"Predestination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Moors, and generally throughout the Mahommedan dominions, the people are strikingly attached to charms, to which, and nature, they leave the cure of almost every disorder; and this is the most strongly impressed upon them from their belief in predestination, which, according to their creed, stipulates the evil a man is to suffer, as well as the length of time it is ordained he should live upon the land of his forefathers; consequently they imagine that ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... yesterday he spoke to me in a very kind manner on the questions raised by Quadratus [Cordatus]. What a spectacle if the Lutherans would oppose each other as the Cadmean brethren! I will therefore modify whatever I can. Yet I desire a more thorough exposition of the doctrines of predestination, of the consent of the will, of the necessity of our obedience, and of the sin unto death. (C. R. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... And a few, that had been two, were called one. These things I heard whilst the minister sat in his study up-stairs, and held his head upon his hands, thinking over the theology of the schools; his wife, meanwhile, in the room below, working out a strange elective predestination, free-will gifts to be, for some little ones that had strayed into the fold to be warmed and clothed and fed. At length the village "news" having all been imparted to me, I gave ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... joint Burggraves after their father's death, seemed to have reconciled themselves without difficulty. The elder of them was already Sigismund's brother-in-law; married to Sigismund's and Wenzel's sister—by such predestination as we saw. Burggraf Johann III was the name of this one; a stout fighter and manager for many years; much liked, and looked to, by Sigismund, as indeed were both the brothers, for that matter; always, together or in succession, a kind of right hand to Sigismund. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Possibly good gardening and an egg-producing hen-yard are the result of willingness to take infinite pains but, out of my disappointments and half successes, I am more inclined to hold that it is luck and predestination. So, I have reduced agricultural activities sharply, but I do know families where each fall finds cellar shelves groaning under cans of fruits and vegetables, products of the garden, and foretelling distinct economies in purchases of canned goods ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... an absolute predestination (fatalism, regulating the universe in advance in all its details) exists or not, is a question of pure metaphysics, the solution of which is quite beyond human comprehension, and need not occupy us here. We must simply depend on the scientific postulate of determinism, i.e., ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... And in the church down Main Street they taught that a lot of us were predestined to be damned, and a few of us to be saved; and naturally we all had our favorite selections for the first bunch. I used to accept the doctrine of predestination for a couple of weeks every year, just before the Main Street church held its Sunday-school picnic, and there are a few old rascals in the Stock Yards that make me lean toward it sometimes now; but, in the main, I believe ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... stuff, the cunninger the workman's hand," and therefore the Maker may have made the world from matter. He maintains that "the hands of Destiny ever deal, in fixed and equal parts their shares of joy and sorrow, woe and weal" to all that breathe our upper air. The problem of predestination he holds in scorn. The unequality of life exists and "that settles it" for him. He accepts one bowl with scant delight but he says "who drains the score must ne'er expect to rue the headache in the morn." Disputing about creeds is "mumbling ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... of this month, Knox had returned to Edinburgh. His work on Predestination was published this ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... with good things and then won't listen to advice, you might as well stop wasting your breath on him, because there is something radically wrong with him. Probably his grandfather had dyspepsia. And a dyspeptic ancestor is worse for a boy than predestination, in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of the most famous among the writings of St. Fulgentius, is that entitled, On the Two-fold Predestination, to Monimus, in answer to certain difficulties proposed to him by a friend of that name. In the first book he shows, that though God foresees sin, he predestinates no one to evil, but only to good, or to grace and glory. In the second book he proves, that the sacrifice of Christ's body and blood ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... have been more powerfully attested, because people are often struck dead by lightning; whereas the fall of the sky is too remote a contingency, such a thing never having been known to happen within the memory of man. As to Mencius, there is a passage in his works which states that a thread of predestination runs through all human life, and that those who accommodate themselves will come off better in the end than those who try to oppose; it is in fact a statement of the [Greek: ouk uper moron] principle. On this Wang Ch'ung remarks that the will of God is consequently made to depend on human actions; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... might be expected to behave rather than as one of the reprobate. But in the middle of the nineteenth century naturalists and physicists assured the world, in the name of Science, that salvation and damnation are all nonsense, and that predestination is the central truth of religion, inasmuch as human beings are produced by their environment, their sins and good deeds being only a series of chemical and mechanical reactions over which they have no control. Such figments as mind, choice, purpose, conscience, ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... that one may lawfully hope in man. For the object of hope is eternal happiness. Now we are helped to obtain eternal happiness by the patronage of the saints, for Gregory says (Dial. i, 8) that "predestination is furthered by the saints' prayers." Therefore ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... pernicious, as well as false; its tendency is to produce the belief of a kind of moral predestination, or overruling principle which cannot be resisted; he that admits it is prepared to comply with every desire that caprice or opportunity shall excite, and to flatter himself that he submits only to the lawful dominion of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... touch upon it. She was of principles at once so broad and so deep that he found himself as often surprised by her devoutness as he felt it his duty to be shocked by her liberality. One day when Maurice had made some allusion to a discussion over the doctrine of predestination which was agitating the ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... Calvinism, in its essential features, never will cease from the earth, because the great fundamental facts of nature are Calvinistic, and men with strong minds and wills always discover it. The predestination of a sovereign will is written over all things. The old Greek tragedians read it, and expressed it. So did Mahomet, Napoleon, Cromwell. Why? They found it so by their own experience; they tried the forces of nature enough to find their strength. The strong swimmer who breasts ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... could hear, whether it concerned himself or not. He had peculiar theories, and one of them was, as he would tell you, that if you overheard a remark apparently not intended for you, you were to make yourself quite easy, as it was "a point of predestination" that you should at that particular moment, consciously or unconsciously, play the eavesdropper. The reason of it would, he always averred, be explained to you later on in your career. The well-known saying "listeners never hear any good of themselves" ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... impertinent compliment to Madame Danton's charming head had sealed the fate of his own. But 'tis in this hap-hazard fashion that the destiny of mortals is decided. We are but the victims of chance or mischance. Of all vainglorious philosophies, that of predestination is the vainest. ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... Christian Theology. It was a wonderful though a highly artificial structure, composed of fine old crusted dogmas which no one could prove, but very few dared to dispute. There was the "magnified man" in the sky, the Infallible Bible, dictated by the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, the Fall, the Atonement, Predestination and Grace, Justification by Faith, a Chosen People, a practically omnipotent Devil, myriads of Evil Spirits, an eternity of bliss to be obtained for nothing, and endless torment for those who did not ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... of this Lake at an hour when there was no one at the Bois? Vaudrey believed neither in superstitions nor in predestination. Nevertheless, he considered the meeting extraordinary, but there is in this fantastic life a reality that brings in our path the being about whom one has just been thinking. He had frequently observed ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... know," she said slowly. "You see, I'm a great philosopher. I never fret or worry, because I regard it as useless; similarly, I never rebel at the way fate shapes my life—I regard that as something past helping. I believe in predestination; do you?" ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... and the Huns might securely trample on the degenerate Romans, whose close and compact order betrayed their apprehensions, and who were equally incapable of supporting the dangers or the fatigues of a day of battle. The doctrine of predestination, so favorable to martial virtue, was carefully inculcated by the king of the Huns, who assured his subjects that the warriors, protected by heaven, were safe and invulnerable amid the darts of the enemy, but that the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... any other place of the various sects that flourished at the time. The account, ampler though it is than the others, does not reveal the true inwardness of the different religious positions. He repeats here what he says elsewhere about the Pharisaic doctrine of predestination tempered by freewill, but he enlarges especially on the difference between the parties in their ideas about the future life.[2] The Pharisees believe that souls have an immortal vigor, and that they will be rewarded ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... endowments, but solely to the unique character of his position. The First Man could n't help getting a certain reputation, would he, n'ould he. But from Adam to Adrian—silence. Then sudden silvery music. And Adrian—mark the predestination—Adrian is childless. He is the last link. With him the chain, five thousand years long, stops. He is the sudden brilliant flare-up of the fire before it goes out. Well, now, tell me—which end of this stick would you prefer to be? The shining silver ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... to sermons full of the hopelessness of predestination; she frankly said she did not believe that Adam was her federal head and representative, and that she, therefore, was born in sin. "I'm a sinner," she said, smiling; "we're all miserable sinners, you know, Mr. Ward, and perhaps ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... Predestination and free will are both taught. "Everything is in the hands of heaven, except the fear of heaven." "All things are ordained of God, but men's actions are their own." When men wish to sin they are enjoined to go to a place where they are unknown, and to clothe themselves in ...
— Hebrew Literature
... seems hard. I was vain enough to think otherwise. I thought so strong a feeling on one side could not co-exist with perfect indifference on the other. I fancied there was something like predestination in this, and that my wandering unwedded soul had met its other half—it's an old Greek notion, you know, that men and women were made in pairs—but I was miserably mistaken, I suppose. How many lovers have you rejected since ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... action under some circumstances. Severe cold benumbs his faculties of mind as well as body, and the nature of his ordinary food is such that unless the supply is regular and sufficient his strength fails him; and again, his belief in predestination is strong, and often a trivial reverse will induce him to abandon himself to his fate. But in these days the Hindoo soldier need not fear that his noble and gallant qualities will not be understood or appreciated. Every good soldier will ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... of God stood there before her, disclosed in all its awfulness, armed with thunders, moving on mighty wheels. The foreknowledge of God closed the question henceforth, and, if proof were needed, made predestination plain. There was man's destiny, irrevocably fixed, iron-bound, changeless and immovable as the laws of God's own being. Yet over the rigid and awful Face of God, flickered a faint light, named mercy; and this mercy vindicated its existence by demanding that some souls should escape the final ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... say what strictly belongs to him, and though very ignorant of books, his nature shall not yield him any intellectual obstructions and doubts. Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man,—never darkened across any man's road who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul's mumps and measles and whooping-coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describe ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... declared that the heathen were now as God had made them, and therefore just as they should be. To establish this theory he used garbled arguments of predestination. ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... High Calvinists favor the Hopkinsian system. The Moderate Calvinists embrace the leading features of Calvin's doctrine, but object to some parts, particularly to his views of the doctrines of predestination, and the extent of the design of Christ's death. While they hold to the election of grace, they do not believe that God has reprobated any of his creatures. They believe that the atonement is, in its nature, general, but in its ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... seemed as irresistible, perfect, and pitiless as Predestination itself. Around Pompey's Amphitheatre stores of hemp caught fire, and ropes used in circuses, arenas, and every kind of machine at the games, and with them the adjoining buildings containing barrels of pitch with which ropes ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... certainty that he would follow the train of her thought; and he decided to try to get another rise out of the round-eyed little clergyman. "Oh, if it weren't the Negro problem, Mr. Bayweather, it would be free-will or predestination, or capital and labor. Mr. Welles suffers from a duty-complex, inflamed to a morbid degree by a life-long compliance to a mediaeval conception ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... he wished to be near me should a battle ensue during the time. Contrary to regulations, I granted the request. Now the question naturally arises, had he gone on his regular duties would the circumstances have been different? The soldier is generally a believer in the doctrine of predestination in the abstract, and it is well he is so, for otherwise many soldiers would run away from battle. But as it is, he consoles himself with the theories of the old doggerel quartet, which reads something ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... in it; she said to herself that she trusted it absolutely. But how was she to know exactly what it was? And yet, could she escape from it even if she wished to? Could she wander away into any path where the Divine Will did not mean her to set foot? Predestination—free will. "If only I were ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Todgers tried his new-born hopes to quell, And Miss Tee made resolutions, but she did not make them well, For they went to smash at daybreak, and she softly murmured ''Tis Kismet! Fate! Predestination! If he'll have me I am his.' While Todgers sang 'There's Only One Girl in This World for Me,' Or its music hall equivalent ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... problem than the nature of woman. Troilus and Cressid, the hero sinned against and the sinning heroine, are the VICTIMS OF FATE. Who shall cast a stone against those who are, but like the rest of us, predestined to their deeds and to their doom; since the co-existence of free-will with predestination does not admit of proof? This solution of the conflict may be morally as well as theologically unsound; it certainly is aesthetically faulty; but it is the reverse ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... result of this grave and earnest controversy, it leaves untouched the corruption of human nature, the deity and atonement of Christ, justification by faith, the necessity of Divine influence to renew and purify the heart, and the scriptural doctrine of predestination, according to the fore-knowledge of God. This distinction is important; since, if it be overlooked, the rejectors of Calvinism may be supposed to have also rejected the capital doctrines of the Reformed faith. Fuller has unwarrantably, perhaps undesignedly, ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... recognized as masters of literature and style, are struck out of their hands, and they (the schoolmasters) substitute their own comments; disputing in a circle of children about Anti-Christ and the doctrine of predestination."