Anglicans From The United Kingdom

"When in her turn the moon obscure withdraws Her light, and setting stars persuade to sleep: Lonely she pines within the empty court, Lies on the couch which just before []he left; Him absent, absent still she hears and sees."

"Here, in the brakes and savage dens of beasts, He nursed his daughter from the dugs of mares, Milking their teats into her tender lips. Soon as the infant first with doubtful feet Could press the ground, her little hands he filled With pointed darts, and on her shoulder hung A bow and quiver. No soft caul of gold Her tresses strains; nor flows her waving gown: Instead of these a tiger's horrid hide Hangs from her head, and over her back descends. Darts with her tender hand even then she threw; And, whirling round her head a sounding sling, Struck a Strymonian crane, or snow-white swan."

"Of mine the world will and ought to be judge, whatever I say or think, and its judgment in these matters is never erroneous."

"Arms and the man I sing who first from Troy Came to the Italian and Lavinian shores, Exiled by fate; much tossed on land and sea By power divine and cruel Juno's rage; Much too in war he suffered, till he reared A city and to Latium brought his gods: Whence sprung the Latin progeny, the kings Of Alba, and the walls of towering Rome."

"His versification here, as everywhere else, is generally flowing and harmonious, and a multitude of beauties of all kinds are scattered through the whole. But then, besides his often grossly mistaking his author's sense, as a translator he is extremely licentious. Whatever he alledges to the contrary in his preface, he makes no scruple of adding or retrenching as his turn is best served by either. In many places, where he shines most as a poet he is least a translator, and where you most admire Mr. Dryden, you see least of Virgil."

"Her Amazonian files with lunar shields Penthesilea leads, and in the midst Of thousand storms, beneath her naked pap Her golden belt she buckles, warlike maid, And, though a virgin, dares engage with men."

"Poetry itself being the music of thoughts and words, as music is the poetry of sounds."

"However poetry may have been dishonoured by the follies of some and the vices of others, the abuse or corruption of the best things being always the worst, it will notwithstanding be ever regarded, as it ever has been, by the wisest and most judicious of men as the very flower of human thinking, the most exquisite spirit that can be extracted from the wit and learning of mankind."

"He who says he values no translation of this or that poem because he understands the original, has indeed no true relish, that is, in effect, no true understanding of either."

"Death, judgment, heaven, and hell! Think, Christians, think! You stand on vast eternity's dread brink. Faith and repentance, piety and prayer! Despise this world, the next be all your care. Thus while my tomb the solemn silence breaks, And to the eye this cold dumb marble speaks, Though dead I preach, if ever with ill success, Living I strove the important truths to press, Your precious, your immortal souls to save; Hear me, at least, oh, hear me from my grave."

"The art and triumph of poetry are in nothing more seen and felt than in moving the passions."

"If some gentlemen are resolved that blank verse shall be prose, they have my free leave to enjoy their saying, provided I may have theirs to think they mean nothing by it, unless they can prove that rhyme is essential to metre; consequently that the Goths and monks were the first inventers of verse, and that Homer and Virgil, as well as Milton, wrote nothing but prose."

"If Helenus has any skill, If any faith, and if Apollo right Inspires his prophet: one thing, goddess-born, One thing, above the rest, I will advise, and oft repeat it: with religious prayer First Juno's deity adore; to her Pay willing sacrifices, and with vows, Suppliant, overpower the mighty queen of heaven."

"Although neither an alchemist, magician, nor astrologer, but simply a great philosopher, Henry More, of Cambridge University — a man universally esteemed, may be named as a shrewd logician, scientist, and metaphysician. His belief in witchcraft was firm throughout his life. His faith in immortality and able arguments in demonstration of the survival of man's spirit after death are all based on the Pythagorean system, adopted by Cardan, Van Helmont, and other mystics. The infinite and uncreated spirit that we usually call God, a substance of the highest virtue and excellency, produced everything else by emanative causality. God thus is the primary substance, the rest, the secondary; if the former created matter with a power of moving itself, he, the primary substance, is still the cause of that motion as well as of the matter, and yet we rightly say that it is matter which moves itself. "We may define this kind of spirit we speak of to be a substance indiscernible, that can move itself, that can penetrate, contract, and dilate itself, and can also penetrate, move, and alter matter,"("Antidote," lib. i., cap. 4.) which is the third emanation."

