Pride As Defense

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 Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  I wrote the president of the factory and demanded he cease and desist or I’d have him thrown in jail for a hundred years. And by the way, I added, how would you like to work with us? I signed a contract with his factory in the summer of 1977, which ended our knockoff problem for the moment. More important, it gave us the capacity to shift production in a huge way, if need be. It also ended once and for all our dependence on Japan. THE PROBLEMS WERE never going to stop, I realized, but for the moment we had more momentum than problems. To build on this momentum we rolled out a new ad campaign with a sexy new slogan: “There is no finish line.” It was the idea of our new ad agency and its CEO, John Brown. He’d just opened his own shop in Seattle, and he was young, bright, and of course the opposite of an athlete. That was all we seemed to hire in those days. Besides Johnson and myself, Nike was a haven for the sedentary. Still, nonjock or not, Brown managed to dream up a campaign and a tagline that perfectly captured Nike’s philosophy. His ad showed a single runner on a lonely country road, surrounded by tall Douglas firs. Oregon, clearly. The copy read: “Beating the competition is relatively easy. Beating yourself is a never-ending commitment.” Everyone around me thought the ad was bold, fresh. It didn’t focus on the product, but on the spirit behind the product, which was something you never saw in the 1970s. People congratulated me on that ad as if we’d achieved something earth-shattering. I’d shrug. I wasn’t being modest. I still didn’t believe in the power of advertising. At all. A product, I thought, speaks for itself, or it doesn’t. In the end, it’s only quality that counts. I couldn’t imagine that any ad campaign would ever prove me wrong or change my mind. Our advertising people, of course, told me I was wrong, wrong, a thousand percent wrong. But again and again I’d ask them: Can you say definitively that people are buying Nikes because of your ad? Can you show it to me in black-and-white numbers? Silence. No, they’d say… we can’t say that definitively . So then it’s a little hard to get enthused, I’d say—isn’t it? Silence. I OFTEN WISHED I had more time to kick back and debate the niceties of advertising. Our semidaily crises were always bigger and more pressing than what slogan to print under a picture of our shoes. In the second half of 1977 the crisis was our debenture holders. They were suddenly clamoring for a way to cash in. By far the best way for them to do so would be a public offering, which, we tried to explain to them, was not an option. They didn’t want to hear that. I turned once more to Chuck Robinson.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  They stayed with Sadik and me for a few nights, then moved to a condominium on Park Avenue that a friend of my mother’s had offered them while she was away. That summer I had found a job clearing a construction site on the Upper West Side, so my mother and sister spent most of their days exploring the city on their own. When we met for dinner, they would give me a detailed report of their adventures: eating strawberries and cream at the Plaza, taking the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, visiting the Cézannes at the Met. I would eat in silence until they were finished and then begin a long discourse on the problems of the city and the politics of the dispossessed. I scolded Maya for spending one evening watching TV instead of reading the novels I’d bought for her. I instructed my mother on the various ways that foreign donors and international development organizations like the one she was working for bred dependence in the Third World. When the two of them withdrew to the kitchen, I would overhear Maya complaining to my mother. “Barry’s okay, isn’t he? I mean, I hope he doesn’t lose his cool and become one of those freaks you see on the streets around here.” One evening, while thumbing through The Village Voice, my mother’s eyes lit on an advertisement for a movie, Black Orpheus, that was showing downtown. My mother insisted that we go see it that night; she said that it was the first foreign film she had ever seen. “I was only sixteen then,” she told us as we entered the elevator. “I’d just been accepted to the University of Chicago—Gramps hadn’t told me yet that he wouldn’t let me go—and I was there for the summer, working as an au pair. It was the first time that I’d ever been really on my own. Gosh, I felt like such an adult. And when I saw this film, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.”

