The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor, p. 458
The Visitor (2002)
“There is one that passeth all the other, and is the most diligent prelate and preacher in all England. And will ye know who it is? I will tell you: it is the devil.”
Sermon on the Plough, 29 January 1548. (G. E. Corrie (ed.), Sermons by Hugh Latimer, sometime Bishop of Worcester, Martyr, 1555 (Cambridge University Press, 1844), pp. 70-1.)
Context: And now I would ask a strange question: who is the most diligentest bishop and prelate in all England that passeth all the rest in doing his office? I can tell for I know him who it is; I know him well. But now I think I see you listening and hearkening that I should name him. There is one that passeth all the other, and is the most diligent prelate and preacher in all England. And will ye know who it is? I will tell you: it is the devil. He is the most diligent preacher of all other; he is never out of his diocese; he is never from his cure; ye shall never find him unoccupied; he is ever in his parish; he keepeth residence at all times; ye shall never find him out of the way, call for him when you will he is ever at home; the diligentest preacher in all the realm; he is ever at his plough; no lording nor loitering can hinder him; he is ever applying his business, ye shall never find him idle, I warrant you. And his office is to hinder religion, to maintain superstition, to set up idolatry, to teach all kind of popery. He is ready as he can be wished for to set forth his plough; to devise as many ways as can be to deface and obscure God's glory... O that our prelates would be as diligent to sow the corn of good doctrine as Satan is to sow cockle and darnel.
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Hugh Latimer 6
British bishop 1485–1555Related quotes

James Burgh, in The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)
Misattributed

“Now I just don't know who to tell to go to hell
Who put the old devil in the distorted angel?”
Distorted Angel
Song lyrics, All This Useless Beauty (1996)

“And for
wanting to know it,
for assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.”
O Taste and See : New Poems (1964), The Secret
Context: I love them
for finding what
I can't find, and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.


First address as Vice-President, widely reported as having been delivered while he was inebriated. (5 March 1865).
Quote

“The devil tempted Christ; yes, but it was Christ who tempted the devil to tempt him.”
Further Extracts from the Note-Books of Samuel Butler http://books.google.com/books?id=zltaAAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+devil+tempted+Christ+yes+but+it+was+Christ+who+tempted+the+devil+to+tempt+him%22&pg=PA76#v=onepage, compiled and edited by A.T. Bartholomew (1934), p. 76