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.

Page 167 of 174 · 20 per page

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  Cheng definitely did not help us steal the oxygen or the chair.” “Of course not.” “He says hi.” —The gallery was already full. Yale was vastly underdressed—every other man wore a tie, and he wore an old sweater that used to fit snugly and now hung like a tent—but his clothes weren’t what anyone would be looking at, anyway. There was Warner Bates from ARTnews , waving, pointing him out to someone else. Warner had come to interview him last fall right after Gloria’s initial Trib feature appeared. He’d brought along a photographer who’d shot Yale sitting on his own couch, laughing with Fiona. Yale was embarrassed by the attention, by the focus on his role. Gloria’s story had been about the collection itself. “After Seventy Years,” the headline read, “an Artist Claims His Prize. ” It included plenty of helpful quotes from an unwitting Bill Lindsey, who didn’t realize the focus would be Ranko Novak. The article wasn’t dishonest; it never stated directly that Novak’s pieces would be in the show. But in talking at length about Novak’s pieces, as well as his life and death, it implied as much. “She wanted him to have his due,” it quoted Yale as saying. “She wanted him hanging next to Modigliani.” That article itself might not have been enough to force Bill’s hand, but the half-dozen more pieces it spawned in the art press were. And suddenly Ranko’s name was all over the gallery’s own press for the show. Yale glimpsed Bill standing a few yards ahead of him in the gallery, and Bill, when he noticed Yale, looked terrified. He spun toward the woman he’d just said goodbye to, asked her something, led her quickly in the other direction. Bill didn’t look sick. Cecily had told him as much, updated him every few months almost apologetically, as if Yale would want Bill to have it. One thing about being in the chair: From behind people, Yale couldn’t see anything yet. He recognized a corner of the Hébuterne bedroom. He’d imagined, once upon a time, wheeling Nora in here to see the show. He’d imagined pushing her in front of the crowds. Here were the Sharps, weaving their way to him. Esmé reached down to envelop him awkwardly in her thin arms. Esmé and Allen had been saints, kept calling to ask if he had everything he needed. For his first long hospital stay, Esmé had brought him a stack of novels. They would never be close friends, would never gossip over brunch, but they’d volunteered themselves to form a safety net below him. “Shall we take you around?” Esmé said. So while Fiona was shanghaied by a man who wanted to explain to her in great detail how he’d known Nora’s husband, Cecily and the Sharps took him around, asked people to let him through.

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

  As almost an aside you wrote that male-to-female transsexuals (pre- and post-op) can enjoy prostate stimulation.14 Having always thought of myself as female, the fact that the prostate is not removed during gender reassignment surgery always seemed somehow unfair (like some vestigial male anatomy left there to taunt me). But as I looked again at the little sentence in the book, I realized there was something wrong. After surgery I read a lot about anatomy. I remembered reading that, while I still do have a prostate,the vagina is now between the prostate and the rectal wall.This is important because if my doctor ever does a prostate exam, she won’t find anything using the usual procedure. She will actually need to find my prostate by feeling through the vaginal wall. Suddenly, it all came together—since my gender reassignment surgery, the prostate is in about the same position and should function very much like a G-spot. Cool. I’ve mentioned this to my partner, and I am looking forward to her helping me test my theory. I love being who I am now as a sexual being—everything, all my 42 years—adds up to the moment. Tough-assed femme to the core who needs the tender as much as she needs the slam and fury. I own all aspects of me now in ways I never dreamed possible. And I feel like I’m gonna rock it that much more every year that I’m on the planet. I like to take long steps in tall heels. That’s my sexuality. Gender TransitionHow does the process of gender transition inform sexual response? Trans-Health (“the online magazine of health and fitness for transsexual and transgendered people”) surveyed its readers on the subject of trans sexuality in 2001.15 Only about 30 readers responded to the survey questions; yet even among this small group, there is a range of sexual interests and concerns. A few identified their gender as “other”; the rest were evenly split between male-to-female (MTF) and female-to-male (FTM) transsexuals. Half “expressed some degree of sexual fluidity; their interests had changed since transition, occasionally several times.” Nearly all the MTFs said they wanted to experience vaginal penetration. Nearly all the FTMs expressed a desire to “put their cocks in other boys’ bottoms.” Many had transgendered partners. Some reported no sexual problems; some, problems related to coming out as trans; and others, problems related to their sexual physiology. Interestingly, many said that being able to view sexuality from more than one gender perspective benefited them. Gender transition is a time of self-discovery. Some people liken it to a kind of adolescence for grown-ups. Ask a 30-year-old man appreciating his chest for the first time, or a 40-year-old woman caressing her own round hips and soft skin. More on gender transition in chapter 14, Gender (Not Destiny).

• From What My Bones Know (2022)

