Anxiety

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 The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Stephen stuck to her point. ‘You don’t look a bit well. We shouldn’t have stayed in Paris last summer.’ Then because her own nerves were on edge that day, she frowned. ‘It’s this business of your not eating whenever I can’t get in to a meal. I know you don’t eat—Pierre’s told me about it. You mustn’t behave like a baby, Mary! I shan’t be able to write a line if I feel you’re ill because you’re not eating.’ Her fear was making her lose her temper. ‘I shall send for a doctor,’ she finished brusquely. Mary refused point-blank to see a doctor. What was she to tell him? She hadn’t any symptoms. Pierre exaggerated. She ate quite enough—she had never been a very large eater. Stephen had better get on with her work and stop upsetting herself over nothing. But try as she might, Stephen could not get on—all the rest of the day her work went badly. After this she would often leave her desk and go wandering off in search of Mary. ‘Darling, where are you?’ ‘Upstairs in my bedroom!’ ‘Well, come down; I want you here in the study.’ And when Mary had settled herself by the fire: ‘Now tell me exactly how you feel—all right?’ And Mary would answer, smiling: ‘Yes, I’m quite all right; I swear I am, Stephen!’ It was not an ideal atmosphere for work, but the book was by now so well advanced that nothing short of a disaster could have stopped it—it was one of those books that intend to get born, and that go on maturing in spite of their authors. Nor was there anything really alarming about the condition of Mary’s health. She did not look very well, that was all; and at times she seemed a little downhearted, so that Stephen must snatch a few hours from her work in order that they might go out together. Perhaps they would lunch at a restaurant; or drive into the country, to the rapture of David; or just wander about the streets arm in arm as they had done when first they had returned to Paris. And Mary, because she would be feeling happy, would revive for these few hours as though by magic. Yet when she must once more find herself lonely, with nowhere to go and no one to talk to, because Stephen was back again at her desk, why then she would wilt, which was not unnatural considering her youth and her situation. 5On Christmas Eve Brockett arrived, bringing flowers. Mary had gone for a walk with David, so Stephen must leave her desk with a sigh. ‘Come in, Brockett. I say! What wonderful lilac!’ He sat down, lighting a cigarette. ‘Yes, isn’t it fine? I brought it for Mary. How is she?’ Stephen hesitated a moment. ‘Not awfully well . . . I’ve been worried about her.’

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Michael Quinn, some of these troops “literally had their guns trained on Brigham Young’s home, so that if there was going to be a civil uprising, his home would be the first to receive cannon shots.” Compounding the prophet’s woes, in 1862 Lincoln signed into law the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, which had been drafted specifically to “punish and prevent the practice of polygamy in the Territories of the United States and to disapprove and annul certain acts of the territorial legislature of Utah.” Just months after taking office, Lincoln demonstrated that he intended to be at least as tough on the Mormons as Presidents Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan had been before him, prompting Brigham to lash out against “such cursed scoundrels as Abe Lincoln and his Minions.” (Which is ironic, because the second Mormon prophet shared many of the attributes that distinguished the sixteenth American president; had Brigham’s life been diverted onto a different track—had his ambitions been less millennial and more secular—it is easy to imagine him in the White House. He certainly had what it takes to become president, and he would have made a memorable one, a national leader in the mold of Lyndon Johnson, say, or Franklin Roosevelt, or even Lincoln himself.) In April 1865 Brigham’s comforting pipe dream of the North and South’s mutual destruction came to an end with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. The Civil War concluded with the Union not only intact but in important ways stronger than ever. Brigham was forced to acknowledge that the United States would thereafter be increasingly involved in the business and governance of Deseret. This eventuality was underscored in 1869 with the ceremonial driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit, near the north end of the Great Salt Lake, marking completion of the transcontinental railroad. Now all that separated Utah from the ungodly reach of the whole Gentile nation was a relatively short, comfortable train ride. And 1869 also saw another major event that signified the end of Utah’s isolation: the first descent of the Green and Colorado Rivers by Major John Wesley Powell, a Civil War hero who had lost his right arm at the battle of Shiloh. Powell’s expedition cast off in puny wooden boats from Green River Station, Wyoming, on May 24, 1869, planning to float the Green River to its confluence with the Colorado River, * then continue downstream through the treacherous, completely uncharted chasms of the Grand Canyon, thereby traversing the last vast expanse of unexplored wilderness in the contiguous United States—the final blank spot on the map. It was a trying voyage, marked by danger, hardship, and acrimony between Powell and some of his men. On August 27, near the lower end of the Grand Canyon, the boatmen beached their vessels on the riverbank immediately above what would turn out to be the last set of dangerous rapids on the entire journey.

