"Priesthood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Law, and to tradition as well. But the Sadducees were in power, the Pharisees were not. The former endeavored in every way to maintain their authority over the people; and against that authority, against the aristocracy, the priesthood, and the accomplices of foreign dominion, the Pharisees ceaselessly excited the mob. In their inability to overthrow the pontificate, they undermined it. With microscopic attention they examined and criticised every act of the clergy; and, with ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... conversational small-change suitable for Abbots. The Abbot was, I think, a little surprised at my theological lore. He asked me where I had acquired it, and when I told him that it was at school, he presumed that I had been at a seminary for youths destined for the priesthood, an idea which would have greatly shocked the ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... pockets of a manager. The self- devotedness of which Rome boasts so much is a self-devotion she has always thus made the most of for herself. Calculating men who have thought only of the interest of the priesthood, have known well how best to stimulate and to display the spasmodic movements of a brainsick disinterestedness. I have not the shadow of a doubt that, once and again, some priest might have been seen, with cold ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... of men and women then specialise off to study how these spirits can be managed, and so arises a priesthood; and the priests, or medicine men as they are called in their earliest forms, gradually, for their own ends, elaborate and wrap round their ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... up and down the camp, suing already for the consulship and office of praetor, while Spinther, Domitius, and Scipio made friends, raised factions, and quarrelled among themselves, who should succeed Caesar in the dignity of his high-priesthood, esteeming all as lightly, as if they were to engage only with Tigranes, king of Armenia, or some petty Nabathaean king, not with that Caesar and his army that had stormed a thousand towns, and subdued ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... heart. Some of his attacks upon Christianity are very bitter, and have been much quoted against Socialism, but they are not one whit more bitter than the superb thunderbolts of invective which the ancient Hebrew prophets hurled against an unfaithful Church and priesthood. For the most part, they are attacks upon religious hypocrisy rather than upon Christianity. Marx was, of course, an agnostic, even an atheist, but he was full of sympathy with the underlying ethical principles ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... abandoned profligacy is not very compatible with severe study, and that an author is seldom loose in his life, even if he be licentious in his writings. A calm inquirer might, perhaps, have been of opinion that a solitary sage may be the antagonist of a priesthood without absolutely denying the existence of a God; but there never are calm inquirers. The world, on every subject, however unequally, is divided into parties; and even in the case of Herbert (Lord Byron) and his writings, those who admired ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... cast a wishful eye on a vast revenue, which they claimed as belonging to them by a sacred and indefeasible title. However little versed in the Scriptures, they had been able to discover that, under the Jewish law, a tenth of all the produce of land was conferred on the priesthood; and forgetting, what they themselves taught, that the moral part only of that law was obligatory on Christians, they insisted that this donation conveyed a perpetual property, inherent by divine right in those who officiated at the altar. During some centuries, the ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... indeed,—too severely and proudly meditative for any such sleight-of-hand. The only great weight which he ever lifted, I suspect, was one which he carried with him always,—the immense dignity of his poetic priesthood. His home and its surroundings were fairly typical of his tastes: a cottage, (so called,) of homely material indeed, but with an ambitious elevation of gables and of chimney-stacks; a velvety sheen of turf, as dapper as that of a suburban haberdasher; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... superficial. In large part the rationalists were willing to leave the question of religion on one side if the ecclesiastics would let them alone. This is true in spite of the fact that the pot-house rationalism of Germany and France in the eighteenth century found the main butt of its ridicule in the priesthood and the Church. On its sober side, in the studies of scholars, in the bureaux of statesmen, in the laboratories of discoverers, it found more solid work. It accomplished results which that other trivial aspect must ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... buried under their dwelling unknown to all the world. But some days after the event they went to confess to a priest of their nation, and revealed every detail of the tragic story. This unworthy minister of the Lord supposed that in a Mahommedan country, where the laws of the priesthood and the functions of a confessor are either unknown or disapproved, no examination would be made into the source of his information, and that his evidence would have the same weight as any other accuser's. So he resolved to make a profit and gratify his own avarice. Several ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the universal law. Through imperceptible degrees men fell away from the faith of their fathers, and the worship of the god had become unfashionable. The devotees were reduced to a handful of women; of the once all-powerful priesthood, Prosper alone remained, and he was an old ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... individual, how largely to the collective worshipper. You could come into the Minster of York as into the basilica of St. Mark at Venice for a silent prayer amid the religious influences of the place, and be conscious of your oneness with your Source, as if there were no other one; but when the priesthood called you as one of many to your devotions, it was with the same imperative voice in both, and you must obey or be cut off from your chance. I suppose it is right; but somehow the down-clashing of that screen of the choir in ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... "Maxims" he speaks of women disrespectfully—a consequence, no doubt, of his disregard for the domestic virtues, and of the dissolute manners which prevailed in the higher ranks of French society in his time—and of the priesthood contemptuously. No hatred is so intense, or so durable, as that which is begotten of apostasy; and a renegade clerk, or a renegade politician, may be always expected to rail fiercely against his original creed. In his personal habits, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... consideration of other phases of the subject before us, I would like to call your attention to the fact that from the earliest days of history there have been recorded instances of some form of psychic healing. In the earlier days the psychic healing work was left entirely in the hands of the priesthood of the various religions prevailing in the several counties of the world. Claiming to have an exclusive divine sanction to perform healing work, these priests used various ceremonies, rites, incantations, etc., in order ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... banditti, rule impartially the most turbulent people, embruted by the violence, and sunk in the corruption of centuries. We see him restore trade—establish order—create civilization as by a miracle—receive from crowned heads homage and congratulation—outwit, conciliate, or awe, the wiliest priesthood of the Papal Diplomacy—and raise his native city at once to sudden yet acknowledged eminence over every other state, its superior in arts, wealth, and civilization;—we ask what errors we are to ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... at Cerilly (Allier) in 1775, he was left fatherless at an early age; but he was a bright, promising scholar, and the cure of his native place took him into his house with the object of educating him for the priesthood. But "seduced by the principles of liberty which served as pretext for the Revolution, inflamed by patriotism, his spirit exalted by his reading of ancient history," as a biographer, Deleuze, wrote, he left the peaceful home of the village priest, and shouldered a musket under the ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... use, which is of fine gold, conical in shape and the rim completely surrounded by a circlet of magnificent diamonds. This prince, the most illustrious of all the kings of Siam, spent many of the best years of his life in the priesthood as high priest of the kingdom. He was a profound scholar, not only in Oriental lore, but in many European tongues and in the sciences. In public he was rather reticent, but in the retirement of the social ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... dedication of the daughters of pious Hindu families to that vocation, just as in Christian countries daughters are consecrated to the vocation of religion from the cradle and sons are dedicated to the priesthood and ministry. Indeed it is considered a high honor for the daughter of a Hindu family to be received into ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... much to further the union of this pair, yet he too was obliged to exercise caution. If he joined them in wedlock as though they were his own children he might be sure of causing loud complaints