  On weekends, when the work was done and I had no more deadlines, I struggled mightily. I was never invited anywhere; I would have been a downer anyway. I lost the ability to speak to anyone without the purpose of an article and a script of meticulously planned questions. Instead, I watched marathons of Six Feet Under and Sex and the City. I drove to thrift stores and altered the clothing I found with supplies I shoplifted from Michaels, turning sweater sleeves into leg warmers and scarves into belts. And my mind unraveled. I heard noises. Fantasized about death and cried myself to sleep. But when I woke up, it was Monday, and thankfully there was more work to be done. It was journalism that gave me my first portfolio—a marker of value. It was journalism, particularly my editor in chief position, that got me into the University of California, Santa Cruz, even though I had a miserable 2.9 GPA. And it was journalism that got me to my high school graduation stage. The event was held at the massive stadium downtown, thousands of parents and family members roaring facelessly around us. My father was not one of them. Everyone was giddy in their caps and gowns. We were already nostalgic, and that made us generous, hugging old friends and tearfully forgiving our nemeses. But my eyes remained dry. I heard other kids saying, “Hell, yeah! We made it, we survived!” For me, that feeling was literal. I shouldn’t even be here, I mused, dazed, as I watched my classmates smile on the Jumbotron overhead. I should be dead. Then, as we filed out of the stadium, my wacky freshman-year English teacher ran up to me and handed over an envelope. In it was a letter she’d had us write to ourselves on our very first day of high school. My handwriting had been more childish as a freshman. The letter was written on Hot Topic notebook paper with a skull embossed on the page. It read: That’s a nice diploma you’ve got there. You’re welcome. Lenore #8. System of a Down. Terrorist Attacks. You probably haven’t thought about this shit in years (or yesterday. Whatever.) Well, however you are now, whoever you are—you’re a better, smarter, more uh…mature (snicker) person than you were now. You’ve come a long way since 4 years ago, and for better or worse, I’m proud of ya. Finally, the tears came. It didn’t matter if my parents were proud of me. I was proud of me, and that was the most important thing. Because I had done this. I’d gotten myself here with my own hard work.

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

  place in the Western Church. Unlike in the East, where Churches in the great cities had competing claims, there was no rival to the pope’s position in the West, particularly as the Latin North African Church, once so self-assertive, was laid low by the seventh-century Arab invasions. The Church’s constant search for a source of authority to solve its disputes encouraged the trend. For all the honour paid to great oecumenical councils like Nicaea and Chalcedon, the conflicts in their aftermaths, and the messy outcome of the council of 553, revealed the drawbacks in this method of decision-making. The battered prestige of the Bishop of Rome was restored and then extended by the pontificate of Pope Gregory I (590–604), often known as ‘the Great’. He was from the same wealthy, traditional administrative background as Ambrose two centuries before, and indeed he was Prefect of the City of Rome before becoming a monk in the city. Gregory was the first monk to become pope, although this was not monasticism as Pachomius or even Martin had known it: Gregory financed the foundation of the monastery which he entered, built on a family property within the city, and a later tradition asserted that his mother, Silvia, customarily sent him vegetables to his monastery on a silver dish.11 This Roman aristocrat showed no enthusiasm for the claims of the surviving Roman emperor. For six years Gregory had represented the Church of Rome as a diplomat (apocrisiary) at the Byzantine Court; despite or perhaps because of this, he had no great affection for or high opinion of the Greeks. When at the end of the sixth century Byzantine power in Italy was shattered by a central European people known as Lombards, Gregory certainly did not see the Lombard victory as a baffling catastrophe, as many had seen Alaric’s sack of Rome in 410. On the contrary, in 592–3 he presided over a separate peace with the Lombards, ignoring the Byzantine imperial representative in Ravenna. He strongly objected to the title of Oecumenical or Universal Patriarch which the Patriarch of Constantinople had used for the past century, particularly because its justification was that the patriarch was bishop in the Universal City of Constantinople, ‘Universal’ because it was capital of the empire. It may have been in order to highlight the pride embodied in the Oecumenical Patriarch’s title that Gregory adopted one of aggressive self-deprecation, which his successors have used ever since: ‘Servant of the servants of God’.12 Gregory did have a strong sense of urgency in his papacy, for the good reason that he believed that the end of the world was imminent. It was easy to assume this, amid the political upheavals and decay of the society which had brought his family their prestige and fortune.13 If the Last Days were coming soon, it was essential that all Christians, not just monks, should prepare themselves for the end by reforming their lives; the clergy, chiefly himself, should be energetic in

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

  "In that Church I have held the office, first of Doctor, and then of Pastor. In my own right I maintain that, in undertaking these offices, I had a legitimate vocation. How faithfully and religiously I have performed them, there is no occasion for now showing at length. Perspicuity, erudition, prudence, ability, or even industry, I will not claim for myself, but that I certainly labored with the sincerity which became me in the work of the Lord, I can in conscience appeal to Christ, my Judge, and all his angels, while all good men bear clear testimony in my favor. This ministry, therefore, when it shall appear to have been of God (as it certainly shall appear after the cause has been heard), were I in silence to allow you to tear and defame, who would not condemn such silence as treachery ? Every person, therefore, now sees that the strongest obligations of duty—obligations which I cannot evade—constrain me to meet your accusations, if I would not with manifest perfidy desert and betray a cause with which the Lord has intrusted me. For though I am for the present relieved of the charge of the Church of Geneva, that circumstance ought not to prevent me from embracing it with paternal affection—God, when he gave it to me in charge, having bound me to be faithful forever." He repels with modest dignity the frivolous charge of having embraced the cause of the Reformation from disappointed ambition. "I am unwilling to speak of myself, but since you do not permit me to be altogether silent, I will say what I can consistently with modesty. Had I wished to consult my own interest, I would never have left your party. I will not, indeed, boast that there the road to preferment had been easy to me. I never desired it, and I could never bring my mind to catch at it; although I certainly know not a few of my own age who have crept up to some eminence—among them some whom I might have equalled, and others outstripped. This only I will be contented to say, it would not have been difficult for me to reach the summit of my wishes, viz., the enjoyment of literary ease with something of a free and honorable station. Therefore, I have no fear that any one not possessed of shameless effrontery will object to me, that out of the kingdom of the pope I sought for any personal advantage which was not there ready to my hand."

