Contempt

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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

  He was far from being so pure and so venerable as Eusebius, blinded by his favor to the church, depicts him, in his bombastic and almost dishonestly eulogistic biography, with the evident intention of setting him up as a model for all future Christian princes. It must, with all regret, be conceded, that his progress in the knowledge of Christianity was not a progress in the practice of its virtues. His love of display and his prodigality, his suspiciousness and his despotism, increased with his power. The very brightest period of his reign is stained with gross crimes, which even the spirit of the age and the policy of an absolute monarch cannot excuse. After having reached, upon the bloody path of war, the goal of his ambition, the sole possession of the empire, yea, in the very year in which he summoned the great council of Nicaea, he ordered the execution of his conquered rival and brother-in-law, Licinius, in breach of a solemn promise of mercy (324).10 Not satisfied with this, he caused soon afterwards, from political suspicion, the death of the young Licinius, his nephew, a boy of hardly eleven years. But the worst of all is the murder of his eldest son, Crispus, in 326, who had incurred suspicion of political conspiracy, and of adulterous and incestuous purposes towards his step-mother Fausta, but is generally regarded as innocent. This domestic and political tragedy emerged from a vortex of mutual suspicion and rivalry, and calls to mind the conduct of Philip II. towards Don Carlos, of Peter the Great towards his son Alexis, and of Soliman the Great towards his son Mustapha. Later authors assert, though gratuitously, that the emperor, like David, bitterly repented of this sin. He has been frequently charged besides, though it would seem altogether unjustly, with the death of his second wife Fausta (326?), who, after twenty years, of happy wedlock, is said to have been convicted of slandering her stepson Crispus, and of adultery with a slave or one of the imperial guards, and then to have been suffocated in the vapor of an over-heated bath. But the accounts of the cause and manner of her death are so late and discordant as to make Constantine’s part in it at least very doubtful.11 At all events Christianity did not produce in Constantine a thorough moral transformation. He was concerned more to advance the outward social position of the Christian religion, than to further its inward mission. He was praised and censured in turn by the Christians and Pagans, the Orthodox and the Arians, as they successively experienced his favor or dislike.

• From Another Country (1962)

  He walked eastward to the park; there were no singers there tonight, only shadows in the shadows of the trees; and a policeman coming into the park as he walked out of it. He walked along MacDougal Street. Here were the black-and-white couples, defiantly white, flamboyantly black; and the Italians watched them, hating them, hating, in fact, all the Villagers, who gave their streets a bad name. The Italians, after all merely wished to be accepted as decent Americans and probably could not be blamed for feeling that they might have had an easier time of it if they had not been afflicted with so many Jews and junkies and drunkards and queers and spades. Vivaldo peered into the bars and coffee houses, half-hoping to see a familiar and bearable face. But there were only the rat-faced boys, with beards, and the infantile, shapeless girls, with the long hair. “How’re you and your spade chick making it?” He turned, and it was Jane. She was drunk and with an uptown, seersucker type, who probably worked in advertising. He stared at her and she said, quickly, with a laugh, “Oh, now, don’t get mad, I was only teasing you. Don’t old girl friends have some rights?” And to the man beside her, she said, “This is an old friend of mine, Vivaldo Moore. And this is Dick Lincoln.” Vivaldo and Dick Lincoln acknowledged each other with brief, constrained nods. “How are you, Jane?” Vivaldo asked, politely; beginning to move, at the same time, in what he hoped was not their direction. But they, naturally, began to move with him. “Oh, I’m fine,” she said. “I seem to have made an incredible recovery—” “Have you been ill?” She looked at him. “Yes, as a matter of fact. Nerves. Due to a love affair that didn’t work out.” “Someone I know?” She laughed, breathily. “You bastard.” “It’s just that I’m terribly accustomed to your dramatics. But I’m glad that everything’s working out for you now.” “Oh, everything’s fine now,” she said, and made a grotesquely girlish little skip, holding heavily onto Lincoln’s hand. “Dick doesn’t care much about soul-searching, but he’s good at what he cares about.” The man she thus described moved stiffly beside her, his face a ruddy mask of uncertainty, clearly determined to do the right thing, whatever the right thing might prove to be. “Come and have a drink with us,” Jane said. They were standing on the corner, in the lights spilling outward from a bar. The light illumined and horribly distorted her face, so that her eyes looked like coals of fire and her mouth stretched joylessly back upon the gums. “For old times’ sake.” “No, thank you,” he said. “I’m going on home. I’ve had a long, hard day.” “Rushing home to your chick?” “Good thing to rush home to, if you’ve got one,” Dick Lincoln said, putting his pink, nerveless hand on Jane’s shoulder.

