| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: memories of twenty years, the voices of rough men now no more,
the strong voice of the everlasting winds, and the whisper of a
mysterious spell, the murmur of the great sea, which must have
somehow reached my inland cradle and entered my unconscious ear,
like that formula of Mohammedan faith the Mussulman father
whispers into the ear of his new-born infant, making him one of
the faithful almost with his first breath. I do not know whether
I have been a good seaman, but I know I have been a very faithful
one. And after all there is that handful of "characters" from
various ships to prove that all these years have not been
altogether a dream. There they are, brief, and monotonous in
Some Reminiscences |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Augsburg Confession by Philip Melanchthon: the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all
truth. They also refer to the example of the Apostles, who
commanded to abstain from blood and from things strangled,
Acts 15, 29. They refer to the Sabbath-day as having been
changed into the Lord's Day, contrary to the Decalog, as it
seems. Neither is there any example whereof they make more
than concerning the changing of the Sabbath-day. Great, say
they, is the power of the Church, since it has dispensed with
one of the Ten Commandments!
But concerning this question it is taught on our part (as has
been shown above) that bishops have no power to decree
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: adulation that never fell to the share of Louis XIV. In
consequence the same position must be taken up with regard to it
as with regard to all religious dogmas. Time alone can act upon
them.
Besides, it would be the more useless to attempt to undermine
this dogma, inasmuch as it has an appearance of reasonableness in
its favour. "In an era of equality," Tocqueville justly remarks,
"men have no faith in each other on account of their being all
alike; yet this same similitude gives them an almost limitless
confidence in the judgment of the public, the reason being that
it does not appear probable that, all men being equally
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