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

  He immediately gave himself, with the utmost zeal, to the duties of his high station, unweariedly active as prince, general, judge, orator, high-priest, correspondent, and author. He sought to unite the fame of an Alexander, a Marcus Aurelius, a Plato, and a Diogenes in himself. His only recreation was a change of labor. He would use at once his hand in writing, his ear in hearing, and his voice in speaking. He considered his whole time due to his empire and the culture of his own mind. The eighteen short months of his reign Dec. 361-June 363) comprehend the plans of a life-long administration and most of his literary works. He practised the strictest economy in the public affairs, banished all useless luxury from his court, and dismissed with one decree whole hosts of barbers, cup-bearers, cooks, masters of ceremonies, and other superfluous officers, with whom the palace swarmed, but surrounded himself instead with equally useless pagan mystics, sophists, jugglers, theurgists, soothsayers, babblers, and scoffers, who now streamed from all quarters to the court. In striking contrast with his predecessors, he maintained the simplicity of a philosopher and an ascetic in his manner of life, and gratified his pride and vanity with contempt of the pomp and pleasures of the imperial purple. He lived chiefly on vegetable diet, abstaining now from this food, now from that, according to the taste of the god or goddess to whom the day was consecrated. He wore common clothing, usually slept on the floor, let his beard and nails grow, and, like the strict anachorets of Egypt, neglected the laws of decency and cleanliness.65 This cynic eccentricity and vain ostentation certainly spoiled his reputation for simplicity and self-denial, and made him ridiculous. It evinced, also, not so much the boldness and wisdom of a reformer, as the pedantry and folly of a reactionist. In military and executive talent and personal bravery he was not inferior to Constantine; while in mind and literary culture he far excelled him, as well as in energy and moral self-control; and, doubtless to his own credit, he closed his public career at the age at which his uncle’s began; but he entirely lacked the clear, sound common sense of his great predecessor, and that practical statesmanship, which discerns the wants of the age, and acts according to them. He had more uncommon sense than common sense, and the latter is often even more important than the former, and indispensable to a good practical statesman. But his greatest fault as a ruler was his utterly false position towards the paramount question of his time: that of religion. This was the cause of that complete failure which made his reign as trackless as a meteor.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  The people of Kendu thought his manners strange. They would come to his house because he was generous with his food and always had something to eat. But among themselves, they would laugh because he had neither wives nor children. Perhaps Onyango heard this talk, for he soon decided that he needed a wife. His problem was, no woman could maintain his household the way he expected. He paid dowry on several girls, but whenever they were lazy or broke a dish, your grandfather would beat them severely. It was normal among the Luo for men to beat their wives if they misbehaved, but even among Luos Onyango’s attitude was considered harsh, and eventually the women he took for himself would flee to their fathers’ compounds. Your grandfather lost many cattle this way, for he would be too proud to ask for the return of his dowry. Finally, he found a wife who could live with him. Her name was Helima. It isn’t known how she felt toward your grandfather, but she was quiet and polite—and most important, she could maintain your grandfather’s high housekeeping standards. He built a hut for her in Kendu, where she spent most of her time. Sometimes he would bring her to Nairobi to stay in the house where he worked. After a few years had passed, it was discovered that Helima could not bear any children. Among the Luo, this was normally proper grounds for divorce—a man could send a barren wife back to his in-laws and ask that his dowry be returned. But your grandfather chose to keep Helima, and in that sense, he treated her well. Still, it must have been lonely for Helima, for your grandfather worked all the time and had no time for friends or entertainment. He did not drink with other men, and he did not smoke tobacco. His only pleasure was going to the dance halls in Nairobi once a month, for he liked to dance. But he also was not such a good dancer—he was rough, and would bump into people and step on their feet. Most people did not say anything about this because they knew Onyango and his temper. One night, though, a drunken man began to complain about Onyango’s clumsiness. The man became rude, and told your grandfather, “Onyango, you are already an older man. You have many cattle, and you have a wife, and yet you have no children. Tell me, is something the matter between your legs?”

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

  Apollinarianism, which sacrificed to the unity of the person the integrity of the natures, at least of the human nature, anticipated the Monophysite heresy, though in a peculiar way, and formed the precise counterpart to the Antiochian doctrine, which was developed about the same time, and somewhat later by Diodorus, bishop of Tarsus (died 394), and Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia (393–428), and which held the divine and human in Christ so rigidly apart as to make Christ, though not professedly, yet virtually a double person. From this school proceeded Nestorius, the head and martyr of the Christological heresy which bears his name. His doctrine differs from that of Theodore of Mopsuestia only in being less speculative and more practical, and still less solicitous for the unity of the person of Christ.1558 He was originally a monk, then presbyter in Antioch, and after 428 patriarch of Constantinople. In Constantinople a second Chrysostom was expected in him, and a restorer of the honor of his great predecessor against the detraction of his Alexandrian rival. He was an honest man, of great eloquence, monastic piety, and the spirit of a zealot for orthodoxy, but impetuous, vain, imprudent, and wanting in sound, practical judgment. In his inaugural sermon he addressed Theodosius II. with these words: "Give me, O emperor, the earth purified of heretics, and I will give thee heaven for it; help me to fight the heretics, and I will help thee to fight the Persians."1559 He immediately instituted violent measures against Arians, Novatians, Quartodecimanians, and Macedonians, and incited the emperor to enact more stringent laws against heretics. The Pelagians alone, with whose doctrine of free will (but not of original sin) he sympathized, he treated indulgently, receiving to himself Julian of Eclanum, Coelestius, and other banished leaders of that party, interceding for them in 429 with the emperor and with the pope Celestine, though, on account of the very unfavorable reports concerning Pelagianism which were spread by the layman Marius Mercator, then living in Constantinople, his intercessions were of no avail. By reason of this partial contact of the two, Pelagianism was condemned by the council of Ephesus together with Nestorianism. But now Nestorius himself fell out with the prevailing faith of the church in Constantinople. The occasion was his opposition to the certainly very bold and equivocal expression mother of God, which had been already sometimes applied to the virgin Mary by Origen, Alexander of Alexandria, Athanasius, Basil, and others, and which, after the Arian controversy, and with the growth of the worship of Mary, passed into the devotional language of the people.1560

• From Going Clear (2013)