• From The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915)

  Magic, too, is made up of beliefs and rites. Like religion, it has its myths and its dogmas; only they are more elementary, undoubtedly because, seeking technical and utilitarian ends, it does not waste its time in pure speculation. It has its ceremonies, sacrifices, lustrations, prayers, chants and dances as well. The beings which the magician invokes and the forces which he throws in play are not merely of the same nature as the forces and beings to which religion addresses itself; very frequently, they are identically the same. Thus, even with the most inferior societies, the souls of the dead are essentially sacred things, and the object of religious rites. But at the same time, they play a considerable rôle in magic. In Australia[74] as well as in Melanesia,[75] in Greece as well as among the Christian peoples,[76] the souls of the dead, their bones and their hair, are among the intermediaries used the most frequently by the magician. Demons are also a common instrument for magic action. Now these demons are also beings surrounded with interdictions; they too are separated and live in a world apart, so that it is frequently difficult to distinguish them from the gods properly so-called.[77] Moreover, in Christianity itself, is not the devil a fallen god, or even leaving aside all question of his origin, does he not have a religious character from the mere fact that the hell of which he has charge is something indispensable to the Christian religion? There are even some regular and official deities who are invoked by the magician. Sometimes these are the gods of a foreign people; for example, Greek magicians called upon Egyptian, Assyrian or Jewish gods. Sometimes, they are even national gods: Hecate and Diana were the object of a magic cult; the Virgin, Christ and the saints have been utilized in the same way by Christian magicians.[78] Then will it be necessary to say that magic is hardly distinguishable from religion; that magic is full of religion just as religion is full of magic, and consequently that it is impossible to separate them and to define the one without the other? It is difficult to sustain this thesis, because of the marked repugnance of religion for magic, and in return, the hostility of the second towards the first. Magic takes a sort of professional pleasure in profaning holy things;[79] in its rites, it performs the contrary of the religious ceremony.[80] On its side, religion, when it has not condemned and prohibited magic rites, has always looked upon them with disfavour. As Hubert and Mauss have remarked, there is something thoroughly anti-religious in the doings of the magician.[81] Whatever relations there may be between these two sorts of institutions, it is difficult to imagine their not being opposed somewhere; and it is still more necessary for us to find where they are differentiated, as we plan to limit our researches to religion, and to stop at the point where magic commences.

• From Educated (2018)

  What, you forgot again?” “You didn’t want it!” she said, her eyes shining like glass. “I gave it to Charles!” “Go get it.” “I’ll buy you another.” “No,” Shawn said, his eyes cold. His baby teeth, which usually gave him an impish, playful appearance, now made him seem unpredictable, volatile. “I want that one. Get it, or don’t come back.” A tear slid down Sadie’s cheek, smearing her mascara. She paused for a moment to wipe it away and pull up her smile. Then she walked over to Charles and, laughing as if it were nothing, asked if she could have the Snickers. He reached into his pocket and pulled it out, then watched her walk back to Shawn. Sadie placed the Snickers in his palm like a peace offering and waited, staring at the carpet. Shawn pulled her onto his lap and ate the bar in three bites. “You have lovely eyes,” he said. “Just like a fish.” —SADIE’S PARENTS WERE DIVORCING and the town was awash in rumors about her father. When Mother heard the rumors, she said now it made sense why Shawn had taken an interest in Sadie. “He’s always protected angels with broken wings,” she said. Shawn found out Sadie’s class schedule and memorized it. He made a point of driving to the high school several times a day, particularly at those times when he knew she’d be moving between buildings. He’d pull over on the highway and watch her from a distance, too far for her to come over, but not so far that she wouldn’t see him. It was something we did together, he and I, nearly every time we went to town, and sometimes when we didn’t need to go to town at all. Until one day, when Sadie appeared on the steps of the high school with Charles. They were laughing together; Sadie hadn’t noticed Shawn’s truck. I watched his face harden, then relax. He smiled at me. “I have the perfect punishment,” he said. “I simply won’t see her. All I have to do is not see her, and she will suffer.” He was right. When he didn’t return her calls, Sadie became desperate. She told the boys at school not to walk with her, for fear Shawn would see, and when Shawn said he disliked one of her friends, she stopped seeing them. Sadie came to our house every day after school, and I watched the Snickers incident play out over and over, in different forms, with different objects. Shawn would ask for a glass of water. When Sadie brought it, he’d want ice. When she brought that he’d ask for milk, then water again, ice, no ice, then juice. This could go on for thirty minutes before, in a final test, he would ask for something we didn’t have. Then Sadie would drive to town to buy it—vanilla ice cream, fries, a burrito—only to have him demand something else the moment she got back.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The lady fell a-smiling and answered, 'It rejoiceth me mightily to see a wise man led by the nose by a woman, even as one leadeth a ram by the horns to the shambles, albeit thou art no longer wise nor hast been since the hour when, unknowing why, thou sufferedst the malignant spirit of jealousy to enter thy breast; and the sillier and more besotted thou art, so much the less is my glory thereof. Deemest thou, husband mine, I am as blind of the eyes of the body as thou of those of the mind? Certes, no; I perceived at first sight who was the priest that confessed me and know that thou wast he; but I had it at heart to give thee that which thou wentest seeking, and in sooth I have done it. Wert thou as wise as thou thinkest to be, thou wouldst not have essayed by this means to learn the secrets of thy good wife, but wouldst, without taking vain suspicion, have recognized that which she confessed to thee to be the very truth, without her having sinned in aught. I told thee that I loved a priest, and wast not thou, whom I am much to blame to love as I do, become a priest? I told thee that no door of my house could abide locked, whenas he had a mind to lie with me; and what door in the house was ever kept against thee, whenas thou wouldst come whereas I might be? I told thee that the priest lay with me every night, and when was it that thou layest not with me? And whenassoever thou sentest thy clerk to me, which was thou knowest, as often as thou layest from me, I sent thee word that the priest had not been with me. What other than a crack-brain like thee, who has suffered thyself to be blinded by thy jealousy, had failed to understand these things? Thou hast abidden in the house, keeping watch anights, and thoughtest to have given me to believe that thou wast gone abroad to sup and sleep. Bethink thee henceforth and become a man again, as thou wast wont to be; and make not thyself a laughing stock to whoso knoweth thy fashions, as do I, and leave this unconscionable watching that thou keepest; for I swear to God that, an the fancy took me to make thee wear the horns, I would engage, haddest thou an hundred eyes, as thou hast but two, to do my pleasure on such wise that thou shouldst not be ware thereof.'