[21] ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... our age have produced such a toning down of the teachings of Calvin, both in and out of Switzerland, that it may be startling to some to be reminded that, except the Lutheran and Methodist, every Church still has in its list of Doctrines those of Election and Predestination. If it were true that every human being was predestined, before birth, either to a good or a bad life, there would, of course, be no meaning in a Saviour or a Gospel; and we can understand the indignation of this honest lad, when he was asked to undertake to teach such things. He ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... receiving certain series of theological propositions without even an effort at comparison,—without a perception of contradiction or inconsequency,—without an effort at harmonizing. Such, however, were not the New England ministers. With them predestination must be made to harmonize with freewill; the Divine entire efficiency with human freedom; the existence of sin with the Divine benevolence;—and at it they went with stout hearts, as men work who are not in the habit of being balked in their undertakings. Hence the Edwardses, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... with puns and epigrams and touches of irony which still retain their savour. His reading, especially in theological matters, was extensive; and he was already a voluminous author on subjects which ranged from predestination to tobacco. But his shrewdness and learning only left him, in the phrase of Henry the Fourth of France, "the wisest fool in Christendom." He had in fact the temper of a pedant, a pedant's conceit, a pedant's love of theories, and a pedant's ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... not trouble them; predestination and justification by faith were not even in their curriculum; foreordination and baptism were to them problems not to be ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... fight against," I said passionately. "The doctrine of predestination is the devil's own doctrine. It is the doctrine set up by the sinner to excuse his sin; it is the coward's doctrine. Understand me, Margot, I love you, but I am not a weak fool. There must be an end of this folly. Perhaps you are playing ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... would no doubt be distant and indirect, for a Brahman would not come into contact with Moslim doctors, though it is said that Madhva could speak Persian.[601] But some Moslim ideas such as the absolute separation of God from the world and the predestination of souls to eternal happiness and misery may have entered Brahman minds. Still, nearly all Madhva's views (with the possible exception of eternal punishment) have Indian analogies. The Yoga teaches ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... And what precedes will is feeling, preceded itself by instinct. Man is only what he becomes—profound truth; but he becomes only what he is, truth still more profound. What am I? Terrible question! Problem of predestination, of birth, of liberty, there lies the abyss. And yet one must plunge into it, and I have done so. The prelude of Bach I heard this evening predisposed me to it; it paints the soul tormented and appealing and finally seizing ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... admonition to England; an application to the Scots nobility, &c.; a letter to Mary the queen-regent, a history of the reformation; a treatise on predestination, the first and second blast of the trumpet; a sermon preached August 1565, on account of which he was for some time prohibited from preaching. He left also sundry manuscripts, sermons, tracts, &c. which have never ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... the doctrine of Free-Will consists simply of an attempt to identify it with the notion of Chance in physics. The notion of Chance, he says, is the same with that of Free-Will; the doctrine of Necessary Connection with the dogma of Predestination. This statement has certainly an imposing air. But consider it. To assert the identity of chance and free-will is but another way of saying that pure freedom is one and the same with absolute lawlessness,—that where freedom exists, law, order, reason do ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to such a people would have been folly. The smooth cadences, the polished gestures, and, above all, the manuscript sermon of a Boston divine, would have disgusted the men and women of the frontier. What cared they for predestination or free-will, or for any of the dogmas of the schools? They wanted to hear the simple, fundamental truths of the Gospel, and they wanted to hear them from a man of their own stamp. They wanted a "fire and brimstone" preacher, one ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... refuted by St. Augustine, emphasised the efficacy of human effort and belittled the importance of supernatural grace. The Calvinists emphasised the degradation of man through Original Sin, and considered mankind so corrupt that the will was of no avail; and thus fell into the doctrine of predestination. It was upon the doctrine of grace according to St. Augustine that the Jansenists relied; and the Augustinus of Jansenius was presented as a sound ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... harvest, he finds his house burned. His wife, in a drunken stupor, had probably set fire to it. She is dying of her burns. Vassily can only sigh. This new misfortune does not put an end to the priest, but rather inspires him. His old faith comes back, he sees in this supreme test a predestination. He kneels down ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... journal is conducted, belongs to a class of sophisms by which the most hateful persecutions may easily be justified. To charge men with practical consequences which they themselves deny is disingenuous in controversy; it is atrocious in government. The doctrine of predestination, in the opinion of many people, tends to make those who hold it utterly immoral. And certainly it would seem that a man who believes his eternal destiny to be already irrevocably fixed is likely to indulge his passions without restraint and to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... remained intact; and he was joyful. He struck a light to look at his watch: the watch had stopped;—that was a bad sign. He could not forget it. Why had his watch stopped? A chilling thought as to whether predestination did not govern the world, allayed all tumult in his mind. He dressed carefully, and soon heard a great City bell, with horrid gulfs between the strokes, tell him that the hour was eleven toward midnight. "Not late," ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... relates, that most of Bussapa's family have fallen victims to tigers. But the firm belief of the "tiger-slayer" in predestination, makes him blind to ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... is that we recognize God working in us, I would yet warn against a too-great preoccupation with the thought. It is a sure road to sterile passivity. God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, predestination and the divine sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, "O Lord, Thou knowest." Those things belong to the deep and mysterious Profound of God's omniscience. ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... which I shall think necessary to notice here. A frequent question of his to Dr. Kennedy was,—"What, then, you think me in a very bad way?"—the usual answer to which being in the affirmative, he, on one occasion, replied,—"I am now, however, in a fairer way. I already believe in predestination, which I know you believe, and in the depravity of the human heart in general, and of my own in particular:—thus you see there are two points in which we agree. I shall get at the others by and by; but you cannot expect me to become a perfect Christian at once." On the subject of Dr. Southwood's ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... were more like the mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... especially developed in connection with the prolonged controversies, in which he was engaged throughout his episcopate (see 83, 84), but he wrote much in addition to controversial treatises. The group of characteristic doctrines known as "Augustinianism," viz.: Original Sin, Predestination, and Grace and the doctrines connected with them, were, to a large extent, the outcome of his own religious experience. He had known the power and depth of sin. He had discovered the hand of God leading him in spite of himself. He knew that his conversion was due, not ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... science de Dieu se soit reellement parfectionnee? A-t-elle pris quelqne part la consistance et l'uniformite que nous voyons prendre aux connaissances humaines, aux arts les plus futiles, aux metiers les plus meprises? Ces mots d'esprit, d'immaterialite, de creation, de predestination, de grace; cette foule de distinctions subtiles dont la theologie s'est parteut remplie dans quelques pays, ces inventions si ingenieuses, imaginees par des penseurs qui se sont succedes depuis taut de siecles, n'ont fait, helas! qu'embrouiller les choses, et jamais la ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... 