Pride

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 A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  See Butt. p. 107. The whole sentence of v. 9 marks the com- plete victory of the apostle on this memorable occasion, the significance of which lies not in that the apostles approved him, which of itself might signify dependence on them instead of the independence on which he has been insisting ever since his strong affirmation of it in iu» 12, but in that his view prevailed as against the opposition of the legalists and the timid com- promise which the apostles themselves at first wished to follow. Was the division of the field here described territorial or racial? Was it understood that Paul and Barnabas were to go to Gentile lands, and, though having it as their distinctive aim to reach the Gentiles, preach to all whom they found, while the other apostles took as their territory the Jewish home lands? Or were the Gentiles in any and every land or city assigned to Paul and Barnabas and the Jews in the same land and city to Peter, James, and John? The use of the terms %&vy} and irepiro^^ which designate the people rather than the territory, seems at first sight to indicate a personal, or rather racial, division. And no doubt it was this in a sense. The basis on which it rested was a difference between Jews and Gentiles as peoples, not between the lands in which they lived. Unquestionably, too, the mission of Paul and Barnabas was chiefly a mission to and for the Gentiles, and that of the others to and for the Jews. Yet on the other hand it must be observed that Paul has used not a simple dative or Trpcfe with the accusa- tive, but cfe, and that, despite some apparent or even a few real exceptions to the general rule, the distinction between these constructions severally, whether we assume here an omitted $\8wfj&V) €ya<y7€Xeerfifyu€$a? or /cr/pucrcntf/w, is with a good degree of consistency maintained throughout N, T. The dative after verbs such as €vajjv and /crjpvcr* (the rare cases after verbs of motion need not come into account here) is a dative of in- direct object denoting the persons addressed. Trpo? with words denoting persons individually or collectively denotes personal approach or address; ek with names of places means "into" or "to*'; with personal designations "among" (i. e., to and among), never being used with singular personal nouns (save 98 GAlATIAlSrS