• From The Erotic Engine (2011)

  The starkest illustration of how the printing press changed taboos around erotica happened in the 1520s in Italy. There are four main characters in this story: the painter, the engraver, the author and the pope. The painter, Giulio Romano, was one of Italy’s most esteemed—at the time of this story, he was in the process of taking over the workshop of Raphael, who had died at the start of the decade. Giulio had a big smock to fill: Raphael was considered one of the three great masters of the Italian High Renaissance (along with Michelangelo and Leonardo). Giulio needed to maintain the reputation Raphael had built for his workshop, while making a name for himself through his own talents and ideas. One of these ideas was a series of sixteen drawings that came to be known as I Modi, which can translate as “The Positions” or “The Ways.” In Italian the word is more nuanced, somewhere between “positions” and “postures.” Each illustration featured a man and a woman having sex. This was nothing new in and of itself: such explicitness was already common in fine art. Traditionally, though, even the most naked figures were dressed up as Greek or Roman gods, goddesses or other legendary figures, providing a cloak of cultural legitimacy to their nakedness. Giulio Romano departed from this tradition, instead using as subjects ordinary, if exceptionally athletic and flexible, human beings. Still, this was not a huge problem—after all, it was all in the name of fine art. Raphael had established a professional relationship with a well-known engraver named Marcantonio Raimondi. Giulio had continued this relationship, and in 1524, he passed the sixteen drawings on to Marcantonio, and then immediately left Rome to design a palace for a duke in Mantua (a palace, by the way, in which Giulio was directed to create many heavily erotic frescoes). Marcantonio’s possession of the sixteen positions put him in a rather nice position of his own. This set of erotic drawings from one of Italy’s greatest artists represented a potentially huge business opportunity. He turned the drawings into engravings, mounted them on a printing press and began producing large quantities of I Modi for sale. This was an early attempt at catering to a mass market for erotica. Although no records remain that can suggest how profitable this venture might have been, it had explosive results for the engraver. While Giulio painted lascivious goat-gods and bare-breasted women on the luxurious walls of the Palazzo del Te for Duke Federico Gonzaga (no relation to Cecilia), Marcantonio was swiftly arrested and jailed by the forces of Pope Clement VII for selling filth. So effective was the papacy’s campaign to confiscate and destroy the images that almost nothing remains of them today.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  Doth then, O Lord God of truth, whoso knoweth these things, therefore please Thee? Surely unhappy is he who knoweth all these, and knoweth not Thee: but happy whoso knoweth Thee, though he know not these. And whoso knoweth both Thee and them is not the happier for them, but for Thee only, if, knowing Thee, he glorifies Thee as God, and is thankful, and becomes not vain in his imaginations. For as he is better off who knows how to possess a tree, and return thanks to Thee for the use thereof, although he know not how many cubits high it is, or how wide it spreads, than he that can measure it, and count all its boughs, and neither owns it, nor knows or loves its Creator: so a believer, whose all this world of wealth is, and who having nothing, yet possesseth all things, by cleaving unto Thee, whom all things serve, though he know not even the circles of the Great Bear, yet is it folly to doubt but he is in a better state than one who can measure the heavens, and number the stars, and poise the elements, yet neglecteth Thee who hast made all things in number, weight, and measure. But yet who bade that Manichaeus write on these things also, skill in which was no element of piety? For Thou hast said to man, Behold piety and wisdom; of which he might be ignorant, though he had perfect knowledge of these things; but these things, since, knowing not, he most impudently dared to teach, he plainly could have no knowledge of piety. For it is vanity to make profession of these worldly things even when known; but confession to Thee is piety. Wherefore this wanderer to this end spake much of these things, that convicted by those who had truly learned them, it might be manifest what understanding he had in the other abstruser things. For he would not have himself meanly thought of, but went about to persuade men, “That the Holy Ghost, the Comforter and Enricher of Thy faithful ones, was with plenary authority personally within him.” When then he was found out to have taught falsely of the heaven and stars, and of the motions of the sun and moon (although these things pertain not to the doctrine of religion), yet his sacrilegious presumption would become evident enough, seeing he delivered things which not only he knew not, but which were falsified, with so mad a vanity of pride, that he sought to ascribe them to himself, as to a divine person.