5. His doctrine of predestination was applicable, and was applied by him, to the same purpose of fortifying and of exalting the courage of his adherents.—"If anything of the matter had happened unto us, we had not been slain here. Answer; If ye ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... obedience paid, When Will and Reason (Reason also is choice) Useless and vain, of freedom both despoild, Made passive both, had servd necessitie, 110 Not mee. They therefore as to right belongd, So were created, nor can justly accuse Thir maker, or thir making, or thir Fate; As if Predestination over-rul'd Thir will, dispos'd by absolute Decree Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed Thir own revolt, not I: if I foreknew, Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault, Which had no less prov'd ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... frivolous that these things were meant to be so. As the Aryan saying has it, looking forward there are a dozen ways, looking backward on the way each man has traveled, there is but one. Crude tragedy carries with it its own conviction of predestination. It would be absurd to suggest that Togral Beg killed thirteen million people by accident or by an extraordinary succession of chances. Admit there is such an element as chance, and between it and Fate is room for a thousand doubts. It is natural enough ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... devil's name—" he began; then again he halted. Something in Chilcote's drawn, excited face checked him. The strange sense of predestination that we sometimes see in the eyes of another struck cold upon him, chilling his last attempt at remonstrance. "What do you want me to do?" he ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... on the Union of the Lutheran and Reformed,—with Pre Des Bosses on Transubstantiation, and with Samuel Clarke on Time and Space,—with Remond de Montmort on Plato, and with Franke on Popular Education,— with the Queen of Prussia (his pupil) on Free-will and Predestination, and with the Electress Sophia, her mother, (in her eighty-fourth year,) on English Politics,—with the cabinet of Peter the Great on the Slavonic and Oriental Languages, and with that of the German Emperor on the claims of George Lewis to the honors of the Electorate,—and finally, with all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... generally supposed that Napoleon was a believer in the doctrine of predestination. The following conversation with Las Cases clearly decides that point. "Pray," said he, "am I not thought to be given to a belief in predestination?"—"Yes, Sire; at least by many people."—"Well, well! let them say what they please, one may sometimes ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... wish to make some observations upon the present style of preaching as compared with the sermonizing of my day. When I occupied the pulpit, the doctrines of election and predestination were the principal themes that engaged the ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... OF JESUS! What a study is this! To attain a dim reflection of it, is the ambition of angels—higher they can not soar. "To be conformed to the image of His Son!"—it is the end of God in the predestination of His Church from all eternity. "We shall be like Him!"—it is the ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... instant's reflection in the impenetrable shades, Claudius concluded to follow the advice of the variety theatre's prima donna. While a stranger to the City of Breweries, he knew that its predestination toward thirst was due to its being the site of an ancient rock-salt mine. In other cities, subterraneans were melodramatic; here, a labyrinth under the surface and at the level of the dancing and drinking cellars was so natural that a child of Munich, dropped into a well, ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... and the later Calvin, could have made out from the few known facts in the life of this navigator so pretty a case in favor of Predestination that the blessed St. Augustine and the worthy Arminius—supposing the four come together for a friendly dish of theological talk—would have had their work cut out for them to formulate a countercase in favor of Free Will. It is a curious truth that every important move ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... conservatism are hanging desperately to the world's flying skirts, but they will eventually drop off. No change in thought has been greater than that concerning God. The absentee Lord who started the universe and then withdrew has gone to the scrap heap, with the ridiculous views of predestination and infant damnation. The idea of a God who at divers times interfered with His creation and temporarily set aside His own laws to convince puny man of His greatness, is likewise obsolescent. The world is slowly growing into a conception of a creator, of some kind, but at least mental, and universally ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... through with Calvinism. She was totally unselfish, yet totally self-centred. In the same way, she was always on a battleground between the claims of her own rampant freewill and her sanctified belief in predestination. It's not an easy thing to ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... make up his mind as to freewill and predestination, but in spite of this doubt expressly states his desire to find out ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... churches of their own, molehills would become mountains, and the congregations would go from arguing into fighting. With Parliament to help her, therefore, she established a Liturgy, in which those who wished to find the Mass could hear the Mass, while those who wanted predestination and justification by faith could find it in the Articles. Both could meet under a common roof, and use a common service, if they would only be reasonable. If they would not be reasonable, the Catholics might have their own ritual in ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... found it at last? Reader, what do you suppose that they have found? What were they in search of? Why some text of Scripture which seem to support their own peculiar notions on the subject of Baptism, Election, Predestination, the Final Perseverance of the saints, &c. The zeal of such persons to propagate their opinions is not more remarkable than the confident, dogmatic manner in which they express them. It is remarkable that professors of religion who are most ignorant and depraved, those ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... expected of a preacher, selecting this passage as the foundation of his discourse, that he would have something to say upon the subject of predestination. It is my purpose to make this the theme of the occasion; and this purpose has governed me in the selection of the text. The subject is one of great practical importance. It relates to the Divine government—its leading principles and the great facts ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... platitudinous, platonic, plebeian, plenipotentiary, plethora, pneumatic, poignant, polity, poltroon, polyglot, pontifical, portentous, posterior, posthumous, potent, potential, pragmatic, preamble, precarious, precocious, precursor, predatory, predestination, predicament, preemptory, prelate, preliminary, preposterous, prerequisite, prerogative, presentiment, primogeniture, probation, probity, proclivity, procrastinate, prodigal, prodigious, prodigy, profligate, progenitor, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... to bear more blame in this matter than he deserves. Divine tyranny with hell as its sanction was no invention of his. The Catholic Church, as all her art shows, had always made full use of it. And the new horror of his own day, the Calvinist predestination, he expressly and frequently repudiates. The free will of man is the very base of his system. In it men may suffer, as it seems to us, out of all proportion to their guilt; but at least they suffer only for deeds done ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... to your parents in their failing years! "Father and mother," you will bid them, "do not think with any anxiety of your child. From ages past poverty as well as success have both had a fixed destiny; and is it likely that separation and reunion are not subject to predestination? Though we may now be far apart in two different places, we must each of us try and preserve good cheer. Your abject child has, it is true, gone from home, but abstain from distressing yourselves ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... malingerers who can be made to behave themselves by the fear of consequences; but it is not worth while maintaining an abominable system of malicious, deliberate, costly and degrading ill-treatment of criminals for the sake of these marginal cases. For practical dealing with crime, Determinism or Predestination is quite a good working rule. People without self-control enough for social purposes may be killed, or may be kept in asylums with a view to studying their condition and ascertaining whether it is