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  49 This is an evidential fact. Cf. Pliny, Ep. 10.96; Tacitus, Ann. 15.44; Suetonius, Claud. 25.4 (Chrestus); Josephus, Ant. 18.63 [whatever the original was]; 20.200. Paul without Judaism29 29 the thought that they are suffering, from their townsfolk, what earlier Christ-followers including himself faced from their compatriots: “the Judaeans, who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all humanity, hindering us from speaking to the nations that they might be saved” (2:14–16). This passage vividly depicts a rupture between Christ-followers and their contemporaries, whether Judaean or Greek, who reject the alleged revelation. Scholars of a previous generation, certain that the condign punishment of Jews for rejecting Christ (2:16) must reflect post-70 conditions, declared at least this part of the passage a post-Pauline interpolation. That option has now fallen out of favor, for good reason. 50 Nowadays, the prevailing PWJ momentum in scholarship leads to the assumption that the passage reflects internal Jewish conflict. 51 But that is not what it obviously says. If we read only what Paul writes, without resorting to Romans or other material unavailable to his audience in Thessalonica, the point seems clear: all heaven-bound Christ-followers will face “persecution” from the champions of ethnos-custom, Judaean and Greek or Thessalonian. The spectrum of ways in which Judaean Christ-followers had reacted to this pressure is another matter, irrelevant to Paul’s points to the Thessalonians and not explored here. But he will later charge that some of his Judaean Christ-following opponents, based in Jerusalem, caved in to persecution from other Judaeans, and that this explains their hostility to his mission among non-Judaeans (Gal 6:12). He, by contrast, uses “new creation” language to stress the radical distinction between Christ-following and maintaining any such old commitments: the old has passed away (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15). As far as his surviving letters permit us to judge, Paul remained devoted to The Announcement for the rest of his life. At the end of his undisputed corpus, at least, he still feels the acute need to defend The Announcement (Rom 1:15–16), for which God has uniquely chosen him (1:1). He has by now fully proclaimed The Announcement in the eastern Roman Empire, he says, and so wants to proceed to “the remainder” of the nations, in the west (Rom 15:17–28; 1:13). The Parthian world and points farther east do not offer the same attraction. If Paul had been free to continue touring The Announcement throughout the Roman Empire, without interference or challenge, perhaps any subsequent letters would have resembled 1 Thessalonians: he gathers a following, leaves town, and sends 50 Birger A. Pearson, “1 Thessalonians 2:13–16: A Deutero-Pauline Interpolation,” HTR 64 (1971): 79–94.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  He sat down amid great applause, in which I joined most heartily. So on that day I was admitted to practice law as a full-fledged citizen. Unluckily for me, when I asked the Clerk of the Court for my full papers, he gave me the certificate of my admission to practice law in Lawrence, saying that as this could only be given to a citizen, it in itself was sufficient. Forty odd years later the government of Woodrow Wilson refused to accept this plain proof of my citizenship and thus put me to much trouble by forcing me to get naturalized again! But at the moment in Lawrence I was all cock-a-hoop and forthwith took a room on the same first floor where Barker & Sommerfeld had their offices, and put out my shingle. I have told this story of my examination at great length because I think it shows as in a glass the amenities and deep kindness of the American character. A couple of days later I was again in Philadelphia. Towards the end of this year 1875, I believe, or the beginning of 1876, Smith drew my attention to an announcement that Walt Whitman, the poet, was going to speak in Philadelphia on Thomas Paine, the notorious infidel, who according to Washington had done more to secure the independence of the United States than any other man. Smith determined to go to the meeting and if Whitman could rehabilitate Paine against the venomous attacks of Christian clergymen who had asserted without contradiction that Paine was a notorious drunkard and of the loosest character, he would induce Forney to let him write an exhaustive and forceful defence of Paine in “The Press.” I felt pretty sure that such an article would never appear but I would not pour cold water on Smith’s enthusiasm. The day came, one of those villainous days common enough in Philadelphia in every winter: the temperature was about zero with snow falling whenever the driving wind permitted. In the afternoon Smith finally determined that he must not risk it and asked me to go in his stead. I consented willingly and he spent some hours in reading to me the best of Whitman’s poetry, laying especial stress, I remember, on “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed.” He assured me again and again that Whitman and Poe were the two greatest poets these States had ever produced and he hoped I would be very nice to the great man. Nothing could be more depressing than the aspect of the Hall that night: ill-lit and half-heated, with perhaps thirty persons scattered about in a space that would have accommodated a thousand. Such was the reception America accorded to one of its greatest spirits, though that view of the matter did not strike me for many a year.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  When we teach children to repress their emotional talk and display, it is not that they may feel more—quite the reverse. It is that they may think more; for, to a certain extent, whatever currents are diverted from the regions below, must swell the activity of the thought-tracts of the brain. In apoplexies and other brain injuries we get the opposite condition—an obstruction, namely, to the passage of currents among the thought-tracts, and with this an increased tendency of objects to start downward currents into the organs of the body. The consequence is tears, laughter, and temper-fits, on the most insignificant provocation, accompanying a proportional feebleness in logical thought and the power of volitional attention and decision,—just the sort of thing from which we try to wean our child. It is true that we say of certain persons that "they would feel more if they expressed less." And in another class of persons the explosive energy with which passion manifests itself on critical occasions seems correlated with the way in which they bottle it up during the intervals. But these are only eccentric types of character, and within each type the law of the last paragraph prevails. The sentimentalist is so constructed that 'gushing' is his or her normal mode of expression. Putting a stopper on the 'gush' will only to a limited extent cause more 'real' activities to take its place; in the main it will simply produce listlessness. On the other hand, the ponderous and bilious 'slumbering volcano,' let him repress the expression of his passions as he will, will find them expire if they get no vent at all; whilst if the rare occasions multiply which he deems worthy of their outbreak, he will find them grow in intensity as life proceeds. On the whole, I cannot see that this third objection carries any weight. If our hypothesis is true, it makes us realize more deeply than ever how much our mental life is knit up with our corporeal frame, in the strictest sense of the term. Rapture, love, ambition, indignation, and pride, considered as feelings, are fruits of the same soil with the grossest bodily sensations of pleasure and of pain. But the reader will remember that we agreed at the outset to affirm this only of what we then called the 'coarser' emotions, and that those inward states of emotional sensibility which appeared devoid at first sight of bodily results should be left out of our account. We must now say a word or two about these latter feelings, the 'subtler' emotions, as we then agreed to call them. THE SUBTLER EMOTIONS.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  "Whether within a house or in the open air, whether walking or standing still, I can tell, although quite blind, when I am opposite an object, and can perceive whether it be tall or short, slender or bulky. I can also detect whether it be a solitary object or a continuous fence; whether it be a close fence or composed of open rails ; and often whether it be a wooden fence, a brick or stone wall, or a quick-set hedge. I cannot usually perceive objects if much lower than my shoulder, but sometimes very low objects can be detected. This may depend on the nature of the objects, or on some abnormal state of the atmosphere. The currents of air can have nothing to do with this power, as the state of the wind does not directly affect it; the sense of hearing has nothing to do with it, as when snow lies thickly on the ground objects are more distinct, although the footfall cannot be heard. I seem to perceive objects through the skin of my face, and to have the impressions immediately transmitted to the brain. The only part of my body possessing this power is my face; this I have ascertained by suitable experiments. Stopping my ears does not interfere with it, but covering my face with a thick veil destroys it altogether. None of the five senses have anything to do with the existence of this power, and the circumstances above named induce me to call this unrecognized sense by the name of 'facial perception.'. . . When passing along a street I can distinguish shops from private houses, and even point out the doors and windows, etc., and this whether the doors be shut or open. When a window consists of one entire sheet of glass, it is more difficult to discover than one composed of a number of small panes. From this it would appear that glass is a bad conductor of sensation, or at any rate of the sensation specially connected with this sense. When objects below the face are perceived, the sensation seems to come in an oblique line from the object to the upper part of the face. While walking with a friend in Forest Lane, Stratford, I said, pointing to a fence which separated the road from a Field, 'Those rails are not quite as high as my shoulder.' He looked at them, and said they were higher. We, however, measured, and found them about, three inches lower than my shoulder. At the time of making this observation I was about four feet from the rails. Certainly in this instance facial perception was more accurate than sight. When the lower part of a. fence is brick-work, and the upper part rails, the fact can be detected, and the line where the two meet easily perceived. Irregularities in height, and projections and indentations in walls, can also be discovered."