• From Trash (1988)

  “Well . . .” She’d hesitated, then shrugged. “No more than working for a living and taking care of my mother.” Margaret works as the head teller at a midtown bank, a job that’s a little like living on the firing line in a small-arms tournament. She spends her weekends picking up after her mother, a beautiful but prematurely senile woman whose four married children have left her to Margaret to nurse and protect. “Mama shit on that blue chintz couch again last week, and you know how embarrassing that is for her. Took me three hours to get it even half clean. I’m thinking I may have to re-cover it, but then I suppose she’ll just have another accident. The doctor said I should have the furniture covered in plastic, that it’s just gonna get worse, but damn, I can’t do that to her. It took her so long to get some nice things, and she loves them so.” I didn’t tell her what I thought, that mostly Mama didn’t notice much of what she sat on anymore. It’s taken Margaret years to be able to afford to buy her mother the things they both always wanted, and it would break Margaret’s heart to give any of it up. Instead I’d changed the subject with a story about my mama’s attempts to get flowers to grow in her swampy yard. Margaret and I both know that some time in the next year she’s gonna have to give up and put her mama in a hospital of some kind. It’s one of the things neither of us discusses with Paula. If Paula were to make one of her righteous comments about Margaret’s mother and the wisdom of nursing homes, Margaret might do something sudden and terrible. “I only hope you know what you’re doing.” Paula slaps her glass down and glares at Margaret and me. For a moment I’ve lost the thread of the conversation, something I’ve been doing a lot lately. The fact is I have been drinking too much, and not sleeping and not eating, and half the time I can’t quite keep up with what’s going on around me. It’s as if I wander away in my mind. Everything someone says reminds me of something someone else said, and I never get around to paying attention to the here and now. I’ve even gotten lost on the way to work, missed my subway stop, and took the whole day off as a result. This time I decide to pull myself together. Paula is looking angry, and Margaret is looking confused. I shrug in Paula’s direction and fish a piece of ice out of my water glass to rub across the back of my neck.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Very soon after Ron was converted to Dan’s brand of fundamentalism, he instructed Dianna to begin following the onerous rules set forth in The Peace Maker. “I went over to their house one day,” Weiss remembers, “and Dianna was shaking and shaking a gallon jug full of cream. I asked her, ‘What in the world are you doing?’ She said, ‘Ron wants me to make our own butter from now on.’ “This was just one little example of how Ron expected her to live. Basically he expected her to be his slave. And it was such a complete reversal from the way he’d been. Before Dan brainwashed him, Ron had treated Dianna like a queen. He was just one of the nicest men I’ve ever known. But when this happened, he became one of the meanest men I’ve ever known. “Dianna could see right away that the changes in Ron were a really bad thing, and I’ve never seen a woman work harder at trying to save a man. She would stay up most of the night trying to talk sense into him. In the hope of bringing him around and saving him, she tried to remain on his good side by going along with some of his crazy demands. But she was only willing to go so far, and then she’d have to say, ‘No, Ron, this just isn’t right.’ ” As Ron became more controlling and more extreme, Dianna slowly lost hope that she could change Ron back into the loving father and considerate husband she’d known previously. He began to talk with growing enthusiasm about polygamy, which made her sick to even contemplate. When Ron announced that he intended to marry off their teenage daughters as plural wives, Dianna reached her breaking point. Desperate, she turned for help to Weiss and other close friends, to leaders of her LDS ward, and especially to Brenda Lafferty—who was married to Allen, the youngest of the six Lafferty brothers. After Dan persuaded his brothers to adopt his fundamentalist beliefs, all their wives acquiesced and submitted, to one degree or another, to the humiliations decreed in The Peace Maker—all their wives, that is, except one: Brenda Wright Lafferty. Intelligent, articulate, and assertive, “Brenda stood up to those Lafferty boys,” says her mother, LaRae Wright. “She was probably the youngest of the

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Don Ciappelletto, who was then out of employ and ill provided with the goods of the world, seeing him who had long been his stay and his refuge about to depart thence, lost no time in deliberation, but, as of necessity constrained, replied that he would well. They being come to an accord, Musciatto departed and Ciappelletto, having gotten his patron's procuration and letters commendatory from the king, betook himself into Burgundy, where well nigh none knew him, and there, contrary to his nature, began courteously and blandly to seek to get in his payments and do that wherefor he was come thither, as if reserving choler and violence for a last resort. Dealing thus and lodging in the house of two Florentines, brothers, who there lent at usance and who entertained him with great honour for the love of Messer Musciatto, it chanced that he fell sick, whereupon the two brothers promptly fetched physicians and servants to tend him and furnished him with all that behoved unto the recovery of his health. But every succour was in vain, for that, by the physicians' report, the good man, who was now old and had lived disorderly, grew daily worse, as one who had a mortal sickness; wherefore the two brothers were sore concerned and one day, being pretty near the chamber where he lay sick, they began to take counsel together, saying one to the other, 'How shall we do with yonder fellow? We have a sorry bargain on our hands of his affair, for that to send him forth of our house, thus sick, were a sore reproach to us and a manifest sign of little wit on our part, if the folk, who have seen us first receive him and after let tend and medicine him with such solicitude, should now see him suddenly put out of our house, sick unto death as he is, without it being possible for him to have done aught that should displease us. On the other hand, he hath been so wicked a man that he will never consent to confess or take any sacrament of the church; and he dying without confession, no church will receive his body; nay, he will be cast into a ditch, like a dog. Again, even if he do confess, his sins are so many and so horrible that the like will come of it, for that there is nor priest nor friar who can or will absolve him thereof; wherefore, being unshriven, he will still be cast into the ditches. Should it happen thus, the people of the city, as well on account of our trade, which appeareth to them most iniquitous and of which they missay all day, as of their itch to plunder us, seeing this, will rise up in riot and cry out, "These Lombard dogs, whom the church refuseth to receive, are to be suffered here no longer";--and they will run to our houses and despoil us not only of our good, but may be of our lives, to boot; wherefore in any case it will go ill with us, if yonder fellow die.'

