"A faithful Minister will not only tell the People of the Crown, but of the Cross of Christ."

     [Matthew Poole] on 1 Thess 3:4.  Annotations upon the Holy Bible. . . . Vol. II. being a continuation of Mr. Poole's work by certain judicious and learned divines, 4th ed. (London:  1700).  So is this Poole?  And does it occur in the Synopsis criticorum aliorumque sacrae scripturae interpretum et commentatorum as well?

     I was put on to this by Anthony C. Thiselton, 1 & 2 Thessalonians through the centuries, Blackwell Bible commentaries (Malden, MA:  Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 89.  It is also to be found on p. 740 of this 19th century printing.

"a truth that precedes culture"

"religion is culture.  It is our collective response to a truth that precedes culture, since it precedes all things.  This responsiveness distinguishes the 'values', 'symbolism', 'practices', 'identity' and so on of religious culture from those of secular culture; it makes all the difference in the world to how we live."

     Clare Carlisle, "Fertile gloss," a review of Culture and the death of God, by Terry Eagleton, Times literary supplement no. 5794 (April 18, 2014):  28.  The following come next and are Carlisle's last words:  "It is strange that a book about the death of God should remain so stubbornly uninterested in what 'God' means—not to mention who, how, and where God might be."

Dutch tolerance

     "Dutch tolerance was never 'nice'.  It was, as Shorto remarks, built not on admiration or even celebrating difference, but precisly on indifference, on letting others live their lives regardless of what one might think of their practices and beliefs, as long as they did not interfere with the business of society and of business itself.  It was a shoulder-shrugging tolerance.  During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Amsterdam's liberalism exercised a decisive influence on European debates through its print shops, from where a constant stream of writing by such heretics and dissidents as Spinoza, Descartes, Le Mettrie, Holbach, and Diderot flowed across the borders.  But inviting persecuted thinkers, as well as Huguenots and Jews, into the city was a result not of humanitarian sentiments but of a shrewd appreciation of the fact that encouraging diversity, attracting expertise and trading networks, establishing strong civic institutions and lowering ideological thresholds would all yield sound economic results."

     Philipp Blom, "Gedogen streets," a review of Amsterdam:  a history of the world's most liberal city, by Russell Shorto, Times literary supplement no. 5796 (May 2, 2014):  5, italics mine.

"Its shame and reproach gladly bear"

"History does not have sides.  It is an impersonal and contingent sequence of events, events that are determined in decisive ways by human deliberation, judgment, choice, and action.  The future of marriage and of countless human lives can and will be determined by our judgments and choices—our willingness or unwillingness to bear faithful witness, our acts of courage or cowardice.  Nor is history, or future generations, a judge invested with god-like powers  to decide, much less dictate, who was right and who was wrong.  The idea of a 'judgment of history' is secularism's vain, meaningless, hopeless, and pathetic attempt to devise a substitute for what the great Abrahamic traditions of faith know is the final judgment of Almighty God.  History is not God.  God is God.  History is not our judge.  God is our judge.

     "One day we will give an account of all we have done and failed to do.  Let no one suppose that we will make this accounting to some impersonal sequence of events possessing no more power to judge than a golden calf or a carved and painted totem pole.  It is before God—the God of truth, the Lord of history—that we will stand.  And as we tremble in His presence it will be no use for any of us to claim that we did everything in our power to put ourselves on 'the right side of history.'"

     Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University, before the 10th Annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, 13 May 2014.  Video at 15:10 here.

"flesh is but the glasse, which holds the dust | That measures all our time; . . ."

     George Herbert, "Church monuments," The temple.

"These laugh at Jeat, and Marble put for signes". 

"the religious tradition does not come into our law and our lives as a set of eccentric 'beliefs,' merely begging for indulgence and exemptions to the laws laid down for others. Rather, our religious teaching has formed the deep moral reserve on which the law has drawn."

     Hadley Arkes, "Recasting religious freedom," First things no. 244 (June/July 2014):  47, 51 (45-51), italics mine.
     Cf. Horace, Odes III.xxiv.35-36:  "quid leges sine moribus vanae proficiunt?", "What do empty laws without morals profit/accomplish?"  Reduced to the words in bold, this later became the motto of the University of Pennsylvania.

"conscience as an understanding ordered to a body of objective moral truths"

"Catholics were not seeking an exemption from the mandate on contraception and abortion based on beliefs of their own that may not be shared by others.  They were pronouncing the mandates to constitute an 'unjust law, no law at all,' and therefore rightly binding on no one.  This was not, [Archbishop Lori] said, a Catholic or Protestant position, but an American position."

     "To the extent that we cast our arguments along the lines of 'belief' and 'sincerity,' we can do no more than plead for an exemption from the laws imposed on others.  But again, that kind of argument distorts the truer moral character of the argument we are making, for some of us truly see these mandates as wrongful laws, which should be enforced on no one."

     Hadley Arkes, "Recasting religious freedom," First things no. 244 (June/July 2014):  47, 51 (45-51).
     If "it is the content and not the sincerity of our beliefs that matters" (45), which is to say their objectivity, and if it is false that just "any conviction that a person [happens to] hold . . . with earnest passion" must be "viewed with the same respect" (46), then a corollary follows:  "not everything that calls itself religion . . . may be regarded as a legitimate religion" (48).