Grief

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 Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  First, he lived in a day when the Church had been under attack and would be under attack again. Its greatest danger was from the possible evil living and rejection of the faith by its members. A church in such circumstances could not afford to carry members who were a bad advertisement for the Christian faith. Its members must be loyal or nothing. That is still true. The Anglican pacifist priest Dick Sheppard spent much of his life preaching in the open air to people who were either hostile or indifferent to the Church. From their questions and their arguments and their criticisms, he said that he had learned that ‘the greatest handicap the Church has is the unsatisfactory lives of professing Christians’. Christians who lead such unsatisfactory lives undermine the very foundations of the Church. Second, the writer to the Hebrews was sure that sin had become doubly serious because of the new knowledge of God and of God’s will which Jesus had brought. One of the early theologians wrote a kind of catechism. He ended by asking what happens if people disregard the offer of Jesus Christ. His answer was that condemnation must necessarily follow, ‘and so much the more because you have read this book’. The greater the knowledge, the greater the sin. The conviction of the writer to the Hebrews was that, if under the old law rejection of the faith was a terrible thing, it had become doubly terrible now that Christ had come. He gives us three definitions of sin. (1) Sin is to trample Christ underfoot. It is not mere rebelliousness against law; it is the wounding of love. It is possible to stand almost any physical attack; the thing that brings submission is a broken heart. It is told that, in the days of the Nazi terror, there was a man in Germany who was arrested, tried, tortured and put into a concentration camp. He faced it all with gallantry and emerged upright and unbroken. Then, by accident, he discovered who it was who had produced the information against him – it was his own son. The discovery broke him, and he died. Attack by an enemy he could bear; attack by one whom he loved killed him. When Caesar was about to be murdered, he faced his assassins with almost disdainful courage. But when he saw the hand of his friend Brutus raised to strike, he wrapped his head in his mantle and died. Once Christ had come, the awfulness of sin lay not in its breaking of the law but in its trampling of the love of Christ underfoot.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  He shaded his face with his long, thin hand, so that she could not see his expression, yet it seemed to her that he knew quite well why she had come to him in that study. Then she told him about Martin, told him all that had happened, omitting no detail, sparing him nothing. She openly mourned the friend who had failed her, and herself she mourned for failing the lover—and Sir Philip listened in absolute silence. After she had spoken for quite a long time, she at length found the courage to ask her question: ‘Is there anything strange about me, Father, that I should have felt as I did about Martin?’ It had come. It fell on his heart like a blow. The hand that was shading his pale face trembled, for he felt a great trembling take hold of his spirit. His spirit shrank back and cowered in his body, so that it dared not look out on Stephen. She was waiting, and now she was asking again: ‘Father, is there anything strange about me? I remember when I was a little child—I was never quite like all the other children—’ Her voice sounded apologetic, uncertain, and he knew that the tears were not far from her eyes, knew that if he looked now he would see her lips shaking, and the tears making ugly red stains on her eyelids. His loins ached with pity for this fruit of his loins—an insufferable aching, an intolerable pity. He was frightened, a coward because of his pity, as he had been once long ago with her mother. Merciful God! How could a man answer? What could he say, and that man a father? He sat there inwardly grovelling before her: ‘Oh, Stephen, my child, my little, little Stephen.’ For now in his pity she seemed to him little, little and utterly helpless again—he remembered her hands as the hands of a baby, very small, very pink, with minute perfect nails—he had played with her hands, exclaiming about them, astonished because of their neat perfection: ‘Oh, Stephen, my little, little Stephen.’ He wanted to cry out against God for this thing; he wanted to cry out: ‘You have maimed my Stephen! What had I done or my father before me, or my father’s father, or his father’s father? Unto the third and fourth generations. . . .’ And Stephen was waiting for his answer. Then Sir Philip set the lips of his spirit to the cup, and his spirit must drink the gall of deception: ‘I will not tell her, You cannot ask it—there are some things that even God should not ask.’

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I was going to backtrack, to ask him what could be possible. Could I take him with me? Could he ever exist in a desert? But he put his hands over his face and began moaning. “Theo,” I said. He wouldn’t answer me and seemed to be in a trance. It was like he’d become a Siren. As Homer said, the Sirens had gorgeous, melodic voices, but they could also howl with pain and agony. It was not pain as I had romanticized it: him beautifully bereft with aching for me. It was not the Sirens as we humans imagined them, armed with divine power. This was vulnerability, a bit of madness even, and what it revealed was that he truly loved me, and that love could be grotesque. Dominic woke up in the other room and began barking along with Theo’s moaning. “Please calm down,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I told him that maybe I could work something out. Maybe I could stay after all. I hadn’t known how much he cared. But he said it was too late. “You lied to me,” he said. “I was going to keep coming to see you on land. I had even wanted to ask you to come join me under the water, seriously. And here you have been set to abandon me all along.” I didn’t know exactly what “under the water” meant. Was he more delusional than I was? Did he know I couldn’t live under there? “Theo, no, it isn’t like that. I really am in love with you. I want to stay with you forever.” “That you would think of leaving me,” he said. “That you would let me grow so close to you and never tell me it was finite. It breaks my heart. It’s humiliating too.” “I was afraid that if I told you there was an end date you would see me differently. I liked the way you saw me. I didn’t want anything to change. And then it was too late, you knew me the way you knew me. I thought of finding a way to stay in Venice, but I was scared that you would reject me,” I said. “Can you help load me back in the wagon?” he said. “I need to go back to the ocean.” “Wait, can’t you just stay and we will talk it through?” “Just help me. Take me back, please. I’m asking you, help me back to the water.” “I didn’t know you felt that way,” I said. “Didn’t know what? That I loved you? When you said ‘eternal love’ I thought you meant that you wouldn’t leave me ever.”

