Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Introduction

Opening Passage: There are actually two versions of the opening floating around; in one, it opens prior to Chapter 1 with the beginning of the letter that frames the narrative, while in the other it simply opens with Chapter 1. The version I happened to have had was in the latter category:

You must go back with me to the autumn of 1827.

My father, as you know, was a sort of gentleman farmer in —shire; and I, by his express desire, succeeded him in the same quiet occupation, not very willingly, for ambition urged me to higher aims, and self-conceit assured me that, in disregarding its voice, I was burying my talent in the earth, and hiding my light under a bushel. My mother had done her utmost to persuade me that I was capable of great achievements; but my father, who thought ambition was the surest road to ruin, and change but another word for destruction, would listen to no scheme for bettering either my own condition, or that of my fellow mortals. He assured me it was all rubbish, and exhorted me, with his dying breath, to continue in the good old way, to follow his steps, and those of his father before him, and let my highest ambition be to walk honestly through the world, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, and to transmit the paternal acres to my children in, at least, as flourishing a condition as he left them to me.

Summary: Gilbert Markham is writing to his friend and brother-in-law about events that occurred twenty years before. A young widow, going by the name Helen Graham, arrives with her young boy and a servant to rent part of Wildfell Hall; this sets all the locals a-twitch to learn more about her, but she is very unforthcoming. After a somewhat rocky start, Markham and the young widow begin to get along very well, but jealousy and gossip begin to whisper some rather nasty things about Helen, until she is finally forced to divulge her story to him: she is fleeing a malicious husband, Arthur Huntingdon.

Tenant is a story of the dark side of marriage: Helen Huntingdon chooses a husband badly, and it goes from passionate to inconsistent to a spiral of struggle and resentment in a matter of a few years, until she flees in order to protect her child from being corrupted by her husband. It recognizes the value and power of marriage -- but for that very reason, it is not something to treat lightly, because when it goes bad, it goes very bad. And how it can be otherwise? One of the things Tenant recognizes is that human beings are capable of being quite dangerous to each other. This danger is in most cases moderated by social conventions and our desire to look good in front of the world, but within the sphere of a marriage itself, these things at times fall away and we interact with each other without a social buffer. And men in particular (although not solely men) are dangerous creatures; they are far from being only dangerous creatures, but take the mildest-seeming man and there are circumstances that can bring out his fangs and claws. Marriage can work, but it requires that a man take his own dangerousness seriously, and that a woman have more regard for character than for anything else. That granted, a great deal may be achieved even with the most unpromising of materials. One of the arcs I found most interesting in the story is that of Ralph Hattersley. A crass and vulgar man who keeps bad and carousing company, Hattersley ends up being a decent husband, although perhaps never any less vulgar, because he means no harm, and, more importantly, means not to harm. He does, inevitably, because of the company he keeps and the habit he develops, but his marital selfishness is merely taking his wife's good temper too much for granted, and thus he is open to good advice, should it be given. This contrasts with Arthur, who more careless of others and more frivolous in temper and habit, whose selfishness is a willful desire to have his own way without regard for any rule. Despite giving a very dark picture of marriage gone bad, the novel is not anti-marriage; rather, its criticism is of people who treat marriage as if it were not a powerfully sacred thing, and, like all sacred things, requiring both discipline and the cultivation of honest sympathy.

While Helen is the heroine, she does not escape the novel's ceaseless consideration of the flaws of its character. She has a streak of pride (it is what gets her into the mess), and she is only able to get happiness in the end by overcoming it. It's noteworthy, and perhaps all too realistic, that she does not really understand what she has thrown herself into until very late.

Tenant is usually considered to be partly a response to Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights; it's not exactly an answer, but it can be read as an attempt to strip away the impressiveness, the romanticization of the overweening passions that bring such destruction in their wake. In Wuthering Heights these things are not presented in a positive light, but they are presented in a striking way, as if they were overwhelming forces of nature. Tenant, a much quieter novel despite its realism about abusiveness, insists on the principle that they are not forces of nature at all, and that they are not overwhelming, so that our giving into them is sordid, almost sickening at times, not striking. Wuthering Heights is usually considered the more technically brilliant of the two, but I'm not sure that this is really fair to Tenant, which is trying to do something considerably more difficult, namely, to prevent the reader from adding an ameliorating sheen as a cover to the awfulness of misstep and wrongdoing in matters of marriage, and yet to do so without being ruthless and (as we say) 'gritty'. Emily has surely taken an easier road than Anne. But Anne has done very well here. There are many ways in which I liked Tenant better than I ever remember liking Wuthering Heights.