curable. To torture them and give ourselves virtuous airs at their expense is ridiculous ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... with a caution to stand well on his guard; and set out in search of his nephew, with the friar, Anastase Douay, and two Indians. "All the way," writes the friar, "he spoke to me of nothing but matters of piety, grace, and predestination; enlarging on the debt he owed to God, who had saved him from so many perils during more than twenty years of travel in America. Suddenly," Douay continues, "I saw him overwhelmed with a profound sadness, for which he himself could not account. He was so much moved that ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... purposes of the petitioners it was a most unfortunate expression. James had just come from Scotland, where the Presbyterians were with their Synod, and where Calvinism was in full swing. He was much in favor of some elements of Calvinism; but he could not see how all the elements held together. Predestination, for example, which offends so many people to-day, was a precious doctrine to King James, and he insisted that his subjects ought to see how clearly God had predestined him to rule over them! But he could not tolerate the necessary logical inference of Calvinism that all men must be equal before ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... present in a sufficiently exalted consciousness, we are confronted by a far greater difficulty when we endeavour to realize how all the future may also be comprehended in that consciousness. If we could believe in the Mohammedan doctrine of kismet, or the Calvinistic theory of predestination, the conception would be easy enough, but knowing as we do that both these are grotesque distortions of the truth, we must look round for ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... doctrines of the Reformation. P. Bayle recounts the title-pages of no fewer than thirty-two books of which Amyraut was the author. These show that he took part in all the great controversies on predestination and Arminianism which then so agitated and harassed all Europe. Substantially he held fast the Calvinism of his preceptor Cameron; but, like Richard Baxter in England, by his breadth and charity he exposed himself to all ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... zeal denounced as sins of the deepest dye; while the unity of the Deity is proclaimed as the grand and cardinal doctrine of the faith. Divine providence pervades the minutest concerns of life, and predestination is taught in its most naked form. Yet prayer is enjoined as both meritorious and effective; and at five stated times every day must it be specially performed. The duties generally of the moral law are enforced, though an evil laxity is given in the matter of polygamy and divorce. Tithes are ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... why. There were all the inequalities of life, side by side, evermore echoing dumbly the same awful question; and over all shone the calm sky which gave no answer. "Have you the interpretation?" he said. "Perhaps you can reconcile freewill and predestination—the need of a universal atonement and the existence of individual virtue? But these are not to me the most difficult questions. Can your Church explain why one man is happy and another miserable?—why one has everything and abounds, and the ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... infinity {7} as a basal axiom should have been comparatively blind to its logical implications. For if God is infinite, then He is all; and if He is all, what becomes of human individuality, or how are human initiative and responsibility so much as thinkable? Benjamin Jowett, in his Essay on Predestination and Freewill, glanced at this problem in passing, and the remarks he made upon it more than fifty years ago, if somewhat tentative, are ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... secular learning brought in its train a strong development of speculative theology. The ninth century is marked by controversy on the Eucharist, and on Predestination. The former of these controversies had an effect upon Anglo-Saxon literature, which requires us to record one or two main facts in this place. Paschasius Radbert, a monk of Corbey, who was for a short while Abbot of that famous monastery, wrote a treatise (the ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... of the human race. Well done, Luther, Father Hecker would say, well and consistently done; when you have proclaimed man totally depraved you have properly made his religion a Cain-like flight from the face of his Maker and his kindred by your doctrine of predestination. Father Hecker deemed it plainly unwise to forego the advantages of attacking such vulnerable points as the Protestant errors of total depravity and predestination for the sake of dwelling on the Biblical and historical credentials of Church authority. He knew, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... I find that the next thing in this wonderful confession of faith of the Presbyterians is the decree of predestination. [Reads the decree.] I am pleased to assure you that it is not necessary to understand this. You have only to believe it. You see that by the decree of God some men and angels are predestinated to heaven and others to eternal hell, and you observe that their number is so certain ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... watchful vitality that she does show. As, for instance, when the Christian Endeavorers fought the question of prize-fight moving-picture shows and won out or when a Parkhurst fought bravely for a clean police force. Even if the world today does not vex itself so much as formerly about predestination, original sin, the "actual presence," or even the correct mental attitude to insure heaven hereafter, the churches may surely count it as a product of their work that the people do trust God more simply for the past and future, and are more in earnest ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... and Scriptural scholar, was punished because he could not agree with Calvin's teaching on predestination, as was also the physician Bolsec; Ameaux one of the members of the Council was put to death because he denounced the tyranny of Calvin and of the Consistory; Gentilis was condemned to execution for differing with Calvin's teaching ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... doomed to fret, To hurl at vanities, to drift in shame Of gain or loss, bewailing the sure rod, Shall of predestination wed thee yet. Something it gathers of what things should drop At entrance on new times; of how thrice broad The world of minds communicative; how A straggling Nature classed in school, and scored With stripes admonishing, may yield to plough Fruitfullest furrows, nor for waxing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the old quarrel between Predestination and Freewill which cannot be solved except by assuming ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... system is that one should give oneself freely up to what the gods throw in one's way. And if the gods—in their inescapable predestination—have made him "for me" and me "for him," to cling fast with cold cautious hands to the anchor of moderation were to be false to the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Guess and Uncertainty is a Trifle, to the vast Discoveries of these Explicatory Optick-Glasses; for here are seen the Nature and Consequences of Secret Mysteries: Here are read strange Mysteries relating to Predestination, Eternal Decrees, and the like: Here 'tis plainly prov'd, That Predestination is, in spight of all Enthusiastick Pretences, so intirely committed into Man's Power, that whoever pleases to hang himself to Day, won't Live till to Morrow: no, though Forty ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... With Puritanism itself he had much natural affinity, and as a determinist the philosophical side of Calvinism attracted him as strongly as it attracted Jonathan Edwards. Froude combined, perhaps illogically, a belief in predestination with a deep sense of moral duty and the responsibility of man. Every reader of his History must have been struck by his respect for all the manly virtues, even in those with whom he has otherwise no sympathy, and his corresponding ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... shall be thine. My bosom-friend, if he blaspheme thy name, I will tear thence his love and fame. One half of me being gone, the rest I give Unto some chapel—die or live. As for my Passion[102]—But of that anon, When with the other I have done. For thy Predestination, I'll contrive That, three years hence, if I survive,[103] I'll build a spital, or mend common ways, But mend my own without delays. Then I will use the works of thy creation, As if I used them but for fashion. The world and I will quarrel; and the year Shall ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... delivered from hell, for his love of justice, by the prayers of St. Gregory; and that Riphaeus, for the same reason, had been gifted with a prophetic knowledge of the Redemption; and then it ended with a rapture on the