Erechtheion

“ He only sought to revive in those, who have lost it in the varying chances and turmoil of life, some consciousness of the intrinsic worth of all that is truly human. As soon as the great ones of the earth learn to see, that even slaves are their brothers, that even the base-born are the children of the Almighty, all the most violent contrasts of class will be smoothed away, and things that now weigh upon us as a yoke, will be turned into a bond of union. ‘My Kingdom is not of this world,’ said Jesus of Nazareth. ”

“ Now, if anyone differ from Thomas, he is called a heretic; nay, if he differ from some new-fangled logic, patched up but yesterday by any sophist of the schools. Whatever they do not like, whatever they do not understand, is heresy! to know Greek is heresy! to speak correctly is heresy! whatever they do not do is heresy! I confess that the charge of violation of the faith is a serious one, but not any and every question ought to be turned into a question of faith. ”

“ To his most noble son, and excellent lord, Edwin king of the Angles, Bishop Honorius, servant of the servants of God, greeting: The integrity of your Christian character, in the worship of your Creator, is so much inflamed with the fire of faith, that it shines out far and near, and, being reported throughout the world, brings forth plentiful fruit of your labours. For your conduct as a king is based upon the knowledge which by orthodox preaching you have obtained of your God and Creator, whereby you believe and worship Him, and as far as man is able, pay Him the sincere devotion of your mind. ”

“ If you are wise consider, not how great you are, but how great a burden rests upon your shoulders. The greater danger you are in, so much the less seek indulgence for yourself, and choose the model for your administration, not from your fathers or from your partisans, but from Christ. What can be more absurd than that a Christian prince should set up Hannibal, Alexander, Cæsar, or Pompey as an example to himself?... Nothing is so becoming, so splendid, so glorious in kings as to attain as nearly as may be to the perfect likeness of Jesus, the supreme [Pg 109] king, greatest and best.... ”

“ And yet the doctrine I taught thee, encouraged the expectation that, because thy Master was good, he would impute his righteousness unto thee. As well might the claim of thy righteousness be maintained, because another was exalted to a circle of purity. Thou hast no lessons in nature to sustain the doctrine of imputed righteousness. All law, which recognizes equity and justice, repudiates the slander upon the name of Jesus. He transfers no good to thee, which thy condition will not receive as thy own inheritance. ”

“ The seeds of inquiry sown in the sixteenth century resulted in a fruitful display of advanced opinions during the next age. In the page of seventeenth century history, more names of men, either avowedly heretics, or charged by the orthodox with heresy, or whose labours can be shown to have tended to the growth of heresy, may probably be recorded than can be found during the whole of the previously long period during which the Christian Church assumed to dominate and control European thought. The seventeenth century muster-roll of heresy is indeed a grand one, and gloriously filled. ”

“ There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know.
There are many skilful apprentices, but few master workmen. On every hand we observe a truly wise practice, in education, in morals, and in the arts of life, the embodied wisdom of many an ancient philosopher. Who does not see that heresies have some time prevailed, that reforms have already taken place? All this worldly wisdom might be regarded as the once unamiable heresy of some wise man. ”

“ Whilst your discovery of your tenent to be an Heresie depends on your having sufficient reason to believe it is so. And 2. The judgment of your having, or not having sufficient reason to believe this, is left to your self, the Church hath no means to know you or any other to be an Heretick, till they declare themselves to be so. And thus, in striving to free your self from Heresie, you have freed all mankind from it, (as to any external discovery and convincement thereof) and cancelled such a sin; unless we can find one, that will confess himself to maintain a thing against his own Conscience. ”

“ It is very remarkable that, in a remote province of a country so situated, a country gentleman, himself belonging to the feudal aristocracy, should have composed a work full of moral maxims and precepts, conceived in the spirit of the philosophers of Greece and Rome, and founded, not on the sanctions of revealed religion, but on a sort of natural system of ethics, on the beauty of virtue, on the innate sense of justice, on the lessons of history. ”

“ What cannot love and righteousness achieve for the race? All that can be accomplished, and more than history has yet recorded. All good that ever was written, taught, or wrought comes from God and human faith in the right. Through divine Love the right government is assimilated, the way pointed out, the process shortened, and the joy of acquiescence consummated. ”

“ Accordingly he was brought before Alexander. "Friend," said the king, "concerning whom dost thou say, that his servant is my master?" The philosopher answered, "My master is reason; his servant is the will. Now dost thou not govern thy kingdom according to the dictates of thy will? Therefore, thy will is thy master. But the will is the servant of my master. So that what I said is true, and thou canst not disprove it." Alexander wondering at the man's wit, candidly answered in the affirmative, and ever after ruled both himself and his kingdom by the laws of reason. ”

“ The words are these: "Ye shall not do unrighteousness in judgment, in measure, in division. Balances of righteousness, weights of righteousness, ephas of righteousness, shall ye have: I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt." Even the contrast—so evident—with the unrighteousness, shows distinctly that balances, measures, and weights of righteousness are here such as belong to righteousness—are in harmony with it. Even the root צדק never occurs in a physical sense, but always, only in a moral sense. ”

“ Wherefore I will rather honour the king [than your gods] , not, indeed, worshipping him, but praying for him. But God, the living and true God, I worship, knowing that the king is made by Him. You will say, then, to me, “Why do you not worship the king?” Because he is not made to be worshipped, but to be reverenced with lawful honour, for he is not a god, but a man appointed by God, not to be worshipped, but to judge justly. For in a kind of way his government is committed to him by God: as He will not have those called kings whom He has appointed under Himself ”

“ Tell thy cousin to take all the noble and fine, to reject all the selfish and unmeaning, in their lives. Doctrine is not in heaven. Not by fasts and scourgings, not by vigils and scruples about the law; not by selfishly shutting out the world, but by taking all poor, suffering, erring, striving humanity into his heart will he become the true Elias. ”

“ And if they take this that we have said, to be heresy, then do we with the Apostle freely confess, that after the way which they call heresy, worship we the God of our Fathers, believing all things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets and Apostles, desiring from our souls to disclaim all heresies and opinions which are not after Christ, and to be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, as knowing our labor shall not be in vain in the Lord. ”

“ Perhaps the knowledge that the cardinal had set himself to the task of nipping in the bud the dangerous growth of incipient heresy alarmed some of the more timid spirits; whilst others sought for truth and light as it was to be found amongst their recognized preachers and teachers, and were often surprised at the depth of spirituality and earnestness which they found in men who were stanch to the core to the traditions of the church, and held in abhorrence the very name and thought of heresy. ”

“ I taught masters to be kind to their servants; because they are brothers before God, the master and the servant. I commanded serving men faithfully and as God to serve their masters. I taught all believing men to worship one God Almighty and invisible. I learned not this lore of any earthly man, but {381}Jesus Christ spake to me from heaven, and sent me to preach his doctrine to all nations, thus saying, 'Go thou throughout the world, and I will be with thee, and whatsoever thou sayest or doest, I will justify it.'" The emperor was then astonished at these words. ”

“ How much more legitimate is it to say with the wise Plato, that the perfect felicity of a kingdom consists in the obedience of subjects to their prince, and of the prince to the laws, and in the laws being just and constantly directed to the public good! ”

“ For as, to take an illustration, certain Greek authors, or the leaders of some heretical sect, after having imbibed an error in doctrine instead of the truth, and having come to the conclusion in their own minds that such is the truth, proceed, in the next place, to endeavour to persuade others of the correctness of their opinions; so, in like manner, are we to suppose is the procedure of the princes of this world, in which to certain spiritual powers has been assigned the rule over certain nations, and who are termed on that account the princes of this world. ”

“ For has he not proposed a dispute, and submitted himself to everybody's judgement? No one has, so far, admonished, taught, convinced him. Every error is not at once heresy.
The best of Christianity is a life worthy of Christ. Where we find that, we should not rashly suspect people of heresy. Why do we so uncharitably persecute the lapses of others, though none of us is free from error? ”

“ Seeing the question will arise, Whether that is a heresy which the magistrate saith is so? and seeing it is both possible, and confessed by all to have often fallen out, that some magistrates have judged that heresy which was not, punishing men accordingly for truth, instead of error; there can be no argument drawn from the obviousness or evidence of heresy, unless we should conclude heresy could never be mistaken for truth, nor truth for heresy; whereof experience shows daily the contrary, even among Christians. ”

“ Wherefore Augustine says: "If men could know this, that is, Equity, and knowing it would obey it, the written Reason, the Law, would not be needful." And therefore it is written in the beginning of the old Digests or Books of the Civil Law: "The written Reason is the Art of Goodness and of Equity." To write this, to show forth and to enforce this, is the business of that Official Post of which one speaks, that of the Emperor, to whom, as has been said, in so far as our own operations extend, we are subject, and no farther. ”

“ Men are good and true of every nation and of every faith; but there are more good and true men in nations where civilisation has made progress, and amongst faiths which have been modified by high humanising influences. Men are good not because of their orthodoxy, but in spite of it; their goodness is the outgrowth of their humanity, not of their orthodoxy. Heresy is necessary to progress; heresy in religion always precedes an endeavour for political freedom. You cannot have effectual political progress without wide-spread heretical thought. ”

“ Real heretics have seldom been recovered to the true faith: not so much defect of judgment, as perverseness of the will, being in the case, through pride, or ambition, or self-willedness, or covetousness, or such like corruption, which therefore must be taken heed of: "Be humble, love the truth and practise it, and damning heresy will be escaped." ”

“ The heretics, tossed about by every blast of doctrine, are opposed by the uniform teaching of the Church, which remains so always, and is consistent with itself.
1. Thus, then, have all these men been exposed, who bring in impious doctrines regarding our Maker and Framer, who also formed this world, and above whom there is no other God; and those have been overthrown by their own arguments who teach falsehoods regarding the substance of our Lord, and the dispensation which He fulfilled for the sake of His own creature man. ”

“ It will be seen from the foregoing chapters that the Erewhonians are a meek and long-suffering people, easily led by the nose, and quick to offer up common sense at the shrine of logic, when a philosopher arises among them, who carries them away through his reputation for especial learning, or by convincing them that their existing institutions are not based on the strictest principles of morality. ”

“ Well, if the Roman Catholic Church ever made an earnest, an authoritative decision, in the world, it was when she declared Martin Luther a heretic. And what man, since his day, has broken off from an old party and established a new one, without most earnestly and solemnly being declared a heretic? No such man can be mentioned. The old party always decides that a new one, that breaks off from it, is a heresy. ”

“ If any one can lay any heresy to my charge, let him prepare to set out to the Council, that he may there in person lay before the Pope and the whole Council whatever heresy he hath heard me utter. If I shall be convicted of any heresy, I do not refuse to suffer the penalties of a heretic. But I trust God, whom I truly love, that He will not permit the detractors and adversaries of the truth to overcome the truth.
Hus did not neglect to take other steps for his defence. ”