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  Commercial SexMost people think of prostitution—the exchange of sex for money—when they think of commercial sex. Yet commercial sex can include any form of sexual expression or entertainment that you pay to enjoy—from the purchase of erotic books, magazines, DVDs, and videos to the dollar you slip into the lacy thong of a dancer at a strip club. Prostitution is illegal in most of the United States and many other countries. Generally, “prostitution” is defined as exchanging sex for money; and usually “sex” is defined as involving some form of direct genital contact. So, in many places where prostitution is illegal, it may be perfectly permissible to charge clients for private sessions with a dominatrix or to host erotic performances and sex parties. Of course, local laws, regulations, and enforcement practices vary widely. We usually don’t think of women as consumers of commercial sex. Yet any dyke who has attended an all-women strip show, purchased a copy of On Our Backs or Best Lesbian Erotica, rented a lesbian sex video or DVD, called a phone sex line, logged onto a cybersex site, or bought a ticket to an explicitly erotic performance has paid for sexual entertainment. Of course, it’s an open secret that many lesbian, bisexual, and queer women work in the sex industry. The ubiquitous girl-girl sex scenes found in porn videos marketed to heterosexual men are often performed by bisexual or lesbian women passing as heterosexual women pretending to be lesbians. Lesbians and bisexual women who work in the sex industry are often delighted to find women in their audiences and among their clientele. Other lesbian, bisexual, and queer women—whether paid or not—strip for the pleasure of seducing a room full of women. I frequently work as a dyke stripper at a local dyke cabaret night. The first time I stripped I had forgotten that folks would be tucking money into my underwear. I’d never even seen a stripper before—and here I was doing a favor for a friend. The audience was so supportive! I felt so sexy! Folks were whispering dirty things in my ears as they tucked bills into my G-string. I felt like the sex goddess of the universe. I’ve never stripped for men, and I don’t think I want to. But for women it’s so sexy! Unless you frequent lesbian strip shows or sex parties, you never may have observed other lesbians having sex—live and in the flesh. Lesbian-produced videos, DVDs, and magazines offer the opportunity to see images of real dykes having real sex. You can’t pop a low-budget, lesbian-made video into the VCR and miss the fact that these are real lesbians having real sex for the pleasure of putting their lust on exhibition—something women just aren’t supposed to do.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  With what tender admiration do we con over our own little deed of benevolence! our own frailties and misdemeanors, how ready we are to acquit ourselves for them, when we notice them at all, on the ground of 'extenuating circumstances'! How much more really comic are our own jokes than those of others, which, unlike ours, will not bear being repeated ten or twelve times over! How eloquent, striking, powerful, our own speeches are! How appropriate our own address! In short, how much more intelligent, soulful, better, is everything about us than in anyone else. The sad chapter of artists' and authors' conceit and vanity belongs here. "The prevalence of this obvious preference which we feel for everything of our own is indeed striking. Does it not look as if our dear Ego must first lend its color and flavor to anything in order to make it please us? . . . Is it not the simplest explanation for all these phenomena, so consistent among themselves, to suppose that the Ego, the self, which forms the origin and centre of our thinking life, is at the same time the original and central object of our life of feeling, and the ground both of whatever special ideas and of whatever special feelings ensue?" Herr Horwicz goes on to refer to what we have already noticed, that various things which disgust us in others do not disgust us at all in ourselves. "To most of us even the bodily warmth of another, for example the chair warm from another's sitting, is felt unpleasantly, whereas there is nothing disagreeable in the warmth of the chair in which we have been sitting ourselves." After some further remarks, he replies to these facts and reasonings as follows: "We may with confidence affirm that our own possessions in most cases please us better [not because they are ours], but simply because we know them better, 'realize' them more intimately, feel them more deeply. We learn to appreciate what is ours in all its details and shadings, whilst the goods of others appear to us in coarse outlines and rude averages. Here are some examples: A piece of music which one plays one's self is heard and understood better than when it is played by another. We get more exactly all the details, penetrate more deeply into the musical thought. We may meanwhile perceive perfectly well that the other person is the better performer, and yet nevertheless—at times get more enjoyment from our own playing because it brings the melody and harmony so much nearer home to us.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Such a principle cannot then be the principle of his bodily selfishness any more than it is the principle of any other tendency he may show. So much for the bodily self-love. But my social self-love, my interest in the images other men have framed of me, is also an interest in a set of objects external to my thought. These thoughts in other men's minds are out of my mind and 'ejective' to me. They come and go, and grow and dwindle, and I am puffed up with pride, or blush with shame, at the result, just as at my success or failure in the pursuit of a material thing. So that here again, just as in the former case, the pure principle seems out of the game as an object of regard, and present only as the general form or condition under which the regard and the thinking go on in me at all. But, it will immediately be objected, this is giving a mutilated account of the facts. Those images of me in the minds of other men are, it is true, things outside of me, whose changes I perceive just as I perceive any other outward change. But the pride and shame which I feel are not concerned merely with those changes. I feel as if something else had changed too, when I perceived my image in your mind to have changed for the worse, something in me to which that image belongs, and which a moment ago I felt inside of me, big and strong and lusty, but now weak, contracted, and collapsed. Is not this latter change the change I feel the shame about? Is not the condition of this thing inside of me the proper object of my egoistic concern, of my self-regard? And is it not, after all, my pure Ego, my bare numerical principle of distinction from other men, and no empirical part of me at all? No, it is no such pure principle, it is simply my total empirical selfhood again, my historic Me, a collection of objective facts, to which the depreciated image in your mind 'belongs.' In what capacity is it that I claim and demand a respectful greeting from you instead of this expression of disdain? It is not as being a bare I that I claim it; it is as being an I who has always been treated with respect, who belongs to a certain family and 'set,' who has certain powers, possessions, and public functions, sensibilities, duties, and purposes, and merits and deserts.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  THE FORMING OF COMMUNITY For the past fifteen years I have been involved, with many different colleagues from the United States and other countries, in what I have come to think of as the building of community. We have worked with small groups, then with larger groups of fifty to two hundred., and occasionally with very large groups of six hundred to eight hundred. We have taken real personal risks. We have been changed by our learnings. We have made many mistakes. We have often been deeply puzzled by the process in which we have become involved. We have tried out different formulations of what we have observed and experienced but we feel very tentative about coming to any conclusions. Yet one central element stands out. We have, at some fundamental level, become more effective in facilitating the formation of temporary communities. In these communities, most of the members feel both a keen sense of their own power and a sense of close and respectful union with all of the other members. The ongoing process includes increasingly open interpersonal communication, a growing sense of unity, and a collective harmonious psyche, almost spiritual in nature. In these groups we have come to focus our efforts on providing a climate in which the participant can make his or her own choices, can participate equally with others in planning or carrying out activities, can become more aware of personal strengths, can become increasingly autonomous and creative as the architect of his or her own life. Because of this total focus on empowering the individual, we have come to think of our way as a person-centered approach. The Context I would point out that this philosophical approach, the foundation stone of what I shall be describing, is not the only possible basis for forming communities. Communities began in the prehistoric past, when our ancient ancestors banded together for the common purpose of hunting, or later for agriculture. The communities of the American Indians have patterns based in philosophy and ritual from which we could profit today. The earliest communities in civilization formed around rivers or harbors, whose commerce bound the citizens together. In the United States, idealistic communities formed around charismatic leaders or religious ideologies. One has only to think of the Amish to realize that some

