Sadness

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Speak to their self-esteem and keep in mind that you’re talking about the relationship between a man and a woman that will shape their lives. Tell them honestly how reluctant you are to call it quits, how hard you tried. If you went to a therapist, minister, or rabbi for help, say so. Don’t deprecate or scapegoat each other. Because you and your spouse cannot make the marriage work, and things between you can only get worse, say you’ve decided to divorce for everyone’s sake. You don’t want them to grow up with the wrong view of what marriage is. You don’t want to live a lie or mislead them into thinking that your failing marriage is the best that marriage provides. It isn’t . Then ask what they understand about divorce. Ask about their friends’ experiences. Let them speak. Let them tell you about their worry of losing you, about their strange ideas of having to be put in a foster home, about children not having funds to go to college. They may be full of bad information and you can correct them gently. Some children will be frozen into silence. Try to help them say what they’re scared of or relieved about. After all, you know them well. Remember that whether or not they speak, every child will have a mind that is spinning fast forward. They will all be worried, some realistically, some exaggeratedly. Keep in mind that there are no empty spaces in their minds. Even when they say “I don’t know,” they can have ideas that are too scary to articulate. Keep in mind that they’ll try with all their might to protect you, that they’re just as worried about you as you are about them, and that they may happily lie to you about what they feel if they think it will comfort you. Then tell them what plans you are making and ask for response and input. Leave it open and tentative. Be sure to give them some real choices. The worst is when they feel like inanimate objects that are just distributed between two homes. This feeling of having no choice can lead to a combination of anger and powerlessness that has long-term effects on their initiative later in life. Tell them soberly that adults who divorce one another continue to love and care for their children until the children are grown. Talk about good plans and what you’ll do together. But don’t get carried away. Schedule another meeting to discuss future plans after everyone has had a chance to think, so you can mutually explore what’s possible. Most of all, you need to tell your children that divorce is very sad for both of you and that you are very sorry. Keep in mind that this is one of the saddest days in any child’s life and nothing will save you from having to face it.

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  Second, the thing “Christianity” denotes is only tertiarily a religious movement. It is always accompanied by religious claims and practices, but the fundamental impact of Christianity on the world has been in the organization of civil life and society. Christianity became not a religion but an umbrella surrogate for religion. If you had Christianity, you had, by definition, religion, whatever your own views or practices might be. Where Christianity takes root, to be sure, it links up with local religious practices and indeed becomes a religion, to the embarrassment of its theoreticians. The hierarchy of believers comes into play again, as the two levels (sophisticates and devout) each concoct a story to explain the other. Augustine would always believe that the ignorant and the intellectual were very different in many ways and that the ignorant had, if anything, the better chance at heaven.383 DON QUIXOTE OF HIPPO What if we could laugh at Augustine? Hasn’t anybody ever done that? Not to judge by the books he wrote, not to judge by the vast literature about him. In the tens of thousands of pages about him, in the thousands of pages he wrote, vast humorlessness stretches as far as the eye can see. When Augustine attempts a lame joke384 or when a bitter enemy allows himself a snide remark, we are astonished, we remark the event, and move on solemnly. Why? Is it because Christianity is a religion that takes life so seriously that every moment of consciousness is notionally written down in a book somewhere? That an impertinent wisecrack is somehow a sin and, even if not a great sin, still something to be toted up in the minus column of that unironic accounting ledger? Christian liturgy is certainly jokeless and virtually humorless, for all that it remembers to speak of joy. In it, wine becomes blood, the most successful men and women are virgins and martyrs, the central action commemorates a brutual judicial murder, and song is an afterthought. Given five million humorless words by Augustine, and heaven only knows how many more solemn words by his exegetes, opponents, historians, biographers, and adulators, we’ll probably never find an easy and natural way to laugh in his presence, that’s true. And that’s sad. What if you take the blinders off? What if you stop seeing “Augustine” or “Saint Augustine” and instead really ask yourself who this guy reminds you of? What comes to mind?