• From Sex Love & Misery: New York

  And I've been in the city for six years. ♪ Show them all I'm not to play with ♪ ♪ I'm the boss, I'm here to claim it ♪ I work for a consulting firm as an administrative assistant and I do a lot of writing as well. - Sometimes when you fail at dating with someone or the first date didn't go well, it would be interesting to know why. - Hey. What you doing tonight? Every, every, every single man on this earth. (loud belching) Excuse me (laughing). Likes to say that they're six feet tall and then you meet 'em and they're absolutely 5'11". Or if they say 5'11 ", they're for sure 5'9". You see. I mean, there's not much to work with, but it's keeping it nice and lifted and that's what I need. (grunting) Don't want a camel toe. These jeans are perfect. They don't give me camel toe at all. - Um, I know how to juggle, I'm pretty good at that. And I have a car, it's pretty great. - I'm funny, I'm cute, I'm Hispanic, Asian, I know how to cook. - I have to offer a lot of depth. - I have a unique perspective on the world, period. - I'm a great travel buddy. - My libido's pretty high. - I'm not judgmental and I'm open minded. - I do karaoke, I do a lot of things. I'm family-oriented. - What don't I have to offer? No, okay, that sounded bad. That sounded awful. - You know, I'm A1. I know my quality, I know my worth and so what I bring to the table is all that it takes to be loved and all that it takes to be treated the way you deserve as the person on the other side. For me, I know who I am, I know my worth, but I wanna be able to help you understand, and realize your worth and help you be the person you need to be and grow in your life. So you gotta be able to keep up. - What I have to offer a woman is I'm very tall and that's really about it, at the end of the day. - To quote Rihanna, first of all, I'm not looking for a guy. Just kidding. I mean, I'm not. But I guess like- - Choose your partners. Some little details. And I guess some people, some women, noticed some little details that they didn't like about me. That's probably why they didn't call me back. - Being close with your mom is really important, I think. Or, on the other hand, if you don't have a mom and that affects you as well and that brings out your soul, I really appreciate that too. Dads, don't really care about. I mean like unless it's a sensitive topic, we can obviously discuss it. Oh, if you can cook, that is so cool.

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

  Resolution is the stage in which the body returns to its nonaroused state. You experience a release of tension. The heart rate and breathing return to normal. Sex flush disappears, nipple erection fades, the glans of the clit once again protrudes from its hood. The labia return to their nonaroused color and size. Do women get “blue balls”—that painful state of unresolved arousal that men talk about? Yes—if after reaching a very high degree of arousal you don’t come, it takes a longer time for the vascular congestion to ease, which can be uncomfortable—or exciting! Sexual Response over a LifetimeJust as your experience of arousal and orgasm does not necessarily follow Masters and Johnson’s four-stage model, your experience of sexuality over the course of your lifetime will not necessarily follow the linear model we’ve been given. And what linear model is that? As children we are supposed to be asexual. Then we hit puberty and get interested in boys. (If we get interested in girls, we must be confused.) Our sexuality matures: we like dick—but not too much and only when we feel an emotional connection to it. Then we hit menopause and the sexual portion of our lives ends with the cessation of reproductive functioning. Gender development is supposed to follow an equally linear path. Of course, this model bears little resemblance to anyone’s real experience. (In fact, if you’re reading this book, you’ve already strayed far from the path.) Real sexual response develops individually (and messily!) over a lifetime—it doesn’t ratchet through one neat stage after another. I had a rough time trying to figure out who I was during my adolescence…. I’m just glad that an eating disorder, shagging some guys, and some experimentation with drugs helped me figure it all out. As I am only 25, I still have a few major life changes to go…. But the main one was the realization that I am not heterosexual. My sex life increased a zillion percent after that. You’ll likely go through many subtle and not so subtle evolutions in sexual response and desire throughout your life. If you’ve come out as lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, queer, or kinky—or all of the above—you’ve already experienced the process of developing your sexuality and gender expression from the inside, rather than from others’ expectations. I am very proud of the fact that since I stopped fucking men, I went from a girl who spreads her legs and waits for it to someone very active and very top! Many women say sex gets better and better as they come to know and accept themselves. The more you explore your sexuality—without judgment—the richer your sense of yourself as a sexual being. MTF Prostate = G-Spot My partner and I recently started reading The Whole Lesbian Sex Book together and find it interesting and useful so far. One sentence caught my attention and got me to make a connection I hadn’t thought of so I decided to pass it along.

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

  In his public career, Martin retained enough of his soldierliness to emerge as a notably aggressive campaigner for the elimination of the traditional religion still strong in rural areas of western Europe such as his. His ministry, played out against formidable opposition, was clearly dramatic. The outlines of it are now luridly obscured by a biography created by his fervent admirer Sulpicius Severus, who had not known Martin particularly well, but built on his fond memories of their meetings to produce a picture of a man with sensational powers. Martin, for instance, had on one occasion undermined a tree sacred to old gods, then stood in the path of its fall, but forced it to fall elsewhere by making the sign of the Cross. The audience loved it and, as a result, ‘you may be sure salvation came to that region’, Sulpicius said with satisfaction.60 Perhaps a less miraculous explanation of such triumphs in the face of conflict is to be found in Martin’s evident ability to fascinate young aristocrats from important Gallo-Roman families, which resulted in his drawing them into the religious life. In other situations we know of complaints that the monastic life deprived society of the public duties which noblemen were expected to perform, but the accretion of powerful friends cannot have done Martin’s campaigns any harm. Sulpicius proudly pointed out that many of them went on to take up new public responsibilities, as bishops.61 People who had known Bishop Martin rather better than Sulpicius Severus were infuriated by his exuberant stories, but their opinions were drowned out in the course of time by the wild popularity of Sulpicius’s book, which addressed the same spiritual market as Athanasius’s Life of Antony. A story told by Sulpicius gave Western Christianity one of its most frequently used technical terms: chapel. Martin was said to have torn his military cloak in half to clothe a poor man, who was later revealed to him in a dream as Christ himself. The cut- down ‘little cloak’, capella in Latin, later became one of the most prized possessions of the Frankish barbarian rulers who succeeded Roman governors in Gaul (see pp. 323–5), and the series of small churches or temporary structures which sheltered this much-venerated relic were named after it: capellae. Thus the West gained its name for any private church of a monarch, and later just for any small church. What Sulpicius had achieved was a strident assertion that the Latin West could produce a holy man who was the equal of any wonder-worker or spiritual athlete in the East – yet another building block in the growing edifice of Western self-confidence. More than a millennium later, in 1483, a little boy was born on St Martin’s day in north Germany, so he was given the name of the much-loved saint. His surname was Luther and he also left something of a mark on Western Christianity.62 Perhaps without the example of the country missions undertaken by Martin

• From What My Bones Know (2022)

  My father knew America’s freedoms and luxuries. And he knew that my future was constrained in Malaysia. He knew my job and education prospects would eventually be limited if we stayed—that I’d likely have to go abroad in order to follow in his ambitious footsteps. Why not now? And so we moved into a beautiful home in San Jose with a deck and a pool, near good schools (though we lied about our address so I could attend the best). My father bought us a Ford station wagon; my mother purchased matching Talbots sweater sets. My parents decorated our new house with our old Malaysian furniture, but they bought me a wrought-iron, American queen bed. It was fitting for a girl they named Stephanie, wasn’t it? They chose the name because it means “the one who wears the crown.” — On Saturdays, my parents took advantage of our comfortable suburban neighborhood. They took me to The Tech Museum of Innovation or the Children’s Discovery Museum or Happy Hollow Park; my mother spent lots of time interrogating the other PTA moms, researching the most educational activities in our area. When we’d exhausted our options, we’d host a barbecue by the pool in our backyard for our fellow Malaysian expat friends and their children. My mother made honey-grilled chicken and always saved the drumsticks for me. Saturdays were for fun. Sundays were for penance. On Sundays, we went to church. My father wore a tie, my mother and I wore matching floral dresses with giant globular shoulder puffs, and we sang “Shout to the Lord” with our all-white congregation. Then we went to New Tung Kee, the Chinese-Vietnamese equivalent of a diner, and I’d order No. 1: combination rice stick noodle soup. Once we got home, my mother would sit me down in front of a yellow spiral-bound notebook with my handwriting on the front: Diary (GERNAL). One Sunday, she wrote this prompt: Please write about your time at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. What did you do? What did you see? Make your journal as interesting as possible, starting from the morning and ending in the evening. Write neatly! It took me more than an hour to complete my assignment, even though I only needed to fill one page. I was six years old and kept getting distracted—playing with our beaded place mats, poking the little felt llamas and tomatoes on the Peruvian arpillera on our wall, drawing elaborate comics on the opposite page. But eventually I dragged my attention to the prompt. Hiya, folks! I wrote. This was a departure. Usually I started each entry with Dear Diary, but today I was feeling voicey.

• From Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex (2023)

  I showed a series of these three photos at a gallery in Brooklyn, all capturing the extended moment of my boyfriend ejaculating onto my face. I called the series Exalted, changing the noun to an adjective. I did this because I don’t think the facial creates a state of being, so much as it adorns one, comments on one. The face, waiting for the come shot, is already exalted—purely beautiful, waiting to be desecrated. The woman doesn’t need a face of spilled milk to become more object than woman, holier than thou—she simply needs to be anticipating the moment, ready for it. A woman came to the gallery, a lesbian who told me her marriage had been sexless for twelve years, her wife frigid. She spoke to me about intimate details of her life for forty-five minutes, divulging more than I could have even thought to ask, before turning abruptly to the photographs on the wall, remarking, “These don’t look like you.” I was taken aback; to me, they do. She asked if they were accurate to how I imagine myself looking when I work, and I said they were: like a painting; like a fallen angel; like a pre-Raphaelite drowned girl-child. My friend asked me to read at the launch of their new magazine; I agreed, saying I would decide the content day-of. That morning, I texted them, “I think I’m gonna read something about how I look really beautiful when I give head.” When you give head, your face shines. It shines with your own spit, and your eyes shine, tearing up while you choke. In 2000, Taschen published Natacha Merritt’s Digital Diaries, comprised of Merritt’s pornographic photos of herself and her real-life lovers having sex, masturbating, and tying one another up. In interviews at the time, twenty-two-year-old Merritt embraced her critics, refusing to even call herself an artist, saying, “Am I a narcissist? Absolutely. It’s all about me, me, me. Why is it bad to love yourself? Who taught us that?” Reviewing her work for Salon, David Bowman wrote, Merritt’s blow job pictures are the most memorable images in the book because, I believe, it’s unprecedented for a woman to take self-portraits depicting herself as a cock-sucker … there is one photograph in particular (on Page 66) that is haunting somehow. Most of Merritt’s face is in the frame, as well as the member that is halfway up her yap … In the photo, Merritt is looking up and a bit to the right, concentrating on something. After I talked with her, I knew what she was looking at.

