| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Disputation of the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences by Dr. Martin Luther: Est insanire.
1. [76] Dicimus contra, quod venie papales nec minimum venialium
peccatorum tollere possint quo ad culpam.
2. [77] Quod dicitur, nec si s. Petrus modo Papa esset maiores
gratias donare posset, est blasphemia in sanctum Petrum et Papam.
3. [78] Dicimus contra, quod etiam iste et quilibet papa maiores
habet, scilicet Euangelium, virtutes, gratias, curationum &c. ut
1. Co. XII.
4. [79] Dicere, Crucem armis papalibus insigniter erectam cruci
Christi equivalere, blasphemia est.
5. [80] Rationem reddent Episcopi, Curati et Theologi, Qui tales
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: ever before how far this glorious world of beautiful creations
lay from the paths of men like himself. He told himself that he
had in common with this woman only the baser uses of life.
Everett's week in Cheyenne stretched to three, and he saw no
prospect of release except through the thing he dreaded. The
bright, windy days of the Wyoming autumn passed swiftly. Letters
and telegrams came urging him to hasten his trip to the coast,
but he resolutely postponed his business engagements. The
mornings he spent on one of Charley Gaylord's ponies, or fishing
in the mountains, and in the evenings he sat in his room writing
letters or reading. In the afternoon he was usually at his post
 The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: health is needed for efficiency in God's service, health must not
be sacrificed to mortification. The general optimism and
healthy-mindedness of liberal Protestant circles to-day makes
mortification for mortification's sake repugnant to us. We can
no longer sympathize with cruel deities, and the notion that God
can take delight in the spectacle of sufferings self-inflicted in
his honor is abhorrent. In consequence of all these motives you
probably are disposed, unless some special utility can be shown
in some individual's discipline, to treat the general tendency to
asceticism as pathological.
Yet I believe that a more careful consideration of the whole
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