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  Religious suicide had its practitioners and apologists then as now, e.g., religious women who killed themselves to avoid rape at the sack of Rome and were praised for it: Civ. 1.16–23.440. Unpublished work on Possidius by E. Hermanowicz wil elucidate the events of this year in remarkable ways; I am grateful to the author for allowing me an advance view.441. E. Diehl, Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres (Berlin, 1925) 1.2052, from Ad Miliaria in western Mauretania.442. German “Arianism” is deceptive. The earliest German converts to Christianity were made by a bishop of their own nationality named Ulfilas, who translated scripture into Gothic and traveled among peoples in the Balkans in the mid-300s, representing the brand of Christianity dominant in Constantinople at that time. By the time those doctrines were rejected and labeled as “Arian,” Ulfilas’s conversion efforts had borne great fruit. For hundreds of years, this would make Germanic-speaking newcomers easy to reject as heretics.443. Ep. 151.444. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan 315–30.445. Brown 337 observes the shift to flattering generals.446. Ep. 220.447. Ep. 230.448. Ep. 231.6.449. Ep. 231.7.450. Already suggested by Brown 423.451. Ep. Jer. 126.2.2.452. Ep. 111.1–7.453. Ammianus Marcellinus 14.6.19.454. Civ. 1.32.455. Ep. Jer. 50 gives a fleeting vignette of a rival from Jerome’s time in Rome whom some scholars identify as Pelagius.456. The word is that of Robert Markus, Conversion and Disenchantment.457. They did correspond, and Augustine later had to defend with some embarrassment just how polite he had been. See Aug. Ep. 146 (to be compared now with S. 348a, expanded by Dolbeau’s discoveries), explained at Gest. Pel. 26.51.458. Melanie is interesting for far more than her encounter with Augustine. Her story was told in a life whose Greek version survives (Gerontius, Vita Melaniae Iunioris, ed. D. Gorce [Paris, 1972]; Eng. trans. by E. Clark [Lewiston, Maine, 1985]).459. Such huge sell-offs were disruptive at many levels. Even slaves feared what would happen to them and regarded their pious masters as self-indulgent profligates: see A. Giardina, “Carità eversiva: Le donazioni di Melanie La Giovane e gli equilibri della società tardoromana,” Studi storici 29(1988) 127–42.460. Vita Melan. iun. 21.461. Ep. 126. Augustine also had to apologize to Alypius for appearing to be poaching on a “development prospect” that Alypius had found for himself.462. Brown 300.463. For the events of these three days and what led up to them, we have the stenographic transcript, approved by the parties, best available with Latin text and French translation in S. Lancel, ed., Actes de la Conférence de Carthage en 411 (Paris, 1972–91).464. The precise claim of the Caecilianists (Coll. Carth. 1.18) is that they were in the majority except in Numidia consularis—the heartland of the prosperous olive-growing high country. The implicit acknowledgment of their focus of weakness is important and gives credibility to the overall claim.465. On these machinations, see Brent Shaw, “African Christianity: Disputes, Definitions, and ‘Donatists,’” in M. R. Greenshields and T. A.

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  In the world of history and humans, though, saints come and go. One generation’s paragon may be another’s pervert, or fashion may simply shift, as cloistered virgins see their stock drop in value while more worldly figures engage the imagination of later generations. The monopoly on sainthood once carefully managed by churches, moreover, has given way once more to pluralistic and polymorphous bandying of the term, with (to be sure) less claim of assurance of eternity. And so saints die, in more ways than one. In a sense, the only good saint was a dead one, because people believed, and Christianity had reinforced this belief, that only a happy ending made a life happy or blessed. Whether good cheer or good works are in question, the ride to the finish line is often enough bumpy and unreliable. But the saint who fades from memory, the saint whose reputation is rewritten to his disadvantage after death, or the saint who turns out not to have existed at all—such saints are only too well known. In an age when traditional churchly structures crumble and when the place of Christianity in the cultural landscape changes dramatically, more saints than ever fade from view. Augustine of Hippo has long been secure in his claim to the title of saint, too secure. His relics are still in Pavia, whatever we may think of them. Numerous religious communities of men or women following his rule, including some bearing his name, continue to do business around the world, though with fewer numbers than in decades past. Churches in his name are common, though mainly now in older neighborhoods. One such church in Philadelphia, one of the oldest in the city, lost its steeple to a lightning bolt a few years ago. In another age, that omen would have been observed with some concern; now it is a question for historic preservationists. Augustine has always lived more in his books than otherwise. Jaroslav Pelikan, whose command of the history of Christian doctrine knows no rival, has said, “There has, quite literally, been no century of the sixteen centuries since the conversion of Augustine in which he has not been a major intellectual, spiritual, and cultural force.” Edward Gibbon played it both ways: “Augustine possessed a strong, capacious, argumentative mind. He boldly sounded the dark abyss of grace, predestination, free-will, and original sin.” And again Gibbon (on City of God): “His learning is too often borrowed, and his arguments too often his own.” Nietzsche read him and laughed at the pear-theft story, but Heidegger read him with great care and lectured on him to monks.