"Laity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... His Majesty pardons freely the cardinals, bishops, priests, and laity who have incurred his disgrace in consequence ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of the dead? There is none that more harmonises with the best feelings of our nature; and yet of all the dogmas rejected by ecclesiastical reforms, I know of none which has less pretensions to Scriptural authority or has been more mischievous, corrupting alike the priesthood and the laity, than that which makes the masses and prayers incident to the commemoration of the dead propitiatory for sins ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... giving away sugared cakes and sweetmeats on the twenty-fifth day of Tybi, our twentieth of January, was then changed to be kept fourteen days earlier, and it still marks the Feast of Epiphany or Twelfth-night. The division of the people into clergy and laity, which was unknown to Greeks and Romans, was introduced into Christianity in the fourth century by the Egyptians. While the rest of Christendom were clothed in woollen, linen, the common dress of the Egyptians, was universally adopted by the clergy as more ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... witchcraft, because they came gradually to look upon it as absurd; and that this new tone of thought appeared, first of all, in those who were least subject to theological influences, and soon spread through the educated laity, and, last of all, took possession ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... with the home and the school, but the tendency has been to turn the religious education of children over to the school of the church. The minister, priest, or rabbi is the chief teacher of faith and duty, but in the Sunday-school the laity also has found instruction of the young people to be one of its functions. Instruction by both of these is supplemented by schools of a distinctly religious type and by a religious press. As long as society at large does not undertake to perform this function of religious education, the church ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... commission of the peace. This Act, however, was passed at a time when it was of the highest importance to the Crown to wrench from the hands of the clergy the power of administering justice in civil cases, which had, from the ignorance of the laity, been enjoyed by them almost exclusively. During the whole reign of James VI., as is well known to the Reverend Court, such a jealousy subsisted betwixt the Church and the State, that those who were at ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... I differ from you. I believe there is no work like happy work,—work done by a heart at leisure from itself; but of course we clergy and laity must take what heaven sends us.' And then he held out his hands to me, and I suppose he saw how unhappy ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... judex must confirm the choice of the community in order to render it valid.[82] All disputes also between bishops and their clergy, between members of the body of clergy, and between these and members of the laity, were settled by the royal authority;[83] and what is most significant, there was a universal and freely used right of appeal for the clergy or laity from the decision of a bishop to the person of the king, who seems to have exhibited no hesitation in modifying or ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... investigation in exegetical matters is cut off. Theological literature is entirely confined to synodal orations and some ascetic writings. The spirit of the present age in Russia is strictly orthodox; and the monocracy of the Greek Church is the great object for which clergy and laity exert themselves; especially in the Baltic provinces. Among sermons, those of Innocenz, vicar of the metropolitan ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... is simply "those in white clothes." This may mean "the laity," or the "upasakas;" but it is better to take the characters in their common Chinese acceptation, as meaning "commoners," "men who have no rank." See in Williams' ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... till 1203, though deserted by the Welsh clergy. "The laity of Wales," he said, "stood by me; but of the clergy whose battle I was fighting, scarce one." He was proclaimed as a rebel, and had some narrow escapes of imprisonment or worse—escapes which he owed to his ready wit and which he delights to ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... architecture advanced with rapid strides. No longer hampered by monastic restrictions, it called into its service the laity, whose guilds of masons and builders carried from one diocese to another their constantly increasing stores of constructive knowledge. By a wise division of labor, each man wrought only such parts ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... the Roman Empire, it is impossible to overlook the evil that the Christians, so admirable when in the desert, did to the State when they were in power. "When I think," said Montesquieu, "of the profound ignorance into which the Greek clergy plunged the laity, I am obliged to compare them to the Scythians of whom Herodotus speaks, who put out the eyes of their slaves in order that nothing might distract their attention from their work . . . . No affair of State, no peace, no truce, no negotiations, no marriage could be transacted by any ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... ten thousand inhabitants,"[78:1] and for all these there were six ministers. The six soon dribbled away to three, and for ten years these three continued without reinforcement. This extreme feebleness of the clergy, the absence of any vigorous church life among the laity, and the debilitating notion that the power and the right to preach the gospel must be imported from Holland, put the Dutch church at such a disadvantage as to