"...indeed, if there were any modesty left in mankind, the histories of the Bible might abundantly assure men of the existence of angels and spirits... I look upon it as a special piece of Providence that . . . fresh examples of apparitions may awaken our benumbed and lethargic minds into an assurance that there are other intelligent beings besides those that are clothed in heavy earth or clay . . . for this evidence, showing that there are bad spirits, will necessarily open a door to the belief that there are good ones, and lastly, that there is a God."

"He firmly believed in apparitions, and stoutly defended the theory of the individuality of every soul in which "personality, memory, and conscience will surely continue in the future state." He divided the astral spirit of man after its exit from the body into two distinct entities: the "aerial" and the "aethereal vehicle." During the time that a disembodied man moves in its aerial clothing, he is subject to Fate -- i.e., evil and temptation, attached to its earthly interests, and therefore is not utterly pure; it is only when he casts off this garb of the first spheres and becomes ethereal that he becomes sure of his immortality. "For what shadow can that body cast that is a pure and transparent light, such as the ethereal vehicle is? And therefore that oracle is then fulfilled, when the soul has ascended into that condition we have already described, in which alone it is out of the reach of fate and mortality." He concludes his work by stating that this transcendent and divinely-pure condition was the only aim of the Pythagoreans."

"True religion, sprung from God above, Is, like her fountain, full of charity, Embracing all things with a tender love, Full of good will and meek expectancy, Full of true justice and sure verity, In heart and voice; free, large, even infinite, Not wedged in straight peculiarity, But grasping all in her vast active spright: Bright lamp of God! that men would joy in thy pure light!"

"Tell mankind Jehovah reigns; He shall bind the world in chains, So as it shall never slide, And with sacred justice guide. Let the smiling heavens rejoice, Joyful earth exalt her voice; Let the dancing billows roar, Echoes answer from the shore, Fields their flowery mantles shake; All shall in their joy partake; While the wood-musicians sing To the ever-youthful spring. Fill His courts with sacred mirth; Lo! He comes to judge the earth: Justly He the world shall sway, And His truth to men display."

"Maurice is equally opposed to the sacerdotalism which makes the essence of religion consist in a magical removal of penalties instead of a 'regeneration' of the nature. He takes what may be vaguely called the 'subjective' view of religion, and sympathises with Schleiermacher's statement that piety is 'neither a knowing nor a doing, but an inclination and determination of the feeling.'"

"As to the skeptics of his age, his language is contemptuous and severe. Speaking of Scot, Adie, and Webster, he terms them "our new inspired saints . . . sworn advocates of the witches, who thus madly and boldly, against all sense and reason, against all antiquity, all interpreters, and against the Scripture itself, will have even no Samuel in the scene, but a confederate knave! Whether the Scripture, or these inblown buffoons, puffed up with nothing but ignorance, vanity, and stupid infidelity, are to be believed, let any one judge," he adds. ("Letter to Glanvil, the author of 'Sadducismus Triumphatus,' May, 25, 1678.") What kind of language would this eminent divine have used against our skeptics of the nineteenth century? p. 206"

"[E]ven those who will not go as far as claiming Cranmerian authorship for the collects outright have agreed that the balance of probability lies very much towards establishing him as the translator of a number of Latin collects of the Sarum rite for the new Prayer Book, and the composer of collects for occasions where no model existed, or where the existing model was not adopted. Otherwise, it becomes very difficult to explain their consistency of style, their economy of expression, and in the case of those that are translations or adaptations of Latin originals, their skilful negotiation between two languages, and their deft adjustments of content to conform to Reformation doctrinal precepts."

"There is little doubt that the Prayer Books are Cranmer's personal legacy to the Church. Though he did not act alone, the final form of the text comes from his own hand."

"Cranmer was the master, or rather the creator, of English liturgical style, because he had apprehended the nature of worship. To serve the purposes of worship he brought the resources of the scholar: appreciation of the fine composition of liturgical Latin; knowledge of the rules of rhythm and clausula; facility and felicity in translation; a feeling for the meanings of words. With such resources, and moved by a profound religious sincerity, Cranmer made of English a liturgical language comparable with Latin at its best."