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

  Then, turning with astonishing energy from one enemy to the other, he appeared before the Little Council on the 2d of September to protest most earnestly against their protection of Berthelier, who intended to present himself on the following day as a guest at the Lord’s table, and by the strength of the civil power to force Calvin to give him the tokens of the body and blood of Christ. He declared before the Council that he would rather die than act against his conscience. The Council did not yield, but resolved secretly to advise Berthelier to abstain from receiving the sacrament for the present. Calvin, ignorant of this secret advice, and resolved to conquer or to die, thundered from the pulpit of St. Peter on the 3d of September his determination to refuse, at the risk of his life, the sacred elements to an excommunicated person. Berthelier did not dare to approach the table. Calvin had achieved a moral victory over the Council.1183 In the mean time Servetus had, within the space of twenty-four hours, prepared a written defence, as directed by the Council, against the thirty-eight articles of Calvin. It was both apologetic and boldly aggressive, clear, keen, violent, and bitter. He contemptuously repelled Calvin’s interference in the trial, and charged him with presumption in framing articles of faith after the fashion of the doctors of the Sorbonne, without Scripture proof.1184 He affirmed that he either misunderstood him or craftily perverted his meaning. He quotes from Tertullian, Irenaeus, and pseudo-Clement in support of his views. He calls him a disciple of Simon Magus, a criminal accuser, and a homicide.1185 He ridiculed the idea that such a man should call himself an orthodox minister of the Church. Calvin replied within two days in a document of twenty-three folio pages, which were signed by all the fourteen ministers of Geneva.1186 He meets the patristic quotations of Servetus with counter-quotations, with Scripture passages and solid arguments, and charges him in conclusion with the intention "to subvert all religion."1187 These three documents, which contained the essence of the doctrinal discussion, were presented to the Little Council on Tuesday the 5th of September. On the 15th of September Servetus addressed a petition to the Council in which he attacked Calvin as his persecutor, complained of his miserable condition in prison and want of the necessary clothing, and demanded an advocate and the transfer of his trial to the Large Council of Two Hundred, where he had reason to expect a majority in his favor.1188 This course had probably been suggested to him (as Rilliet conjectures) by Perrin and Berthelier through the jailer, Claude de Genève, who was a member of the Libertine party.