  “Gee, sir, you kicked ass,” one of the men said. “It was a home run,” Rathbun assured him. “Really?” Miscavige asked doubtfully. “Jesus Christ, I was just there and I don’t know. The guy was pissing me off so much.” Koppel won an Emmy for that show. Miscavige took credit for it, saying, “ I got Ted the Emmy.” He even had a replica of an Emmy made and placed in the Officers Lounge at Gold Base. But he never went on television again. THE TIME STORY WAS a turning point in the church’s history. The embarrassment for Scientology celebrities undercut the church’s strategy of making the religion appear to be a spiritual refuge for the show-business elite. One of the chief appeals of the religion to prospective recruits was the perceived network that Scientology provided its members, especially in Hollywood, awarding them an advantage in a ruthlessly competitive industry. With the Time article, affiliation with the church became an embarrassing liability. Tom Cruise was one of the stars who appeared to be backing away from Scientology.2 He stopped moving up the Bridge. He and Nicole adopted two children, Isabella and Connor, and began spending more time in Sydney, Kidman’s hometown, where she could be close to her family. He hired a powerful publicist, Pat Kingsley, who was able to enforce rigid control over the content of the interviews the star granted. Although his affiliation with Scientology was generally known, there was no more fuel for the media mill. He seemed to be putting as much distance between himself and the church as possible. The church began to plot its counterattack. The Cult Awareness Network, besieged by more than fifty lawsuits brought by Scientologists, went bankrupt in 1996. An individual Scientologist purchased its name and assets at auction. Soon after that, the reorganized Cult Awareness Network sent out a brochure lauding the Church of Scientology for its efforts to “ increase happiness and improve conditions for oneself and others.” The church also began a $3 million campaign against Time , placing full-page ads every day in USA Today for twelve weeks, charging that the magazine had “supported” Adolf Hitler, for instance, by naming him the 1938 “Man of the Year” because of his dominance in European affairs. A lengthy supplement was placed in USA Today titled “The Story That Time Couldn’t Tell: Who Really Controls the News at Time —and Why,” in which the church claimed that Time was actually under the sway of the pharmaceutical industry—specifically, Eli Lilly and Company, the maker of Prozac. The church had charged that Prozac caused people to commit mass murder and suicide. The Time article was the drug company’s revenge, the church alleged.3 Rathbun directed the ferocious legal assault on Time and oversaw the team of private detectives probing into Behar’s private life.

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

  all else, the study of the Scriptures, and called upon them to imitate Jerome who took up Hebrew late in life. He sent them sermons, seven of which had been delivered in the Paraclete. He proposed that there should be a convent for monks close by the Paraclete. The monks and nuns were to help each other. An abbot was to stand at the head of both institutions. The nuns were to do the monks’ washing and cooking, milk the cows, feed the chickens and geese. In 1137 and again in 1139, we find Abaelard suddenly installed at St. Genevieve and enjoying, for a while, meteoric popularity. John of Salisbury was one of his pupils. How the change was brought about does not fully appear. But Abaelard was not destined to have peace. The final period of his restless career now opens. Bernard was at that time the most imposing religious personality of Europe, Abaelard was its keenest philosophical thinker. The one was the representative of churchmanship and church authority, the other of freedom of inquiry. A clash between these two personalities was at hand. It cannot be regarded as an historical misfortune that these two men met on the open field of controversy and on the floor of ecclesiastical synods. History is most true to herself when she represents men just as they were. She is a poor teacher, when she does not take opportunity to reveal their infirmities as well as their virtues. Abaelard was as much to blame for bringing on the conflict by his self-assertive manner as Bernard was to blame by unnecessarily trespassing upon Abaelard’s territory. William, abbot of St. Thierry, addressed a letter to Bernard and Geoffrey, bishop of Chalons, announcing that Abaelard was again teaching and writing doctrinal novelties. These were not matters of mean import, but concerned the doctrine of the Trinity, the person of Christ, the Holy Spirit, and God’s grace. They were even receiving favor in the curia at Rome. William adduced no less than thirteen errors.1364 The first open sign of antagonism was a letter written by Abaelard, brimming over with self-conceit. On a visit to Heloise at the Paraclete, Bernard had taken exception to the use of the phrase "supersubstantial bread" in the Lord’s Prayer, instead of "daily bread" as given by Luke. Abaelard heard of the objection from Heloise, and, as if eager to break a lance with Bernard, wrote to him, showing he was in error. He became sarcastic, pointing out that, at Clairvaux, novelties were being practised which were otherwise unknown to the Church. New hymns were sung and certain intercessory prayers left out as if the Cistercian monks did not stand in need of intercession also.1365 So far as we know, Bernard did not answer this letter. After some delay, he acted upon the request of William of Thierry.

• From My People (2022)

  But that was a decade ago, and don’t have my master’s yet, so I made myself very attractive to them.” Ben and I are the same age, and when he was sitting in at lunch counters in Savannah, I had just applied to the university. By the time I was admitted, it was 1961, and Ben, like me, would have been a sophomore. But he told me during my visit that he was encountering among black high school students in the state the same problem he had had—as late as the year we graduated: “I simply didn’t know the school existed, and neither do they.” Once they know, there is the problem of money. Even though the university is state supported, expenses for an on-campus student can be $2,000 a year or more. “It does cost a lot of money,” Ben said, “but there’s a lot in this institution that needs to be channeled into the black community. The black community pays taxes, and supports this school.” He added that 80 percent of the black students at the university receive either work-study or graduate assistantships or federal aid. “If you have the guts to come here in the first place, then you got it made,” he said. (That wasn’t necessarily so in my case, despite the rumor that the NAACP was paying me fifty dollars a day. If I had been in it for the money that would hardly have been enough, but the rumor was totally groundless. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund donated its talents to fight our legal battles—but its support ended there, as it should have. Carl Holman, my closest friend, now a vice president of the National Urban Coalition, who was then a professor at Clark College and the editor of the Atlanta Inquirer , managed each quarter through friends to wrangle some money from such groups as the Elks of Memphis, who paid the eighty-three dollars a quarter or thereabouts for my room in the dormitory. And sometimes I made money speaking, although most of those engagements were for church groups that paid with “Praise the Lord” and “God bless you.” It never occurred to me to apply for a job on campus, although I had worked at Wayne State University before I transferred. And I’m not sure that with all the other pressures at that time I would have been able to handle a job, too. Nor did I think of applying for any kind of loan or aid. Having had to force my way in, I guess I couldn’t imagine their doing anything to help me stay.) Admission requirements have stood in the way of black applicants, according to Ben Colebert. For starters, a combined score of 900 on the nationwide Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is required, in addition to a B-plus average. “The black school system just hasn’t been geared toward passing these tests,” he explained.

