Love

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 Decameron (1353)

  Some, then, of my censurers say that I do ill, young ladies, in studying overmuch to please you and that you please me overmuch. Which things I do most openly confess, to wit, that you please me and that I study to please you, and I ask them if they marvel thereat,--considering (let be the having known the dulcet kisses and amorous embracements and delightsome couplings that are of you, most sweet ladies, often gotten) only my having seen and still seeing your dainty manners and lovesome beauty and sprightly grace and above all your womanly courtesy,--whenas he who had been reared and bred on a wild and solitary mountain and within the bounds of a little cell, without other company than his father, no sooner set eyes on you than you alone were desired of him, you alone sought, you alone followed with the eagerness of passion. Will they, then, blame me, back bite me, rend me with their tongues if I, whose body Heaven created all apt to love you, I, who from my childhood vowed my soul to you, feeling the potency of the light of your eyes and the sweetness of your honeyed words and the flame enkindled by your piteous sighs,--if, I say, you please me or if I study to please you, seeing that you over all else pleased a hermitling, a lad without understanding, nay, rather, a wild animal? Certes, it is only those, who, having neither sense nor cognizance of the pleasures and potency of natural affection, love you not nor desire to be loved of you, that chide me thus; and of these I reck little.

• From Augustine: Philosopher and Saint (2005)

  32 ecarG dna ,evoL ,htiaF :7 erutceL road to get to the destination. We love the road (this earth, this mortal life) for the sake of the destination. • Enjoying means using with delight, clinging to something for its own sake, trying to (cid:191) nd our happiness in it. • Cupidity means trying to (cid:191) nd our ultimate happiness by enjoying something other than God. It makes us miserable, as the Confessions illustrates. • Enjoying God is the only thing that can make us ultimately happy. • Love unites us with what we love: hence enjoying God means being united with him. • We can enjoy our neighbors in God, i.e., being joined to them as one body joined to God (like spokes of a wheel all joined at one hub). Beauty and will: Augustine’s concept of Charity owes a great deal to Plato’s concept of eros in the Symposium and the Phaedrus, especially in the following respects: • We love what we see as beautiful. • Love aspires upward to eternal Beauty. • Love is at the deepest desire of our souls. • Love is beyond the control of our will (as anyone who has ever fallen in love knows). Grace • Justi(cid:191) cation by Grace: (cid:405) De(cid:191) nitions: justi(cid:191) cation (= being made righteous), righteousness (= justice), grace (= gift of God). (cid:405) For Paul and Augustine, “righteousness” means Charity (i.e., obedience to Jesus’ twofold command of love). (cid:405) Augustine’s key treatise on the doctrine of justi(cid:191) cation (i.e., on how we become righteous) is On the Spirit and the Letter. (cid:405) The key contrast in this treatise is slavish obedience versus (cid:191) lial obedience, i.e., obeying God’s law out of fear or obeying it out of love.

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

  But Peter was as quick in returning to his right position as in turning away from it. He most sincerely loved the Lord from the start and had no rest nor peace till he found forgiveness. With all his weakness he was a noble, generous soul, and of the greatest service in the church. God overruled his very sins and inconsistencies for his humiliation and spiritual progress. And in his Epistles we find the mature result of the work of purification, a spirit most humble, meek, gentle, tender, loving, and lovely. Almost every word and incident in the gospel history connected with Peter left its impress upon his Epistles in the way of humble or thankful reminiscence and allusion. His new name, "Rock," appears simply as a "stone" among other living stones in the temple of God, built upon Christ, "the chief corner-stone."293 His charge to his fellow-presbyters is the same which Christ gave to him after the resurrection, that they should be faithful "shepherds of the flock" under Christ, the chief "shepherd and bishop of their souls."294 The record of his denial of Christ is as prominent in all the four Gospels, as Paul’s persecution of the church is in the Acts, and it is most prominent—as it would seem under his own direction—in the Gospel of his pupil and "interpreter" Mark, which alone mentions the two cock-crows, thus doubling the guilt of the denial,295 and which records Christ’s words of censure ("Satan"), but omits Christ’s praise ("Rock").296 Peter made as little effort to conceal his great sin, as Paul. It served as a thorn in his flesh, and the remembrance kept him near the cross; while his recovery from the fall was a standing proof of the power and mercy of Christ and a perpetual call to gratitude. To the Christian Church the double story of Peter’s denial and recovery has been ever since an unfailing source of warning and comfort. Having turned again to his Lord, who prayed for him that his personal faith fail not, he is still strengthening the brethren.297

