that a great number of tables had been set, the kitchen was a hive of activity, and various other dining arrangements had been put in hand, whereupon he thought to himself: “This man is truly as excellent as people say.” He spent a little more time surveying the scene, and then, since the meal was now ready, the Abbot’s steward ordered in the water for them to wash their hands, after which he seated them all at table. By a pure coincidence, the place where Primas was seated happened to be directly opposite the door of the room from which the Abbot would emerge as he came into the hall to dine.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Ramon said that it was better to buy flowers from him: ‘I cut fresh from the garden when you want,’ he coaxed gently. He spoke even his broken English with the soft, rather sing-song drawl of the local peasants. ‘But aren’t they our flowers?’ inquired Mary, surprised. Ramon shook his head: ‘Yours to see, yours to touch, but not yours to take, only mine to take—I sell them as part of my little payment. But to you I sell very cheap, Señorita, because you resemble the santa noche that makes our gardens smell sweet at night. I will show you our beautiful santa noche.’ He was thin as a lath and as brown as a chestnut, and his shirt was quite incredibly dirty; but when he walked he moved like a king on his rough bare feet with their broken toe-nails. ‘This evening I make you a present of my flowers; I bring you a very big bunch of tabachero,’ he remarked. ‘Oh, you mustn’t do that,’ protested Mary, getting out her purse. But Ramon looked offended: ‘I have said it. I give you the tabachero.’ 3Their dinner consisted of a local fish fried in oil—the fish had a very strange figure, and the oil, Stephen thought, tasted slightly rancid; there was also a small though muscular chicken. But Concha had provided large baskets of fruit; loquats still warm from the tree that bred them, the full flavoured little indigenous bananas, oranges sweet as though dripping honey, custard apples and guavas had Concha provided, together with a bottle of the soft yellow wine so dearly beloved of the island Spaniards. Outside in the garden there was luminous darkness. The night had a quality of glory about it, the blue glory peculiar to Africa and seen seldom or never in our more placid climate. A warm breeze stirred the eucalyptus trees and their crude, harsh smell was persistently mingled with the thick scents of heliotrope and datura, with the sweet but melancholy scent of jasmine, with the faint, unmistakable odour of cypress. Stephen lit a cigarette: ‘Shall we go out, Mary?’ They stood for a minute looking up at the stars, so much larger and brighter than stars seen in England. From a pond on the farther side of the villa, came the queer, hoarse chirping of innumerable frogs singing their prehistoric love songs. A star fell, shooting swiftly earthward through the darkness.

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

  The men who, next to the Apostles, have exerted and still exert through their writings the greatest influence in the Christian Church, as leaders of theological thought, are St. Augustin, Martin Luther, and John Calvin: all pupils of Paul, inspired by his doctrines of sin and grace, filled with the idea that God alone is great, equally eminent for purity of character, abundance in labors, and whole-souled consecration to the service of Christ, their common Lord and Saviour; and yet as different from each other as an African, a German, and a Frenchman can be. Next to them I would place an Englishman, John Wesley, who, as to abundance of useful labor in winning souls to Christ, is the most apostolic man that Great Britain has produced. Augustin commands the respect and gratitude of the Catholic as well as the Protestant world. He is, among the three the profoundest in thought, and the sweetest in spirit; free from bitterness and coarseness, even in his severest polemics; yet advocating a system of exclusiveness which justifies coercion and persecution of heretics and schismatics. He identified the visible catholic church of his day with the kingdom of God on earth, and furnished the program of mediaeval Catholicism, though he has little to say about the papacy, and protested, in the Pelagian controversy, against the position of one Pope, while he accepted the decision of another. All three were fighters, but against different foes and with different weapons. Augustin contended for the catholic church against heretical sects, and for authority against false freedom; Luther and Calvin fought for evangelical dissent from the overwhelming power of Rome, and for rational freedom against tyrannical authority. Luther was the fiercest and roughest fighter of the three; but he alone had the Teutonic gift of humor which is always associated with a kindly nature, and extracts the sting out of his irony and sarcasm. His bark was far worse than his bite. He advised to drown the Pope and his cardinals in the Tiber; and yet he would have helped to save their lives after the destruction of their office. He wrote a letter of comfort to Tetzel on his death-bed, and protested against the burning of heretics. Luther and Calvin learned much from Augustin, and esteemed him higher than any human teacher since the Apostles; but they had a different mission, and assumed a polemic attitude towards the traditional church. Augustin struggled from the Manichaean heresy into catholic orthodoxy, from the freedom of error into the authority of truth; the Reformers came out of the corruptions and tyranny of the papacy into the freedom of the gospel. Augustin put the church above the Word, and established the principle of catholic tradition; the Reformers put the Word above the church, and secured a progressive understanding of the Scriptures by the right of free investigation.