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

  Here Apolinarius evidently protests against the Quartadecimanian practice, yet simply as one arising from ignorance, and not as a blameworthy heresy. He opposes it as a chronological and exegetical mistake, and seems to hold that the fourteenth, and not the fifteenth, is the great day of the death of Christ as the true Lamb of God, on the false assumption that this truth depends upon the chronological coincidence of the crucifixion and the Jewish passover. But the question arises: Did he protest from the Western and Roman standpoint which had many advocates in the East,348 or as a Quartadecimanian?349 In the latter case we would be obliged to distinguish two parties of Quartadecimanians, the orthodox or catholic Quartadecimanians, who simply observed the 14th Nisan by fasting and the evening communion, and a smaller faction of heretical and schismatic Quartadecimanians, who adopted the Jewish practice of eating a paschal lamb on that day in commemoration of the Saviour’s last passover. But there is no evidence for this distinction in the above or other passages. Such a grossly Judaizing party would have been treated with more severity by a catholic bishop. Even the Jews could no more eat of the paschal lamb after the destruction of the temple in which it had to be slain. There is no trace of such a party in Irenaeus, Hippolytus350 and Eusebius who speak only of one class of Quartadecimanians.351 Hence we conclude that Apolinarius protests against the whole Quartadecimanian practice, although very mildly and charitably. The Laodicean controversy was a stage in the same controversy which was previously discussed by Polycarp and Anicetus in Christian charity, and was soon agitated again by Polycrates and Victor with hierarchical and intolerant violence. 3. Much more important and vehement was the third stage of the controversy between 190 and 194, which extended over the whole church, and occasioned many synods and synodical letters.352 The Roman bishop Victor, a very different man from his predecessor Anicetus, required the Asiatics, in an imperious tone, to abandon their Quartadecimanian practice. Against this Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, solemnly protested in the name of a synod held by him, and appealed to an imposing array of authorities for their primitive custom. Eusebius has preserved his letter, which is quite characteristic.

• From Jesus and His Jewish Influences (2015)

  78 Lecture 12—Was Jesus a Pharisee?Jesus and His Jewish Influences to Jesus, Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three dwellings.” ●● The term rabbi in Hebrew or Aramaic is an unofficial term of respect that was generally given to men who were experts in the Torah, or Jewish law. Literally translated, the term means “my master” or “one who is greater than myself.” We should not confuse the term rabbi as used in the time of Jesus with modern rabbis. ●● Although Pharisees often apparently spoke to each other using the term rabbi or were addressed as such because they were considered experts in the law, it doesn’t mean that this term was used necessarily only to address someone who was a Pharisee. Anyone who was considered to be an expert in the Torah could have been addressed by the term rabbi. Was Jesus a Pharisee? ●● As mentioned earlier, the Pharisaic principle of oral law allowed for interpretation of the written law. But passages in the Gospels suggest that Jesus rejected the principle of oral law. ●● For example, Mark 7:1–8 reads: “The Pharisees gathered about him with some scribes who had come from Jerusalem. They had noticed that some of his disciples ate their food without first giving their hands a ceremonial washing to purify them. … And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Jesus, why do your disciples not observe the rules handed down by our ancestors, but eat food without purifying their hands?’” ●● Notice the reference here to the laws handed down by our ancestors—that is, oral law. Jesus’s response is very interesting: “But he said to them, it was about you, hypocrites, that Isaiah prophesied. So finally in the words this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.” 79Lecture 12—Was Jesus a Pharisee?Jesus and His Jewish Influences ●● Jesus is citing Isaiah 29:13. We see this all throughout the Gospels: Jesus cites passages from the Hebrew Bible to support his position. And Jesus then continues in this passage, saying, “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” ●● Jesus accuses his opponents here of being hypocrites who worship God with their lips, their mouths— Jesus’s accusation that the Pharisees had abandoned the law of God by holding to “human tradition”—oral law rather than written law— strongly suggests that he was not a Pharisee. 80 Jesus and His Jewish Influences in oral tradition—not with their hearts. And he accuses them of improperly following the law by adhering to human traditions. Here, human traditions refers to the oral interpretation of the law, not the written law. ●● In other words, if we take seriously this passage and others in the Gospel accounts, then we conclude that Jesus was not a Pharisee, and he explicitly rejected the Pharisees’ doctrine of oral law.

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

  Heretical baptism was, in the third century, the subject of a violent controversy, important also for its bearing on the question of the authority of the Roman see. Cyprian, whose Epistles afford the clearest information on this subject, followed Tertullian461 in rejecting baptism by heretics as an inoperative mock-baptism, and demanded that all heretics coming over to the Catholic church be baptized (he would not say re-baptized). His position here was due to his high-church exclusiveness and his horror of schism. As the one Catholic church is the sole repository of all grace, there can be no forgiveness of sins, no regeneration or communication of the Spirit, no salvation, and therefore no valid sacraments, out of her bosom. So far he had logical consistency on his side. But, on the other hand, he departed from the objective view of the church, as the Donatists afterwards did, in making the efficacy of the sacrament depend on the subjective holiness of the priest. "How can one consecrate water," he asks, "who is himself unholy, and has not the Holy Spirit?" He was followed by the North African church, which, in several councils at Carthage in the years 255–6, rejected heretical baptism; and by the church of Asia Minor, which had already acted on this view, and now, in the person of the Cappadocian bishop Firmilian, a disciple and admirer of the great Origen, vigorously defended it against Rome, using language which is entirely inconsistent with the claims of the papacy.462 The Roman bishop Stephen (253–257) appeared for the opposite doctrine, on the ground of the ancient practice of his church.463 He offered no argument, but spoke with the consciousness of authority, and followed a catholic instinct. He laid chief stress on the objective nature of the sacrament, the virtue of which depended neither on the officiating priest, nor on the receiver, but solely on the institution of Christ. Hence he considered heretical baptism valid, provided only it was administered with intention to baptize and in the right form, to wit, in the name of the Trinity, or even of Christ alone; so that heretics coming into the church needed only confirmation or the ratification of baptism by the Holy Ghost. "Heresy," says he, "produces children and exposes them; and the church takes up the exposed children, and nourishes them as her own, though she herself has not brought them forth."