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

  It was at first confined to a difference of opinion on the eucharistic presence, which the Marburg Conference of 1529 could not remove, although Luther and Zwingli agreed in fourteen and a half out of fifteen articles of faith. Luther refused any compromise. Other differences gradually developed themselves, on the ubiquity of Christ’s body, predestination, and baptismal regeneration, which tended to widen and perpetuate the split. The union of the two Confessions in Prussia and other German states, since 1817, has not really healed it, but added a third Church, the United Evangelical, to the two older Confessions which, still continue separate in other countries. The controversies among the Protestants in the sixteenth century roused all the religious and political passions and cast a gloom over the bright picture of the Reformation. Melanchthon declared that with tears as abundant as the waters of the river Elbe he could not express his grief over the distractions of Christendom and the "fury of theologians." Calvin also, when invited, with Melanchthon, Bullinger and Buzer, in 1552, by Archbishop Cranmer to Lambeth Palace for the purpose of framing a concensus-creed of the Reformed churches, was willing to cross ten seas for the cause of Christian union.40 But the noble scheme was frustrated by the stormy times, and still remains a pium desiderium. Much as we must deplore and condemn sectarian strife and bitterness, it would be as unjust to charge them on Protestantism, as to charge upon Catholicism the violent passions of the trinitarian, christological and other controversies of the Nicene age, or the fierce animosity between the Greek and Latin Churches, or the envy and jealousy of the monastic orders of the Middle Ages, or the unholy rivalries between Jansenists and Jesuits, Gallicans and Ultramontanists in modern Romanism. The religious passions grow out of the selfishness of depraved human nature in spite of Christianity, whether Greek, Roman, or Protestant., and may arise in any denomination or in any congregation. Paul had to rebuke the party spirit in the church at Corinth. The rancor of theological schools and parties under one and the same government is as great and often greater than among separate rival denominations. Providence overrules these human weaknesses for the clearer development of doctrine and discipline, and thus brings good out of evil. The tendency of Protestantism towards individualism did not stop with the three Reformation Churches, but produced other divisions wherever it was left free to formulate and organize the differences of theological parties and schools. This was the case in England, in consequence of what may be called a second Reformation, which agitated that country during the seventeenth century, while Germany was passing through the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War.

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

  His lecture-room was crowded to overflowing, and he heard occasionally as many as eleven languages at his frugal but hospitable table. He received calls to Tübingen, Nürnberg, and Heidelberg, and was also invited to Denmark, France, and England; but he preferred remaining in Wittenberg till his death. At the urgent request of Luther, who wished to hold him fast, and to promote his health and comfort, he married (having no vow of celibacy to prevent him) as early as August, 1520, Catharina Krapp, the worthy daughter of the burgomaster of Wittenberg, who faithfully shared with him the joys and trials of domestic life. He had from her four children, and was often seen rocking the cradle with one hand, while holding a book in the other. He used to repeat the Apostles’ Creed in his family three times a day. He esteemed his wife higher than himself. She died in 1557 while he was on a journey to the colloquy at Worms: when he heard the sad news at Heidelberg, he looked up to heaven, and exclaimed, "Farewell! I shall soon follow thee." Next to the "Lutherhaus" with the "Luthermuseum," the most interesting dwelling in the quaint old town of Wittenberg on the banks of the Elbe is the house of Melanchthon in the Collegienstrasse. It is a three-story building, and belongs to the Prussian government, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. having bought it from its former owner. Melanchthon’s study is on the first story; there he died. Behind the house is a little garden which was connected with Luther’s garden. Here, under the shade of the tree, the two Reformers may often have exchanged views on the stirring events of the times, and encouraged each other in the great conflict. The house bears in German the inscription on the outer wall: — "Here lived, taught, and died Philipp Melanchthon." § 41. Luther and Melanchthon. P. Schaff: Luther und Melanchthon, In his "Der Deutsche Kirchenfreund," Mercersburg, Pa., vol. III. (1850), pp. 58–64. E. L. Henke: Das Verhältniss Luthers und Melanchthons zu einander. Festrede am 19 April, 1860. Marburg (28 pages). Compare also Döllinger: Die Reformation, vol. i. 349 sqq. "Wo sich das strenge mit dem Zarten, Wo Starkes sich und Mildes paarten, Da giebt es einen guten Klang." (Schiller.) In great creative epochs of the Church, God associates congenial leaders for mutual help and comfort. In the Reformation of the sixteenth century, we find Luther and Melanchthon in Germany, Zwingli and Oecolampadius, Farel and Viret, Calvin and Beza in Switzerland, Craniner, Latimer, and Ridley in England, Knox and Melville in Scotland, working together with different gifts, but in the same spirit and for the same end. The Methodist revival of the eighteenth century was carried on by the co-operation of the two Wesleys and Whitefield; and the Anglo-Catholic movement of the nineteenth, by the association of Pusey, Newman, and Keble.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  This is what it looks like, Luke is saying, when Jesus is enthroned as Lord of the world, and his followers go out to put his royal rule into effect, ending up in Rome announcing God’s kingdom and Jesus as Lord “with all boldness, and with no one stopping them” (28:31). In Luke, as in John, the broader picture is filled in with the little telltale touches that show that the larger cosmic kingdom achievement is to be applied vividly to every single person. Over against those who have claimed, absurdly of course, that Luke had no real atonement theology (mainly on the grounds that he does not reproduce Mark 10:45!), we discover Luke saying again and again that Jesus was being accused of crimes of which he was innocent but people all around him were guilty: They began to accuse him. “We found this fellow,” they said, “deceiving our nation! He was forbidding people to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he is the Messiah—a king!” (23:2) [Pilate] released the man they asked for, the one who’d been thrown into prison because of rebellion and murder, and gave Jesus over to their demands. (23:25) “Daughters of Jerusalem,” said Jesus, “don’t cry for me. Cry for yourselves instead! Cry for your children! Listen: the time is coming when you will say, ‘A blessing on the barren! A blessing on wombs that never bore children, and breasts that never nursed them!’ At that time people will start to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us’! Yes: if this is what they do with the green tree, what will happen to the dry one?” (23:28–31) Jesus, in other words, is the “green” tree, the tree that is not ready for burning. He is innocent. But all around him, growing up in the streets and lanes of Jerusalem, are the young firebrands who will be only too ready for the fire when the time comes. The innocence of Jesus continues to be a major motif throughout Luke’s account of the crucifixion: One of the bad characters who was hanging there began to insult him. “Aren’t you the Messiah?” he said. “Rescue yourself—and us, too!” But the other one told him off. “Don’t you fear God?” he said. “You’re sharing the same fate that he is! In our case it’s fair enough; we’re getting exactly what we asked for. But this fellow hasn’t done anything out of order.” (23:39–41) The centurion saw what happened, and praised God. “This fellow,” he said, “really was in the right.” (23:47) The four canonical gospels thus demand to be read with their two main themes, kingdom and cross, fully and thoroughly integrated in a way that the great majority of the Western church has simply not noticed. And there is more. Temple, Kingdom, and Cross One particular symbol stood high above all others in first-century Palestinian Judaism. Indeed, it stood proudly upon a hill, where it could not be hidden.