from the priesthood, and especially the Dominicans, who were very influential at the court of Rome—nay, he must be prepared for opposition directed against himself as well as the young pair. The prior of the order had already complained to the nuncio of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... myths of the origin of man and of the world, we shall begin by considering those current among the most backward peoples, where no hereditary or endowed priesthood has elaborated and improved the popular beliefs. The natives of Australia furnish us with myths of a purely popular type, the property, not of professional priests and poets, but of all the old men and full-grown warriors ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... social condition, for the Spanish conquerors saw all with their own eyes. The constitution was communistic. All the land, fields, and pastures was divided into three parts, of which two belonged to the Inca and the priesthood, and the third to the people. The cultivation of the land was supervised by a commissioner of the government, who had to see that the produce was equitably distributed, and that the ground was properly manured with guano from ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... possession of Babylon and there "take the hands of Bel." Tiglath-pileser III., Shalmaneser IV., and Sargon were all alike usurpers, who governed by right of the sword. It was only when they had made themselves masters of Babylon and been recognized by Bel and his priesthood that their title to ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... trample upon liberty as no other government under the whole heavens has ever done? This dreadful power, that has compelled the great political parties of the country to creep in the dust for its favor; that has debauched to a large extent the Christianity of the nation; that bids a craven priesthood stand with Golden Rule in hand, and defend the robbing of mothers of their babes, and husbands of their wives; that bids courts decree injustice; Sir, I plant myself upon the Constitution, and demand justice and liberty, and say to this bloody Moloch, Away! Sir, the world has never ...
— Speech of John Hossack, Convicted of a Violation of the Fugitive Slave Law • John Hossack
... across the ocean to the city of Rome, Italy, to study for the priesthood, leaving his little sister in Cincinnati. It is related that he was a very eloquent and powerful orator, and was considered a very promising man by the people of the city of Rome, and received great attention ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... together in an inseparable connection. Hence it is, that Jesus touched infants, Matt, xviii. 2-6; Mark x. 13-16; and that he healed the sick by the touch: and that those who touched him were healed: hence also it is, that inaugurations into the priesthood are at this day effected by the laying on of hands. From these considerations it is evident, that the innocence of parents and the innocence of infants meet each other by the touch, especially of the hands, and thereby join ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... is a fraud, clergy and priesthood are mercenary, cowardly, and interested time-servers. "The priests and the parsons are salary-slaves as much as the workers are wage-slaves. The majority of them dare not preach the Gospel of Humanity, Justice, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... into the Forum with their naked blades, they invoked him by name, saying 'Cicero!' repeatedly, as you all heard. His benefactor, Caesar, then, he slew, and as for Antony from whom he obtained personally safety and a priesthood when he was in danger of perishing at the hands of the soldiers in Brundusium, he repays him with this sort of thanks, by accusing him for deeds with which neither he himself nor any one else ever found any fault and attacking him for conduct which he praises in others. ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... persuasion, that some signal and greatly advantageous change was to be effected in the condition of their country, by the agency of a long-promised messenger from heaven.* The rulers of the Jews, their leading sect, their priesthood, had been the authors of this persuasion to the common people. So that it was not merely the conjecture of theoretical divines, or the secret expectation of a few recluse devotees, but it was become the popular hope and Passion, and, like all popular ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... when finished, be used as a lodge-room for the Order Lodge and other secret societies. In the body of the temple, where it is intended that the congregation shall assemble, are two sets of pulpits, one for the priesthood, and the other for the grandees of ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... confession on all the personal and moral phases of the problem in hand are enough to move and humble the heart of any pastor. Such conference solemnizes and reassures the worker with boys, while to have spent no time as an invited and reverent guest within this sacred precinct is to fail of a priesthood that ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... numerous and as keen As the necessities their authors feel; Then cast them, closely bundled, every brat At the right door. Profusion is its sire. Profusion unrestrained, with all that's base In character, has littered all the land, And bred within the memory of no few A priesthood such as Baal's was of old, A people such as never was till now. It is a hungry vice:—it eats up all That gives society its beauty, strength, Convenience, and security, and use; Makes men mere vermin, worthy ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... Scripture as surely as did the high priests of the Jews, I should not be deterred by the fact that there have been heretic and impious Roman pontiffs; for among the Hebrew high-priests of old there were also heretics and impious men who gained the high-priesthood by improper means, but who, nevertheless, had Scriptural sanction for their supreme power of interpreting the law. (See Deut. xvii. 11, 12, and xxxviii. 10, also Malachi ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... knowledge to theoretical; and with the whole machinery of a free, active, and popular government in constant operation before his eyes, he returned to take the government of a dilapidated country. The power of the priesthood, exercised in the most fearful shape of tyranny; the power of the crown, at once feeble and arbitrary; the power of opinion, wholly extinguished; and the power of the people, perverted into the instrument of their own oppression—were the elements of evil ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... under Generals Moore and Baird, was sent to that country, which now began to be devastated by a war between the partizans of England and France. On one side, that of the English, were ranged the pride of the old grandees, the arts and prejudices of a cunning and intelligent priesthood, and the intolerable stupid superstition of the most ignorant and priest-ridden part of the people. On the other side, there was a small party of the more liberal minded, who supported the French, because they had abolished the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... part of the conservatives for the pure national religion, it was of course quite compatible that the circles of the highest rank should openly make a jest of it. The practical side of the Roman priesthood was the priestly cuisine; the augural and pontifical banquets were as it were the official gala-days in the life of a Roman epicure, and several of them formed epochs in the history of gastronomy: the banquet on the accession of the augur Quintus ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... skies;—"The cherubim know most; the seraphim love most." The gods shall settle their own quarrels. But I cannot recite, even thus rudely, laws of the intellect, without remembering that lofty and sequestered class of men who have been its prophets and oracles, the high-priesthood of the pure reason, the Trismegisti, the expounders of the principles of thought from age to age. When at long intervals we turn over their abstruse pages, wonderful seems the calm and grand air of these few, these great spiritual lords who have ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... for your priesthood, I shall say but little, Corbies and clergy are a shot right kittle; But under favour o' your langer beard, Abuse o' magistrates might ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... whose writings numerous instances of quotation following the sense only, of false ascription, of the blending of passages, of quotations from memory, are given in the treatise of Bp. Kaye [Endnote 56:1]. Dr. Westcott has recently collected [Endnote 56:2] the quotations from Chrysostom On the Priesthood, with the result that about one half present variations from the Apostolic texts, and some of these variations, which he gives at length, are certainly ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... individuals; but their opinions, as well as those of the augurs, were taken on all important affairs of state. The arusp'ices seem not to have been appointed officially, nor are they recognised as a regular order of priesthood. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... compensation for having conducted me, on that day, to a place where I learned something of the first importance to me." Then followed a magnificent bequest for the establishment and support of a Catholic asylum for boys; another for a standing fund for the support of young men preparing for the priesthood, who were destitute of means, and anxious to enter holy orders. The residue of his princely fortune, he wished applied to furnishing capital for a bank for the poor, where, by making small deposits in seasons of health and prosperity, ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... been afraid indeed to marry and keep two wives." Here, as in the bud, we may unfold those subsequent scenes of our story which spread out in the following century; the branching out of the non-conformists into their various sects; and the indecent haste of our reformed priesthood, who, in their zeal to cast off the yoke of Rome, desperately submitted to the liberty of having "two wives or more!" There is a proclamation to abstain from flesh on Fridays and Saturdays; exhorted on the principle, not only that "men should abstain on those days, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... particular, were of the opinion that he could profit to a certain extent at least by securing for his children an education at the expense of the state. While it is likely that from the first Joseph was destined for the priesthood, yet there was provision for ecclesiastical training under royal patronage as well as for secular, and a transfer from the latter to the former was easier than the reverse. Both were to be placed at the college of Autun for a preliminary ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... I should ill Deserve the name of our great father's son, If, as my elder, I revered thee not, And in the worship of our God, called not On thee to join me, and precede me in Our priesthood—'tis thy place. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Dryden with less reverence, than might have been expected from a man of his understanding, when speaking of so great a genius. The cause of Trapp's disgust to Dryden, seems to have been this: Dryden had a strong contempt for the priesthood, which we ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... bowed their heads and took off their caps. To no one lower than the king himself would they have shown respect at such an hour; but their daring fell before the Church of Christ, and they honoured their priesthood. The hetman and leaders agreed to release Pototzky, after having extracted from him a solemn oath to leave all the Christian churches unmolested, to forswear the ancient enmity, and to do no harm to the Cossack forces. One leader alone would not consent to such ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... never take the place of adoration. The heart must be satisfied, as well as the conscience. Larevilliere, a Director, of irreproachable character, felt this deficiency of their system, and saw how strong a hold the Catholic priesthood had upon the common people. The idea occurred to him of rivalling the churches by establishing regular meetings of moral men and women, to sing hymns of praise to the Almighty, "one and indivisible," and to listen to discourses ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... religion of Thibet. Until the arrival of the Rajputs, they seem all to have eaten every kind of animal food, and still do so whenever they are at liberty to indulge their inclinations. They still continue to drink spirituous liquors. Each tribe appears originally to have had a priesthood and deities peculiar to itself, although the worship of Bhim Sen, the son of Pandu, seems to be very general, and to have been that which preceded the doctrine of the Buddhas; but first the Lamas, or, perhaps, rather the Zogis, and then the Brahmans, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... lacking in the Greek and could not have been omitted by the translator had they been in the original text, and because they are composed partly of mere echoes of Jeremiah and partly of promises for the Monarchy and Priesthood not consonant with his views of the institutions of Israel, they are very generally rejected. So are 2 and 3 because of their doubtful relevance and their style, that of the great prophet of the end of the Exile. The originality of 1 and 4-13 has also been denied. The question is difficult. ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... somebody else said it was. The whole body of travellers seemed to be a collection of voluntary human sacrifices, bound hand and foot, and delivered over to Mr Eustace and his attendants, to have the entrails of their intellects arranged according to the taste of that sacred priesthood. Through the rugged remains of temples and tombs and palaces and senate halls and theatres and amphitheatres of ancient days, hosts of tongue-tied and blindfolded moderns were carefully feeling their way, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... all in general began to admire him thus come among them. And great troops of People daily assembled thither with Sacrifices, and to worship him. Whereby seeing their inclination so strong towards him, he began to perceive it was not only possible, but also easie and probable to change his Priesthood for ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... once to a young and ardent novice, studying for the priesthood, "are generally socialists and revolutionists. They are an offence to the Church and ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... makes us take great interest in them, and bestow our money liberally on those who furnish aliment to our appetite. The mild and simple principles of the Christian philosophy would produce too much calm, too much regularity of good, to extract from its disciples a support for a numerous priesthood, were they not to sophisticate it, ramify it, split it into hairs, and twist its texts till they cover the divine morality of its author with mysteries, and require a priesthood to explain them. The Quakers seem to have discovered this. They have no priests, therefore ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... imposed on them until the time of reformation"; that is, until Christ did come. "But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come," etc., puts an end to the things and ordinances of the Levitical priesthood. Read the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th Chapters of Hebrews, and you will find this true. So, then, when He saith, "The days come in which I make a new covenant," it is rather to be meant a changing of the administration, taking ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... memories stirred in him. He had come from a good family in the Western Reserve, where he had rough-and-tumbled up through the grades into High School. After a year here he had gone to a Catholic School, Sacred Heart College, and had studied for the priesthood. He recalled his mother, a gentle, white-haired old lady, with fond pride in him; his father, who had been the soul of honor. By some queer chance she had lit on the very lines that he had learned from the old school reader and recited before an audience the last ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... all. I don't know him. He is part of the holy priesthood; that is enough for me. He is a ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... occurred in Canto XXIX. The general signification of the story is clear enough. It is a contest for supremacy between the regal or military order and Brahmanical or priestly authority, like one of those struggles which our own Europe saw in the middle ages when without employing warlike weapons the priesthood frequently gained the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... of her effort she was foiled by the bitterness of the reformers. The London mob tore down the crosses in the streets. Her attempt to retain the crucifix, or to enforce the celibacy of the priesthood, fell dead before the opposition of the Protestant clergy. But to the mass of the nation the compromise of Elizabeth seems to have been fairly acceptable. They saw but little change. Their old vicar or rector in almost every case remained ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... nun, For whose sake Abeilard, I ween, Lost manhood and put priesthood on? (From Love he won such dule and teen!) And where, I pray you, is the Queen Who willed that Buridan should steer Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine?... But where ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... exorcise a dreaded power. From this savage fetichism the nature-worship found among the Aztecs in Mexico, and the worship of the sun in Peru, are distinguished by the greater definiteness and order of their religious conceptions and usages. In them the gods have names, and an ordained priesthood cares for the religious interests of the people. The highest form to which fetichism has attained is the worship of Manitou, the great spirit, which is found among the ancient tribes ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... forbade the holding of more than two religious processions in a year. In such a country as Belgium this restriction was strongly resented. But the establishment in 1825 by the king of a Collegium Philosophicum at Louvain, at which all candidates for the priesthood were by royal decree required (after 1826) to have a two-years' course before proceeding to an episcopal seminary, met with strenuous resistance. The instruction was in ancient languages, history, ethics and canon-law; and the teachers were ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... faith retained anything of its former vigour were the north and the extreme west, at that time the poorest and least populated parts of the kingdom. One main cause of the change lay in the gradual dying out or removal of the Catholic priesthood and the growth of a new Protestant clergy who supplied their place. The older parish priests, though they had almost to a man acquiesced in the changes of ritual and doctrine which the various phases of the Reformation imposed upon them, remained ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... soon becomes important, and, therefore, that records are early kept, in a growing civilisation. "After Nehemiah's return from the captivity in Babylon, the priests at Jerusalem whose register was not found were as polluted put from the priesthood." Rome had her parish registers, which were kept in the temple of Saturn. But modern parish registers were "discovered" (like America) in 1497, when Cardinal Ximenes found it desirable to put on record the ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... chief Torquam donned his ceremonial dress, a string of eagle feathers held by the crimsoned quills of the porcupine and extending down his back until almost it touched the ground. About his neck, as token of his priesthood, he threw the bear-claw necklace, known far and wide among the tribes for its famous powers of healing. Wildenai alone made no change except to bind the satin black of her hair still more smoothly within a fillet of silver. ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... performance of circumcision was at one time limited to the priesthood, who, in addition to the cleanliness that this operation imparted to that class, added the shaving of the whole body as a means of further purification. The nobility, royalty, and the higher warrior class seem to have adopted circumcision as well, either as a ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... the head was severed. Then there arose a loud shout of triumph. The offering to the fetish was the signal for the most enthusiastic rejoicing, and the shouts of adulation were deafening. The people, ground down by a crafty priesthood, and steeped in the most degrading superstitions, looked upon the wholesale butchery that followed without a shudder. King, courtiers and slaves seemed seized with an insatiable desire for blood, and as one head fell after another, the cries of the victims drowned by the vociferous shouts of ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... application to books, before he could entirely overcome the prejudices of his education. He never believed the absurd tenets of the church of Rome; nor could he embrace the ridiculous doctrine of her infallibility: But as he had been taught an early reverence to the priesthood, and a submissive obedience to their authority, it was a long while before he assumed courage to think freely for himself, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... to live a life not much more cleanly or more graceful than that of the swine which were his favourite food. But he would have a right to plead, as an excuse, that not only in England, but throughout the whole of the conquered Latin empire, the Latin priesthood, who, in some respects, were—to their honour—the representatives of Roman civilisation and the protectors of its remnants, were the determined enemies of its cleanliness; that they looked on personal dirt—like the old hermits of the Thebaid—as a sign of sanctity; and discouraged—as ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... same time they were in many respects the most degraded. Nothing could equal the depth of their abasement before an insolent priesthood, except the unblushing effrontery with which the latter lorded it over them. For any infraction of their arbitrary rules, the most cruel and humiliating penances were imposed. I knew an instance of a young woman, a Romanist, who engaged ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... about ten years after the foundation of Kunwald, there met at Lhota a Synod of the Brethren to settle the momentous question {1467.}, "Is it God's will that we separate entirely from the power of the Papacy, and hence from its priesthood? Is it God's will that we institute, according to the model of the Primitive Church, a ministerial order of our own?" For weeks they had prayed and fasted day and night. About sixty Brethren arrived. The Synod was held in a tanner's cottage, under ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... guard against vanity, the common failing of inexperienced youth; but particularly against that kind of vanity that dubs a man a coxcomb; a character which, once acquired, is more indelible than that of the priesthood. It is not to be imagined by how many different ways vanity defeats its own purposes. One man decides peremptorily upon every subject, betrays his ignorance upon many, and shows a disgusting presumption upon the rest. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... he tried to provoke a repetition of it, that he might burst out in wrathful defence of his friends—to be named friends when they were vilified: defence of poor Ambrose at least, the sinner who, or one as bad, might have reached to pardon through the priesthood. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sympathize with you in all that you have suffered, and we consider the persecution with which you have been pursued by a venal Court and an imperious and uncharitable priesthood, as an illustrious proof of your personal merit, and a lasting reproach to that Government from the grasp of whose tyranny you are so ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... a pile of wood, both of which to be prepared there for this purpose, and to be burnt alive, along with the pacts and spells which remain in the hands of the clerk and the manuscript of the book written by the said Grandier against a celibate priesthood, and his ashes, to be scattered to the four winds of heaven. And we have declared, and do hereby declare, all and every part of his property confiscate to the king, the sum of one hundred and fifty livres being first taken therefrom to be employed in the purchase of a copper plate whereon the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of Francois Mouret (see La Conquete de Plassans), was ordained to the priesthood and appointed cure of Les Artaud, a squalid village in Provence, to whose degenerate inhabitants he ministered with small encouragement. He had inherited the family taint of the Rougon-Macquarts, which in him took the same form as in the case of his mother—a morbid religious enthusiasm bordering ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... PRIEST, the hero of a comic German epic of the 13th century, represented as an Englishman, a man of great wit and humor, but ignorant and hypocritical. His popularity excites the envy of the superior clergy, who seek to depose him from the priesthood by making public exposition of his ignorance, but by his quickness at repartee he always manages to turn the laugh against them.—Ascribed to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... amongst the leading chivalries of Europe, in very fact they are, for political or social purposes, the most powerless gentry in existence. Acting in a corporate capacity, they can do nothing. The malignant planet of this low-born priesthood comes between them and the peasantry, eclipsing oftentimes the sunshine of their comprehensive beneficence, and always destroying their power to discountenance[20] evil-doers. Here is the sad excuse. But, for all that, we must affirm that, if the Irish ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... among the poorer classes of the town had arisen a certain hostility to the statue. The councillors suspected that the priesthood had been at work. The forces of reaction against the forces of progress! Very well! The councillors hurriedly decided that the best available site, on the whole, was that strip of waste ground where the fishermen sat pottering. The pedestal was promptly planted. Umberto ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... as would appear, was the origin of Buddhism. Strictly speaking, and apart from its later developments, Buddhism is a religion which knows no God, which attaches no value to prayer, which has no place for a priesthood. Nowhere, perhaps, is its agnosticism more conspicuous than in the five main prohibitions, which are addressed alike to clergy and laity. The first of these forbids the taking of life,—human life chiefly, but other ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... was advanced to the Priesthood of the Episcopal Church of America, by the Rt. Rev. J. Th. Holly, D. D., LL. D., Bishop of Hayti. In 1882 he was delegated to represent the Episcopal Church in the United States, and to collect funds for the building of the same in Hayti. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... go on adoring with the blindest infatuation. Were it not for this astounding gift of resilience one might deplore the prurient curiosity that wants to peep into the hollow image of Isis and get at the machinery of the priesthood. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... other respects Father John was a fair specimen of the Irish priesthood. He must have been an eloquent man, for he had been sent on different foreign missions to obtain money for building chapels by preaching sermons. But his appearance was anything but dignified; he was very short, and very fat, and had little or no appearance of neck; his face, ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... cry of the strong for help the gospel has had just these three great prime factors to present for the solution of the problems of every age: first, the home, with its priesthood of the father and mother, the sanctuary of the house and the ministrations of family life; secondly, the school; and thirdly, between the home and the school, the church. When our Lord himself, from all possible sources, made selection ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... thought—when our old servant, Anthony, opened the door, and, without speaking, showed in a very gentlemanly and prepossessing man, who had something remarkable about his dress, betraying his profession to be that of the Roman Catholic priesthood. He glanced at my uncle first, then at me. It was to me he bowed. 'I did not give my name,' said he, 'because you would hardly have recognised it; unless, sir, when in the north, you heard of Father Bernard, the ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... But it must be remembered, that, where this theory is established, the habit of deference is logically carried much farther than mere conjugal convenience would take it. Its natural outcome is the authority of the priest, not of the husband. That domination of the women of France by the priesthood which forms even now the chief peril of the republic—which is the strength of legitimism and imperialism and all other conspiracies against the liberty of the French people—is only the visible and inevitable result ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... "A strange army, the priesthood," he said to himself. "Every race and every rank of life—men who have always had a creed, and men who have had none. Soldiers, sailors, men from trades and professions, drawn to the Standard by an irresistible impulse that they ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... market-place; and stood in the crowd, with corresponding dismay, six years later to shout for Queen Elizabeth. Since that date, for the first eleven years he had gone, as did other Catholics, to his parish church secretly, thankful that there was no doubt as to the priesthood of his parson, to hear the English prayers; and then, to do him justice, though he heard with something resembling consternation the decision from Rome that compromise must cease and that, henceforth, all true Catholics must withdraw ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... "Suffer little children to come unto me." Unto me; he did not send them first for lessons in morals to the schools of the Pharisees, or to the unbelieving Sadducees, nor to read the precepts and lessons phylacteried on the garments of the Jewish priesthood; he said nothing of different creeds or clashing doctrines; but he opened at once to the youthful mind the everlasting fountain of living waters, the only source of eternal truths: "Suffer little children to come unto me." And that injunction ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... assures us that the only temple now existing is the spiritual Church of the living God. 'Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? ye also as lively stones are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God by Jesus Christ, whose house are ye, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone;' and our Lord Himself tells us that where two or three are gathered together, even there is He in their midst. The priest, the sacrifice, the ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... de Lure would not affect my intended destination, my father accepted it, judging that some years passed in a family so distinguished would give me a taste for the more serious studies necessary to fit me for the priesthood. I set out, therefore, with the Count de Lure, much grieved at leaving my parents, but pleased also at the same time, as is usual with one at my age, with new scenes. The count took me to one of his estates near Tours, where I was received with the greatest kindness by ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Whether the Sadducees or the Pharisees gain the contention the burden remaineth the same. At times have I thought of turning to the spade and apron and white robe of the Essenes where there be no Aaronic priesthood or ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... Burton often made bitter attacks on Christianity, and wrote most scathingly against the Roman Catholic priesthood, and the cenobitic life of the monks, yet at times he had certain sympathies with Roman Catholicism. Thus at Baroda, instead of attending the services of the garrison chaplain, he sat under the pleasant Goanese ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... predecessors: the most ancient of whom is the supreme god, and the rest subordinate gods. For a long time these connate forms of government—civil and religious—remain closely associated. For many generations the king continues to be the chief priest, and the priesthood to be members of the royal race. For many ages religious law continues to include more or less of civil regulation, and civil law to possess more or less of religious sanction; and even among the most advanced nations these two controlling agencies are by no means completely ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... increasing needs of the community . . . the intellectual element in religion requires some one to express it, and this, in some form or other, will be the clergy"?[1] Surely if there were no "orders" in the beginning, then a priesthood was no creation of Jesus, his apostles were no priests, they created, therefore, no priests, and a priestly caste grew up as an intrusion in Christendom just as it arose in the religion of the holy Buddha in India, and attempted, though unsuccessfully, to invade ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... been able to ascertain, the temples of Benares have very little of either funded or landed property. The vast sum required for the support of the priesthood comes mainly from the offerings of ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... view of Christianity as a religion of humility and sloth, which preaches only the courage of endurance and makes its followers indifferent to worldly honor, is unfavorable to the development of political vigor. The Italians have been made irreligious by the Church and the priesthood; the nearer Rome, the less pious the people. When Machiavelli, in his proposals looking toward Lorenzo (II.) dei Medici (died 1519), approves any means for restoring order, it must be remembered that he has an exceptional case in mind, that he ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... taken such deep root in the heart of the nation as it has done. Nay, it could not; for does not every man of common sense know, that good moral principles seldom grow in a bad moral soil, until it is cultivated for their reception. It is, therefore, certainly a proof that the Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland had not neglected the religious principles of the people. It may, I know, and it has been called a superstitious contagion; but however that may be, so long as we have such contagions among us, we will readily pardon the superstition. Let superstition always assume a shape ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... should the worst come to the worst, he has his machines ready, which, if necessary, will miraculously rekindle the dead fire of Vesta. In this way, even though Julia should escape the sacrifice, the power of the priesthood would still ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... from those which Tegner himself had frequently delivered chiefly in the substitution of pagan for the Christian deities. As a matter of fact, marriage was a purely civil contract among the ancient Norsemen, and had no association with the temple or the priesthood, which, by the way, was no separate office but a patriarchal function belonging to the secular chieftainship. But Tegner's public were in nowise shocked by anachronisms of this sort; they probably rejoiced the more heartily in the happiness of the reunited lovers, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... I have read that book, and been conversant in the affairs of Asia, in vain. There is not such a syllable in it; but, on the contrary, against oppressors by name every letter of that law is fulminated. There are interpreters established throughout all Asia to explain that law, an order of priesthood, whom they call men of the law. These men are conservators of the law; and to enable them to preserve it in its perfection, they are secured from the resentment of the sovereign: for he cannot touch them. Even their kings are not always vested with a real supreme ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... bodies of the nobility and princes, and through these have destroyed the clergy. Assertions of this sort, which those possessed uttered while in a state which may be compared with that of magnetic sleep, obtained general belief, and passed from mouth to mouth with wonderful additions. The priesthood were, on this account, so much the more zealous in their endeavors to anticipate every dangerous excitement of the people, as if the existing order of things could have been seriously threatened by such incoherent ravings. Their exertions were effectual, for exorcism was a powerful ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... war between Hyrcanus and Aristobulus. It was then that Jerusalem was taken by the Roman general, after a siege of three months, and the conqueror entered the most sacred precincts of the temple, to the horror of the priesthood. He established Hyrcanus as high priest, as has been already related, and then retired to Pontus, settled its affairs, and departed with his army for Italy, having won a succession of victories never equaled in the East, except by Alexander. And ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... medicine men and women—an order of priesthood consulted and employed in all times of sickness. These powwows are persons who are believed to have performed extraordinary cures, either by the application of roots and herbs or by incantations. When an Indian wishes to be initiated ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... God has been developing a church, the members of which are designated as the body of Christ. (Philippians 1:29; Colossians 1:18) These are also designated members of the royal priesthood. (1 Peter 2:9,10) During