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

  The licentious Gnostics, as the Nicolaitans, the Ophites, the Carpocratians, and the Antitactes, in a proud conceit of the exaltation of the spirit above matter, or even on the diabolical principle, that sensuality must be overcome by indulging it, bade defiance to all moral laws, and gave themselves up to the most shameless licentiousness. It is no great thing, said they, according to Clement of Alexandria, to restrain lust; but it is surely a great thing not to be conquered by Iust, when one indulges in it. According to Epiphanius there were Gnostic sects in Egypt, which, starting from a filthy, materialistic pantheism and identifying Christ with the generative powers of nature, practised debauchery as a mode of worship, and after having, as they thought, offered and collected all their strength, blasphemously exclaimed: "I am Christ." From these pools of sensuality and Satanic pride arose the malaria of a vast literature, of which, however, fortunately, nothing more than a few names has come down to us. § 119. Cultus and Organization. In cultus, the Gnostic docetism and hyper-spiritualism led consistently to naked intellectual simplicity; sometimes to the rejection of all sacraments and outward means of grace; if not even, as in the Prodicians, to blasphemous self-exaltation above all that is called God and worshiped.822 But with this came also the opposite extreme of a symbolic and mystic pomp, especially in the sect of the Marcosians. These Marcosians held to a two-fold baptism, that applied to the human Jesus, the Messiah of the psychical, and that administered to the heavenly Christ, the Messiah of the spiritual; they decorated the baptistery like a banquet-hall; and they first introduced extreme unction. As early as the second century the Basilideans celebrated the feast of Epiphany. The Simonians and Carpocratians used images of Christ and of their religious heroes in their worship. The Valentinians and Ophites sang in hymns the deep longing of Achamoth for redemption from the bonds of Matter. Bardesanes is known as the first Syrian hymn-writer. Many Gnostics, following their patriarch, Simon, gave themselves to magic, and introduced their arts into their worship; as the Marcosians did in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

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

  In the present divided state of Christendom there are different kinds of orthodoxy and heresy. Orthodoxy is conformity to a recognized creed or standard of public doctrine; heresy is a wilful departure from it. The Greek church rejects the Roman dogmas of the papacy, of the double procession of the Holy Ghost, the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, and the infallibility of the Pope, as heretical, because contrary to the teaching of the first seven oecumenical councils. The Roman church anathematized, in the Council of Trent, all the distinctive doctrines of the Protestant Reformation. Evangelical Protestants on the other hand regard the unscriptural traditions of the Greek and Roman churches as heretical. Among Protestant churches again there are minor doctrinal differences, which are held with various degrees of exclusiveness or liberality according to the degree of departure from the Roman Catholic church. Luther, for instance, would not tolerate Zwingli’s view on the Lord’s Supper, while Zwingli was willing to fraternize with him notwithstanding this difference. The Lutheran Formula of Concord, and the Calvinistic Synod of Dort rejected and condemned doctrines which are now held with impunity in orthodox evangelical churches. The danger of orthodoxy lies in the direction of exclusive and uncharitable bigotry, which contracts the truth; the danger of liberalism lies in the direction of laxity and indifferentism, which obliterates the eternal distinction between truth and error. The apostles, guided by more than human wisdom, and endowed with more than ecclesiastical authority, judged severely of every essential departure from the revealed truth of salvation. Paul pronounced the anathema on the Judaizing teachers, who made circumcision a term of true church membership (Gal. 1:8), and calls them sarcastically "dogs" of the "concision" (Phil. 3:2, blevpete tou;" kuvna" ... th'" katatomh'"). He warned the elders of Ephesus against "grievous wolves" (luvkoi barei'") who would after his departure enter among them (Acts 20:29); and he characterizes the speculations of the rising gnosis falsely so called (yeudwvnumo" gnw'si") as "doctrines of demons" (didaskalivai daimonivwn, 1 Tim. 4:1; Comp. 6:3–20; 2 Tim. 3:1 sqq.; 4:3 sqq.). John warns with equal earnestness and severity against all false teachers who deny the fact of the incarnation, and calls them antichrists (1 John 4:3; 2 John 7); and the second Epistle of Peter and the Epistle of Jude describe the heretics in the darkest colors.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  The need or desire to understand our place in the universe most often led to reading – everything from Paramahansa Yogananda to Carlos Castaneda, Shirley MacLaine and Black Elk, to the teachings of Buddha and the channelled work of Emanuel, and back again. At times, in a Wednesday night meeting, someone would bring up an idea they’d been reading about and contemplating and ask Limori for Azeen’s explanation of the topic. The answer would invariably come back, usually laced with gentle humour, agreeing with some of what the referenced author said, but also, ever-so-subtly, undermining the author’s authority and the veracity of their message, and implying once again that it was only Limori herself who knew The Truth. Later, when we were more enthralled and more closely tied to her, she might say, “Azeen says that Yogananda’s message has been twisted somewhat and that what he really meant was . . .“ Or she would even tune into the teacher (Jesus, Buddha, etc.) himself and bring his message directly to us. The underlying implication was that if you want the real truth, you cannot trust even the books that a spiritual teacher has written; you must hear The Truth from the source itself, and Limori was the one person who could connect with these wise masters and give us the message they intended. With “us” you got The Truth; with “them” you could never be sure. Additionally, to create a stronger feeling in the group of “us versus them,” those among us who had partners or spouses who did not attend the group would very quickly find that person thrown into a light of suspicion. The messages would begin subtly and at once build up the group member’s perceived standing in God’s eyes, while at the same time implying (or stating) that the non-attending partner was deficient in some way. For example, a group member might share a dream with Limori that had seemed spiritually significant. Limori would respond by affirming what the member thought and then, with a wink and a smile, say something like, “But your husband wouldn’t understand such an advanced concept, would he?” Her tone would be kind and jovial, but the message would be crystal clear. The group member was advancing rapidly toward spiritual enlightenment, but unfortunately her spouse was not quite as special and not able to keep up. The group member would eventually be told they were “being held back spiritually” by their spouse. And when someone’s spouse came into question by Limori, and she began to really lean on the group member to consider leaving the marriage, she always had a trump card to play: “Do you choose God or do you choose your spouse?” What a conundrum for the serious spiritual student! It was the very choice Michael would be required to make several years down the road, both in his marriage and later in his relationship with me.