"Now the nature of man being ever prone to idolatry from the beginning of the world, and the Papists being ready by all means and policy to defend and extol the mass, for their estimation and profit; and the people being superstitiously enamored and doted upon the mass (because they take it for a present remedy against all manners of evils); and part of the princes being blinded by papistical doctrine part loving quietness, and loth to offend their clergy and subjects, and all being captives and subjects to the antichrist of Rome; the state of the world remaining in this case, it is no wonder that abuses grew and increased in the church, that superstition with idolatry were taken for godliness and true religion, and that many things were brought in without the authority of Christ as purgatory, the oblation and sacrificing of Christ by the priest alone; the application and appointing of the same to such persons as the priests would sing or say mass for, and to such abuses, as they could devise; to deliver some from purgatory, and some from hell (if they were not there finally by God determined to abide, as they termed the matter); to hallow and preserve them that went to Jerusalem, to Rome, to St. James in Compostella, and to other places in pilgrimage; for a preservative against tempest and thunder, against perils and dangers of the sea, fora remedy against murrain of cattle, against pensiveness of the heart, and against all manner of affliction and tribulation"

"It is not also taught you in Scripture, that you should desire St. Rock to preserve you from the pestilence, to pray to St. Barbarra to defend you from thunder or gun-shot, to offer St. Loy an horse of wax, a pig to St. Anthony, a candle to St, Sithine. But I should be too long, if I were to rehearse unto you all the superstitions that have grown out of the invocation and praying to saints departed, wherewith men have been seduced, and God's honour given to creatures. This was also no small abuse that we called the images by the names of the things, whom they did represent. For we were won't to say, "This is St. Ann's altar ;"-"My father is gone a pilgrimage to our Lady of Walsingham;"-" In our church St. James standeth on the right hand of the high altar." These speeches we were wont to use, although they be not to be commended. For St. Austin in the exposition of the 113th Psalm affirmeth, that they who do call such images, as the carpenter hath made, do change the truth of God into a lie. It is not also taught you in all Scripture. Thus, good children, I have declared how we were wont to abuse images, not that hereby I condemn your fathers, who were men of great devotion, and had an earnest love towards God, although their zeal in all points was not ruled and governed by true knowledge, but they were seduced and blinded partly by the common ignorance that reigned in their time, partly by the covetousness of their teachers, who abused the simplicity of the unlearned people to the maintenance of their own lucre and glory. But this be profitable, for if they had, either Christ would have taught it or the Holy Ghost would have revealed it unto the Apostles, which they did not. And if they did, the Apostles were very negligent that would not make some mention of it, and speak some good word for images, seeing that they speak so many against them. And by this means Anti-christ and his holy Papists had more knowledge or fervent zeal to give s godly things ad profitable for us, than had the very holy saints of Christ, yea more than Christ himself and the Holy Ghost. Now forasmuch, good children, as images be neither necessary nor profitable in our churches and temples, nor were not used at the beginning in Christ's nor the Apostles' time, nor many years after, and that at length they were brought in by bishops of Rome, maugre emperors' teeth; and seeing also, that they be very slanderous to Christ's religion, for by them the name of God is blasphemed among the infidels, Turks, and Jews, which because of our images do call Christian religion, idolatry and worshiping of images: and for as much also, as they have been so wonderfully abused within this realm to the high contumely and dishonor of God, and have been great cause of blindness and of much contention among the King's Majesty's loving subjects and are like so to be still, if they should remain: and chiefly seeing God's word speaketh so much against them, you may hereby right well consider what great causes and ground the King's Majesty had to take them away within his realm, following here in the example of the godly King Hezekias, who brake down the brazen serpent, when he saw it worshiped, and was therefore praised of God, notwithstanding at the first the same was made and set up by God's commandment, and was not only a remembrance of God's benefits, before received, but also a figure of Christ to come. And not only Hezekias, but also Manasses, and Jehosaphat, and Josias, the best kings that were of the Jews, did pull down images in the time of their reign."

"Thomas Cranmer shaped the Church of England by his life, his death and his writing. Not only his liturgical style, but Cranmer's personal witness and martyrdom have left a profound impress on the Anglican consciousness. No one who has read or heard of how Cranmer, at the stake, put his right hand in the flames saying that the hand that had offended, signing retractions that he did not in his heart believe, should be the first to suffer, can ever forget it."