hidden mysteries of Predestination, and on the joy of ignorance itself when submitting to the divine will. The two blessed spirits, meanwhile, whom the bird mentioned, like the fingers of sweet lutenist to sweet singer, when they quiver to his warble as ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... dish which stood all day in the black angle of the grate; his dinner came in from a cookshop; and our old porter's wife went up at the prescribed hour to set his room in order. Finally, a whimsical chance, in which Sterne would have seen predestination, had named the man Gobseck. When I did business for him later, I came to know that he was about seventy-six years old at the time when we became acquainted. He was born about 1740, in some outlying suburb of Antwerp, of a Dutch father and ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... before—and this is the reason of their surprise at my appearance. The children, of course, are equally astonished, but are too frightened to reflect steadily on an European. Both the women and men say it is maktoub, ("predestination") which has brought me amongst them, and they are right. These poor people are very civil to me. In my quality of tabeeb they consult me. The prevailing disease is sore eyes. Two children were brought to me, a girl with a dropsy of a year's standing, and ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... that according to its tenets he was permitted a kind of action that in other men might be reprehensible. He came to the story of Evie last of all, and allowed her to see how dominating a part Fate, or Predestination had played ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... out as far as may be possible such good as a man has had in him since his origin. Let us strike down the bad to the hell that gapes for him. This, we think, or something like this, was Mr. Carlyle's translation of election and predestination into politics and morals.... There is not much pity and no salvation worth speaking of in either body of doctrine; but there is a strange, and what some might regard as a terrible parallelism between ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... these kings thus improved their country, but never themselves? Is this somewhat expensive and ambitious Herr, Friedrich I. buttoned in diamonds, indeed the best that Protestantism can produce, as against Fowlers, Bears, and Red Beards? Much more, Friedrich Wilhelm, orthodox on predestination; most of all, his less orthodox son;—have we, in these, the highest results which Dr. Martin Luther can produce for the present, in the first circles of society? And if not, how is it that the country, having gained so much ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... was destined for something particular; it was his old dream of fortune, which would not be wholly satisfied by the good conditions for all men which he wanted to help to bring about. His fate was no longer in his eyes a grievous and crushing predestination to poverty, which could only be lifted from him by a miracle; he was lord of his own future, and already he was restlessly building ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Prince expresses the pure and still popular Moslem feeling; and yet the learned and experienced Mr Redhouse would confuse this absolute Predestination with Providence. A friend tells me that the idea of absolute Fate in The Nights makes her feel as if the world were a jail. [FN244] In the Book of Sindibad this is the Story of the Sandal-wood Merchant and the Advice of the Blind Old Man. Mr. Clouston (p. 163) quotes a Talmudic joke ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... am an incorrigible," said Ives. "I am opposed to the doctrine of predestination, to the rule of three, gravitation, taxation, and everything of the kind. Life has always seemed to me something like a serial story would be if they printed above each instalment a synopsis of ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... theologian; his vast studies Contest with Manicheans,—their character and teachings Controversy with the Donatists,—their peculiarities Tracts: Unity of the Church and Religious Toleration Contest with the Pelagians: Pelagius and Celestius Principles of Pelagianism Doctrines of Augustine: Grace; Predestination; Sovereignty of God; Servitude of the Will Results of the Pelagian controversy Other writings of Augustine: "The City of God;" Soliloquies; Sermons Death and character Eulogists of Augustine His ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... Pardon me if I speak too much of my wretched affairs. But I'll tell you what I think. To endure this revolting destitution a man must be an Arab. Now, I cannot pretend to be an Arab; I would not adopt their ideals if I could. And yet, alas! I am beginning to believe in predestination, as they do; to believe that our faults and our virtues are distilled beforehand in the silent laboratory of the past. A sad creed, to think of men born to misfortune; to be obliged to consider yourself—how do you say ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... was: what were more salvatory, faith or works? Or another: whether we are saved or condemned by God's predestination or by our free will (libertarian, arbitrarian, Augustinianism, and Pelagianism; Jansenism and Ultramontanism)? Or another: in our moral perfection how much is God's grace operating and how much our human collaboration? Or another: what part worship plays in our ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... Democracy, so-called, all the really good people are in the business of forcing others to their own way of thinking. I must tell you also of a branch of the Presbyterian church which separated from the old church on the question of predestination and infant damnation. Of Baptists, Methodists, and others there are numerous sects, which in England would be frowned upon as various forms of ludicrous non-conformism. De Tocqueville's book, for which my thanks to you, dear grandmama, will preserve ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... and distort the beneficent character of God. Indeed it might have been evident to him before that in looking upon herself as a castaway, Jane's sensitive spirit was gradually lapsing into the gloomy horrors of predestination. But this blindness of the father to such a tendency was very natural in a man to whose eye familiarity with the doctrine had removed its deformity. The old man looked upon her countenance with an ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... united to his Creator. In preparation for this final consummation the poet, as he ascends to the Empyrean, gives a most beautiful epitome of the principal mysteries of religion and of some of the tenets of scholastic philosophy, treating especially the Fall of Man, Predestination, Free Will, the Redemption, the Immortality of the Soul and the theory of Human Knowledge. Allegorically considered, the poem is a veil, under which we see the ideal life of man upon earth, exercising virtue and gaining ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... trick, it pleases the "editor" to depreciate his work in the passage just mentioned. The writer, whoever he was, was fully qualified for the task. The possibility of a young man of narrow intellect—his passion against his brother already excited, and his whole mind given to the theology of predestination—gliding into such ideas as are here described is undoubted; and it is made thoroughly credible to the reader. The story of the pretended Gil Martin, preposterous as it is, is told by the unlucky ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Adherer to the Doctrine of Predestination, yet to the full Assurance of a Providence I never could fail to adhere. Thence came it, that my natural Desire to serve my own native Country prevail'd upon me to quit the Service of another, though its Neighbour and Allie. Events are not always to ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... moral idea, the deepest reverence for all things connected with his religion and a sublime conception of the Unity and Omnipotence of the Deity. Noteworthy too is a proud resignation to the decrees of Fate and Fortune (Kaza wa Kadar), of Destiny and Predestination—a feature which ennobles the low aspect of Al-Islam even in these her days of comparative degeneration and local decay. Hence his moderation in prosperity, his fortitude in adversity, his dignity, his perfect self-dominance and, lastly, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... that God was pleased to send his only begotten son to redeem the world by his death on a cross. A strange conception truly. And while he was thinking these things Paul fell to telling his dogma concerning predestination, and he was anxious that Jesus should digest his reply to Mathias, who had said that predestination conflicted with the doctrine of salvation for all. But Jesus, who was of Mathias' opinion, refrained from expressing himself definitely on the point, preferring to forget Paul, so that he ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... future state; that they have a confused notion of several powers, good and