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Meanwhile, Rinuccio, midnight being now at hand, departed his house, to do that which had been enjoined him of his mistress, and as he went, he entered into many and various thoughts of the things which might possibly betide him; as, to wit, that he might fall into the hands of the police, with Scannadio's body on his shoulders, and be doomed to the fire as a sorcerer, and that he should, an the thing came to be known, incur the ill-will of his kinsfolk, and other like thoughts, whereby he was like to have been deterred. But after, bethinking himself again, 'Alack,' quoth he, 'shall I deny this gentlewoman, whom I have so loved and love, the first thing she requireth of me, especially as I am thereby to gain her favour? God forbid, though I were certainly to die thereof, but I should set myself to do that which I have promised!' Accordingly, he went on and presently coming to the sepulchre, opened it easily; which Alessandro hearing, abode still, albeit he was in great fear. Rinuccio, entering in and thinking to take Scannadio's body, laid hold of Alessandro's feet and drew him forth of the tomb; then, hoisting him on his shoulders, he made off towards the lady's house.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  3If Stephen had been fearful for Mary’s safety before, she was now ten times more so. The front was in a condition of flux and the Postes de Secours were continually shifting. An Allied ambulance driver had been fired on by the Germans, after having arrived at the spot where his Poste had been only the previous evening. There was very close fighting on every sector; it seemed truly amazing that no grave casualties had so far occurred in the Unit. For now the Allies had begun to creep forward, yard by yard, mile by mile, very slowly but surely; refreshed by a splendid transfusion of blood from the youthful veins of a great child-nation. Of all the anxieties on Mary’s account that now beset Stephen, Thurloe was the gravest; for Thurloe was one of those irritating drivers who stake all on their own inadequate judgment. She was brave to a fault, but inclined to show off when it came to a matter of actual danger. For long hours Stephen would not know what had happened, and must often leave the base before Mary had returned, still in doubt regarding her safety. Grimly, yet with unfailing courage and devotion, Stephen now went about her duties. Every day the risks that they all took grew graver, for the enemy, nearing the verge of defeat, was less than ever a respecter of persons. Stephen’s only moments of comparative peace would be when she herself drove Mary. And as though the girl missed some vitalizing force, some strength that had hitherto been hers to draw on, she flagged, and Stephen would watch her flagging during their brief spells together off duty, and would know that nothing but her Celtic pluck kept Mary Llewellyn from a breakdown. And now, because they were so often parted, even chance meetings became of importance. They might meet while preparing their cars in the morning, and if this should happen they would draw close together for a moment, as though finding comfort in nearness. Letters from home would arrive for Stephen, and these she would want to read to Mary. In addition to writing, Puddle sent food, even luxuries sometimes, of a pre-war nature. To obtain them she must have used bribery and corruption, for food of all kinds had grown scarce in England. Puddle, it seemed, had a mammoth war map into which she stuck pins with gay little pennants. Every time the lines moved by so much as a yard, out would come Puddle’s pins to go in at fresh places; for since Stephen had left her to go to the front, the war had become very personal to Puddle.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Could Mrs. Antrim have ignored Stephen Gordon’s existence, she would almost certainly have done so. She disliked the girl; she had always disliked her; what she called Stephen’s ‘ queer- ness ’ aroused her suspicion — she was never quite clear as to what she suspected, but felt sure that it must be something outlandish: ‘A young woman of her age to ride like a man, I call it pre- posterous! ° declared Mrs. Antrim. It can safely be said that Stephen at eighteen had in no way outgrown her dread of the Antrims; there was only one member of that family who liked her, she knew, and that was the small, hen-pecked Colonel. He liked her because, a fine horseman him- self, he admired her skill and her courage out hunting. ‘It’s a pity she’s so tall, of course — ° he would grumble, ‘ but she does know a horse ard how to stick on one. Now my children might have been brought up at Margate, they’re just about fitted to ride the beach donkeys! ’ But Colonel Antrim would not count at the dance; indeed in his own house he very seldom counted. Stephen would have to endure Mrs. Antrim and Violet — and then Roger was home from Sandhurst. Their antagonism had never quite died, perhaps be- cause it was too fundamental. Now they covered it up with a cloak of good manners, but these two were still enemies at heart, and they knew it. No, Stephen did not want to go to that dance, though she went in order to please her mother. Nervous, awk- ward and apprehensive, Stephen arrived at the Antrims that night, little thinking that Fate, the most expert of tricksters, was 100 THE WELL OF LONELINESS waiting to catch her just round the corner. Yet so it was, for dur- ing that evening Stephen met Martin and Martin met Stephen, and their meeting was great with portent for them both, though neither of them could know it. It all happened quite simply as such things will happen. It was Roger who introduced Martin Hallam; it was Stephen who ex- plained that she danced very badly; it was Martin who suggested that they sit out their dances. Then — how quickly it occurs if the thing is pre-destined — they suddenly knew that they liked each other, that some chord had been struck to a pleasant vibration; and this being so they sat out many dances, and they talked for quite a long while that evening.