""The ink of the scholar", so runs an Arabic proverb, "is of more worth than the blood of the martyr." The proverb is true of Cranmer. In his liturgy he bequeathed to the newly reformed English Church an instrument of worship which was to ensure to it a principle of life, and which also, in its remarkable combination of the traditional with the contemporary, of the old with the new, was to be not the least important factor in imparting to Anglican Christianity its distinctive stamp."

"In the midst of life we are in death."

"For two sundry sorts of people, it seemeth necessary that something be said in the entry of this book by the way of a preface, whereby hereafter it may be both the better accepted of them which hitherto could not well bear it, and also the better used of them which heretofore have misused it. For truly some there are that be too slow and need the spur, some other seem too quick, and need more of the bridle; some lose their game by short shooting, some by overshooting; some walk too much on the left hand, some too much on the right. In the former sort be all they that refuse to read or to hear read the scripture in the vulgar tongue; much worse, they that also let or discourage the other from the reading or hearing thereof. In the latter sort be they which by their indiscrete speaking, contentious disputing, or otherwise by their licentious living, slander and hinder the word of God most of all. Neither can I well tell whether of them I may judge the more offender: him that doth obstinately refuse so godly and goodly knowledge, or him that so ungodly and so ungoodly doth abuse the same. And as touching the former, I would marvel much that any man should be so mad as to refuse in darkness, light; in hunger, food; in cold, fire. For the word of God is light."

"I commend thy soul to God, and thy body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection."

"There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so surely established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted."

"My duty towards my neighbours is to love them as myself. And to do to all as I would they should do to me. To love, honour and succour my father and mother. To honour and obey the King and his ministers. To submit myself to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters. …. To hurt nobody by word or deed. To be true and just in all my dealing. To bear no malice or hatred in my heart. To keep my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue from evil speaking, lying and slandering. To keep my body in temperance, soberness and chastity. Not to covet or desire others’ goods. But learn and labour truly to get my own living, and to do my duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to call me."

"Every man desireth, good people, at the time of their death, to give some good exhortation that others may remember after their death, and be the better thereby. So I beseech God grant me grace, that I may speak something at this my departing, whereby God may be glorified and you edified. ….. I pray you learn and bear well away this one lesson, To do good to all as much as in you lieth, and to hurt no one, no more than you would hurt your own natural and loving brother or sister. For this you may be sure of, that whosoever hateth any person, and goeth about maliciously to hinder or hurt that person, surely, and without all doubt, God is not with them, although they think themselves never so much in God's favour."

"[P]erhaps Cranmer's most remarkable achievement as a liturgist, considering its subsequent influence, was the Order for Morning and for Evening Prayer."

"Now was it night, when in deepe rest enrol'd Are waves and windes, and mute the world doth show Weari'd the beasts, and those that bottome hold Of billow'd sea, and of moyst streames that flow, And who are lodged in cave, or pen'd in fold, And painted flyers in oblivion low, Under their secret horrours silenced, Stilled their cares, and their harts suppelled."

"I sing the goodly armes, and that Chieftaine Who great Sepulchre of our Lord did free. Much with his hande, much wrought he with his braine; Much in that glorious conquest suffred hee: And hell in vaine hitselfe opposde, in vaine The mixed troopes Asian and Libick flee To armes, for Heaven him favour'd, and he drew To sacred ensignes his straid mates anew."

"You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the tabernacle if you do not pity Jesus in the slum."

"Reinforcing these were still rarer items of Africana and foreign Negro interest, the volumes of...Gustavus Vassa's celebrated autobiography that supplied so much of the evidence in 1796 for Granville Sharpe's attack on slavery in the British colonies...The cumulative effect of such evidences of scholarship and moral prowess is too weighty to be dismissed as exceptional."

"I hope to have the satisfaction of seeing the renovation of liberty and justice resting on the British government, to vindicate the honour of our common nature."

"This is "a round unvarnished tale" of the chequered adventures of an African who early in life was torn from his native country by those savage dealers in a traffic disgraceful to humanity and which has fixed a stain on the legislature of Britain, which nothing but its abolition can remove. With what propriety can we boast of our humanity and love of justice whilst we continue a commerce inconsistent with either? [...] The narrative appears to be written with much truth and simplicity. The author's account of the manners of the natives of his own province (Eboe) is interesting and pleasing; and the reader, unless perchance he is either a West-India planter or Liverpool merchant, will find his humanity severely wounded by the shameless barbarity practised towards the author's hapless countrymen in our colonies."