• From Mystical Tradition: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2008)

  B. Patristic authors mocked the elaborate cosmic schemata in Gnostic myths—so much in contrast to the plain stories of the Gospels. C. Patristic writers devised a strategy of response that revealed their understanding of the challenge posed: Something fundamental was at stake. 1. In response to the proliferation of revelational texts, they affirmed a closed canon of Scripture. 2. In response to what they regarded as rampant speculation, they established a rule of faith, or creed. 3. In response to competing teachers purveying secret revelations, they argued for the public apostolic succession of the bishops as the guarantors of faithful teaching. III. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi library extended and complicated our understanding of Gnosticism, as insider literature often does. A. The codices, containing Coptic translations of compositions originally written in Greek, reveal a wide variety of writings, none of them especially philosophical. 1. The writings include tractates that record conversations with otherworldly revealers; “Gospels” of various sorts, but none of them in narrative form; letters and sermons that contain esoteric interpretations of the readers’ experience; writings from Greco-Roman religion (the Hermetica); ascetical instruction (Sentences of Sextus); and even a snippet of Plato’s Republic. 2. The single unifying element is the theme of revelation: Truths not available through empirical observation are disclosed. B. At least two distinct ideological tendencies show themselves within these varied compositions. 1. Some of the writings are Sethian in character, so-called because of the Old Testament figure Seth, who plays the role of revealer and hero. These writings tend to be strongly dualistic (matter is bad; only spirit is good) and show hostility to the creator God of Judaism; they usually contain little trace of Christianity. 2. Some are Valentinian, named for the mid-2nd-century teacher Valentinus; these usually have explicitly Christian elements. ©2008 The Teaching Company. 59

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

  The Pagan historians of Rome have branded and immortalized the vices and crimes of the Caesars: the misanthropy, cruelty, and voluptuousness of Tiberius; the ferocious madness of Caius Caligula, who had men tortured, beheaded, or sawed in pieces for his amusement, who seriously meditated the butchery of the whole senate, raised his horse to the dignity of consul and priest, and crawled under the bed in a storm; the bottomless vileness of Nero, "the inventor of crime," who poisoned or murdered his preceptors Burrhus and Seneca, his half-brother and brother-in-law Britannicus, his mother Agrippina, his wife Octavia, his mistress Poppaea, who in sheer wantonness set fire to Rome, and then burnt innocent Christians for it as torches in his gardens, figuring himself as charioteer in the infernal spectacle; the swinish gluttony of Vitellins, who consumed millions of money in mere eating; the refined wickedness of Domitian, who, more a cat than a tiger, amused himself most with the torments of the dying and with catching flies; the shameless revelry of Commodus with his hundreds of concubines, and ferocious passion for butchering men and beasts on the arena; the mad villainy of Heliogabalus, who raised the lowest men to the highest dignities, dressed himself in women’s clothes, married a dissolute boy like himself, in short, inverted all the laws of nature and of decency, until at last he was butchered with his mother by the soldiers, and thrown into the muddy Tiber. And to fill the measure of impiety and wickedness, such imperial monsters were received, after their death, by a formal decree of the Senate, into the number of divinities and their abandoned memory was celebrated by festivals, temples, and colleges of priests! The emperor, in the language of Gibbon, was at once "a priest, an atheist, and a god." Some added to it the dignity of amateur actor and gladiator on the stage. Domitian, even in his lifetime, caused himself to be called "Dominus et Deus noster," and whole herds of animals to be sacrificed to his gold and silver statues. It is impossible to imagine a greater public and official mockery of all religion. The wives and mistresses of the emperors were not much better. They revelled in luxury and vice, swept through the streets in chariots drawn by silver-shod mules, wasted fortunes on a single dress, delighted in wicked intrigues, aided their husbands in dark crimes and shared at last in their tragic fate, Messalina the wife of Claudius, was murdered by the order of her husband in the midst of her nuptial orgies with one of her favorites; and the younger Agrippina, the mother of Nero, after poisoning her husband, was murdered by her own son, who was equally cruel to his wives, kicking one of them to death when she was in a state of pregnancy. These female monsters were likewise deified, and elevated to the rank of Juno or Venus.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Some of them were really fantastic, no whore has ever told the truth about who comes to her, I am sure of that, they would chop off her head before they would dare to hear it. But it is happening, it is happening all the time.” He leaned up, hugging his knees, staring at the sea. “Then I would take their money; if they made difficulties I could scare them because I was mineur. Anyway, it was very easy to scare them. Most of those people are cowards.” Then he said, in a low voice, “I never thought that I would be happy to have a man touch me and hold me. I never thought that I would be able, truly, to make love with a man. Or with anyone.” “Why,” Eric asked at last, “didn’t you use women instead of men, as you despised the men so much?” Yves was silent. Then, “I don’t know. D’abord, I took what there was—or allowed what there was to take me,” and he looked at Eric and grinned. He sipped his whiskey and stood up. “It is simpler with men, it is usually shorter, the money is easier. Women are much more cunning than men, especially those women who would go after a boy like me, and even more unattractive, really.” He laughed. “It is much harder work, and it is not so sure.” His face dropped again into its incongruous, austere melancholy. “You do not meet many women in the places I have been; you do not meet many human persons at all. They are all dead. Dead.” He stopped, his lips pursed, his eyes glittering in the light that fell though the window. “There were many whores in my mother’s place, but—well, yes, there have been a few women, but I couldn’t stand them, either.” He moved to the window and stood there with his back to Eric. “I do not like l’elégance des femmes. Every time I see a woman wearing her fur coats and her jewels and her gowns, I want to tear all that off her and drag her someplace, to a pissoir, and make her smell the smell of many men, the piss of many men, and make her know that that is what she is for, she is no better than that, she does not fool me with all those shining rags, which, anyway, she only got by blackmailing some stupid man.” Eric laughed, but he was frightened. “Comme tu es feroce!” He watched Yves turn from the window and slowly pace the room—long and lean, like a stalking cat, and in the heavy shadows. And he saw that Yves’ body was changing, was losing the adolescent, poverty-stricken harshness. He was becoming a man.

