Extracts from Literature
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Literature’
Sir Philip Francis told the House of Commons that it must not let ministers manufacture crises as an excuse for grabbing more power.
In 1794, Great Britain was braced for an invasion by neighbouring France, and King George III, as hereditary Elector of Hanover, decided that the situation warranted stationing Hanoverian troops in Britain. Sir Philip Francis, among others, demanded to know why the Commons had not been consulted, and was told that in desperate times His Majesty’s Government can take desperate measures.
Cynewulf encourages his listeners to remain committed to the Christian life, by reminding them of the reward that awaits them.
What shines out of every page of the New Testament is the promise of eternal life. In Christ, a narrative poem written in Old English sometime around 800, the poet Cynewulf drew together a number of Scriptural quotations to remind his listeners of the reward that awaits those who do not turn aside.
The lives of men are like voyages across stormy seas, but we no longer have to sail them as if they were uncharted waters.
Christ is a long narrative poem by Cynewulf, a poet writing in Old English at the turn of the ninth century, about seventy years after the death of St Bede. In the following extract, he likens human life to the tossing of ships on stormy seas, and the Christian gospel as a chart to bring our ‘sea-steeds’ safely to heaven’s harbour.
Edmund Burke begged the clergy of England to give us all a break from the twenty-four-hour news cycle.
On November 4th, 1789, not yet five months into the French Revolution, Dr Richard Price delivered a sermon at the Presbyterian Chapel in Old Jewry entitled ‘On the Love of Our Country’, in which he called upon all patriotic Englishmen to support the French rebels as a matter of Christian duty. Writing to a French correspondent, Edmund Burke complained that it was grossly inappropriate.
Mole is enjoying the most wonderful Spring morning, skipping his chores and going for a row with Rat.
The Mole has emerged from his winter burrow one fine morning at the beginning of Spring. After scampering off carelessly, leaving spring-cleaning far behind, he finds himself for the first time in his life at the River. Mole’s expert eye falls on a small round opening near the water’s edge, and he is just thinking that it would make a nice burrow when he realises that there is a small, round face framed in it.
Edmund Burke would not congratulate the French revolutionaries on their ‘liberty’ until he knew what they would do with it.
In 1789, the French Parliament relieved King Louis XVI of his constitutional privileges, and amidst chaotic scenes proclaimed that henceforth ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ would define their Government. Some believed that France was becoming more like England, and that Louis would be retained to add, like England’s George III, regal pomp to a liberal democracy. Edmund Burke wasn’t convinced.