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The political chicken continues, as Democrats and Republicans steer the nation toward the fiscal cliff. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says the GOP "have to tell us what makes sense to them, and then we can take a look at it," while House Speaker John Boehner counters, "There are a lot of items on the table, the president knows what they are. The question is what are they willing to do?"
The fiscal cliff is all anyone can talk about, but maybe there are a few things you're unclear on. Now you can spare yourself the embarrassment of asking or the frustration of Googling.
What is the fiscal cliff?
It's the confluence of expiring tax cuts and automatic budget cuts, scheduled for Jan. 1, that would combine to total more than $600 billion in 2013.
What are the tax cuts, and how will they affect me?
The Bush tax cuts were proposed by President George W. Bush and passed by Congress in 2001 and 2003 and lowered the marginal tax rates for nearly all taxpayers. The cuts have been extended several times but are now scheduled to expire on Dec. 31. According to the White House, if the cuts expire, your average American family of four would see its annual tax bill go up about $2,200, or about $42 a week.
And the spending cuts?
During the debt-ceiling crisis, Democrats and Republicans made a deal: If the two parties didn't agree to budget cuts by the end of 2012, drastic cuts would automatically kick in. They include $27 billion from the defense budget, another $27 billion from non-defense spending and $12 billion from Medicare. There aren't many specifics about the cuts, though Defense Secretary Panetta did say, "A sequestration budget is not one that I could recommend."
U.S. & World
What would the combination of spending cuts and rising taxes mean?
The Congressional Budget Office says the combination of the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the massive spending cuts -- going over the figurative cliff -- would be disastrous for the U.S. economy: It would shrink the GDP by 0.5 percent, push unemployment back above 9 percent and probably start another recession.
What do Democrats want?
President Barack Obama primarily hopes to maintain the tax cuts for all but those making more than $250,000.
What do Republicans want?
The GOP would like to see the Bush tax cuts extended for all taxpayers, including those making more than $250,000, for the foreseeable future. Most Republican lawmakers have signed Grover Norquist's Taxpayer Protection Pledge (PDF), a promise to oppose any effort to increase taxes or decrease deductions.
Is there room for compromise?
According to several experts, yes. Some Republicans are already backing off the Norquist pledge, opening up room for negotiation. A compromise could focus on raising tax revenues via fewer deductions, instead of raising the tax rate.
"I agree with Grover — we shouldn't raise rates — but I think Grover is wrong when it comes to we can't cap deductions and buy down debt," Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said on ABC's 'This Week with George Stephanopoulos.' "What do you do with the money? I want to buy down debt and cut rates to create jobs, but I will violate the pledge, long story short, for the good of the country, only if Democrats will do entitlement reform."
A package that limited deductions, and didn't raise tax rates, "would not be a violation of Grover (Norquist)'s pledge," says Dan Mitchell of the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute. "Republicans in the Senate and probably some in the House would probably go along with (that)."
Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution, a liberal-leaning think tank, also sees room for agreement with a cap on deductions, but she doubts that popular deductions like the mortgage interest or charitable giving will be singled out.
"There are several ways to do that," Sawhill said. "One is a hard dollar cap on deductions, if you want your mortgage interest deduction, fine, but you can't have your charitable deduction. That would tend to hit the wealthy more."
Sawhill also thinks Obama might be willing to raise the level for the tax hike to $500,000, as Warren Buffett has suggested. And there could be reforms to entitlements — specifically Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which the GOP would love but to which Democrats are resistant.
What do the American people want?
Based on the November election, it seems clear that voters favor the Democrats' tax-the-rich stance. The Dems just won the White House and picked up two Senate seats and eight House seats. Plus, a Pew Center poll conducted this summer showed that Americans favor by a 2-to-1 margin a tax hike on the rich.
While Sawhill may share the public's desire to see the tax cuts extended for the bottom 98 percent, she says the American people don't realize just how bad things are.
"The public is in denial, the polls show that," she said. "They think it's a lot easier to close this gap than elected officials do. ... Either we have to pay a lot more, not just the wealthy, but the middle class, or we have to scale back."


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I've got a totally theoretical question to you on today - what is the "best" practice for storing passwords? [Best in terms of security and performance]
Usually, especially PHP-Developers tend to store user credentials either in plain text or as hash, using MD5 or SHA1 and their successors. The more clever web developers and software cooks even add some salt to the password before hashing.
Android Developers usually seem to store in plain text, as far as I have seen it until yet, naively relying on the user rights concept of android, even arguing that rooting the devices the user's own fault.
There are lots of different practices out there. Plain text for those applications, where the developers either rely on platform security or want the user to recover their own password. Hashing where developers rely on the integrity of their hashing algorithm, ignoring collision attacks and so on. Salted Hashings where developers read that plain hashing is a bad thing because of rainbow tables. There are even some developers out there who use real cryptography, but usually the key is somewhere recoverable.
My idea was to use AES (or [still not broken] symmetric cryptography in general, like blowfish and so on), crypting the padded password (for hiding the password length) with some salt prefix. The Key would be the users password, which should make it impossible to recover and verifying the password without the password.
I wonder why the usual practice differs from that idea - so where's the fault? The complexity shouldn't be that much high, because there are good implementations of AES out there, even hardware implementations. There are no hash collisions possible on this.
So am I right that no one could use a data dump with those passwords for anything other than bruteforcing? [Of course there are other attacks, which are regardless of the back-end password storage, those are not topic of this question]
May it be that this idea is pretty similar and related to bcrypt, but without multiple iterations?

subset: commoncrawl


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Fewer than half of state school teachers encourage Oxbridge applications
The Guardian World News
Fewer than half of state school teachers would advise bright pupils to apply to the UK's top universities, and the numbers are falling, research suggests.
The Sutton Trust, which commissioned the study, said it was deeply concerning that the majority of teachers would not encourage gifted students to apply to Oxford and Cambridge.
It said more needed to be done in schools to "dispel the myths" about the two elite institutions and other leading universities.
The study, which questioned 730 state secondary school teachers as part of the Teacher Voice Omnibus which regularly surveys teachers'views, found that just 44% would encourage their gifted students to consider Oxford or Cambridge, down from 50% five years ago.
A breakdown of the findings shows that 16% of teachers always encourage their academically gifted pupils to apply to Oxbridge, while 28% say they usually do.
The survey also reveals that many state school teachers underestimate the proportion of pupils from state schools that study at Oxford or Cambridge.
Of the 86% that gave an answer, more than half (55%) said it was less than 30%, while just 7% said over half of the UK students at Oxbridge were from the state sector. Around 14% said they did not know.
In reality, 57% of students admitted to Oxbridge are from state schools, the Sutton Trust said.
The trust's chairman, Sir Peter Lampl, said: "It is deeply concerning that the majority of state school teachers are not encouraging their brightest children to apply to Oxford and Cambridge.
"It is also worrying that almost all state school teachers, even the most senior school leaders, think that Oxbridge is dominated by public schools."
He added: "The sad consequence of these findings is that Oxford and Cambridge are missing out on talented students in state schools, who are already under-represented at these institutions based on their academic achievements. We need to do much more to dispel the myths in schools about Oxbridge and other leading universities."
These universities also needed to ensure they were accessible to bright students, regardless of background, Sir Peter said.
Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said pupils needed good careers advice from independent, qualified advisers.
"We agree that young people should be made aware of the opportunities available to them, which is why we have been so concerned about the removal of national funding for face-to-face careers guidance by a qualified adviser," he said.
"This should be an entitlement for all students. Applying to Oxbridge is only one of many appropriate routes for our brightest young people. There are many good universities in the UK and other excellent employment-based routes into top careers, all of which are available to high-calibre applicants from all backgrounds. Social mobility is about far more than entry to Oxbridge."
Lightman said teachers were not careers advisers and may not know, or have experience of, Oxbridge and their admissions processes.
Filed under: Education News, In Case You Missed It - 28th April 2012, Universities | Tagged: ASCL, Brian Lightman, Careers Advice, Gifted Students, Oxbridge, The Sutton Trust | Leave a comment »