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “I do not doubt it,” replied he, rather astonished at her earnestness and warmth; for had he not imagined it to be a joke for the good of her acquaintance in general, founded only on a something or a nothing between Mr. Willoughby and herself, he would not have ventured to mention it. CHAPTER XIX. Edward remained a week at the cottage; he was earnestly pressed by Mrs. Dashwood to stay longer; but, as if he were bent only on self-mortification, he seemed resolved to be gone when his enjoyment among his friends was at the height. His spirits, during the last two or three days, though still very unequal, were greatly improved—he grew more and more partial to the house and environs—never spoke of going away without a sigh—declared his time to be wholly disengaged—even doubted to what place he should go when he left them—but still, go he must. Never had any week passed so quickly—he could hardly believe it to be gone. He said so repeatedly; other things he said too, which marked the turn of his feelings and gave the lie to his actions. He had no pleasure at Norland; he detested being in town; but either to Norland or London, he must go. He valued their kindness beyond any thing, and his greatest happiness was in being with them. Yet, he must leave them at the end of a week, in spite of their wishes and his own, and without any restraint on his time.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Lisa was fortunate because her stepmother was a decent, kind woman who built a loving, lasting marriage with Lisa’s father. It’s also lucky that in this case Lisa was very young at the time of the divorce. It’s easier for an adult to play with a young child who in turn expects adults to take on authority roles. Adolescents, in contrast, have separate interests and resent being told what to do. This said, it’s a mistake to think that little children have little feelings. Little children have powerful feelings and, despite their limited skills, can disrupt a second marriage as effectively as any adolescent on the warpath. Children of all ages have strong mixed feelings about stepparents. As I noted in discussing stepfathers, the stepmother also has to realize that it takes as long to cultivate the friendship and affection of a child as it does to cultivate the friendship and affection of an adult. Two WorldsIN LOOKING AT Lisa and others who were raised within the protection of good second marriages, I must admit my surprise that the good remarriage of one or both parents was not as influential as I had expected it would be in ameliorating the child’s fear that her own adult relationships would fail. (All too often just one parent finds a happy, lasting remarriage and not both.) Although Lisa loved her father and stepmother, she never felt that their marriage was one that she would like for herself. She knew they were happy, but when she talked about them her tone was always bland. She never volunteered observations about them in the amused, pleased, or critical ways that the adults in intact families talked about their parents. For reasons that we can only speculate about, children raised in remarried families often have a greater psychological distance between themselves and their parents compared with peers raised in an intact family. It was easier for Lisa to spend time with her father and stepmother separately than to feel truly at home with both together, although she loved and admired them. She could never quite visualize them as a couple. Perhaps loyalty to the excluded parent holds the key to these feelings.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  As I searched my memory I was hard put to recall children of divorce talking happily, after the divorce, about any holidays or family vacations. Thanksgiving and Christmas posed annual dilemmas. Along with the goodies came the question—whose turn is it to spend which holiday where? For many, these occasions were a mixed bag. Some recalled visiting grandparents alone without their parents, which gave many children a sense of belonging to an extended family, something youngsters in intact families took for granted. Most loved their grandparents very much. These were happy times in their grandparents’ home that were long remembered. Some children liked spending separate vacations with their dad and his new family while others hated summer vacations because they were forced to go visit one parent under court order. Family celebrations like graduations, bar mitzvahs, weddings, and birthdays could be very happy. But they could also be marred by continuing tensions between parents, new lovers, and ex-partners. Will one of the adults ruin the occasion by acting out? The children would hold their breath until the event was safely over. The glow of a family get-together, where the older generations can relax and enjoy the food and laugh at the children’s antics and the children can bask in the family’s admiration, was not part of their storehouse of childhood memories in the same way that it was for those in most intact families. Invisible Structure of ParentingAS GARY DESCRIBED how he spent his time as a child, it gradually dawned on me that in a well-functioning intact family mothers and fathers are in the background as their children grow up. Their role is to create a safe and supportive place for the children, whose job during elementary and junior high school is to go to school, play, make friends, and simply grow up. From the child’s perspective, children occupy center stage. The parents’ job as producers is to stay in the wings and make sure that the show goes on. They should of course encourage, applaud, feed, and clothe the players. If the children stumble, parents should come out of the wings, help them up, dust them off, and immediately get offstage again.