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

  I beg all pious hearts to bear me witness, and to pray for me that I may stand firm in this faith to the end. For—which God forbid!—should I in the temptation and agony of death speak differently, it must be counted for nothing but an inspiration of the Devil.857 Thus help me my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, blessed forever. Amen." The "Confession" called out two lengthy answers of Zwingli and Oecolampadius, at the request of the Strassburg divines; but they add nothing new.858 This bitter controversy fell in the most trying time of Luther, when he suffered greatly from physical infirmity and mental depression, and when a pestilence raged at Wittenberg (1527), which caused the temporary removal of the University to Jena. He remained on the post of danger, escaped the jaws of death, and measurably recovered his strength, but not his former cheerfulness, good humor, and buoyancy of spirit. § 107. The Marburg Conference, A.D. 1529. (With Facsimile of Signatures.) I. Contemporary Reports. (1) Lutheran. Luther’s references to the Conference at Marburg, in Erl. ed. XXXII. 398, 403, 408; XXXVI. 320 sqq. (his report

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

  Thus, until the letter arrived which informed me that Malherbe was out of danger, and that Charles and my brother, together with my wife and the others, were safe,603 I would have been all but utterly cast down, unless, as I have already mentioned, my heart was refreshed in prayer and private meditations, which are suggested by His Word .... "The son whom the Lord had lent you for a season, He has taken away. There is no ground, therefore, for those silly and wicked complaints of foolish men: O blind death! O hard fate! O implacable daughters of Destiny! O cruel fortune! The Lord who had lodged him here for a season, at this stage of his career has called him away. What the Lord has done, we must, at the same time, consider has not been done rashly, nor by chance, neither from having been impelled from without, but by that determinate counsel, whereby He not only foresees, decrees, and executes nothing but what is just and upright in itself, but also nothing but what is good and wholesome for us. Where justice and good judgment reign paramount, there it is impious to remonstrate. When, however, our advantage is bound up with that goodness, how great would be the degree of ingratitude not to acquiesce, with a calm and well-ordered temper of mind, in whatever is the wish of our Father .... "It is God who has sought back from you your son, whom He had committed to you to be educated, on the condition that he might always be His own. And, therefore, He took him away, because it was both of advantage to him to leave this world, and by this bereavement to humble you, or to make trial of your patience. If you do not understand the advantage of this, without delay, first of all, setting aside every other object of consideration, ask of God that

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

  In this important feature he differed from Augustin, who taught the Catholic view of the subjective uncertainty of salvation.821 Calvin made the certainty, Augustin the uncertainty, a stimulus to zeal and holiness. Calvin was fully aware of the unpopularity of the doctrine. "Many," he says, "consider nothing more unreasonable than that some of the common mass of mankind should be foreordained to salvation, and others to destruction ... When the human mind hears these things, its petulance breaks all restraint, and it discovers a serious and violent agitation as if alarmed by the sound of a martial trumpet." But he thought it impossible to "come to a clear conviction of our salvation, till we are acquainted with God’s eternal election, which illustrates his grace by this comparison, that he adopts not all promiscuously to the hope of salvation, but gives to some what he refuses to others." It is, therefore, not from the general love of God to all mankind, but from his particular favor to the elect that they, and they alone, are to derive their assurance of salvation and their only solid comfort. The reason of this preference can only be found in the inscrutable will of God, which is the supreme law of the universe. As to others, we must charitably assume that they are among the elect; for there is no certain sign of reprobation except perseverance in impenitence until death. Predestination, according to Calvin, is the eternal and unchangeable decree of God by which he foreordained, for his own glory and the display of his attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation. "Predestination," he says, "we call the eternal decree of God, by which he has determined in himself the destiny of every man. For they are not all created in the same condition, but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or the other of these ends, we say, he is predestinated either to life or to death."822 This applies not only to individuals, but to whole nations. God has chosen the people of Israel as his own inheritance, and rejected the heathen; he has loved Jacob with his posterity, and hated Esau with his posterity. "The counsel of God, as far as concerns the elect, is founded on his gratuitous mercy,