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

  10:25–2825. And, behold, a certain Lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? 26. He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? 27. And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. 28. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. BEDE. Our Lord had told His disciples above that their names were written in Heaven; from this it seems to me the lawyer took occasion of tempting our Lord, as it is said, And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. For there were in fact certain men who then went about the whole country of the Jews bringing charges against Christ, and saying that He spoke of the commands of Moses as useless, and Himself introduced certain strange doctrines. A lawyer then, wishing to entrap Christ into saying something against Moses, comes and tempts Him, calling Him Master, though not bearing to be His disciple. And because our Lord was wont to speak to those who came to Him concerning eternal life, the lawyer adopts this kind of language. And since he tempted Him subtly, he receives no other answer than the command given by Moses; for it follows, He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? AMBROSE. For he was one of those who think themselves skilled in the law, and who keep the letter of the law, while they know nothing of its spirit. From a part of the law itself our Lord proves them to be ignorant of the law, shewing that at the very first the law preached the Father and the Son, and announced the sacraments of the Lord’s Incarnation; for it follows, And he answering said, Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind. BASIL. (in Ps. 44.) By saying, with all thy mind, he does not admit of any division of love to other things, for whatever love you cast on lower things necessarily takes away from the whole. For as a vessel full of liquid, whatever flows therefrom must so much diminish its fulness; so also the soul, whatever love it has wasted upon things unlawful, has so much lessened its love to God.

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

  9. The gift of Miracles624 is the power possessed by the apostles and apostolic men, like Stephen, to heal all sorts of physical maladies, to cast out demons, to raise the dead, and perform other similar works, in virtue of an extraordinary energy or faith, by word, prayer, and the laying on of hands in the name of Jesus, and for his glory. These miracles were outward credentials and seals of the divine mission of the apostles in a time and among a people which required such sensible helps to faith. But as Christianity became established in the world, it could point to its continued moral effects as the best evidence of its truth, and the necessity for outward physical miracles ceased. 10. Finally, the gift of Love, the greatest, most precious, most useful, most needful, and most enduring of all, described and extolled by St. Paul in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians with the pen of an angel in the vision and enjoyment of the God of infinite love himself.625 Love is natural kindness and affection sanctified and raised to the spiritual sphere, or rather a new heavenly affection created in the soul by the experience of the saving love of God in Christ. As faith lies at the bottom of all charisms, so love is not properly a separate gift, but the soul of all the gifts, guarding them from abuse for selfish and ambitious purposes, making them available for the common good, ruling, uniting, and completing them. It alone gives them their true value, and without love even the speaking with tongues of angels, and a faith which removes mountains, are nothing before God. It holds heaven and earth in its embrace. It "believeth all things," and when faith fails, it "hopeth all things," and when hope fails, it "endureth all things," but it "never fails." As love is the most needful of all the gifts on earth, so it will also outlast all the others and be the ornament and joy of the saints in heaven. For love is the inmost essence, the heart, as it were, of God, the ground of all his attributes, and the motive of all his works. It is the beginning and the end of creation, redemption, and sanctification—the link which unites us with the triune God, the cardinal virtue of Christianity, the fulfilling of the law, the bond of perfectness, and the fountain of bliss. § 46. Christianity in Individuals. The transforming spiritual power of Christianity appears first in the lives of individuals. The apostles and primitive Christians rose to a morality and piety far above that of the heroes of heathen virtue and even that of the Jewish saints. Their daily walk was a living union with Christ, ever seeking the glory of God and the salvation of men. Many of the cardinal virtues, humility, for example, and love for enemies, were unknown before the Christian day.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  [Footnote 417: "It was the custom in those days to attach to the bedposts sundry small instruments in the form of birds, which, by means of certain mechanical devices, gave forth sounds modulated like the song of actual birds."--_Fanfani._] On this wise consorting with her at one time and another, without its costing him aught in the world, and growing every hour more entangled, it befell that he sold his stuffs for ready money and made a good profit thereby; of which the lady incontinent heard, not from him, but from others, and Salabaetto being come one night to visit her, she fell to prattling and wantoning with him, kissing and clipping him and feigning herself so enamoured of him that it seemed she must die of love in his arms. Moreover, she would fain have given him two very fine hanaps of silver that she had; but he would not take them, for that he had had of her, at one time and another, what was worth a good thirty gold florins, without availing to have her take of him so much as a groat's worth. At last, whenas she had well enkindled him by showing herself so enamoured and freehanded, one of her slave-girls called her, as she had ordained beforehand; whereupon she left the chamber and coming back, after awhile, in tears cast herself face downward on the bed and fell to making the woefullest lamentation ever woman made. Salabaetto, marvelling at this, caught her in his arms and fell a-weeping with her and saying, 'Alack, heart of my body, what aileth thee thus suddenly? What is the cause of this grief? For God's sake, tell it me, my soul.' The lady, after letting herself be long entreated, answered, 'Woe's me, sweet my lord, I know not what to say or to do; I have but now received letters from Messina and my brother writeth me that, should I sell or pawn all that is here,[418] I must without fail send him a thousand gold florins within eight days from this time, else will his head be cut off; and I know not how I shall do to get this sum so suddenly. Had I but fifteen days' grace, I would find a means of procuring it from a certain quarter whence I am to have much more, or I would sell one of our farms; but, as this may not be, I had liefer be dead than that this ill news should have come to me.' [Footnote 418: Syn. that which belongeth to us (_ciò che ci è_,) _ci_, as I have before noted, signifying both "here" and "us," dative and accusative.]