invite aggression. Later English governors ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... large silver flagon. The form of the chalice was entirely changed. As we have noticed, the bowl of the pre-Reformation chalices became smaller and shallower, on account of the gradually introduced practice of refusing the wine to the laity. Now in the year 1562 the size of the bowl was greatly enlarged, and the "Communion cup" took the place of the "Massing chalice." Some poor parishes were obliged to content themselves with pewter vessels. St. Lawrence's Church, Reading, had a curious bridal cup, which was carried before all brides ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... on her in the attitude which he had learnt from plays and poems conveyed to the laity the ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... this art of navigation inclines those who follow it to be desirous of discovering the secrets of this world. It is now forty years[2] that I have been sailing to all those parts of the world which are frequented at present; and I have conversed with many wise and learned men, both clergy and laity, Latins, Greeks, Indians and Moors, and of many other sects and nations. God has been favourable to my inclination, and has given me the spirit of understanding, so that I have become very skilful in navigation, with a competent knowledge in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... in your Country the Laity have so little Honesty, they are not to be trusted with the taking off your Beard unless you see't done:—but here's a Glass, Sir. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... begotten in return was displayed in the epitaph set up over him, describing him as a Nero, as death to the laity, a viper to the clergy, a liar and a drunkard. [1] But malignity of disappointed ambition and repressed vice did not go so far as to caricature his face. The graver had to copy the epitaph given him, but the sculptor reproduced the face ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... treacherously seized upon, made a prisoner, forced to appear bare-footed and bare-headed before his enemies, and compelled to subscribe an abject recantation. This was followed by a severe persecution against the Albigenses; and express orders that the laity should not be permitted to read the sacred scriptures. In the year 1620 also the persecution against the Albigenses was very severe. In 1648 a heavy persecution raged throughout Lithuania and Poland. The cruelty of the Cossacks was so excessive, that the Tartars themselves were ashamed of their ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... mixed audience, to the laity rather than to students, these Lectures are more popular than scholastic in their character. Mr. Marsh alludes to this with something like regret in his Preface. We look upon this as by no means a misfortune. The book will, for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... limitations of such service. There are many clergymen whose experience and opportunities for study fit them for leadership in an attempt to establish systematic training, in the seminaries. A demand from the laity for more experienced direction in church charity would also help to hasten the introduction of regular ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... useless effort to make the crooked straight, and number that which had been weighed in the balances of God, and found for ever wanting. To ignore wilfully facts like these, which were patent all along to the British nation, facts on which the British laity acted, till they finally conquered at the Reformation, and on which they are acting still, and will, probably, act for ever, is not to have any real reverence for the opinions or virtues of our forefathers; and we are not astonished ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... an impertinence upon my part to volunteer even a suggestion—upon such a subject. But, that being the state of opinion among the scholars and the clergy, it is well for the unlearned in Hebrew lore, and for the laity, to avoid entangling themselves in such a vexed question. Happily, Milton leaves us no excuse for doubting what he means, and I shall therefore be safe in speaking of the opinion in question as the ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... But the remedy was a simple one. Every man was "to travail first for his own amendment." Then the bishops and clergy were to agree in their teaching, "which, seeing there is but one truth and verity, they may easily do, calling therein for the grace of God." Then the nobles and laity were to be pious and humble, to read their new Bibles "reverently and humbly ... and in any doubt to resort to the learned or at best the higher powers." "I am very sorry to know and hear how unreverendly that precious jewel, the Word of God, is disputed, rimed, sung, and jangled ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... from somewhere of a procession of priests loudly singing some awe-inspiring chant, the guttural tones of the singers echoing through the aisles. Following the clerical party will come a rabble of nuns, children and ordinary laity, and before you have scarcely had time to think a service has commenced, people are kneeling, and if you do not make haste towards the doors a priest will probably succeed in reaching you with a collecting ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... members of Christ. The Church—and especially the Church of England—is in vital need of reform. The recently launched "Life and Liberty" Movement is a hopeful sign of the determination of a certain number of clergy and laity that reform shall be secured. In particular it is essential that the Church should recover freedom of self-government in spiritual things, and liberty to adapt her machinery and organization to changing needs, by the readjustment of her relation ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... in