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C. Gordon Fullerton, who compiled a distinguished career as a NASA astronaut, research pilot and Air Force test pilot spanning almost 50 years, died Aug. 21. He was 76.
Fullerton had sustained a severe stroke in late 2009, and had been confined to a long-term care facility in Lancaster, Calif., for most of the past 3½ years.
Fullerton logged 382 hours in space flight on two space shuttle missions while serving in the NASA astronaut corps from September 1969 until November 1986. He then joined the Flight Crew Branch at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, where he served for 22 years as a research test pilot on a variety of high-profile projects.
During the latter years of his career at NASA Dryden, he served as Associate Director of Flight Operations and as chief of the directorate's flight crew branch, often called its chief pilot, responsible for a variety of flight research and administrative support activities.
A native of Portland, Ore., Fullerton earned Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., in 1957 and l958, respectively. After working briefly as a mechanical design engineer for Hughes Aircraft Co., he then entered the U. S. Air Force in July 1958.
Following flight school, Fullerton was first trained as an F-86 interceptor pilot, and later became a B-47 bomber pilot at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson, Ariz. He was then selected to attend the Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School (now the Air Force Test Pilot School), Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., in 1964.
Upon graduation he was assigned as a test pilot with the Bomber Operations Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. His test flying experience led to his being selected to be a flight crewmember for the Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory program from 1966 until that program was canceled in 1969.
Fullerton was then assigned by the Air Force to NASA's astronaut corps at the NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, where he served on the support crews for the Apollo 14, 15, 16, and 17 lunar missions.
In 1977, Fullerton was assigned to one of the two flight crews that piloted the space shuttle prototype Enterprise during the Approach and Landing Test program at Dryden. Fullerton was the pilot on the eight-day STS-3 space shuttle orbital flight test mission March 22-30, 1982. The mission exposed the orbiter Columbia to extremes in thermal stress and tested the 50-foot Remote Manipulator System used to grapple and maneuver payloads in orbit. That mission became the only space shuttle mission to land at White Sands, N.M., because Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards was too wet to support a landing due to heavy seasonal rains.
Fullerton was commander of the STS-51F Spacelab 2 mission, launched on July 29, 1985. That mission, on the shuttle orbiter Challenger, was the first pallet-only Spacelab mission and the first to operate the Spacelab Instrument Pointing System. It carried 13 major experiments in the fields of astronomy, solar physics and ionospheric, life and materiel science. The mission ended Aug. 6, 1985, with a landing at Edwards.
Upon his transfer to NASA Dryden at Edwards Air Force Base, Fullerton became the project pilot on the NASA NB-52B launch aircraft and was heavily involved in the return of that aircraft to flight status after a four-year downtime. Fullerton flew the B-52 on the first six air launches of the commercially developed Pegasus rocket. He was involved in a series of development air launches of the X-38 Crew Recovery Vehicle and in the Pegasus launches for the hypersonic X-43A Hyper-X supersonic-combustion ramjet ("scramjet") project.
Fullerton was the project pilot on the Propulsion Controlled Aircraft project, during which he successfully landed both a modified F-15 and an MD-11 transport with all control surfaces neutralized, using only engine thrust modulation for control.
As a pilot for NASA's DC-8 Airborne Science flying laboratory, Fullerton deployed worldwide to support a variety of research studies, including atmospheric physics, ground mapping and meteorology. He was also pilot-in-command on the first test flights of NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, following major modifications to the 747SP to integrate the observatory's 2.5-meter infrared telescope.
Fullerton was assigned to evaluate the flying qualities of the Russian Tu-144 supersonic transport during two flights in 1998, becoming one of only two non-Russian pilots to fly that aircraft. He also served as project pilot for a series of high-speed landing tests of space shuttle landing gear components installed on a modified Convair 990 jetliner.
Fullerton flew in numerous other research programs at Dryden, including the C-140 JetStar Laminar Flow Control, F-111 Mission Adaptive Wing, F-14 Variable Sweep Flow Transition, space shuttle drag chute and F-111 crew module parachute tests on the B-52, X-29 vortex flow control and experiments on the F-18 Systems Research Aircraft. He also served as pilot-in-command of NASA's modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft on numerous ferry flights of space shuttles mounted atop the 747's fuselage from Edwards to the Kennedy Space Center.
Fullerton was on active duty in the Air Force for 30 years, rising to the rank of colonel, prior to his retirement from the service in 1988. He piloted more than 135 different types of aircraft during his Air Force and NASA career, amassing more than 16,000 flight hours.
Among the special awards and honors Fullerton has received are the Iven C. Kincheloe Award from the Society of Experimental Test Pilots in 1978; Department of Defense Distinguished Service and Superior Service Medals; Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross; NASA Distinguished and Exceptional Service Medals; NASA Space Flight Medals in 1983 and 1985; General Thomas D. White Space Trophy; Haley Space Flight Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; American Astronautical Society Flight Achievement Awards for 1977, 1981 and 1985; the Certificate of Achievement Award from the Soaring Society of America; and the Ray E. Tenhoff Award from the Society of Experimental Test Pilots in 1992 and 1993.
Fullerton was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2005, and the International Space Hall of Fame in 1982. He was a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, a member of the Tau Beta Pi honorary engineering fraternity and a Fellow of the American Astronautical Society.
Funeral arrangements are pending at Halley-Olsen-Murphy Memorial Chapel in Lancaster. A funeral mass is scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 24, at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lancaster, followed by a celebration of Fullerton's life at NASA Dryden on Monday, Aug. 26, beginning at 10 a.m.
Source: NASA


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- "Alas for the eve when I met Lady Grieve, / A-strolling the park in the dusk! / She was of the belief I could straighten her teeth, / Next moment she'd sprouted a tusk."
- —Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington in his five-hundredth Deathday Party[src]
Lady Grieve (fl. 1492) was a lady-in-waiting at the court of King Henry VII.[1]
She met Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington, a wizard, while strolling in a park on the evening of 30 October, 1492. Lady Grieve was confident that Sir Nicholas could straighten her crooked teeth, but his effort to do so backfired, causing her to grow a tusk instead. Sir Nicholas was nearly beheaded (earning him his nickname) the following morning as a result of this mishap.[2]
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Mentioned in early drafts only)
- J. K. Rowling's official site (Mentioned only)
- Pottermore (Mentioned as "a lady-in-waiting")
Notes and references
- ↑ Writing by J.K. Rowling: "Hogwarts Ghosts" at Pottermore
- ↑ Nearly Headless Nick's background at jkrowling.com
Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.


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Written by Sergei Boutenko
If you run, hike, swim, snowboard, cycle, attend crossfit, or actively engage in any other sports, then you're probably aware that your body requires extra nutritional supplementation in order to function properly. Simply put, athletes need more nutrients than less-active people. They demand more from their bodies and thus must compensate with the right nutrients to keep up performance and recovery.
Unfortunately, today's athletes have been duped into believing that in order to maintain proper health, they must consume a wide range of animal products, supplements, and power gels. I think this is one of the biggest misconceptions in the field of sports and fitness. In this post, I am not interested in arguing whether athletes should be vegans or not.
I simply want to challenge the traditional approach and illustrate that the nutritional needs of an athlete can be met through natural means. I believe all athletes can benefit by consuming more fresh, organic greens and fruits in a blended concoction commonly referred to as a "green smoothie."
To keep the body performing optimally, you must consistently replenish the following seven essential nutrients: calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, selenium, sodium, and zinc. Traditional athletes accomplish this by taking multivitamins and supplements. In my personal practice, I have found it beneficial to disregard tradition and instead blend green smoothies made from dark leafy veggies and fresh fruit. While I do not consider myself an "endurance athlete," I live an extremely active life.
Here is my idea of a good time: last summer I climbed Mt Shasta (a 14,179 foot tall mountain in Northern California) in four hours and forty-five minutes. The following day I decided that I needed to climb more mountains so I scaled nearby Mt Mcloughlin (9,495 feet) and Mt Thielsen (9,182 feet) in one day. Mind you, I have never taken artificial supplements and base my success and endurance largely on my diet.
Athletes Need More Nutrients Than Less-Active People
Let's look at the essential nutrients needed to sustain prolonged exercise, as well as how one can get these elements in natural form.
1. Calcium is essential because it prevents muscle cramps and helps strengthen bones. According to the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association (ICPA) most athletes don't meet their need for daily calcium intake. Lack of calcium can lead to a slew of problems, such as, osteoporosis and hormone imbalance. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommended daily dose of calcium ranges between 1,000-1,500 mg per day. Most people think that the best way to get calcium is to drink a glass of milk. Few people are aware that dark leafy greens are just as effective at loading the body with calcium. According to the USDA, one cup of milk has 314 mg of calcium. A cup of collard greens has 357 mg of calcium. That's 63 mg more than a glass of milk. Thus a green smoothie crammed with collard greens can meet ones need for calcium no worse than milk.
2. Iron is another common element that athletes are deficient in. One of iron's primary functions is to carry oxygen to cells and eliminate carbon dioxide from the body. Most sports nutritionists recommend eating red meat to get your daily dose of iron. In traditional sports nutrition it is rarely mentioned that tomatoes, apricots, pomegranates, currants, olives, Swiss chard, and parsley are also excellent sources of iron.
3. Magnesium is essential for athletes. Its presence is vital in more than 300 chemical processes that sustain basic human function and health (http://triathlon.competitor.com). These functions include blood pressure regulations, muscle contraction and relaxation, nerve function, immunity, and cardiac activity. Foods that contain high amounts of magnesium include: almonds, flaxseeds, sunflower seeds, spinach, beet greens, collards greens, and dates. Adding these foods to your green smoothies will aid your body in many of its metabolic processes.
4. Potassium is easy! Every good smoothie needs a banana. According to the USDA, one cup of mashed banana has more than 800 mg of potassium. If you're not a fan of bananas, here is a list of other foods that are high in this essential nutrient: avocado, beet greens, spinach, apricots, cantaloupe, figs, nectarines, and pears.
5. Selenium is critical to antioxidant production. Athletes who don't get enough selenium in their diet experience more cell damage and take longer to recover from strenuous exercise. Regular consumption of Brazil nuts, sunflower seeds, spinach, and seaweed will ensure that your body gets enough selenium.
6. Sodium retains water in the cells and prevents dehydration. Fresh fruits and vegetable are better at helping cells retain water than any sports drinks on the market. Period!
7. Zinc levels are directly correlated to endurance. Athletes who have lower than recommended zinc levels in the body will struggle to perform at their peak. According to the ICPA (www.chiro.org) zinc is also crucial for tissue repair. Here are some foods that contain high amounts of zinc: pumpkin seeds, squash seeds, water melon seeds, peanuts, bee pollen, sweet peppers, spinach, parsley, and seaweed.
Why you should stop spending money on expensive supplements
In addition to the seven essential nutrients, sports enthusiast also require higher than normal amounts of protein. If you look at the nutritional composition of most dark green, leafy veggies, you will find that they rival many types of meat in essential amino acids (protein). For example, one pound of romaine lettuce or kale provides you with roughly the same amount of protein as a quarter pound steak (www.drfuhrman.com). One pound of greens may seem like a lot, but when you blend a pound of greens in a smoothie, it's not too difficult to consume it in its entirety. After all, large, muscular animals like elephants and cows get their protein from greens.
In a nutshell, my message is simple… "Stop spending money on expensive supplements and instead, blend a smoothie!" I am so confident that green smoothies rival conventional supplements, I'm making a documentary about it. One week ago I launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a documentary about how green smoothies affect endurance athletes.
If you pre-order my video your contribution will help me fund this documentary. For more information on my project, check out this link: Kickstarter Project | Powered by Green Smoothies Film
P.S. Here's an awesome Power Green Smoothie that's great for pre and post workouts…
Sergei's Green Power Smoothie
1 cup spinach
1 cup Swiss chard
1 cup collard greens
1-2 stalks of celery with dark green leaves
1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
1 banana
1 peach, pitted
1 pear
1/2 avocado
4 dates, pitted
2 tablespoons bee pollen (optional)
Serves 2-3
Add enough water to blend everything in the blender. Blend until smooth and enjoy!
Join the conversation
What green smoothie are you slurping on today? Do you drink green smoothies before or after an intense workout? I'd love to hear about it! Share in the comments below.