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

  Servetus was too vain and obstinate to take advice. In the beginning of 1531, he secured a publisher for his book on the "Errors of the Trinity," Conrad Koenig, who had shops at Basel and Strassburg, and who sent the manuscript to Secerius, a printer at Hagenau in Alsace. Servetus went to that place to read the proof. He also visited Bucer and Capito at Strassburg, who received him with courtesy and kindness and tried to convert him, but in vain. In July, 1531, the book appeared under the name of the author, and was furnished to the trade at Strassburg, Frankfort, and Basel, but nobody knew where and by whom it was published. Suspicion fell upon Basel. This book is a very original and, for so young a man, very remarkable treatise on the Trinity and Incarnation in opposition to the traditional and oecumenical faith. The style is crude and obscure, and not to be compared with Calvin’s, who at the same age and in his earliest writings showed himself a master of lucid, methodical, and convincing statement in elegant and forcible Latin. Servetus was familiar with the Bible, the ante-Nicene Fathers (Tertullian and Irenaeus), and scholastic theology, and teemed with new, but ill-digested ideas which he threw out like firebrands. He afterwards embodied his first work in his last, but in revised shape. The following is a summary of the Seven Books on the Trinity:— In the first book he proceeds from the historical Jesus of Nazareth, and proves, first, that this man is Jesus the Christ; secondly, that he is the Son of God; and thirdly, that he is God.1042 He begins with the humanity in opposition to those who begin with the Logos and, in his opinion, lose the true Christ. In this respect he anticipates the Socinian and modern humanitarian Christology, but not in a rationalistic sense; for he asserts a special indwelling of God in Christ (somewhat resembling Schleiermacher), and a deification of Christ after his exaltation (like the Socinians).1043 He rejects the identity of the Logos with the Son of God and the doctrine of the communication of attributes. He distinguishes between the Hebrew names of God: Jehovah means exclusively the one and eternal God; Elohim or El or Adonai are names of God and also of angels, prophets, and kings (John 10:34–36).1044 The prologue of John speaks of things that were, not of things that are. Everywhere else the Bible speaks of the man Christ. The Holy Spirit means, according to the Hebrew ruach and the Greek pneuma, wind or breath, and denotes in the Bible now God himself, now an angel, now the spirit of man, now a divine impulse.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  This Mrs. Cole could not well acquaint me with, in any expectation of my offering for service: for, sufficiently easy as I was in my circumstances, it must have been the temptation of an immense interest indeed, that could have induced me to embrace such a job, neither had I ever expressed, nor indeed, felt the least impulse or curiosity to know more of a taste, that promised so much more pain than pleasure to those that stood in no need of such violent goads: what then should move me to subscribe myself voluntarily to a party of pain, foreknowing it such? Why, to tell the plain truth, it was a sudden caprice, a gust of fancy for trying a new experiment, mixed with the vanity of approving my personal courage to Mrs. Cole, that determined me, at all risks, to propose myself to her and relieve her from any further look-out. Accordingly, I at once pleased and surprised her, with a frank and unreserved tender of my person to her and her friend’s absolute disposal on this occasion. My good temporal mother was, however, so kind as to use all the arguments she could imagine to dissuade me: but, as I found they only turned on a motive of tenderness to me, I persisted in my resolution, and thereby acquitted my offer of any suspicion of its not having been sincerely made, or out of compliment only. Acquiescing then thankfully in it, Mrs. Cole assured me “that bating the pain I should be put to, she had no scruple to engage me to this party, which she assured me I should be liberally paid for, and which, the secrecy of the transaction preserved safe from the ridicule that otherwise vulgarly attended it; that for her part, she considered pleasure, of one sort or other, as the universal port of destination, and every wind that blew thither a good one, provided it blew nobody any harm; that she rather compassionated, than blamed those unhappy persons, who are under a subjection they cannot shake off, to those arbitrary tastes that rule their appetites of pleasures with an unaccountable control: tastes too, as infinitely diversified, as superior to, and independent of all reasoning as the different relishes or palates of mankind in their viands, some delicate stomach nauseating plain meats, and finding no savour but in highseasoned, luxurious dishes, whilst others again pique themselves upon detesting them.” I stood now in no need of this preamble of encouragement, or justification: my word was given, and I was determined to fulfill my engagements. Accordingly the night was set, and I had all the necessary previous instructions how to act and conduct myself. The dining room was duly prepared and lighted up, and the young gentleman posted there in waiting, for my introduction to him.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  These political objectives were certainly uppermost in Bin Laden’s mind too in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, although he would also invoke the divine will. In the videotape released on October 7, 2001, he crowed: “Here is America struck by God in one of its vital organs, so that its greatest buildings are destroyed,”72 buildings that had been carefully selected as “America’s icons of military and economic power.”73 Five times Bin Laden applied the word kafir (“infidel”) to the United States, though each time it referred not to the religious beliefs of America but to its violation of Muslim sovereignty in Arabia and Palestine:74 on the same day, President George W. Bush announced Operation Enduring Freedom, a U.S.-led war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Like the First Crusade against Islam, this military offensive was couched in the language of liberty: “We defend not only our precious freedoms, but also the freedom of people everywhere.”75 He assured the people of Afghanistan that the United States had no quarrel with them, would strike only at military targets, and promised airdrops of food, medicine, and supplies. Also, just a week following the attacks, Bush had made clear that America’s quarrel was not with Islam: “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war.”76 Like Bin Laden, Bush, in this carefully secular presentation, also saw the world starkly divided into two camps, one good, the other evil: “In this conflict there is no neutral ground. If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers themselves.”77 Bush’s Manichean worldview reflected the thinking of the neoconservatives prominent in his administration, who had a semimystical belief that nothing must impede America’s unique historical mission in the twenty-first century. The “War on Terror” would be waged against any forces that threatened America’s global leadership. Indeed, neoconservatism has been described as “a faith-based system” because it required absolute fidelity to its doctrine, permitting no deviation from its beliefs.78 And so the politics of the secular nation was imbued with a quasi-religious fervor and conviction. The United States had a mission to promote the global free market, the One True Economy, everywhere. It was not a religious message but one that nevertheless resonated strongly as such with Bush’s base of 100 million American evangelical Christians, who still subscribed to the vision of America as a “city on a hill.”