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

  But he rejects the prohibition of clerical marriage as an "act of impious tyranny contrary to the Word of God and to every principle of justice. With what impunity fornication rages among them [the papal clergy] it is unnecessary to remark; emboldened by their polluted celibacy, they have become hardened to every crime … . Paul places marriage among the virtues of a bishop; these men teach that it is a vice not to be tolerated in the clergy … . Christ has been pleased to put such honor upon marriage as to make it an image of his sacred union with the Church. What could be said more in commendation of the dignity of marriage? With what face can that be called impure and polluted, which exhibits a similitude of the spiritual grace of Christ?... Marriage is honorable in all; but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge (Heb. 13:4). The Apostles themselves have proved by their own example that marriage is not unbecoming the sanctity of any office, however excellent: for Paul testifies that they not only retained their wives, but took them about with them (1 Cor. 9:5)." § 107. The Exercise of Discipline in Geneva. Calvin succeeded after a fierce struggle in infusing the Church of Geneva with his views on discipline. The Consistory and the Council rivalled with each other, under his inspiration, in puritanic zeal for the correction of immorality; but their zeal sometimes transgressed the dictates of wisdom and moderation. The union of Church and State rests on the false assumption that all citizens are members of the Church and subject to discipline. Dancing, gambling, drunkenness, the frequentation of taverns, profanity, luxury, excesses at public entertainments, extravagance and immodesty in dress, licentious or irreligious songs were forbidden, and punished by censure or fine or imprisonment. Even the number of dishes at meals was regulated. Drunkards were fined three sols for each offence. Habitual gamblers were exposed in the pillory with cords around their neck. Reading of bad books and immoral novels was also prohibited, and the popular "Amadis de Gaul "was ordered to be destroyed (1559). A morality play on "the Acts of the Apostles," after it had been performed several times, and been attended even by the Council, was forbidden. Parents were warned against naming their children after Roman Catholic saints who nourished certain superstitions; instead of them the names of Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel, Zechariah, Jeremiah, Nehemiah became common. (This preference for Old Testament names was carried even further by the Puritans of England and New England.) The death penalty against heresy, idolatry, and blasphemy, and the barbarous custom of the torture were retained. Adultery, after a second offence, was likewise punished by death. These were prohibitive and protective laws intended to prevent and punish irreligion and immorality.

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

  Luther thought the preaching of the gospel would bring about all the necessary changes, but he had to complain bitterly, at the end of his life, of the dissolute manners of the students and citizens at Wittenberg, and seriously thought of leaving the city in disgust.712 Calvin knew well enough that the ideal could only be imperfectly realized in this world, but that it was none the less our duty to strive after perfection. He often quotes Augustin against the Donatists who dreamed of an imaginary purity of the Church, like the Anabaptists who, he observes, "acknowledge no congregation to belong to Christ, unless it be in all respects conspicuous for angelic perfection, and who, under pretext of zeal, destroy all edification." He consents to Augustin’s remark that "schemes of separation are pernicious and sacrilegious, because they proceed from pride and impiety, and disturb the good who are weak, more than they correct the wicked who are bold." In commenting on the parable of the net which gathered of every kind (Matt. 13:47), he says: "The Church while on earth is mixed with good and bad and will never be free of all impurity … . Although God, who is a God of order, commands us to exercise discipline, he allows for a time to hypocrites a place among believers until he shall set up his kingdom in its perfection on the last day. As far as we are concerned, we must strive to correct vices and to purge the Church of impurity, although she will not be free from all stain and blemish till Christ shall separate the goats from the sheep."713 Calvin discusses the subject of discipline in the twelfth chapter of the fourth book of his Institutes. His views are sound and scriptural. "No society," he says at the outset, "no house can be preserved in proper condition without discipline. The Church ought to be the most orderly society of all. As the saving doctrine of Christ is the soul of the Church, so discipline forms the nerves and ligaments which connect the members and keep each in its proper place. It serves as a bridle to curb and restrain the refractory who resist the doctrine of Christ; or as a spur to stimulate the inactive; and sometimes as a father’s rod to chastise, in mercy and with the gentleness of the spirit of Christ, those who have grievously fallen away. It is the only remedy against a dreadful desolation in the Church." One of the greatest objections which he had against the Roman Church of his day was the utter want of discipline in constant violation of the canons. He asserts, without fear of contradiction, that "there was scarcely one of the (Roman) bishops, and not one in a hundred of the parochial clergy, who, if sentence were to be passed upon his conduct according to the ancient canons, would not be excommunicated, or, to say the very least, deposed from his office."714

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

  "In the name of God Almighty, we, the Syndics, Small and Great Councils with our people assembled at the sound of the trumpet and the great clock, according to our ancient customs, have considered that the matter above all others worthy of recommendation is to preserve the doctrine of the holy gospel of our Lord in its purity, to protect the Christian Church, to instruct faithfully the youth, and to provide a hospital for the proper support of the poor,—all of which cannot be done without a definite order and rule of life, from which every estate may learn the duty of its office. For this reason we have deemed it wise to reduce the spiritual government, such as our Lord has shown us and instituted by his Word, to a good form to be introduced and observed among us. Therefore we have ordered and established to follow and to guard in our city and territory the following ecclesiastical polity, taken from the gospel of Jesus Christ."687 The document is inspired by a high view of the dignity and responsibility of the ministry of the gospel, such as we find in the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians and Ephesians. "It may be confidently asserted," says a Catholic historian,688 "that in no religious society of Christian Europe the clergy was assigned a position so dignified, prominent, and influential as in the Church which Calvin built up in Geneva." In his Institutes Calvin distinguishes three extraordinary officers of the Church,—Apostles, Prophets, and Evangelists,—and four ordinary officers—Pastors (Bishops), Teachers, Ancients (Lay-elders), and Deacons.689 Extraordinary officers were raised up by the Lord at the beginning of his kingdom, and are raised up on special occasions when required "by the necessity of the times." The Reformers must be regarded as a secondary class of Apostles, Prophets, and Evangelists. Calvin himself intimates the parallel when he says:690 "I do not deny that ever since that period [of the Apostles] God has sometimes raised up Apostles or Evangelists in their stead, as he has done in our own time. For there was a necessity for such persons to recover the Church from the defection of Antichrist. Nevertheless, I call this an extraordinary office, because it has no place in well-constituted Churches."691 The extraordinary offices cannot be regulated by law. The Ordinances, therefore, give directions only for the ordinary offices of the Church. 1. The Pastors,692 or ministers of the gospel, as Calvin likes to call them, have "to preach the Word of God, to instruct, to admonish, to exhort and reprove in public and private, to administer the sacraments, and, jointly with the elders, to exercise discipline."693