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  This desponding turn of mind, though it could not be communicated to Mrs. Dashwood, gave additional pain to them all in the parting, which shortly took place, and left an uncomfortable impression on Elinor’s feelings especially, which required some trouble and time to subdue. But as it was her determination to subdue it, and to prevent herself from appearing to suffer more than what all her family suffered on his going away, she did not adopt the method so judiciously employed by Marianne, on a similar occasion, to augment and fix her sorrow, by seeking silence, solitude and idleness. Their means were as different as their objects, and equally suited to the advancement of each. Elinor sat down to her drawing-table as soon as he was out of the house, busily employed herself the whole day, neither sought nor avoided the mention of his name, appeared to interest herself almost as much as ever in the general concerns of the family, and if, by this conduct, she did not lessen her own grief, it was at least prevented from unnecessary increase, and her mother and sisters were spared much solicitude on her account. Such behaviour as this, so exactly the reverse of her own, appeared no more meritorious to Marianne, than her own had seemed faulty to her. The business of self-command she settled very easily;—with strong affections it was impossible, with calm ones it could have no merit. That her sister’s affections _were_ calm, she dared not deny, though she blushed to acknowledge it; and of the strength of her own, she gave a very striking proof, by still loving and respecting that sister, in spite of this mortifying conviction. Without shutting herself up from her family, or leaving the house in determined solitude to avoid them, or lying awake the whole night to indulge meditation, Elinor found every day afforded her leisure enough to think of Edward, and of Edward’s behaviour, in every possible variety which the different state of her spirits at different times could produce,—with tenderness, pity, approbation, censure, and doubt. There were moments in abundance, when, if not by the absence of her mother and sisters, at least by the nature of their employments, conversation was forbidden among them, and every effect of solitude was produced. Her mind was inevitably at liberty; her thoughts could not be chained elsewhere; and the past and the future, on a subject so interesting, must be before her, must force her attention, and engross her memory, her reflection, and her fancy.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  These words, which conveyed to Elinor a direct avowal of his love for her sister, affected her very much. She was not immediately able to say anything, and even when her spirits were recovered, she debated for a short time, on the answer it would be most proper to give. The real state of things between Willoughby and her sister was so little known to herself, that in endeavouring to explain it, she might be as liable to say too much as too little. Yet as she was convinced that Marianne’s affection for Willoughby, could leave no hope of Colonel Brandon’s success, whatever the event of that affection might be, and at the same time wished to shield her conduct from censure, she thought it most prudent and kind, after some consideration, to say more than she really knew or believed. She acknowledged, therefore, that though she had never been informed by themselves of the terms on which they stood with each other, of their mutual affection she had no doubt, and of their correspondence she was not astonished to hear. He listened to her with silent attention, and on her ceasing to speak, rose directly from his seat, and after saying in a voice of emotion, “to your sister I wish all imaginable happiness; to Willoughby that he may endeavour to deserve her,”—took leave, and went away. Elinor derived no comfortable feelings from this conversation, to lessen the uneasiness of her mind on other points; she was left, on the contrary, with a melancholy impression of Colonel Brandon’s unhappiness, and was prevented even from wishing it removed, by her anxiety for the very event that must confirm it. CHAPTER XXVIII. Nothing occurred during the next three or four days, to make Elinor regret what she had done, in applying to her mother; for Willoughby neither came nor wrote. They were engaged about the end of that time to attend Lady Middleton to a party, from which Mrs. Jennings was kept away by the indisposition of her youngest daughter; and for this party, Marianne, wholly dispirited, careless of her appearance, and seeming equally indifferent whether she went or staid, prepared, without one look of hope or one expression of pleasure. She sat by the drawing-room fire after tea, till the moment of Lady Middleton’s arrival, without once stirring from her seat, or altering her attitude, lost in her own thoughts, and insensible of her sister’s presence; and when at last they were told that Lady Middleton waited for them at the door, she started as if she had forgotten that any one was expected.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Truth obliged her to acknowledge some small share in the action, but she was at the same time so unwilling to appear as the benefactress of Edward, that she acknowledged it with hesitation; which probably contributed to fix that suspicion in his mind which had recently entered it. For a short time he sat deep in thought, after Elinor had ceased to speak;—at last, and as if it were rather an effort, he said, “Colonel Brandon seems a man of great worth and respectability. I have always heard him spoken of as such, and your brother I know esteems him highly. He is undoubtedly a sensible man, and in his manners perfectly the gentleman.” “Indeed,” replied Elinor, “I believe that you will find him, on farther acquaintance, all that you have heard him to be, and as you will be such very near neighbours (for I understand the parsonage is almost close to the mansion-house,) it is particularly important that he _should_ be all this.” Edward made no answer; but when she had turned away her head, gave her a look so serious, so earnest, so uncheerful, as seemed to say, that he might hereafter wish the distance between the parsonage and the mansion-house much greater. “Colonel Brandon, I think, lodges in St. James Street,” said he, soon afterwards, rising from his chair. Elinor told him the number of the house. “I must hurry away then, to give him those thanks which you will not allow me to give _you;_ to assure him that he has made me a very—an exceedingly happy man.” Elinor did not offer to detain him; and they parted, with a very earnest assurance on _her_ side of her unceasing good wishes for his happiness in every change of situation that might befall him; on _his_, with rather an attempt to return the same good will, than the power of expressing it. “When I see him again,” said Elinor to herself, as the door shut him out, “I shall see him the husband of Lucy.” And with this pleasing anticipation, she sat down to reconsider the past, recall the words and endeavour to comprehend all the feelings of Edward; and, of course, to reflect on her own with discontent. When Mrs. Jennings came home, though she returned from seeing people whom she had never seen before, and of whom therefore she must have a great deal to say, her mind was so much more occupied by the important secret in her possession, than by anything else, that she reverted to it again as soon as Elinor appeared. “Well, my dear,” she cried, “I sent you up the young man. Did not I do right?