OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# National Donate Life Month, 2009

Delivered on 01 April 2009.
Administration of Barack H. Obama, 2009
Proclamation 8356—National Donate Life Month, 2009
April 1, 2009
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
    Through organ, tissue, and marrow donation Americans can give the extraordinary gift of life. National Donate Life Month provides an opportunity to honor those who have given of themselves to save lives and to call upon others to participate in this generous effort.
    Every day in our Nation and across the world, Americans dedicate themselves to helping those in need. During times of crisis and calm, Americans have looked beyond themselves to aid friends and strangers alike. This spirit of giving represents a hallmark of our national character.
    Many Americans have followed this tradition of generosity through organ, tissue, and marrow donation. These selfless individuals have saved lives and strengthened families and communities, and they deserve respect and admiration for their contributions.
    I urge all Americans to follow these examples by considering becoming an organ, tissue, or marrow donor. The call for help from those in need of transplants is clear. More donors are needed to meet the needs of those on the national waiting list for life-saving transplants. When considering organ donation, Americans should consult family members to ensure that loved ones are fully aware of the donor's decisions.
    Joining the ranks of organ donors is simple. I encourage Americans to learn more about becoming a donor at www.organdonor.gov.
    Now, Therefore, I, Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim April 2009 as National Donate Life Month. I call upon health care professionals, volunteers, educators, government agencies, faith-based and community groups, and private organizations to join forces to increase the number of organ and tissue donors throughout our Nation.
    In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.
    BARACK OBAMA
[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 11:15 a.m., April 3, 2009]
NOTE: This proclamation was published in the Federal Register on April 6.
Categories: National Donate Life Month.
Subjects: Donate Life Month, National.
DCPD Number: DCPD200900211
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States federal government (see 17 U.S.C. 105).
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Apology of Rufinus/Book II/Chapter 18

15. Also in the Preface of his Commentary on Micah, which was written to Paula and Eustochium, he says, after some few remarks:
“As to what they say, that it is not right for me to rifle the works of Origen, and thereby to defile the writings of the ancients, they think this a telling piece of abuse; but it is, in my opinion, the highest praise, since I am seeking to imitate those who are approved not only by us, but by all thoughtful men.”
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Apology of Rufinus/Book II/Chapter 16

13. But why should I prolong this discussion? I shall take no notice of his reproaches and railings; I shall make no answer to his violent attacks, that daily task of his, for which Porphyry sharpened his pen. For I have chosen Jesus, not Barabbas, for my master, and he has taught me to be silent when reviled. I will come to the point where I will shew how much truth there is in the excuses for himself and the accusations against me which he has heaped together. He says that it is only in two short Prefaces that he ever was known to have praised Origen; and that his praise extended only to his work as an interpreter of Scripture, in which nothing is said of doctrine or of the faith, and that in those parts of his works which he has himself translated there is absolutely nothing advanced of the kind which he now reproves in the interest of the Synagogue rather than that of the edification of Christians. It ought, one would think, be enough to put him to silence, that those very things which he set forth in his own books he blames in those of others; nevertheless, let us see how far these other assertions of his are true. In the Preface to the commentaries of Origen on Ezekiel, contained in fourteen homilies or short orations, he writes thus to one Vincentius:
“It is a great thing which you ask of me, my friend, that I should translate Origen into Latin, and present to the ears of Romans a man of whom we may say in the words of Didymus the seer, that he was a teacher of the churches second only to the Apostles.”
And a little way on he adds:
“I will briefly state for your information that Origen’s works on the whole of Scripture are of three kinds. First come the Extracts or Notes, called in Greek Scholia, in which he shortly and summarily touches upon the things which seemed to him obscure or to present some difficulty. The second kind is the Homiletics, of which the present commentary is a specimen. The third kind is what he called Tomes, or as we say Volumes. In this part of his work he gives all the sails of his genius to the breathing winds; and, drawing off from the land, he sails away into mid ocean. I know that you wish that I should translate his writings of all kinds. I have before mentioned the reason why this is impossible; but I promise you this, that if, through your prayers, Jesus gives me back my health, I intend to translate, I will not say all, for that would be rash, but very many of them; on this condition, however, which I have often set you, that I should provide the words and you the secretary.”