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Peek #4 and one more tomorrow and then on Sunday I will share the whole thing :)
Friday, September 09, 2016
Peek #4
2 comments:
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About Me
- Donna
- Hi everyone, my name is Donna. I just love stitching of all sorts, I also love antique, and book stores. I am married and I have 2 children, and 3 grandchildren :). My Christian faith is the foundation of my life, and has sustained me through the ups and downs of this journey. Keep spreading kindness so you can change the world. So glad you stopped by, leave me a message and I will stop by and visit you.


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I'm new to Linux (which I'm setting up to start teaching myself web development). I am installing Vim, and in order to do so installed Mercurial.
hg clone https://vim.googlecode.com/hg vim seemed to work fine, but when I try to update to the newest version using hg pull and hg update I get this after hg pull:
abort: no repository found in '/home/steven' (.hg not found)!
Am I doing something wrong?
Some details on my setup: Dual boot computer with Windows on one SSD harddrive and Linux on a separate optical drive. Ubuntu 12.04


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Enjoying your schadenfreude?
My friend and neighbor on Bolivar, Rusty Cluck, pulls some mighty big words out of his hat from time to time. I confess up front that I got this one and the idea for this column when reading something he wrote recently. He told a woman to "enjoy her schadenfreude," and I wanted to be certain I understood what it meant. The woman writer has an overly offensive attitude and she is at her worst when writing. She can make the most simple statement sound like it has been driven into readers' hearts with a sledge hammer, and in the prelude to this writing by Rusty she had told folks to enjoy a recent property tax hike on their holdings. She also pointed out that she had said a week ago that this would be coming and that we should have been forewarned.
No one saw it coming. Not one person predicted it would be in the high amount that it was. Not many families can afford the very high increases assigned to their property values, and even if they could, they certainly don't need anyone shoving it down their collective throats with a hard vengeance and an "I was right and you act like you didn't even know" attitude. Rebuilding after Hurricane Ike has been job enough for most.The purest definition for "schadenfreude" means to take delight in another's misfortune. I have learned that no matter how much you dislike a person and how deserving something bad happening to them might seem to you at the moment, it is best not to take delight in their undoing. Karma has a certain way of coming back to bite the person doing the bragging. The Bible teaches us "to take heed least we ourselves fall." ("Wherefore, let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall." – Matthew 10:12)
The first biblical illustration that came to my mind was from a series I taught some years ago on the Book of Esther. This is a very interesting book, and the word "God" is not mentioned one time in the entire writing. Wicked Haman was out to destroy all of the Jews in the land, and he ordered a set of gallows built from which to hang Mordecai, a good and honest man. As you read the chapters one by one and get toward the end of the book, one finds it a great hero and villain story. In Chapter 7, we read that Haman was hanged in public on the very gallows he had built for the innocent servant of God, Mordecai. In Verse 9, a servant describes the scene for us. "The gallows which Haman ordered built are 50 cubits high and stand ready." The king said, "Hang him thereon."
The word with which I began this column comes from the German language and joins two words meaning "harm" and "joy." Etymonline further describes the word as "having malicious joy in the misfortunes of others," and says the word originated from "damage, harm and injury" paired with "joy, happy, and hoping for joy." At any rate, it sounds bad to me, and it is something I want to avoid.
Lord, help us to be very cautious about taking joy from the misfortune of others in any avenue of our lives or theirs. We never know when the shoe just might be on the other foot.
Henley can be reached at (409) 781-8788 or at brendacannonhenley [at] yahoo [dot] com.


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Profiles in Coaching: Tom Renney
Profiles in Coaching is a new series here at Cult of Hockey: On The NHL. Given that nearly every head coach in the NHL is a bad quarter-season away from losing his job, it makes sense to profile candidates who might be expected to ascend to a vacant coaching position.Specifically, this series has been started because of the uncertainty of the Oilers' head coaching position – Tom Renney is in the final year of his contract, and the team has yet to emerge from the NHL basement, but it's likely to continue regardless of what happens to Renney in the short term. We start today by consideringRenney.
Tom Renney is the current head coach of the Edmonton Oilers, a position he's held since being promoted from the associate coaching position in the summer of 2010.
NHL Coaching Experience:
1996 – 1998: Head Coach, Vancouver Canucks
2003 – 2009: Head Coach, New York Rangers
2009 – 2010: Associate Coach, Edmonton Oilers
2010 – Now: Head Coach, Edmonton Oilers
Tom Renney was derided by many as a flop at the NHL level after being dismissed by the Vancouver Canucks, but that criticism came a little too early. Renney spent some time behind the scenes with the New York Rangers, working with both the professional and amateur scouting departments before making his return to coaching just prior to the NHL lockout. Over parts of five seasons, Renney proved he could coach at the NHL level, guiding the Rangers to north of 40 wins in each full season he coached the team.
Renney landed in Edmonton as part of the 'coaching dream team' hired by Steve Tambellini in 2009-10, working as Pat Quinn's number two and ascending to the top job in the summer after the Oilers' failings plummeted the team into rebuilding mode. With the team still in lottery country two seasons later and reaching the end of his contract, there's little doubt that Renney's job is in jeopardy though it's fair to ask if coaching is really one of the Oilers' primary problems.
Other Experience:
Renney really made his name in two seasons as the head coach of the Kamloops Blazers (WHL); those teams went 101-37-6 for a 0.714 win percentage. According to the Oilers' official website, that mark stands as the best in the history of the Canadian Hockey League. Beyond the regular season success, which saw Kamloops lead the league in points both years, Renney's teams also experienced playoff success, winning both the WHL crown and the Memorial Cup in 1991-92. The year before, Renney was named the WHL coach of the year.
Tom Renney also has had an extensive career with Hockey Canada. The Oilers' official website states that Renney has coached internationally for Canada on 10 separate occasions, capturing three gold medals. Renney was the head coach at the 1994 Olympics (winning silver) and at the 1995, 1996 and 2000 World Championships. In addition to his work coaching, Renney has also had experience on the executive side of things with Hockey Canada, spending time as their Vice President of Hockey Operations.
Most Recently:
There's been a significant shift in Renney's coaching style from 2010-11 to 2011-12, as the Oilers' head coach has started to focus more intensely on line matchups and which end of the rink his players start in, tactics that he used frequently (and often with success) in New York. He's capable of pushing hard for specific matchups that he feels are advantageous, and he's also shown a willingness to give specific players a heavy percentage of work exclusively in either the offensive or defensive zone. The special teams, which were a mess for years, have come around under Renney's leadership, with the Oilers boasting a potent power play and capable penalty kill.
Point Form:
– Renney is a fan of the 'designated goon' going back to his New York days; typically his teams employ a fourth-line forward with one NHL skill who receives limited minutes.
– Typically regarded as a strong developmental coach, his failure to keep Magnus Paajarvi and Linus Omark in the NHL lineup have raised questions in some quarters.
– Few coaches are as on-message as Renney is; he's almost always utterly unflappable and patient in his press conferences and behind the bench.
– Renney exhibits a definite preference for veteran goalies; he's stuck with Nikolai Khabibulin through thick and thin and been hesitant to grant Devan Dubnyk starts.
What Do You Think Of Him?
Renney is a high-calibre coach, a proven commodity at the NHL level. I'm not a staunch defender because I do question some of the things I've seen – the usage of some young players, how goalie assignments have been handed out, the Oilers' seeming inability to consistently execute line changes in a timely fashion – but at the same time I'm not overly critical either. People are going to disagree on personnel decisions day-to-day; that's life. I think he's competent and that if the Oilers choose to move on he won't have trouble finding other work.