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

  The order of degradation was carried out by six bishops, who disrobed the condemned man of his vestments and destroyed his tonsure. They then put on his head a cap covered over with pictures of the devil and inscribed with the word, heresiarch, and committed his soul to the devil. With upturned eyes, Huss exclaimed, "and I commit myself to the most gracious Lord Jesus." The old motto that the Church does not want blood—ecclesia non sitit sanguinem — was in appearance observed, but the authorities knew perfectly well what was to be the last scene when they turned Huss over to Sigismund. "Go, take him and do to him as a heretic" were the words with which the king remanded the prisoner to the charge of Louis, the Count Palatine. A guard of a thousand armed men was at hand. The streets were thronged with people. As Huss passed on, he saw the flames on the public square which were consuming his books. For fear of the bridge’s breaking down, the greater part of the crowd was not allowed to cross over to the place of execution, called the Devil’s Place. Huss’ step had been firm, but now, with tears in his eyes, he knelt down and prayed. The paper cap falling from his head, the crowd shouted that it should be put on, wrong side front. It was midday. The prisoner’s hands were fastened behind his back, and big neck bound to the stake by a chain. On the same spot sometime before, so the chronicler notes, a cardinal’s worn-out mule had been buried. The straw and wood were heaped up around Huss’ body to the chin, and rosin sprinkled upon them. The offer of life was renewed if he would recant. He refused and said, "I shall die with joy to-day in the faith of the gospel which I have preached." When Richental, who was standing by, suggested a confessor, he replied, "There is no need of one. I have no mortal sin." At the call of bystanders, they turned his face away from the East, and as the flames arose, he sang twice, Christ, thou Son of the living God, have mercy upon me. The wind blew the fire into the martyr’s face, and his voice was hushed. He died, praying and singing. To remove, if possible, all chance of preserving relics from the scene, Huss’ clothes and shoes were thrown into the merciless flames. The ashes were gathered up and cast into the Rhine. While this scene was being enacted, the council was going on with the transaction of business as if the burning without the gates were only a common event. Three weeks later, it announced that it had done nothing more pleasing to God than to punish the Bohemian heretic. For this act it has been chiefly remembered by after generations.

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

  It was kept up by natural increase, by war, and by the slave-trade which was carried on in Europe more or less till the fifteenth century, and in America till the eighteenth. Not a few freemen sold themselves into slavery for debt, or from poverty. The slaves were completely under the power of their masters, and had no claim beyond the satisfaction of their physical wants. They could not bear witness in courts of justice. They could be bought and sold with their children like other property. The marriage tie was disregarded, and marriages between freemen and slaves were null and void. In the course of time slavery was moderated into serfdom, which was attached to the soil. Small farmers often preferred that condition to freedom, as it secured them the protection of a powerful nobleman against robbers and invaders. The condition of the serfs, however, during the middle ages was little better than that of slaves, and gave rise to occasional outbursts in the Peasant Wars, which occurred mostly in connection with the free preaching of the Gospel (as by Wiclif and the Lollards in England, and by Luther in Germany), but which were suppressed by force, and in their immediate effects increased the burdens of the dependent classes. The same struggle between capital and labor is still going on in different forms. The mediaeval church inherited the patristic views of slavery. She regarded it as a necessary evil, as a legal right based on moral wrong, as a consequence of sin and a just punishment for it. She put it in the same category with war, violence, pestilence, famine, and other evils. St. Augustin, the greatest theological authority of the Latin church, treats slavery as disturbance of the normal condition and relation. God did not, he says, establish the dominion of man over man, but only over the brute. He derives the word servus, as usual, from servare (to save the life of captives of war doomed to death), but cannot find it in the Bible till the time of the righteous Noah, who gave it as a punishment to his guilty son Ham; whence it follows that the word came "from sin, not from nature." He also holds that the institution will finally be abolished when all iniquity shall disappear, and God shall be all in all.336 The church exerted her great moral power not so much towards the abolition of slavery as the amelioration and removal of the evils connected with it. Many provincial Synods dealt with the subject, at least incidentally. The legal right of holding slaves was never called in question, and slaveholders were in good and regular standing. Even convents held slaves, though in glaring inconsistency with their professed principle of equality and brotherhood.

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

  Philip cherished this precious memorial of his father’s piety, and bequeathed it as an heirloom to his son.329 From the beginning of his retreat, and especially in the second year, Charles fulfilled his religious duties with scrupulous conscientiousness, as far as his health would permit. He attended mass in the chapel, said his prayers, and listened to sermons and the reading of selections from the Fathers (Jerome, Augustin, Bernard), the Psalms, and the Epistles of Paul. He favored strict discipline among the friars, and gave orders that any woman who dared to approach within two bow-shots of the gate should receive a hundred stripes. He enjoyed the visits of Francisco Borgia, Duke of Gandia, who had exchanged a brilliant position for membership in the Society of the Jesuits, and confirmed him in his conviction that he had acted wisely in relinquishing the world. He wished to be prayed for only by his baptismal name, being no longer emperor or king. Every Thursday was for him a feast of Corpus Christi. He repeatedly celebrated the exequies of his parents, his wife, and a departed sister. Yea, according to credible contemporary testimony, he celebrated, in the presentiment of approaching death, his own funeral, around a huge catafalque erected in the dark chapel. Bearing a lighted taper, he mingled with his household and the monks in chanting the prayers for the departed, on the lonely passage to the invisible world, and concluded the doleful ceremony by handing the taper to the priest, in token of surrendering his spirit to Him who gave it. According to later accounts, the Emperor was laid alive in his coffin, and carried in solemn procession to the altar.330 This relish for funeral celebrations reveals a morbid trait in his piety. It reminds one of the insane devotion of his mother to the dead body of her husband, which she carried with her wherever she went. His Intolerance. We need not wonder that his bigotry increased toward the end of life. He was not philosopher enough to learn a lesson of toleration (as Dr. Robertson imagines) from his inability to harmonize two timepieces. On the contrary, he regretted his limited forbearance towards Luther and the German Protestants, who had defeated his plans five years before. They were now more hateful to him than ever. To his amazement, the same heretical opinions broke out in Valladolid and Sevilla, at the very court and around the throne of Spain. Augustin Cazalla,331 who had accompanied him as chaplain in the Smalkaldian war, and had preached before him at Yuste, professed Lutheran sentiments. Charles felt that

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The place seemed full of an articulate silence that leapt out shouting from every corner—a jibing, grimacing, vindictive silence. She brushed it aside with a sweep of her hand, as though it were some sort of physical presence. But who was it who brushed that silence aside? Not Stephen Gordon . . . oh, no, surely not . . . Stephen Gordon was dead; she had died last night: ‘A l’heure de notre mort . . .’ Many people had spoken those prophetic words quite a short time ago—perhaps they had been thinking of Stephen Gordon. Yet now some one was slowly climbing the stairs, then pausing upon the landing to listen, then opening the door of Mary’s bedroom, then standing quite still and staring at Mary. It was some one whom David knew and loved well; he sprang forward with a sharp little bark of welcome. But Mary shrank back as though she had been struck—Mary pale and red-eyed from sleeplessness—or was it because of excessive weeping? When she spoke her voice sounded unfamiliar: ‘Where were you last night?’ ‘With Valérie Seymour. I thought you’d know somehow . . . It’s better to be frank . . . we both hate lies . . .’ Came that queer voice again: ‘Good God—and I’ve tried so hard not to believe it! Tell me you’re lying to me now; say it, Stephen!’ Stephen—then she wasn’t dead after all; or was she? But now Mary was clinging—clinging. ‘Stephen, I can’t believe this thing—Valérie! Is that why you always repulse me . . . why you never want to come near me these days? Stephen, answer me; are you her lover? Say something, for Christ’s sake! Don’t stand there dumb . . .’ A mist closing down, a thick black mist. Some one pushing the girl away, without speaking. Mary’s queer voice coming out of the gloom, muffled by the folds of that thick black mist, only a word here and there getting through: ‘All my life I’ve given . . . you’ve killed . . . I loved you . . . Cruel, oh, cruel! You’re unspeakably cruel . . .’ Then the sound of rough and pitiful sobbing. No, assuredly this was not Stephen Gordon who stood there unmoved by such pitiful sobbing. But what was the figure doing in the mist? It was moving about, distractedly, wildly. All the while it sobbed it was moving about: ‘I’m going . . .’ Going? But where could it go? Somewhere out of the mist, somewhere into the light? Who was it that had said . . . wait, what were the words? ‘To give light to them that sit in darkness . . .’ No one was moving about any more—there was only a dog, a dog called David.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I put my arms around his neck and cried into his fur. Then I ran up the stairs and Dominic, still loyal in spite of everything, followed me up. From upstairs I could see that Theo had made it only halfway to the ocean. I called to him, but he didn’t turn around. When he finally got to the tide, he didn’t climb up onto the rocks, but simply dragged himself into the sea, never once pausing or looking back. Pulling himself across the sand he looked so helpless and pathetic, but as he crawled into the ocean and disappeared, he suddenly seemed so in control of himself. I thought, He is the laws of nature, though I didn’t know what that meant. I ran back down the stairs and over the sand to the water’s edge—Dominic racing behind me. I sat down in the sand and waited. I waited there all night with no blanket, just me in my sundress. I huddled against the dog to keep warm. Once in a while I would call out Theo’s name, but he never came back. 46.By morning I was very sick: in the spirit, the mind, and the body. I couldn’t stay in Venice any longer. Clearly something had gone very wrong, and I was getting worse. Group therapy had only led me to a merman with severe abandonment issues. Fuck this whole situation. I had come here to get away from Jamie, in the hope that the distance would help me recover. Now he was pursuing me and I didn’t even want him anymore. Didn’t that mean my mission was accomplished? Hadn’t I won? It was time to return to Phoenix and claim my prize. I decided to call and tell him the good news. “It’s me,” I said. “I know.” He laughed. “How are you?” “I’m okay. I haven’t heard from you. I’ve been worried.” “I’m sorry. I needed some time to do some thinking.” “Oh yes?” “Yes.” “And what are your thoughts?” “Well, I was wondering first if you are still with—Megan. Or has that already burned out?” “Well, there’s been some complications with that situation, actually.” I knew he would fall out of love fast, but this had ended quicker than I thought. “Oh really?” I said. This was going to be good. “Yes, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this. But I didn’t want to text it to you. And when I wasn’t hearing back I figured I would talk to you in person when you returned.” This was it. He wanted me back. He was leaving Megan for me, he just needed to be sure I still wanted to be with him too before he ended things. Men are cowardly. But I could understand that and had sympathy for him. Five minutes before, I had been lovesick over Theo. The heart contains multitudes. We all need someone in our lives, because ultimately, humans are weak.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Then I saw his face. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth. His eyes were open, hazy, as though they were made of plastic. He looked like a grotesque stuffed-animal version of himself. The floor was covered in vomit and drool. “Oh no,” I said out loud. “Please, no.” He was motionless. I didn’t even have to touch him. I didn’t have to feel his flank or check for breath to know he was dead. The whole summer came flashing in front of me: each of the men and behind them sweet Dominic, waiting for me in the background the whole time. What had I done? I had poisoned him. I’d been dosing him heavier and heavier, because he seemed to be getting more resistant. “Please come back. Please,” I begged, kneeling beside him. His eye seemed to be looking at me, or through me into space. His ear was flapped up over his head and I adjusted it so it faced downward again. It felt cold when I touched it, and detached from anything living, like a piece of loose suede. I began to cry. I thought of how he didn’t like being stroked on his ear, but he always let me. The rest of his body was cold too, heavy like stone. I shook him a little. Where was he? How was his body here but he was just gone? Everything about him had been warmth, softness, the most gentle parts of life. But now he was the opposite: rigid and empty. “I never wanted you to suffer,” I said. “I only wanted you to be comfortable. I didn’t want you to be scared of Theo.” But a quiet voice inside me said, No, that isn’t the truth. The truth was I’d wanted him out of the way so I could wander the labyrinth of my fantasy life. I had been given pure love in the form of this dog and I had destroyed him. I sat there and waited. I waited as I had waited for Theo, because I didn’t know what else to do. And sitting on that floor, the truth was further revealed to me that I was not capable of love for anyone. I’d always imagined that there was a subjective reality. But there was nothing subjective about this. I was objectively selfish and cruel. Suddenly it occurred to me that there really were gods who could smite us. The gods were just nature itself. If you didn’t follow the gods, you blew it. I had gone against nature. I had done it all wrong.

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

  name by unworthy professors and under the sanction of an unholy alliance of politics and religion, than the Bible for all the nonsense men have put into it, or God for the abuse daily and hourly practised with his best gifts. But the number of martyrs must be judged by the total number of Christians who were a minority of the population. The want of particular statements by contemporary writers leaves it impossible to ascertain, even approximately, the number of martyrs. Dodwell and Gibbon have certainly underrated it, as far as Eusebius, the popular tradition since Constantine, and the legendary poesy of the middle age, have erred the other way. This is the result of recent discovery and investigation, and fully admitted by such writers as Renan. Origen, it is true, wrote in the middle of the third century, that the number of Christian martyrs was small and easy to be counted; God not permitting that all this class of men should be exterminated.65 But this language must be understood as referring chiefly to the reigns of Caracalla, Heliogabalus, Alexander Severus and Philippus Arabs, who did not persecute the Christians. Soon afterwards the fearful persecution of Decius broke out, in which Origen himself was thrown into prison and cruelly treated. Concerning the preceding ages, his statement must be qualified by the equally valid testimonies of Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria (Origen’s teacher), and the still older Irenaeus, who says expressly, that the church, for her love to God, "sends in all places and at all times a multitude of martyrs to the Father."66 Even the heathen Tacitus speaks of an "immense multitude" (ingens multitudo) of Christians, who were murdered in the city of Rome alone during the Neronian persecution in 64. To this must be added the silent, yet most eloquent testimony of the Roman catacombs, which, according to the calculation of Marchi and Northcote, extended over nine hundred English miles, and are said to contain nearly seven millions of graves, a large proportion of these including the relics of martyrs, as the innumerable inscriptions and instruments of death testify. The sufferings, moreover, of the church during this period are of course not to be measured merely by the number of actual executions, but by the far more numerous insults, slanders, vexatious, and tortures, which the cruelty of heartless heathens and barbarians could devise, or any sort of instrument could inflict on the human body, and which were in a thousand cases worse than death. Finally, while the Christian religion has at all times suffered more or less persecution, bloody or unbloody, from the ungodly world, and always had its witnesses ready for any sacrifice; yet at no period since the first three centuries was the whole church denied the right of a peaceful legal existence, and the profession of Christianity itself universally declared and punished as a political crime. Before Constantine the Christians were a helpless and proscribed minority in an essentially heathen world, and under a heathen government.

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

  Jacopone da Todi, the author of these hymns, called also Jacobus de Benedictis (d. 1306), was converted from a wild career by the sudden death of his wife through the falling of a gallery in a theatre. He gave up the law, both degrees of which he had received from Bologna, and was admitted to the Franciscan order.2104 He abandoned himself to the extreme of ascetic austerity, appearing at one time in the public square walking on all fours and harnessed like a horse. He wrote a number of poems in the vulgar tongue, exposing the vices of his age and arraigning Boniface VIII. for avarice. He espoused the cause of the Colonna against that pope. Boniface had him thrown into prison and the story went that when the pope asked him, when he expected to get out, Jacopone replied, "when you get in." Not until Boniface’s death, in 1303, was the poet released. He spent his last years in the convent of Collazone. His comfort in his last hours was his own hymn, Giesu nostra fidanza — Jesus our trust and confidence. § 134. The Religious Drama. Literature: W. Hone: Anc. Mysteries, Lond., 1823.—W. Marriott: Col. Of Engl. Miracle Plays, Basel, 1838.—J. P. Collier: Hist. of Engl. Dram. Poetry, 2 vols. Lond. 1831; new ed., 1879.—Th. Wright: Engl. Mysteries, Lond., 1838. —F. J. Mone: Altdeutsche Schauspiele, Quedlinb., 1841; D. Schauspiel d. MtA., 2 vols., Karlsr., 1846.—*Karl Hase: D. geistliche Schauspiel, Leip. 1858, Engl. transl. by A. W. Jackson, Lond. 1880.—E. de Coussemaker: Drames liturg du moyen âge, Paris, 1861. —E. Wilken: Gesch. D. Geistl. Spiele In Deutschland, Götting., 2d ed., 1879.—A. W. Ward: Hist. of Engl. Dram. Lit., Lond., 1875.—G. Milchsack: D. Oster Und Passionsspiele, Wolfenbüttel, 1880.—*A. W. Pollard: Engl. Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes with Introd. and Notes, Lond., 1890, 4th ed., 1904.—C. Davidson: Studies in the Engl. Mystery Plays, 1892, printed for Yale Univ.—W. Creizenach: Gesch. des neueren Dramas, 3 vols. Halle, 1893–1903.—Heinzel: Beschreibung des geistl. Schauspiels im Deutschen MtA., Leip., 1898.—O’Connor: Sacred Scenes and Mysteries, Lond., 1899.—*E. K. Chambers: The Mediaeval Stage, 2 vols. Oxf., 1903. —Art. in Nineteenth Century, June, 1906, Festum stultorum by Mrs. V. Hemming.—J. S. Tunison: Dram. Traditions of the Dark Ages, Cincinnati, 1907. See the large list of works in Chambers, I. xiii-xlii.

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

  He attended the second Council of Nicaea (787). During the reign of Leo the Arminian (813) he suffered imprisonment, banishment and mutilation for his devotion to the Icons, and died about 820. His "Chronography" is one of the chief sources for the history of the image-controversy.453 The following specimen from Adam’s lament of his fall is interesting: "Adam sat right against the Eastern gate, By many a storm of sad remembrance tost: O me! so ruined by the serpent’s hate! O me! so glorious once, and now so lost! So mad that bitter lot to choose! Beguil’d of all I had to lose! Must I then, gladness of my eyes, — Must I then leave thee, Paradise, And as an exile go? And must I never cease to grieve How once my God, at cool of eve, Came down to walk below? O Merciful! on Thee I call:

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

  So I said, ’Dear sir, I will go straight home and write all this to my little boy; but he has an aunt, Lene,597 that he must bring with him.’ And the man answered, ’So it shall be; go and write as you say.’ "Therefore, dear little boy Johnny, learn and pray with a good heart, and tell Lippus and Jost to do the same, and then you will all come to the garden together. And now I commend you to Almighty God. Give my love to aunt Lene, and give her a kiss for me. Anno 1530. Thy loving father, "Martinus Luther" He was deeply grieved by the early death of his favorite daughter Lena (Magdalen), a pious, gentle, and affectionate girl of fourteen, with large, imaginative eyes, and full of promise.598 "I love her very much," he prayed; "but, dear God, if it is thy holy will to take her hence, I would gladly leave her with Thee." And to her he said, "Lena dear, my little daughter, thou wouldst love to remain here with thy father: art thou willing to go to that other Father?"—"Yes, dear father," she replied, "just as God wills." And when she was dying, he fell on his knees beside her bed, wept bitterly, and prayed for her redemption. As she lay in her coffin, he exclaimed, "Ah! my darling Lena, thou wilt rise again, and shine like a star,—yea, as a sun. I am happy in the spirit, but very sorrowful in the flesh." He wrote to his friend Jonas: "You will have heard that my dearest child is born again into the eternal kingdom of God. We ought to be glad at her departure, for she is taken away from the world, the flesh, and the devil; but so strong is natural love, that we cannot bear it without anguish of heart, without the sense of death in ourselves." On her tomb he inscribed these lines: — "Here do I Lena, Luther’s daughter, rest, Sleep in my little bed with all the blessed. In sin and trespass was I born; Forever would I be forlorn, But yet I live, and all is good — Thou, Christ, didst save me with thy blood." Luther was simple, regular, and temperate in his habits. The reports to the contrary are slanders of enemies. The famous and much-abused adage, — "Who does not love wife, wine, and song, Remains a fool his whole life long,"599- is not found in his works, nor in any contemporary writing, but seems to have originated in the last century, on the basis of some mediaeval saying.600 He

• From The Pisces (2018)

  None of them seemed right. Dying was the closest. Now the urinary tract infection had subsided but I felt sick over Garrett. I kept replaying the night before in my mind. Somehow in my memory it was way hotter than it had actually been: my vagina wetter, his dick thicker, his moans heartier and more passionate. I thought about his tongue and jaw, and tears came to my eyes. What the fuck was happening? And why didn’t he want me? That night I slept with my phone next to my head on vibrate, but I didn’t really sleep. I woke up every hour and looked to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. I decided it might be time to return to therapy and check in. 23.When I walked in the door at group, everyone gave me looks that were a cross between disdain and We knew you would be back. They were actually excited to see me. I couldn’t help but think that they just wanted more people to be as fucked up as they were. The more fuck-ups like them, the less alone they were—maybe even the less fucked up they were. If everyone was fucked up in the same way as you then maybe you weren’t so fucked up. Compared to them I’d thought I was normal. I may have been obsessing, but I hadn’t stalked Garrett outside his office or anything. But oddly, everyone in the group seemed to be doing well. Chickenhorse felt proud of herself and was tooting her horn. That morning she had spotted her neighbor’s two dogs locked in their parked car in the heat and swept in to save them. “I called animal services on their asses,” she said. Of course, when animal services arrived, the neighbors, who were merely putting groceries away, were livid. They banged on her door and screamed at her. “You would think I’d be triggered or at least retraumatized!” she said. “But since I’m already being evicted, it felt empowering—as the victim—to stand up for other creatures who were being abused.” Brianne, who looked to have just gotten some fresh Botox in her forehead, had met a man on OkCupid—a new foray for her. They’d even progressed from the messaging stage of the app to actual email. “Of course, he’s on a business trip in Europe,” she said softly, her eyebrows arched like a child’s rendering of geese in flight. “But he said that when he returns he actually wants to get together with me. Face-to-face. In person. At a real restaurant. And I think I am going to go.” I decided to come clean, sort of, about my two dates. I didn’t say that I went home with Adam and watched him jerk off or fucked Garrett on a bathroom floor, but simply that I had gone. “The first guy was gross,” I said. “If they’re gross, I’m fine. I can take it or leave it.”