• From On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy (1961)

  Rogers’s openness—in an important sense On Becoming a Person needs no introduction, since Rogers introduces himself in an essay exactly titled “This is Me”—stands in contrast to the posture favored by his peers, who believed the therapist must present himself as a blank slate. The prevailing judgment was that Rogers could be dismissed because he was not serious. This judgment hides and reveals a narrow view of what is serious or intellectual. Rogers was a university professor and a widely published scholar, with sixteen books and more than two hundred articles to his credit. The very success of On Becoming a Person may have injured Rogers’s academic reputation; he was known for the directness and simplicity of these essays, not for the complexity of more technical theoretical articles written in the same period. But even in On Becoming a Person, Rogers places his ideas in historical and social context, alluding to contemporary social psychology, animal ethology, and communications and general systems theory. He locates his heritage in existential philosophy, referring most often to Søren Kierkegaard (from whom he takes the phrase “to be that self which one truly is,” Rogers’s answer to the question “What is the goal of life?”) and Martin Buber. And Rogers enjoyed a busy career as a public intellectual, debating and corresponding openly with such figures as Buber, Paul Tillich, Michael Polanyi, Gregory Bateson, Hans Hofman, and Rollo May. More than most of his colleagues, Rogers was a committed scientist espousing an empirical evaluation of psychotherapy. As early as the 1940s, and before anyone else in the field, Rogers was recording psychotherapeutic sessions for the purpose of research. He is the first inventor of a psychotherapy to define his approach in operational terms, listing six necessary and sufficient conditions (engaged patient, empathic therapist, etc.) for constructive personality change. He developed reliable measures and sponsored and publicized evaluations of his hypotheses. Rogers was committed to an assessment of process: What helps people to change? His research, and that of his scientific collaborators, led to results embarrassing to the psychoanalytic establishment. For example, one study, of transcripts of therapy sessions, found that in response to clarification and interpretation—the tools of psychoanalysis—clients typically abandon self-exploration; only reflection of feeling by the therapist leads directly to further exploration and new insight. Rogers, in other words, marshaled a substantial intellectual effort in the service of a simple belief: Humans require acceptance, and given acceptance, they move toward “self-actualization.” The corollaries of this hypothesis were evident to Rogers and his contemporaries. The complex edifice of psychoanalysis is unnecessary—transference may well exist, but to explore it is unproductive. A haughty and distant posture, the one assumed by many psychoanalysts at mid-century, is certainly countertherapeutic. The self-awareness and human presence of the therapist is more important than the therapist’s technical training.

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

  If I ran out of calves' liver or shell steaks in the middle of a busy Saturday night, Steven could be counted on to slip out the kitchen door and return a few moments later with whatever I needed. Where he got the stuff I never knew. I only knew not to ask. System D, to work right, requires a certain level of plausible deniability. I am always pleased to find historical precedent for my darker urges. And in the restaurant business, where one's moods tend to swing from near euphoria to crushing misery and back again at least ten times a night, it's always useful to remember that my crew and I are part of a vast and well-documented continuum going back centuries. Why did this particular reference hold such magic for me, though? I had to think about that. Why this perverse pride in finding that my lowest, sleaziest moments of mid-rush hackwork were firmly rooted in tradition, going back to the French masters? It all comes down to the old dichotomy, the razor's edge of volume versus quality. God knows, all chefs want to make perfect food. We'd like to make sixty-five to seventy-five absolutely flawless meals per night, every plate a reflection of our best efforts, all our training and experience, only the finest, most expensive, most seasonal ingredients available—and we'd like to make a lot of money for our masters while we do it. But this is the real world. Most restaurants can't charge a hundred fifty bucks a customer for food alone. Sixty-five meals a night (at least in my place) means we'll all be out of work—and fast. Two hundred fifty to three hundred meals a night is more like it when you're talking about a successful New York City restaurant and job security for your posse of well-paid culinarians in the same breath. When I was the executive chef, a few years ago, of a stadium-size nightclub/supper club near Times Square, it often meant six and seven hundred meals a night—a logistical challenge that called for skills closer to those of an air-traffic controller or a military ordnance officer than to those of a classically trained chef. When you're cranking out that kind of volume, especially during the pretheater rush, when everybody in the room expects to wolf down three courses and dessert and still be out the door in time to make curtain for Cats, you'd better be fast. They want that food. They want it hot, cooked the way they asked, and they want it soon.

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

  The disputation at Berne lasted nineteen days (from Jan. 6 to 26). It was the Protestant counterpart of the disputation at Baden in composition, arrangements and result. It had the same effect for Berne as the disputations of 1523 had for Zurich. The invitations were general; but the Roman Catholic cantons and the four bishops who were invited refused, with the exception of the bishop of Lausanne, to send delegates, deeming the disputation of Baden final. Dr. Eck, afraid to lose his fresh laurels, was unwilling, as he said, "to follow the heretics into their nooks and corners"; but he severely attacked the proceedings. The Reformed party was strongly represented by delegates from Zurich, Basel, and St. Gall, and several cities of South Germany. Zurich sent about one hundred ministers and laymen, with a strong protection. The chief speakers on the Reformed side were Zwingli, Haller, Kolb, Oecolampadius, Capito, and Bucer from Strassburg; on the Roman side, Grab, Huter, Treger, Christen, and Burgauer. Joachim von Watt of St. Gall presided. Popular sermons were preached during the disputation by Blaurer of Constance, Zwingli, Bucer, Oecolampadius, Megander, and others. The Reformers carried an easy and complete victory, and reversed the decision of Baden. The ten Theses or Conclusions, drawn up by Haller and revised by Zwingli, were fully discussed, and adopted as a sort of confession of faith for the Reformed Church of Berne. They are as follows: — 1. The holy Christian Church, whose only Head is Christ, is born of the Word of God, and abides in the same, and listens not to the voice of a stranger. 2. The Church of Christ makes no laws and commandments without the Word of God. Hence human traditions are no more binding on us than as far as they are founded in the Word of God. 3. Christ is the only wisdom, righteousness, redemption, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. Hence it is a denial of Christ when we confess another ground of salvation and satisfaction. 4. The essential and corporal presence of the body and blood of Christ cannot be demonstrated from the Holy Scripture. 5. The mass as now in use, in which Christ is offered to God the Father for the sins of the living and the dead, is contrary to the Scripture, a blasphemy against the most holy sacrifice, passion, and death of Christ, and on account of its abuses an abomination before God. 6. As Christ alone died for us, so he is also to be adored as the only Mediator and Advocate between God the Father and the believers. Therefore it is contrary to the Word of God to propose and invoke other mediators. 7. Scripture knows nothing of a purgatory after this life. Hence all masses and other offices for the dead166 are useless. 8. The worship of images is contrary to Scripture. Therefore images should be abolished when they are set up as objects of adoration.