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Elephant Cape
Be an elephant with this super cape
With our wide range of pretend play clothes children will have hours of fun and learning where they can pretend to be anything from a doctor to a king or a spider to a lion. Made with safe and robust materials our pretend play outfits are EN71 toy safety tested. They are also fully compliant and certified with the EC toy safety directive, are graded to BSI childrenswear specifications and also carry a CE mark. The majority of our costumes are machine washable on a gentle 40 degree wash. Any dress hoops and boned wings are removable for easy washing. All garments are clearly labelled with washing instructions. Suitable for ages 3-6 years old.
Code: 9968
£20.45 exc vat
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Tonight is the finale of Top Chef Masters (10PM on Bravo – an NBC/Universal network). And while the show essentially serves as a placeholder for when the real "Top Chef" arrives next week, there's something about "Masters" that is even more enjoyable than the original product. Yeah, Kelly Choi is a lousy host, but that's just part of the deal. Personally, I find it extremely gratifying to watch a reality competition in which the contestants are legitimately among the best in the universe at what they do. These people are INSANELY talented, and the food porn they end up producing is enough to make me want to eat my remote.
Anyway, we're down to the final three tonight after Jonathan Waxman, who clearly just wanted to go home, was booted last week. All three final chefs could easily win. All three have differing strengths that could shine based on the final challenge. Also, I would sacrifice a finger to have any of them be my personal chef for the rest of my existence. No joke. Take the finger. What do I care, as long as Susur Lee is gonna make me miso glazed black cod any time I want it? Easiest voluntary amputation EVER. Let's break down the percent odds of winning:
MARCUS SAMUELSSON, 20%: Marcus came on strong last week, winning both the Quickfire and the Elimination Challenges. His weakness appears to be putting to much stuff on his plate. And isn't just like a reality show to tell me that MORE FOOD is somehow a bad thing. Anyway, Marcus is the coolest of the remaining chefs. He's Swedish-Ethiopian. How many Swedish-Ethiopian people do you think exist in the world? Three? Three and a half? Plus they always cut to shots of his wife and she is SMOKING HOT. Also, he cures lot of meats. And man, is cured meat good. Marcus is solid, people.
RICK MOONEN, 39%: There's something oddly lovable about Rick. Maybe it's the glasses. Or the fact that he's completely insane. I dunno. But that guy can cook a fish. If tonight's challenge allows for seafood, Rick's gonna be tough to beat. He looks like he'd willingly give a year of his life to win the competition. He's quite focused like that. Also, this is the last night you have to see the clip of Rick yelling, "I'm talkin' here!" If you could jail a network for overuse of one clip, Bravo would be serving consecutive life sentences right now.
SUSUR LEE, 41%: Hard to forget that Susur nearly got a perfect 20 star score a couple weeks back. Even when it appears like the critics don't like something in his dish, he still ends up getting four and a half stars anyway. I think they purposely cut out the parts where the critics taste Susur's food and spontaneously climax. Because you know darn well that food is astonishing. The critics may be looking to split hairs, but you and I at home know better. That stuff looks better than anything I get to eat over the course of an entire decade. Stupid judges. YOU DON'T APPRECIATE FOOD LIKE I DO.
So there are the odds. I say Susur has a slight edge over Rick to take the final prize. Never doubt a chef with a ponytail.


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How to place a hold
You can place holds at the library or while using the library's online catalog. You may also call (920) 533 – 8534 or email firstname.lastname@example.com, and a Librarian will place a hold for you.
To place a hold on an item when using our web catalog, click on the words Place Hold. A login screen will appear. You will need to type in the entire number from the back of your library card under the words Library Card Number. Do not type in spaces or dashes in your library card number. Next to your library card number, type in your PIN. The PIN is the last four digits of your phone number. Next choose either First Available Copy or Specific Copy. After you click on one of the previous options you will be asked to re-enter your PIN. A Submit Hold screen will appear. Check to see that Campbellsport is the pickup location. If this is correct, click on the words Submit Hold. You will receive a notice by phone or e-mail when the item arrives at the library for you.
If you wish to have your reserve notices e-mailed to you see the your account page for instructions.


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MSI GeForce 9800GT 512MB: For Linux desktop users interested in a mid-range discrete graphics card there are more choices than ever before with NVIDIA continuing to release new stable Linux drivers as they have done for many years while AMD this year has been making evolutionary leaps compared to their earlier state. AMD is now providing same-day support with all new products, CrossFire on Linux, OverDrive, and many other recently introduced features. NVIDIA and AMD are nearly at a feature parity and even in the past two months they both released new video APIs for Linux (PureVideo / VDPAU and X-Video Bitstream Acceleration, respectively) and they are now battling it out on Linux over performance. We recently looked at AMD's new ATI Radeon HD 4830 mid-range graphics card, but in this article we are comparing it to the NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT, courtesy of Micro-Star International.
Copyright © 2019 by Phoronix Media. All rights reserved.


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MEXICO CITY — Mexico's highly anticipated education overhaul program — intended to weed out poorly performing teachers, establish professional hiring standards and weaken the powerful teachers' union — is buckling under the tried-and-true tactic of huge street protests, throwing the heart of the capital into chaos.
A radical teachers' group mobilized thousands of members in Mexico City last week, chasing lawmakers from their chambers, occupying the city's historic central square, blocking access to hotels and the international airport, and threatening to bring an already congested city to a halt in the coming days.
These mobilizations, analysts said, suggest how difficult it may be for President Enrique Peña Nieto to get through this and other changes he has pushed since taking office in December, including an energy and telecommunications overhaul deemed vital to revving up the economy.
Already, lawmakers, who passed the principal outlines of the education program in December and are negotiating additional legislation needed to carry it out, have shelved one of the bill's most vital provisions, an evaluation requirement aimed at halting the common practice of buying and selling teaching jobs and establishing mechanisms to fire poorly performing instructors.
"What has happened is very grave," said Sergio Aguayo, a political analyst at the Colegio de México. "A kidnapped city and a dismantled reform."
Mr. Peña Nieto had focused on the public education system because he and analysts have called it vital to moving more people into the middle class.
Mexico ranks last in standardized test scores among the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Teachers buy, sell or inherit positions as though they were family heirlooms. Removing poorly performing teachers is virtually impossible, even over allegations of sexual or substance abuse.
But this year began with hope that change was coming.
The main political parties agreed to work together to pass the overhaul. In February, the seemingly untouchable leader of the powerful main teachers' union, Elba Esther Gordillo, was ousted from her post and jailed on suspicion of embezzlement, a rare rebuke to powerful figures here.
But by April, members of a small but militant faction of the union began pushing back with violent protests in Guerrero State, including the shutdown of the highway connecting the tourist hub of Acapulco to Mexico City. Demonstrators then paralyzed parts of Oaxaca and Michoacán States, in the south and west.
Last week, they descended on Mexico City, where they turned the central square into a tent city, forcing the Mexico City Marathon, scheduled for Sunday, to be rerouted. And they blockaded the two buildings belonging to the chambers of Congress, forcing the legislature to meet at a convention center. "The president of the country, the secretary of education, they are not putting up a fight for the reform," said Edna Jaime, director of México Evalúa, a public policy research group. "They threw it out and left it alone."
Ms. Jaime said she believed the federal and state governments were afraid of heightening the conflict with a direct confrontation.
On Friday, Mr. Peña Nieto defended the proposal, saying that teachers who objected to the changes misunderstood them.
"The education reform will give them opportunities that they don't have today," he said. "The reform benefits Mexico's teachers because it is designed to give them job stability, clear rules and certainty for ascending within the national education system."
Much of the rancor from the teachers has focused on evaluations. The new law would make them obligatory every four years. Teachers who failed an evaluation could try again a year later, and again a year after that. After failing three times, tenured teachers would be moved to administrative positions while newer teachers would be fired.
"This evaluation is disguised to start firing our peers," said Floriberto Alejo, 50, a teacher who came from Oaxaca State on Monday.
Mr. Alejo said the proposed overhaul poses a risk to teachers' seniority. "The education reform, full of tricks, is on track to privatize education." He said the change intends to fire many teachers and make it harder for parents to find fully staffed public schools, therefore forcing them to send their children to private ones.
Last week, Congress stripped that requirement from the bill, saying it would be taken up at a later date.
"If this content of the law is eliminated in order to avoid conflict, the reform will be practically inconclusive and have no effect," said Sergio Cárdenas, an education expert at CIDE, a Mexico City research university.
By Friday, the city ground to a near standstill. Getting around the city, in some places, took two to three times as long as usual.
The country's main airline, Aeroméxico, waived all change fees for passengers who missed their flights, while television stations showed alternate routes to the airport and other neighborhoods.
"This is the expression of a country that is drowning in violence," said Mr. Aguayo, the political analyst. "There is no ability to impose democratic rules."


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With Valentine's Day falling right in the middle of the Winter Games this year, love is definitely in the air at the Sochi Olympic Village.
Fueled by a mix of adrenaline and endorphins – perhaps a dose of the Tinder dating app as well – U.S. athletes are opening up to the world about their Olympic crushes.
American short track speed skater Eddy Alvarez says he doesn't want to come off too strong, but he wants to marry his crush: Norwegian snowboarder Silje Norendal.
U.S. ski slopestyle bronze medalist Nick Goepper is killing it on the slopes, and on social media too, tweeting "Is there ANYONE out there generous enough to be my Valentine? #sochiproblems."
Even @NBCOlympics is feeling sorry for the lonely 19-year-old, giving his search for love a little viewership boost:
Does anyone want to be Nick's #OlympicValentine? RT @NickGoepper: Is there ANYONE out there generous enough to be my Valentine?
— NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) February 14, 2014
What Could top a Bronze Medal Win for @NickGoepper? Only if @taylorswift13 would be his Valentine! #OlympicValentinepic.twitter.com/hrTfDuBAsD
— NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) February 14, 2014
While Goepper might be rocking out to Taylor Swift songs today, his fellow Team USA men's freeski gold medalist Joss Christensen is enamored with actress Emma Watson.
Speedskater Alyson Dudek cast a wider Valentine's Day net, sending out a sweet photo captioned "From Sochi with love" to all her fans.
From Sochi with love. Who will be my #OlympicValentine ?! #email@example.com/ya60ftCfNl
— Alyson Dudek (@alydudek) February 14, 2014
The athletes' bids for love aren't the only Winter Olympics-themed Valentine's Day tweets taking over the web.
The hashtag game featuring "#OlympicPickupLines," created on Monday by "The Tonight Show" host Jimmy Fallon, has already received thousands of clever and oh-Sochi-eesy submissions.
Goepper and Christensen, along with fellow Team USA men's freeski podium sweeper Gus Kenworthy, appeared on the Today Show to deliver a few of Fallon's favorite lines:
"I'm no curler, but I think I could sweep you off your feet!"
"Did you just fall from heaven? Or did your hotel room floor cave in?"
"Do you know what my country's ski jacket is made of? Boyfriend material."
And last, our favorite Valentine's Day post came from the U.S. Olympic Team (@USOlympic): "I'd ski down this… If you were at the finish line."
Tag someone from #TeamUSA who makes your heart race... #LoveTeamUSApic.twitter.com/hy9zVe0WIP
— US Olympic Team (@USOlympic) February 14, 2014
Figure skater Ashley Wagner posted a Valentine's Day card you could send to your sweetheart – check out these Olympic e-cards too.