evil, but these are ruled by one supreme being called Holloloo. This account of the religion of Daaga was confirmed by the military chaplain who attended him in his last moments. He also informed me that he believed in predestination;—at least he said that Holloloo, he knew, had ordained that he should come to white man's ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... any sort of an opinion whatever upon the Shorter Catechism was, in his father's eyes, nothing short of impious. But, as the young man was of that class that rush in where angels fear to tread, he had given his views on predestination without any hesitancy and had gone off to the field leaving his father in a very bad humour. Wee Andra himself was particularly happy, for he took an unfilial delight in troubling his paternal relative. At heart he was respectful ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... great-great-great-grandmother looked at her with horror. "You have been brought up as one of the heathen," said she. Then she produced a small book, and Letitia was bidden to seat herself upon a stool and learn the doctrine of predestination ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... read as deeply as you may. Some people think otherwise; that they can get the peace of God by understanding. If they could but understand more, their minds would be at rest. So they weary themselves with reading, and thinking, and arguing, perhaps trying to understand predestination, election, assurance; perhaps trying to understand which is the true Church. What do they get thereby? Certainly not the peace of God. They certainly do not set their minds at rest. They cannot. Books cannot give a live ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... together with his fellowship. He continued in his college, till he was qualified, by his years of residence, for the degree of bachelor of divinity, which he attempted to take in 1641, but was denied his grace [57], for disputing concerning predestination, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... likewise dispute several circumstances about the resurrection of the dead, the nature of our bodies after the resurrection, and in what manner they shall be united to our souls. They also attack one another "very weakly with great vigour," about predestination. And it is certainly true, (for Bishop Taylor and Mr. Whiston the Socinian say so,) that all churches in prosperity alter their doctrines every age, and are neither satisfied with themselves, nor their own confessions; neither ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... writing, but taught by word of mouth. Besides, it is clear that Mohammedanism is an offshoot of Zoroastrianism and Christianity. Like these, it teaches the Unity of the Whole, the divine Presence in all creatures and things (Ubiquity), Predestination, which is only one form of Karma, and Resurrection, which expresses one ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... power over us boys. You never talked religion much, but I have seen high fellows come away from being with you as still and quite as one feels when one goes into a church. I can't understand all the hang of predestination, and moral ability, and natural ability, and God's efficiency, and man's agency, which Dr. H. is so engaged about; but I can understand you, you can do ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... alive, was much deformed because of the danger of the mother. After it had been washed likewise from the original sin in which all we children of Adam are born, they both died, to the joy and wonder of that minister at seeing the depth of the divine decrees in regard to the predestination of those souls. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... volumes. Above these, grouped along in friendly, social rows, were books of all sorts, sizes, and bindings, the titles of which I had read so often that I knew them by heart. There were Bell's Sermons, Bonnett's Inquiries, Bogue's Essays, Toplady on Predestination, Boston's Fourfold State, Law's Serious Call, and other works of that kind. These I looked over wistfully, day after day, without even a hope of getting something interesting out of them. The thought that father could read and understand things like these filled ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... the way La Salle conversed with me of matters of piety, grace, and predestination. He expatiated upon all his obligations to God, for having saved him from so many dangers during the last twenty years that he had traversed America. He seemed to me to be peculiarly penetrated with a grateful sense of God's kindness to him. Suddenly I saw him ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... didst with Pitfall and with Gin Beset the Road I was to wander in, Thou wilt not with Predestination round Enmesh me, and impute my Fall ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and every time she felt it she thought regretfully of Lloyd Archer. She had hoped he would make a confession of faith this communion, but he had not come before the session at all. She knew he had doubts concerning close communion, and she had heard him say that certain complications of predestination and free will did not appear reasonable to him. Marg'et Ann thought it very daring of him to exact reasonableness of those in spiritual high places. She would as soon have thought of criticising the Creator ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... the year 1600 or 1650 fared worse. They never heard anything but "religion." Their heads were filled with "predestination," "transubstantition," "free will," and a hundred other queer words, expressing obscure points of "the true faith," whether Catholic or Protestant. According to the desire of their parents they were baptised Catholics or Lutherans or Calvinists or Zwinglians or ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... operation! You have gone through too much for that. But now cheer up, Alice, it will all come right. Some of these days you will see how our dear Lord and His Holy Mother love you. Why, don't you know, you little goose, that these are signs of your predestination? Don't you remember all that you have learned about the saints, and how they prayed to ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... evident that some unexplained circumstances had called the attention of Franklin very earnestly to the subject of religion. He wrote very much upon that theme, and published a new version of the Lord's Prayer, and a lecture upon Providence and Predestination. He, however, admits that he very seldom attended ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... as firmly in predestination as if he had been, like me, a Calvinist, for nineteen years. I do not know how he learnt the affair of the Duc du Maine; he has always kept it a great secret. But what appears the most singular to me is that he does not hate his brother-in-law, who has endeavoured ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Revolution; about Constituents who do not constitute. The High Heavens allow it and smile, and it is well for the atoms that they think themselves free American representatives, that they do not feel the string of predestination around their ankles. The senatorial twenty, from their high carved seats, see the strings and smile, too; yes, and see their own strings, and smile. Wisdom does not wish for flight. "The people" having changed the constitution, the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... forth, whether by the creation, or the relation of things in such an order. And we have seen, that things singly are good, and together very good, in Thy Word, in Thy Only-Begotten, both heaven and earth, the Head and the body of the Church, in Thy predestination before all times, without morning and evening. But when Thou begannest to execute in time the things predestinated, to the end Thou mightest reveal hidden things, and rectify our disorders; for our sins hung over us, and we had sunk into the dark deep; ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... out. Whenever this happened, was it not his duty to endeavor to repair the damage? Were not penances imposed on him in the confessional for every default? Luther is said to have been led into still deeper gloom by his study of the doctrine of predestination. True, but even this study did not lead Luther off into fatalism. It terrified him, because he studied that profound doctrine without a true perception of divine grace and the meaning of the Redeemer's work. However, ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... deal and rained in a proportion; my native air was more unkind than man's ingratitude, and I must consent to pass a good deal of my time between four walls in a house lugubriously known as the Late Miss M^cGregor's Cottage. And now admire the finger of predestination. There was a schoolboy in the Late Miss M^cGregor's Cottage, home from the holidays, and much in want of "something craggy to break his mind upon." He had no thought of literature; it was the art of Raphael that received his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be gourmands by