• From The Decameron (1353)

  TEODORO, BEING ENAMOURED OF VIOLANTE, DAUGHTER OF MESSER AMERIGO HIS LORD, GETTETH HER WITH CHILD AND IS CONDEMNED TO BE HANGED; BUT, BEING RECOGNIZED AND DELIVERED BY HIS FATHER, AS THEY ARE LEADING HIM TO THE GALLOWS, SCOURGING HIM THE WHILE, HE TAKETH VIOLANTE TO WIFE The ladies, who abode all fearful in suspense to know if the lovers should be burnt, hearing of their escape, praised God and were glad; whereupon the queen, seeing that Pampinea had made an end of her story, imposed on Lauretta the charge of following on, who blithely proceeded to say: "Fairest ladies, in the days when good King William[282] ruled over Sicily, there was in that island a gentleman hight Messer Amerigo Abate of Trapani, who, among other worldly goods, was very well furnished with children; wherefore, having occasion for servants and there coming thither from the Levant certain galleys of Genoese corsairs, who had, in their cruises off the coast of Armenia, taken many boys, he bought some of these latter, deeming them Turks, and amongst them one, Teodoro by name, of nobler mien and better bearing than the rest, who seemed all mere shepherds. Teodoro, although entreated as a slave, was brought up in the house with Messer Amerigo's children and conforming more to his own nature than to the accidents of fortune, approved himself so accomplished and well-bred and so commended himself to Messer Amerigo that he set him free and still believing him to be a Turk, caused baptize him and call him Pietro and made him chief over all his affairs, trusting greatly in him. [Footnote 282: William II. (A.D. 1166-1189), the last (legitimate) king of the Norman dynasty in Sicily, called the Good, to distinguish him from his father, William the Bad.] As Messer Amerigo's children grew up, there grew up with them a daughter of his, called Violante, a fair and dainty damsel, who, her father tarrying overmuch to marry her, became by chance enamoured of Pietro and loving him and holding his manners and fashions in great esteem, was yet ashamed to discover this to him. But Love spared her that pains, for that Pietro, having once and again looked upon her by stealth, had become so passionately enamoured of her that he never knew ease save whenas he saw her; but he was sore afraid lest any should become aware thereof, himseeming that in this he did other than well. The young lady, who took pleasure in looking upon him, soon perceived this and to give him more assurance, showed herself exceeding well pleased therewith, as indeed she was. On this wise they abode a great while, daring not to say aught to one another, much as each desired it; but, whilst both, alike enamoured, languished enkindled in the flames of love, fortune, as if it had determined of will aforethought that this should be, furnished them with an occasion of doing away the timorousness that baulked them.

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

  (4.) Sanctification (aJgiasmov").803 The divine act of justification is inseparable from the conversion and renewal of the sinner. It affects the will and conduct as well as the feeling. Although gratuitous, it is not unconditional. It is of necessity the beginning of sanctification, the birth into a new life which is to grow unto full manhood. We are not justified outside of Christ, but only in Christ by a living faith, which unites us with him in his death unto sin and resurrection unto holiness. Faith is operative in love and must produce good works as the inevitable proof of its existence. Without love, the greatest of Christian graces, even the strongest faith would be but "sounding brass or clanging cymbal."804 Sanctification is not a single act, like justification, but a process. It is a continuous growth of the whole inner man in holiness from the moment of conversion and justification to the reappearance of Jesus Christ in glory.805 On the part of God it is insured, for he is faithful and will perfect the good work which he began; on the part of man it involves constant watchfulness, lest he stumble and fall. In one view it depends all on the grace of God, in another view it depends all on the exertion of man. There is a mysterious co-operation between the two agencies, which is expressed in the profound paradox: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure."806 The believer is mystically identified with Christ from the moment of his conversion (sealed by baptism). He died with Christ unto sin so as to sin no more; and he rose with him to a new life unto God so as to live for God; he is crucified to the world and the world to him; he is a new creature in Christ; the old man of sin is dead and buried, the new man lives in holiness and righteousness. "It is no longer I (my own sinful self) that lives, but it is Christ that lives in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh, I live in faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me."807 Here is the whole doctrine of Christian life: it is Christ in us, and we in Christ. It consists in a vital union with Christ, the crucified and risen Redeemer, who is the indwelling, all-pervading, and controlling life of the believer; but the union is no pantheistic confusion or absorption; the believer continues to live as a self-conscious and distinct personality. For the believer "to live is Christ, and to die is gain." "Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s."808