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

  Under these circumstances the Church has to choose between liberty with self-support, and dependence with government support. If Calvin lived at this day, he would undoubtedly prefer the former. Calvinists and Presbyterians have taken the lead in the struggle for Church independence against the Erastian and rationalistic encroachments of the civil power. Free Churches have been organized in French Switzerland (Geneva, Vaud, Neuchàtel), in France, Holland, and especially in Presbyterian Scotland. The heroic sacrifices of the Free Church of Scotland in seceding from the Established Church, and making full provision for all her wants by voluntary contributions, form one of the brightest chapters in the history of Protestantism. The Dissenters in England have always maintained and exercised the voluntary principle since their legal recognition by the Toleration Act of 1689. In the British Provinces and in North America, all denominations are on a basis of equality before the law, and enjoy, under the protection of the government, full liberty of self-government with the corresponding duty of self-support. The condition of modern society demands a peaceful separation of Church and State, or a Free Church in a Free State. § 104. The Ecclesiastical Ordinances. Comp. § 83 (352 sqq.) and § 86 (367 sqq.). Calvin discusses the ministerial office in the third chapter of the fourth book of his Institutes. Having considered Calvin’s general principles on Church government, we proceed to their introduction and application in the little Republic of Geneva. We have seen that in his first interview with the Syndics and Council after his return, Sept. 13, 1541, he insisted on the introduction of an ecclesiastical constitution and discipline in accordance with the Word of God and the primitive Church.685 The Council complied with his wishes, and intrusted the work to the five pastors (Calvin, Viret, Jacques Bernard, Henry de la Mare, and Aymé Champereau) and six councillors (decided Guillermins), to whom was added Jean Balard as advisory member. The document was prepared under his directing influence, submitted to the Councils, slightly altered, and solemnly ratified by a general assembly of citizens (the Conseil général), Jan. 2, 1542, as the fundamental church law of the Republic of Geneva.686 Its essential features have passed into the constitution and discipline of most of the Reformed and Presbyterian Churches of Europe and America. The official text of the "Ordinances "is preserved in the Registers of the Venerable Company, and opens with the following introduction: —

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

  The Lutheran Reformers subjected the Church to the secular rulers, and made her an obedient handmaid of the State; but they complained bitterly of the selfish and arbitrary misgovernment of the princes. The congregations in most Lutheran countries of Europe have no voice in the election of their own pastors. The Reformers of German Switzerland conceded more power to the people in a democratic republic, and introduced synods, but they likewise put the supreme power into the hands of the civil government of the several cantons. In monarchical England the governorship of the Church was usurped and exercised by Henry VIII. and, in a milder form, by Queen Elizabeth and her successors, and acquiesced in by the bishops. The churches under Calvin’s influence always maintained, at least in theory, the independence of the Church in all spiritual affairs, and the right of individual congregations in the election of their own pastors. Calvin derives this right from the Greek verb used in the passage which says that Paul and Barnabas ordained presbyters by the suffrages or votes of the people.677 "Those two apostles," he says, "ordained the presbyters; but the whole multitude, according to the custom observed among the Greeks, declared by the elevation of their hands who was the object of their choice … . It is not credible that Paul granted to Timothy and Titus more power (1 Tim. 5:22 Tit. 1:5) than he assumed to himself." After quoting with approval two passages from Cyprian, he concludes that the apostolic and best mode of electing pastors is by the consent of the whole people; yet other pastors ought to preside over the election, "to guard the multitude from falling into improprieties through inconstancy, intrigue, and confusion."678 The Presbyterian Church of Scotland has labored and suffered more than any Protestant Church for the principle of the sole headship of Christ; first against popery, then against prelacy, and last against patronage. In North America this principle is almost universally acknowledged. 2. The parity of the clergy as distinct from a jure divino hierarchy whether papal or prelatical. Calvin maintained, with Jerome, the original identity of bishops (overseers) and presbyters (elders); and in this he has the support of the best modern exegetes and historians.679 But he did not on this account reject all distinctions among ministers, which rest on human right and historical development, nor deny the right of adapting the Church order to varying conditions and circumstances. He was not an exclusive or bigoted Presbyterian. He had no objection to episcopacy in large countries, like Poland and England, provided the evangelical doctrines be preached.680 In his correspondence with Archbishop Cranmer and Protector Somerset, he suggests various improvements, but does not oppose episcopacy. In a long letter to King Sigismund Augustus of Poland, he even approves of it in that kingdom.681