Favorite Passage:

‘God help me now!’ I murmured, sinking on my knees among the damp weeds and brushwood that surrounded me, and looking up at the moonlit sky, through the scant foliage above. It seemed all dim and quivering now to my darkened sight. My burning, bursting heart strove to pour forth its agony to God, but could not frame its anguish into prayer; until a gust of wind swept over me, which, while it scattered the dead leaves, like blighted hopes, around, cooled my forehead, and seemed a little to revive my sinking frame. Then, while I lifted up my soul in speechless, earnest supplication, some heavenly influence seemed to strengthen me within: I breathed more freely; my vision cleared; I saw distinctly the pure moon shining on, and the light clouds skimming the clear, dark sky; and then I saw the eternal stars twinkling down upon me; I knew their God was mine, and He was strong to save and swift to hear. ‘I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,’ seemed whispered from above their myriad orbs. No, no; I felt He would not leave me comfortless: in spite of earth and hell I should have strength for all my trials, and win a glorious rest at last!

Recommendation: Highly Recommended.

Classifying Ethical Approaches

Three of the load-bearing phenomena of ethics are happiness, obligation, and character. Each of these can be considered in a lot of different ways, but as it happens, in each case most approaches to ethical questions in general fall under one of two possible responses to each.

(1) Happiness: In practice, the key ethical divide on the question of happiness is whether happiness is subjective (S) or objective (O); another way to put the matter is to ask whether the feeling of happiness and actual happiness can come apart. Mill and Aristotle both talk about something that can be characterized as happiness, the fulfilling good of a life, but Mill's account is subjective, characterizing this fulfilling good in terms of pleasures and pains, while Aristotle's account is objective, characterizing it as a totality of good relevant to one's nature.

(2) Obligation: The most significant divide on the question of obligation is between positivists (P), who think that all obligations are made into obligations for us, and naturalists (N), who think that some obligations are not made but natural to us in some way (due to the nature of reason, usually). Thus divine command theorists and natural law theorists are divided by the fact that divine command theorists are positivists and natural law theorists are naturalists.

(3) Character: Dispute about the nature of character is a trickier landscape, but a big division in approaches is the one between those who take the standard of good character to be based on some kind of moral sentiment or feeling (F) or on reason itself in some way (R). Thus Hume and Aquinas both take character to be very important, but Hume is a sentimentalist and Aquinas a rationalist.

These are very different divides, but there is a sort of commonality among the three, since in each case one side makes the idea in question more objective than the other. There are also different ways you could divide ethical approaches that interact with these in important and interesting ways, the most important being the divide among consequentialists, deontologists, and virtue ethicists. An ONR virtue ethicist and an ONR deontologist will have a lot in common, but they will differ as to the kinds of things they think are fundamental. In any case, these other divides can be set aside for now.

We then have a set of families into which we can divide fully developed ethical approaches, that is, ethical approaches that have some kind of substantive account of each of these:

SPF
SPR
SNF
SNR
OPF
OPR
ONF
ONR

Aristotelian approaches to ethics are usually ONR, although occasionally you find modern Aristotle-inspired approaches that are OPR, a position that is suggested by Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy". Kantianism is very explicitly SNR; much of the structure of Kant's overall approach to ethics is that he accepts the empiricist account of happiness, which is subjectivist, and wishes to integrate that with a rationalist account of obligation, which is naturalist. Utilitarians are all S's, although not all consequentialists are, and Mill is a positivist about obligations, so he's at least an SP. It's a bit trickier to say whether he is SPF or SPR; he says things consistent with both. Without a full study, I think the evidence, particularly from the essay "On Bentham" indicates that he is SPF. Hume seems to be SNF -- he's definitely an F, since he thinks character is recognized as good or bad by moral sentiment, and he does not in fact treat all obligations in positivist terms, but traces some of them back to the same moral sentiment, which would make him technically an N. The ethical approaches that tend to say things that sound most like ONF are moral sense theories, although I suspect that they are sometimes really SNF. I'm not sure if there are any OPF approaches, but perhaps some divine command theories come close.