• From Mystical Tradition: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2008)

  2. There are emphases distinctive to each tradition or found in two traditions and not in the third: dance and song in Judaism and Islam, Eucharistic piety among Christians. 3. Certain lines of dependence or mutual influence can be discerned: recollection and the repetition of the divine name and the rosary. C. We can also find common structural elements in each tradition. 1. Mysticism thrives within a community that transmits tradition, enables modeling and imitation, and provides common rituals. 2. Mysticism exists in creative tension with exoteric traditions— needing them for definition, while seeking their deepest meaning. 3. Mysticism in the West involves remarkably close interpretation of sacred texts. D. The most important common element is the construal of reality that makes sense of mystical experience. 1. The empirical world is not self-sufficient or self-explanatory but points to a transcendent world of spirit accessible through knowledge and love. 2. This world is not enough; the spiritual realm is more real, more true, and more valuable than the transient realm of ordinary existence. 3. The sole significant human ambition is to reach that which is most real, most true, most good through sanctification. III. The question that most demands consideration concerns the truth claims of mystics. A. Despisers regard mysticism as, at best, self-deception or delusion and, at worst, a form of charlatanism. 1. It is impossible to deny that some manifestations of mysticism and some forms of neurosis have coincided. 2. It is equally impossible to deny that some “mystics” have been deceivers of others. B. Advocates regard mystics as scouts who report on realities that are real but camouflaged by everyday distractions. 1. Some forms of psychic distress, such as the migraines that Hildegard of Bingen may have suffered, may open up insight into reality. At the same time, we should note that many of the mystics we have studied were robustly healthy by any metric. 142 ©2008 The Teaching Company.

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

  They also disliked Calvin as a foreigner, who was not even naturalized before 1559. In the pride and prejudice of nativism, they denounced the refugees, who had sacrificed home and fortune to religion, as a set of adventurers, soldiers of fortune, bankrupts, and spies of the Reformer. "These dogs of Frenchmen," they said, "are the cause that we are slaves, and must bow before Calvin and confess our sins. Let the preachers and their gang go to the —." They deprived the refugees of the right to carry arms, and opposed their admission to the rights of citizenship, as there was danger that they might outnumber and outvote the native citizens. Calvin secured, in 1559, through a majority of the Council, at one time, the admission of three hundred of these refugees, mostly Frenchmen. The Patriots disliked also the protectorate of Bern, although Bern never favored the strict theology and discipline of Calvin. 2. The Libertines732 or Spirituels, as they called themselves, were far worse than the Patriots. They formed the opposite extreme to the severe discipline of Calvin. He declares that they were the most pernicious of all the sects that appeared since the time of the ancient Gnostics and Manichaeans, and that they answer the prophetic description in the Second Epistle of Peter and the Epistle of Jude. He traces their immediate origin to Coppin of Yssel and Quintin of Hennegau, in the Netherlands, and to an ex-priest, Pocquet or Pocques, who spent some time in Geneva, and wanted to get a certificate from Calvin; but Calvin saw through the man and refused it. They revived the antinomian doctrines of the mediaeval sect of the "Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit," a branch of the Beghards, who had their headquarters at Cologne and the Lower Rhine, and emancipated themselves not only from the Church, but also from the laws of morality.733 The Libertines described by Calvin were antinomian pantheists. They confounded the boundaries of truth and error, of right and wrong. Under the pretext of the freedom of the spirit, they advocated the unbridled license of the flesh. Their spiritualism ended in carnal materialism. They taught that there is but one spirit, the Spirit of God, who lives in all creatures, which are nothing without him. "What I or you do," said Quintin, "is done by God, and what God does, we do; for he is in us." Sin is a mere negation or privation, yea, an idle illusion which disappears as soon as it is known and disregarded. Salvation consists in the deliverance from the phantom of sin. There is no Satan, and no angels, good or bad. They denied the truth of the gospel history. The crucifixion and resurrection of Christ have only a symbolical meaning to show us that sin does not exist for us.

