Marilynne Robinson - The Givenness of Things

“that such punishment may”: Documents of the Christian Church , ed. Henry Bettenson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), 248–54.

“Meanwhile some poor wretch may cry at their gate”: William Langland, Piers the Ploughman , trans. J. F. Goodridge (London: Penguin, 1966), 114.

“If God spare my life”: John Foxe, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs: Select Narratives , ed. John N. King (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 15.

“being born in a stable”: John Calvin, Sermons on Isaiah’s Prophecy of the Death and Passion of Christ , trans. and ed. T.H.L. Parker (Cambridge, U.K.: James Clarke & Co., 1956), 51.

“was nourished in such poverty as to hardly appear human”: Ibid., 54.

“In disquisitions concerning the motions of the stars”: John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion , trans. John Allen (Philadelphia, 1813), book 1, chap. 5, paragraph 2, 64.

“Fetch down some knowledge from the clouds”: Isaac Watts, The Improvement of the Mind: A Supplement to the Art of Logic (London, 1833; Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1998), 32–33.

“the manifold agility of the soul”: Calvin, Institutes , book 1, chap. 5, paragraph 10, 67.

“he should have so much of a natural candour and sweetness”: Watts, Improvement , 64.

“learn to know, and taste, and feel a fine stanza, as well as to hear it”: Watts, Improvement , 294.

GRACE

“My ending is despair”: William Shakespeare, The Tempest , ed. Northrop Frye (Baltimore: Penguin, 1959), epilogue, lines 15–18, 90.

SERVANTHOOD

“Great slaughter and burning”: Anne Askew and John Bale, The Examinations of Anne Askew , ed. Elaine V. Beilin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 8.

“But all the clergy of the church”: Langland, Piers the Ploughman , 149–50.

“Faith alone is sufficient”: Ibid., 190.

“being Written in times of Freedom”: Roger L’Estrange, Considerations and Proposals in Order to the Regulation of the Press (London, 1663), 10. quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eebo;idno=A47832.

“Death, Mutilation, Imprisonment, Banishment”: Ibid., 31.

“For the Authors, nothing”: Ibid., 30–32.

“We must listen”: Karl Barth, The Theology of John Calvin , trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 177.

“Hoc est corpus meum”: Elizabeth I: Collected Works , eds. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 47.

“I know the inconstancy”: Ibid., 66.

“Earthly princes deprive themselves”: Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 59.

“In the palaces of kings”: John Calvin, Commentaries on the Book of the Prophet Daniel , trans. Thomas Myers (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1996), 350–51.

“Whence, then, does it happen”: Ibid., 166.

“If the poor man”: Langland, Piers the Ploughman , 174.

“Manslaughter is committed not”: Wycliffite Spirituality , eds. and trans. J. Patrick Hornbeck, Stephen E. Lahey, and Fiona Somerset, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 2013), 189.

“Among all the sins”: Wycliffite Spirituality , 17.

“the simple response is”: Ibid., 70.

“Thou shalt not take”: Ibid., 224.

“One can be saved”: Ibid., 74.

“Our joy and our healing”: Langland, Piers the Ploughman , 132.

GIVENNESS

“men who, in the name”: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America , trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 2004), 13.

“The motion of the blood and animal spirits”: Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections , ed. Edward Hickman (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1834, 1974), 1: 242.

“We have got so far”: Ibid., 1: ccxxi.

AWAKENING

“My general remark is”: Owen Lovejoy, “Sermon on Religion and Politics, July 21, 1842,” in Lovejoy, His Brother’s Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 , eds. William F. Moore and Jane Ann Moore (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 36.

“The crack in the teacup”: W. H. Auden, “As I Walked Out One Evening,” in The Norton Anthology of Poetry , 3rd ed. (New York: Norton, 1970), 1099–100.

“many will say to me”: Matthew 7:22–23.

“the sword of the Spirit”: Ephesians 6:17.

DECLINE

“Braver men never lived”: Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment and Other Writings (London: Penguin Classics, 1997), Kindle edition.

“the fortunes of a race”: Ibid.

FEAR

“in the beginning with God”: John 1:2–5.

“the eternal life”: 1 John 1:2.

“The sound of a driven leaf”: Leviticus 26:36–37.

PROOFS

“When the Scripture speaks”: Calvin, Institutes , book 1, chap. 13, paragraph 7, 145.

“upholds all things”: Hebrews 1:3.

“Of [God’s] wonderful wisdom”: Calvin, Institutes , book 1, chap. 5, paragraph 2, 64.

“Were it not that”: John Calvin, Commentary on the Gospel According to John 1–10 , trans. William Pringle (Edinburgh, 1847; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1999), 1:4, 11.

“All circumstances are the frame”: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson , ed. Thomas H. Johnson (New York: Little, Brown, 1960), 398.

“All who are not ”: Calvin, Commentary on John , 1:5, 33.

“Let not thy heart”: James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament , 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), 412, 423.

“You go and take”: Ibid., 425, 426, 429.

“[The Evangelist] speaks here”: Calvin, Commentary on John , 1:4, 32.

“The most beautiful thing”: Albert Einstein, in Living Philosophies: A Series of Intimate Credos (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1931), 6.

“Scientific views end in”: Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist (Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1998), 39.

“God was always invented”: Richard Feynman, Superstrings: A Theory of Everything , eds. P.C.W. Davies and J. Brown (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 208–209.

“For from the fact”: René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy with Selections from the Objections and Replies , ed. John Cottingham (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Sixth Meditation, 62.

“arbitrary constitution of the Creator”: Jonathan Edwards, “The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards , ed. Edward Hickman (London, 1834; Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 1:223.

MEMORY

“this species of property”: Jefferson Davis, speech in the U.S. Senate, February 8, 1858, in Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings , ed. William J. Cooper, Jr. (Modern Library, 2004), 141.

“This relationship [that subsists]”: Henry Ward Beecher, “The Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society” (speech, New York, January 14, 1855). http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25653/25653-h/25653-h.htm.

“in the image of God”: Genesis 1:27.

METAPHYSICS

“what a darkness we are involved in”: John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , ed. Alexander Campbell Fraser (New York: Dover Publications, 1959), vol. 2, book 4, chap. 3, 222.

“is the image of”: Colossians 1:15 ff.

“the knowledge of God’s”: Colossians 2:2–3.