predestination, there are also gourmands by profession. There are four classes of these: Financiers, men of letters, ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... the adoption of children by Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of His will.' Soon after, we hear that 'He hath revealed to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself'; and that our predestination to an inheritance in Christ is 'according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... in the mouth, is an Avatar of Persecution in the heart. Men who believe in eternal damnation and a literal sea of fire and brimstone, incur the certainty of it, according to their creed, on the slightest temptation of appetite or passion. Predestination insists on the necessity of good works. In Masonry, at the least now of passion, one speaks ill of another behind his back; and so far from the "Brotherhood" of Blue Masonry being real, and the solemn pledges contained in ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... of election and predestination may be very convenient for Mrs. Wappinger, but I should think you might have reasons for not caring to ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... strongly interwoven both with philosophy and theology had, in all ages, thrown every school and every church into such inextricable doubt and perplexity. The first reformers in England, as in other European countries, had embraced the most rigid tenets of predestination and absolute decrees, and had composed upon that, system all the articles of their religious creed. But these principles having met with opposition from Arminius and his sectaries, the controversy was soon ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... Church call gluttony a mortal sin? Why should fasting occupy a place in the disciplines of religion? What is the meaning of Luther's advice to the young clergyman who came to him, perplexed with the difficulties of predestination and election, if it be not that, in virtue of its action upon the brain, when wisely applied, there is moral and religious virtue even in a hydro-carbon? To use the old language, food and drink are creatures of God, and have therefore a spiritual ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the patience,—all these were at once the marks of blows and the spoils of victory received from the Enemy. The wilderness, calm, ruthless, just, terrible, waited in the shadow of the forest, seeking no combat, avoiding none, conquering with a lofty air of predestination, yielding superbly as though the moment's victory for which a man had strained the fibres of his soul were, after all, a little, unimportant thing; never weary, never exultant, dispassionate, inevitable, mighty, whose emotions were silence, whose speech was ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... to introduce the question concerning the secret predestination of God, because we are not considering what might or might not happen, but what the nature of man truly was. Adam, therefore, might have stood if he chose, since it was only by his own will that he fell; but ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... 'turned into a curse' to him. Who, possessed by such ideas, could lead a life of love and service to God or man? They must in a measure realize themselves. 'The worst of it is, I do believe,' he said. I, like all connected with him, was broken against the rock of predestination."] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... usurped by those to whom it did not belong,—an error which is continually repeating itself, and which shows itself in a fearful form, especially in the case of those who believe in the doctrine of Predestination. We need, for example, refer only to Cromwell, who, in the hour of death, silenced, by this false consolation, all the accusations of his [Pg 385] conscience. [Greek: Peritome men gar hophelei], says the Apostle, in Rom. ii. 25, [Greek: ean nomon prasses. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... whole strength of the intellects which had long been engaged in the conflict for national and religious liberty, was now directed to metaphysical theology, and wasted upon interminable disputes about predestination and grace. Barneveldt enrolled himself among the partisans of Arminius; ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... We are as believers of Christ united to Him, One with Him and therefore we possess every spiritual blessing the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is capable of giving. Then follows the great facts connected with our redemption in Christ. Here we find election, predestination, adoption, or putting into the Son-place, Redemption, the source of redemption as well as the prize ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... I have come, as I have told Asa Gray, is that such a question, as is touched on in this note, is beyond the human intellect, like "predestination and free will," or ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... Mounce, Tony's governor and bear-leader, was just putting a hand to the third clause of the fourth part of a sermon on Free-Will and Predestination as the Hepzibah B.'s anchor rattled overboard. Tony, in his haste to be ashore, would have made one plunge with the anchor; but the Reverend Ozias, on being roused from his lucubrations, earnestly ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature. On the other hand, an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of free will and predestination. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... thy valour can make the attainment thereto possible to thee." Rejoined Zayn al-Asnam, "Know, O Mubarak, that opulence is gained only by blood; nor cometh aught upon mankind save by determination and predestination of the Creator (be He glorified and magnified!); so look to thine own stoutness of heart and take thou no thought of me." Thereupon Mubarak forthright bade his slaves get them ready for wayfare; so they obeyed his bidding in all things and mounted horse and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Love has reasons that reason does not understand; and if Cornelia is Hyde's by predestination, as well as by choice, vainly we shall worry and fret; all our opposition will come to nothing. Give Cornelia this interval, and tithe it not; in a few days Arenta will have gone away; and as for ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... some, from unconquerable indolence of body; in others, from the intoxication produced by the fumes of tobacco and of opium; but in most of my brother Turks it arose from the confidence which the belief in predestination inspired. When a bullet killed one of their companions, they only observed, scarcely taking the pipes from their mouths, 'Our hour is not yet come: it is not the will of Mahomet that ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... of the Deity; that with Him there is no succession of time nor of ideas; that, therefore, the relative terms past, present, and future, as used among men, cannot, with strict propriety, be applied to Deity. I believe in the doctrines of foreknowledge and predestination, as thus expounded. I do not believe in those doctrines as imposing any fatality or necessity on men's actions, or any way infringing ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... names can be blotted out of the book. The metaphor has often been pressed into the service of a doctrine of unconditional and irreversible predestination. But rightly looked at, it points in the opposite direction. Remember Moses's agonised cry, 'Blot me out of Thy book'; and the Divine answer, 'Him that sinneth against Me, his name will I blot out of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Augustine) advanced the question to the Theological stage, by connecting it with the great doctrines of Original Sin and Predestination; in which stage it shared all the speculative difficulties attaching to these doctrines. The Theological world, however, has always been divided between Free-will and Necessity; and probably the weightiest names are to be found among the Necessitarians. No man ever brought ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... Predestinarian." "Philosophical Necessity and Predestination One Thing and The Same." "Whatever is not, is." "Whatever ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... sentiment, the preoccupation with sin and predestination; but read the much more terrible words of Senancour, expressive of the Catholic, not the Protestant, despair, when he makes his Obermann say, "L'homme est perissable. Il se peut; mais perissons en resistant, et, si ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... Revolution was impending in Scotland, Knox was living at Geneva. He may have been engaged on his "Answer" to the "blasphemous cavillations" of an Anabaptist, his treatise on Predestination. Laing thought that this work was "chiefly written" at Dieppe, in February-April 1559, but as it contains more than 450 pages it is probably a work of longer time than two months. In November 1559 the English at Geneva ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang |