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CHP vs CML, Forking and Picky Receivers
CHP is a Haskell library that implements message-passing concurrency — and so is CML, a Haskell implementation of the concurrency features of Concurrent ML. Recently, someone asked on reddit what the differences are between the CHP and CML libraries. So in this post, I will perform a comparison by going through the API of the CML Haskell package and seeing how to implement the same functionality in CHP.
CML Events in CHP
CML is organised around Event types. An Event represents a sort of future synchronisation, that can be engaged in using the function sync :: Event a -> IO a. CHP doesn't have this distinction as such; all events are monadic actions, and you engage in them when you execute them in the CHP monad. So in effect, anything of type Event a in CML is just CHP a in CHP. CML has a choose :: [Event a] -> Event a function for choosing between such events, which is identical to CHP's function alt :: [CHP a] -> CHP a.
CML has a wrap :: Event a -> (a -> IO b) -> Event b function that allows you to specify a post-synchronisation operation. Given that we have already seen that the Event type is the CHP monad and that we would execute the operation in the CHP monad rather than IO, this operation in CHP would be something like wrapCHP :: CHP a -> (a -> CHP b) -> CHP b. I'm sure many Haskell programmers will recognise this as the type of monadic bind (>>=), and indeed monadic bind has the same semantics of wrap; it can choose and synchronise on the left-hand event, then later execute the right-hand operation with the result.
CML has a guard :: IO (Event a) -> Event a event for specifying a pre-synchronisation operation that is run every time a synchronisation is attempted on the given event. I have not come across this particular feature before, but it would be interesting to see how to achieve a similar effect in CHP if anyone has a use case for the guard function. CML also has a wrapabort :: IO () -> Event a -> Event a that allows you to specify an action to execute if the event is not chosen. Like guard, I am not sure what I might use this function for. It would be relatively easy to wrap up an alt to execute abort actions for non-chosen guards, though.
CML has a "fork and forget" spawning operator, spawn :: IO () -> IO ThreadId, that is really a synonym for forkIO. There are philosophical issues here. Fork and forget, which is present in many concurrency frameworks, can be very useful to set off processes that you just want to set going and not interact with, or to launch daemon processes that should run for the program's lifetime. One problem with it is that the semantics are not always immediately clear — to what extent are the processes forgotten? For example, what do you think the output of this program will be?
import Control.Concurrent main = forkIO (threadDelay 1000 >> putStrLn "Hello World?")
The question is: will the Haskell program wait for all the forked processes to finish before the main program finishes, i.e. will the text be printed? The answer seems to be: no; on my GHC 6.10.3 system, if I compile the above with -threaded and run it, there is no output, even if I take the delay down to zero. So if you want to wait for a particular forked process to complete before your program ends, you'll need to add mechanisms to do so yourself. Or rather: when your main program finishes, you had better be sure that all the forked processes have finished, or that you are sure that you don't care if they are still running.
To help with such issues, CHP offers runParallel, which we've seen a lot, but also something that I call scoped forking. There are two basic operations in scoped forking, centred around a monad transformer called ForkingT. (You can use ForkingT on any monad that is a member of the MonadCHP type-class, i.e. that has CHP at the bottom. The most obvious thing is to have the ForkingT CHP monad, but you can also have ForkingT (StateT Int CHP) or similar.) You fork off a process within this transformer using fork :: MonadCHP m => CHP () -> ForkingT m (). This forks off the first parameter, and is an action in the ForkingT transformed monad. You initiate one of these blocks using forking :: MonadCHP m => ForkingT m a -> m a. The important thing is that when the ForkingT block (the first parameter) finishes its own execution, the call to forking does not return until every forked process has also finished. So you can fork off as many processes as you like in the forking block, but at the end, you must wait for them all to finish.
So between runParallel and forking (the only mechanisms for running processes concurrently in CHP), there is always a defined, clear point in your program at which you will wait for any concurrent sub-processes to terminate. When your outer-most runCHP call finishes, it is not possible for these to still be any CHP processes running, so there is no confusion or race hazards involving termination semantics as there is with fork-and-forget functions such as forkIO.
Back to CML — the last item to cover is channels. CML has a type Channel a. It's not clear from the documentation whether these channels support multiple readers and/or multiple writers, but let's assume for simplicity that they don't, and thus that this is the same as CHP's OneToOneChannel a. There is a channel :: IO (Channel a) function for creating channels which is the same as CHP's oneToOneChannel :: CHP (OneToOneChannel a). There is also a function to write to a channel, transmit :: Channel a -> a -> Event (), which is the same as CHP's writeChannel :: Chanout a -> a -> CHP () except that CHP has the concept of channel-ends which CML does not. CHP uses channel-ends to make it clear that when a process is passed a Chanout end, it will be writing to that end of the channel, and cannot read from it. In this way, the directionality of the channels becomes apparent in the types, and there is some static guarantee of the patterns of usage of channels.
CML's operation for reading from a channel is more interesting: receive :: Channel a -> (a -> Bool) -> Event a. The second parameter is a function that allows you to decide whether you want to engage in reading from the channel, based on the value being offered. Interestingly, the CSP calculus contains this feature, but it is not something I have added to CHP. I believe Erlang effectively also offers something like this (by pattern-matching on messages in a process's message queue). I can see uses for this, and in CHP you would have to implement something like this by sending values on different channels, and choosing based on the channel the value was being communicated on rather than the value itself. I should perhaps add this to CHP in future, but for now this is a useful CML feature that CHP does not support. Without this aspect, receive is equivalent to CHP's readChannel :: Chanin a -> CHP a.
The main difference between the features of CML and CHP are that CML is a nice small library, and CHP is a larger library with many more features (barriers, clocks, conjunction, parallel operators, poison, more channel types, traces, and the new higher-level features like the connectable type-class and behaviours). I think CHP subsumes CML for the features I want, but obviously I'm very biased. CML does have the benefit of operating in the IO monad, which can be more convenient than CHP's eponymous monad. The reason for having the CHP monad is to support poison (more cleanly than using exceptions) and tracing, two features not present in CML.
In terms of the implementation, CHP uses STM and has a lot of logic to support some of the extra features (especially conjunction), but only uses as many threads as you would expect (one per thread of execution). CML uses MVars and has relatively simple algorithms, although they do spawn a lot of threads — from what I can understand of skimming the code, choose spawns off a new thread for every possibility being offered. The transactional events library does something similar. In contrast, CHP spawns off no threads for an alt call, and just performs one (potentially expensive) memory transaction then blocks until it is woken up by another thread offering to synchronise with it. That said, I expect CML may be faster than CHP for common cases.
Differences aside, CML and CHP are similar in their approach to concurrency (I can't remember if CML was influenced by the CSP calculus, but it certainly has a similar approach to concurrency), so many of the design patterns should transfer between the two libraries — especially if CML's developers were to add barriers in a future version.


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Possible Solutions
Is the garbage disposer knockout plug removed?
If the dishwasher is connected to a garbage disposer, be sure the knockout plug has been removed from the disposer inlet.
CLICK HERE for more information on removing the garbage disposer knockout plug.
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Are there any obstructions in the drain or garbage disposer?
Check for any food or obstructions caught in the drain or the garbage disposer. Run the disposer to clear the obstruction.
Still need help? Call or schedule service.
You may need assistance from a qualified technician. Call 1-800-344-1274 or click below to schedule an appointment.


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The Star Wars prequel movies – The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack Of The Clones (2002), and Revenge Of The Sith (2005) – are the most fascinating bad movies that have ever been made. That's probably not the distinction these films were going for, but there you have it. I've been asked, "Why are you so interested… Read more
star wars
Great film trilogies
I just read an interesting article that makes the argument that the Bourne trilogy of movies is the best American film trilogy around: Why the Bourne Series is the Best American Film Trilogy Ever Made He makes a lot of good points, and I'd be closer to agreeing with him if any individual film in the series were… Read more


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Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 4, by Edward Gibbon, [1788], at sacred-texts.com
Justinian has been already seen in the various lights of a prince, a conqueror, and a lawgiver: the theologian 80 still remains, and it affords an unfavorable prejudice, that his theology should form a very prominent feature of his portrait. The sovereign sympathized with his subjects in their superstitious reverence for living and departed saints: his Code, and more especially his Novels, confirm and enlarge the privileges of the clergy; and in every dispute between a monk and a layman, the partial judge was inclined to pronounce, that truth, and innocence, and justice, were always on the side of the church. In his public and private devotions, the emperor was assiduous and exemplary; his prayers, vigils, and fasts, displayed the austere penance of a monk; his fancy was amused by the hope, or belief, of personal inspiration; he had secured the patronage of the Virgin and St. Michael the archangel; and his recovery from a dangerous disease was ascribed to the miraculous succor of the holy martyrs Cosmas and Damian. The capital and the provinces of the East were decorated with the monuments of his religion; 81 and though the far greater part of these costly structures may be attributed to his taste or ostentation, the zeal of the royal architect was probably quickened by a genuine sense of love and gratitude towards his invisible benefactors. Among the titles of Imperial greatness, the name of Pious was most pleasing to his ear; to promote the temporal and spiritual interest of the church was the serious business of his life; and the duty of father of his country was often sacrificed to that of defender of the faith. The controversies of the times were congenial to his temper and understanding and the theological professors must inwardly deride the diligence of a stranger, who cultivated their art and neglected his own. "What can ye fear," said a bold conspirator to his associates, "from your bigoted tyrant? Sleepless and unarmed, he sits whole nights in his closet, debating with reverend graybeards, and turning over the pages of ecclesiastical volumes." 82 The fruits of these lucubrations were displayed in many a conference, where Justinian might shine as the loudest and most subtile of the disputants; in many a sermon, which, under the name of edicts and epistles, proclaimed to the empire the theology of their master. While the Barbarians invaded the provinces, while the victorious legion marched under the banners of Belisarius and Narses, the successor of Trajan, unknown to the camp, was content to vanquish at the head of a synod. Had he invited to these synods a disinterested and rational spectator, Justinian might have learned, "that religious controversy is the offspring of arrogance and folly; that true piety is most laudably expressed by silence and submission; that man, ignorant of his own nature, should not presume to scrutinize the nature of his God; and that it is sufficient for us to know, that power and benevolence are the perfect attributes of the Deity." 83
Toleration was not the virtue of the times, and indulgence to rebels has seldom been the virtue of princes. But when the prince descends to the narrow and peevish character of a disputant, he is easily provoked to supply the defect of argument by the plenitude of power, and to chastise without mercy the perverse blindness of those who wilfully shut their eyes against the light of demonstration. The reign of Justinian was a uniform yet various scene of persecution; and he appears to have surpassed his indolent predecessors, both in the contrivance of his laws and the rigor of their execution. The insufficient term of three months was assigned for the conversion or exile of all heretics; 84 and if he still connived at their precarious stay, they were deprived, under his iron yoke, not only of the benefits of society, but of the common birth-right of men and Christians. At the end of four hundred years, the Montanists of Phrygia 85 still breathed the wild enthusiasm of perfection and prophecy which they had imbibed from their male and female apostles, the special organs of the Paraclete. On the approach of the Catholic priests and soldiers, they grasped with alacrity the crown of martyrdom the conventicle and the congregation perished in the flames, but these primitive fanatics were not extinguished three hundred years after the death of their tyrant. Under the protection of their Gothic confederates, the church of the Arians at Constantinople had braved the severity of the laws: their clergy equalled the wealth and magnificence of the senate; and the gold and silver which were seized by the rapacious hand of Justinian might perhaps be claimed as the spoils of the provinces, and the trophies of the Barbarians. A secret remnant of Pagans, who still lurked in the most refined and most rustic conditions of mankind, excited the indignation of the Christians, who were perhaps unwilling that any strangers should be the witnesses of their intestine quarrels. A bishop was named as the inquisitor of the faith, and his diligence soon discovered, in the court and city, the magistrates, lawyers, physicians, and sophists, who still cherished the superstition of the Greeks. They were sternly informed that they must choose without delay between the displeasure of Jupiter or Justinian, and that their aversion to the gospel could no longer be distinguished under the scandalous mask of indifference or impiety. The patrician Photius, perhaps, alone was resolved to live and to die like his ancestors: he enfranchised himself with the stroke of a dagger, and left his tyrant the poor consolation of exposing with ignominy the lifeless corpse of the fugitive. His weaker brethren submitted to their earthly monarch, underwent the ceremony of baptism, and labored, by their extraordinary zeal, to erase the suspicion, or to expiate the guilt, of idolatry. The native country of Homer, and the theatre of the Trojan war, still retained the last sparks of his mythology: by the care of the same bishop, seventy thousand Pagans were detected and converted in Asia, Phrygia, Lydia, and Caria; ninety-six churches were built for the new proselytes; and linen vestments, Bibles, and liturgies, and vases of gold and silver, were supplied by the pious munificence of Justinian. 86 The Jews, who had been gradually stripped of their immunities, were oppressed by a vexatious law, which compelled them to observe the festival of Easter the same day on which it was celebrated by the Christians. 87 And they might complain with the more reason, since the Catholics themselves did not agree with the astronomical calculations of their sovereign: the people of Constantinople delayed the beginning of their Lent a whole week after it had been ordained by authority; and they had the pleasure of fasting seven days, while meat was exposed for sale by the command of the emperor. The Samaritans of Palestine 88 were a motley race, an ambiguous sect, rejected as Jews by the Pagans, by the Jews as schismatics, and by the Christians as idolaters. The abomination of the cross had already been planted on their holy mount of Garizim, 89 but the persecution of Justinian offered only the alternative of baptism or rebellion. They chose the latter: under the standard of a desperate leader, they rose in arms, and retaliated their wrongs on the lives, the property, and the temples, of a defenceless people. The Samaritans were finally subdued by the regular forces of the East: twenty thousand were slain, twenty thousand were sold by the Arabs to the infidels of Persia and India, and the remains of that unhappy nation atoned for the crime of treason by the sin of hypocrisy. It has been computed that one hundred thousand Roman subjects were extirpated in the Samaritan war, 90 which converted the once fruitful province into a desolate and smoking wilderness. But in the creed of Justinian, the guilt of murder could not be applied to the slaughter of unbelievers; and he piously labored to establish with fire and sword the unity of the Christian faith. 91
With these sentiments, it was incumbent on him, at least, to be always in the right. In the first years of his administration, he signalized his zeal as the disciple and patron of orthodoxy: the reconciliation of the Greeks and Latins established the tome of St. Leo as the creed of the emperor and the empire; the Nestorians and Eutychians were exposed. on either side, to the double edge of persecution; and the four synods of Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, were ratified by the code of a Catholic lawgiver. 92 But while Justinian strove to maintain the uniformity of faith and worship, his wife Theodora, whose vices were not incompatible with devotion, had listened to the Monophysite teachers; and the open or clandestine enemies of the church revived and multiplied at the smile of their gracious patroness. The capital, the palace, the nuptial bed, were torn by spiritual discord; yet so doubtful was the sincerity of the royal consorts, that their seeming disagreement was imputed by many to a secret and mischievous confederacy against the religion and happiness of their people. 93 The famous dispute of the Three Chapters, 94 which has filled more volumes than it deserves lines, is deeply marked with this subtile and disingenuous spirit. It was now three hundred years since the body of Origen 95 had been eaten by the worms: his soul, of which he held the preexistence, was in the hands of its Creator; but his writings were eagerly perused by the monks of Palestine. In these writings, the piercing eye of Justinian descried more than ten metaphysical errors; and the primitive doctor, in the company of Pythagoras and Plato, was devoted by the clergy to the eternity of hell-fire, which he had presumed to deny. Under the cover of this precedent, a treacherous blow was aimed at the council of Chalcedon. The fathers had listened without impatience to the praise of Theodore of Mopsuestia; 96 and their justice or indulgence had restored both Theodore of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa, to the communion of the church. But the characters of these Oriental bishops were tainted with the reproach of heresy; the first had been the master, the two others were the friends, of Nestorius; their most suspicious passages were accused under the title of the three chapters; and the condemnation of their memory must involve the honor of a synod, whose name was pronounced with sincere or affected reverence by the Catholic world. If these bishops, whether innocent or guilty, were annihilated in the sleep of death, they would not probably be awakened by the clamor which, after the a hundred years, was raised over their grave. If they were already in the fangs of the daemon, their torments could neither be aggravated nor assuaged by human industry. If in the company of saints and angels they enjoyed the rewards of piety, they must have smiled at the idle fury of the theological insects who still crawled on the surface of the earth. The foremost of these insects, the emperor of the Romans, darted his sting, and distilled his venom, perhaps without discerning the true motives of Theodora and her ecclesiastical faction. The victims were no longer subject to his power, and the vehement style of his edicts could only proclaim their damnation, and invite the clergy of the East to join in a full chorus of curses and anathemas. The East, with some hesitation, consented to the voice of her sovereign: the fifth general council, of three patriarchs and one hundred and sixty-five bishops, was held at Constantinople; and the authors, as well as the defenders, of the three chapters were separated from the communion of the saints, and solemnly delivered to the prince of darkness. But the Latin churches were more jealous of the honor of Leo and the synod of Chalcedon: and if they had fought as they usually did under the standard of Rome, they might have prevailed in the cause of reason and humanity. But their chief was a prisoner in the hands of the enemy; the throne of St. Peter, which had been disgraced by the simony, was betrayed by the cowardice, of Vigilius, who yielded, after a long and inconsistent struggle, to the despotism of Justinian and the sophistry of the Greeks. His apostasy provoked the indignation of the Latins, and no more than two bishops could be found who would impose their hands on his deacon and successor Pelagius. Yet the perseverance of the popes insensibly transferred to their adversaries the appellation of schismatics; the Illyrian, African, and Italian churches were oppressed by the civil and ecclesiastical powers, not without some effort of military force; 97 the distant Barbarians transcribed the creed of the Vatican, and, in the period of a century, the schism of the three chapters expired in an obscure angle of the Venetian province. 98 But the religious discontent of the Italians had already promoted the conquests of the Lombards, and the Romans themselves were accustomed to suspect the faith and to detest the government of their Byzantine tyrant.
Justinian was neither steady nor consistent in the nice process of fixing his volatile opinions and those of his subjects. In his youth he was, offended by the slightest deviation from the orthodox line; in his old age he transgressed the measure of temperate heresy, and the Jacobites, not less than the Catholics, were scandalized by his declaration, that the body of Christ was incorruptible, and that his manhood was never subject to any wants and infirmities, the inheritance of our mortal flesh. This fantastic opinion was announced in the last edicts of Justinian; and at the moment of his seasonable departure, the clergy had refused to subscribe, the prince was prepared to persecute, and the people were resolved to suffer or resist. A bishop of Treves, secure beyond the limits of his power, addressed the monarch of the East in the language of authority and affection. "Most gracious Justinian, remember your baptism and your creed. Let not your gray hairs be defiled with heresy. Recall your fathers from exile, and your followers from perdition. You cannot be ignorant, that Italy and Gaul, Spain and Africa, already deplore your fall, and anathematize your name. Unless, without delay, you destroy what you have taught; unless you exclaim with a loud voice, I have erred, I have sinned, anathema to Nestorius, anathema to Eutyches, you deliver your soul to the same flames in which they will eternally burn." He died and made no sign. 99 His death restored in some degree the peace of the church, and the reigns of his four successors, Justin Tiberius, Maurice, and Phocas, are distinguished by a rare, though fortunate, vacancy in the ecclesiastical history of the East. 100
The faculties of sense and reason are least capable of acting on themselves; the eye is most inaccessible to the sight, the soul to the thought; yet we think, and even feel, that one will, a sole principle of action, is essential to a rational and conscious being. When Heraclius returned from the Persian war, the orthodox hero consulted his bishops, whether the Christ whom he adored, of one person, but of two natures, was actuated by a single or a double will. They replied in the singular, and the emperor was encouraged to hope that the Jacobites of Egypt and Syria might be reconciled by the profession of a doctrine, most certainly harmless, and most probably true, since it was taught even by the Nestorians themselves. 101 The experiment was tried without effect, and the timid or vehement Catholics condemned even the semblance of a retreat in the presence of a subtle and audacious enemy. The orthodox (the prevailing) party devised new modes of speech, and argument, and interpretation: to either nature of Christ they speciously applied a proper and distinct energy; but the difference was no longer visible when they allowed that the human and the divine will were invariably the same. 102 The disease was attended with the customary symptoms: but the Greek clergy, as if satiated with the endless controversy of the incarnation, instilled a healing counsel into the ear of the prince and people. They declared themselves Monothelites, (asserters of the unity of will,) but they treated the words as new, the questions as superfluous; and recommended a religious silence as the most agreeable to the prudence and charity of the gospel. This law of silence was successively imposed by the ecthesis or exposition of Heraclius, the type or model of his grandson Constans; 103 and the Imperial edicts were subscribed with alacrity or reluctance by the four patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch. But the bishop and monks of Jerusalem sounded the alarm: in the language, or even in the silence, of the Greeks, the Latin churches detected a latent heresy: and the obedience of Pope Honorius to the commands of his sovereign was retracted and censured by the bolder ignorance of his successors. They condemned the execrable and abominable heresy of the Monothelites, who revived the errors of Manes, Apollinaris, Eutyches, &c.; they signed the sentence of excommunication on the tomb of St. Peter; the ink was mingled with the sacramental wine, the blood of Christ; and no ceremony was omitted that could fill the superstitious mind with horror and affright. As the representative of the Western church, Pope Martin and his Lateran synod anathematized the perfidious and guilty silence of the Greeks: one hundred and five bishops of Italy, for the most part the subjects of Constans, presumed to reprobate his wicked type, and the impious ecthesis of his grandfather; and to confound the authors and their adherents with the twenty-one notorious heretics, the apostates from the church, and the organs of the devil. Such an insult under the tamest reign could not pass with impunity. Pope Martin ended his days on the inhospitable shore of the Tauric Chersonesus, and his oracle, the abbot Maximus, was inhumanly chastised by the amputation of his tongue and his right hand. 104 But the same invincible spirit survived in their successors; and the triumph of the Latins avenged their recent defeat, and obliterated the disgrace of the three chapters. The synods of Rome were confirmed by the sixth general council of Constantinople, in the palace and the presence of a new Constantine, a descendant of Heraclius. The royal convert converted the Byzantine pontiff and a majority of the bishops; 105 the dissenters, with their chief, Macarius of Antioch, were condemned to the spiritual and temporal pains of heresy; the East condescended to accept the lessons of the West; and the creed was finally settled, which teaches the Catholics of every age, that two wills or energies are harmonized in the person of Christ. The majesty of the pope and the Roman synod was represented by two priests, one deacon, and three bishops; but these obscure Latins had neither arms to compel, nor treasures to bribe, nor language to persuade; and I am ignorant by what arts they could determine the lofty emperor of the Greeks to abjure the catechism of his infancy, and to persecute the religion of his fathers. Perhaps the monks and people of Constantinople 106 were favorable to the Lateran creed, which is indeed the least reasonable of the two: and the suspicion is countenanced by the unnatural moderation of the Greek clergy, who appear in this quarrel to be conscious of their weakness. While the synod debated, a fanatic proposed a more summary decision, by raising a dead man to life: the prelates assisted at the trial; but the acknowledged failure may serve to indicate, that the passions and prejudices of the multitude were not enlisted on the side of the Monothelites. In the next generation, when the son of Constantine was deposed and slain by the disciple of Macarius, they tasted the feast of revenge and dominion: the image or monument of the sixth council was defaced, and the original acts were committed to the flames. But in the second year, their patron was cast headlong from the throne, the bishops of the East were released from their occasional conformity, the Roman faith was more firmly replanted by the orthodox successors of Bardanes, and the fine problems of the incarnation were forgotten in the more popular and visible quarrel of the worship of images. 107
Before the end of the seventh century, the creed of the incarnation, which had been defined at Rome and Constantinople, was uniformly preached in the remote islands of Britain and Ireland; 108 the same ideas were entertained, or rather the same words were repeated, by all the Christians whose liturgy was performed in the Greek or the Latin tongue. Their numbers, and visible splendor, bestowed an imperfect claim to the appellation of Catholics: but in the East, they were marked with the less honorable name of Melchites, or Royalists; 109 of men, whose faith, instead of resting on the basis of Scripture, reason, or tradition, had been established, and was still maintained, by the arbitrary power of a temporal monarch. Their adversaries might allege the words of the fathers of Constantinople, who profess themselves the slaves of the king; and they might relate, with malicious joy, how the decrees of Chalcedon had been inspired and reformed by the emperor Marcian and his virgin bride. The prevailing faction will naturally inculcate the duty of submission, nor is it less natural that dissenters should feel and assert the principles of freedom. Under the rod of persecution, the Nestorians and Monophysites degenerated into rebels and fugitives; and the most ancient and useful allies of Rome were taught to consider the emperor not as the chief, but as the enemy of the Christians. Language, the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind, soon discriminated the sectaries of the East, by a peculiar and perpetual badge, which abolished the means of intercourse and the hope of reconciliation. The long dominion of the Greeks, their colonies, and, above all, their eloquence, had propagated a language doubtless the most perfect that has been contrived by the art of man. Yet the body of the people, both in Syria and Egypt, still persevered in the use of their national idioms; with this difference, however, that the Coptic was confined to the rude and illiterate peasants of the Nile, while the Syriac, 110 from the mountains of Assyria to the Red Sea, was adapted to the higher topics of poetry and argument. Armenia and Abyssinia were infected by the speech or learning of the Greeks; and their Barbaric tongues, which have been revived in the studies of modern Europe, were unintelligible to the inhabitants of the Roman empire. The Syriac and the Coptic, the Armenian and the Aethiopic, are consecrated in the service of their respective churches: and their theology is enriched by domestic versions 111 both of the Scriptures and of the most popular fathers. After a period of thirteen hundred and sixty years, the spark of controversy, first kindled by a sermon of Nestorius, still burns in the bosom of the East, and the hostile communions still maintain the faith and discipline of their founders. In the most abject state of ignorance, poverty, and servitude, the Nestorians and Monophysites reject the spiritual supremacy of Rome, and cherish the toleration of their Turkish masters, which allows them to anathematize, on the one hand, St. Cyril and the synod of Ephesus: on the other, Pope Leo and the council of Chalcedon. The weight which they cast into the downfall of the Eastern empire demands our notice, and the reader may be amused with the various prospect of, I. The Nestorians; II. The Jacobites; 112 III. The Maronites; IV. The Armenians; V. The Copts; and, VI. The Abyssinians. To the three former, the Syriac is common; but of the latter, each is discriminated by the use of a national idiom. Yet the modern natives of Armenia and Abyssinia would be incapable of conversing with their ancestors; and the Christians of Egypt and Syria, who reject the religion, have adopted the language of the Arabians. The lapse of time has seconded the sacerdotal arts; and in the East, as well as in the West, the Deity is addressed in an obsolete tongue, unknown to the majority of the congregation.
80 The strain of the Anecdotes of Procopius, (c. 11, 13, 18, 27, 28,) with the learned remarks of Alemannus, is confirmed, rather than contradicted, by the Acts of the Councils, the fourth book of Evagrius, and the complaints of the African Facundus, in his xiith book - de tribus capitulis, "cum videri doctus appetit importune ...spontaneis quaestionibus ecclesiam turbat." See Procop. de Bell. Goth. l. iii. c. 35.
81 Procop. de Edificiis, l. i. c. 6, 7, &c., passim.
82 Procop. de Bell. Goth. l. iii. c. 32. In the life of St. Eutychius (apud Aleman. ad Procop. Arcan. c. 18) the same character is given with a design to praise Justinian.
83 For these wise and moderate sentiments, Procopius (de Bell. Goth. l. i. c. 3) is scourged in the preface of Alemannus, who ranks him among the political Christians - sed longe verius haeresium omnium sentinas, prorsusque Atheos - abominable Atheists, who preached the imitation of God's mercy to man, (ad Hist. Arcan. c. 13.)
84 This alternative, a precious circumstance, is preserved by John Malala, (tom. ii. p. 63, edit. Venet. 1733,) who deserves more credit as he draws towards his end. After numbering the heretics, Nestorians, Eutychians, &c., ne expectent, says Justinian, ut digni venia judicen tur: jubemus, enim ut ...convicti et aperti haeretici justae et idoneae animadversioni subjiciantur. Baronius copies and applauds this edict of the Code, (A.D. 527, No. 39, 40.)
85 See the character and principles of the Montanists, in Mosheim, Rebus Christ. ante Constantinum, p. 410 - 424.
86 Theophan. Chron. p. 153. John, the Monophysite bishop of Asia, is a more authentic witness of this transaction, in which he was himself employed by the emperor, (Asseman. Bib. Orient. tom. ii. p. 85.)
87 Compare Procopius (Hist. Arcan. c. 28, and Aleman's Notes) with Theophanes, (Chron. p. 190.) The council of Nice has intrusted the patriarch, or rather the astronomers, of Alexandria, with the annual proclamation of Easter; and we still read, or rather we do not read, many of the Paschal epistles of St. Cyril. Since the reign of Monophytism in Egypt, the Catholics were perplexed by such a foolish prejudice as that which so long opposed, among the Protestants, the reception of the Gregorian style.
88 For the religion and history of the Samaritans, consult Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, a learned and impartial work.
89 Sichem, Neapolis, Naplous, the ancient and modern seat of the Samaritans, is situate in a valley between the barren Ebal, the mountain of cursing to the north, and the fruitful Garizim, or mountain of cursing to the south, ten or eleven hours' travel from Jerusalem. See Maundrel, Journey from Aleppo &c.
90 Procop. Anecdot. c. 11. Theophan. Chron. p. 122. John Malala Chron. tom. ii. p. 62. I remember an observation, half philosophical. half superstitious, that the province which had been ruined by the bigotry of Justinian, was the same through which the Mahometans penetrated into the empire.
91 The expression of Procopius is remarkable. Anecdot. c. 13.
92 See the Chronicle of Victor, p. 328, and the original evidence of the laws of Justinian. During the first years of his reign, Baronius himself is in extreme good humor with the emperor, who courted the popes, till he got them into his power.
93 Procopius, Anecdot. c. 13. Evagrius, l. iv. c. 10. If the ecclesiastical never read the secret historian, their common suspicion proves at least the general hatred.
94 On the subject of the three chapters, the original acts of the vth general council of Constantinople supply much useless, though authentic, knowledge, (Concil. tom. vi. p. 1 - 419.) The Greek Evagrius is less copious and correct (l. iv. c. 38) than the three zealous Africans, Facundus, (in his twelve books, de tribus capitulis, which are most correctly published by Sirmond,) Liberatus, (in his Breviarium, c. 22, 23, 24,) and Victor Tunnunensis in his Chronicle, (in tom. i. Antiq. Lect. Canisii, 330 - 334.) The Liber Pontificalis, or Anastasius, (in Vigilio, Pelagio, &c.,) is original Italian evidence. The modern reader will derive some information from Dupin (Bibliot. Eccles. tom. v. p. 189 - 207) and Basnage, (Hist. de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 519 - 541;) yet the latter is too firmly resolved to depreciate the authority and character of the popes.
95 Origen had indeed too great a propensity to imitate the old philosophers, (Justinian, ad Mennam, in Concil. tom. vi. p. 356.) His moderate opinions were too repugnant to the zeal of the church, and he was found guilty of the heresy of reason.
96 Basnage (Praefat. p. 11 - 14, ad tom. i. Antiq. Lect. Canis.) has fairly weighed the guilt and innocence of Theodore of Mopsuestia. If he composed 10,000 volumes, as many errors would be a charitable allowance. In all the subsequent catalogues of heresiarchs, he alone, without his two brethren, is included; and it is the duty of Asseman (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 203 - 207) to justify the sentence.
97 See the complaints of Liberatus and Victor, and the exhortations of Pope Pelagius to the conqueror and exarch of Italy. Schisma . . per potestates publicas opprimatur, &c., (Concil. tom. vi. p. 467, &c.) An army was detained to suppress the sedition of an Illyrian city. See Procopius, (de Bell. Goth. l. iv. c. 25:). He seems to promise an ecclesiastical history. It would have been curious and impartial.
98 The bishops of the patriarchate of Aquileia were reconciled by Pope Honorius, A.D. 638, (Muratori, Annali d' Italia, tom. v. p. 376;) but they again relapsed, and the schism was not finally extinguished till 698. Fourteen years before, the church of Spain had overlooked the vth general council with contemptuous silence, (xiii. Concil. Toretan. in Concil. tom. vii. p. 487 - 494.)
99 Nicetus, bishop of Treves, (Concil. tom. vi. p. 511 - 513:) he himself, like most of the Gallican prelates, (Gregor. Epist. l. vii. 5 in Concil. tom. vi. p. 1007,) was separated from the communion of the four patriarchs by his refusal to condemn the three chapters. Baronius almost pronounces the damnation of Justinian, (A.D. 565, No. 6.)
100 After relating the last heresy of Justinian, (l. iv. c. 39, 40, 41,) and the edict of his successor, (l. v. c. 3,) the remainder of the history of Evagrius is filled with civil, instead of ecclesiastical events.
101 This extraordinary, and perhaps inconsistent, doctrine of the Nestorians, had been observed by La Croze, (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 19, 20,) and is more fully exposed by Abulpharagius, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 292. Hist. Dynast. p. 91, vers. Latin. Pocock.) and Asseman himself, (tom. iv. p. 218.) They seem ignorant that they might allege the positive authority of the ecthesis. (the common reproach of the Monophysites) (Concil. tom. vii. p. 205.)
102 See the Orthodox faith in Petavius, (Dogmata Theolog. tom. v. l. ix. c. 6 - 10, p. 433 - 447:) all the depths of this controversy in the Greek dialogue between Maximus and Pyrrhus, (acalcem tom. viii. Annal. Baron. p. 755 - 794,) which relates a real conference, and produced as short-lived a conversion.
103 Impiissimam ecthesim .... scelerosum typum (Concil. tom. vii p. 366) diabolicae operationis genimina, (fors. germina, or else the Greek in the original. Concil. p. 363, 364,) are the expressions of the xviiith anathema. The epistle of Pope Martin to Amandus, Gallican bishop, stigmatizes the Monothelites and their heresy with equal virulence, (p. 392.)
104 The sufferings of Martin and Maximus are described with simplicity in their original letters and acts, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 63 - 78. Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 656, No. 2, et annos subsequent.) Yet the chastisement of their disobedience had been previously announced in the Type of Constans, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 240.)
105 Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 368) most erroneously supposes that the 124 bishops of the Roman synod transported themselves to Constantinople; and by adding them to the 168 Greeks, thus composes the sixth council of 292 fathers.
106 The Monothelite Constans was hated by all, (says Theophanes, Chron. p. 292). When the Monothelite monk failed in his miracle, the people shouted, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 1032.) But this was a natural and transient emotion; and I much fear that the latter is an anticipation of the good people of Constantinople.
107 The history of Monothelitism may be found in the Acts of the Synods of Rome (tom. vii. p. 77 - 395, 601 - 608) and Constantinople, (p. 609 - 1429.) Baronius extracted some original documents from the Vatican library; and his chronology is rectified by the diligence of Pagi. Even Dupin (Bibliotheque Eccles. tom. vi. p. 57 - 71) and Basnage (Hist. de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 451 - 555) afford a tolerable abridgment.
108 In the Lateran synod of 679, Wilfred, an Anglo-Saxon bishop, subscribed pro omni Aquilonari parte Britanniae et Hiberniae, quae ab Anglorum et Britonum, necnon Scotorum et Pictorum gentibus colebantur, (Eddius, in Vit. St. Wilfrid. c. 31, apud Pagi, Critica, tom. iii. p. 88.) Theodore (magnae insulae Britanniae archiepiscopus et philosophus) was long expected at Rome, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 714,) but he contented himself with holding (A.D. 680) his provincial synod of Hatfield, in which he received the decrees of Pope Martin and the first Lateran council against the Monothelites, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 597, &c.) Theodore, a monk of Tarsus in Cilicia, had been named to the primacy of Britain by Pope Vitalian, (A.D. 688; see Baronius and Pagi,) whose esteem for his learning and piety was tainted by some distrust of his national character - ne quid contrarium veritati fidei, Graecorum more, in ecclesiam cui praeesset introduceret. The Cilician was sent from Rome to Canterbury under the tuition of an African guide, (Bedae Hist. Eccles. Anglorum. l. iv. c. 1.) He adhered to the Roman doctrine; and the same creed of the incarnation has been uniformly transmitted from Theodore to the modern primates, whose sound understanding is perhaps seldom engaged with that abstruse mystery.
109 This name, unknown till the xth century, appears to be of Syriac origin. It was invented by the Jacobites, and eagerly adopted by the Nestorians and Mahometans; but it was accepted without shame by the Catholics, and is frequently used in the Annals of Eutychius, (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 507, &c., tom. iii. p. 355. Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alexandrin. p. 119.), was the acclamation of the fathers of Constantinople, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 765.)
110 The Syriac, which the natives revere as the primitive language, was divided into three dialects. 1. The Aramoean, as it was refined at Edessa and the cities of Mesopotamia. 2. The Palestine, which was used in Jerusalem, Damascus, and the rest of Syria. 3. The Nabathoean, the rustic idiom of the mountains of Assyria and the villages of Irak, (Gregor, Abulpharag. Hist. Dynast. p. 11.) On the Syriac, sea Ebed-Jesu, (Asseman. tom. iii. p. 326, &c.,) whose prejudice alone could prefer it to the Arabic.
111 I shall not enrich my ignorance with the spoils of Simon, Walton, Mill, Wetstein, Assemannus, Ludolphus, La Croze, whom I have consulted with some care. It appears, 1. That, of all the versions which are celebrated by the fathers, it is doubtful whether any are now extant in their pristine integrity. 2. That the Syriac has the best claim, and that the consent of the Oriental sects is a proof that it is more ancient than their schism.
112 In the account of the Monophysites and Nestorians, I am deeply indebted to the Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana of Joseph Simon Assemannus. That learned Maronite was despatched, in the year 1715, by Pope Clement XI. to visit the monasteries of Egypt and Syria, in search of Mss. His four folio volumes, published at Rome 1719 - 1728, contain a part only, though perhaps the most valuable, of his extensive project. As a native and as a scholar, he possessed the Syriac literature; and though a dependent of Rome, he wishes to be moderate and candid.