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

  693–777. Dorner: Christologie, vol. ii. pp. 60–98. Hefele (R.C.): Conciliengesch., vol. ii. pp. 134:ff. H. H. Milman: History of Latin Christianity, vol. i. ch. iii. pp. 195–252. (Stanley, in his History of the Eastern Church, has seen fit to ignore the Nestorian, and the other Christological controversies—the most important in the history of the Greek church!) Comp. also W. Möller: Article Nestorius, in Herzog’s Theol. Encykl. vol. x. (1858) pp. 288–296, and the relevant sections in the works on Doctrine History. Apollinarianism, which sacrificed to the unity of the person the integrity of the natures, at least of the human nature, anticipated the Monophysite heresy, though in a peculiar way, and formed the precise counterpart to the Antiochian doctrine, which was developed about the same time, and somewhat later by Diodorus, bishop of Tarsus (died 394), and Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia (393–428), and which held the divine and human in Christ so rigidly apart as to make Christ, though not professedly, yet virtually a double person. From this school proceeded Nestorius, the head and martyr of the Christological heresy which bears his name. His doctrine differs from that of Theodore of Mopsuestia only in being less speculative and more practical, and still less solicitous for the unity of the person of Christ.1558 He was originally a monk, then presbyter in Antioch, and after 428 patriarch of Constantinople. In Constantinople a second Chrysostom was expected in him, and a restorer of the honor of his great predecessor against the detraction of his Alexandrian rival. He was an honest man, of great eloquence, monastic piety, and the spirit of a zealot for orthodoxy, but impetuous, vain, imprudent, and wanting in sound, practical judgment. In his inaugural sermon he addressed Theodosius II. with these words: "Give me, O emperor, the earth purified of heretics, and I will give thee heaven for it; help me to fight the heretics, and I will help thee to fight the Persians."1559 He immediately instituted violent measures against Arians, Novatians, Quartodecimanians, and Macedonians, and incited the emperor to enact more stringent laws against heretics. The Pelagians alone, with whose doctrine of free will (but not of original sin) he sympathized, he treated indulgently, receiving to himself Julian of Eclanum, Coelestius, and other banished leaders of that party, interceding for them in 429 with the emperor and with the pope Celestine, though, on account of the very unfavorable reports concerning Pelagianism which were spread by the layman Marius Mercator, then living in Constantinople, his intercessions were of no avail. By reason of this partial contact of the two, Pelagianism was condemned by the council of Ephesus together with Nestorianism. But now Nestorius himself fell out with the prevailing faith of the church in Constantinople.