Both Shade and Substance, Beef and Bone

The DOG in the RIVER
by Christopher Smart

The churl that wants another's fare
Deserves at least to lose his share.
As thro' the stream a dog convey'd
A piece of meat, he spy'd his shade
In the clear mirrour of the flood;
And thinking it was flesh and blood,
Snapp'd to deprive him of the treat--
But mark the glutton's self-defeat
Miss'd both another's and his own,
Both shade and substance, beef and bone.

An adaptation from Phaedrus's Fables.

Poem Retrospective XXVIII

The Walls of Jericho

You and I were just children
long ago,
but where our golden youth went
only God and His angels know.

We played out by the trainyard,
three as one,
till we couldn't see our faces
from the setting of the sun.

And the train on the track played a trumpet
deep and low
that spoke the brazen note
that broke the walls of Jericho.

And Tom was a valiant soldier
off for war;
we'd spear him in the chest
then he'd get back up for more.

You let down the embankment
a scarlet thread
but Tom went off to dinner
and left us all for dead.

And the train on the track played a trumpet
deep and low
that spoke the brazen note
that broke the walls of Jericho.

Then we all went off to college
and Tom to war,
and the priest said at the service
that death is but a door.

You and I were just children
long ago,
but where our sunny days went
only God and His angels know.

And the train on the track plays a trumpet
deep and low
that speaks the brazen note
and breaks the walls of Jericho.

Doctor of Peace

Today is the feast of St. Gregory of Narek, Doctor of the Church.

From his "Litany for the Transfiguration":

Treasure beyond measure and beyond description,
indefinable union of the Holy Trinity:
the Father, unattainable in thought, without beginning and Creator God;
light of light, consubstantial Son, born of the Father before anything,
eternally inseparable and undividable from the paternal bosom,
the same in equality and unity, indubitable and immutable nature;
in honor equal to the Father and the Son, sharing in their glory, Holy Spirit,
who proceeds from the Father and fills every creature
and is worshiped and praised with the Father and the Son, inexpressible in essence,
unseen by the seraphim and incomprehensible by the cherubim,
unattainbale in thought, higher than anything.
O immortal King, unfathomable by authorities and principalities:
Please accept the supplications and entreaties of your ransomed people,
as it pleases you, we pray.

[St. Gregory of Narek, The Festal Works of St. Gregory of Narek, Terian, ed. and tr., Liturgical Press (Collegeville, MN: 2106) p. 131. This is a very good work, with a great deal of interesting material.]

Poem Retrospective XXVII

Parmenides' Vision

Rapt, thrown upward, undone,
In ecstatic vision seeking vital clue,
I journeyed on the well-known path;
She came:
Great gold-winged goddess, chariot-driven,
More splendid far than Cyprian glory
On sands made manifest to Anchises' son.
She came,
And, speaking, said to my dreaming ears:
Two ways lie before you; one is true, one appears,
Both gated, and above the former
The message of the gods shines forth
Like the words above the Delphic road,
Holy:
What is, is, and is not what is not.
Upon that path lies your way, said she,
The way of truth and not of seeming;
What appears will pass, what is real remains;
wisdom's lover finds sweet relief
In what is.
Then the fleeting, swift-footed, gold-winged goddess
Was gone, and I amazed.

Republic

The Guarantee Clause of the U. S. Constitution begins, "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government...." Historically this has tended to be applied mostly in cases of state admission, giving Congress the authority to accept or reject a state constitution as consistent with republican principles, so that state constitutions that have been accepted are presumptively taken to be so consistent. However, while there hasn't been much movement on other grounds (because the relevant authority is not the courts but Congress), it seems clear that the mere having of a constitution apparently consistent with republican principles is not the same as being guaranteed a republican form of government -- consistency with republicanism is not not the same as being republican in application.

What are the basic principles of a republic? You could have variations, but historically Americans have tended to follow Madison in Federalist Papers #39:

...we may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior. It is ESSENTIAL to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it.... It is SUFFICIENT for such a government that the persons administering it be appointed, either directly or indirectly, by the people; and that they hold their appointments by either of the tenures just specified....

Thus a republican form of government takes the government only to be able to exercise its powers insofar as it derives them directly and indirectly from its people, and only exemplified in cases where those administering the government in any of its powers get their appointment from those people.