## Footnotes

* ↑ Letter lxxxiv, 2.
* ↑ See this Preface translated among Jerome’s works in this Series.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Apology of Rufinus/Book II/Chapter 19

16. Again, in the Preface to his book on the meaning of Hebrew names, he says, some way down:
“For fear that, when the edifice has been completed, the last touch, so to speak, should be wanting, I have explained the words and names of the New Testament, partly through a wish to follow the steps of Origen, whom all but the ignorant acknowledge to have been the greatest teacher of the churches next to the Apostles. Among the rest of the illustrious monuments of his genius is the labour which he has bestowed upon this, desiring to complete as a Christian what Philo as a Jew had left undone.”
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Apology of Rufinus/Book II/Chapter 2

2. Let us see what my adversary himself says on this point in those Commentaries which he has selected. In the second book, in commenting on the words “Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth to his neighbour, for we are members one of another” (after a short introduction) he speaks as follows:
“Hence Paul himself, who was one of the perfect, says in another Epistle “We speak wisdom among them that are perfect.” This then is what is commanded, that those mystic and secret things, which are full of divine truth, should be spoken by each man to his neighbour, so that day unto day may utter speech and night to night shew knowledge, that is, that a man should show all those clear and lucid truths which he knows to those to whom the words can be worthily addressed: “Ye are the light of the world.” On the other hand, he should exhibit everything involved in darkness and wrapped up in the mist of symbols to others who are themselves nothing but mist and darkness, those of whom it is said “And there was darkness under his feet,” that is, of course, under the feet of God. For on Mount Sinai Moses enters into the whirlwind and the mist where God was; and it is written of God, “He has made darkness his secret place.” Let each man then thus speak truth in a mystery to his neighbour, and not give that which is holy to dogs nor cast his pearls before swine; but those who are anointed with the oil of truth, them let him lead into the bridechamber of the spouse, into the inner sanctuary of the King.”
Observe, I beg you, look carefully and see whether in all this passage there is any one else but himself on whom the condemnation can fall. If his adversaries were looking for an opportunity of convicting and destroying him on the ground of what he has written, what other course could they take, and what other testimonies could they wish to produce against him than these which he produces against himself as if he were pleading against another? If it were sought to pronounce a condemnation against him, his own letter would suffice. You have only to change the name; the test of the accusation suits no one but himself alone. What he calls on us on the one hand to condemn, he exhorts us on the other hand to follow: what he asserts, that he reproves: what he hates, that he does. How happy must be his disciples who obey and imitate him!

## Footnotes

* ↑ Eph. iv. 25
* ↑ 1 Cor. ii. 6
* ↑ Ps. xix. 2
* ↑ Matt. v. 14
* ↑ Ps. xviii. 9
* ↑ Ps. xviii. 11
* ↑ Matt. vii. 6
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Apology of Rufinus/Book II/Chapter 21

18. Lastly, take the following from another letter to Marcella:
“The blessed Martyr Pamphilus, whose life Eusebius the Bishop of Cæsarea set forth in some three volumes, wished to rival Demetrius Phalereus and Pisistratus, in his zeal to establish a library of sacred books: he sought out all through the world representative works of great minds, which are their true and everlasting monuments; but most of all he acquired at great expense all the books written by Origen, and gave them to the church at Cæsarea. This library was afterwards partly destroyed; but Acatius and later on Euzoius, Bishops of that church, endeavoured to reestablish it in parchment volumes. The last of these recovered a great many works, and left us an inventory of them, but he shews that he could not find the Commentary on the hundred and twenty-sixth Psalm and the Tract on the Hebrew letter Pe, by the fact that he does not mention it. Not that so great a man as Adamantius passed over anything, but that, through the negligence of his successors it did not remain to times within our memory.”
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Apology of Rufinus/Book II/Chapter 13

