John Taylor - I Would Not Be a Slave to God!

I was not born a slave!  I cannot, will not be a slave.  I would not be slave to God!...I'd go at His behest; but would not be His slave.  I'd rather be extinct than be a slave.  His friend I feel I am, and He is mine: --a slave!  The manacles would pierce my very bones--the clanking chains would grate upon my soul--a poor, lost, servile, crawling wretch to lick the dust and fawn and smile upon the thing who gave the lash!  Myself--perchance my wives, my children to dig the mud, to mould and tell the tale of brick and funish our own straw!...But stop!  I'm God's free man: I will not, cannot be a slave!  Living, I'll be free here, or free in life above--free with the Gods, for they are free..."

-John Taylor, Life of John Taylor by B.H. Roberts, 424

"I'd read a great deal in the Old Testament before it occurred to me that it as among other things a handbook for revolutionaries. that what it extolls above all else is freedom. There is not historian and no archaelogist who has any conception of what stonework means. The Semitic god was a god of the common man and that is why he'll have no hewn stones to his altar. He'll have no hewing of stone because he'll have no slavery."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pg. 65)