their earthly career they are counted as members of the sacrificing priesthood, of which Aaron was a type. Aaron and his sons were required to serve before the Lord in the ceremonies in connection with ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... permitted to resume them. Another priest presides over the great church of St. Stephen, of which he was the rector. More than once the door of repentance and return has been opened to him; but, I believe, he is still waging war in his own way, and beyond the precincts of the priesthood, both upon the right of private property in land and ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... judgment, backed by the learning that Queen Marguerite of Navarre had introduced among the companions of her daughter, had rendered her superior to most of those with whom she came in contact: and the Huguenot ministers, who were much more dependent on their laity than the Catholic priesthood, for the most part treated her as not only a devout and honourable woman, an elect lady, but as a sort of State authority. That she had the right-mindedness to respect and esteem such men as Theodore Beza, Merlin, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stands the protector of the four classes of the people; the guardian of the four conditions of the priesthood[80]. He has just left the judgment-seat, and is ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... endured in great penance six year; and then Sir Launcelot took the habit of priesthood of the Bishop, and a twelvemonth he sang mass. And there was none of these other knights but they read in books, and holp for to sing mass, and rang bells, and did bodily all manner of service. And ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... Roman governor—was away, Annas put to death many of the sect called Christians, to gratify the Sadducees. The people were indignant, for these men had done no harm; and Agrippa deprived him of the priesthood and appointed Jesus, son of Damnai. Then, unhappily, Festus—who was a just and good governor—died, and Albinus succeeded him. He was a man greedy of money, and ready to do anything for gain. He took bribes from robbers, and encouraged, ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... military power—urged on the people an exterminating war. A black flag waved from the Missions, and fired every heart with an unrelenting vengeance and hatred. To slay a heretic was a free pass through the dolorous pains of purgatory. For the priesthood foresaw that the triumph of the American element meant the triumph of freedom of conscience, and the abolition of their own despotism. To them the struggle was one involving all the privileges of their order; and they urged on the fight with passionate denunciations of the foe, and with ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... of all the provinces. In the Jesuit College, the Quebec Seminary, and other Roman Catholic institutions founded in Montreal, St. Hyacinthe, Three Rivers, and Nicolet, young men could always be educated for the priesthood, or receive such higher education as was considered necessary in those early times. The Quebec Seminary always occupied a foremost position as an educational institution of the higher order, and did much ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... pattern of the heavenly Temple, in the High Priest he sees Christ, in the sacrifices the offering of the spotless Son; the priests of the Temple are but "the example and shadow of heavenly things," of the heavenly priesthood serving in "the true tabernacle." A most elaborate allegory is thus worked out in chapters iii.-x., and the writer alleges that the Holy Ghost thus signified the deeper meaning; all was "a figure for ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... Menagerie at Versailles. To his son, born at Paris in 1663, Louis XIV. stood godfather, bestowing on the child his distinguished Christian name. The young Laguerre received his education at a Jesuit College, with the view of entering the priesthood, but a confirmed impediment in his speech demonstrated his unfitness for such a calling. He began to evince considerable art-ability, and, on the recommendation of the fathers of the college, he eventually embraced the profession of painting. He then ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Apostle says (Heb. 7:12): "The priesthood being translated, it is necessary that a translation also be made of the law." But the priesthood is twofold, as stated in the same passage, viz. the levitical priesthood, and the priesthood of Christ. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... which reason cannot mitigate, and length of time alone blunts the edge of our afflictions and puts an end to many evils, the youth, having been brought back by his friends and mother, and restored to his right way of thinking, and to his learning, in process of time attained the rank of priesthood. ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... more necessary to a priest than to a king, wherefore it is written (Malachi 2:7): "The lips of the priest shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth," and (Osee 4:6): "Because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will reject thee, that thou shalt not do the office of priesthood to Me." Now the king is commanded to learn knowledge of the Law (Deut. 17:18, 19). Much more therefore should the Law have commanded the priests to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... converse in a tongue different from that used in ordinary life, and the chants containing the prayers and legends were often in this esoteric dialect. Fragments of one or two of these have floated down to us from the Aztec priesthood. The travellers Balboa and Coreal, mention that the temple services of Peru were conducted in a language not understood by the masses,[284-1] and the incantations of the priests of Powhatan were not in ordinary Algonkin, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... upon the throne of the Caesars; to attribute to him powers weightier than all which the Caesars had possest . . . It was a magnificent idea. A politic idea, too; for it would cover the priesthood with all the prestige of ancient Rome, and enable them to face the barbarian in the name of that great people whose very memory still awed him; whose baths, aqueducts, palaces, he looked on as the work of demons; whose sages and poets were to him enchanters; whose very gems, dug out of the ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... Besides the regular priesthood, there were many kinds of medicine men, necromancers or mediums, sorcerers and diviners, who preyed upon the superstition and credulity of their countrymen. The belief that all forms of disease were caused by evil spirits, and their fear of being "prayed ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... Frenchmen at a neighboring village. One of the strangers proved to be a man destined to hold a conspicuous place in the history of western discovery. This was Louis Joliet, a young man of about the age of La Salle. Like him, he had studied for the priesthood; but the world and the wilderness had conquered his early inclinations, and changed him to an active and ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... in the first two books, the arguments for the existence and providence of the gods have been set forth and denied, by Velleius the Epicurean, Cotta the academician, and Balbus the Stoic; in the third book, Cotta, the head of the priesthood, the Pontifex Maximus, proceeds to refute the stoical opinion that there are gods who govern the universe and provide for the welfare of mankind. To be sure, he says, as Pontifex, he of course believes in the gods, but he feels free as a philosopher to deny their existence. "I believe in ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Plunket's success in obtaining a committee to consider the claims of the catholics. This was carried by a majority of six, and followed up by two bills, removing all catholic disabilities with very slight exceptions, but subject to stringent and somewhat illusory securities for the loyalty of the priesthood. Ultimately on April 2 a comprehensive measure of catholic relief passed the house of commons by a majority of nineteen. All the most influential members of the lower house now voted in its favour, but the attitude ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... from their constant wrestle with dangers ill understood, are prone to seek and find supernatural forces. Nor was this all. Later, when she had become rich, powerful, luxurious, licentious, and refractory to the priesthood, her most powerful citizens felt a need of atoning for their many sins by splendid religious foundations. So her people came to live in an atmosphere of religious observance, and the bloom and fruitage of their religious hopes and fears are seen ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... the fireplace and a bulgy sideboard. There is a very strong flavour of mesmeric suggestion about a woman's attitude towards these matters, considered in the light of her customary common sense. Do you know, George, I really believe there is a secret society of tradesmen, a kind of priesthood, who get hold of our womenkind and muddle them up with all these fancies. It's a sort of white magic. Have you ever been in a ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... of life, proper to the religion of Humanity, is to be directed by a priesthood. The priests are to possess neither wealth nor material power; they are not to command, but to counsel; their authority is to rest on persuasion, not on force. When religion has become positive and society industrial, then the influence of the church upon the state becomes really free ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... not pronounced. She attends church pretty regularly, but is entirely free from superstition, though not always from intolerance. Adoration of the priesthood is not at all in her line. For politics she cares nothing, except in Victoria where naturally she espouses her father's side warmly, but in an irrational, almost stupid, way. Art is a dead letter to her, and so is literature, unless an unceasing and untiring ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... demurred, but to no purpose; the Parliament ceased to resist the arguments of the Prince, when he represented to them as magistrates, that the peace of the state and the prosperity of the Church must be inseparable. At the same time he endeavored to convince the bigots among the priesthood on both sides, that the love of country and the performance of civil and political duties may be completely ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... He always showed himself one of the most ungenerous enemies of the clergy, of monarchy, and of his King, for whose death he voted. On the 25th of May, 1792, in declaiming against Christianity and priesthood, he wished them both, for the welfare of mankind, at the bottom of the sea; and on the 18th of December the same year, he declared in the Jacobin Club that, if the National Convention evinced any signs of clemency towards Louis XVI., ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... principle, and only after the subjugation of the land by Belisarius had Arianism in Italy been formally condemned. Of course it was protected by the warring Goths: Totila's victories had now once more extended religious tolerance over a great part of the country; the Arian priesthood re-entered their churches; and even in Rome the Greek garrison grew careless of the reviving heresy. Of these things did Decius speak, when the distressed lover sought his counsel. No one more liberal than Decius; but he bore a name which he could not forget, and in his eyes the Goth was ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... philosophers, and authors! This was the beau-ideal of Algernon Sidney's Aristocratic Republic, of the Helvetian vision of what ought to be the dispensation of public distinctions; yet was it, after all, a desirable aristocracy? Did society gain; did literature lose? Was the priesthood of Genius made more sacred and more pure by these worldly decorations and hollow titles; or was aristocracy itself thus rendered a more disinterested, a more powerful, or a more sagacious element in the administration of law, or the elevation of opinion? These questions, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... life within their life. Then what was he?—a substance?—or the dimmest of all shadows? He longed to speak out from his own pulpit at the full height of his voice, and tell the people what he was. "I, whom you behold in these black garments of the priesthood—I, who ascend the sacred desk, and turn my pale face heavenward, taking upon myself to hold communion in your behalf with the Most High Omniscience—I, in whose daily life you discern the sanctity of Enoch—I, whose footsteps, as you suppose, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seem strange to you. Your church doth not recognize the sacrament of baptism, when it has been performed by unconsecrated hands of dissenters: you do rebaptize all converts from those sects. So our church does not recognize the sacrament of marriage, when performed by any one outside of its own priesthood. I shall with true gladness of heart administer the holy sacrament of marriage to these two so strangely separated, and so strangely brought together. They have borne ten years of penance for whatever of sin had gone before: the church ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... make no mention of the raising of Lazarus. He then goes on, "As the raising of Lazarus is true, though not contained at all in the first three Gospels; so the gift of consecrating the Eucharist may have been committed by Christ to the priesthood, though only indirectly taught in any of the four. Will you say I am arguing against our own Church, which says the Scripture 'contains all things necessary to be believed to salvation?' Doubtless, Scripture contains all things necessary to be believed; but there may be things ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... retirement from public life. We smile when we hear him in the violent first fervour of his conversion, talking about becoming a Trappist, and, later, a Jesuit. He knew himself better when he shrank so long and persistently from the yoke of priesthood, and when, having yielded against his truer instincts to the indiscreet zeal of pious friends, he experienced an agony of repugnance at his first Mass. With different antecedents he might have profited by the yoke, but as things stood it could but ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... age of five-and-thirty was Jean Baptiste Carrier, Representative of the Convention with the Army of the West, the attorney who once had been intended by devout parents for the priesthood. He had been a month in Nantes, sent thither ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... arch-god, he devoted himself to the purer and more sublime worship of Aton, the sun. But he failed to win the permanent adhesion of the people to his reform, or to conciliate or entirely crush the enormously powerful priesthood of Ammon. A few years after the reformer's death, the old cults were re-established and the monuments of Aton studiously defaced. Hymns were then addressed to Amen-re, which are almost monotheistic in expression. The cult of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... shaken with that tearless agony, it seemed to me that the self-same pang, with hardly mitigated torment, leaped thrilling from her heartstrings to my own. Was it wrong, therefore, if I felt myself consecrated to the priesthood by sympathy like this, and called upon to minister to this woman's affliction, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... from Mount Vaughan, and rode up to the Government House, in country style. He was in a little wagon, drawn by eight natives, and sat bolt upright, with an umbrella over his head. The maligners of the priesthood, in all ages and countries, have accused them of wishing to ride on the necks of the people; but I never before saw so nearly literal an exemplification of the fact. In its metaphorical sense, indeed, I should be very far from casting such an imputation ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... ruin destroyed" all this, and we hope in truth that we are now approaching a new epoch of our spiritual as well as moral existence. Just as, out of the first awakening of a pure human feeling such as Christianity brought us, there rose in contrast to priesthood a work like the "Magic Flute," child-like, artless but devoutly pure and full of feeling, so now there resounds like the mighty watchword of this full national ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... midnight! There was something monkish about the habits which he and his companion wore, and the thought flashed into my mind that perhaps they were members of some religious order, or some Oriental cult or priesthood. And both of them, I added to myself, must ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... he could not do better than deliver his country from the hands of the prelates, and restore the ancient form of government; hoping, in the event of success, to be considered a new founder or second father of the city. The dissolute manners of the priesthood, and the discontent of the Roman barons and people, encouraged him to look for a happy termination of his enterprise; but he derived his greatest confidence from those verses of Petrarch in the canzone which begins, "Spirto gentil che quelle membra ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... people at liberty to bestow what they pleased, they gave it as their opinion, that they ought not to be less liberal than the ancient Jews, who, under the Levitical law, gave a tenth of their property to the priesthood and to the poor. Ambrose, in like manner, recommended tenths, as now necessary, and as only a suitable ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Miss Scott's conversion, began his career as an Episcopal clergyman. There was a barrier to his becoming a Roman Catholic priest, as he was married; but his wife soon shared in his religious ardor, and when he entered the priesthood she became a nun. He lacked stability, however, in his religious views, and was subsequently received again into the Episcopal Church. It was his desire that his wife should at once join him but she refused to leave the Convent, and she finally became the founder ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... dates from a much older period than the charitable institution of which it is now the home. It was the seat of a religious fraternity far back in the Middle Ages, and continued so till Henry VIII. turned all the priesthood of England out-of-doors, and put the most unscrupulous of his favorites into their vacant abodes. In many instances, the old monks had chosen the sites of their domiciles so well, and built them on such a broad system of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... now no established religion in Japan, Buddhism having been abolished in 1874. The temples and priesthood are maintained by voluntary contributions. The poor laws are simple: government gives nine bushels of rice to every person over seventy or under fifteen years of age, who cannot work, and the same to foundlings under ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... Gallic tribes were aristocracies, in