TWO:CHAPTER XXVI. DEFEATS AND PERILS.It is not the king that I love in him; it is the man. If I considered the dignity and the power of the king, I should only seek to keep myself at a distance from him. But the qualities which are personal to him, both of the heart and of the head, they attach me to him for life, without reserve and without fear.26
TWO:FREDERICK AT THE MILL.
TWO:Frederick, with grim humor characteristic of him, sent back the courier with the following response, as if from the Russian general, signed Fermor, but in the kings handwriting:The heresy about predestination, writes Carlyle, or the election by free grace, as his majesty terms it, according to which a man is preappointed, from all eternity, either to salvation or the opposite, which is Fritzs notion, and indeed Calvins, and that of many benighted creatures, this editor among them, appears to his majesty an altogether shocking one. What! may not deserter Fritz say to himself, even now, or in whatever other deeps of sin he may fall into, I was foredoomed to it? How could I or how can I help it? The mind of his majesty shudders as if looking over the edge of an abyss.
TWO: