theologians-from-england

"For the safeguard of your country, if you be called to the wars, grutch [complain] not nor groan at it. Go with good wills and lusty courages to meet them in the field rather than to tarry till they come home to you and hang you at your own gates. Play not the milksops in making curtsy who shall go first, but Show yourselves true Englishmen in readiness, courage, and boldness. And be ashamed to be the last. Fear neither French nor Scot. For first you have God and all his army of angels on your side [a marginal note observes "God is English"]. You have right and truth, and seek not to do them wrong but to defend your own right. Think not that God will suffer you to be foiled at their hands, for your fall is his dishonor. If you lose the victory, he must lose the glory. For you fight not only in the quarrel of your country but also and chiefly in defense of his true religion and of his dear son Christ....What people be they with whom we shall match. Are they giants? Are they conquerors or monarchs of the world? No, good Englishman, they be effeminate Frenchmen, stout in brag but nothing in deed. They be such as you have always made to take to their heels..., saving that William of Normandy crept in among us through the civil war of two brethren, Harold and Tostig. And yet, what did he? He left his posterity to reign which were rather by time turned to be English than the noble English to become French, as our tongue and manners at this day declareth, which differeth very little from our ancestors the Saxons....Thus have we nothing to dismay us but all things to encourage us. God to fight for us, the strength of our land, the courage of our men, the goodness of our soil....Now, therefore, it is our duties to be in every wise obedient....Do you not hear how lamentably your natural mother, your country of England, calleth upon you for obedience?...I have been and am glad of you. I delight and rejoice in you above all over nations. In declaration whereof I have always spued out and cast from me Danes, French, Norwegians, and Scots. I could brook none of them for the tender love that I bare unto you, of whom I have my name. I never denied to minister to you by my singular commodities which God hath lent me for you, as corn and cattle, land and pasture, wool and cloth, lead and tin, flesh and fish, gold and silver, and all my other treasures. I have poured them out among you and enriched you above all your neighbors....Besides this, God hath brought forth in me the greatest and excellentest treasure that he hath for your comfort and all the world’s. He would that out of my womb should come that servant of his, your brother John Wyclif, who begat [John] Hus, who begat [Martin] Luther, who begat truth. What greater honor could you or I have than it pleased Christ, as it were in a second birth, to be born again of me among you? [A marginal note comments: "Christ's second birth in England"]. And will you now suffer me, or rather by your disobedience purchase me, to be a mother without my children?...Stick to your mother as she sticketh to you. Let me keep in quiet and feed, as I have done, your wives, your children, and your kinsfolks. Obey your mistress and mine which God hath made lady [queen] over us, both by nature and law. You cannot be my children, if you be not her subjects....?Thus good, truehearted Englishmen, speaketh your country unto you, not in word but in deed. Wherefore give no dull ear to hear, nor hearken to any vain blasts or voices which may draw you from the love of your country and the defense of your sovereign...."

"Every thing is what it is, and not another thing."

"It is better never to begin, than never to make an end."

"Money maketh a man."

"A fig for him. Let him doe his worst."

"It is a strange beast that hath neither head nor taile."

"Good wine engendreth good blood."

"A man shall never bee enriched by envie."

"Glowing coales sparkle often."

"Experience the mother of wisedome."

"Let him that beginneth the song make an end."

"At three words, he is at the top of the house."

"The Crosse is the ladder of heaven."

"He that seeketh, findeth."

"Desires are nourished by delay."

"Musicke is the eie of the eare."

"The better workeman the worser husband."

"A wrangler never wanteth words."

"To promise, and to give nought, is to comfort a foole."

"Farre folke fare best."

"Nothing enlarges more the gulf of atheism, than that wide passage, which lies between the faith and lives of men pretending to be Christians."

"My Lord," a certain nobleman is said to have observed to the bishop, after sitting next to Bentley at dinner, "that chaplain of yours is a very extraordinary man." Stillingfleet agreed, adding, "Had he but the gift of humility, he would be the most extraordinary man in Europe."

""Gods me! how now! what present have we here?” “A Book that stood in peril of the press; But now it’s past those pikes, and doth appear To keep the lookers on from heaviness.” “What stuff contains it?”—“Fustian, perfect spruce. Wit’s gallimalfry, or wit fried in steaks.” “From whom came it, a God’s name?”—“From his Muse, (Oh do not tell!) that still your favour seeks.” “And who is that?”—“Truth that is I.”—“What I? I per se I, great I, you would say.”—“No! Great I indeed you well may say; but I Am little i, the least of all the row.”"

"To the same Revolution We owe That Limited Form of Government which is our only Security; Those Parliaments, in which Our own Consent frames Our own Laws; Those Laws so framed, and afterwards executed, in an Administration of Justice, with regard to the Affairs of Life and of Property, utterly unexperienced by any Nation of the Known World, except Ourselves."

"In our own Country, All Civil Freedom itself subsists in the highest Degree, by that very Freedom of Speech, which often, through Mistake or Malice, attacks Those who protect it. Liberty of finding Fault, is in a peculiar Sense the Birthright of British Freeborn Subjects. Nor shall it ever be any Argument with Me, to oppress or stifle this Liberty, that it is abused. Nay, If it sometimes becomes Exorbitant Licentiousness; I will no more admit This Exorbitance to be a Reason for taking it away, when it happens not to please or serve the Persons, or the Cause, to which I wish well; than I will plead for cutting out Men's Tongues, because They talk too freely of what They understand nothing of. If any thing be found fault with, let it be defended, if it can. If it cannot be defended, let it go on to be found fault with. The Cure of what is Evil in all this, (except in Cases of the highest Immediate Malignity to the State), is only to lie in every Man's own Breast."

"Freedom of Speech, or the Liberty of the Press, (which is only a Conveyance of that Speech to Multitudes whom the Voice cannot reach) often does Mischief. This is certain. But let It be once taken away, under what Pretence soever; and how much greater Mischiefs must follow? All the Mischiefs, of Darkness in the Intellectual World, of Baseness in the Moral World, and of Slavery in the Political World."

"At their parting they use to say, Merry meet merry part, and that before they are carried to their meetings, their Foreheads are anointed with greenish Oyl that they have from the Spirit which smells raw. They for the most part are carried in the Air. As they pass, they say, Thout, tout a tout, tout, throughout and about. Passing back they say, Rentum Tormentum, and another word which she doth not remember."

"We cannot conceive how the Fœtus is form'd in the Womb, nor as much as how a Plant springs from the Earth we tread on; we know not how our Souls move the Body, nor how these distant and extream natures are united: ... And if we are ignorant of the most obvious things about us, and the most considerable within our selves, 'tis then no wonder that we know not the constitution and powers of the Creatures, to whom we are such strangers."

"At their parting they say [A Boy! merry meet, merry part.]"

"The precipitancy of disputation, and the stir and noise of Passions, that usually attend it, must needs be prejudicial to Verity."

"The Understanding also hath its Idiosyncrasies, as well as other faculties."

"The indisputable Mathematicks, the only Science Heaven hath yet vouchsaft Humanity, have but few Votaries among the slaves of the Stagirite."

"The knowledge we have of the Mathematicks, hath no reason to elate us; since by them we know but numbers, and figures, creatures of our own, and are yet ignorant of our Maker's."

"Though we are certain of many things, yet that Certainty is no absolute Infallibility; there still remains the possibility of our being mistaken in all matters of humane Belief and Inquiry."

"The Woman in us, still prosecutes a deceit, like that begun in the Garden."

"Time as a River, hath brought down to us what is more light and superficial; while things more solid and substantial have been immersed."

"The belief of our Reason is an Exercise of Faith; and Faith is an Act of Reason."

"The Sages of old live again in us; and in opinions there is a Metempsychosis."

"For Mathematical Sciences, he that doubts their certainty, hath need of a dose of Hellebore."

"Christianity must win upon men, as Christ did, by veiling its majesty before it reveals it. Men of retiring and devotional habits must first attract that majesty to themselves, and then it will draw to them others, upon whom an ostentatious display of knowledge would not have exercised any really beneficial influence."

"Eccentric in appearance and manner, he was brimful of genuine and multifarious learning."

"Whilst Butler, needy wretch! was yet alive, No gen'rous patron would a dinner give: See him, when starved to death, and turn'd to dust, Presented with a monumental bust! The poet's fate is here in emblem shown,— He ask'd for bread, and he receiv'd a stone."

"Here lie I, once a witty fair, Ill-loving and ill-loved; Whose heedless beauty was my snare, Whose wit my folly proved. Reader, should any curious stay To ask my luckless name, Tell them the grave that hides my clay Conceals me from my shame. Tell them I mourned for guilt of sin More than for pleasure spent: Tell them, whate’er my morn had been, My noon was penitent."

"From sunset to daybreak, when folks are asleep, New watchmen are 'pointed the 'chequer to keep; New locks and new bolts fasten every door, And the chests are made three times as strong as before. Yet the thieves, when 'tis open, the treasure may seize, For the same are still trusted with care of the keys. From the night to the morning, 'tis true, all is right; But who shall secure it from morning to night?"

"Can anything be more absurd than keeping women in a state of ignorance, and yet so vehemently to insist on their resisting temptation?"

"All sensible people agree in thinking that large seminaries of young ladies, though managed with all the vigilance and caution which human abilities can exert, are in danger of great corruption."

"Palmam qui meruit, ferat."

"That learning belongs not to the female character, and that the female mind is not capable of a degree of improvement equal to that of the other sex, are narrow and unphilosophical prejudices."

"The ancient map of Persia, Colchis,. and Armenia is absolutely full of the most distinct and startling evidences of Indian colonization, and, what is more astonishing, practically evinces, in the most powerful manner, the truth of several main points in the two great Indian poems, the Ramayana and the Mahahharata. The whole map is positively nothing less than a journal of emigration on the most gigantic scale."

"I have glanced at the Indian settlements in Egypt, which will again be noticed, and I will now resume my observations from the lofty frontier, which is the true boundary of the European and Indian races. The Parasoos, the people of Parasoo Ram, those warriors of the Axe, have penetrated into and given a name to Persia; they are the people of Bharata; and to the principal stream that pours its waters into the Persian Gulf they have given the name of Ea-Bharates (Euphrat-es), the Bharat Chief."