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

  After he left the Roman Church, there was no Evangelical bishop in France to ordain him; the bishops, so far, all remained in the old Church, except two or three in East Prussia and Sweden. If the validity of the Christian ministry depended on an unbroken succession of diocesan bishops, which again depends on historical proof, it would be difficult to defend the Reformation and to resist the claims of Rome. But the Reformers planted themselves on the promise of Christ, the ever-present head of the Church, who is equally near to his people in any age. They rejected the Roman Catholic idea of ordination as a divinely instituted sacrament, which can only be performed by bishops, and which confers priestly powers of offering sacrifice and dispensing absolution. They taught the general priesthood of believers, and fell back upon the internal call of the Holy Spirit and the external call of the Christian people. Luther, in his earlier writings, lodged the power of the keys in the congregation, and identified ordination with vocation. "Whoever is called," he says, "is ordained, and must preach: this is our Lord’s consecration and true chrism." He even consecrated, by a bold irregularity, his friend Amsdorf as superintendent of Naumburg, to show that he could make a bishop as well as the pope, and could do it without the use of consecrated oil. Calvin was regularly elected pastor and teacher of theology at Geneva in 1536 by the presbyters and the council, with the consent of the whole people.420 This popular election was a revival of the primitive custom. The greatest bishops of the early Church—such as Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augustin—were elected by the voice of the people, which they obeyed as the voice of God.

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

  In April, 1532, Calvin, in his twenty-third year, ventured before the public with his first work, which was printed at his own expense, and gave ample proof of his literary taste and culture. It is a commentary on Seneca’s book On Mercy. He announced its appearance to Daniel with the words, "Tandem jacta est alea." He sent a copy to Erasmus, who had published the works of Seneca in 1515 and 1529. He calls him "the honor and delight of the world of letters."409 It is dedicated to Claude de Hangest, his former schoolmate of the Mommor family, at that time abbot of St. Eloy (Eligius) at Noyon. This book moves in the circle of classical philology and moral philosophy, and reveals a characteristic love for the best type of Stoicism, great familiarity with Greek and Roman literature.410 masterly Latinity, rare exegetical skill, clear and sound judgment, and a keen insight into the evils of despotism and the defects of the courts of justice, but makes no allusion to Christianity. It is remarkable that his first book was a commentary on a moral philosopher who came nearer to the apostle Paul than any heathen writer. It is purely the work of a humanist, not of an apologist or a reformer. There is no evidence that it was intended to be an indirect plea for toleration and clemency in behalf of the persecuted Protestants. It is not addressed to the king of France, and the implied comparison of Francis with Nero in the incidental reference to the Neronian persecution would have defeated such a purpose.411 Calvin, like Melanchthon and Zwingli, started as a humanist, and, like them, made the linguistic and literary culture of the Renaissance tributary to the Reformation. They all admired Erasmus until he opposed the Reformation, for which he had done so much to prepare the way. They went boldly forward, when he timidly retreated. They loved religion more than letters. They admired the heathen classics, but they followed the apostles and evangelists as guides to the higher wisdom of God. § 72. Calvin’s Conversion. 1532. Preface to his Commentary on the Psalms (Opera, XXXI. 21, 22, Latin and French in parallel columns), and his Reply to Sadolet (Opera, V. 389). See above, p. 296. Henry, I. ch. II. Stähelin, I. l6–28. Kampschulte, I. 230. Lefranc, 96 sqq. A brilliant career—as a humanist, or a lawyer, or a churchman—opened before Calvin, when he suddenly embraced the cause of the Reformation, and cast in his lot with a poor persecuted sect.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 4 (300 – 1300, Rome) (2009)

  1620s, they learned of its rediscovery (on a site now unknown, but very possibly that of the identifiable Ta Qin monastery in Zhouzhi (see Plate 7). Dated 781, surmounted by dragons and a cross and bearing inscriptions in Chinese and Estrangela, it is a silkily expressed commemoration of imperial favour shown towards the Christians since 635, culminating in their present protector, General Guo Ziyi. Besides its detailed if inevitably politically selective account of that history, it boldly recites a statement of Christian faith in Chinese, commendations of the faith, and poetry in praise of the triune God and of Christ ‘divided in nature’, with allusions to imperial literature which stake a bold claim for Christianity as the best expression of the universe’s underlying principle, the Tao. With the stele’s proud enunciation of various ecclesiastical dignitaries alongside emperors and imperial officials, there could be no better symbol of the integration of the Dyophysite Christian community into imperial life. The first and last visual impression that it leaves in its present setting in Xi’an’s ‘Forest of Stelae’ is just how alike are all the other monuments around it.27 There are many more traces of the Church of the East’s real attempt to explain the Christian message in terms which would make sense to people in this alien culture. From their first arrival in China, Christians seemed to have realized that it would be a good strategy to use language familiar to Chinese from Taoism, as the stele from 781 now at Xi’an witnessed. Taoism, after all, had a vision of the original goodness of human nature which was congenial to Dyophysites emphasizing the whole humanity of Christ’s separate human nature alongside his divinity. Yet Dyophysite Christians were also ready to model themselves on another faith which the Chinese recognized as having come from beyond their borders, but which was by now well established and widely respected: Buddhism. So Alopen and his successors presented their faith in the form of sutras, discourses in Buddhist style, and they had no inhibitions in presenting Buddhism as a form of truth, albeit one which needed extending. So Alopen, drawing on the specialized titles of honour of the Buddhists, had written in his Jesus Messiah Sutra: All the buddhas as well as kinnaras and the superintending-devas and arhans can see the Lord of Heaven. No human being, however, has ever seen the Lord of Heaven … All the buddhas flow and flux by virtue of this very wind, while in this world, there is no place where the wind does not reach. Here, there seems to be a real attempt to suggest that the teachings of Buddhism are in a literal sense inspired by the Holy Spirit. Elsewhere in his Discourse on the oneness of the Ruler of the Universe, Alopen observed that, thanks to the Devil, ‘[i]t has become impossible for a human being to understand the truth and attain “liberation from sorrow”’ – the latter phrase simply being a