—And I suppose you had no great difficulty—You did not find him very unwilling to accept your proposal?” “No, ma’am; _that_ was not very likely.” “Well, and how soon will he be ready?—For it seems all to depend upon that.”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Marianne had promised to be guided by her mother’s opinion, and she submitted to it therefore without opposition, though it proved perfectly different from what she wished and expected, though she felt it to be entirely wrong, formed on mistaken grounds, and that by requiring her longer continuance in London it deprived her of the only possible alleviation of her wretchedness, the personal sympathy of her mother, and doomed her to such society and such scenes as must prevent her ever knowing a moment’s rest. But it was a matter of great consolation to her, that what brought evil to herself would bring good to her sister; and Elinor, on the other hand, suspecting that it would not be in her power to avoid Edward entirely, comforted herself by thinking, that though their longer stay would therefore militate against her own happiness, it would be better for Marianne than an immediate return into Devonshire. Her carefulness in guarding her sister from ever hearing Willoughby’s name mentioned, was not thrown away. Marianne, though without knowing it herself, reaped all its advantage; for neither Mrs. Jennings, nor Sir John, nor even Mrs. Palmer herself, ever spoke of him before her. Elinor wished that the same forbearance could have extended towards herself, but that was impossible, and she was obliged to listen day after day to the indignation of them all. Sir John, could not have thought it possible. “A man of whom he had always had such reason to think well! Such a good-natured fellow! He did not believe there was a bolder rider in England! It was an unaccountable business. He wished him at the devil with all his heart. He would not speak another word to him, meet him where he might, for all the world! No, not if it were to be by the side of Barton covert, and they were kept watching for two hours together. Such a scoundrel of a fellow! such a deceitful dog! It was only the last time they met that he had offered him one of Folly’s puppies! and this was the end of it!” Mrs. Palmer, in her way, was equally angry. “She was determined to drop his acquaintance immediately, and she was very thankful that she had never been acquainted with him at all. She wished with all her heart Combe Magna was not so near Cleveland; but it did not signify, for it was a great deal too far off to visit; she hated him so much that she was resolved never to mention his name again, and she should tell everybody she saw, how good-for-nothing he was.” The rest of Mrs. Palmer’s sympathy was shown in procuring all the particulars in her power of the approaching marriage, and communicating them to Elinor. She could soon tell at what coachmaker’s the new carriage was building, by what painter Mr. Willoughby’s portrait was drawn, and at what warehouse Miss Grey’s clothes might be seen.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Early in February, within a fortnight from the receipt of Willoughby’s letter, Elinor had the painful office of informing her sister that he was married. She had taken care to have the intelligence conveyed to herself, as soon as it was known that the ceremony was over, as she was desirous that Marianne should not receive the first notice of it from the public papers, which she saw her eagerly examining every morning. She received the news with resolute composure; made no observation on it, and at first shed no tears; but after a short time they would burst out, and for the rest of the day, she was in a state hardly less pitiable than when she first learnt to expect the event. The Willoughbys left town as soon as they were married; and Elinor now hoped, as there could be no danger of her seeing either of them, to prevail on her sister, who had never yet left the house since the blow first fell, to go out again by degrees as she had done before. About this time the two Miss Steeles, lately arrived at their cousin’s house in Bartlett’s Buildings, Holburn, presented themselves again before their more grand relations in Conduit and Berkeley Streets; and were welcomed by them all with great cordiality. Elinor only was sorry to see them. Their presence always gave her pain, and she hardly knew how to make a very gracious return to the overpowering delight of Lucy in finding her _still_ in town. “I should have been quite disappointed if I had not found you here _still_,” said she repeatedly, with a strong emphasis on the word. “But I always thought I _should_. I was almost sure you would not leave London yet awhile; though you _told_ me, you know, at Barton, that you should not stay above a _month_. But I thought, at the time, that you would most likely change your mind when it came to the point. It would have been such a great pity to have went away before your brother and sister came. And now to be sure you will be in no _hurry_ to be gone. I am amazingly glad you did not keep to _your word_.” Elinor perfectly understood her, and was forced to use all her self-command to make it appear that she did _not_. “Well, my dear,” said Mrs. Jennings, “and how did you travel?” “Not in the stage, I assure you,” replied Miss Steele, with quick exultation; “we came post all the way, and had a very smart beau to attend us. Dr. Davies was coming to town, and so we thought we’d join him in a post-chaise; and he behaved very genteelly, and paid ten or twelve shillings more than we did.” “Oh, oh!” cried Mrs. Jennings; “very pretty, indeed! and the Doctor is a single man, I warrant you.”