I would argue on the basis of this that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is in fact a violation of the principles of republicanism; that, because of this, Congress has the authority to overturn it if it ever is completed; and that, in fact, Congress has the constitutional duty to do so. While states do have the right to determine how to allocate their electors, the United States has the constitutional duty to guarantee that they do so in a form consistent with republican government.

Under the NPVIC, the electors for the state would be chosen not on the basis of decisions made by the people of that state, but on the basis of a number obtained by adding official popular vote totals from all the different states. This means that the electors are chosen not because they represent the people of the state but because they represent an abstract assessment of the nation, and this abstract assessment is not only based on considering the rest of the nation as more important than the people of the state that the electors are supposed to represent, it is, because state election laws are different, obtained in a way inconsistent with the will of the people of that state, expressed in their election laws, as to how votes should be handled. The appointment of the electors for a state under such a compact is neither a direct nor an indirect expression of the people. The whole point of the Compact, in fact, is to sever the appointment of electors by a state from the expressed will of the people of the state.

Similarly, states assigning electors according to the NPVIC are assigning them on the basis of a process that cannot be directly affected by the people and that cannot be adequately monitored, reviewed, and corrected by their representatives. The people of Colorado have no direct say in the election laws of Connecticut, or of any other state than their own. The elections in different states are monitored, reviewed, and corrected only by the governments of those states, so representatives in Colorado do not have the authority or ability to guarantee that everything in Connecticut is being done in accordance with the will and interests of the people of Colorado. There are, in fact, only two ways to appoint electors that do not sever the appointments from the direct or indirect control of the people of a state: by appointing on the basis of the votes of the people of that state, according to election laws determined by the state legislature; or by the specific deliberation of those who represent the people of that state, according to election laws determined by the state legislature. Neither of these occurs in the NPVIC scenario: the appointment of electors in the Compact is not based on the popular vote of that particular state, but on a number, to which the state popular vote is only an easily swamped contributor. Nor does the appointment involve any specific deliberation by the legislature as to what will best represent the interests of the people of that particular state. The Compact amounts, in fact, to a complete refusal to recognize the electors as representatives of the people of that particular state.

NPV is a bad idea simply on its own merits -- its advocates are unrelenting liars, it solves none of the problems it purports to solve, it is incapable of providing any of the things its advocates promise, and it is based explicitly on the incoherent motivation of treating the normal functioning of the Electoral College as bad while not doing the appropriate thing to fix it (namely, Constitutional amendment). But it is more than that; it is a betrayal of republican principle. And, I would suggest, should be regarded by everyone as unconstitutional.

Poem Retrospective XXVI

Dream

The air is hot and dry,
obscured by storms of dust.
Unending realms of sand
parch with fatal thirst.
Yet even on this desert planet
water can be found:
dew in secret places,
springs in sacred places,
pools by wind-worn rocks.

I dreamed:
This desert was a beach;
mist was in the air.
Great waves of philosophy
broke against the shore.

Evening Note for Monday, February 25

Thought for the Evening: Humanitarian Traditions and Cliental Privilege

I have previously noted that humanitarian traditions naturally tend to develop customs of privileged communication. Because they are concerned with helping people, which requires communication, and because they develop customs of deferential responsibility to those they help, which requires protecting those they help, they tend to create forms of confidentiality that have to be maintained. One can give a more abstract account of it by recognizing that humanitarian traditions, by their nature, are concerned with matters directly and immediately relevant to individual human personhood and dignity, so that their central communications are not public but cases in which cooperation is happening on a matter that is not, as we say, just anyone's business. In cases where the humanitarian tradition forms a fully developed profession, this confidentiality is found in specific forms that we could call cliental privilege. Examples would be doctor-patient confidentiality, attorney-client confidentiality, and ministerial confidentiality (sometimes called clergy-penitent confidentiality). In cliental privilege, we take it to be the case that the professional is actually not working on his own behalf, and thus must act as the client's representative, not taking it upon himself to make decisions with regard to publicizing communications. In a sense, the professional is working within the sphere of the client's own personal dignity; failure to respect communications within that sphere is a violation of their dignity, and thus inconsistent with the very purpose of a humanitarian tradition.