"And thus ended our Arctic voyage, to the no small joy of all on board, after having been absent four months; in which time, at the imminent hazard of our lives, we explored nearly as far towards the Pole as 81 degrees north, and 20 degrees east longitude; being much farther, by all accounts, than any navigator had ever ventured before; in which we fully proved the impracticability of finding a passage that way to India."

"My dream now returned upon my mind with all its force; it was fulfilled in every part; for our danger was the same I had dreamt of: and I could not help looking on myself as the principal instrument in effecting our deliverance..."

"I was sensible of the invisible hand of God, which guided and protected me when in truth I knew it not: still the Lord pursued me although I slighted and disregarded it; this mercy melted me down. When I considered my poor wretched state I wept, seeing what a great debtor I was to sovereign free grace. Now the Ethiopian was willing to be saved by Jesus Christ, the sinner's only surety, and also to rely on none other person or thing for salvation."

"But is not the slave trade entirely a war with the heart of man? And surely that which is begun by breaking down the barriers of virtue involves in its continuance destruction to every principle, and buries all sentiments in ruin!"

"Hitherto I had thought only slavery dreadful; but the state of a free negro appeared to me now equally so at least, and in some respects even worse, for they live in constant alarm for their liberty; and even this is but nominal, for they are universally insulted and plundered without the possibility of redress; for such is the equity of the West Indian laws, that no free negro's evidence will be admitted in their courts of justice. In this situation is it surprising that slaves, when mildly treated, should prefer even the misery of slavery to such a mockery of freedom?"

"Accordingly he signed the manumission that day; so that, before night, I who had been a slave in the morning, trembling at the will of another, was became [sic] my own master, and completely free. I thought this was the happiest day I had ever experienced..."

"Soon after this the blacks who brought me on board went off, and left me abandoned to despair. I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country, or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore, which I now considered as friendly; and I even wished for my former slavery in preference to my present situation, which was filled with horrors of every kind, still heightened by my ignorance of what I was to undergo. I was not long suffered to indulge my grief; I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste any thing. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely. I had never experienced any thing of this kind before; and although, not being used to the water, I naturally feared that element the first time I saw it, yet nevertheless, could I have got over the nettings, I would have jumped over the side, but I could not; and, besides, the crew used to watch us very closely who were not chained down to the decks, lest we should leap into the water: and I have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating. This indeed was often the case with myself."

"The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror, which I am yet at a loss to describe, nor the then feelings of my mind. When I was carried on board I was immediately handled, and tossed up, to see if I were sound, by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke (which was very different from any I had ever heard), united to confirm me in this belief."

"Such a tendency has the slave-trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men—No; it is the fatality of this mistaken avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall. And, had the pursuits of those men been different, they might have been as generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are unfeeling, rapacious and cruel. Surely this traffic cannot be good, which spreads like a pestilence, and taints what it touches! which violates that first natural right of mankind, equality and independency, and gives one man a dominion over his fellows which God could never intend! For it raises the owner to a state as far above man as it depresses the slave below it; and, with all the presumption of human pride, sets a distinction between them, immeasurable in extent, and endless in duration! Yet how mistaken is the avarice even of the planters? Are slaves more useful by being thus humbled to the condition of brutes, than they would be if suffered to enjoy the privileges of men? The freedom which diffuses health and prosperity throughout Britain answers you—No. When you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree unknown to yourselves, has left man alone scant and unfinished, and incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for him!—An assertion at once impious and absurd. Why do you use those instruments of torture? Are they fit to be applied by one rational being to another? And are ye not struck with shame and mortification, to see the partakers of your nature reduced so low? But, above all, are there no dangers attending this mode of treatment? Are you not hourly in dread of an insurrection? [...] But by changing your conduct, and treating your slaves as men, every cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest, intelligent and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness, would attend you."

"I was named Olaudah, which, in our language, signifies vicissitude or fortune also, one favoured, and having a loud voice and well spoken."