| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Augsburg Confession by Philip Melanchthon: silence in their sermons concerning the righteousness of
faith, while only the doctrine of works was treated in the
churches, our teachers have instructed the churches concerning
faith as follows: --
First, that our works cannot reconcile God or merit
forgiveness of sins, grace, and justification, but that we
obtain this only by faith when we believe that we are received
into favor for Christs sake, who alone has been set forth the
Mediator and Propitiation, 1 Tim. 2, 6, in order that the
Father may be reconciled through Him. Whoever, therefore,
trusts that by works he merits grace, despises the merit and
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon: horses standing, will not bolt off to join the company. Some horses
again, as the result of bad training, will run away from the
exercising-ground and make for the stable. A hard mouth may be
detected by the exercise called the {pede} or volte,[5] and still more
so by varying the direction of the volte to right or left. Many horses
will not attempt to run away except for the concurrence of a bad mouth
along with an avenue of escape home.[6]
[5] See Sturz, s.v.; Pollux, i. 219. Al. "the longe," but the passage
below (vii. 14) is suggestive rather of the volte.
[6] Al. "will only attempt to bolt where the passage out towards home
combines, as it were, with a bad mouth." {e . . . ekphora} = "the
 On Horsemanship |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: the subject with her, is more repulsive than her relations with her
deceased husband's brother.
Here, too, Shakespear betrays for once his religious sense by making
Hamlet, in his agony of shame, declare that his mother's conduct makes
"sweet religion a rhapsody of words." But for that passage we might
almost suppose that the feeling of Sunday morning in the country which
Orlando describes so perfectly in As You Like It was the beginning and
end of Shakespear's notion of religion. I say almost, because
Isabella in Measure for Measure has religious charm, in spite of the
conventional theatrical assumption that female religion means an
inhumanly ferocious chastity. But for the most part Shakespear
|