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

  He also allows the liberum arbitrium in the sense that man acts voluntarily and of his inner impulse.876 But he denies that man, without the assistance of the Holy Spirit, has the power to choose what is spiritually good, and quotes Rom. 6:17; 7:14, 23. "Man has arbitrium spontaneum, so that he willingly and by choice does evil, without compulsion from without, and, therefore, he incurs guilt. But, owing to native depravity, his will is so given to sin that it always chooses evil. Hence spontaneity and enslavement may exist together. The voluntas is spontanea, but not libera; it is not coacta, yet serva." This is an anticipation of the artificial distinction between natural ability and moral inability—a distinction which is practically useless. As regards the teaching of the early Church, he could not deny that the Fathers, especially Origen, exalt the freedom of the will; but he could claim Augustin in his later writings, in which he retracted his earlier advocacy of freedom. The objection that the slavery of the will nullifies the exhortations to repent, would be valid, if God did not make them effective by his Spirit. The reply of Calvin to Pighius is more cautious and guarded than Luther’s reply to Erasmus, and more churchly than Zwingli’s tract on Providence. In defending himself, he defended what was then the common Protestant doctrine, in opposition to the then prevailing Pelagianism in the Roman Church. It had a good effect upon the Council of Trent, which distinctly disowned the Pelagian and Semi-Pelagian heresy.877 Calvin dedicated his book to Melanchthon, as a friend who had agreed with him and had advised him to write against Pighius, if he should attack the Reformation. But Melanchthon, who had taught the same doctrine, was at that time undergoing a change in his views on the freedom of the will, chiefly because he felt that the denial of it would make God the author of sin, and destroy man’s moral accountability.878 He was as competent to appreciate the logical argument in favor of necessity, but he was more open to the force of ethical and practical considerations. In his reply to Calvin’s dedication, May 11, 1543, he acknowledged the compliment paid to him, but modestly and delicately intimated his dissent and his desire that Protestants should unite in the defence of those more important doctrines, which commended themselves by their simplicity and practical usefulness. "I wish," he says, "you would transfer your eloquence to the adorning of these momentous subjects, by which our friends would be strengthened, our enemies terrified, and the weak encouraged; for who in these days possesses a more forcible or splendid style of disputation? ... I do not write this letter to dictate to you who are so learned a man, and so well versed in all the exercises of piety. I am persuaded, indeed, that it agrees with your sentiments, though less subtle and more adapted for

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

  theological questions. He seemed to be satisfied, but returned again and again with new doubts. Calvin, overburdened with labor and care, patiently listened and spent whole hours with the sceptic. He also answered his objections in writing.955 At last he refused further discussion as useless. "He tried," wrote Calvin to Lismann, "to circumvent me like a serpent, but God gave me strength to withstand his cunning." The spirit of doubt spread more and more in the Italian congregation. One of the principal sympathizers of Biandrata was Gianpaolo Alciati, a Piedmontese who had served in the army, and was not used to reverent language. Martinengo, the worthy Italian pastor, shortly before his death, begged Calvin to take care of the little flock and to extirpate the dangerous heresy. Accordingly, a public meeting of the Italian congregation was held May 18, 1558, in the presence of Calvin and two members of the Council. Calvin, in the name of the Council, invited the malcontents to utter themselves freely, and assured them that they should not be punished. Biandrata appealed to certain expressions of Calvin, but was easily convicted of mistake. Alciati went so far as to declare that the orthodox party "worshipped three devils worse than all the idols of popery." After a three hours’ discussion, it was resolved that all the members of the congregation should subscribe a confession of faith, which asserted the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, as being consistent with the essential unity of the Godhead. Six members at first refused to subscribe, but yielded afterwards with the exception, it seems, of Biandrata and Alciati. They felt unsafe in Geneva, and went to Bern. There they found a sympathizer in Zurkinden, the secretary of the city, who engaged in an angry controversy with Calvin. Biandrata left for Poland, gained the confidence of Prince Radziwill, propagated his Unitarian opinions, and justified himself before a synod at Pinczow (1561). In 1563 he accepted a call of Prince John Sigismund of Transylvania as his physician, and converted him and many others to his views, but was charged by Faustus Socinus to have in his last years favored the Jesuits from mercenary motives. It is possible that the old man, weary of theological strife, lost himself in the maze of scepticism, like Ochino. Tradition reports that he was robbed and murdered by his own nephew after 1585. 3. The peace of the Italian congregation was again disturbed by Giovanne Valenti Gentile of Calabria, a school-master of some learning and acuteness, who was attracted to Geneva by Calvin’s reputation, but soon imbibed the sentiments of Gribaldo and Biandrata. He was one of the six members who had at first refused to sign the Italian confession of faith. Soon after the departure of Biandrata and Alciati he openly professed their views, urged, as he said, by his conscience.

