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March 21, 1665

 

The Right Reverend James Ussher, D. D., died on March 21, 1665. He was the Lord Archbishop of Armagh, and the Primate of Ireland, and had famously calculated the age of the world to have begun in 4004 BC. His sermons reveal that his idea of terror, designed to frighten sinners into changing their behavior, involved cats. Big cats. Here is an excerpt:

Of sinners he wrote
"A lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evening shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities, and every one that goeth out thence shall be torn to pieces."

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