• From An Anomalous Jew: Paul Among Jews, Greeks, and Romans (2016)

  141 AN ANOMALOUS JEW of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” That translation is warranted if we consider that the whole sentence in Gal 2:19-20 is an ex- plication of human faith in the context of participation in Jesus’ faithful and loving act of giving himself over to death. The role of Christ is accentuated at both the beginning and the end of the sentence. Paul begins with cocruci- fixion with Christ by stating, “I have been crucified with Christ”; then at the end Paul defines the crucified Son as him “who loved me and gave himself for me.” The crucified Messiah who died on the cross as an act of self-giving love is the primary actor here. In addition, Paul makes two sets of contrasts between the source of human life and Christ as the agent who brings life to the believer through his death. Believers life Source of that life it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live in/by/because of the faithfulness of the Son of God. In other words, the believer is alive because of the risen life, faithfulness, and self-giving death of the Son of God. (3) In Gal 3:23-25 Paul refers to the mo- ment “when faith came.’ Here the noun miotic is a metonym for “Christ? equivalent to the time when “God sent forth his Son” (Gal 4:4). If we coordi- nate Gal 2:16 (“justified . . . by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ”) with Gal 3:23-25 (“faith” = Christ), then miotic should be christologically conceived. While I am convinced by the subjective genitive reading in Gal 2:19, | am not persuaded about its validity in Gal 2:16, for five reasons: 1. Paul never once makes Christ the subject of the cognate verb motevw, as one might expect if Christ’s own faithfulness were specifically in view. 2. Froma semantic point of view, a genitive modifier restricts and defines the head term but does not fill it with additional content. So miotewe ‘Inoov Xptotod restricts the appropriate realm of faith to Jesus Christ rather than specifying Christ’s own faith."*® 16. Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts, “IIiottg with a Preposition and Genitive Mod- ifier: Lexical, Semantic, and Syntactic Considerations in the mioti¢ Xptotod Discussion,” in The Faith of Jesus Christ, ed. M. F. Bird and P. M. Sprinkle (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2009), 33-53 (esp. 51). 142 An Apocalyptic and Salvation-Historical Rereading of Galatians 3. The prepositions 614 and éx that preface niotewo Inood Xptotod in Gal 2:16 are more or less abbreviations of éx miotewc from Hab 2:4 (LXX) and underscore human faith as the condition for “righteousness” (see Gal3:8,2:43'535).?*7 4.

• From Fragments (7)

  V The Crimes of the Oedipodean Cycle. By Henry N, Botvman, A Study of Vergil's Descriptions of Nature. By Mabel Louise Anderson, Deception in Plautus^ a Study in the Technique of Comedy. By Helen E, Wieand. A Study of Latin Hymns. By Alice King MacGilion, Latin Stems and Engush Deriva- tives for Cjesar. By Madge Devore, The Lyric Songs of the Greeks. By Walter Petersen. Selections from Catullus. By Mary Stewart, Plato's Studies and Criticisms of the Poets. By Carleton L, Brownson. RICHARD G. badger, PUBLISHER, BOSTON THE LYRIC SONGS OF THE GREEKS THE EXTANT FRAGMENTS OF SAPPHO, ALCAEUS, ANACREON, AND THE MINOR GREEK MONQDISTS TRANSUTBD INTO ENCUSH VIRSB BV WALTER PETERSEN, Ph.D. rtorsuoK or claiiici, betbaky )f|jw.n»vB«]T«np BOSTON RICHARD G. BADGER THE GORHAM PRESS Copyright, 1918, by Richard G. Badger #t.»»^'i All Rights Reserved OR, LENQ-X A-ND EN FCL'iJDATlONo 1019 L • •• •••• • • • . : . • • • ; Made in the United States of America Tbb Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. • • • • ♦ • • • *• • • • * , • • '. • • • • • • • • r • • • • TO MY MOTHER WHO FIRST INSTILLED INTO MB THE LOVE OP POETRY AND SONG * . " 1 . > PREFACE These translations comprise the poems and frag- ments of those Greek lyric poets whose works were intended to be sung chiefly by the individual, i. e. of the Greek monodists. Of these, however, are given even those fragments which really belong to different categories, e. g. the Epithalamia of Sappho, which were intended for a chorus, and the Elegies and Epigrams of Anacreon are rendered as well as their other poems. Of each poet are given all those fragments which seemed long enough and clear enough to admit of any kind of satisfactory interpretation, omitting only mere words and short phrases which seemed unimportant from every point of view. On the other hand, many fragments have been received which are of no importance intrinsi- cally, but which might shed some light or other on the sphere of thought and interest of the various poets. On the whole my misgivings are rather that I have given too much than not enough. Since my object was to interpret the Greek lyric poets to the general English reader, and not to ap- peal particularly to the Classical scholar, it seemed obvious to me that ako the form should be that in which we are wont to see modern English lyrics. I have therefore used rhymed couplets and stanzas, which alone bring the ancient lyrics near to us, and \ I 1' Contents PAOB Her Hope of Immortality 37 Sappho's Song for Her Girl Friends 38 Her Loyalty to Her Girl Friends 38 Sappho's Temperament 38 Sappho's Tastes 38 Sappho on Her Death-Bed to Her Daughter . . 39 Gnom^ and Proverbial Expressions .... 39 Keep Guard on Thy Tongue 39 Beauty 39

• From An Anomalous Jew: Paul Among Jews, Greeks, and Romans (2016)

  Paul shifts without any hesitation from the community boundaries that tradition- ally separated Jews and Gentiles (2:1-14) to the incorporation of Jewish and Gentile believers into the revelatory event of the gospel (2:15-21). He stresses that the Jewish way of life does not open up the way for Gentiles, but through the law’s own testimony, we die to the law, so that even the Gentiles might have a share in the new age (2:17-20). Paul gives himself as an example of someone who has passed beyond the jurisdiction of the law in Christ's death over into the risen life of the Son of God (2:19-20). Faith of this order means that one acts and is acted upon by God in Jesus Christ as a sign of covenantal fulfill- ment to what was promised to Abraham. Paul thus ties together the human responses of faith with Christ's deliberate self-giving act of loving self-sacrifice. The faithfulness of the crucified Son and faith in Christ are collapsed together in the believer’s cocrucifixion. As Sam K. Williams puts it, “T live in faith—that of the Son of God who loved me.”’”® There is no faith other than that which is 119. See Charles Cosgrove, The Cross and the Spirit: A Study in the Argument and The- ology of Galatians (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988), 56; Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London; T&T Clark, 2004), 75-76; idem, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: Beyond the New Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 255; Benjamin Schliefer, Abraham's Faith in Romans 4: Paul’s Concept of Faith in Light of the History of Reception of Genesis 15:6 (WUNT 224; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 262; Michael F. Bird, “What if Martin Luther Had Read the Dead Sea Scrolls? Historical Par- ticularity and Theological Interpretation in Pauline Theology: Galatians as a Test Case,” JTI 3 (2009): 119-21; and esp. Preston M. Sprinkle, “Iliottg Xptotod,” in The Faith of Jesus Christ, ed. M. F. Bird and P. M. Sprinkle (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2009), 165-84, with larger bibliography. 120. Sam K.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  This circumstance was a growing attachment between her eldest girl and the brother of Mrs. John Dashwood, a gentleman-like and pleasing young man, who was introduced to their acquaintance soon after his sister’s establishment at Norland, and who had since spent the greatest part of his time there. Some mothers might have encouraged the intimacy from motives of interest, for Edward Ferrars was the eldest son of a man who had died very rich; and some might have repressed it from motives of prudence, for, except a trifling sum, the whole of his fortune depended on the will of his mother. But Mrs. Dashwood was alike uninfluenced by either consideration. It was enough for her that he appeared to be amiable, that he loved her daughter, and that Elinor returned the partiality. It was contrary to every doctrine of hers that difference of fortune should keep any couple asunder who were attracted by resemblance of disposition; and that Elinor’s merit should not be acknowledged by every one who knew her, was to her comprehension impossible. Edward Ferrars was not recommended to their good opinion by any peculiar graces of person or address. He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing. He was too diffident to do justice to himself; but when his natural shyness was overcome, his behaviour gave every indication of an open, affectionate heart. His understanding was good, and his education had given it solid improvement. But he was neither fitted by abilities nor disposition to answer the wishes of his mother and sister, who longed to see him distinguished—as—they hardly knew what. They wanted him to make a fine figure in the world in some manner or other. His mother wished to interest him in political concerns, to get him into parliament, or to see him connected with some of the great men of the day. Mrs. John Dashwood wished it likewise; but in the mean while, till one of these superior blessings could be attained, it would have quieted her ambition to see him driving a barouche. But Edward had no turn for great men or barouches. All his wishes centered in domestic comfort and the quiet of private life. Fortunately he had a younger brother who was more promising. Edward had been staying several weeks in the house before he engaged much of Mrs. Dashwood’s attention; for she was, at that time, in such affliction as rendered her careless of surrounding objects. She saw only that he was quiet and unobtrusive, and she liked him for it. He did not disturb the wretchedness of her mind by ill-timed conversation. She was first called to observe and approve him farther, by a reflection which Elinor chanced one day to make on the difference between him and his sister. It was a contrast which recommended him most forcibly to her mother.