Saturday, April 5, 2025
Robert Carter
Carter was always said to have great integrity, but acting on his principles even when it essentially ruined him financially was an example of virtue few followed.
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/robert-carter-and-manumission
Augustine
"And lo, I was now in my thirtieth year, sticking in the same mire, greedy of enjoying things present, which passed away and wasted my soul, while I said to myself, 'Tomorrow I shall find it. It will appear manifestly, and I shall grasp it. Lo, Faustus the Manichee will come and clear every thing! O you great men, ye Academicians, it is true then, that no certainty can be attained for the ordering of life? Nay, let us search the more diligently and despair not. Lo, things in the ecclesiastical books are not absurd to us now, which sometimes seemed absurd, and may be taken otherwise, and in a good sense. I will take my stand where as a child my parents placed me, until the clear truth be found out. But where shall it be sought or when? Ambrose has no leisure. We have no leisure to read. Where shall we find even the books? Whence, or when procure them? From whom borrow them? Let set times be appointed, and certain hours be ordered for the health of our soul. Great hope has dawned: the catholic faith teaches not what we thought, and vainly accused it of. Her instructed members hold it profane to believe God to be founded by the figure of a human body. And do we doubt to knock, that the rest may be opened? The forenoons our scholars take up: what do we do during the rest of the day? Why not this? But when shall we pay court to our great friends, whose favor we need? When shall we compose what we may sell to scholars? When shall we refresh ourselves, unbending our minds from these intense cares?'" (6.11.18)