10 (2). I would not, therefore, have you distress yourself overmuch about these points, nor expose yourself needlessly either to penance or to condemnation. But there is a matter of real importance, as to which I can neither excuse nor defend you; namely, a statement openly made by you which is not only heathenish but beyond all heathenism and impiety—the statement in the treatise which I have mentioned above, that God has a mother-in-law. Has anything so profane as this or so impious been said even by any of the heathen poets? It would be a foolish question to ask whether you find anything of the kind in the holy Scriptures. I only ask whether ‘your’ Flaccus or Maro, whether Plautus or Terence, or even whether any writer of Satires among all their unclean and immodest sayings has ever uttered such an outrage against God. No doubt you were led astray by the fact that the girl to whom you addressed the treatise was called the bride of Christ: and hence you thought that her mother according to the flesh might be called the mother-in-law of God. You did not recollect that such things are said not according to the order of the flesh, but according to the grace of the spirit. For a woman is called the bride of Christ because the word of God is united in a kind of mystic wedlock with the human soul. But if the mother of the girl in question is related to Christ by this spiritual connexion, she herself should be called the bride of Christ, not the mother-in-law of God. As it is, you might as well go on to call the father of the girl God’s father-in-law, and her sister his sister-in-law, or to call the girl herself God’s daughter-in-law. The fact is, you were so anxious to appear completely possessed of the eloquence of Plautus or of Cicero, that you forgot that the Apostle speaks of the whole church, parents and children, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters, all together, as one virgin or bride, when he says, “I determined this very thing, to present you as a chaste virgin to one man, which is Christ.” But you boast that you follow not Paul’s but Porphyry’s Introduction, and, since he wrote his impious and sacrilegious books against Christ and against God, you have fallen, through his introduction, into this abyss of blasphemy.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Ep. xxii. c. 20.
* ↑ The word “Dei” has crept in, apparently, wrongly. If it stands the meaning would be, ‘To whom you were teaching the word of God,’ or the allusion may be to Ps. xlv. 10, with which the Letter to Eustochium begins, ‘Hearken O daughter so shall the King desire thy beauty.’
* ↑ 2 Cor. xi. 2
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Apology of Rufinus/Book II/Chapter 14

11. If, then, you really intend to do an act of repentance for those evil speeches of yours, if you are not merely mocking us by saying this, and if you are not in your heart such a lover of strife and contention that you are willing even to defame yourself on this sole condition that you may be able thereby to besmirch another; if it is not in pretence but in good faith that you repent of what you have said amiss, come and do penance for this great and foul blasphemy; for it is indeed blasphemy against God. For if a man oversteps the mark by speaking erroneously of mere creatures, this is not such a very execrable crime, especially if he does it, as you say, not with a set purpose of blasphemy, but in seeking to vindicate the justice of God. But to lift up your mouth against the heaven is a grave offence; to speak violence and blasphemy against the Most High is worthy of death. Let us bestow our lamentations upon that which is hard to cure; for what man is there who has the jaundice, and is in danger both of looks and life, who will complain loudly because of a little hangnail on his foot or because a scratch made with his own finger which easily yields to remedies, is not yet cured?

## Footnotes

* ↑ Morbus regius; used variously for jaundice and leprosy. See Jer. Life of Hilarion, c. 34.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Apology of Rufinus/Book II/Chapter 17

14. Take, again, the Preface to the Song of Songs:
“To the most holy Pope Damasus. Origen in his other books has surpassed all other men: in the Song of Songs he has surpassed himself. The work consists of eleven complete volumes, and reaches a length of nearly twenty thousand lines. In these he discusses first the version of the Septuagint; then those of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, and last of all a Fifth Version which he states that he discovered on the coast of Actium, and this he does so grandly and so freely that it seems to me as if the words were fulfilled in him which say, “The king has brought me into his bedchamber.” It would require a vast amount of time, of labour, and of money to translate a work so great and of so much merit into the Latin language. I therefore leave it unattempted; and have merely translated, and that without elegance, but correctly, these two Tracts which he composed in ordinary language for babes and sucklings. I give you a mere taste of his opinions, not a full meal; but enough to make you realize what is the worth of his greater works, when the smaller give you so much pleasure.”

## Footnotes

* ↑ Cant. i. 4
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Apology of Rufinus/Book II/Chapter 20

17. Once more, in his letter to Marcella he says:
“Ambrose, who supplied the paper, the money and the secretaries by the aid of which our Adamantius and Chalcenterus completed his innumerable books, in a certain letter written to the same person from Athens, declares that he never had a meal, when Origen was present, without something being read, and that he never went to bed without having some brother read aloud from the holy Scriptures. This he said he continued day and night, so that prayer waited upon reading and reading upon prayer.”

## Footnotes

* ↑ Letter xliii, 1.
* ↑ Indomitable or made of adamant.
* ↑ Indefatigable; lit. Brazen-bowelled.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/City of God/Book IX/Chapter 18