While these forms of cliental privilege are all in some sense the same kind of thing, humanitarian traditions custom-build their ethical components, so each will tend to be tailored to the ends of the humanitarian tradition and have a somewhat different set of ethical obligations associated with it than others would. Exceptions are also handled differently; for instance, doctors may justifiably breach, and indeed may be expected to breach, confidentiality to avoid harm to others; because law deals with more complicated matters, this will less often provide a justification for lawyers, but lawyers are expected to breach confidentiality in cases of when the communications themselves are being used for crimes. Lawyers can breach confidentiality in matters of payment in ways that would not be generally acceptable for doctors and would not generally be relevant to religious ministers. The reasons for these exceptions are all end-based -- they are cases of upholding the spirit rather than the letter of the confidentiality. If lawyers could not disclose confidential communications in cases where the client is failing to pay them, this would lead to lawyers refusing to represent people who did not pay up front, thus defeating the humanitarian purpose of giving people the protection of legal representation. As 'do not harm' has historically been regarded as the highest obligation of physicians, for a physician to disclose confidential information to prevent medical harm supports the reason why the confidentiality exists in the first place.

An under-considered question with regard to the ethics of cliental privilege is the nature of obligations created for third parties. Attorney-client privilege is generally considered only with respect to the attorney and the client; but what about third parties who discover (e.g., by accident) the information? Third parties that are part of the profession would seem constrained by the same obligations, allowing for some differences in how different parties might relate to the ends of the profession. Third parties who are not professionals, on the other hand, would not be bound by professional codes of ethics, and, except in cases where they are bound by contract or law, would not have the same obligations. But if the argument above is at least more or less right, there would have to be more general moral obligations of confidentiality, of which the professional codes are merely specific formulations for the purpose of the profession.

Cliental privilege is a topic that I think should more generally be considered in both ethics and political philosophy, in part because I think there is a continual tendency on the part of governments to try to restrict cliental privilege. This is a serious matter. Cliental privilege is a protection of the person qua person in some field or domain, so intrusions on it can be severe restrictions of freedom, and, indeed, acts of oppression. I would go so far as to say that the state has no right at all to interpose itself where it is not strictly required for the ends for which the state exists, and even then only insofar as is strictly required for those ends. One can well imagine there are cases where the state needs to know medical information -- e.g., in cases requiring enforced quarantine; one can more broadly recognize cases in which the state would be the appropriate agent for enforcing confidentiality and that this might require certain kinds of reporting. But basic and well-established forms of cliental privilege are essential to the functioning of a free society, or even a tolerable one; the presumption should be that they are to be held as sacrosanct -- that interfering with them is interference with due process and, at times, a usurpation of power.

We should, in fact, see these kinds of things as the natural expressions of human freedom.

There are forms of privileged communications that do not fall under cliental privilege. Two obvious cases are the private communications of spouses and the seal of the confessional. That marital communications can be privileged follows from the very nature of marriage itself; spouses are within each other's personal spheres as a matter of moral duty and obligation. Clergy-penitent privilege is applicable to Catholic priests, but the seal of the confessional is a completely distinct form of privilege that arises from the nature of sacramental confession: it is a divine tribunal, and thus is a sort of God-soul confidentiality. In Catholic tradition, clergy-penitent privilege is breachable -- it is much less strict as a form of a privilege than medical or legal confidentiality is, at least when it does not itself involve some sort of legal confidentiality under canon law -- but the seal of confession is by its nature unbreachable, barring dispensation from God Himself, which, of course, is somewhat difficult to obtain. The two kinds of privilege are simply different, although they are unfortunately often confused.

(Of course, there are kinds of confidentiality that are not in any strict sense privileged communication of the sort we are talking about here -- confidentiality between friends, confidentiality based on contract, and the like. In general these kinds of confidentiality either fall outside of humanitarian traditions or, if part of a humanitarian tradition, concern matters that are not central to it.)

Previous Evening Notes on humanitarian traditions:
* Humanitarian Traditions
* Prima Facie Duties and Humanitarian Traditions

Various Links of Interest

* Myles Werntz, The Saint of the City Goes Rural: Dorothy Day and the Life of the Land

* Leah Shaffer has an interesting discussion of the Ik, a tribe in Uganda who have often been called "the loveless people", due to the description of them by anthropologist Colin Turnbull in the 1960s; he characterized them as extremely ungenerous and harsh to those in need, and that has been their reputation ever since. As it turns out, however, Turnbull was observing them during one of the worst famines the Ik have experienced in living memory, when everyone was barely getting by; the Ik are in reality quite as generous as anyone else, and have a religion that takes generosity to be rewarded by the spirits.

