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More "Recant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the Lord alone, and from the Lord to receive pardon, without the intervention of any pope, priest, or ghostly mediator. This was counted by the Catholic Church a horrible blasphemy, and the Diet of Worms was called, and Luther was commanded to appear before it and recant. Presiding over this Diet was Charles V., Emperor of Germany; here were Electors, Princes and crowned heads, popish priests, bishops and cardinals, together with the principal nobility of Catholic Europe—these all came together to compel the recantation of Friar Martin Luther. ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... Christians, by destroying their churches, and by taking away their property. Members of the hated faith lost their privileges as full Roman citizens. Then sterner measures followed. The prisons were crowded with Christians. Those who refused to recant and sacrifice to the emperor were thrown to wild animals in the arena, stretched on the rack, or burned over a slow fire. Every refinement of torture was practiced. Paganism, fighting for its existence, left no means untried to root out a sect both ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... workyng is al this? I know perfectly that no kynde of workes can saue mee, but onely the workes of Christ my Lord and Sauiour. The kyng hearing these wordes, turned hym about and laught, and called her vnto hym and caused her to recant, because she was hys aunt, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... hobble so far. Oh, the mercenary old scribbler! His late verses halt like himself, yet he lowereth not the price of his masques. Besides which, he is grown moral, and unsays all his former good things. Mort Dieu! your superannuated bards ever recant the indiscretions of their nonage. Clement Marot took to psalm-writing in his old age. As to Baif, his name will scarce outlast the scenery of his ballets, his plays are out of fashion since the Gelosi arrived. He deserves ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... account fit to reason upon; nor is there anything in the description of the two late voyages of the Chinese emperor from that city into East and West Tartary, in the years 1682 and 1683, which can make us recant what we have said concerning London. As for Delhi and Agra, belonging to the Mogul, we find nothing against our position, but much to show the vast numbers which attend that emperor in his business ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... must still dissent, Whose froward gospell brooks no Lent, And who recant, but ne'er repent, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... secession, came to Washington in search of her son, a youth enlisted in the Confederate Army. She found him in the Fort Henry hospital, where, allowed to see him, as she was loyal, in spite of regulations about prisoners of war, she learned that he would recover. She induced him to recant and offer his parole if he were allowed freedom. She called on Secretary Stanton, but he was in one of his boorish moods—was he ever out of them?—and repulsed her with rudeness. She finally appealed to the President, who ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... when the affair was reported to St. Petersburg the Empress Catherine ordered that they should be handed over to the ecclesiastical authorities, and that in the event of their proving obdurate to exhortation they should be tried by the Criminal Courts. Uklein professed to recant, and was liberated; but he continued his teaching secretly in the villages, and at the time of his death he was believed to have no less ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... from their company. Neither can we yet forget, how Julius the Third, above ten years past, provided warily by his writ that none of our sort should be suffered to speak in the council, except that there were some, peradventure, that would recant and change his opinion): for this cause chiefly we thought it good to yield up an account of our faith in writing, and truly and openly to make answer to those things wherewith we have been openly charged; to the end the world may see the parts and foundations of that ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... not say so. When we go into the drawing-room, Nina shall sing it for you, and I'll wager you recant your opinion.' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... "I can best explain it by a dream that I had some time ago. I dreamed that a young priest visited me with the intention of getting me to recant. 'McGlyn,' he said, 'if you don't recant, you'll be damned!' And I thought for a minute or two and then gave the only answer that a man with a conscience could give: 'Well, brother, I'll be damned if ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... religion, had in a moment untuned the spirituality of his audience. He would find that he had awakened within them the passion of curiosity—the most unspiritual of passions, and of curiosity in a fierce polemic shape. The very safest step in so deplorable a situation would be, instantly to recant. Already by this one may estimate the evil, when such would be its readiest palliation. For in what condition would the reputation of the teacher be left for discretion and wisdom as an intellectual guide, when his first act must be to recant—and ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... France, to what a fate I disdain to tell. Nor was her son's house a home for my dear mistress; my poor Frank was weak, as perhaps all our race hath been, and led by women. Those around him were imperious, and in a terror of his mother's influence over him, lest he should recant, and deny the creed which he had adopted by their persuasion. The difference of their religion separated the son and the mother: my dearest mistress felt that she was severed from her children and alone in the world—alone but ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... they had paralyzed her, had not put out the fires. She had still hoped that he could deny, explain, recant, own that he had been hasty, perhaps; perhaps mistaken; give her some loophole. She could have understood—oh, to a degree almost abject—his point of view. Mrs. Forrester had accused her of that. And ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... hands. Jesuits and Popish priests were, by Act of Parliament, ordered to depart the realm within forty days. Those who should afterwards return to the kingdom were to be held guilty of high treason. Students in the foreign seminaries were commanded to return within six months and recant, or be held guilty of high treason. Parents and guardians supplying money to such students abroad were to incur the penalty of a preamunire—perpetual exile, namely, with loss of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... call me to account for what But now I spake, nor can I with mine honour Recant my words, that little hope is left me, E're to enjoy what (next to Heaven) I long for, Is ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... turn my head, and my lips would have met those of Rodolphe, and we should have made it up once more. Ah! For a moment I really thought that he was going to die in my arms, or that, at least, he would go mad, as he almost did once before, you remember? I felt I was going to yield, I was going to recant first, I was going to clasp him in my arms, for really one must have been utterly heartless to remain insensible to such grief. But I recollected the words he had said to me the day before, 'You have no spirit if you stay with me, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... persecutors were by no means satisfied. Fresh tortures and cruelties were resorted to to force confessions of guilt from these worn-out and dying men. A few gave way, and said what they were told to say; and these unhappy men were produced in St. Paul's Cathedral shortly afterward, and made to recant their errors, and were then "reconciled to the Church." A similar scene was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... been whipping me, to try to get me to recant on my expressions of support for the ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... not succeed, the explosion only scorching one of his hands and face. In this situation he remained until more powder was brought from the castle, during which time his comfortable and godly speeches were often interrupted, particularly by friar Campbel calling upon him "to recant, pray to our lady and say, Salve regina." Upon being repeatedly disturbed in this manner by Campbel, Mr. Hamilton said, "Thou wicked man, thou knowest that I am not an heretic, and that it is the truth of God, for which I now suffer; so much didst thou confess unto me ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... speeches often display a brilliance, energy, and ardour, which create a forcible impression, but sometimes betray the orator into hasty assertions, of which he may afterwards repent, but feeling too much pride to recant, he prefers standing by the position he had hastily assumed; consequently, he is then compelled to marshal all his powers of argument to sustain that which in his own mind he may feel convinced is erroneous. ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... fierce harangue composed of invectives against simple Christianity could so be called— was brought to a conclusion; and now, in a loud voice, the presiding Inquisitor asked the accused for the last time whether they would recant and make confession of their sins, promising them absolution and a sure entrance into heaven, with a more easy death than the terrible one to which they were condemned. The gag was removed from the mouth of the chief prisoner that he might ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... summoned by the temporal power. He had a safe-conduct, which even so powerful a prince as Charles V. durst not violate. In April, 1521, the reformer appeared before the collected dignitaries of the German empire, both spiritual and temporal, and was called upon to recant his opinions as heretical in the eyes of the church, and dangerous to the peace of the empire. Before the most august assembly in the world, without a trace of embarrassment, he made his defence, and refused to recant. "Unless," said he, "my errors can be demonstrated by texts from Scripture, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... 1618. His opinions had been revived more ably in certain treatises and discourses, published in 1628 and 1632, by Theophilus Brabourne, a Puritan minister in Norfolk. Both Brabourne and Traske had been obliged to recant their opinions and return to orthodoxy; and indeed Traske had done so in a Tract written against himself, though he again relapsed. Nevertheless the heresy had taken root, and one heard in 1644 of Traskites or Sabbatarians dispersed through England. The sect is continued still ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the sick. It was a forced retirement, and yet it was a retirement that was in every way in accord with her desires. But in spite of the persecution that followed her, and the obloquy heaped upon her name, and the bribe of pardon if she would but recant, she never retracted nor wavered in her inward or outward faith, even in the estimation of a hair. The firm reticence as to the supreme secrets of her life, and her steadfast loyalty to that which she honestly believed was truth, must ever command the affectionate admiration of all those who prize ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... abjure, discontinue, quit, retire from, cast off, forego, recant, retract, cease, forsake, relinquish, surrender, cede, forswear, renounce, vacate, depart from, give up, repudiate, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... they implored her for their sake to recant. Pale as death, and with tears streaming down her cheeks, she shook her head quietly. "I cannot deny the Lord who died for me," ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... have all the well-known symptoms of a man under a malign magical influence. In this extremity Horace affects to recant all the mischief he has formerly spoken of the enchantress. Let her name what penance he will, he is ready to perform it. If a hundred steers will appease her wrath, they are hers; or if she prefers to be sung of as the chaste and good, and to range ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... On the other side I have always and shall always understand how it is possible for the most earnest and faithful of men and even of women perhaps, to err in the convictions of the heart as well as of the mind, to profess an affection which is an illusion, and to recant and retreat loyally at the eleventh hour, on becoming aware of the truth which is in them. Such men are the truest of men, and the most courageous for the truth's sake, and instead of blaming them I hold them in honour, for me, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... had their rules; he must be made to recant and abjure his heresy; and, if necessary, torture must be applied. This he knew well enough, and his daughter knew it, and her distress may be imagined. Moreover, it is not as if they had really been heretics, as if they hated or despised ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... the Holy Inquisition was endeavouring to stifle the thought of Galileo. In the modern world, the Inquisition of the United States of Europe and America is no less crushing than was the Holy Inquisition of old. But Nicolai, firmer of spirit than Galileo, has refused to recant. Last month (September, 1917), the journals of German Switzerland announced that he had been once more brought to trial, and had been sentenced to five months' imprisonment by the Danzig court-martial. Thus again does ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... made him many fair speeches and large offers to return to Mahometism, offering him pensions, and the command of horse. He said he had now only four rupees a month, which was a poor recompense for becoming a Christian, but if he would recant, he would give him high dignities and large means. The fellow answered, that he had not become a Christian for such small wages, as he was able to earn as much in the service of a Mahometan; but was a Christian in his heart, and was determined so to continue. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... Cochin-China Fancy, and the Table-Turning Craze (in respect to which Mark Lemon declared that if Hope, the spiritualist, would give a convincing seance in Whitefriars, Punch would recant), and the Racecourse, and the Great Exhibition, and Horsetaming, and a score of other subjects—whether pastime or fashion or phase—were all used by Leech with unfailing humour. The Chartist period of 1848 was a great opportunity, happily ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... do I not then know you? and did I not tell you that Anne Askew is to be stretched upon the rack to-morrow, unless she recant?" ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... formal public judgment upon him. Two theological faculties, those of the universities of Cologne and Louvain, were the first to pronounce an official condemnation of him and his writings. The latter were to be burnt, and their author compelled publicly to recant. This sentence, though pronounced after the disputation at Leipzig, related only to a small collection of earlier writings. In a published reply he dismissed, not without scorn, these learned divines, who, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... of his ill-balanced nature. "No. All! All!" he repeated with vehemence. "Didn't Noah people the earth with eight? But I'll not leave eight! My cousins, for they are blood-royal, shall live if they will recant. And my old nurse, whether or no. And Pare, for no one ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... powers of the church and the civil government were ultimately brought to bear to crush out the "Lollards," as those who held heretical beliefs at that time were called. New and stringent laws were passed in 1401 and 1415, several persons were burned at the stake, and a large number forced to recant, or frightened into keeping their opinions secret. This religious movement gradually died out, and by the middle of the fifteenth century nothing ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... world, thus: "Dear Presto, We are even thus far." "Now we are even," quoth Stephen, when he gave his wife six blows for one. I received your ninth four days after I had sent my thirteenth. But I'll reckon with you anon about that, young women. Why did not you recant at the end of your letter, when you got my eleventh, tell me that, huzzies base? were we even then, were we, sirrah? But I won't answer your letter now, I'll keep it for another time. We had a great deal of snow to-day, and ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... usual immediately demanded money from the priests. Father Venancio gave him all he had. He was nevertheless given a frightful whipping, six persons holding him while others rained blows upon him. A determined effort was made to force the priest to recant, and when this failed Leyba leaped upon him, kicking and beating him. He then ordered him thrown down face uppermost, and asked for a knife with the apparent intention of mutilating him. He did not use the knife, however, but instead, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... St Paul's, London, presided over by Archbishop Arundel, condemned him to be burned at Smithfield, the tournament ground just outside the city walls. It is said that the prince of Wales (afterwards Henry V.) witnessed the execution and offered the sufferer both life and a pension if he would recant; but in Walsingham's words, "the abandoned villain declined the prince's advice, and chose rather to be burned than to give reverence to the life-giving sacrament. So it befell that this mischievous fellow was burnt to ashes, and died ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... breasts, the nurse of child-like love; Her legs, O legs! her aye well-stepping feet: Pain heard her praise, and full of inward fire, (First sealing up my heart as prey of his) He flies to her, and, boldened with desire, Her face, this age's praise, the thief doth kiss. O Pain! I now recant the praise I gave, And swear she is not ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... Meynell and the Professor. But Meynell could not be induced to soften or recant anything. He would often say indeed with an eager frown, when confronted with some statement of his own, "That was badly put! It should be so-and-so." And then would follow some vivid correction or expansion, which sometimes left the matter worse than before. The hopes of the Archdeacon, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Emilia Belloni?—don't love her now?—do not love her now? If you have ever said that you love Emilia Belloni, recant, and you are forgiven; and then go, for I think I hear Georgiana below. Quick! I am not acting. It's earnest. The word, if you please, as you are a gentleman. Tell me, because I have heard tales. I have been perplexed about you. I am sure you're ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... husband personally urged on these deeds, because they wrote to the Council, urging them to be active in the kindling of the fearful fires. As Cranmer was known not to be a firm man, a plan was laid for surrounding him with artful people, and inducing him to recant to the unreformed religion. Deans and friars visited him, played at bowls with him, showed him various attentions, talked persuasively with him, gave him money for his prison comforts, and induced him to sign, I fear, as many as six recantations. But when, after all, he was taken out ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... commend me for so doing. To err and to be a heretic are two things; I am no heretic, because I will not stand refractorily to defend any one thing that is contrary to the Word. Prove any thing which I hold to be an error, and I will recant it. ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... Ivan's scourge is not exactly an article of faith. One can fail to believe in it without being in danger of hell-fire. Besides, I am ready to recant my heresy; but I will confess to you that I find nothing ferocious or stern in the face of this honest servant. At all events, he is a jailer who does not keep his prisoners closely, and who sometimes gives them a relaxation beyond his orders; for the other day, it seems to ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... cypress trees, under the blue, blue sky, and behold through a tangle of olive-boughs the marvellous Dome of Florence, as satisfying as the sea, or under a starry heaven the loveliest of cities glittering like a rival firmament with answering constellations? And yet I recant. For if there is one piece of art which is better than nature, 't is Botticelli's so-called "Spring," which, long misprised and now worm-riddled, adds the last magic to the wonderful flower-city. To her that hath shall ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Protestant king was hailed with delirious joy by the Huguenots, and with corresponding rage by Catholic France. The one looked forward to redressing of wrongs and avenging of injuries; and the other flatly refused submission unless Henry should recant his heresy and become a ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... might look at it, within a space of twelve hours he had not only changed some of his most cherished opinions, but he had acted in accordance with that change in a way that made it seem almost impossible for him ever to recant. In the interests of law and order he had engaged in an unlawful and disorderly pursuit of criminals, and had actually come in conflict not with the criminals, but with the only party apparently authorized to pursue them. More than that, he was finding himself ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... know, however, that he was asked to recant, and we know he refused. We also know that he repeated his heresies and hurled back into the teeth of his accusers the invective they heaped ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... who by a long familiarity with infamy has obtained these qualities, may confidently tell to-day what he intends to contradict to-morrow; he may affirm fearlessly what he knows that he shall be obliged to recant, and may write letters from ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... inkwell with a smile. "You mistake the nature of this occasion, Mr. Oberlies. You are not asked to recant. You are merely asked to desist from further disloyal utterances, as much for your own protection and comfort as from consideration for the feelings of your neighbours. I will now hear the charges against ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... the first to be passed. On the 8th of March, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were sent down to the University to be tried before a committee of Convocation which had already decided on its verdict; and the Fathers of the Reformation were either to recant or to suffer the flaming penalties of heresy in the presence of the legislature, as the first-fruits of a renovated ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... errors, mistakes and short-comings in our conduct than in our thought. And the reason of it is that the conscience is humble and even takes a pleasure in being ashamed. But the intellect is proud, and if forced to recant is driven to despair. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... a new toy, Henry was now engrossed in the fun of being Pope in his own dominions; and as Head of the Church of England whom it behoved to reprobate heresy in every shape and form, he conducted a trial against one John Nicholson, who, refusing to recant his heretical opinions, was burned at Smithfield. After this he felt confident of being as Catholic as the real Pope, and safe from opprobrium. He proceeded to bring forward deliberations in Parliament on the subject ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... of Species" would have been laughed out of court. Or probably had Darwin been persistent we would have consigned him to the stocks, burned his book in the public square, and with the aid of logical thumbscrews made him recant. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... ask me! A mother's plea might tempt the angels of heaven to recant!—Now the hymn is ended: I must go! The ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... attempted to hunt down the faithful expressly violated the spirit of the imperial enactment. But still, some Christians now suffered the penalty of a good confession. Pliny himself admits that individuals who were brought before his own tribunal, and who could not be induced to recant, were capitally punished; and elsewhere the law was not permitted to remain in abeyance. About the close of the reign of Trajan, Simeon, the senior minister of Jerusalem, now in the hundred and twentieth year of his age, fell a victim to its severity. This martyr was, probably, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... angrily, "it was cruel to her to make the confession you did this morning. I would a thousand times rather suffer myself—ay, and see my mother suffer, too—than see her suffer. And this is what you've done. Had you not better go away and leave me alone? Had you not better recant what you said this morning, and say you spoke while ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... gentleman who had brought her that funny story of his giving information regarding the duel! The family being absent, George, too, did not choose to leave his note. "If cousin Will has been the slander-bearer, I will go and make him recant," thought George. "Will the family soon ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... has melted my literary heart. By way of homage to her I eat the dust and recant all the hard and bitter things I said and thought in my youth concerning Ancient Greece; especially I apologise, on behalf of myself and my pedagogues, for after regarding its language as a dead one. A Child of the Orient (Lane) has taught me better, though ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... cause, you can do something better than get shot for it; and if you want martyrdom, there is a nobler martyrdom than death. The Christians who were trundled in barrels with spikes in them deserve higher honour than those who died in a moment, before they could recant. The highest form of martyrdom, though, is not even living for the sake of a cause, but living without one, merely because it is your duty to live. If you are called upon to testify to a great truth, it is easy to sing in flames. Yes, ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... ours, by reason of that modesty and piety which is almost inherent in their nature." The applause which followed this discourse was general; only Fucarandono and his companions, who had not wherewith to reply, and yet were too obstinate to recant, kept a discontented silence. It was judged that Xavier's opinion was the more reasonable, and the dispute adjourned to the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... retreat by just such excuses as have been suggested. Was he wiser and more conscientious than they? A refusal to accept the proffered olive branch now meant,—he knew it well,—the irreconcilable enmity of the Buchanan faction. And he was not asked to recant, but only to accept what he had always deemed the very essence of statesmanship, a compromise. His Republican allies promptly evinced their distrust. They fully expected him to join his former associates. From them he could expect no sympathy ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... same, and do fear that the old saying will prove true," "Malum consilium consultori pessimum."[1226] The story of the frenzy of Charles who, on one occasion, seemed to be resolved to take the lives of Navarre and Conde, unless they should instantly recant, and was only prevented by the entreaties of his young wife, may be exaggerated.[1227] But certain it is that the unhappy king was the victim of haunting memories of the past, which, while continually robbing him of peace of mind, sometimes drove ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... Wordsworth, Coleridge, and others, are wonderfully vivid but too often sour in flavour; his sketch of Charles Lamb is an outrage on that generous and kindly soul. Too often he was unconscious of the pain given by such random words. When he was brought to book, he was honourable enough to recant. Fearing on one occasion to have offended even the serene loyalty of Emerson, he cries out protestingly, 'Has not the man Emerson, from old years, been a Human Friend to me? Can I ever forget, or think otherwise than lovingly ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... which among you does not know and suffer under such benevolent despots? It is in vain you say to them, "Dear Madam, I took Podgers' specific at your orders last year, and believe in it. Why, why am I to recant and accept the Rodgers' articles now?" There is no help for it; the faithful proselytizer, if she cannot convince by argument, bursts into tears, and the refusant finds himself, at the end of the contest, taking down the bolus, and saying, "Well, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... man. Then was he let loose for a day, and his friends thought to have him at liberty the next day. After this he was sent to be racked in the Tower, till he was almost lame, and there promised to recant.* ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... ground, with fagots already piled about them, and to these the unfortunate men were speedily bound, amidst the silence of the crowd and the cries of the monks and Familiars, who pressed upon their victims, bidding them repent and recant ere they were lost forever. But to these murdering villains the three men answered naught, and presently it was all over with them, and there was one more crime ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... either recant and try to rejoin the medical profession; or he will embrace some newer and if possible equally extravagant doctrine; or he will stick to his colors and go down with his sinking doctrine. Very few will pursue the ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... she dares not consent, for fear he should recant. [Aside.] Well, we shall have your company to church in the morning. May be it may get you an appetite to see us fall to before you. Setter, ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... are all in a story!" said the chief Commissioner, wrathfully. "But she's a well-favoured maid, this: it were verily pity to burn her, if we could win her to recant." ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... Derby in fervid remonstrance, 'if shortly after catholic emancipation and the reform bill had been admitted as settlements, their friends had come down and insisted not only that the Houses of parliament should consent to act on the new policy they had adopted, but should expressly recant their opinion in favour of the policy that had formerly prevailed? What would the friends of Sir R. Peel have said in 1835 if, when he assumed the government and when the new parliament assembled, he had been called upon to declare that the reform ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... strong majority," said my friend, "against me; but still I recant not my original opinion. Edinburgh before the world. For a hospitality that never tires; for pleasant fellows that improve every day of your acquaintance; for pretty girls that make you long for a repeal of the canon about being only singly blessed, and lead you to long for a ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... their creditors, and thieves were made slaves of those whom they had robbed. The attempt to introduce Christianity into Japan and the resistance to it led to the slavery of many Christian converts, if they refused after torture to recant. This was an alternative to death. Slaves were tattooed with marks to show ownership. "Slaves were bought and sold like cattle in early times, or presented as tribute by their owners,—a practice constantly referred ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Damocles! It hangs by a hair. Christina is to be given ten minutes to recant, under penalty of having it fall. On the blade there is something written in strange characters. Don't scratch your head; you will not ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... Cobham, was at this time the most influential man among the Lollards (SS255, 283). He was brought to trial and convicted of heresy. The penalty was death; but the King granted him a respite, in the hope that he might recant, and Oldcastle managed to escape ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... jurisdiction and desiring at any cost to keep the peace, called together some of the leading gentry and asked for advice as to the problem facing them. "I know," said he, "that calling upon the Christians to recant will be useless, but can we not issue tickets to them upon which are the very words they use in entering the Church, 'I promise to repent?' There should be no difficulty in getting them to take these, for it will mean to them what they themselves preach, while to the anti-Christian fanatic it ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... us through ignorance) I intend to come (God willing) the sooner to heare his singular Judgment on the behalfe of such parties; I have known a Minister in Suffolke preach as much against their discovery in a Pulpit, and forc'd to recant it (by the Committee) in the same place. I much marvaile such evill Members[69] should have any (much more any of the Clergy) who should daily preach Terrour to convince such Offenders, stand up to take their parts ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... defence of taking a bagpipe on pilgrimage, which will be found on page 141. Thorpe, though he was sent back to prison, lived to write this account of his trial three-and-fifty years after it took place, but Sir John Oldcastle was burnt alive, despite all Prince Hal's efforts to win him to recant and save himself, and the short account of his trial, which follows that of Thorpe, has thus a more ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... Perswade thy husband to recant his errours, He shall not onely live, but in our favoures Be ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... her, for the love that he bears her Highness, to try and amend her ways and recant her errors, and do penitence in this Lenten season for her fault, after the example of the great apostle St. Paul, who was converted to the Christian faith, and became an elect son and mighty preacher of the gospel, bringing many to righteousness and enjoying ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... a person sure that he is saying something infinitely flattering, and at the same time with a lurking smile on his countenance, at the idea of the ease and certainty with which this offer would induce Mr. Percy to recant all he had said against patrons and patronage. He was curious to hear how the philosopher would change his tone; but, to his surprise, Mr. Percy did not alter ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... inquired and reported, and of course, reported unfavourably to the judges. A bill to disqualify the judges was re-introduced and read a first time. Mr. Hart again appeared at the Bar to take his seat for Three Rivers. He had been re-elected. He was still a Jew, and showed no disposition to recant his error. Nor would the House recant their error. The resolution which had been adopted against Mr. Hart's taking his seat in the previous Parliament was repeated in this. The House of Assembly went still farther. A bill to disqualify all Jews from ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... offensive to pious ears. It forbade all persons to read his writings, upon pain of excommunication. Such as had any of his books in their possession were commanded to burn them. He himself, if he did not publicly recant his errors and burn his books within sixty days, was pronounced an obstinate heretic, excommunicated and delivered over to Satan. And it enjoined upon all secular princes, under pain of incurring the same censure, to seize ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... her displeasure the state of her affections, saw with terror the greatness of the danger which threatened him. He found, however, that the present was no time for enforcing objections, and perceiving he had already gone too far, though he was by no means disposed to recant, he thought it most prudent to retreat, and let her meditate upon his exhortation while its impression was ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... desired Sir William Chaloner, who then was at Liege, to bear a letter to me, which is still extant: he proposed, if the king would pardon and receive him into favour again, with some competent subsistence, that he would recant all that he had said or written to the disadvantage of any in the court of England, confessing that he had been urged thereunto by some combustious spirits, that for their malicious designs had set him on work." Buckingham would ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... like Luther conceive for men like Cajetanus, Eck, and Hoogstraten, who were first sent by the Vatican to negotiate his surrender? For publishing simple Bible-truth the cardinal at Augsburg roared and bellowed at him, "Recant! Recant!" Even at this early stage of the affair matters assumed such an ominous aspect that Luther's friends urged him to quietly leave the city. They did not trust the amicable gentleman from the polished circle of the Pope's immediate ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... and that "all things were made at the beginning of the world." For his simple statement of truths in natural science which are to-day truisms, he was, as we have seen, dragged forth by the theological faculty, forced to recant publicly, and to print his recantation. In this he announced, "I abandon everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which may be contrary to ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... have been painful and humiliating to John Eliot to be brought to account for and compelled to recant the sentiments of a book which had been in circulation eight or nine years, and much applauded by those who now arraigned and made a scapegoat of him, to avert from themselves the consequence and suspicion of sentiments which they had ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... liberties of the Church, and that the lords, who consented thereto, had incurred a liability to spiritual censures. Standish, warden of the Mendicant Friars of London, defended the action of Parliament, while the temporal peers requested the bishops to make the Abbot of Winchcombe recant.[661] They refused, and, at the Convocation of 1515, Standish was summoned before it to explain his conduct. He appealed to the King; the judges pronounced that all who had taken part in the proceedings against Standish had incurred the penalties of praemunire. ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... inquisitors, were appointed, called Kirishitan-bugyo, to seek out and punish members of the prohibited religion.