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

  Zwingli does not shrink from the abyss of supralapsarian-ism. God, he teaches, is the supreme and only good, and the omnipotent cause of all things. He rules and administers the world by his perpetual and immutable providence, which leaves no room for accidents. Even the fall of Adam, with its consequences, is included in his eternal will as well as his eternal knowledge. So far sin is necessary, but only as a means to redemption. God’s agency in respect to sin is free from sin, since he is not bound by law, and has no bad motive or affection.151 Election is free and independent; it is not conditioned by faith, but includes faith.152 Salvation is possible without baptism, but not without Christ. We are elected in order that we may believe in Christ and bring forth the fruits of holiness. Only those who hear and reject the gospel in unbelief are foreordained to eternal punishment. All children of Christian parents who die in infancy are included among the elect, whether baptized or not, and their early death before they have committed any actual sin is a sure proof of their election.153 Of those outside the Church we cannot judge, but may entertain a charitable hope, as God’s grace is not bound. In this direction Zwingli was more liberal than any Reformer and opened a new path. St. Augustin moderated the rigor of the doctrine of predestination by the doctrine of baptismal regeneration and the hypothesis of future purification. Zwingli moderated it by extending the divine revelation and the working of the Holy Spirit beyond the boundaries of the visible Church and the ordinary means of grace. It is very easy to caricature the doctrine of predestination, and to dispose of it by the plausible objections that it teaches the necessity of sin, that it leads to fatalism and pantheism, that it supersedes the necessity of personal effort for growth in grace, and encourages carnal security. But every one who knows history at all knows also that the strongest predestinarians were among the most earnest and active Christians. It will be difficult to find purer and holier men than St. Augustin and Calvin, the chief champions of this very system which bears their name. The personal assurance of election fortified the Reformers, the Huguenots, the Puritans, and the Covenanters against doubt and despondency in times of trial and temptation. In this personal application the Reformed doctrine of predestination is in advance of that of Augustin. Moreover, every one who has some perception of the metaphysical difficulties of reconciling the fact of sin with the wisdom and holiness of God, and harmonizing the demands of logic and of conscience, will judge mildly of any earnest attempt at the solution of the apparent conflict of divine sovereignty and human responsibility.

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

  There can be no doubt about this. Luther feared God, and nothing else. He sought the glory of Christ, and cared nothing for the riches and pleasures of the world. At Coburg, Luther was in the full vigor of manhood,—forty-six years of age,—and at the height of his fame and power. With the Augsburg Confession his work was substantially completed. His followers were now an organized church with a confession of faith, a form of worship and government, and no longer dependent upon his personal efforts. He lived and labored fifteen years longer, completing the translation of the Bible,—the greatest work of his life, preaching, teaching, and writing; but his physical strength began to decline, his infirmities increased, he often complained of lassitude and uselessness, and longed for rest after his herculean labors. Some of his later acts, as the unfortunate complicity with the bigamy affair of Philip of Hesse, and his furious attacks upon Papists and Sacramentarians, obscured his fame, and only remind us of the imperfections which adhere to the greatest and best of men. Here, therefore, is the proper place to attempt an estimate of his public character, and services to the church and the world. § 124. Luther’s Public Character, and Position in History. In 1883 the four hundredth anniversary of Luther’s birth was celebrated with enthusiasm throughout Protestant Christendom by innumerable addresses and sermons setting forth his various merits as a man and a German, as a husband and father, as a preacher, catechist, and hymnist, as a Bible translator and expositor, as a reformer and founder of a church, as a champion of the sacred rights of conscience, and originator of a mighty movement of religious and civil liberty which spread over Europe and across the Atlantic to the shores of the Pacific. The story of his life was repeated in learned and popular biographies, in different tongues, and enacted on the stage in the principal cities of Germany.992 Not only Lutherans, but Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, Unitarians, united in these tributes to the Reformer. The Academy of Music in New York could not hold the thousands who crowded the building to attend the Luther-celebration arranged by the Evangelical Alliance in behalf of the leading Protestant denominations of America.993 Such testimony has never been borne to a mortal man. The Zwingli-celebration of the year 1884 had a similar character, and extended over many countries in both hemispheres, but would probably not have been thought of without the preceding Luther-celebration.

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

  The Reformed Church does not bear the name of any man, and is not controlled by a towering personality, but assumed different types under the moulding influence of Zwingli and Bullinger in Zurich, of Oecolampadius in Basle, of Haller in Berne, of Calvin and Beza in Geneva, of Ursinus and Olevianus in the Palatinate, of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley in England, of Knox in Scotland. The Lutheran Church, as the very name indicates, has the stamp of Luther indelibly impressed upon it; although the milder and more liberal Melanchthonian tendency has in it a legitimate place of honor and power, and manifests itself in all progressive and unionistic movements as those of Calixtus, of Spener, and of the moderate Lutheran schools of our age. Calvinism has made a stronger impression on the Latin and Anglo-Saxon races than on the German; while Lutheranism is essentially German, and undergoes more or less change in other countries. Calvin aimed at a reformation of discipline as well as theology, and established a model theocracy in Geneva, which lasted for several generations. Luther contented himself with a reformation of faith and doctrine, leaving the practical consequences to time, but bitterly lamented the Antinomian disorder and abuse which for a time threatened to neutralize his labors in Saxony. The Swiss Reformers reduced worship to the utmost simplicity and naked spirituality, and made its effect for kindling or chilling-devotion to depend upon the personal piety and intellectual effort of the minister and the merits of his sermons and prayers. Luther, who was a poet and a musician, left larger scope for the esthetic and artistic element; and his Church developed a rich liturgical and hymnological literature. Congregational singing, however, flourishes in both denominations; and the Anglican Church produced the best liturgy, which has kept its place to this day, with increasing popularity. The Reformed Church excels in self-discipline, liberality, energy, and enterprise; it carries the gospel to all heathen lands and new colonies; it builds up a God-fearing, manly, independent, heroic type of character, such as we find among the French Huguenots, the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, the Waldenses in Piedmont; and sent in times of persecution a noble army of martyrs to the prison and the stake. The Lutheran Church cultivates a hearty, trustful, inward, mystic style of piety, the science of theology, biblical and historical research, and wrestles with the deepest problems of philosophy and religion. God has wisely distributed his gifts, with abundant opportunities for their exercise in the building up of his kingdom. § 4. Literature on the Swiss Reformation. Compare the literature on the Reformation in general, vol. VI. 89–93, and the German Reformation, pp. 94–97. The literature on the Reformation in French Switzerland will be given in a later chapter (pp. 223 sqq.).

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 1 (1000 BCE – 100 CE) (2009)

  yearning to expand: a state more or less permanently at war either to maintain or to expand its frontiers could not afford the luxury of real democracy. Why was Rome’s expansion so remarkably successful? Plenty of other states produced dramatic expansion, but survived for no more than a few generations or a couple of centuries at most. The western part of the Roman state survived for twelve hundred years, and in its eastern form the Roman Empire had a further thousand years of life after that. The answer probably lies in another contrast with Greece: the Romans had very little sense of racial exclusiveness. They gave away Roman citizenship to deserving foreigners – by deserving, they would mean those who had something to offer them in return, if only grateful collaboration. Occasionally whole areas would be granted citizenship. It was even possible for slaves to make the leap from being non-persons to being citizens, simply by a formal ceremony before a magistrate, or by provision in their owners’ wills.32 Where this highly original view of citizenship came from is not clear; it must have evolved during the struggle for power between the patricians and the plebeians after the fall of the kings. In any case, the effect was to give an ever- widening circle of people a vested interest in the survival of Rome. That became clear in one dramatic case in the first century of the Common Era, when a Jewish tent-maker called Paul, from Tarsus, far away from Rome in Asia Minor, could proudly say that he was a Roman citizen, knowing that this status protected him against the local powers threatening him. It might have been his pride in this status of universal citizen which first suggested to Paul that the Jewish prophet who had seized his allegiance in a vision had a message for all people and not just the Jews. The story of the Roman Republic is one of steady expansion throughout the Mediterranean. Rome must have had contact with Greeks from its earliest days, but it started casting interested and acquisitive eyes on the Greek mainland during the second century BCE. Rome’s eventual conquest of Greece and the Near East, still ruled by Seleucid descendants of one of Alexander the Great’s generals, was not planned: initially friendly relations gradually deteriorated until the Republic lurched into war with the Seleucid king Antiochos III from 192 to 188 BCE. As a result Rome became the master of Greece and soon the Romans extended their encirclement of the Mediterranean basin with their conquest of the Ptolemaic monarchy of Egypt. The paradoxical cliché (no less true for being so) about the consequence of this advance was suavely expressed in Latin by the Emperor Augustus’s admirer the Roman poet Horace: ‘Greece, the captive, made her savage victor captive, and brought the arts into rustic Latium.’33 The relationship was always edgy, its awkwardness symbolized by newly imperial Rome’s adoption of a convenient fiction that it had been founded by descendants