which the influence of clanship was a predominant feature; while the German system, although nominally regal, was in reality democratic. In Gaul were two orders, the nobility and the priesthood, while the people, says Caesar, were all slaves. The knights or nobles were all trained to arms. Each went forth to battle, followed by his dependents, while a chief of all the clans was appointed to take command during the war. The prince or chief ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... founding Merton College, the first college which existed in the University, Merton proposed not only to erect a building in which the lads who studied might be boarded and placed under supervision, but to train them with a view to learning for its own sake, and not to prepare them for the priesthood. The eagerness to learn things difficult was accompanied by a desire to increase popular knowledge. For the first time since the Chronicle came to an end, which was soon after the accession of Henry II., ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... easy to see something peculiarly holy, something deeply religious in the occupations and acts of the priesthood or the ministry. But thinking of these as religious and of such service as divine we fall into the habit of thinking that they alone, in all the world of action, are divine. We set on one side of life the religious service limited to these formal acts and on the other side what we call ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... exposed the ignorance[FN74] of the protestants. Thus at last his merit was appreciated by the Emperor Tsuchi-mikado (1199-1210), and he was promoted to So Jo, the highest rank in the Buddhist priesthood, together with the gift of a purple robe in 1206. Some time after this he went to the city of Kama-kura, the political centre, being invited by Sane-tomo, the Shogun, and laid the foundation of the so-called Kama-kura Zen, still ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... people at that time entertained a belief, founded on old traditions, that a deliverer would arise among them, who would restore them to their ancient splendor. The disciples of Jesus regarded him as this long-expected Messiah. But the priesthood, believing that the doctrines he taught were prejudicial to their interests, denounced him to the Roman governor, who, to satisfy their clamors, reluctantly delivered ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... earliest childhood I had felt a vocation to the priesthood, so that all my studies were directed with that idea in view. Up to the age of twenty-four my life had been only a prolonged novitiate. Having completed my course of theology I successively received all the minor orders, and my superiors ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... more solemnly than ever. "It's not Gospel," said he. "It's mere human tradition. Why, for centuries there was a married priesthood even in the Latin Church. Dunstan's chief measures consisted in a fierce war on the married clergy. So did Hildebrand's—Gregory the Seventh, you know. The Church at Milan, sustained by the doctrines of the great Ambrose, ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... unswerving purpose of that church was to govern, temporally as well as spiritually. She sought to supply to men from her own store all the knowledge which was necessary for their welfare, and that knowledge was limited to dogmas and beliefs which would strengthen the power of the priesthood. A strict and absolute acceptance of the truths of Christianity as she defined them, and a humble obedience to the clergy were made the sole and necessary conditions of salvation. A questioning of those truths or a violation of that obedience was ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... care to live," said one of the very ablest and most eminent members of the American Catholic priesthood—"I would not care to live," said he, "if I could not have my play-hour, music, and flowers. They are God's gifts and my necessity. Every young man who has a home commits a crime if he does not each day bring one hour of joy into ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... Vignon. "Journalism, so far from being in the hands of a priesthood, came to be first a party weapon, and then a commercial speculation, carried on without conscience or scruple, like other commercial speculations. Every newspaper, as Blondet says, is a shop to which people come for opinions of the right ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... fears He is carrying on His work most beautifully. He will breathe His own life, which is all prayer, into us. As He makes us partakers of His righteousness and His life, He will of His intercession too. As the members of His body, as a holy priesthood, we shall take part in His priestly work of pleading and prevailing with God for men. Yes, let us most joyfully say, ignorant and feeble though we be, 'Lord, teach ...
— Lord, Teach Us To Pray • Andrew Murray
... Fortunately, priesthood had tried its mailed hand on the slow and sluggish Dutch, with the result that the Spaniards were driven from the Netherlands. Holland was the home of freedom. Amsterdam became a Mecca for the oppressed. The Jews flocked thither, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... office might not be neglected, he appointed a perpetual priest as flamen to Jupiter, and distinguished him by a fine robe, and a royal curule chair. To him he added two other flamens, one for Mars, another for Quirinus. He also chose virgins for Vesta, a priesthood derived from Alba, and not foreign to the family of the founder. That they might be constant attendants in the temple, he appointed them pay out of the public treasury; and by enjoining virginity, and various religious observances, he made them sacred and venerable. He also ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... this high standard, blame is attached to the missionary, instead of credit for that which he has effected. They forget, or will not remember, that human sacrifices, and the power of an idolatrous priesthood—a system of profligacy unparalleled in any other part of the world—infanticide a consequence of that system—bloody wars, where the conquerors spared neither women nor children—that all these have been abolished; and that dishonesty, intemperance, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Emeritus, President; Board of Directors; Treasurer; Clerk; Future Board of Trustees; Proprietor of the Priesthood: Dictator of the Services; Proprietor of the Sanhedrin. She has come far, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... we are all busy," was the answer, "some till the garden; others train young men for the priesthood; one of our number is a carpenter; and another," he added, evidently laughing at his own expense, "knows just enough about machinery to make a ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... the royal race, the aristocracy, the priesthood? You enquire, and you find that they usually know not themselves. They are usually—I had almost dared to say, always—foreigners. They have crossed the neighbouring mountains. They have come by sea, like Dido to Carthage, like Manco Cassae and Mama Bello to ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... upon a hillock's crest, A little church the Saracen espied; Abandoned by its priesthood, like the rest, For war was flaming upon every side. Rodomont of this place himself possest; Which, from its site, as well as lying wide Of fields, from whence he tidings loathed to hear, So pleased him, he ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... fear—to follow it without scruple. Indeed, the experience of a great number of ages has shewn to what excess of wickedness, to what lengths, the passions of man have carried him, when they have been authorized by the priesthood—when they have been unchained by superstition—or, at least, when he has been enabled to cover himself with its mantle. Man has never been more ambitious, never more covetous, never more crafty, never more cruel, never more ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... his "new state" he recognised that the true self-sacrifice, the perfect priesthood, lay by way of life, not ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... best beloved Una, "born again." These were the words upon whose mystical meaning I had so long pondered, rejecting the explanations of the priesthood, until Death himself resolved for me ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the more. Thus worn or weaken'd, well or ill content, Submit they must to David's government: Impoverish'd and deprived of all command, Their taxes doubled as they lost their land; And, what was harder yet to flesh and blood, Their gods disgraced, and burnt like common wood. This set the heathen priesthood in a flame; For priests of all religions are the same. Of whatsoe'er descent their godhead be, 100 Stock, stone, or other homely pedigree, In his defence his servants are as bold, As if he had been born of beaten gold. The Jewish rabbins, though their enemies, In this ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of the Two Powers, Church and State, both derived from God and both entitled to absolute power in their respective spheres. On this principle the State should not interfere with episcopal elections, or with matters of faith and discipline; it should not exercise jurisdiction over the priesthood who are servants of the Church, or over Church estates since they are held in trust for God and the poor. This view was proclaimed to the world by Leo III, who caused to be set up in the Lateran a mosaic representing in an allegory his relations to the Empire. St. Peter sits enthroned ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis |
