| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Koran: were melting, shall it boil in their bellies like the boiling of hot
water!-'Take him and hale him into the midst of hell! then pour over
his head the torment of hot water!-Taste! verily, thou art the mighty,
the honourable! Verily, this is that whereon ye did dispute!'
Verily, the pious shall be in a safe place! in gardens and
springs, they shall be clad in satin and stout silk face to face.
Thus!-and we will wed them to bright and large-eyed maids! They
shall call therein for every fruit in safety. They shall not taste
therein of death save their first death, and we will keep them from
the torment of hell! Grace from thy Lord, that is the grand bliss!
And we have only made it easy for thy tongue, that haply they may be
The Koran |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: more pleased himself with the effect he produced than those
(even when they were well pleased) for whom he produced it;
a master of all the distinctively social virtues and a votary
of all agreeable sensations; a devotee of something mysterious
and sacred to which he occasionally alluded in terms more ecstatic
even than those in which he spoke of the last pretty woman,
and which was simply the beautiful though somewhat superannuated
image of HONOR; he was irresistibly entertaining and enlivening,
and he formed a character to which Newman was as capable of
doing justice when he had once been placed in contact with it,
as he was unlikely, in musing upon the possible mixtures
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Augsburg Confession by Philip Melanchthon: been granted for the sake of securing temporal interests, it
is much more proper that they be granted on account of the
distress of souls.]
In the second place, why do our adversaries exaggerate the
obligation or effect of a vow when, at the same time, they
have not a word to say of the nature of the vow itself, that
it ought to be in a thing possible, that it ought to be free,
and chosen spontaneously and deliberately? But it is not
unknown to what extent perpetual chastity is in the power of
man. And how few are there who have taken the vow
spontaneously and deliberately! Young maidens and men, before
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