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

  The most important example of dogmatic influence in Luther’s version is the famous interpolation of the word alone in Rom. 3:28 (allein durch den Glauben), by which he intended to emphasize his solifidian doctrine of justification, on the plea that the German idiom required the insertion for the sake of clearness.464 But he thereby brought Paul into direct verbal conflict with James, who says (James 2:24), "by works a man is justified, and not only by faith" ("nicht durch den Glauben allein"). It is well known that Luther deemed it impossible to harmonize the two apostles in this article, and characterized the Epistle of James as an "epistle of straw," because it had no evangelical character ("keine evangelische Art"). He therefore insisted on this insertion in spite of all outcry against it. His defense is very characteristic. "If your papist," he says,465 "makes much useless fuss about the word sola, allein, tell him at once: Doctor Martin Luther will have it so, and says: Papist and donkey are one thing; sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas. For we do not want to be pupils and followers of the Papists, but their masters and judges." Then he goes on in the style of foolish boasting against the Papists, imitating the language of St. Paul in dealing with his Judaizing opponents (2 Cor. 11:22 sqq.): "Are they doctors? so am I. Are they learned? so am I. Are they preachers? so am I. Are they theologians? so am I. Are they disputators? so am I. Are they philosophers? so am I. Are they the writers of books? so am I. And I shall further boast: I can expound Psalms and Prophets; which they can not. I can translate; which they can not .... Therefore the word allein shall remain in my New Testament, and though all pope-donkeys (Papstesel) should get furious and foolish, they shall not turn it out."466 The Protestant and anti-Romish character of Luther’s New Testament is undeniable in his prefaces, his discrimination between chief books and less important books, his change of the traditional order, and his unfavorable judgments on James, Hebrews, and Revelation.467 It is still more apparent in his marginal notes, especially on the Pauline Epistles, where he emphasizes throughout the difference between the law and the gospel, and the doctrine of justification by faith alone; and on the Apocalypse, where he finds the papacy in the beast from the abyss (Rev. 13), and in the Babylonian harlot (Rev. 17).468 The anti-papal explanation of the Apocalypse became for a long time almost traditional in Protestant commentaries.

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

  The arguments for the Waldensian origin are derived from certain additions to the Codex Teplensis, and alleged departures from the text of the Vulgate. But the additions are not anti-Catholic, and are not found in the cognate Freiberger MS.; and the textual variations can not be traced to sectarian bias. The text of the Vulgate was in greater confusion in the middle ages than the text of the Itala at the time of Jerome, nor was there any authorized text of it before the Clementine recension of 1592. The only plausible argument which Dr. Keller brings out in his second publication (pp. 80 sqq.) is the fact that Emser, in his Annotations to the New Test. (1523), charges Luther with having translated the N. T. from a "Wickleffisch oder hussisch exemplar." But this refers to copies of the Latin Vulgate; and in the examples quoted by Keller, Luther does not agree with the Codex Teplensis. The hostility of several Popes and Councils to the circulation of vernacular translations of the Bible implies the existence of such translations, and could not prevent their publication, as the numerous German editions prove. Dutch, French, and Italian versions also appeared among the earliest prints. See Stevens, Nos. 687 and 688 (p. 59 sq.). The Italian edition exhibited in 1877 at London is entitled: La Biblia en lingua Volgare (per Nicolo di Mallermi). Venetia: per Joan. Rosso Vercellese, 1487, fol. A Spanish Bible by Bonif. Ferrer was printed at Valencia, 1478 (see Reuss, Gesch. der heil. Schr. N. T., II. 207, 5th Ed.). The Bible is the common property and most sacred treasure of all Christian churches. The art of printing was invented in Catholic times, and its history goes hand in hand with the history of the Bible. Henry Stevens says (The Bibles in the Caxton Exhibition, p. 25): "The secular history of the Holy Scriptures is the sacred history of Printing. The Bible was the first book printed, and the Bible is the last book printed. Between 1450 and 1877, an interval of four centuries and a quarter, the Bible shows the progress and comparative development of the art of printing in a manner that no other single book can; and Biblical bibliography proves that during the first forty years, at least, the Bible exceeded in amount of printing all other books put together; nor were its quality, style, and variety a whit behind its quantity." § 63. A Critical Estimate of Luther’s Version. Luther’s version of the Bible is a wonderful monument of genius, learning, and piety, and may be regarded in a secondary sense as inspired. It was, from beginning to end, a labor of love and enthusiasm. While publishers and printers made fortunes, Luther never received or asked a copper for this greatest work of his life.446

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

  One man with the truth on his side is stronger than a majority in error, and will conquer in the end. Christ was right against the whole Jewish hierarchy, against Herod and Pilate, who conspired in condemning him to the cross. St. Paul was right against Judaism and heathenism combined, "unus versus mundum;" St. Athanasius, "the father of orthodoxy," was right against dominant Arianism; Galileo Galilei was right against the Inquisition and the common opinion of his age on the motion of the earth; Döllinger was right against the Vatican Council when, "as a Christian, as a theologian, as an historian, and as a citizen," he protested against the new dogma of the infallibility of the Pope.385 That Luther was right in refusing to recant, and that he uttered the will of Providence in hearing testimony to the supremacy of the word of God and the freedom of conscience, has been made manifest by the verdict of history. § 57. Private Conferences with Luther. The Emperors Conduct. On the morning after Luther’s testimony, the Emperor sent a message—a sort of personal confession of faith—written by his own hand in French, to the Estates, informing them, that in consistency with his duty as the successor of the most Christian emperors of Germany and the Catholic kings of Spain, who had always been true to the Roman Church, he would now treat Luther, after sending him home with his safe-conduct, as an obstinate and convicted heretic, and defend with all his might the faith of his forefathers and of the Councils, especially that of Constance.386 Some of the deputies grew pale at this decision; the Romanists rejoiced. But in view of the state of public sentiment the Diet deemed it expedient to attempt private negotiations for a peaceful settlement, in the hope that Luther might be induced to withdraw or at least to moderate his dissent from the general Councils. The Emperor yielded in spite of Aleander’s protest. The negotiations were conducted chiefly by Richard von Greiffenklau, Elector and Archbishop of Treves, and at his residence. He was a benevolent and moderate churchman, to whom the Elector Frederick and Baron Miltitz had once desired to submit the controversy. The Elector of Brandenburg, Duke George of Saxony, Dr. Vehus (chancellor of the Margrave of Baden), Dr. Eck of Treves, Dean Cochlaeus of Frankfort,387 and the deputies of Strasburg and Augsburg, likewise took part in the conferences.