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

  First, Paul speaks regularly in the synagogues. He travels to Jerusalem to celebrate Jewish Pen- tecost (Acts 20.16), and he circumcises Timothy. Second, he converses in the agora. He gives a speech where pagan poets are cited thus aligning himself with persuasive Greek style. Third, Acts witnesses to the difficulties inherent in living according to the dictum. Paul instantly ran into difficulties with the synagogues; he is ridiculed in Athens. His performance there even earned him accusations of being an idolater.” 77. Alan Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 265. 97 AN ANOMALOUS JEW perapostles in Corinth, even if their teaching was sophistic rather than no- mistic, led Paul to buttress his own apostolic authority by juxtaposing the old covenant with the new covenant in 2 Cor 3. Paul laments that the Jews who read the old covenant are unaware that the glory of Moses has departed. The veil that covers their minds is “removed” (katapyéw) in Christ when one “con- verts” (émotpégw) to the Lord (2 Cor 3:15-16). This remark about those who are veiled should be coordinated with what Paul states in 2 Cor 4:3-4, “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Paul places the Jews in the category of those who are perishing (am6A- Avut) and are unbelievers (dmtotot) and therefore are in need of salvation. Finally, in 2 Cor 11:24 Paul claims that he has five times received the thirty-nine lashes from the Jews. That implies his willingness to submit to the discipline of a synagogue, also that he was evidently doing something that prompted a call for severe discipline for his activities. We do not know whether evangelistic, social, or legal reasons led to Paul’s receiving this penalty, but it does prove that he remained within the orbit of Jewish synagogues at one time or other. Romans contains further material that relates the Jews to Paul’s gospel.”® The propositio of Rom 1:16 that “the gospel is the power of salvation for every- one who believes, the Jew first, and then the Greek” is not reflecting purely a salvation-historical scheme of how the gospel came to the Gentiles via the Jews, but it mirrors Paul’s actual missionary practice of beginning with the Jews in a local synagogue. The diatribes in Romans may reflect actual instances of debates with real Jewish persons (e.g., Rom 2:1-3:9; 6:1-3; 7:1-25} 9:1-5; 1071-3).

• From The City of God

  131 Lecture 6 Transcript—The Price of Empire (Books 2–3) But the libido dominandi does say something positive, and precisely because it remains theological. For the reason Augustine thinks humans are gripped by the libido dominandi is because we are creatures who long for a kind of joy that transcends momentary worldly happiness, and we think it promises us the closest simulacra to joy that we can achieve. The scope of our hope shows how silly and sad any merely mundane program of domesticating our appetites must finally be. Thus we are revealed, in our glory and our misery, in our domination by this dominating lust. Furthermore, this libido is not simply psychological and theological. This deeply individual and psychological malady also illuminates our collective political history. For the libido dominandi is the inward correlate of the outward Imperium Romanum, the way that that imperium plants itself in the souls of those who serve it, and whose souls become, in turn, the soil which reaffirms, cultivates, and expands the outward imperium. The empire’s mode of control is domination— it’s fundamentally external. And because of this, it is always inevitably imperfect—crude and resisted by the subjugated and not always complete. There’s always some remainder of power left undominated. But, after all the polemics, the conclusion to these books is then mixed, ambivalent. Augustine exhorts the pagans to recognize that they’ve misconceived the proper shape of their desires, and the proper means whereby they might satisfy them. Rome’s old gods are not gods but demons. The Romans should turn to the true liberty of the city of God, where all the old Roman virtues are not rejected but transfigured—as he puts it, where victory is truth, where dignity is holiness, where peace is happiness, and where life is eternity. Now, note: this suggests that the putative ideals of both the old republic and the Christian congregation might be fulfilled in Christianity. Both groups, despite their differences, believe that true happiness consists of modest and settled joy, not extravagant circuses of libidinality. Their differences lie in how they conceive that joy, and how they aim to partake in it. Augustine says that the Romans 132 Books That Matter: The City of God should reject their nostalgia for their imagined ancestors and see that what they say they want is findable in their cities today, in the communities of Christians around them even now. Happiness lies not in domination but in the liberation that Christ’s grace offers.

