| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: accomplished, he must include the other influence of the variable cause as
well. Wherefore, we must return again and find another suitable beginning,
as about the former matters, so also about these. To which end we must
consider the nature of fire, and water, and air, and earth, such as they
were prior to the creation of the heaven, and what was happening to them in
this previous state; for no one has as yet explained the manner of their
generation, but we speak of fire and the rest of them, whatever they mean,
as though men knew their natures, and we maintain them to be the first
principles and letters or elements of the whole, when they cannot
reasonably be compared by a man of any sense even to syllables or first
compounds. And let me say thus much: I will not now speak of the first
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians by Martin Luther: The Jews believed if they kept the Law they would be saved. When they
heard that the Gospel proclaimed a Christ who had come into the world to
save sinners and not the righteous; when they heard that sinners were to
enter the kingdom of heaven before the righteous, the Jews were very
much put out. They murmured: "These last have wrought but one hour,
and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden
and heat of the day." (Matthew 20:12.) They complained that the heathen
who at one time had been worshipers of idols obtained grace without the
drudgery of the Law that was theirs.
Today we hear the same complaints. "What was the use of our having
lived in a cloister, twenty, thirty, forty years; what was the sense of having
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: cringing secretary, and viewing him with a smile of confidence.
'This man,' said Mr Haredale, eyeing him from top to toe, 'who in
his boyhood was a thief, and has been from that time to this, a
servile, false, and truckling knave: this man, who has crawled and
crept through life, wounding the hands he licked, and biting those
he fawned upon: this sycophant, who never knew what honour, truth,
or courage meant; who robbed his benefactor's daughter of her
virtue, and married her to break her heart, and did it, with
stripes and cruelty: this creature, who has whined at kitchen
windows for the broken food, and begged for halfpence at our chapel
doors: this apostle of the faith, whose tender conscience cannot
Barnaby Rudge |