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

  During the trial of Servetus the political and religious Libertines combined in an organized effort for the overthrow of Calvin at Geneva, but were finally defeated by a failure of an attempted rebellion in May, 1555. § 109. The Leaders of the Libertines and their punishment: — Gruet, Perrin, Ameaux, Vandel, Berthelier. We shall now give sketches of the chief Patriots and Libertines, and their quarrels with Calvin and his system of discipline. The heretical opponents—Bolsec, Castellio, Servetus—will be considered in a separate chapter on the Doctrinal Controversies. 1. Jacques Gruet was the first victim of Calvin’s discipline who suffered death for sedition and blasphemy. His case is the most famous next to that of Servetus. Gruet739 was a Libertine of the worst type, both politically and religiously, and would have been condemned to death in any other country at that time. He was a Patriot descended from an old and respectable family, and formerly a canon. He lay under suspicion of having attempted to poison Viret in 1535. He wrote verses against Calvin and the refugees which (as Audin says) were "more malignant than poetic." He was a regular frequenter of taverns, and opposed to any rules in Church and State which interfered with personal liberty. When in church, he looked boldly and defiantly into the face of the preacher. He first adopted the Bernese fashion of wearing breeches with plaits at the knees, and openly defied the discipline of the Consistory which forbade it. Calvin called him a scurvy fellow, and gives an unfavorable account of his moral and religious character, which the facts fully justified. On the 27th of June, 1547, a few days after the wife of Perrin had defied the Consistory,740 the following libel, written in the Savoyard patois, was attached to Calvin’s pulpit in St. Peter’s Church: — "Gross hypocrite (Gros panfar), thou and thy companions will gain little by your pains. If you do not save yourselves by flight, nobody shall prevent your overthrow, and you will curse the hour when you left your monkery. Warning has been already given that the devil and his renegade priests were come hither to ruin every thing. But after people have suffered long they avenge themselves. Take care that you are not served like Mons. Verle of Fribourg.741 We will not have so many masters. Mark well what I say."742 The Council arrested Jacques Gruet, who had been heard uttering threats against Calvin a few days previously, and had written obscene and impious verses and letters. In his house were found a copy of Calvin’s work against the Libertines with a marginal note, Toutes folies, and several papers and letters filled with abuse of Calvin as a haughty, ambitious, and obstinate hypocrite who wished to be adored, and to rob the pope of his honor. There were also found two Latin pages in Gruet’s handwriting, in which the Scriptures were ridiculed, Christ blasphemed, and the immortality of the soul called a dream and a fable.

• From Another Country (1962)

  What in the world was she doing here, and why was she needling this absurd little woman? The music changed, becoming louder and swifter and more raucous; and all their attention returned, with relief, to the dance floor. Ida and Ellis had begun a new dance; or, rather, Ida had begun a new cruelty. Ida was suddenly dancing as she had probably not danced since her adolescence, and Ellis was attempting to match her—he could certainly not be said to be leading her now, either. He tried, of course, his square figure swooping and breaking, and his little boy’s face trying hard to seem abandoned. And the harder he tried—the fool! Cass thought—the more she eluded him, the more savagely she shamed him. He was not on those terms with his body, or with hers, or anyone’s body. He moved his buttocks by will, with no faintest memory of love, no hint of grace; his thighs were merely those of a climber, his feet might have been treading grapes. He did not know what to do with his arms, which stuck out at angles to his body as though they were sectioned and controlled by strings, and also as though they had no communion with his hands—hands which had grasped and taken but never caressed. Was Ida being revenged? or was she giving him warning? Ellis’ forehead turned slick with sweat, his short, curly hair seemed to darken, Cass almost heard his breathing. Ida circled around him, in her orange dress, her legs flashing like knives, and her hips cruelly grinding. From time to time she extended to him, his fingers touched, her lean, brown, fiery hand. Others on the floor made way for them—for her: it must have seemed to Ellis that the music would never end. But the juke box fell silent, at last, and the colored lights stopped whirling, for the band was coming on again. Ida and Ellis returned to the table. The lights began to dim. Cass stood up. “Ida,” she said, “I promised to have one drink, and I have, and now I must go. I really must. Richard will kill me if I stay out any longer.” Her voice unaccountably shook, and she felt herself blushing as she said this. At the same time, she realized that Ida was in an even more dangerous mood now than she had been before her dance. “Oh, call him up,” Ida said. “Even the most faithful of wives deserves a night out.” Cass, very nearly, in her fear and despair, sank slowly into her seat again; but Ellis, mopping his brow, and gleaming, was more cheerful than ever. “I don’t think that’s necessarily so,” he said—and wrung from the table the obligatory laugh—“and, anyway, Mrs.