• From The City of God

  108 Books That Matter: The City of God excessive affections or wrongly attuned attachments to things of this world. We are too proud, too attached to something, and our suffering teaches us to hold it more lightly, as not truly part of who we essentially are. As he puts it in Book 2, Chapter 9, “In this universal catastrophe, the sufferings of Christians have tended to their moral improvement.” As to the sufferings of pagans in the sack of Rome, he can see no way in which the similar thing can be affirmed. In seeing it this way, we attempt to recover and reaffirm the agency lost in suffering. It is thus essentially an empowering strategy. By resisting the temptation towards a static victimhood, we attempt to find in suffering God’s presence, to which we are called to respond. At times, the empowering purpose of this therapy has been pushed beyond asceticism to self-destructiveness. But there’s a difference between humility and humiliation, selflessness and self-abnegation, and this practice should remain available to us. Because of this, we must emphasize that not every person can manage this in the same way, and none of us should assume that we can. It should be undertaken with the utmost pastoral tact, and not out of apologetic interests but practical healing ones. Remember, he says we are talking here more as consolation than as apologetic. None of this aims to exonerate God—God’s righteousness is presumed here—but rather to figure out what humans can do, how to respond to such absurd suffering without appealing to the arid calculus of merit. Nor should this encourage us to seek out more suffering. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. We don’t need to go out looking for more suffering; but what suffering we encounter we should seek to use to our own advantage. Is this attitude fully inhabitable, however? Is it possible? Is it wise? It seems to set us up for a life of complicated and transitory happiness, at best. Can you imagine telling a friend who has suffered the death of a spouse, or worse still a child, to try to find some use in this death? To learn from it that they may have cherished their now departed 109 Lecture 5 Transcript—The Problem of Suffering (Book 1) loved one wrongly? Augustine does not pretend to have answered or solved the problem of evil, just sketched the outlines of how someone with his philosophical and theological convictions might answer it, and he will return to this topic repeatedly in later books, climaxing in the last three on the resurrection of the dead.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  It amused her to observe that all her friends seemed determined to send her to Delaford;—a place, in which, of all others, she would now least chuse to visit, or wish to reside; for not only was it considered as her future home by her brother and Mrs. Jennings, but even Lucy, when they parted, gave her a pressing invitation to visit her there. Very early in April, and tolerably early in the day, the two parties from Hanover Square and Berkeley Street set out from their respective homes, to meet, by appointment, on the road. For the convenience of Charlotte and her child, they were to be more than two days on their journey, and Mr. Palmer, travelling more expeditiously with Colonel Brandon, was to join them at Cleveland soon after their arrival. Marianne, few as had been her hours of comfort in London, and eager as she had long been to quit it, could not, when it came to the point, bid adieu to the house in which she had for the last time enjoyed those hopes, and that confidence, in Willoughby, which were now extinguished for ever, without great pain. Nor could she leave the place in which Willoughby remained, busy in new engagements, and new schemes, in which _she_ could have no share, without shedding many tears. Elinor’s satisfaction, at the moment of removal, was more positive. She had no such object for her lingering thoughts to fix on, she left no creature behind, from whom it would give her a moment’s regret to be divided for ever, she was pleased to be free herself from the persecution of Lucy’s friendship, she was grateful for bringing her sister away unseen by Willoughby since his marriage, and she looked forward with hope to what a few months of tranquility at Barton might do towards restoring Marianne’s peace of mind, and confirming her own. Their journey was safely performed. The second day brought them into the cherished, or the prohibited, county of Somerset, for as such was it dwelt on by turns in Marianne’s imagination; and in the forenoon of the third they drove up to Cleveland. Cleveland was a spacious, modern-built house, situated on a sloping lawn. It had no park, but the pleasure-grounds were tolerably extensive; and like every other place of the same degree of importance, it had its open shrubbery, and closer wood walk, a road of smooth gravel winding round a plantation, led to the front, the lawn was dotted over with timber, the house itself was under the guardianship of the fir, the mountain-ash, and the acacia, and a thick screen of them altogether, interspersed with tall Lombardy poplars, shut out the offices.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  He could say no more, and rising hastily walked for a few minutes about the room. Elinor, affected by his relation, and still more by his distress, could not speak. He saw her concern, and coming to her, took her hand, pressed it, and kissed it with grateful respect. A few minutes more of silent exertion enabled him to proceed with composure. “It was nearly three years after this unhappy period before I returned to England. My first care, when I _did_ arrive, was of course to seek for her; but the search was as fruitless as it was melancholy. I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for her comfortable maintenance, and I learnt from my brother that the power of receiving it had been made over some months before to another person. He imagined, and calmly could he imagine it, that her extravagance, and consequent distress, had obliged her to dispose of it for some immediate relief. At last, however, and after I had been six months in England, I _did_ find her. Regard for a former servant of my own, who had since fallen into misfortune, carried me to visit him in a spunging-house, where he was confined for debt; and there, in the same house, under a similar confinement, was my unfortunate sister. So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind! hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had once doted. What I endured in so beholding her—but I have no right to wound your feelings by attempting to describe it—I have pained you too much already. That she was, to all appearance, in the last stage of a consumption, was—yes, in such a situation it was my greatest comfort. Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death; and that was given. I saw her placed in comfortable lodgings, and under proper attendants; I visited her every day during the rest of her short life: I was with her in her last moments.” Again he stopped to recover himself; and Elinor spoke her feelings in an exclamation of tender concern, at the fate of his unfortunate friend.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “I understand you. You do not suppose that I have ever felt much. For four months, Marianne, I have had all this hanging on my mind, without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature; knowing that it would make you and my mother most unhappy whenever it were explained to you, yet unable to prepare you for it in the least. It was told me,—it was in a manner forced on me by the very person herself, whose prior engagement ruined all my prospects; and told me, as I thought, with triumph. This person’s suspicions, therefore, I have had to oppose, by endeavouring to appear indifferent where I have been most deeply interested; and it has not been only once; I have had her hopes and exultation to listen to again and again. I have known myself to be divided from Edward for ever, without hearing one circumstance that could make me less desire the connection. Nothing has proved him unworthy; nor has anything declared him indifferent to me. I have had to contend against the unkindness of his sister, and the insolence of his mother; and have suffered the punishment of an attachment, without enjoying its advantages. And all this has been going on at a time, when, as you know too well, it has not been my only unhappiness. If you can think me capable of ever feeling, surely you may suppose that I have suffered _now_. The composure of mind with which I have brought myself at present to consider the matter, the consolation that I have been willing to admit, have been the effect of constant and painful exertion; they did not spring up of themselves; they did not occur to relieve my spirits at first. No, Marianne. _Then_, if I had not been bound to silence, perhaps nothing could have kept me entirely—not even what I owed to my dearest friends—from openly showing that I was _very_ unhappy.” Marianne was quite subdued. “Oh! Elinor,” she cried, “you have made me hate myself for ever.—How barbarous have I been to you!—you, who have been my only comfort, who have borne with me in all my misery, who have seemed to be only suffering for me!—Is this my gratitude?—Is this the only return I can make you?—Because your merit cries out upon myself, I have been trying to do it away.”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  In her earnest meditations on the contents of the letter, on the depravity of that mind which could dictate it, and probably, on the very different mind of a very different person, who had no other connection whatever with the affair than what her heart gave him with every thing that passed, Elinor forgot the immediate distress of her sister, forgot that she had three letters on her lap yet unread, and so entirely forgot how long she had been in the room, that when on hearing a carriage drive up to the door, she went to the window to see who could be coming so unreasonably early, she was all astonishment to perceive Mrs. Jennings’s chariot, which she knew had not been ordered till one. Determined not to quit Marianne, though hopeless of contributing, at present, to her ease, she hurried away to excuse herself from attending Mrs. Jennings, on account of her sister being indisposed. Mrs. Jennings, with a thoroughly good-humoured concern for its cause, admitted the excuse most readily, and Elinor, after seeing her safe off, returned to Marianne, whom she found attempting to rise from the bed, and whom she reached just in time to prevent her from falling on the floor, faint and giddy from a long want of proper rest and food; for it was many days since she had any appetite, and many nights since she had really slept; and now, when her mind was no longer supported by the fever of suspense, the consequence of all this was felt in an aching head, a weakened stomach, and a general nervous faintness. A glass of wine, which Elinor procured for her directly, made her more comfortable, and she was at last able to express some sense of her kindness, by saying, “Poor Elinor! how unhappy I make you!” “I only wish,” replied her sister, “there were any thing I _could_ do, which might be of comfort to you.” This, as every thing else would have been, was too much for Marianne, who could only exclaim, in the anguish of her heart, “Oh! Elinor, I am miserable, indeed,” before her voice was entirely lost in sobs. Elinor could no longer witness this torrent of unresisted grief in silence. “Exert yourself, dear Marianne,” she cried, “if you would not kill yourself and all who love you. Think of your mother; think of her misery while _you_ suffer: for her sake you must exert yourself.” “I cannot, I cannot,” cried Marianne; “leave me, leave me, if I distress you; leave me, hate me, forget me! but do not torture me so. Oh! how easy for those, who have no sorrow of their own to talk of exertion! Happy, happy Elinor, _you_ cannot have an idea of what I suffer.” “Do you call _me_ happy, Marianne? Ah! if you knew!—And can you believe me to be so, while I see you so wretched!”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Never had Marianne been so unwilling to dance in her life, as she was that evening, and never so much fatigued by the exercise. She complained of it as they returned to Berkeley Street. “Aye, aye,” said Mrs. Jennings, “we know the reason of all that very well; if a certain person who shall be nameless, had been there, you would not have been a bit tired: and to say the truth it was not very pretty of him not to give you the meeting when he was invited.” “Invited!” cried Marianne. “So my daughter Middleton told me, for it seems Sir John met him somewhere in the street this morning.” Marianne said no more, but looked exceedingly hurt. Impatient in this situation to be doing something that might lead to her sister’s relief, Elinor resolved to write the next morning to her mother, and hoped by awakening her fears for the health of Marianne, to procure those inquiries which had been so long delayed; and she was still more eagerly bent on this measure by perceiving after breakfast on the morrow, that Marianne was again writing to Willoughby, for she could not suppose it to be to any other person. About the middle of the day, Mrs. Jennings went out by herself on business, and Elinor began her letter directly, while Marianne, too restless for employment, too anxious for conversation, walked from one window to the other, or sat down by the fire in melancholy meditation. Elinor was very earnest in her application to her mother, relating all that had passed, her suspicions of Willoughby’s inconstancy, urging her by every plea of duty and affection to demand from Marianne an account of her real situation with respect to him.