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

  At the same time, he was determined to obey the will of God as soon as it would be made clear to him by unmistakable indications of Providence. "When I remember," he wrote to Farel, "that in this matter I am not my own master, I present my heart as a sacrifice and offer it up to the Lord."610 A very characteristic sentence, which reveals the soul of his piety. A seal of Calvin bears this motto, and the emblem is a hand presenting a heart to God. Seventeen years later, when he looked back upon that critical period of his life, he expressed the same view. "Although the welfare of that Church," he says, "was so dear to me, that I could without difficulty sacrifice my life for it; yet my timidity presented to me many reasons of excuse for declining to take such a heavy burden on my shoulders. But the sense of duty prevailed, and led me to return to the flock from which I had been snatched away. I did this with sadness, tears, and great anxiety and distress of mind, the Lord being my witness, and many pious persons who would gladly have spared me that pain, if not the same fear had shut their mouth."611 He mentions especially Martin Bucer, "that excellent servant of Christ," who threatened him with the example of Jonah; as Farel, on Calvin’s first visit to Geneva, had threatened him with the wrath of God. His friends in Geneva, the Council and the people, were convinced that Calvin alone could save the city from anarchy, and they made every effort to secure his return. His recall was first seriously discussed in the Council early in 1539, again in February, 1540, and decided upon Sept. 21, 1540. Preparatory steps were taken to secure the co-operation of Bern, Basel, Zürich, and Strassburg. On the 13th of October, Michel Du Bois, an old friend of Calvin, was sent by the Large Council with a letter to him, and directed to press the invitation by oral representation. Without waiting for an answer, other petitions and deputations were forwarded. On the 19th of October the Council of Two Hundred resolved to use every effort for the attainment of that object. Ami Perrin and Louis Dufour were sent (Oct. 21 and 22) as deputies, with a herald, to Strassburg "to fetch Master Calvin." Twenty dollars gold (écus au soleil) were voted, on the 27th, for expenses.612 The Registres of that month are full of actions concerning the recall of "the learned and pious Mr. Calvin." No more complete vindication of the cause of the Reformers could be imagined. Farel’s aid was also solicited. With incomparable self-denial he pardoned the ingratitude of the Genevese in not recalling him, and made every exertion to secure the return of his younger friend, whom he had first compelled by moral force to stop at Geneva. He bombarded him with letters.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  because good must have its opposite derives from Stoic philosophy. The Stoic Chrysippus, who lived a little earlier than Ben Sira, wrote that there is nothing more foolish than those who think that good can exist without evil. Nothing exists without its matching opposite. This idea, however, does not sit easily with Ben Sira’s insistence on human free will. Ben Sira also borrows from the Stoics the idea of teleology: everything is created for a purpose, to meet some need. Everything is good in its appointed time. Storms and natural disasters are created to give vent to God’s anger. Ben Sira rather blithely claims that “all these are good for the godly, but for sinners they turn into evils” (39:27). This idea is certainly in line with the claims of Genesis that God’s creation is good, but it can hardly withstand serious reflection. The book of Job had already shown that disasters can strike the good and the bad without distinction. The problem of evil was acute for Ben Sira because he resolutely resisted the idea of reward or punishment after death. Death is simply the Lord’s decree for all flesh. Whether life is for ten or a hundred or a thousand years, there is no inquiry about it in Hades (41:1-4). In this respect, his view of life resembles that of Qoheleth. “Hard work was created for everyone, and a heavy yoke is laid on the children of Adam, from the day they come forth from their mother’s womb until they return to the mother of all the living. Perplexities and fear of heart are theirs, and anxious thought of the day of their death” (40:1-2). Unlike Qoheleth, however, Ben Sira still wants to insist that there is justice in the world. So he suggests that while all creatures are troubled by anxiety, this affects sinners seven times more. Death and destruction were created for the wicked. He does not find a satisfactory explanation, however, for the fact that these things also befall the just. Unlike Qoheleth, Ben Sira remains convinced that the world is in the power of a benevolent and all-powerful Deity. At the end of the great hymn to the Creator in chapter 43, he declares: “He is the all” (43:27). Taken at face value, the phrase sounds pantheistic. The Stoics believed that the world ( cosmos ) was the body of God and was animated by a Spirit or Logos. Ben Sira, however, hardly meant this rhetorical flourish to be taken literally. He clearly maintains a distinction