* John Wilkins, Lucretius and the papal secretary, on the Epicurean revival in the Renaissance. [ADDED LATER: It looks like John's website may have a bad ad or widget or something that tries a malicious redirect. I've blocked the link for the moment and will replace it later if it becomes clear that the problem is fixed.]

* John Bowen, Unmutual Friend, discusses Charles Dickens's mistreatment of his wife; this has been known about from mostly indirect evidence, but Bowen notes a channel of evidence about it that likely has Catherine Dickens herself as a source.

* Corey Robin, Why Has It Taken Us So Long to See Trump’s Weakness? discusses the "Historovox", the weird mix of academic theorizing and punditry that has become popular among people who like to pretend that their political opinions are much more intelligent than the political opinions of others.

* Ellie Murray, What is a cause?

* Hank Shea, Curb the crisis: 10 essential lessons for investigating church leaders. It's surprisingly thoughtful and intelligent for something in the National Catholic Reporter.

* John Brungardt, Some Mistakes Due to What is Per Accidens

* Philippa Foot on whether an Ought can be derived from an Is.

* The "National Popular Vote Compact" scam, which involves no national popular vote at all, is coming into the news again, as Colorado is, like other state legislatures stupid enough to fall for the scam, set to pass a law in its favor. I have repeatedly pointed out the outright lies that have been used to try to press this corrupt scheme to get state legislatures to disenfranchise their own voters in Presidential elections on the pretext that they are putting forward a national popular vote when they aren't. And we inch step by step toward it. You know I don't usually go crazy about politics, but I tell you true: this is the single most serious threat to the Republic currently on the field.


Currently Reading

Anne Bronte, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Etienne Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience
Plotinus, The Enneads
Michael Flynn, In the Lion's Mouth

Poem Retrospective XXV

Cold and Empty Rooms

I walked through cold and empty rooms.
The dust was in the air, and sunlight chill
at times would pierce with ray the stuffy gloom
and slide across the floor to touch the wall,
as all the little flecks like drunkards wheeled,
like dancing debutantes at silent ball.

My footsteps echoed, muffled, in the calm;
I walked through cold and empty rooms.
I felt like ancient monk in fast and alm
preparing prayer in the vesper gloam
each breath writ in the air like chanted neume
that rises from the pilgrim seeking home.

Through endless rooms I wandered, dreading doom,
as cold took up my breath like sudden smoke.
I walked through cold and empty rooms,
through endless doors, as though some heavy yoke
were on my shoulders, as though disaster loomed.
To give my heart some strength I softly spoke.

"See how these quiet rooms, this endless maze,
with boundless silence waits in tranquil sloom
and does not count the years, or months, or days,
as if I could for lifetimes through it roam."
I walked through cold and empty rooms;
they did not hear, nor care for what I'd say.

As cemetery sounds seem fraught with sense,
as heavy seems the air once stained with crime,
I felt a weight invisible, immense:
The footfall soft seemed like some drum of doom,
the ruthless, steady metronome of time:
I walked through cold and empty rooms.

Poem Retrospective XXIV

Partial rhyme is very difficult to work with -- it needs to be strong enough to make a difference to the poem, and yet weak enough to give a richer variation than full rhyme. This is my best effort in this direction.

Hurried Prayer

Creator of this ever-rolling orb,
the earth your footstool, all of space your robe,
as you have made this cosmos come to be,
so bring the waywardness of man to bay!
And work in me, most holy Lamb of God,
a power born of heaven, aimed toward good,
as you by greatest mercy ransom brought
to all our race, and hope of glory bright!
And music Spirit, with your winds inspire
the souls of we who pray, and do not spare
one moment of delay; to all who fear
descend in mighty love, pure heaven's fire!
O God, three-personed, one in substance true,
redeem your slave-sold people from their tears,
and as you give from each to each again,
so give to us, that we might Godhead gain
for, though not Gods by right or nature born,
in you we may be God, our mere dross burned!