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  With this in mind, I recently ventured my first few little bites out of a very large country. At Huang Cheng Lao Ma restaurant, in Chengdu, Szechuan's frenetically developing capital, a large cauldron of murky and bubbling palm oil sits center table: the notorious Szechuan hotpot. Bobbing on the roiling surface of the dark, viscous liquid is a logjam of tongue-scalding dried Szechuan chilies. Less noticeable, but just as plentiful, are a fistful of hua jiao, smaller, darker "flower" peppercorns. The dried chilies are pure burn. The peppercorns, though aromatic, are pure freeze. They numb the mouth, at times the whole face, as they go down (which explains why they are a popular remedy for toothache). My friend David, a Chengdu native, points at the spicy hellbroth with his chopsticks and says, "It gets stronger as it cooks." He points across the large communal table at a family of locals gathered around a similar witches' brew. The mother is red faced and holds a fist to her chest. The father is mopping sweat from his neck. David grins and dips a slice of raw beef into the hotpot, swirling it around to cook for a few seconds before a secondary dunk in cooler oil, then pops it in his mouth. "Diarrhea tomorrow," he promises. "For me, or for you?" I ask, assuming that it's my delicate Western metabolism he's concerned about. "Oh no. Everybody pays tomorrow," he laughs. "Still. We come back again. You'll see. It's addictive." Plates of uncooked chicken, shrimps, sliced kidney, quail eggs, noodles, and vegetables arrive. Each will find their way in increments into the increasingly volcanic oil before disappearing down our throats. It's like a lethal fondue. We've ordered the strongest, "hottest" variety, in a town famous for its profligate way with peppers, and it hurts so good. The perfect mixture of pleasure and pain. I feel strangely in competition with David. They say "never let them see you sweat," but it's way too late for that. We're both in full lather. David swallows another slice of kidney, rubs his solar plexus, and grimaces, and I feel—to my shame—gratified by his pain. I'm surviving Szechuan. I'm making it through this most incendiary of incendiary meals in the fire capital of the world. And I'm loving it. The effect of all the peppers is almost narcotic in its endorphin-producing qualities. In fact, early hotpot chefs were rumored to lace their concoctions with opium, to keep customers coming back. It wasn't necessary. Those who survive their initial exposure to the dish can't help but return to it, like a beautiful but bad girlfriend.

• From Wild (2012)

  On Halloween night we moved into the house we’d built out of trees and scrap wood. It didn’t have electricity or running water or a phone or an indoor toilet or even a single room with a door. All through my teen years, Eddie and my mom kept building it, adding on, making it better. My mother planted a garden and canned and pickled and froze vegetables in the fall. She tapped the trees and made maple syrup, baked bread and carded wool, and made her own fabric dyes out of dandelions and broccoli leaves. I grew up and left home for college in the Twin Cities at a school called St. Thomas, but not without my mom. My acceptance letter mentioned that parents of students could take classes at St. Thomas for free. Much as she liked her life as a modern pioneer, my mother had always wanted to get her degree. We laughed about it together, then pondered it in private. She was forty, too old for college now, my mother said when we discussed it, and I couldn’t disagree. Plus, St. Thomas was a three-hour drive away. We kept talking and talking until at last we had a deal: she would go to St. Thomas but we would have separate lives, dictated by me. I would live in the dorm and she would drive back and forth. If our paths crossed on campus she would not acknowledge me unless I acknowledged her first. “All this is probably for nothing,” she said once we’d hatched the plan. “Most likely I’ll flunk out anyway.” To prepare, she shadowed me during the last months of my senior year of high school, doing all the homework that I was assigned, honing her skills. She replicated my worksheets, wrote the same papers I had to write, read every one of the books. I graded her work, using my teacher’s marks as a guide. I judged her a shaky student at best. She went to college and earned straight As. Sometimes I hugged her exuberantly when I saw her on campus; other times I sailed on by, as if she were no one to me at all. We were both seniors in college when we learned she had cancer. By then we weren’t at St. Thomas anymore. We’d both transferred to the University of Minnesota after that first year—she to the Duluth campus, I to the one in Minneapolis—and, much to our amusement, we shared a major. She was double majoring in women’s studies and history, I in women’s studies and English. At night, we’d talk for an hour on the phone. I was married by then, to a good man named Paul. I’d married him in the woods on our land, wearing a white satin and lace dress my mother had sewn.