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “It is enough,” said she; “to say that he is unlike Fanny is enough. It implies everything amiable. I love him already.” “I think you will like him,” said Elinor, “when you know more of him.” “Like him!” replied her mother with a smile. “I feel no sentiment of approbation inferior to love.” “You may esteem him.” “I have never yet known what it was to separate esteem and love.” Mrs. Dashwood now took pains to get acquainted with him. Her manners were attaching, and soon banished his reserve. She speedily comprehended all his merits; the persuasion of his regard for Elinor perhaps assisted her penetration; but she really felt assured of his worth: and even that quietness of manner, which militated against all her established ideas of what a young man’s address ought to be, was no longer uninteresting when she knew his heart to be warm and his temper affectionate. No sooner did she perceive any symptom of love in his behaviour to Elinor, than she considered their serious attachment as certain, and looked forward to their marriage as rapidly approaching. “In a few months, my dear Marianne,” said she, “Elinor will, in all probability be settled for life. We shall miss her; but _she_ will be happy.” “Oh! Mama, how shall we do without her?” “My love, it will be scarcely a separation. We shall live within a few miles of each other, and shall meet every day of our lives. You will gain a brother, a real, affectionate brother. I have the highest opinion in the world of Edward’s heart. But you look grave, Marianne; do you disapprove your sister’s choice?”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  She could easily conceive that marriage might not be immediately in their power; for though Willoughby was independent, there was no reason to believe him rich. His estate had been rated by Sir John at about six or seven hundred a year; but he lived at an expense to which that income could hardly be equal, and he had himself often complained of his poverty. But for this strange kind of secrecy maintained by them relative to their engagement, which in fact concealed nothing at all, she could not account; and it was so wholly contradictory to their general opinions and practice, that a doubt sometimes entered her mind of their being really engaged, and this doubt was enough to prevent her making any inquiry of Marianne. Nothing could be more expressive of attachment to them all, than Willoughby’s behaviour. To Marianne it had all the distinguishing tenderness which a lover’s heart could give, and to the rest of the family it was the affectionate attention of a son and a brother. The cottage seemed to be considered and loved by him as his home; many more of his hours were spent there than at Allenham; and if no general engagement collected them at the park, the exercise which called him out in the morning was almost certain of ending there, where the rest of the day was spent by himself at the side of Marianne, and by his favourite pointer at her feet. One evening in particular, about a week after Colonel Brandon left the country, his heart seemed more than usually open to every feeling of attachment to the objects around him; and on Mrs. Dashwood’s happening to mention her design of improving the cottage in the spring, he warmly opposed every alteration of a place which affection had established as perfect with him. “What!” he exclaimed—“Improve this dear cottage! No. _That_ I will never consent to. Not a stone must be added to its walls, not an inch to its size, if my feelings are regarded.” “Do not be alarmed,” said Miss Dashwood, “nothing of the kind will be done; for my mother will never have money enough to attempt it.” “I am heartily glad of it,” he cried. “May she always be poor, if she can employ her riches no better.” “Thank you, Willoughby. But you may be assured that I would not sacrifice one sentiment of local attachment of yours, or of any one whom I loved, for all the improvements in the world. Depend upon it that whatever unemployed sum may remain, when I make up my accounts in the spring, I would even rather lay it uselessly by than dispose of it in a manner so painful to you. But are you really so attached to this place as to see no defect in it?”