* Christians [324] who freely recanted were not punished, but only kept under surveillance: those who refused to recant, even after torture, were degraded to the condition of slaves, or else put to death. In some parts of the country, extraordinary cruelty was practised, and every form of torture used to compel recantation. But it is tolerably certain that the more atrocious episodes of ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... Turks. It was pretty to hear the priests talk so politely of Islam, and curse the Protestants so bitterly. We were very nearly having a row about a woman, who formerly turned Moslimeh to get rid of an old blind Copt husband who had been forced upon her, and was permitted to recant, I suppose in order to get rid of the Muslim husband in his turn. However he said, 'I don't care, she is the mother of my two children, and whether she is Muslim or Christian she is my wife, and I won't divorce her, but I'll send her to church as much as she likes.' Thereupon the priests ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... Refusing to recant, Barbara was arraigned and condemned to death. Her energetic paternal evidently had heard the maxim, "If you want anything done, do it yourself." His heavy blows fell soft as feathers. She seemed in sweet slumber. So ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... effect would have been produced: the step was naturally looked upon as a challenge. More and Fisher were condemned to death and executed in the summer—martyrs assuredly to conscience. The whole of their offence consisted in the single fact that they could not and would not recant their belief in the validity of Katharine's marriage. Had they sought to make converts to that opinion, or to make it a text for preaching sedition, there might have been some colour of justice in their ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... matter in a different light. Master and fellows looked upon Mr. Cospatric as a dangerous heretic—much, in fact, as Urban VIII. and his cardinals regarded Galileo—and resolved to make him recant. The senior tutor was chosen as their instrument. He was an official with what were described as "little ways of his own." He hauled Cospatric. Union speech and revolutionary sentiments were not referred to. The delinquent was (amid a cacophony ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... is a bird of music, or of prey; Mounting, she strikes at all things in her way. But if this birdlime once but touch her wings, On the next bush she sits her down and sings. I have but one word more; tell me, I pray, What you will get by damning of our play? A whipt fanatic, who does not recant, Is, by his brethren, called a suffering saint; And by your hands should this poor poet die, Before he does renounce his poetry, His death must needs confirm the party more, Than all his scribbling life could do before; Where so much zeal does in a sect appear, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... Anaxagoras, long agon, Saw hills, as well as you i'th' moon, And held the sun was but a piece Of red hot iron as big as Greece. Believ'd the heavens were made of stone, Because the sun had voided one: And, rather than he would recant Th' ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... the House, Before they broke the peace, break vows? 150 For having freed us first from both Th' Allegiance and Supremacy Oath, Did they not next compel the Nation To take and break the Protestation? To swear, and after to recant 155 The solemn League and Covenant? To take th' Engagement, and disclaim it, Enforc'd by those who first did frame it Did they not swear, at first, to fight For the KING'S Safety and his Right, 160 And after march'd ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... of this readiness Gladstone was fond of quoting: Sir Francis Burdett had made a speech against the Whigs, in which he spoke of the "cant of patriotism." "There is one thing worse than the cant of patriotism," retorted Lord John, "and that is the recant of patriotism." Again, when the Queen once asked him, "Is it true, Lord John, that you hold that a subject is justified, in certain circumstances, in disobeying his sovereign?" his answer to this difficult question could not have been better: "Well, speaking to a ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... days from hence. All those persons who are suspected of heresy, or have been found guilty, are to be called before the lord prior and the Lord of Mortimer, and they will be bidden to abjure all their false doctrines publicly. The whole village will be assembled to hear them recant; high and low, rich and poor, all are to meet together in the great quadrangle of the priory to hear and see. The lay brother says it will be a fine sight. If they will not recant, the prior will give them over to the Lord ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Julia, I recant my words; I have no belief that you or I shall ever have cause hereafter for unhappiness. Those eyes that dwelt so tenderly on mine; that hand whose pressure lingers yet in every nerve of my frame; those lips turned ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... toward him the example of divine mercy which wills not the death of a sinner, but that he should be converted and live; and so once more he calls upon him to repent, in which case he will receive him graciously like the prodigal son. Sixty days are given him to recant. But if he and his adherents will not repent, they are to be regarded as obstinate heretics and withered branches of the vine of Christ, and must be punished according to law. No doubt the punishment of burning ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... (aside). Ha! the elder Brutus Made his soul iron, though his sons repented. They boasted not their baseness. [Draws his sword. Infamous changeling! Recant this instant, and swear loyalty, 225 And strict obedience to thy sovereign's will; Or, by the spirit of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... deprivation of Bishop Bonner in 1549, and was extremely hostile to Gardiner. He was consecrated Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester by Archbishop Cranmer. He was summoned to London in 1553, and imprisoned. In 1554 his bishopric was declared void. He refused to recant, and was burnt as an obstinate ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... not brave the lash!" cried her father, his cheeks blanched with horror at the thought. "You will be womanly, my child, and recant." ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... her chair. At last the expected blow had fallen. She sat dazed, thinking wildly. Had they got to Doctor Sherman since she had seen him, and forced him to recant? Had Manning, offered the world by them in this crisis, somehow sold her out? She searched the latter's face with consternation. But he wore a rather stolid look that ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... Saviour Christ, to maintain his faith and always be armed against the world, the sectaries, the devil, and what else he were able to produce. But no man will do this, except he be so sure of his doctrine and religion, that, although I myself should play the fool, and should recant and deny this my doctrine and religion, which God forbid, he notwithstanding would not yield, but say, if Luther, or an angel from heaven, should teach otherwise, "Let him ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... his tricolor! Well may Major Lecointre shake his head with a look of severity; and speak audible resentful words. But now a swashbuckler, with enormous white cockade, overhearing the Major, invites him insolently, once and then again elsewhere, to recant; and failing that, to duel. Which latter feat Major Lecointre declares that he will not perform, not at least by any known laws of fence; that he nevertheless will, according to mere law of Nature, by dirk ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... said the Major, "and I recant all I said about them before. There, sir, will that ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... brought him to it, "but this much I know," he added, "that the general cast of your thoughts is, to say the least, unfortunate. There is strength in them, but a strength, whose source, being physical, must wither. You will yet recant." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... with contempt, gradually became violent persecutors of him and his followers. Their main wrath fell on the unprotected slaves, whom they exposed to the scorching sun, and who, in their intolerable thirst, would sometimes recant, and acknowledge the idols. Some of them remained firm, and afterward showed with triumph their scars. Mohammed, Abu Bakr, Ali, and all who were connected with powerful families, were for a long time safe. For the principal protection in such a disorganized society was the principle ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... for my dear mistress; my poor Frank was weak, as perhaps all our race hath been, and led by women. Those around him were imperious, and in a terror of his mother's influence over him, lest he should recant, and deny the creed which he had adopted by their persuasion. The difference of their religion separated the son and the mother: my dearest mistress felt that she was severed from her children and alone in the world—alone but for one constant servant on whose fidelity, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... loved Emilia Belloni?—don't love her now?—do not love her now? If you have ever said that you love Emilia Belloni, recant, and you are forgiven; and then go, for I think I hear Georgiana below. Quick! I am not acting. It's earnest. The word, if you please, as you are a gentleman. Tell me, because I have heard tales. I have been perplexed about ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... devotion compels our admiration. One may search the grim history of early Christian martyrology without finding anything to surpass the heroism of the Roman Catholic Martyrs of Japan. Burnt on stakes made of crosses, torn limb from limb, buried alive, they yet refused to recant. We are told of one Jesuit priest, Christopher Ferreya, who, after enduring horrible tortures, was at length hung by his feet in such a way that his head was buried in a hole in the ground from which air and light were excluded. His right-hand was left ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... be passed. On the 8th of March, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were sent down to the University to be tried before a committee of Convocation which had already decided on its verdict; and the Fathers of the Reformation were either to recant or to suffer the flaming penalties of heresy in the presence of the legislature, as the first-fruits ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... refuted and convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by the clearest arguments; otherwise I can not and will not recant; for it is neither safe nor expedient to act against conscience. Here I take my stand. I can do no otherwise, so ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... were ultimately brought to bear to crush out the "Lollards," as those who held heretical beliefs at that time were called. New and stringent laws were passed in 1401 and 1415, several persons were burned at the stake, and a large number forced to recant, or frightened into keeping their opinions secret. This religious movement gradually died out, and by the middle of the fifteenth century nothing ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... such excuses as have been suggested. Was he wiser and more conscientious than they? A refusal to accept the proffered olive branch now meant,—he knew it well,—the irreconcilable enmity of the Buchanan faction. And he was not asked to recant, but only to accept what he had always deemed the very essence of statesmanship, a compromise. His Republican allies promptly evinced their distrust. They fully expected him to join his former associates. ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... residence at Bruxelles, this Eglisham desired Sir William Chaloner, who then was at Liege, to bear a letter to me, which is still extant: he proposed, if the king would pardon and receive him into favour again, with some competent subsistence, that he would recant all that he had said or written to the disadvantage of any in the court of England, confessing that he had been urged thereunto by some combustious spirits, that for their malicious designs had set him on work." Buckingham would never ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... had said grimly, "let her pay for the privilege." And close to the girl's elbow sat the chief inquisitor, Robin Morrell, big, bold, unabashed, persevering, bringing all possible pressure to force her to recant. People about them—his unconscious familiars—sipped and chattered, and fluttered up and away, but he remained fixed throughout. He must have her, he was determined to dominate her; in the end she could not but yield. There was no other ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... recant your slander? You do not beg my forgiveness?... Bethink you well: has your conscience nothing to ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... "Recant all you have said," cried Blaize, brandishing the rolling-pin over him. "Confess that you have calumniated Patience. Confess that she rejected your advances, if you ever dared to make any to her. Confess that she is a model of purity and constancy. Confess all ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... it condemned as heretical, scandalous, and offensive to pious ears. It forbade all persons to read his writings, upon pain of excommunication. Such as had any of his books in their possession were commanded to burn them. He himself, if he did not publicly recant his errors and burn his books within sixty days, was pronounced an obstinate heretic, excommunicated and delivered over to Satan. And it enjoined upon all secular princes, under pain of incurring the same censure, to seize his person and deliver him up to be punished as his crimes deserved; ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... I recant my words; I have no belief that you or I shall ever have cause hereafter for unhappiness. Those eyes that dwelt so tenderly on mine; that hand whose pressure lingers yet in every nerve of my frame; those lips turned so coyly, yet, shall I say, reluctantly from me,—all tell me that ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the spirituality of his audience. He would find that he had awakened within them the passion of curiosity—the most unspiritual of passions, and of curiosity in a fierce polemic shape. The very safest step in so deplorable a situation would be, instantly to recant. Already by this one may estimate the evil, when such would be its readiest palliation. For in what condition would the reputation of the teacher be left for discretion and wisdom as an intellectual guide, when his first act ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... Gourlay and Stratoun were condemned and burned, "because, after great solicitation made by the king, they refused to abjure and recant" (Cattley's Foxe, iv. 579); but, on the other hand, the writer of the Diurnal of Occurrents (p. 18) and Bishop Lesley (History, 1830, p. 149) assert that ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... before, and the breaking into various places by the people. One Alicourt seems to have been regarded as the 'medium,' and the sounds were heard as in Cock Lane and at Tedworth when he was in bed. Later experiments gave no results, and the friars were severely punished, and obliged to recant their charges against Madame de Mesmin. The case, scratches, raps, false accusations and all, is parallel to that of the mendacious 'Scratching Fanny,' examined by Dr. Johnson and Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury. In that affair the child was driven by threats ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... See, he was one of the few prelates—perhaps the only one—who personally sought to avenge himself. During the dispute, a number of friars had supported the Government, and these he caused to stand on a raised platform in front of a church, and publicly recant their former acts, declaring themselves miscreants. Juan de Nargas had just retired from the Governorship after seven years' service, and the Archbishop called upon him likewise to abjure his past proceedings and perform the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the lash!" cried her father, his cheeks blanched with horror at the thought. "You will be womanly, my child, and recant." ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... To err and to be a heretic are two things; I am no heretic, because I will not stand refractorily to defend any one thing that is contrary to the Word. Prove any thing which I hold to be an error, and I will recant it. ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... been a-listenin' off and on for two years back to Mr. Brownleigh, our missionary—to know you're a dangerous man to have at large. I'd as soon have a mad dog let loose. Why, what you preach ain't the gospel, an' it ain't the truth, and the time has come for you to know it, an' own it and recant. Recant! That's what they call it. That's what we're here to see 't you do, or we'll know the reason why. That's ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... hated personally, and in Rouen on national grounds. Hence there would be a certainty of calumny arising against her such as would not affect martyrs in general. That being the case, it would follow of necessity that some people would impute to her a willingness to recant. No innocence could escape that. Now, had she really testified this willingness on the scaffold, it would have argued nothing at all but the weakness of a genial nature shrinking from the instant approach of torment. And those ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... reinsert these omissions now with advantage, unless considerable additions were made to the references, thus giving more appearance of personal controversy to the memoirs than is desirable. After all, the omission of these two chapters, in which I find nothing to recant, improves, as I am told, the general balance of the book. ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... of Gloucester, who, having refused to recant his opinions, was burned alive before the cathedral of Gloucester ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... would have been laughed out of court. Or probably had Darwin been persistent we would have consigned him to the stocks, burned his book in the public square, and with the aid of logical thumbscrews made him recant. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... I 'll live so now, I 'll make that world recant, And change her speeches. You did ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... had hurt and he hankered for revenge, he was to have it now. He, Noyes, had bared his soul to the husband and confessed a love that now he must stand up and recant. That was punishment enough for any man. He must do that, too, without violating any of Marjory's confidences—without helping in any way to disentangle the pitiful snarl that it was within his ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... than I was led to expect when I heard that 18 or 19 of Stanley's (so-called) party meant to go against him. Anybody who records from day to day the shifting appearances of the political sky must constantly recant one day the opinion and expectation of the preceding. Stanley's speech the night before last may very likely make an important difference in the result of this extraordinary contest, for he has, as it seems to me, put a final end to any possibility ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... my lips would have met those of Rodolphe, and we should have made it up once more. Ah! For a moment I really thought that he was going to die in my arms, or that, at least, he would go mad, as he almost did once before, you remember? I felt I was going to yield, I was going to recant first, I was going to clasp him in my arms, for really one must have been utterly heartless to remain insensible to such grief. But I recollected the words he had said to me the day before, 'You have no spirit if you ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... crowd every place—earth, air, sky; so have they become of everything a part, that return to the first religion can only be along bloody paths, through fields of persecution; that is to say, the converts must be willing to die rather than recant. And who in this age can carry the faith of men to such a point but God himself? To redeem the race—I do not mean to destroy it—to REDEEM the race, he must make himself once more manifest; HE MUST ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Homoeopathist will either recant and try to rejoin the medical profession; or he will embrace some newer and if possible equally extravagant doctrine; or he will stick to his colors and go down with his sinking doctrine. Very few will pursue the course ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... they wrote to the Council, urging them to be active in the kindling of the fearful fires. As Cranmer was known not to be a firm man, a plan was laid for surrounding him with artful people, and inducing him to recant to the unreformed religion. Deans and friars visited him, played at bowls with him, showed him various attentions, talked persuasively with him, gave him money for his prison comforts, and induced him to sign, I fear, as many as six recantations. ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... the traitor McClellan. Probably all those men who wagged their chins in that conference really believed that McClellan was aiming to betray them. One indeed, Julian, long afterward had the largeness of mind to confess his fault and recant. The rest died in their absurd delusion, maniacs of suspicion to the very end. At the time all of them laid their heads together—for what purpose? Was it to catch ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... their rules; he must be made to recant and abjure his heresy; and, if necessary, torture must be applied. This he knew well enough, and his daughter knew it, and her distress may be imagined. Moreover, it is not as if they had really been heretics, as if they hated or despised the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... The pun on "cant" and "recant" was not original, though Lord John's application of it was. Its inventor seems to have been Lady Townshend, the brilliant mother of Charles Townshend, the elder Pitt's Chancellor of the Exchequer. When she was asked if George Whitefield, the evangelical preacher, had yet recanted, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... Keiths are great people in Scotland, I hear. Didn't I always try to impress it on you that it was better to be born handsome than rich? I am not worth fifteen hundred shillings a year, and in June (D. V.) beautiful Kate Danton is to be my wife. Recant your heresy, and ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... must they also be known by no one; but while they know all and pass through all, they themselves remain invisible and unknown to all; for "Do thou," they say, "know all, but let nobody know thee." For this reason, persons of such a persuasion are also ready to recant, yea, rather, it is impossible that they should suffer on account of a mere name, since they are alike to all. The multitude, however, cannot understand these matters, but only one out of a thousand, or two out of ten thousand. They declare that they are no longer Jews, and that they ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... of the Dominicans, born in Gaeta; represented the Pope at the Diet of Augsburg, and tried in vain to persuade Luther to recant; wrote a Commentary on the Bible, and on the "Summa ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Capitoline Hill, the Roman Senate resolves to defend the city against the Germans to the last, and then we have Arnaldo a prisoner in a cell of the Castle of St. Angelo. The Prefect of Rome vainly entreats him to recant his heresy, and then leaves him with the announcement that he is to die before the following day. As to the soliloquy which follows, Niccolini says: "I have feigned in Arnaldo in the solemn hour of death these doubts, and I believe them exceedingly probable in a disciple ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... entered the convento and as usual immediately demanded money from the priests. Father Venancio gave him all he had. He was nevertheless given a frightful whipping, six persons holding him while others rained blows upon him. A determined effort was made to force the priest to recant, and when this failed Leyba leaped upon him, kicking and beating him. He then ordered him thrown down face uppermost, and asked for a knife with the apparent intention of mutilating him. He did not use the knife, however, but instead, assisted by his followers, gave the unhappy priest ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... follow toward him the example of divine mercy which wills not the death of a sinner, but that he should be converted and live; and so once more he calls upon him to repent, in which case he will receive him graciously like the prodigal son. Sixty days are given him to recant. But if he and his adherents will not repent, they are to be regarded as obstinate heretics and withered branches of the vine of Christ, and must be punished according to law. No doubt the punishment of burning was meant; the bull in fact expressly condemns the proposition of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... Christianity. It threatened with relentless torture any attempt to promulgate the faith, and contained an order for all citizens to appear in the public place on a certain day for adherents of the new religion to recant, by stamping on ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... Langton arose lazily, and stepping to the door, turned the key; then returning to the hearth, in leisurely manner turned back his cuff's. "I have traced the slander to you, and hold the proofs. Perhaps you had best stand up and recant it before you take your hiding. But, whether or no, I am going to hide you," he promised, with his engaging smile. Stooping swiftly he caught up the malacca. Mr. Silk sprang to his feet and snatched ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the council. This was granted to him at last. Thrice heard, June 5, 7, 8, 1415—if, indeed, such tumultuary sittings, where the man speaking for his life, and for much more than his life, was continually interrupted and overborne by hostile voices, by loud cries of "Recant, recant!" may be reckoned as hearings at all—he bore himself, by the confession of all, with courage, meekness, and dignity. The charges brought against him were various; some so far-fetched as that urged by a Nominalist from the University of Paris—for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... and consecrated by the death of the bride's father in the torturing fires of the Inquisition? How would they ever get the smell of the smoke of that sacrifice out of their nostrils? Castell was a brave man; no torments would make him recant. It was doubtful even if he would be at the pains to deny his faith, he who had only been baptized a Christian by his father for the sake of policy, and suffered the fraud to continue for the purposes of his business, and that he ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... body both. They say those creatures only bewitched one maid, and she was but a poor villein belonging to some doctor of the schools: and so frightened was she to see their punishment that she was in a hurry to recant every thing they had taught her. Well! we shall see no more of them, that's one good thing. I shouldn't think any of them would be alive by the end of the week. The proclamation was strict—neither food nor shelter to be given, nor any compassion shown. And ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... would not recant those of her words and deeds which had been pronounced evil by her judges. Here answer made confusion ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... blind frenzy inflicted on the inflexible martyr to his faith, it is certainly more difficult to explain the severity exercised upon the more pliable, whom the arguments of ghostly advisers, or the terrors of the Place de Greve, had induced to recant. Generally the judge did nothing more in their behalf than commute their punishment by ordering them to be strangled before their bodies were consigned to the flames.[78] Yet in one exceptional case—that of a servant whose master, a gentleman and one of the men-at-arms of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... coach, and hear nothing but the voice, which sounded in my ears louder than ever, and far more like; and I became at length perfectly satisfied that I had no business to stand in the capacity of Mr Smith's accuser. It was too late to recant. The bell had rung—the curtain was up and the performances ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... displeasure the state of her affections, saw with terror the greatness of the danger which threatened him. He found, however, that the present was no time for enforcing objections, and perceiving he had already gone too far, though he was by no means disposed to recant, he thought it most prudent to retreat, and let her meditate upon his exhortation while its impression was yet ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... under the thumb of the Turks. It was pretty to hear the priests talk so politely of Islam, and curse the Protestants so bitterly. We were very nearly having a row about a woman, who formerly turned Moslimeh to get rid of an old blind Copt husband who had been forced upon her, and was permitted to recant, I suppose in order to get rid of the Muslim husband in his turn. However he said, 'I don't care, she is the mother of my two children, and whether she is Muslim or Christian she is my wife, and I won't divorce ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... the building was again burned. Says Mr. Baedeker, whose guidebook is indispensable in the hands of a traveler, "Near the cathedral stood the celebrated Cross of St. Paul, where sermons were preached, papal bulls promulgated, heretics made to recant, and witches to confess, and where the pope's condemnation of Luther was proclaimed in the presence of Woolsey." Here is the burial place of a long list of noted persons. Here occurred Wyckiff's citation for heresy, 1337; and here Tyndale's New Testament was burned, ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... know perfectly that no kynde of workes can saue mee, but onely the workes of Christ my Lord and Sauiour. The kyng hearing these wordes, turned hym about and laught, and called her vnto hym and caused her to recant, because she was hys ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... tortures and cruelties were resorted to to force confessions of guilt from these worn-out and dying men. A few gave way, and said what they were told to say; and these unhappy men were produced in St. Paul's Cathedral shortly afterward, and made to recant their errors, and were then "reconciled to the Church." A similar scene was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... quack theology and medicine. O, my dear brethren and fellow-sojourners in Vanity Fair, which among you does not know and suffer under such benevolent despots? It is in vain you say to them, 'Dear madam, I took Podger's specific at your orders last year, and believe in it. Why am I to recant, and accept the Rodger's articles now?' There is no help for it; the faithful proselytizer, if she cannot convince by argument, bursts into tears, and the recusant finds himself taking down the bolus, and saying 'Well, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... I not then know you? and did I not tell you that Anne Askew is to be stretched upon the rack to-morrow, unless she recant?" ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... but he would not concede the right to impose a compulsory oath. A deputation of ministers was sent to Salem to argue with him: he responded by counseling them to admonish the magistrates of their injustice. He was cited to appear before the state representatives to recant; he appeared, but only to affirm that he was ready to accept banishment or death sooner than be false to his convictions. Sentence of banishment was thereupon passed against him, but he was allowed till the ensuing ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... as heretics, but they had no power to burn them. Accordingly, a statute was passed this year (1401), known as the statute of heresy (de haeretico comburendo), authorising the ecclesiastical courts to hand over to the civil powers any heretic refusing to recant, or relapsing after recantation, so that he might pay the penalty of being publicly burnt before the people.(738) It was the first English law passed for the suppression of religious opinion, and its first victim is ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... of the English landscape softened and subdued me. Those effects are so common, that I can claim no credit for their operation on my mind; and, before I had gone far, I was on the point of returning, if not to recant, at least to palliate the harshness of my appeal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... nor is any regard given to the injunction to all Inquisitors to acquaint themselves with all the details of any heresy which they were commissioned to root out; they were to obtain the information from those who would recant and use it against the accused; and to instruct other judges in the belief and ritual of the heresy, so that they also might recognize it and act accordingly. The objectors also overlook the fact that the believers in any given religion, when tried for their faith, exhibit a sameness ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... such calm dignity, that he, more than ever smitten by her beauty, determined, since he could not live for her, to save her by his death. Consequently, he declared all his statements to be false, and asked forgiveness from God and from Beatrice; neither threats nor tortures could make him recant, and he died firm in his denial, under frightful tortures. The Cenci ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... longo fas est obrepere, summum. But what needs all this? I hope there will no such cause of offence be given; if there be, [816]Nemo aliquid recognoscat, nos mentimur omnia. I'll deny all (my last refuge), recant all, renounce all I have said, if any man except, and with as much facility excuse, as he can accuse; but I presume of thy good favour, and gracious acceptance (gentle reader). Out of an assured hope and confidence thereof, I ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... religion, especially as regards the plan of salvation. After an imprisonment of two years he was brought before his judges, declared guilty of the acts alleged, excommunicated, and, on his nobly refusing to recant, was delivered over to the secular authorities to be punished "as mercifully as possible, and without the shedding of his blood," the horrible formula for burning a prisoner at the stake. Knowing well that though his tormentors might destroy his body, his thoughts ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... man sipped a cup of wine and fanned himself after his episcopal exhortation, Basil briefly questioned the prisoners again. The bishop had shown them their errors in matters of faith; were they prepared to recant, and re-enter the fold from ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... order, for the sake of peace, for the sake of trade, ought to be, not only satisfactorily, but speedily settled. We have been told, Sir, that, if we pronounce this bill to be a better bill than the last, we recant all the doctrines which we maintained during the last Session, we sing our palinode; we allow that we have had a great escape; we allow that our own conduct was deserving of censure; we allow that the party which was the minority in this House, and, most unhappily for the country, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... catholic emancipation and the reform bill had been admitted as settlements, their friends had come down and insisted not only that the Houses of parliament should consent to act on the new policy they had adopted, but should expressly recant their opinion in favour of the policy that had formerly prevailed? What would the friends of Sir R. Peel have said in 1835 if, when he assumed the government and when the new parliament assembled, he had been ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... me! A mother's plea might tempt the angels of heaven to recant!—Now the hymn is ended: I must go! The ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... treat him with more honour; he talked, too, mysteriously, of secret interviews and promises and understandings; and gradually it began to get about that Campion was yielding to kindness; that he had seen the Queen; that he was to recant at Paul's Cross; and even that he was to have the See of Canterbury. This last rumour caused great indignation at Lambeth, and Anthony was more pressed than ever to get what authentic news he could of the Jesuit. Then at the beginning ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... severities he practiced finally cost him his life (1558). But let no one suppose that these penances were on account of cruelties practiced upon his Protestant subjects! From his cloister he wrote to the inquisitors adjuring them to show no mercy; to deliver all to the flames, even if they should recant; and the only regret of the dying penitent was that ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... Wellesley, but ready to descend when the "dignus vindice nodus" should announce itself. And this, by the way, must have been the "thunderbolt," this military demonstration, which, in our blind spirit of prophecy doubtless, we saw dimly in the month of September last; so that we are disposed to recant our confession even of partial error as to the coming fortunes of Repeal, and to request that the reader will think of us as of very decent prophets. But, whether we were so or not, the Government (it is clear) acted in the prophetic spirit of military wisdom. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... close, that if he would suppliantly submit and retract opinions which he declared he never held, his judges would be lenient—otherwise, his danger was obvious. He was thus asked to confess his errors, to swear that he would never more preach them, and publicly recant; but he constantly refused such terms, unless he were convicted by the word of God. Even the emperor pleaded with him to yield; the judges also urged him, and professed a desire for his escape; but he was not ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... most impudently in the world, thus: "Dear Presto, We are even thus far." "Now we are even," quoth Stephen, when he gave his wife six blows for one. I received your ninth four days after I had sent my thirteenth. But I'll reckon with you anon about that, young women. Why did not you recant at the end of your letter, when you got my eleventh, tell me that, huzzies base? were we even then, were we, sirrah? But I won't answer your letter now, I'll keep it for another time. We had a great deal of snow to-day, and 'tis terrible cold. I dined with ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... Did Thomas Paine recant? Mr. Paine had prophesied that fanatics would crawl and cringe around him during his last moments. He believed that they would put a lie in the mouth of death. When the shadow of the coming dissolution was upon him, two clergymen, Messrs. Milledollar and Cunningham, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... has heard much about his readings and his expounding of the Scriptures. He vows that he and Garret and the monk Ferrar have been the ringleaders in all this trouble, and that, unless they formally recant and join in this act of open submission, they shall be dealt with as obstinate heretics, and handed over to the secular arm, to ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... against water again," Skinner remarked. "I have always allowed its utility for washing purposes, but have considered it a distinct failure as a drink. I recant. While considering that at home beer is good enough for me, I am prepared to maintain that, in the middle of the Bayuda Desert, clear cold water and plenty of it is good enough for anyone. But how in the world are we going to get at ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... colored. "I recant," said he, bluntly; and everybody saw what had operated his conversion. That is ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... and imprisoned, and when the affair was reported to St. Petersburg the Empress Catherine ordered that they should be handed over to the ecclesiastical authorities, and that in the event of their proving obdurate to exhortation they should be tried by the Criminal Courts. Uklein professed to recant, and was liberated; but he continued his teaching secretly in the villages, and at the time of his death he was believed to have no less ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Mounting, she strikes at all things in her way. But if this birdlime once but touch her wings, On the next bush she sits her down and sings. I have but one word more; tell me, I pray, What you will get by damning of our play? A whipt fanatic, who does not recant, Is, by his brethren, called a suffering saint; And by your hands should this poor poet die, Before he does renounce his poetry, His death must needs confirm the party more, Than all his scribbling life could ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... be glad to be strengthened, by the consent of others. Nay more, you shall have atheists strive to get disciples, as it fareth with other sects. And, which is most of all, you shall have of them, that will suffer for atheism, and not recant; whereas if they did truly think, that there were no such thing as God, why should they trouble themselves? Epicurus is charged, that he did but dissemble for his credit's sake, when he affirmed there were blessed natures, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... of the seventeenth century was a place of disease of body and misery of mind. Penn was kept in close confinement, and the bishop sent him word that he must either recant or die a prisoner. "I told him," says Penn, "that the Tower was the worst argument in the world to convince me; for whoever was in the wrong, those who used force for religion could never be in the right." He declared ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... that modesty and piety which is almost inherent in their nature." The applause which followed this discourse was general; only Fucarandono and his companions, who had not wherewith to reply, and yet were too obstinate to recant, kept a discontented silence. It was judged that Xavier's opinion was the more reasonable, and the dispute adjourned to the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... Grindal says they held meetings and administered the sacrament in private houses, fields, and even in ships, and ordained ministers, elders, and deacons, after their own manner. The Lord Mayor, in pity, urged them to recant, but they remained firm. Several of these sufferers for conscience' sake died in prison, including Richard Fitz, their minister, and Thomas Rowland, a deacon. In the year 1597, within two months, 5,468 prisoners, including many Spaniards, were ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... poor (p. 345) man's life. Milner ascribes to him a violence of temper, altogether unbecoming the melancholy circumstances of that hour of death, and directs our thoughts chiefly to his attempt to force a conscientious man to recant. ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... melted my literary heart. By way of homage to her I eat the dust and recant all the hard and bitter things I said and thought in my youth concerning Ancient Greece; especially I apologise, on behalf of myself and my pedagogues, for after regarding its language as a dead one. A Child of the Orient (Lane) has taught me better, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... not know what she would do or what she would say when she saw Ward. She knew that she was full of bitterness and disappointment and chagrin. She had accused innocent persons of a crime. Ward had placed her in that position and compelled her to recant and apologize. She had offended Marthy beyond forgiveness—and Charlie Fox. Her face burned with shame when she remembered the things she had said to them. Ward was the cause of that humiliation; and Ward was going to know exactly what she thought ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... resign, abjure, discontinue, quit, retire from, cast off, forego, recant, retract, cease, forsake, relinquish, surrender, cede, forswear, renounce, vacate, depart from, give ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... between Meynell and the Professor. But Meynell could not be induced to soften or recant anything. He would often say indeed with an eager frown, when confronted with some statement of his own, "That was badly put! It should be so-and-so." And then would follow some vivid correction ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... criticised. The Cardinal retorted in intemperate language, and so entirely had the legates secured the support of Constantine that Nicetas' work was committed to the flames, and he was forced to recant what he had said against the Roman Church. But the Patriarch was immovable, and for the moment he occupied a stronger position than the Emperor, who desired to conciliate him. At last the patience of the legates was exhausted, and on July ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... one favour, ile recant My Love, I wonot have so much as one Good thought on you; I will neglect you, sir, Nay and abuse you, too, if you ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... trained "poor priests" to be wandering evangelists spreading abroad the message of salvation among the populace. For a time they attained considerable success, notwithstanding the fact that the severe persecution to which they were subjected caused all of Wyclif's personal followers to recant. [Sidenote: 1401] The passage of the act De Haeretico Comburendo was not, however, in vain, for in the fifteenth century a number of common men were found with sufficient resolution to die for their faith. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... of all the noble army to which he belonged, the name of that man is written large in history, as the name of one who had fortitude to die, not in the cause of religious belief, but in that of scientific conviction. For why did Bruno suffer? He suffered, as we all know, because he refused to recant his persuasion of the truth of the Copernican theory. Why, then, do I adduce the name of Bruno at the close of this lecture? I do so because, as far as I have been able to ascertain, he was the first clearly to enunciate the monistic theory of things to which the consideration of my subject has ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... Two others, destined in the future to play the highest parts in the kingdom, were saved by his orders. These were the two Huguenot princes, Henry of Navarre, and Henry de Conde. The king sent for them during the height of the massacre, and bade them recant ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... needed to go to the woods to be alone. Of course she didn't appear at the Cabin the next day, and Peter searched for her—fruitlessly. She weighed on his conscience, like a sin unshrived. He had to find her to explain the unexplainable, to tell her what her confidence had meant to him, to recant his blasphemy of her idols in ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... "The prisoner must recant on oath his statement that he is the Sunchild. The interpreter must be squared, or convinced of his mistake. The Mayoress, Dr. Downie, I, and the gaoler (with the interpreter if we can manage him), must depose on oath that the prisoner is not Higgs. This must be our contribution to the ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... brought her that funny story of his giving information regarding the duel! The family being absent, George, too, did not choose to leave his note. "If cousin Will has been the slander-bearer, I will go and make him recant," thought George. "Will the family soon be back?" he ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have no account fit to reason upon; nor is there anything in the description of the two late voyages of the Chinese emperor from that city into East and West Tartary, in the years 1682 and 1683, which can make us recant what we have said concerning London. As for Delhi and Agra, belonging to the Mogul, we find nothing against our position, but much to show the vast numbers which attend that emperor in ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... named Geronimo was, about the beginning of the seventeenth century, converted to Christianity by a captive. The reigning Pasha ordered him to recant, and gave him twenty-four hours to make up his mind. On his refusal, the Pasha caused Geronimo to be buried alive in the mud which was being poured into moulds and dried into blocks, for the purpose of building fort Bab-el-Oued. In this block the poor martyr was built into the ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... of a Protestant king was hailed with delirious joy by the Huguenots, and with corresponding rage by Catholic France. The one looked forward to redressing of wrongs and avenging of injuries; and the other flatly refused submission unless Henry should recant his heresy and become a convert to the ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... singing a hymn in Chinese, "Jesus Is Leading Me." At Taiyan-fu an especially touching incident occurred: Five or six young girls, just in their teens, were about to be killed, when a leader intervened, declaring: "It is a pity to slaughter mere children," and urged them to recant. Their only answer was: "Kill us quickly, since that is your purpose; we shall not change." And they paid for their ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... was a painful day to the prisoners. Every one of them, from all the prisons, was brought up before the Bishop of Winchester, Dr Gardiner, in his house at Saint Mary Overy, and asked if he would recant. Mr Rose and Robin of course were amongst them. But all answered alike, that "they would stand to what they had believed and taught." When he heard this, the Bishop raved and stormed, and commanded them to be committed to ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... consent to the conventional shyness in public, whether he be the member of an audience or of a congregation, but makes himself perceptible. And even when he has a desperate thing to say, in the moment of absolute revolt—such a thing as "I can't like you, mother," which anon he will recant with convulsions of distress—he has to "speak the thing he will," and when he recants ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... Cilicia, being at Tarsus, three christians were brought before him; their names were Tarachus, an aged man; Probus, and Andronicus. After repeated tortures and exhortations to recant, they, at ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... remembered that this cry of illicit knowledge, backed by more or less appropriate texts, has been used against every advance of human knowledge. It was used against the new astronomy, and Galileo had actually to recant. It was used against Galvani and electricity. It was used against Darwin, who would certainly have been burned had he lived a few centuries before. It was even used against Simpson's use of chloroform in child-birth, ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... must fight her beasts by herself. She was going to make her parents and sisters happy; she was going through with her bargain; but there was no need to tell them any more about it. In her hard mood she told herself that that was the only wear. If she should be wept over, she might well recant. When the fatal word was once spoken, she would write to her mother—that was all that she could do. For the same reason—that she dreaded a tender moment— she did not go to church with her griefs. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... indeed left her nothing to say. But there was a look of perplexity in her eyes—as if she were casting about for some stupidly tactless act or omission of her own to account for his surliness—that made him recant altogether. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... thereto do repent the same, and do fear that the old saying will prove true," "Malum consilium consultori pessimum."[1226] The story of the frenzy of Charles who, on one occasion, seemed to be resolved to take the lives of Navarre and Conde, unless they should instantly recant, and was only prevented by the entreaties of his young wife, may be exaggerated.[1227] But certain it is that the unhappy king was the victim of haunting memories of the past, which, while continually robbing him of peace of mind, sometimes drove him to the borders of madness. ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... and Bonner pushed a reactionary movement to the front, he retired from his see (1539). Latimer lived in peaceful retirement under Edward VI, but under Mary he, with other reformers, was arrested and thrown into the Tower. Brought to Oxford for examination, he refused to recant, and was confined for a year in the common prison, and on October 16, 1555, put to death by fire, along with Ridley, at a place opposite Balliol College, where the Martyr's Memorial was ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... survived the hardships he has had to undergo, he is still labouring at the oar in one of those dreadful ships, enduring the worst kind of slavery, for life alone will terminate it. My poor brother-in-law was also captured, and refusing to recant, he was treated, being a Frenchman, even more severely than my husband, for he was first tortured; still holding out, the barbarians placed him on the cruel wheel, where, while still alive, his bones were broken, and he, as ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... for women. That was all the more a reason why he should learn to care for her. The love of being loved was habit, ingrained, and she could not dismiss it with a word. But she gave him her friendship, and having given it would not recant from her secret vow to be honest ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... occur to me I put the idea sternly from me, for I was by way of being a robust trencherman. I had joyed in the pleasures of the table, and I had written copiously of those joys, and I now declined to recant of my faith ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... Father, you mistake!" His voice rang through the room like a clarion. "I do not recant! My writings do express my deepest and ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... and has two Gothic windows of that religious and heavenly beauty which pains the heart with its inexhaustible richness. One longed to fall down on the space of green turf before the church, now bathed in the soft golden October sunshine, and recant these happy, commonplace centuries of heresy, and have back again the good old believing days of bigotry, and superstition, and roasting, and racking, if only to have once more the men who dreamed those windows out of their faith and piety (if they did, which I doubt), and made them ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... since I had seen the spot in my own country where a most inordinate ambition had cut down the flower of all knighthood, because he was a Scot who would not sell his birthright! The king left me in wrath and threatened to make me recant my words—I as proudly declared I would maintain them. Next morning, being in waiting on the prince, I entered his chamber, and found John le de Spencer (the coward who so basely insulted Wallace ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... fish, and a basket of alligator-pears. A band of mermaids carried the canoe with exquisite management through the shallows and over the breakers, and poor Popanilla in a few minutes found himself out at sea. Tremendously frightened, he offered to recant all his opinions, and denounce as traitors any individuals whom the Court might select. But his former companions did not exactly detect the utility of his return. His offers, his supplications, were equally fruitless; and the only answer which floated ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... height as that it deserved emprisonment, deprivation, and a most severe reprimande. At last the Counsell agried in a more moderat censure, that he should with close doors (tho my Lord Commissioner would have had it publick) acknowledge his offence upon his knees before the wholle Lords, and recant and disclame the forsaid expression as seditious and not becoming a subject: And theiron, as its said, ane act was made, that no petition should be presented heirafter but subscryved ather by the ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... hanged. If Elizabeth had given a false tale to hide the questionable causes of her absenting herself, she had probably found that it took a much more serious turn than she intended, and she must now make up her mind to recant her tale or go through with it. She resolved on the latter course, to which she was probably tempted by having all London to back her. She could not well have carried on the charge alone, but the popularity of her cause brought ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... sect were burned A.D. 1022. When urged to recant they replied, "We have a higher law, one written by the Holy Spirit in the ...
— Water Baptism • James H. Moon
