Yet if any one contends that it is said of nothing else than circumcision, that in it the infant has broken the covenant of God because he is not circumcised, he must seek some method of explanation by which it may be understood without absurdity (such as this) that he has broken the covenant, because it has been broken in him although not by him.
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

The next day, at the fifth watch, Chia Yun first came in search of Ni Erh, to whom he repaid the money, and then taking fifty taels along with him, he sped outside the western gate to the house of Fang Ch'un, a gardener, to purchase trees, where we will leave him without saying anything more about him.
— from Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I by Xueqin Cao

But as the Indians seldom or never empty the tea-pot (they consider it a waste to throw away the old leaves, and keep on adding a few new ones, which they let boil to get their full flavour), Launa knew better than to drink it.
— from A Girl of the North: A Story of London and Canada by Susan Morrow Jones

I was told that a journey from a country town in Scotland or North England to London is an event in a lifetime with almost any one of the natives.
— from On Old-World Highways A Book of Motor Rambles in France and Germany and the Record of a Pilgrimage from Land's End to John O'Groats in Britain by Thos. D. (Thomas Dowler) Murphy

But the Moorish ranks were filled with the flower of their chivalry; and their immense superiority of numbers enabled them to make their attacks simultaneously on the most distant quarters of the town, with such unintermitted vivacity, that the little garrison, scarcely allowed a moment for repose, was wellnigh exhausted with fatigue.
— from The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic — Volume 1 by William Hickling Prescott

When considering the literature of place, one must not overlook the fair land of Provence or the "Midi of France"—that little-known land lying immediately to the westward of Marseilles, which is seldom or never even tasted by the hungry tourist.
— from The Cathedrals of Southern France by M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

As he walked along, lost in such thoughts, the rays of the evening sun disappeared suddenly beneath heavy clouds, through which at first it peeped like a flaming triumphal arch, until the increasing shades of night enveloped the extinguished glow.
— from Withered Leaves: A Novel. Vol. I. (of III) by Rudolf von Gottschall

The old generous, helpful spirit survives, in spite of new economic theories, in these English country towns, and landlords and merchants have not yet given up the old-fashioned belief that where they make their money they are bound to spend it to the best advantage of their poorer and less fortunate neighbors.
— from Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. by Various

The tyro of the dripping-pan will be no more entitled to screen himself behind his imperfect science or neglected education, than the unlettered criminal to plead his ignorance of the alphabet as a justification of his ignorance of the statute law, [Pg 242] whose enactments send him to Botany Bay.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 370, August 1846 by Various

For the writer (in spite of notorious examples to the contrary) must look to be ill-paid.
— from Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays by Robert Louis Stevenson

Man is physically able to perform good works because they are enjoined by the moral law of nature under pain of sin; he is morally able because, in spite of numerous evil tendencies, not a few gentiles and unbelievers have led upright lives and thereby proved that man can perform good works without the aid of grace.
— from Grace, Actual and Habitual: A Dogmatic Treatise by Joseph Pohle