• From The City of God

  485 Vision of God „Augustine’s last great theme is his vision of God. But even here, the God Augustine calls his readers to believe in is something quite radically different than what they may have previously understood God to be. Where the Romans and Greeks had seemed to believe in divinity as set apart and indifferent to the world, Augustine’s reading of the Bible made him see that God was rather the father of the prodigal son, who runs to meet his returning repentant child, heedless of his own dignity. „In this vision of religion, God has already accomplished everything we need to get to God. In an age where religion was still largely conceived transactionally, this idea actually is quite revolutionary. „God has already done everything for us. In return, we are called on to go deeper into God, into God’s love, deeper into being the creatures we were always meant to be. „Much of the time, Augustine thought, this God is literally too good for humans to believe. Yet God has graciously offered routes into believing through our participation in the church, the body of Christ—one of the gifts that God has given us to help us get to God. „We do this “going deeper” within the church by loving one another, loving the world, and working out works of compassion and charity. Thus for Augustine, this form of religion is as Where the Romans and Greeks had seemed to believe in divinity as set apart and indifferent to the world, Augustine’s reading of the Bible made him see that God was rather the father of the prodigal son, who runs to meet his returning repentant child, heedless of his own dignity. Lecture 23—The City of God as a Single Book

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

  Dean Stanley (Sermons and Essays on the Apost. Age, p. 249 sq., 3d ed.): "Above all John spoke of the union of the soul with God, but it was by no mere process of oriental contemplation, or mystic absorption; it was by that word which now for the first time took its proper place in the order of the world—by Love. It has been reserved for St. Paul to proclaim that the deepest principle in the heart of man was Faith; it was reserved for St. John to proclaim that the essential attribute of God is Love. It had been taught by the Old Testament that ’the beginning of wisdom was the fear of God;’ it remained to be taught by the last apostle of the New Testament that ’the end of wisdom was the love of God.’ It had been taught of old time by Jew and by heathen, by Greek philosophy and Eastern religion, that the Divinity was well pleased with the sacrifices, the speculations, the tortures of man; it was to St. John that it was left to teach in all its fulness that the one sign of God’s children is ’the love of the brethren.’ And as it is Love that pervades our whole conception of his teaching, so also it pervades our whole conception of his character. We see him—it surely is no unwarranted fancy—we see him declining with the declining century; every sense and faculty waxing feebler, but that one divinest faculty of all burning more and more brightly; we see it breathing through every look and gesture; the one animating principle of the atmosphere in which he lives and moves; earth and heaven, the past, the present, and the future alike echoing to him that dying strain of his latest words, ’We love Him because He loved us.’ And when at last he disappears from our view in the last pages of the sacred volume, ecclesiastical tradition still lingers in the close: and in that touching story, not the less impressive because so familiar to us, we see the aged apostle borne in the arms of his disciples into the Ephesian assembly, and there repeating over and over again the same saying, ’Little children, love one another;’ till, when asked why he said this and nothing else, he replied in those well known words, fit indeed to be the farewell speech of the Beloved Disciple, ’Because this is our Lord’s command and if you fulfil this, nothing else is needed.’ " § 42. Apostolic Labors of John. John in the Acts.

• From The City of God

  239 Lecture 11 Transcript—Sacrifice and Ritual (Book 10) the weight of divinity. He remained too proud to see how very much of the philosophical picture he himself carefully constructed through strenuous thought had in fact been realized in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. It was as if he had kept trying to chisel his way through a granite cliff with a toothpick, while nearby a giant tunnel loomed, untraversed. If only Porphyry and the Platonists had understood, Augustine thinks, they would have been able to see the world differently—not as a cage of flesh holding sparks of illuminated spirit down, but as luminous matter, itself glowing in the glory of God’s love. That is, they would have seen the whole world as sacramental, as a mystery, meaning more than its bare literality, having levels of significance far above that. The key sacrament, the one on which the whole sacramentality of Creation itself relies, is of course the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But that sacramental action on the part of God means that all creation in its manifold diverse ways of being speaks of that mystery too, if we only have eyes to see it. This is what we can call Augustine’s sacramental imagination, and he will ask his audience increasingly in coming books to see events and physical things in creation as themselves sacramental, partaking in divine significances, vehicles of God’s communication to the world. Now note: Augustine lived before the technical medieval language of sacrament appears—seven sacraments, that sort of thing—so he uses this term with a licentious enthusiasm that later thinkers would never allow, but which is not without for us a pedagogical point. The key here is that the world is not fundamentally to be disdained or anxiously manipulated, but instead gratefully admired and delighted in, in participation, as a sign of God’s love for humanity. But we can see this only when we understand that the question we must ask is, not how do we sacrifice to get to God, but how do we become the sacrifice that God is making us, that God is working within us to be and to do? How can we become, as Augustine puts it movingly at the end of this book, the sacrifice we already are? For us