... blue, blue sky, and behold through a tangle of olive-boughs the marvellous Dome of Florence, as satisfying as the sea, or under a starry heaven the loveliest of cities glittering like a rival firmament with answering constellations? And yet I recant. For if there is one piece of art which is better than nature, 't is Botticelli's so-called "Spring," which, long misprised and now worm-riddled, adds the last magic to the wonderful flower-city. To her that ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the Queen's hands. Jesuits and Popish priests were, by Act of Parliament, ordered to depart the realm within forty days. Those who should afterwards return to the kingdom were to be held guilty of high treason. Students in the foreign seminaries were commanded to return within six months and recant, or be held guilty of high treason. Parents and guardians supplying money to such students abroad were to incur the penalty of a preamunire—perpetual exile, namely, with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... government; that so at last all times might not have reason to complain of the Drum Ecclesiastic. If any one, concerned really for truth, undertake the confutation of my Hypothesis, I promise him either to recant my mistake, upon fair conviction; or to answer his difficulties. But he must remember two things. First, That cavilling here and there, at some expression, or little incident of my discourse, is not an answer to my book. ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... that beat no base retreat In youth's magnanimous years— Ignoble hold it, if discreet When interest tames to fears; Shall spirits that worship light Perfidious deem its sacred glow, Recant, and trudge where worldlings go, ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... if you can, in any one illiberal sentiment, or in any opinion which I have need to recant; and that, after twenty years' scribbling ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... of Church and War? Did not our Worthies of the House, Before they broke the peace, break vows? 150 For having freed us first from both Th' Allegiance and Supremacy Oath, Did they not next compel the Nation To take and break the Protestation? To swear, and after to recant 155 The solemn League and Covenant? To take th' Engagement, and disclaim it, Enforc'd by those who first did frame it Did they not swear, at first, to fight For the KING'S Safety and his Right, 160 And after march'd to ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... second Bishop of Smyrna, was executed here because he would not recant his faith; he was a disciple of the Apostle John, and this incident shows ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... own words) per multiplices amores discurrebam, I took a snatch where I could get it; nay more, I railed at marriage downright, and in a public auditory, when I did interpret that sixth Satire of Juvenal, out of Plutarch and Seneca, I did heap up all the dicteries I could against women; but now recant with Stesichorus, palinodiam cano, nec poenitet censeri in ordine maritorum, I approve of marriage, I am glad I am a [5934]married man, I am heartily glad I have a wife, so sweet a wife, so noble a wife, so young, so chaste a wife, so loving a wife, and I do wish and desire ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... readiness Gladstone was fond of quoting: Sir Francis Burdett had made a speech against the Whigs, in which he spoke of the "cant of patriotism." "There is one thing worse than the cant of patriotism," retorted Lord John, "and that is the recant of patriotism." Again, when the Queen once asked him, "Is it true, Lord John, that you hold that a subject is justified, in certain circumstances, in disobeying his sovereign?" his answer to this difficult question could not have been better: ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... authorities saw the matter in a different light. Master and fellows looked upon Mr. Cospatric as a dangerous heretic—much, in fact, as Urban VIII. and his cardinals regarded Galileo—and resolved to make him recant. The senior tutor was chosen as their instrument. He was an official with what were described as "little ways of his own." He hauled Cospatric. Union speech and revolutionary sentiments were not referred to. The delinquent was (amid a cacophony ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... discipline. "The burgess-class, for a long while so indifferent to the burnings that took place, were astounded at last at the constancy with which the pile was mounted by all those men and all those women who had nothing to do but to recant in order to save their lives. Some could not persuade themselves that people so determined were not in the right; others were moved with compassion. 'Their very hearts,' say contemporaries, 'wept together with their eyes.'" It needed only an opportunity to bring these feelings out. Some ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... proceeds in a frenzy of enthusiasm to break and dishonor the images of the gods, proclaiming himself a Christian. In obedience to the imperial decree, Nearchus is hurried to execution, in the sight of his friend, while Polyeuctes is thrown into prison to repent and recant. ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... into my veins and lungs the poison that will soon rob you of care and regret. If I was harsh to-day, forgive and forget it, for nothing rankles in the grave; and now, Edith, go away quickly, before I repent and recant the words I here utter. God comfort you, Edith Dexter, and remember that I hold you guiltless of ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... been painful and humiliating to John Eliot to be brought to account for and compelled to recant the sentiments of a book which had been in circulation eight or nine years, and much applauded by those who now arraigned and made a scapegoat of him, to avert from themselves the consequence and suspicion of sentiments which they had ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... Mr. Speaker," said George Washington, rising with his hand in his bosom; "as de question is befo' us, I wish to say that de las' bro' mus' have spoken under 'xcitement. Every man don' have his price! An' I hope de bro' will recant—like as de Psalmist goes out o' his way to say 'In my haste I said, All men are liars.' He was a very busy man, de Psalmist—writin' down hymns all day, sharpen'n' his lead-pencil, bossin' 'roun' de choir—callin' Selah! Well, bro'n an' sisters "—both arms going out, and his voice going up—" ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... Forrester's revelations, though they had paralyzed her, had not put out the fires. She had still hoped that he could deny, explain, recant, own that he had been hasty, perhaps; perhaps mistaken; give her some loophole. She could have understood—oh, to a degree almost abject—his point of view. Mrs. Forrester had accused her of that. And ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... position on a hill overlooking the wonderful windings of the River Forth, and here we found the tomb of the Protestant martyrs "Margaret and Agnes," the latter only eighteen years of age, who were tied to stakes at low water in the Bay of Wigtown on May 11th, 1685, and, refusing an opportunity to recant and return to the Roman Catholic faith, were left to be drowned in the rising tide. Over the spot where they were buried their figures appeared beautifully sculptured in white marble, accompanied by that of an angel standing ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... reputation as a subtle dialectician; his lectures developing the philosophy of Aristotle attracted a large circle of hearers. In 1204 his doctrines were condemned by the university, and, on a personal appeal to Pope Innocent III., the sentence was ratified, Amalric being ordered to return to Paris and recant his errors. His death was caused, it is said, by grief at the humiliation to which he had been subjected. In 1209 ten of his followers were burnt before the gates of Paris, and Amalric's own body was exhumed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... tomb of the Protestant martyrs "Margaret and Agnes," the latter only eighteen years of age, who were tied to stakes at low water in the Bay of Wigtown on May 11th, 1685, and, refusing an opportunity to recant and return to the Roman Catholic faith, were left to be drowned in the rising tide. Over the spot where they were buried their figures appeared beautifully sculptured in white marble, accompanied by that of an angel standing beside them; ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... One example of this readiness Gladstone was fond of quoting: Sir Francis Burdett had made a speech against the Whigs, in which he spoke of the "cant of patriotism." "There is one thing worse than the cant of patriotism," retorted Lord John, "and that is the recant of patriotism." Again, when the Queen once asked him, "Is it true, Lord John, that you hold that a subject is justified, in certain circumstances, in disobeying his sovereign?" his answer to this difficult question could not have been better: "Well, speaking to a sovereign of the House ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... lower still I fall, only supreme In misery: Such joy ambition finds. But say I could repent, and could obtain, By act of grace, my former state; how soon Would highth recall high thoughts, how soon unsay What feigned submission swore? Ease would recant Vows made in pain, as violent and void. For never can true reconcilement grow, Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep: Which would but lead me to a worse relapse And heavier fall: so should I purchase dear Short ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... afford. Beside, the undertaking may be very hazardous; for they are a sort of men generally very hot and passionate; and should I provoke them, I doubt not would set upon me with a full cry, and force me with shame to recant, which if I stubbornly refuse to do, they will presently brand me for a heretic, and thunder out an excommunication, which is their spiritual weapon to wound such as lift up a hand against them. It is true, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... the frightful ruin, heard the stories of Christians and missionaries, faced the little companies of survivors and learned more of the awful ordeal through which they had passed, I marvelled, not that some yielded, but that so many stood steadfast. Edicts were issued commanding them to recant on pain of dire punishment, but promising protection to those who obeyed. The following proclamation posted on the wall of the yamen at Ching-chou-fu ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... be confirmed in its previous determination to condemn him as an obstinate heretic. A month was allowed him, to give in his final answer. During this time cardinals and bishops tried their eloquence to persuade him to recant; especially at the instigation of the emperor, who wished to save his life on account of his own pledged honour. But all these efforts could not move the faith nor firmness of this pious and heroic man; and on ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... with the air of a person sure that he is saying something infinitely flattering, and at the same time with a lurking smile on his countenance, at the idea of the ease and certainty with which this offer would induce Mr. Percy to recant all he had said against patrons and patronage. He was curious to hear how the philosopher would change his tone; but, to his surprise, Mr. Percy did not ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... revealed to those who are inwardly attentive and allow love to teach them something. A man who has truly loved, though he may come to recognise the thousand incidental illusions into which love may have led him, will not recant its essential faith. He will keep his sense for the ideal and his power to worship. The further objects by which these gifts will be entertained will vary with the situation. A philosopher, a soldier, and a courtesan will express the same religion in different ways. In ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... still I fall, onely Supream In miserie; such joy Ambition findes. But say I could repent and could obtaine By Act of Grace my former state; how soon Would highth recal high thoughts, how soon unsay What feign'd submission swore: ease would recant Vows made in pain, as violent and void. For never can true reconcilement grow Where wounds of deadly hate have peirc'd so deep: Which would but lead me to a worse relapse 100 And heavier fall: so should I purchase deare Short intermission bought with double smart. This ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Work here, worke there: what kinde of workyng is al this? I know perfectly that no kynde of workes can saue mee, but onely the workes of Christ my Lord and Sauiour. The kyng hearing these wordes, turned hym about and laught, and called her vnto hym and caused her to recant, because she was hys aunt, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... Mulross, whose sanity was not suspected, and whose ankle was now well again, was also invited, as were three other members of the Cabinet and myself as amicus curiae. It was understood that after dinner there would be a settling-up with the two rebels. Either they should recant and come to heel, or they should depart from the fold to swell the wolf-pack of the Opposition. The Prime Minister did not conceal the loss which his party would suffer, but he argued very sensibly that anything was better than a brace ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... ready to descend when the "dignus vindice nodus" should announce itself. And this, by the way, must have been the "thunderbolt," this military demonstration, which, in our blind spirit of prophecy doubtless, we saw dimly in the month of September last; so that we are disposed to recant our confession even of partial error as to the coming fortunes of Repeal, and to request that the reader will think of us as of very decent prophets. But, whether we were so or not, the Government (it is clear) acted in the prophetic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... they know all and pass through all, they themselves remain invisible and unknown to all; for "Do thou," they say, "know all, but let nobody know thee." For this reason, persons of such a persuasion are also ready to recant, yea, rather, it is impossible that they should suffer on account of a mere name, since they are alike to all. The multitude, however, cannot understand these matters, but only one out of a thousand, or two out of ten thousand. They declare that they are ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... contracted for was lost. The writer states, that "the expectation of that ship made us loose our second voyage, which did very much discourage the merchants with whom wee had to do; they went to law with us to make us recant the bargaine that wee had made with them. After wee had disputed a long time, it was found that the right was on our side and wee innocent of what they did accuse us. So they endeavoured to come to an agreement, but wee were betrayed by our ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... "cant" and "recant" was not original, though Lord John's application of it was. Its inventor seems to have been Lady Townshend, the brilliant mother of Charles Townshend, the elder Pitt's Chancellor of the Exchequer. When she was asked if George Whitefield, the evangelical ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... the bride's father in the torturing fires of the Inquisition? How would they ever get the smell of the smoke of that sacrifice out of their nostrils? Castell was a brave man; no torments would make him recant. It was doubtful even if he would be at the pains to deny his faith, he who had only been baptized a Christian by his father for the sake of policy, and suffered the fraud to continue for the purposes ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... he would suppliantly submit and retract opinions which he declared he never held, his judges would be lenient—otherwise, his danger was obvious. He was thus asked to confess his errors, to swear that he would never more preach them, and publicly recant; but he constantly refused such terms, unless he were convicted by the word of God. Even the emperor pleaded with him to yield; the judges also urged him, and professed a desire for his escape; but he was not to be moved, and must therefore hasten back to his cell, an outcast ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... a Jew at Madrid, who being condemned to the fire on account of his religion, a crowd of school-boys following him to the stake, and apprehending they might lose their sport, if he should happen to recant, would often clap him on the back, and cry, "Sta firme Moyse (Moses, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... Lord Cobham, was at this time the most influential man among the Lollards (SS255, 283). He was brought to trial and convicted of heresy. The penalty was death; but the King granted him a respite, in the hope that he might recant, and Oldcastle managed to ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... conflict and now the profession of atheism is not allowed. If it can be shown that any sane person takes such a position, he is given a certain period to recant. If recantation is not forthcoming, he is placed in the public work-house until he acknowledges the existence of Deity. Atheists are ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... became violent persecutors of him and his followers. Their main wrath fell on the unprotected slaves, whom they exposed to the scorching sun, and who, in their intolerable thirst, would sometimes recant, and acknowledge the idols. Some of them remained firm, and afterward showed with triumph their scars. Mohammed, Abu Bakr, Ali, and all who were connected with powerful families, were for a long time safe. For the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... the love that he bears her Highness, to try and amend her ways and recant her errors, and do penitence in this Lenten season for her fault, after the example of the great apostle St. Paul, who was converted to the Christian faith, and became an elect son and mighty preacher of the gospel, bringing many to righteousness and enjoying the high favour of our ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... which blind frenzy inflicted on the inflexible martyr to his faith, it is certainly more difficult to explain the severity exercised upon the more pliable, whom the arguments of ghostly advisers, or the terrors of the Place de Greve, had induced to recant. Generally the judge did nothing more in their behalf than commute their punishment by ordering them to be strangled before their bodies were consigned to the flames.[78] Yet in one exceptional case—that of a servant ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... my visits to Miss Secker have given you any concern? Why must the source of your anxiety be always so mortifying and opprobrious to me? That the absence of a few days, and the company of another woman, should be thought to change my sentiments, and make me secretly recant those vows which I offered to you, is an imputation on my common sense which—I suppose I deserve. You judge of me from what you know of me. How can you do otherwise? If my past conduct naturally creates such suspicions, who am I to blame but myself? ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... Luther's works which it condemned as heretical, scandalous, and offensive to pious ears. It forbade all persons to read his writings, upon pain of excommunication. Such as had any of his books in their possession were commanded to burn them. He himself, if he did not publicly recant his errors and burn his books within sixty days, was pronounced an obstinate heretic, excommunicated and delivered over to Satan. And it enjoined upon all secular princes, under pain of incurring ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... finger to save her. Their labor was nearly lost; her enemies became furious. Persuading was of no use; she refused to go back from any thing she had said or done. Her instant death was threatened if she continued obstinate, but if she would recant she was promised deliverance from the English. "I will sign," she said at last. The cardinal drew a paper from his sleeve with a short denial. She put her mark to it. They kept their promise of mercy by passing this sentence upon her: "Joan, we condemn you, through our grace and moderation, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... disown, recant, repudiate, abjure, discard, forswear, refuse, retract, deny, disclaim, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... his indifference should pique her vanity. Markham did not care for women. That was all the more a reason why he should learn to care for her. The love of being loved was habit, ingrained, and she could not dismiss it with a word. But she gave him her friendship, and having given it would not recant from her secret vow to be honest ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... thy husband to recant his errours, He shall not onely live, but in our favoures Be ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... he was one of the few prelates—perhaps the only one—who personally sought to avenge himself. During the dispute, a number of friars had supported the Government, and these he caused to stand on a raised platform in front of a church, and publicly recant their former acts, declaring themselves miscreants. Juan de Nargas had just retired from the Governorship after seven years' service, and the Archbishop called upon him likewise to abjure his past proceedings and perform the following penance:—To wear a penitent's garb—to place ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... strange to modern readers; but anyone who has studied the lives of Bossuet and San Carlo Borromeo will admit that it is true.) Hence the persecution was carried out with that vigour which was necessary to make it a success. In Spain, if a heretic under torture or the fear of it consented to recant, the Holy Office was not satisfied with a mere formal recantation; for the rest of his life the convert was watched day and night to see that there was no sign of back-sliding; and even the possession of a fragment of the New Testament was considered ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... of January was a painful day to the prisoners. Every one of them, from all the prisons, was brought up before the Bishop of Winchester, Dr Gardiner, in his house at Saint Mary Overy, and asked if he would recant. Mr Rose and Robin of course were amongst them. But all answered alike, that "they would stand to what they had believed and taught." When he heard this, the Bishop raved and stormed, and commanded them to be committed to straiter ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... lodged in separate cells, in the prison portion of the Palazzo Vecchio, and each was importuned to recant the charges made against the Pope and the Medici. All refused, even when told ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... wonder, the next morning arose a genuine sunny, beautiful day. Let the fact be recorded that such things do sometimes occur even in England. C—— was mollified, and began to recant his ill-natured heresies of the night before, and went so far as to walk, out of his own proper motion, to Ann Hathaway's Cottage before breakfast—he being one of the brethren described ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... Elizabeth had given a false tale to hide the questionable causes of her absenting herself, she had probably found that it took a much more serious turn than she intended, and she must now make up her mind to recant her tale or go through with it. She resolved on the latter course, to which she was probably tempted by having all London to back her. She could not well have carried on the charge alone, but the popularity ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... neither safe nor prudent to do aught against conscience. Till such time as either by proofs from holy Scripture, or by fair reason or argument, I have been confuted and convicted, I cannot and will not recant. Here I stand - I cannot do otherwise - God be my help, Amen.' It is evident enough that to this man all popes, cardinals, emperors, devils, all hosts and nations were but weak, weak as the forest with all its strong trees might be to the smallest ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... no sooner discovered the iniquitous conduct and designs of Lauder, than he compelled him to confess and recant, in the following letter to the reverend Mr. Douglas, which he drew up for him: but scarcely had Lauder exhibited this sign of contrition, when he addressed an apology to the archbishop of Canterbury, soliciting his patronage for an edition of the very poets whose works he had ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... was worn by the royal infant when she nursed him. This she brought forth; and the stranger no sooner saw it, than he exclaimed, 'Ah, my little coat!' After this, Comtesse de R. declared her belief that he was her prince to be so firm that she would have died on the scaffold rather than recant. Without hesitation, she gave up the best apartments of her house for his use and occupation; she even offered for his acceptance the remains of her fortune. This, however, he at once refused, asking ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... excommunication and decretals of the Pontiff into the flames,—and, before the principalities and power of the Empire, one German against all Germany, had simply and sublimely indicated the identity of his doctrine with his nature, by declaring that he not merely would not, but could not, recant. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... always known that she must die when her mission was fulfilled and death held no terrors for her. To all the bishop's questions she answered firmly and without hesitation. The bishop failed to confuse her and at last condemned her to death for heresy, bidding her recant if she would live. She refused and was lead to prison, from ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... their appearance at the fete. But no sooner were they welcomed by General Stanley and his daughters, than the brother and sister, who had mutually encouraged each other's disputes, hastened to recant their opinions. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... was put on trial on a charge of heresy and sedition. He was tortured so cruelly that he was led to recant and to "confess," as his judges said. They had already come to a decision that he was guilty. Sentence of death was pronounced, and he mounted the scaffold on May 23rd, 1498. He looked upon the multitude gathered in the great Piazza, but he did not speak to them; he did not save himself, as some ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... calculated for his own power. There is a great disunion among the ministers on the Naval bill: Mr. Pelham and Pitt (the latter out of hatred and jealousy of Lord Sandwich) gave up the admiralty in a material point, but the paramount little Duke of Bedford has sworn that they shall recant on the report-what a figure they will make! This bill was chiefly of Anson's projecting, who grows every day into new unpopularity.(11) He has lately had a sea-piece drawn of the victory for which he was lorded, in which his own ship ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... condemned him to be burned at Smithfield, the tournament ground just outside the city walls. It is said that the prince of Wales (afterwards Henry V.) witnessed the execution and offered the sufferer both life and a pension if he would recant; but in Walsingham's words, "the abandoned villain declined the prince's advice, and chose rather to be burned than to give reverence to the life-giving sacrament. So it befell that this mischievous fellow was burnt to ashes, and died ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... I know, no friends we shall want, Which for hope of gain the truth will recant, And give themselves wholly to set out Hypocrisy, Being egg'd on with Avarice, and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... hands—the whole unrivalled sweetness of the English landscape softened and subdued me. Those effects are so common, that I can claim no credit for their operation on my mind; and, before I had gone far, I was on the point of returning, if not to recant, at least to palliate the harshness of my appeal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... Whatso'er the Close Committee would? Made Mars and Saturn for the cause, The Moon for fundamental laws; The Ram, the Bull, the Goat, declare Against the Book of Common Prayer; The Scorpion take the Protestation, And Bear engage for Reformation; Made all the royal stars recant, ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... of the most animated and effective speakers of any in the Chambers, and his speeches often display a brilliance, energy, and ardour, which create a forcible impression, but sometimes betray the orator into hasty assertions, of which he may afterwards repent, but feeling too much pride to recant, he prefers standing by the position he had hastily assumed; consequently, he is then compelled to marshal all his powers of argument to sustain that which in his own mind he may feel convinced is erroneous. Yet although ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... Reason, for any ial. Reasonable rezona. Reasoning rezonado. Rebate—ment rabato. Rebel ribelanto. Rebel ribeli. Rebellion ribelo—ado. Rebellious ribela. Rebound resalti. Rebuff malprospero. Rebuke riprocxo. Rebut refuti. Recall to mind memorigi. Recall (to dismiss) eksigi. Recant malkonfesi. Recapitulate resumi, ripeti. Recede malproksimigxi. Receipt kvitanco. Receipts enspezoj. Receive ricevi. Receiver (of taxes) kolektisto. Receiver (recipient) adresato, ricevanto. Recent nova. Recently antaux ne longe. Reception ricevo. Recess (vacation) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... note to Miss Lyddy, with a message for the gentleman who had brought her that funny story of his giving information regarding the duel! The family being absent, George, too, did not choose to leave his note. "If cousin Will has been the slander-bearer, I will go and make him recant," thought George. "Will the family soon be ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... reached the second only, When, clapping both his hands against his sides, He whined about a rupture that forbade These extreme courses. Great heroic soul Dropped like a cur into a sea of terror, He sank right under. Then he came up gasping, Ready to swear, deny, abjure, recant, Anything, everything! Foolish, weak, old man, Who had been so proud of his discoveries, And dared to teach his betters. How we grinned To see him kneeling there and whispering, thus, Through his white ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... and in Rouen on national grounds. Hence there would be a certainty of calumny arising against her such as would not affect martyrs in general. That being the case, it would follow of necessity that some people would impute to her a willingness to recant. No innocence could escape that. Now, had she really testified this willingness on the scaffold, it would have argued nothing at all but the weakness of a genial nature shrinking from the instant approach of torment. And those will often pity that weakness most who, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... Worthies of the House, Before they broke the peace, break vows? 150 For having freed us first from both Th' Allegiance and Supremacy Oath, Did they not next compel the Nation To take and break the Protestation? To swear, and after to recant 155 The solemn League and Covenant? To take th' Engagement, and disclaim it, Enforc'd by those who first did frame it Did they not swear, at first, to fight For the KING'S Safety and his Right, 160 And after march'd to find him out, And charg'd him home ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... nothing but the voice, which sounded in my ears louder than ever, and far more like; and I became at length perfectly satisfied that I had no business to stand in the capacity of Mr Smith's accuser. It was too late to recant. The bell had rung—the curtain was up and the performances ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Boston, my father and Mr. Cotton went to the jail window to see them; and after some little discourse with them, he told Gorton that if he had done or said anything which he could with a clear conscience renounce, he would do well to recant the same, and the Court, he doubted not, would be merciful; adding, that it would be no disparagement for him to do so, as the best of men were liable to err: as, for instance, his brother Cotton here generally did preach that one year which he publicly ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the matter in a different light. Master and fellows looked upon Mr. Cospatric as a dangerous heretic—much, in fact, as Urban VIII. and his cardinals regarded Galileo—and resolved to make him recant. The senior tutor was chosen as their instrument. He was an official with what were described as "little ways of his own." He hauled Cospatric. Union speech and revolutionary sentiments were not referred to. The delinquent was ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... smaller majority than I was led to expect when I heard that 18 or 19 of Stanley's (so-called) party meant to go against him. Anybody who records from day to day the shifting appearances of the political sky must constantly recant one day the opinion and expectation of the preceding. Stanley's speech the night before last may very likely make an important difference in the result of this extraordinary contest, for he has, as it seems to me, put a final end to any possibility of junction with ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... other. The dying Romayne persists in his resolution to see the child. So completely has his way of thinking been altered by the approach of death, and by the closing of the brilliant prospect which was before him, that he even threatens to recant, with his last breath, if his wishes are not complied with. How it will end I ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... this sect were burned A.D. 1022. When urged to recant they replied, "We have a higher law, one written by the Holy Spirit in the ...
— Water Baptism • James H. Moon
... courts could condemn men as heretics, but they had no power to burn them. Accordingly, a statute was passed this year (1401), known as the statute of heresy (de haeretico comburendo), authorising the ecclesiastical courts to hand over to the civil powers any heretic refusing to recant, or relapsing after recantation, so that he might pay the penalty of being publicly burnt before the people.(738) It was the first English law passed for the suppression of religious opinion, and its first ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... the class to whose instrumentality chiefly was to be ascribed that tremendous reflux of public feeling which had followed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament. To put the Janes, the Souths, the Sherlocks into such a situation that they must either starve, or recant, publicly, and with the Gospel at their lips, all the ostentatious professions of many years, was a revenge too delicious to be relinquished. The Tory, on the other hand, sincerely respected and pitied those clergymen ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and Stratoun were condemned and burned, "because, after great solicitation made by the king, they refused to abjure and recant" (Cattley's Foxe, iv. 579); but, on the other hand, the writer of the Diurnal of Occurrents (p. 18) and Bishop Lesley (History, 1830, p. 149) assert ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... if he has survived the hardships he has had to undergo, he is still labouring at the oar in one of those dreadful ships, enduring the worst kind of slavery, for life alone will terminate it. My poor brother-in-law was also captured, and refusing to recant, he was treated, being a Frenchman, even more severely than my husband, for he was first tortured; still holding out, the barbarians placed him on the cruel wheel, where, while still alive, his bones were broken, and he, as did many other faithful Protestants, expired, though in fearful torments, ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... right to impose a compulsory oath. A deputation of ministers was sent to Salem to argue with him: he responded by counseling them to admonish the magistrates of their injustice. He was cited to appear before the state representatives to recant; he appeared, but only to affirm that he was ready to accept banishment or death sooner than be false to his convictions. Sentence of banishment was thereupon passed against him, but he was allowed till the ensuing ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... be alone. Of course she didn't appear at the Cabin the next day, and Peter searched for her—fruitlessly. She weighed on his conscience, like a sin unshrived. He had to find her to explain the unexplainable, to tell her what her confidence had meant to him, to recant his blasphemy of her idols ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... death. "Their unflinching devotion compels our admiration. One may search the grim history of early Christian martyrology without finding anything to surpass the heroism of the Roman Catholic Martyrs of Japan. Burnt on stakes made of crosses, torn limb from limb, buried alive, they yet refused to recant. We are told of one Jesuit priest, Christopher Ferreya, who, after enduring horrible tortures, was at length hung by his feet in such a way that his head was buried in a hole in the ground from which air and light were excluded. His right-hand was ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... reported to St. Petersburg the Empress Catherine ordered that they should be handed over to the ecclesiastical authorities, and that in the event of their proving obdurate to exhortation they should be tried by the Criminal Courts. Uklein professed to recant, and was liberated; but he continued his teaching secretly in the villages, and at the time of his death he was believed to have no less ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... a calm is no joke. It not only revolutionizes his abdomen, but unsettles his mind; tempts him to recant his belief in the eternal fitness of things; in short, almost makes an ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... mandates and disavow all belief in the new opinions which were deemed contrary to the teachings of Scripture. The last instance of such oppression occurred in France in the year 1756, when the great Buffon was required to recant certain opinions concerning the antiquity of the earth which he had published in his work on Natural History. This he promptly did, and in almost servile language withdrew all the opinions to which the fathers had objected. A like conflict between the followers of science and the clerical ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... of the Consistory, Bishop Bonner had sent, first for Pygot and Knight, and afterwards for Tomkins and Hunter, into his "great chamber," and asked them if they were willing to recant. They all refused, "not being persuaded in their consciences" that the doctrines propounded to them were true. These four were then brought into the Consistory, and a paper was offered them to sign, containing a synopsis of their belief. ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... spectacles of the age. I need not dwell on that exciting scene, where, in the presence of all that was illustrious and powerful in Germany, this defenceless doctor dares to say to supremest temporal and spiritual authority, "Unless you confute me by arguments drawn from Scripture, I cannot and will not recant anything ... Here I stand; I cannot otherwise: God help me! Amen." How superior to Galileo and other scientific martyrs! He is not afraid of those who can kill only the body; he is afraid only of Him who hath power to cast both soul and body into hell. So he stands as firm as the eternal pillars ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... long agon, Saw hills, as well as you i'th' moon, And held the sun was but a piece Of red hot iron as big as Greece. Believ'd the heavens were made of stone, Because the sun had voided one: And, rather than he would recant Th' opinion, suffered banishment." ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... taking away their property. Members of the hated faith lost their privileges as full Roman citizens. Then sterner measures followed. The prisons were crowded with Christians. Those who refused to recant and sacrifice to the emperor were thrown to wild animals in the arena, stretched on the rack, or burned over a slow fire. Every refinement of torture was practiced. Paganism, fighting for its existence, left no means untried to root out a ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... spirituality of his audience. He would find that he had awakened within them the passion of curiosity—the most unspiritual of passions, and of curiosity in a fierce polemic shape. The very safest step in so deplorable a situation would be, instantly to recant. Already by this one may estimate the evil, when such would be its readiest palliation. For in what condition would the reputation of the teacher be left for discretion and wisdom as an intellectual guide, when his first act must be to recant—and to recant what to ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... reported, and of course, reported unfavourably to the judges. A bill to disqualify the judges was re-introduced and read a first time. Mr. Hart again appeared at the Bar to take his seat for Three Rivers. He had been re-elected. He was still a Jew, and showed no disposition to recant his error. Nor would the House recant their error. The resolution which had been adopted against Mr. Hart's taking his seat in the previous Parliament was repeated in this. The House of Assembly went still ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... attack upon Bishop Gardiner by Barnes in a sermon at St Paul's Cross was the signal for a bitter struggle between the Protestant and reactionary parties in Henry's council, which raged during the spring of 1540. Barnes was forced to apologize and recant; and Gardiner delivered a series of sermons at St Paul's Cross to counteract Barnes' invective. But a month or so later Cromwell was made earl of Essex, Gardiner's friend, Bishop Sampson, was sent to the Tower, and Barnes reverted to Lutheranism. It was a delusive victory. In July, Cromwell was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... for a meeting with "Dail Eireann" are so impossible that one wonders he took the trouble to state them—viz. (1) that "Dail Eireann" must give up to be tried (and we presume hanged) a certain unspecified number of their own colleagues; (2) that they must recant their Republicanism and proclaim their allegiance to the Empire; (3) that negotiations must proceed on the basis of the Partition Act and the surrender of one-fourth of their country ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... were to hold and believe the doctrines of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. 'Men and women,' says the edict, 'who disobey this command shall be punished as disturbers of public order. Women who have fallen into heresy shall be buried alive. Men, if they recant, shall lose their heads. If they continue obstinate, they shall be burnt ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... it began the most impudently in the world, thus: "Dear Presto, We are even thus far." "Now we are even," quoth Stephen, when he gave his wife six blows for one. I received your ninth four days after I had sent my thirteenth. But I'll reckon with you anon about that, young women. Why did not you recant at the end of your letter, when you got my eleventh, tell me that, huzzies base? were we even then, were we, sirrah? But I won't answer your letter now, I'll keep it for another time. We had a great ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... general of the Dominicans, born in Gaeta; represented the Pope at the Diet of Augsburg, and tried in vain to persuade Luther to recant; wrote a Commentary on the Bible, and on the "Summa Theologiae" ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... and personality many writers will tell you that the man is inconsistency itself; advocating now what in a year he will recant; that for this and other reasons it is baffling to try to make a picture many-sided enough to portray adequately his ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... a story of a martyr in the second century. He was brought before the king, and told that if he did not recant they would banish him. Said he, "O king, you cannot banish me from Christ; for He has said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee!" The apostle John was banished to the island of Patmos; but it was ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody
... Doris cried: "The race of wasps is much belied; I must recant what I have said,— Wasps are remarkably ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... Ha! the elder Brutus Made his soul iron, though his sons repented. They boasted not their baseness. [Draws his sword. Infamous changeling! Recant this instant, and swear loyalty, 225 And strict obedience to thy sovereign's will; Or, by the spirit of departed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... opinion, as if they fainted in it, within themselves, and would be glad to be strengthened, by the consent of others. Nay more, you shall have atheists strive to get disciples, as it fareth with other sects. And, which is most of all, you shall have of them, that will suffer for atheism, and not recant; whereas if they did truly think, that there were no such thing as God, why should they trouble themselves? Epicurus is charged, that he did but dissemble for his credit's sake, when he affirmed there were blessed natures, but such as enjoyed themselves, without having respect to the government ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... French throne. In this emergency John Quincy Adams turned his back on Massachusetts, and threw into the uprising scale of the administration, the weight of his talents and of his already eminent fame. Massachusetts instructed the recusant to recant. He refused to obey, and resigned his place. His change of political relations astounded the country, and, with the customary charity of partisan zeal, was attributed to venality. It is now seen by us in the light reflected upon it by the habitual independence, unquestioned ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... the Bible far more for lessons in pedagogy. However, too many people misread the quoted passage. They interpret the expression "unto death" as if it were "until death." This interpretation would weaken the expression. The martyrs would not recant even when the fires were blazing all about them or when their bodies were lacerated. They were faithful unto death. In ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... side I have always and shall always understand how it is possible for the most earnest and faithful of men and even of women perhaps, to err in the convictions of the heart as well as of the mind, to profess an affection which is an illusion, and to recant and retreat loyally at the eleventh hour, on becoming aware of the truth which is in them. Such men are the truest of men, and the most courageous for the truth's sake, and instead of blaming them I hold them in honour, for me, and ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... which will be found on page 141. Thorpe, though he was sent back to prison, lived to write this account of his trial three-and-fifty years after it took place, but Sir John Oldcastle was burnt alive, despite all Prince Hal's efforts to win him to recant and save himself, and the short account of his trial, which follows that of Thorpe, has thus a more ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... company. Neither can we yet forget, how Julius the Third, above ten years past, provided warily by his writ that none of our sort should be suffered to speak in the council, except that there were some, peradventure, that would recant and change his opinion): for this cause chiefly we thought it good to yield up an account of our faith in writing, and truly and openly to make answer to those things wherewith we have been openly charged; to the end the world may see the parts and foundations of that ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... days for the amusement of the king, who, ambitious of surpassing his sister sovereign, Queen Mary of England, and to exhibit his love for religion, manages to put to death ten times as many as she ventures to send to the stake, unless they recant, when they will have the honour of being strangled or hung instead," answered Leslie, in a nonchalant tone. "He and his counsellors are determined to extirpate heresy; but as the Protestants are numbered by hundreds of thousands, and as there are a good many ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... creature—weakly, with few wits. I should say she were most like of any to recant, save that she hath so little wit, it were scarce to our credit if ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... or his candidate could be defeated in 1908 only by Democratic harmony. Bryan was abroad, traveling, and somehow his distant figure looked less appalling than the near-by figure in the White House. The East did not ask him to recant his radicalism, but only not to talk about it. He arrived in New York, and business went to hear him make a harmony speech. If he made it, business would support him for President. He made the speech; he declared for Government ownership of railroads. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... over to the administration, covering their retreat by just such excuses as have been suggested. Was he wiser and more conscientious than they? A refusal to accept the proffered olive branch now meant,—he knew it well,—the irreconcilable enmity of the Buchanan faction. And he was not asked to recant, but only to accept what he had always deemed the very essence of statesmanship, a compromise. His Republican allies promptly evinced their distrust. They fully expected him to join his former associates. From them he could expect no sympathy in such a dilemma.[662] His political ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... endeavour to save the poor (p. 345) man's life. Milner ascribes to him a violence of temper, altogether unbecoming the melancholy circumstances of that hour of death, and directs our thoughts chiefly to his attempt to force a conscientious man to recant. ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... confess to errors, mistakes and short-comings in our conduct than in our thought. And the reason of it is that the conscience is humble and even takes a pleasure in being ashamed. But the intellect is proud, and if forced to recant is driven to despair. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... severely criticised. The Cardinal retorted in intemperate language, and so entirely had the legates secured the support of Constantine that Nicetas' work was committed to the flames, and he was forced to recant what he had said against the Roman Church. But the Patriarch was immovable, and for the moment he occupied a stronger position than the Emperor, who desired to conciliate him. At last the patience of the legates was exhausted, and on July 16, 1054, they proceeded to the Church of St. Sophia, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... who are the persecutors in all countries except America, could not bear that he should worship God in his own way, or dream of going to heaven but in their leading strings, and therefore soon gave him to understand, that he must either "recant or trot"; that is, quit ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... stand up and confess his Saviour Christ, to maintain his faith and always be armed against the world, the sectaries, the devil, and what else he were able to produce. But no man will do this, except he be so sure of his doctrine and religion, that, although I myself should play the fool, and should recant and deny this my doctrine and religion, which God forbid, he notwithstanding would not yield, but say, if Luther, or an angel from heaven, should teach otherwise, "Let ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... and thought whether there could be any harm, after all, in taking a turn or two; it would be only polite. But, before he could recant in words, a soldier came up, a medium-sized warrior with a large nose and round little eyes, who had been very funny during the Lancers in directing all the figures ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... power. He had a safe-conduct, which even so powerful a prince as Charles V. durst not violate. In April, 1521, the reformer appeared before the collected dignitaries of the German empire, both spiritual and temporal, and was called upon to recant his opinions as heretical in the eyes of the church, and dangerous to the peace of the empire. Before the most august assembly in the world, without a trace of embarrassment, he made his defence, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... himself. Recant! Confess! In God's name, what? Abjure his writings, the convictions of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... His voice rang through the room like a clarion. "I do not recant! My writings do express ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... visits to the picture-galleries since my last date; and I think it fair towards my own powers of appreciation to record that I begin to appreciate Turner's pictures rather better than at first. Not that I have anything to recant as respects those strange, white-grounded performances in the chambers at the Marlborough House; but some of his happier productions (a large landscape illustrative of Childe Harold, for instance) seem to me to have more magic in them than any other pictures. I admire, too, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... asked if she would not recant those of her words and deeds which had been pronounced evil by her judges. Here answer ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the course of history for the whole Germanic world are as follows: In 1517 Luther posted up the ninety-five theses at Wittenberg; 1520, burned the papal bull and issued the Address to the German Nobility; 1522, attended the Diet at Worms and refused to recant; in seclusion at the Wartburg translated the New Testament, which was published that same year; 1525, married Katharina Bora, a nun, having previously renounced monasticism; 1534, published the complete German Bible. Aside from the polemics, tractates, epistles, commentaries, ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... the well-known symptoms of a man under a malign magical influence. In this extremity Horace affects to recant all the mischief he has formerly spoken of the enchantress. Let her name what penance he will, he is ready to perform it. If a hundred steers will appease her wrath, they are hers; or if she prefers to be sung of as the chaste and good, and to range above the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... mother's plea might tempt the angels of heaven to recant!—Now the hymn is ended: I must go! The ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... Madeleine Briconnet, the widow of Theobald of Yverni, disguised herself as a woman of the people, so that she might save her life, but was betrayed by the fine petticoat which hung below her coarse gown. As she would not recant, she was allowed a few moments' prayer, and then tossed into the water. Her son-in-law, the marquis Renel, escaping in his shirt, was chased by the murderers to the bank of the river, where he succeeded in unfastening a boat. He would have got away altogether but for his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... There is no doubt that the Queen and her husband personally urged on these deeds, because they wrote to the Council, urging them to be active in the kindling of the fearful fires. As Cranmer was known not to be a firm man, a plan was laid for surrounding him with artful people, and inducing him to recant to the unreformed religion. Deans and friars visited him, played at bowls with him, showed him various attentions, talked persuasively with him, gave him money for his prison comforts, and induced him to sign, I fear, as many as six recantations. ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... through her displeasure the state of her affections, saw with terror the greatness of the danger which threatened him. He found, however, that the present was no time for enforcing objections, and perceiving he had already gone too far, though he was by no means disposed to recant, he thought it most prudent to retreat, and let her meditate upon his exhortation while its impression was yet strong ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... ago, on the same platform with Gen. Wade Hampton and other distinguished citizens he made a speech to the colored people recommending qualified suffrage; but subsequently was obliged by high-pressure to recant, and to set himself right has since become intensely radical. His idea now is that the Negro is entitled to everything the white man enjoys—an opinion which has been encouraged by his appointment as magistrate, General Sickles having conferred ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... belonged, the name of that man is written large in history, as the name of one who had fortitude to die, not in the cause of religious belief, but in that of scientific conviction. For why did Bruno suffer? He suffered, as we all know, because he refused to recant his persuasion of the truth of the Copernican theory. Why, then, do I adduce the name of Bruno at the close of this lecture? I do so because, as far as I have been able to ascertain, he was the first clearly to enunciate the monistic theory of things to which the consideration ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... majority. Notwithstanding, we consider it our duty to make the people attentive to those things, and to instruct such as are not wilfully [tr. note: sic] blind. But should we be deceived in our opinion, and clearly be convinced of it, we shall not be ashamed to recant. In vain people dream of the Millennium before crosses and tribulations shall have visited the Christian world by the rage of Antichrist. His kingdom is reared under a good garb; if this were not the case, no person would be deceived. Men who are notoriously immoral ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... Don't ask me to hold my tongue. I retract, I recant. It is a fatality. I have resolved upon that view. You could stand the shot of beauty, not of brains. That is our report. There! And it's delicious to feel that the county wins you. No tea. I cannot possibly wait. And, oh! here she is. I must have a look at her. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Inquisition was endeavouring to stifle the thought of Galileo. In the modern world, the Inquisition of the United States of Europe and America is no less crushing than was the Holy Inquisition of old. But Nicolai, firmer of spirit than Galileo, has refused to recant. Last month (September, 1917), the journals of German Switzerland announced that he had been once more brought to trial, and had been sentenced to five months' imprisonment by the Danzig court-martial. Thus again does force manifest its ludicrous weakness, for its unjust decrees merely help to raise ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... it up once more. Ah! For a moment I really thought that he was going to die in my arms, or that, at least, he would go mad, as he almost did once before, you remember? I felt I was going to yield, I was going to recant first, I was going to clasp him in my arms, for really one must have been utterly heartless to remain insensible to such grief. But I recollected the words he had said to me the day before, 'You have no spirit if you stay with me, for I no longer love you,' ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... est obrepere, summum. But what needs all this? I hope there will no such cause of offence be given; if there be, [816]Nemo aliquid recognoscat, nos mentimur omnia. I'll deny all (my last refuge), recant all, renounce all I have said, if any man except, and with as much facility excuse, as he can accuse; but I presume of thy good favour, and gracious acceptance (gentle reader). Out of an assured hope and confidence ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... it once my sloth: in such an age So many volumes deep, I not a page? But I recant, and vow 'twas thrifty care That kept my pen from spending on slight ware, And breath'd it for a prize, whose pow'rful shine Doth both reward the striver, and refine. Such are thy poems, friend: for since th' hast writ, I can't reply to any name, but wit; ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
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