| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Augsburg Confession by Philip Melanchthon: vile apparel. But the people conceive many pernicious opinions
from the false commendations of monastic life. They hear
celibacy praised above measure; therefore they lead their
married life with offense to their consciences. They hear that
only beggars are perfect; therefore they keep their
possessions and do business with offense to their consciences.
They hear that it is an evangelical counsel not to seek
revenge; therefore some in private life are not afraid to take
revenge, for they hear that it is but a counsel, and not a
commandment. Others judge that the Christian cannot properly
hold a civil office or be a magistrate.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: cleansed, and converts them into swiftness or strength, into the
play of beautiful muscles and the moulding of fair flesh, into the
curves and colours of the hair, the lips, the eye; so the soul in
its turn has its nutritive functions also, and can transform into
noble moods of thought and passions of high import what in itself
is base, cruel and degrading; nay, more, may find in these its most
august modes of assertion, and can often reveal itself most
perfectly through what was intended to desecrate or destroy.
The fact of my having been the common prisoner of a common gaol I
must frankly accept, and, curious as it may seem, one of the things
I shall have to teach myself is not to be ashamed of it. I must
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: In short, your good points will become your faults, your faults
will be vices, and your virtues crime.
"If you save a man, you will be said to have killed him; if he
reappears on the scene, it will be positive that you have secured
the present at the cost of the future. If he is not dead, he will
die. Stumble, and you fall! Invent anything of any kind and claim
your rights, you will be crotchety, cunning, ill-disposed to
rising younger men.
"So, you see, my dear fellow, if I do not believe in God, I
believe still less in man. But do not you know in me another
Desplein, altogether different from the Desplein whom every one
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