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

  Pelagius1715 was a simple monk, born about the middle of the fourth century in Britain, the extremity of the then civilized world. He was a man of clear intellect, mild disposition, learned culture, and spotless character; even Augustine. with all his abhorrence of his doctrines, repeatedly speaks respectfully of the man.1716 He studied the Greek theology, especially that of the Antiochian school, and early showed great zeal for the improvement of himself and of the world. But his morality was not so much the rich, deep life of faith, as it was the external legalism, the ascetic self-discipline and self-righteousness of monkery. It was characteristic, that, even before the controversy, he took great offence at the well-known saying of Augustine: "Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt."1717 He could not conceive, that the power to obey the commandment must come from the same source as the commandment itself. Faith, with him, was hardly more than a theoretical belief; the main thing in religion was moral action, the keeping of the commandments of God by one’s own strength. This is also shown in the introductory remarks of his letter to Demetrias, a noble Roman nun, of the gens Anicia, in which he describes a model virgin as a proof of the excellency of human nature: "As often as I have to speak concerning moral improvement and the leading of a holy life, I am accustomed first to set forth the power and quality of human nature, and to show what it can accomplish.1718 For never are we able to enter upon the path of the virtues, unless hope, as companion, draws us to them. For every longing after anything dies within us, so soon as we despair of attaining that thing." In the year 409, Pelagius, already advanced in life, was in Rome, and composed a brief commentary on the Epistles of Paul. This commentary, which has been preserved among the works of Jerome, displays a clear and sober exegetical talent.1719 He labored quietly and peacefully for the improvement of the corrupt morals of Rome, and converted the advocate Coelestius, of distinguished, but otherwise unknown birth, to his monastic life, and to his views. It was from this man, younger, more skilful in argument, more ready for controversy, and more rigorously consistent than his teacher, that the controversy took its rise. Pelagius was the moral author, Coelestius the intellectual author, of the system represented by them.1720 They did not mean actually to found a new system, but believed themselves in accordance with Scripture and established doctrine. They were more concerned with the ethical side of Christianity than with the dogmatic; but their endeavor after moral perfection was based upon certain views of the natural power of the will, and these views proved to be in conflict with anthropological principles which had been developed in the African church for the previous ten years under the influence of Augustine.

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

  But in the Greek fathers he was well read, especially in Origen, Eusebius, Didymus, and Gregory Nazianzen; less in Irenaeus, Athanasius, Basil, and other doctrinal writers. The Hebrew he learned with great labor in his mature years; first from a converted but anonymous Jew, during his five years’ ascetic seclusion in the Syrian desert of Chalcis (374–379); afterwards in Bethlehem (about 385) from the Palestinian Rabbi Bar-Anina, who, through fear of the Jews, visited him by night.2098 This exposed him to the foolish rumor among bigoted opponents, that he preferred Judaism to Christianity, and betrayed Christ in preference to the new "Barabbas."2099 He afterwards, in translating the Old Testament, brought other Jewish scholars to his aid, who cost him dear. He also inspired several of his admiring female pupils, like St. Paula and her daughter Eustochium, with enthusiasm for the study of the sacred language of the old covenant, and brought them on so far that they could sing with him the Hebrew Psalms in praise of the Lord. He lamented the injurious influence of these studies on his style, since "the rattling sound of the Hebrew soiled all the elegance and beauty of Latin speech."2100 Yet, on the other hand, he was by the same means preserved from flying off into hollow and turgid ornamentations, from which his earlier writings, such as his letters to Heliodorus and Innocentius, are not altogether free. Though his knowledge of Hebrew was defective, it was much greater than that of Origen, Epiphanius, and Ephraem Syrus, the only other fathers besides himself who understood Hebrew at all; and it is the more noticeable, when we consider the want of grammatical and lexicographical helps and of the Masoretic punctuation.2101 Jerome, who unfortunately was not free from vanity, prided himself not a little upon his learning, and boasted against his opponent Rufinus, that he was "a philosopher, a rhetorician, a grammarian, a dialectician, a Hebrew, a Greek, a Latin, three-tongued," that is, master of the three principal languages of the then civilized world.2102 All these manifold and rare gifts and attainments made him an extremely influential and useful teacher of the church; for he brought them all into the service of an earnest and energetic, though monkishly eccentric piety. They gave him superior access to the sense of the Holy Scriptures, which continued to be his daily study to extreme old age, and stood far higher in his esteem than all the classics. His writings are imbued with Bible knowledge, and strewn with Bible quotations. But with all this he was not free from faults as glaring as his virtues are shining, which disturb our due esteem and admiration. He lacked depth of mind and character, delicate sense of truth, and firm, strong convictions. He allowed himself inconsistencies of every kind, especially in his treatment of Origen, and, through solicitude for his own reputation for orthodoxy, he was unjust to that great teacher, to whom he owed so much.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  His father, Ron Miscavige, a salesman at various times of cookware, china, insurance, and cosmetics, was the first in the family to be drawn to the work of Hubbard. Frustrated with the ineffective treatment his son was getting for his asthma, Ron took David to a Dianetics counselor. “ I experienced a miracle,” David later declared, “and as a result I decided to devote my life to the religion.” But in fact asthma continued to afflict him, and his disease was at the center of the Miscavige family drama. Soon Ron and his wife, Loretta, and their four children were getting auditing at the Scientology mission in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Ronnie Junior was the oldest of the children, followed by the twins, David and Denise, and the youngest, Lori. In 1972, the family moved to England in order to take advanced courses at the church’s worldwide headquarters at Saint Hill. At the age of twelve, David became one of the youngest auditors in the history of the church—“ the Wonder Kid,” he was called. The following year, in June, Ron and Loretta had to return to the United States for a couple of weeks. They needed someone to take care of David while they and the other children were gone. There was another American studying at Saint Hill, Ervin Scott, whose wife was also afflicted with asthma. His memory is that he agreed to let the boy stay with him. He recalls that in the first encounter David’s parents, along with his twin sister, met with him before they left. Scott immediately liked the family. The father was “ wonderful and bright,” the mother was “very beautiful, with high affinity,” and the daughter was “the cutest thing.” David, however, sat at the end of the couch, unsmiling, with his arms crossed. The family wanted to make sure that Scott knew what to do in case of an intense asthma attack. “They said, ‘We have to warn you about Dave,’ ” Scott recalled. “ ‘David has episodes, very unusual episodes.’ ” The parents explained that Dave became extremely angry when he was suffering an asthma seizure. “Then they said, starting with the husband, ‘When these episodes occur, do not touch him! ’ The mother reiterated, ‘Yes, please don’t touch him!’ I said, ‘What happens?’ They said, ‘David gets very, very violent, and he beats the hell out of you if you touch him.’ And the sister says, ‘Oh my God, he does beat you, really hard!’ ” Again and again, the family members emphasized that David had beaten them during an attack. Scott glanced at David, who, he recalls, nodded in agreement. He seemed almost smug, Scott remembers thinking, “like he was arrogantly proud of kicking their ass.” Scott was puzzled. He had never heard of asthma making a person violent. In his experience, a person in the grip of such an attack was frozen with fear. He said he would heed the warning, however.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  By that time the battle over the Black Studies Department had started at John Jay. And again I saw the use and abuse of women, of Black people, saw how Black studies was being used by the university in a really cynical fashion. A year later, I returned to the English Department. I had made a number of enemies. One of the attempts to discredit me among Black students was to say I was a lesbian. Now by this time I would have considered myself uncloseted, but I had never discussed my own poetry at John Jay, nor my sexuality. I knew, as I had always known, that the only way you can head people off from using who you are against you is to be honest and open first, to talk about yourself before they talk about you. It wasn’t even courage. Speaking up was a protective mechanism for myself — like publishing “Love Poem” in Ms. magazine in 1971 and bringing it in and putting it up on the wall of the English Department. Adrienne: I remember hearing you read “Love Poem” on the Upper West Side, a coffeehouse at 72nd Street. It was the first time I’d heard you read it. And I think it was about that time, the early seventies. You read it. It was incredible. Like defiance. It was glorious. Audre: That’s how I was feeling, back against the wall, because as bad as it is now, the idea of open lesbianism in the Black community was — I mean, we’ve moved miles in a very short time — totally horrible. My publisher called and literally said he didn’t understand the words of “Love Poem.” He said, “Now what is this all about? Are you supposed to be a man?” And he was a poet! And I said, “No, I’m a loving woman.” Adrienne: Well, don’t tell me that your publisher had never heard of lesbians. Audre: I’m sure he had, but the idea that I’d write a poem … Adrienne: … That one of his poets in the Broadside Series … Audre: That’s right. And he was a sensitive man. He was a poet. Adrienne: But he did print your work. Audre: Yes, he did. But he didn’t print that poem, the first time around. “Love Poem” was supposed to have been in From a Land Where Other People Live. Adrienne: And it wasn’t published in that book? You took it out?