Chapter 18.—That the Deceitful Demons, While Promising to Conduct Men to God by Their Intercession, Mean to Turn Them from the Path of Truth.
As to the demons, these false and deceitful mediators, who, though their uncleanness of spirit frequently reveals their misery and malignity, yet, by virtue of the levity of their aerial bodies and the nature of the places they inhabit, do contrive to turn us aside and hinder our spiritual progress; they do not help us towards God, but rather prevent us from reaching Him. Since even in the bodily way, which is erroneous and misleading, and in which righteousness does not walk,—for we must rise to God not by bodily ascent, but by incorporeal or spiritual conformity to Him,—in this bodily way, I say, which the friends of the demons arrange according to the weight of the various elements, the aerial demons being set between the ethereal gods and earthy men, they imagine the gods to have this privilege, that by this local interval they are preserved from the pollution of human contact. Thus they believe that the demons are contaminated by men rather than men cleansed by the demons, and that the gods themselves should be polluted unless their local superiority preserved them. Who is so wretched a creature as to expect purification by a way in which men are contaminating, demons contaminated, and gods contaminable? Who would not rather choose that way whereby we escape the contamination of the demons, and are cleansed from pollution by the incontaminable God, so as to be associated with the uncontaminated angels?
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/City of God/Book IX/Chapter 2

Chapter 2.—Whether Among the Demons, Inferior to the Gods, There are Any Good Spirits Under Whose Guardianship the Human Soul Might Reach True Blessedness.
This book, then, ought, according to the promise made in the end of the preceding one, to contain a discussion, not of the difference which exists among the gods, who, according to the Platonists, are all good, nor of the difference between gods and demons, the former of whom they separate by a wide interval from men, while the latter are placed intermediately between the gods and men, but of the difference, since they make one, among the demons themselves. This we shall discuss so far as it bears on our theme. It has been the common and usual belief that some of the demons are bad, others good; and this opinon, whether it be that of the Platonists or any
other sect, must by no means be passed over in silence, lest some one suppose he ought to cultivate the good demons in order that by their mediation he may be accepted by the gods, all of whom he believes to be good, and that he may live with them after death; whereas he would thus be ensnared in the toils of wicked spirits, and would wander far from the true God, with whom alone, and in whom alone, the human soul, that is to say, the soul that is rational and intellectual, is blessed.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/City of God/Book IX/Chapter 21

Chapter 21.—To What Extent the Lord Was Pleased to Make Himself Known to the Demons.
The devils themselves knew this manifestation of God so well, that they said to the Lord though clothed with the infirmity of flesh, “What have we to do with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art Thou come to destroy us before the time?” From these words, it is clear that they had great knowledge, and no charity.  They feared His power to punish, and did not love His righteousness. He made known to them so much as He pleased, and He was pleased to make known so much as was needful. But He made Himself known not as to the holy angels, who know Him as the Word of God, and rejoice in His eternity, which they partake, but as was requisite to strike with terror the beings from whose tyranny He was going to free those who were predestined to His kingdom and the glory of it, eternally true and truly eternal. He made Himself known, therefore, to the demons, not by that which is life eternal, and the unchangeable light which illumines the pious, whose souls are cleansed by the faith that is in Him, but by some temporal effects of His power, and evidences of His mysterious presence, which were more easily discerned by the angelic senses even of wicked spirits than by human infirmity. But when He judged it advisable gradually to suppress these signs, and to retire into deeper obscurity, the prince of the demons doubted whether He were the Christ, and endeavored to ascertain this by tempting Him, in so far as He permitted Himself to be tempted, that He might adapt the manhood He wore to be an example for our imitation. But after that temptation, when, as Scripture says, He was ministered to by the angels who are good and holy, and therefore objects of terror to the impure spirits, He revealed more and more distinctly to the demons how great He was, so that, even though the infirmity of His flesh might seem contemptible, none dared to resist His authority.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Mark i. 24.
* ↑ Matt. iv. 3–11.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/City of God/Book IX/Chapter 19

Chapter 19.—That Even Among Their Own Worshippers the Name “Demon” Has Never a Good Signification.
But as some of these demonolators, as I may call them, and among them Labeo, allege that those whom they call demons are by others called angels, I must, if I would not seem to dispute merely about words, say something about the good angels. The Platonists do not deny their existence, but prefer to call them good demons. But we, following Scripture, according to which we are Christians, have learned that some of the angels are good, some bad, but never have we read in Scripture of good demons; but wherever this or any cognate term occurs, it is applied only to wicked spirits. And this usage has become so universal, that, even among those who are called pagans, and who maintain that demons as well as gods should be worshipped, there is scarcely a man, no matter how well read and learned, who would dare to say by way of praise to his slave, You have a demon, or who could doubt that the man to whom he said this would consider it a curse? Why, then, are we to subject ourselves to the necessity of explaining away what we have said when we have given offence by using the word demon, with which every one, or almost every one, connects a bad meaning, while we can so easily evade this necessity by using the word angel?