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  Nor names pronounced nor destinies decreed, Then gods were born within them. (trans. S. Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia , 233) At the beginning, then, only the primordial pair, Apsu and Tiamat, were on the scene. (Both Apsu and Tiamat represent primordial waters. Some scholars think that Apsu represented the fresh waters beneath the earth while Tiamat represented the salt waters, or sea.) The story proceeds with the theogony, or begetting of the gods, which must come before the creation of humanity. Here it is the young gods who create a tumult. Finally, Apsu, with his counselor Mummu, goes to Tiamat and complains: Their ways have become very grievous to me, By day I cannot rest, by night I cannot sleep. I shall abolish their ways and disperse them. Let peace prevail so that we can sleep. (Dalley, Myths , 234) Tiamat resists the proposal (“How could we allow what we ourselves created to perish?”), but Mummu supports it. The young gods, however, learn of the plot because of the wisdom of Ea. Ea then devised a spell, put Apsu to sleep, and slew him. He set up his dwelling on top of Apsu. There he begat new gods, Bel and Marduk. Anu, father of Ea, created four winds and gave them to Marduk to play with. But the winds stirred up Tiamat and made some gods restless, and they incited Tiamat to action. Tiamat then prepared for battle and made Qingu leader of her army. Again, Ea discovered what was happening. Ea and Anu in turn tried to confront Tiamat but were intimidated and turned back. At last, Ea urged Marduk to come forward. Marduk agreed to fight Tiamat on one condition: “If indeed I am to be your champion, If I am to defeat Tiamat and save your lives, Convene the council, name a special fate . . . And let me, my own utterance shall fix fate instead of you! Whatever I create shall never be altered! Let a decree from my lips shall never be revoked, never changed!” The gods granted his demand: “You are honoured among the great gods. Your destiny is unequalled, your word (has the power of) Anu! . . . May your utterance be law, your word never falsified.”

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON The Wisdom of Solomon is a very different kind of wisdom book from Ben Sira. It was composed in Greek in Alexandria, Egypt, most probably in the early first century C.E. (The only other book in the Old Testament that was composed in Greek is the deuterocanonical 2 Maccabees.) Moreover, the author had evidently had a good Greek education and knew a great deal more about Greek philosophy than was the case with Ben Sira. Wisdom is not a philosophical tract; it is rather a rhetorical piece that draws on philosophical ideas. One of these ideas is the immortality of the soul, a concept that was quite alien to Ben Sira and the older wisdom tradition, and that makes a profound difference in the worldview of Wisdom. The Jewish community in Alexandria took root shortly after the conquest of Egypt by the Greeks, at the end of the third century B.C.E. Jews prospered under the rule of the Ptolemies, the Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt down to the death of Cleopatra after the battle of Actium in 31 B.C.E. A Jewish high priest, Onias IV, who fled from Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean revolt, became a general in the Ptolemaic army and was allowed to build a Jewish temple at Leontopolis. There is an extensive Jewish literature from Egypt, written in Greek. Most of this literature is believed to have been written in Alexandria. By the early first century C.E. there were no less than a million Jews in Egypt, according to the philosopher Philo. Philo’s figures are not reliable, but there is no doubt that the Jewish population was very large. The Romans took control of Egypt after the battle of Actium. Roman rule eventually brought difficulties for the Jews. The Roman system of taxation drew a sharp line between those who were citizens of the Greek cities, such as Alexandria, and those who were not. The Jews as a group were never citizens, although some individual Jews enjoyed that status. There was increasing friction between the Jews and the Greeks in Alexandria, and violence broke out in 38 C.E. In 41 C.E. the emperor Claudius issued a decree that ordered the Alexandrians to respect the rights of the Jews to live according to their own