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  I knew, as I had always known, that the only way you can head people off from using who you are against you is to be honest and open first, to talk about yourself before they talk about you. It wasn’t even courage. Speaking up was a protective mechanism for myself — like publishing “Love Poem” in Ms. magazine in 1971 and bringing it in and putting it up on the wall of the English Department. Adrienne: I remember hearing you read “Love Poem” on the Upper West Side, a coffeehouse at 72nd Street. It was the first time I’d heard you read it. And I think it was about that time, the early seventies. You read it. It was incredible. Like defiance. It was glorious. Audre: That’s how I was feeling, back against the wall, because as bad as it is now, the idea of open lesbianism in the Black community was — I mean, we’ve moved miles in a very short time — totally horrible. My publisher called and literally said he didn’t understand the words of “Love Poem.” He said, “Now what is this all about? Are you supposed to be a man?” And he was a poet! And I said, “No, I’m a loving woman.” Adrienne: Well, don’t tell me that your publisher had never heard of lesbians. Audre: I’m sure he had, but the idea that I’d write a poem ... Adrienne: ... That one of his poets in the Broadside Series ... Audre: That’s right. And he was a sensitive man. He was a poet. Adrienne: But he did print your work. Audre: Yes, he did. But he didn’t print that poem, the first time around. “Love Poem” was supposed to have been in From a Land Where Other People Live. Adrienne: And it wasn’t published in that book? You took it out? Audre: Yes. But when you heard me read “Love Poem,” I had already made up my mind that I wasn’t going to be worrying any more over who knows and who doesn’t know that I have always loved women. One thing has always kept me going — and it’s not really courage or bravery, unless that’s what courage or bravery is made of — is a sense that there are so many ways in which I’m vulnerable and cannot help but be vulnerable, I’m not going to be more vulnerable by putting weapons of silence in my enemies’ hands. Being an open lesbian in the Black community is not easy, although being closeted is even harder.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  And I think it was about that time, the early seventies. You read it. It was incredible. Like defiance. It was glorious. Audre: That’s how I was feeling, back against the wall, because as bad as it is now, the idea of open lesbianism in the Black community was — I mean, we’ve moved miles in a very short time — totally horrible. My publisher called and literally said he didn’t understand the words of “Love Poem.” He said, “Now what is this all about? Are you supposed to be a man?” And he was a poet! And I said, “No, I’m a loving woman. ” Adrienne: Well, don’t tell me that your publisher had never heard of lesbians. Audre: I’m sure he had, but the idea that I’d write a poem … Adrienne: … That one of his poets in the Broadside Series … Audre: That’s right. And he was a sensitive man. He was a poet. Adrienne: But he did print your work. Audre: Yes, he did. But he didn’t print that poem, the first time around. “Love Poem” was supposed to have been in From a Land Where Other People Live. Adrienne: And it wasn’t published in that book? You took it out? Audre: Yes. But when you heard me read “Love Poem,” I had already made up my mind that I wasn’t going to be worrying any more over who knows and who doesn’t know that I have always loved women. One thing has always kept me going — and it’s not really courage or bravery, unless that’s what courage or bravery is made of — is a sense that there are so many ways in which I’m vulnerable and cannot help but be vulnerable, I’m not going to be more vulnerable by putting weapons of silence in my enemies’ hands. Being an open lesbian in the Black community is not easy, although being closeted is even harder. When a people share a common oppression, certain kinds of skills and joint defenses are developed. And if you survive you survive because those skills and defenses have worked. When you come into conflict over other existing differences, there is a vulnerability to each other which is desperate and very deep. And that is what happens between Black men and women because we have certain weapons we have perfected together that white women and men have not shared. I said this to someone, and she said, very rightly, the same thing exists within the Jewish community between Jewish men and Jewish women.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  The judge in the Armstrong suit, where this document was presented as evidence, offered his own amateur diagnosis of Hubbard’s personality in a crushing decision against the church: The organization is clearly schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder LRH. The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background, and achievements. The writings and documents in evidence additionally reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power, and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile. At the same time it appears that he is charismatic and highly capable of motivating, organizing, controlling, manipulating, and inspiring his adherents.... Obviously, he is and has been a very complex person, and that complexity is further reflected in his alter ego, the Church of Scientology. IN 1948, ten years after his first attempt to establish himself as a screenwriter, Hubbard had returned to Hollywood, setting up shop as a freelance guru. “I went right down in the middle of Hollywood, I rented an office, got a hold of a nurse, wrapped a towel around my head and became a swami,” Hubbard later said. “I used to sit in my penthouse on Sunset Boulevard and write stories for New York and then go to my office in the studio and have my secretary tell everybody I was in conference while I caught up on my sleep,” he recalled on another occasion. He painted a far different picture in a letter to the Veterans Administration, which was demanding reimbursement for an overpayment: “I cannot imagine how to repay this $51.00 as I am nearly penniless and have but $28.50 to last me for nearly a month to come,” he writes. “My expenditures consist of $27 a month trailer rent and $80 a month food for my wife and self which includes gas, cigarettes and all incidentals. I am very much in debt and have not been able to get a job.” Instead of repaying the VA, he boldly asks for a loan. In Hollywood, Hubbard began perfecting techniques that he first developed in the naval hospital and that later became Dianetics. He boasts to Hays, “Been amusing myself making a monkey out of Freud. I always knew he was nutty but didn’t have a firm case.” He adds that he has been conducting research on inferiority complexes: “Nightly had people writhing in my Hollywood office, sending guys out twice as tall as superman.” For the first time, he floats the idea of a book, which he tentatively titles An Introduction to Traumatic Psychology. He thinks it will require about six weeks to write. “I got to revolutionize this here field because nobody in it, so far as I can tell, knows his anatomy from a gopher hole.” Hubbard was casting around for a new direction in his life.