• From The City of God

  234 Books That Matter: The City of God to the demons, Christ is a perfect mediator, we saw, between things human and divine. But Christ as a mediator, for Augustine, upends our expectations about what that mediation must be. So here, in Book 10, Augustine uses this debate to explore the nature of Jesus Christ as the true mediator, the one and perfect sacrifice, and the Christians’ great High Priest and inaugurator of Christian liturgy—that is, the Christians’ great teacher of worship, and the great exemplar of proper action in this world. Augustine’s God, preeminently visible in Christ but presented throughout the Scriptures, is not like the classical gods of Greece and Rome. As we saw in the last lecture, the best devotees of those gods—the Platonists—are too trapped by the social imagination of Ancient Rome, and so imagine their divinities inaccessible by direct appeal to lowlifes such as ourselves. That is to say, the pagan Greeks and Romans assumed, even demanded, that their gods remain marble, immobile, rigid, inflexible, unbending. They did not allow their gods to change or respond to prayers or sacrifice. They could not feel compassion. For union, the higher never condescends to stoop to the lower; it is rather up to the lower to convert and rise to the higher, and then become assimilated into the same immobile character as the higher principle. For them, motion or dynamism of any sort was a sign of weakness or imperfection. But if the real mediator is God in Christ, Christ makes the first move, for Augustine. Christ comes down to us, and becomes human without losing his divinity. And Christ is moved for us, if not fundamentally by us. Christ chooses to see, and Christ chooses to love, for the entire Triune God has chosen to see and love. Hence, Christ can mediate properly, because Christ has chosen to be both true human—created flesh—and true God—eternally unchanging and thus untroubled by any turbulence. This invisible God makes Godself visible in a way that viewers can bear—in the Law and the story of Israel, and then preeminently in the person of Jesus the Messiah, the Christ. And this very presence of

• From The City of God

  Chapter 1. --Of This Part of the Work, Wherein We Begin to Explain the Origin and End of the Two Cities. The city of God we speak of is the same to which testimony is borne by that Scripture, which excels all the writings of all nations by its divine authority, and has brought under its influence all kinds of minds, and this not by a casual intellectual movement, but obviously by an express providential arrangement. For there it is written, "Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. " [446]And in another psalm we read, "Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of His holiness, increasing the joy of the whole earth. " [447]And, a little after, in the same psalm, "As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God. God has established it for ever. "And in another, "There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of our God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved. " [448]From these and similar testimonies, all of which it were tedious to cite, we have learned that there is a city of God, and its Founder has inspired us with a love which makes us covet its citizenship. To this Founder of the holy city the citizens of the earthly city prefer their own gods, not knowing that He is the God of gods, not of false, i. e. , of impious and proud gods, who, being deprived of His unchangeable and freely communicated light, and so reduced to a kind of poverty-stricken power, eagerly grasp at their own private privileges, and seek divine honors from their deluded subjects; but of the pious and holy gods, who are better pleased to submit themselves to one, than to subject many to themselves, and who would rather worship God than be worshipped as God. But to the enemies of this city we have replied in the ten preceding books, according to our ability and the help afforded by our Lord and King. Now, recognizing what is expected of me, and not unmindful of my promise, and relying, too, on the same succor, I will endeavor to treat of the origin, and progress, and deserved destinies of the two cities (the earthly and the heavenly, to wit), which, as we said, are in this present world commingled, and as it were entangled together. And, first, I will explain how the foundations of these two cities were originally laid, in the difference that arose among the angels. [446] Ps. lxxxvii. 3. [447] Ps. xlviii. 1. [448] Ps. xlvi. 4.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 6. --Of the Character of the Human Will Which Makes the Affections of the Soul Right or Wrong. But the character of the human will is of moment; because, if it is wrong, these motions of the soul will be wrong, but if it is right, they will be not merely blameless, but even praiseworthy. For the will is in them all; yea, none of them is anything else than will. For what are desire and joy but a volition of consent to the things we wish? And what are fear and sadness but a volition of aversion from the things which we do not wish? But when consent takes the form of seeking to possess the things we wish, this is called desire; and when consent takes the form of enjoying the things we wish, this is called joy. In like manner, when we turn with aversion from that which we do not wish to happen, this volition is termed fear; and when we turn away from that which has happened against our will, this act of will is called sorrow. And generally in respect of all that we seek or shun, as a man's will is attracted or repelled, so it is changed and turned into these different affections. Wherefore the man who lives according to God, and not according to man, ought to be a lover of good, and therefore a hater of evil. And since no one is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is evil by vice, he who lives according to God ought to cherish towards evil men a perfect hatred, so that he shall neither hate the man because of his vice, nor love the vice because of the man, but hate the vice and love the man. For the vice being cursed, all that ought to be loved, and nothing that ought to be hated, will remain.