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

  12–14; Justin M.: Apol. I. 31, 47; Eusebius: H. Eccl. IV. 2. and 6. Rabbinical traditions in Derenbourg: Histoire de la Palestine depuis Cyrus jusqu’à Adrien (Paris 1867), pp. 402–438. II. Fr. Münter.: Der Judische Krieg unter Trajan u. Hadrian. Altona and Leipz. 1821. Deyling: Aeliae Capitol. origines et historiae. Lips. 1743. Ewald: Gesch. des Volkes Israel, VII. 373–432. Milman: History of the Jews, Books 18 and 20. Grätz: Gesch. der Juden. Vol. IV. (Leipz. 1866). Schürer: Neutestam. Zeitgeschichte (1874), pp. 350–367. The Jews had displayed their obstinate unbelief and bitter hatred of the gospel in the crucifixion of Christ, the stoning of Stephen, the execution of James the Elder, the repeated incarceration as of Peter and John, the wild rage against Paul, and the murder of James the Just. No wonder that the fearful judgment of God at last visited this ingratitude upon them in the destruction of the holy city and the temple, from which the Christians found refuge in Pella. But this tragical fate could break only the national power of the Jews, not their hatred of Christianity. They caused the death of Symeon, bishop of Jerusalem (107); they were particularly active in the burning of Polycarp of Smyrna; and they inflamed the violence of the Gentiles by eliminating the sect of the Nazarenes. The Rebellion under Bar-Cochba. Jerusalem again Destroyed. By severe oppression under Trajan and Hadrian, the prohibition of circumcision, and the desecration of Jerusalem by the idolatry of the pagans, the Jews were provoked to a new and powerful insurrection (A.D. 132–135). A pseudo-Messiah, Bar-Cochba (son of the stars, Num. 24:17), afterwards called Bar- Cosiba (son of falsehood), put himself at the head of the rebels, and caused all the Christians who would not join him to be most cruelly murdered. But the false prophet was defeated by Hadrian’s general in 135, more than half a million of Jews were slaughtered after a desperate resistance, immense numbers sold into slavery, 985 villages and 50 fortresses levelled to the ground, nearly all Palestine laid waste, Jerusalem again destroyed, and a Roman colony, Aelia Capitolina, erected on its ruins, with an image of Jupiter and a temple of Venus. The coins of Aelia Capitolina bear the images of Jupiter Capitolinus, Bacchus, Serapis, Astarte. Thus the native soil of the venerable religion of the Old Testament was ploughed up, and idolatry planted on it. The Jews were forbidden to visit the holy spot of their former metropolis upon pain of death.18 Only on the anniversary of the destruction were they allowed to behold and bewail it from a distance. The prohibition was continued under Christian emperors to their disgrace. Julian the Apostate, from hatred of the Christians, allowed and encouraged them to rebuild the temple, but in vain. Jerome, who spent the rest of his life in monastic retirement at Bethlehem (d.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  I’m afraid for my cedar—it’s all weighted down—I feel worried about it.’ Then Sir Philip sent in to Upton for chain, and for stout pads of felt to support the branches; and he himself must direct the gardeners while they climbed into the tree and pushed off the snow; and he himself must see to the placing of the stout felt pads, lest the branches be galled. Because he loved Anna who loved the cedar, he must stand underneath it directing the gardeners. A sudden and horrible sound of rending. ‘Sir, look out! Sir Philip, look out, sir, it’s giving!’ A crash, and then silence—a horrible silence, far worse than that horrible sound of rending. ‘Sir Philip—oh, Gawd, it’s over ’is chest! It’s crushed in ’is chest—it’s the big branch wot’s given! Some one go for the doctor—go quick for Doctor Evans. Oh, Gawd, ’is mouth’s bleedin’—it’s crushed in ’is chest—Won’t nobody go for the doctor?’ The grave, rather pompous voice of Mr. Hopkins: ‘Steady, Thomas, it’s no good losin’ your head. Robert, you’d best slip over to the stables and tell Burton to go in the car for the doctor. You, Thomas, give me a hand with this bough—steady on—ease it off a bit to the right, now lift! Steady on, keep more to the right—now then, gently, gently, man—lift!’ Sir Philip lay very still on the snow, and the blood oozed slowly from between his lips. He looked monstrously tall as he lay on that whiteness, very straight, with his long legs stretched out to their fullest, so that Thomas said foolishly: ‘Don’t ’e be big—I don’t know as I ever noticed before—’ And now some one came scuttling over the snow, panting, stumbling, hopping grotesquely—old Williams, hatless and in his shirt sleeves— and as he came on he kept calling out something: ‘Master, oh, Master!’ And he hopped grotesquely as he came on over the slippery snow. ‘Master, Master—oh, Master!’ They found a hurdle, and with dreadful care they placed the master of Morton upon it, and with dreadful slowness they carried the hurdle over the lawn, and in through the door that Sir Philip himself had left standing ajar. Slowly they carried him into the hall, and even more slowly his tired eyes opened, and he whispered: ‘Where’s Stephen? I want—the child.’ And old Williams muttered thickly: ‘She’s comin’, Master—she be comin’ down the stairs; she’s here, Sir Philip.’ Then Sir Philip tried to move, and he spoke quite loudly: ‘Stephen! Where are you? I want you, child—’ She went to him, saying never a word, but she thought: ‘He’s dying—my Father.’

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

  The bodies were burnt and, that no particle might be left to be used as a relic, the ashes were thrown into the Arno. Savonarola had been pronounced by Alexander’s commission "that iniquitous monster—omnipedium nequissimum — call him man or friar we cannot, a mass of the most abominable wickedness." The pious Landucci, in thinking of his death, recalled the crucifixion and, at the scene of the execution, again lamented the disappointment of his hopes for the renovation of the Church and the conversion of the infidel—la novazione della chiesa e la conversione degli infedeli. Savonarola was one of the most noteworthy figures Italy has produced. The modern Christian world, Catholic and Protestant, joins him in close fellowship with the flaming religious luminaries of all countries and all centuries. He was a preacher of righteousness and a patriot. Among the religious personalities of Italy, he occupies a position of grandeur by himself, separate from her imposing popes, like Gregory VII. and Innocent III.; from Dante, Italy’s poet and the world’s; from St. Francis d’Assisi and from Thomas Aquinas. Italy had other preachers,—Anthony of Padua, Bernardino of Siena,—but their messages were local and ecclesiastical. With Arnold of Brescia, Savonarola had something in common. Both had a stirring message of reform. Both mixed up political ideals with their spiritual activity and both died by judicial sanction of the papal see. Savonarola’s intellectual gifts and attainments were not extraordinary. He was great by reason of moral conviction, his eloquence, his disinterested love of his country, his whole-souled devotion to the cause of righteousness. As an administrator, he failed. He had none of the sagacity or tact of the statesman and it was his misfortune to have undertaken to create a new government, a task for which he was the least qualified of all men.1208 He was a preacher of righteousness and has a place in the "goodly fellowship of the prophets." He belonged to the order of Ezekiel and Isaiah, Nathan and John the Baptist,—the company in which the Protestant world also places John Knox. Savonarola was a true Catholic. He did not deny a single dogma of the mediaeval Church. But he was more deeply rooted in the fundamental teachings of Christ than in ecclesiastical formulas. In the deliverance of his message, he rose above rituals and usages. He demanded regeneration of heart. His revolt against the authority of the pope, in appealing to a council, is a serious stumbling-block to Catholics who are inclined to a favorable judgment of the Friar of St. Mark’s. Julius II.’s bull Cum tanto divino,1505, pronounced every election to the papacy secured by simony invalid. If it was meant to be retroactive, then Alexander was not a true pope.1209 The favorable judgments of contemporaries were numerous.