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

  III. Occasional writings, i.e., upon current questions and in answer to questions. (1) The oblation of boys,1251 the famous treatise in which Raban argued against the position the Mainz Council of 829 had taken in allowing Gottschalk to leave his order. Gottschalk produced two arguments, the first that it was not right to compel a person to remain a monk just because his parents had in his infancy, or immature youth put him in a monastery. The second was that the oblation of a minor must be established by a properly qualified witness, and that in his case only Saxons could give such testimony, since, according to Saxon law, it was illegal to deprive a Saxon of his liberty on the testimony of a non-Saxon. Raban tries to refute him upon both points. He shows that both the Scriptures and the Fathers by precept and example allow of the consecration of children, and in relation to the second point he rejoins: As if the service of Christ deprived a man of his liberty and nobility!"1252 But the real objection to Gottschalk’s second argument was the latter’s assertion that Frankish testimony could not be received. This roused Raban’s patriotism and incited his eloquence. "Who does not know," he says, "that the Franks were Christians long before the Saxons? Yet the latter, contrary to all human and divine law, arrogate to themselves the right to reject Frankish testimony."1253 Having thus answered Gottschalk, he proves by the Bible his third argument, that a vow to God must not be broken. His final point is that monasticism is a divine institution. In this treatise he does not name Gottschalk, but the reference is unmistakeable. His whole conduct towards the unfortunate Gottschalk was intolerant. (2) The reverence of children to their parents, and of subjects to their king.1254 This was addressed to Louis the Pious after his deposition and imprisonment in the year 833. By Biblical quotations he shows that God has commanded children to honor their parents and subjects their kings, and has put his curse upon those who do not. Then coming directly to the point he makes the application to the existing circumstances, and calls the sons of Louis to obedience. He defends Louis against the charge of homicide in executing Bernard; and finally addressing the emperor he comforts him in his sorrow and counsels him to exercise clemency when he is restored to power. The whole treatise does great credit to Raban’s head and heart. (3) On the degrees of relationship within which marriage is permissible.1255