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  HABAKKUK The book of Habakkuk is exceptional in that there is no superscription giving the dates of the prophet’s activity. There is a clear indication of his time, however, in 1:6: “For I am rousing the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous nation. . . .” The Chaldeans were a tribe of Aramean origin that appeared in lower Mesopotamia early in the first millennium B.C.E. and became one of the dominant elements in the Neo-Babylonian Empire that was founded by Nabopolassar (626–605 B.C.E.) and expanded by Nebuchadnezzar II, the destroyer of Jerusalem. After the fall of Nineveh in 612, the control of the western part of the Assyrian Empire lay between Egypt and Babylon. In 609, Pharaoh Neco led an army to assist the Assyrians against Babylon at Carchemish on the Euphrates. King Josiah of Judah went to meet him at Megiddo, but the pharaoh killed him (2 Kgs 23:29). According to 2 Chron 35:20-27, Josiah was killed in battle, but there is no mention of a battle in 2 Kings. It may be that Josiah was executed, for whatever reason. In any case, the Babylonians were victorious at Carchemish and could now proceed to consolidate their control over Syria-Palestine. The prophecy of Habakkuk takes place against the backdrop of these events. Habakkuk is also exceptional in the prophetic books in that it offers a sustained reflection on the problem of injustice. Habakkuk begins on a reflective note that is more typical of the psalmists than of the prophets: “How long, O L ORD , shall I cry for help?” (cf. Pss 4:2; 13:1; et al.). The problem is that of theodicy, the justice of God, a frequent topic in the wisdom literature. The wicked surround the righteous and treat them violently, but God does nothing about it. Some scholars think the prophet is referring to the Assyrians, but this is unlikely. Assyrian oppression was not a factor in Judah for a long time before the rise of the Chaldeans. It is far more likely that Habakkuk is referring to internal injustice in Jerusalem. We find similar complaints in this period in the oracles of Jeremiah. Conjectural reconstructed image of ancient Babylon.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  Tiglath-pileser III, an alabaster bas-relief from the king’s central palace at Nimrud, Mesopotamia, ca 730-727 B.C.E. Now in the British Museum, London. The prophecy of Amos is also dated “two years before the earthquake.” This earthquake is also mentioned in Zech 14:5, but it cannot be dated precisely. That such a precise date is given, however, suggests that the prophetic career of Amos was quite short, perhaps no more than a single season. Alternatively, this date may indicate only the beginning of the prophet’s career. Apart from the introductory preface, there is only one biographical notice in the book of Amos. This is found in 7:10-14 and relates an encounter between Amos and the priest of Bethel. The placement of this notice is probably due to the fact that the story was transmitted in connection with Amos’s visions at Bethel. Some scholars have seen a parallel between this incident and the confrontation between an anonymous Judean prophet and Jeroboam I by the altar of Bethel in 1 Kings 13. If the episode in Amos were invented on the model of that passage, however, we should expect that the prophet would address the king directly. The account of the reign of Jeroboam II in 2 Kings makes no mention of Amos and gives a relatively benign account of Jeroboam. Whatever its origin, the story of the encounter with the priest of Bethel is remarkable in several respects. Amos was preaching that divine punishment was about to befall the kingdom of Israel. The priest Amaziah was understandably nervous about this and worried lest the king think he endorsed the preaching of Amos and was party to a conspiracy. He is all the more irritated by the fact that Amos is a Judean. Therefore he tells him to go back to where he came from, for Bethel is a royal sanctuary and loyal to Jeroboam. The response of Amos has given rise to much commentary: “I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet.” The Hebrew literally reads: “No prophet I” (the term for “prophet” is nabi’ ). Some scholars translate, “I was no prophet,” since Amos goes on to say that he was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamores until the Lord called him. But Amos does not say that he became a nabi’ , and Amaziah calls him not a nabi’ but a chozeh (seer). The point is that Amos is not a member of a prophetic guild, of the “sons of the prophets” who ate at the king’s table (such as we saw in the

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  scribes, and this fact inspires some confidence that they did not deliberately distort his message. A Sense of Impending Doom One of the most distinctive features of Jeremiah’s prophecy is the acute sense of impending disaster that informs much of his poetic oracles. The first prophecies reported in the book take the form of vision reports, similar to those of Amos, in which the Lord asks him what he sees. The first vision (1:11-12) involves a wordplay on the word for an almond tree, which has the same consonants in Hebrew as the verb “to watch” (cf. the wordplay on “summer fruit” in Amos 8:1-3). This is followed by another vision, of a boiling pot tilting over from the north. The foe from the north, in the oracles of Jeremiah, is Babylon, which would approach Judah from the north, through Syria. These visions are not likely to be any earlier than the battle of Carchemish in 605 B.C.E., which opened the way to Syria and Palestine for the Babylonians. More than any other biblical writer, Jeremiah evokes the sheer terror of military conquest from the victim’s point of view: “My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh, the walls of my heart! My heart is beating wildly; I cannot keep silent; for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war” (4:19). He sees the coming devastation in cosmic terms: “I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void” (4:23). (This verse is often taken as an allusion to the opening of the Priestly account of creation in Gen 1:2. Both passages could be using the same stock phrase, but in any case, Jeremiah’s vision implies the undoing of creation.) The announcement of impending doom is the dominant message in these oracles. The prophet also upbraids the people for various offenses, and he sometimes calls for repentance, but most of his oracles give the impression that doom is inevitable, and that the important thing is for people to come to terms with that fact. Accordingly, he is especially scathing to those who proclaim peace when there is no peace (8:11). The prophet uses some striking metaphors for the condition of Judah. In chapter 13, he is told to bury a soiled loincloth. (The location is probably the village of Parah, near Anathoth, rather than the Euphrates, which was several hundred miles away, but there may be a wordplay on the name Euphrates.) When he retrieves it after many days, it is, naturally, ruined and good for nothing. So, by implication, is Judah. In chapter 19, he smashes a potter’s jug as a symbol for the way the Lord will smash Judah. Both of these symbolic actions are reported in the sermonic prose of the Deuteronomistic editors, but they probably recall acts performed by the prophet.