| 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: that pardons may be preached in others.
54. Injury is done the Word of God when, in the same sermon,
an equal or a longer time is spent on pardons than on this
Word.
55. It must be the intention of the pope that if pardons,
which are a very small thing, are celebrated with one bell,
with single processions and ceremonies, then the Gospel, which
is the very greatest thing, should be preached with a hundred
bells, a hundred processions, a hundred ceremonies.
56. The "treasures of the Church," out of which the pope.
grants indulgences, are not sufficiently named or known among
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: nurse, again, was scarcely a desirable house-fellow. Since
her arrival, the fall of whisky in the young man's private
bottle was much accelerated; and though never communicative,
she was at times unpleasantly familiar. When asked about the
patient's health, she would dolorously shake her head, and
declare that the poor gentleman was in a pitiful condition.
Yet somehow Somerset had early begun to entertain the notion
that his complaint was other than bodily. The ill-looking
birds that gathered to the house, the strange noises that
sounded from the drawing-room in the dead hours of night, the
careless attendance and intemperate habits of the nurse, the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: he makes sure that his plumbing is sound, and after that he
thinks it can do no harm to let the Lord have a chance. It makes
the women happy, and after all, there are a lot of things we
don't yet know about the world. So he repairs to the family pew,
and recites over the venerable prayers, and contributes his mite
to the maintenance of an institution which, fourteen Sundays
every year, proclaims the terrifying menaces of the Athanasian
Creed:
Whoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he
hold the Catholick faith. Which faith, except one do keep whole
and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.
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