defiance of red tape and its censures. But in the days when Chaucer and the generation with which he grew up were young, the ardour of foreign conquest had not yet died out in the land, and clergy and laity cheerfully co-operated in bearing the burdens which military glory has at all times brought with it for a civilised people. The high spirit of the English nation, at a time when the decline in its fortunes was already near at hand (1366), is evident from the answer given to the application ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... imitated in the design. The chancel was, as in most of the new churches built at this time, only deep enough for the sanctuary, as surpliced choirs had not been thought possible in villages, and so many old chancels had been invaded by the laity that it was an ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... desires to increase its numbers to profess the Roman Catholic religion. The high birth-rates are all in unprogressive Catholic populations. When a Catholic people begins to be educated, the priests apparently lose their influence upon the habits of the laity, and a rapid decline in the births at once sets in. The most advanced countries which did not accept the Reformation, France and Belgium, are precisely those in which parental prudence has been carried almost to excess. ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... remarkable events which occurred in the course of this year, was the secession of a considerable number of the ministers and laity of the established church of Scotland from that body. This secession arose out of a controversy which had been raised upon the limits of ecclesiastical and civil jurisdiction, and the agitation which had been produced in tire minds of the non-intrusion party since the adverse decision of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... worst, I gave a copy of it to a friend who was fond of such things, and told him that I could not guess who was the author of it, but that I thought it pretty clever. With a certain description of the clergy as well as the laity, it met with a roar ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... court and the clergy is made up amicably, both parties have yielded something; the king being afraid of losing more of his soul, and the clergy more of their revenue. Those gentlemen are very skillful in making the most of the vices and the weaknesses of the laity. I hope you have read and informed yourself fully of everything relative to that affair; it is a very important question, in which the priesthood of every country in Europe is highly concerned. If you would be thoroughly convinced that their tithes are of divine institution, and their property ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... usages, of the use of the surplice, the sign of the cross in baptism, the gift of the ring in marriage, the posture of kneeling at the Lord's Supper, was shared by a large number of the clergy and laity alike. At the opening of Elizabeth's reign almost all the higher churchmen but Parker were opposed to them, and a motion for their abolition in Convocation was lost but by a single vote."—J. R. Green, Short History of the English ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... shooting-coat, his thick shoes, his wide-awake hat stuck under one arm, and his stick under the other, while he holds his opera-glass to his eyes. How he shuffles about to get the best point of sight, quite indifferent as to clergy or laity! All that bell-ringing, incense-flinging, and breast-striking is nothing to him: he has paid dearly to be brought thither; he has paid the guide who is kneeling a little behind him; he is going to pay the sacristan who ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... simply because we lawyers, through endless practice, arrange the issue so much more easily, conceive its history better and know what to exclude and what, with some degree of certainty, to retain. In consequence we often forget our powers and present the unskilled laity, even when persons of education, too much of the material. Then it must be considered that most witnesses are uneducated, that we can not actually descend to their level, and their unhappiness under a flood of strange material we can grasp only with ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... humbled. Could they have done better than the laity? Nay, even the monkish lords of Saint Claude asked for a layman, honest Boguet, to sit in judgment on their own people, who were much given to witchcraft. In that sorry Jura, a poor land of firs and scanty pasturage, the serf in his despair yielded ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... literature are ultimately only parts of one indivisible entity: Philology—though the fact often escapes us. "The most effective work," said Gildersleeve,[91] "is done by those who see all in the one as well as one in the all." And strange as it appears to the laity, a linguistic fact may convey a universal lesson. I hesitate to generalize, but I believe most of our colleges need to emphasize the language side ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... presence; 2d, celibacy; 3d, monastic vows; 4th, low mass; 5th, auricular confession; 6th, withholding the cup from the laity. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... occupied by lawyers once: but the laity have long since been admitted into its precincts, and I do not know that any of the principal legal firms have their chambers here. The offices of the Polwheedle and Tredyddlum Copper Mines occupy one set of the ground-floor ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... complain that the prejudices of the people were needlessly violated, that opinions should have been allowed to be free, and the reform of religion have been left to be accomplished by reason. Yet, however cruel was the Six Articles bill, the governing classes even among the laity were unanimous in its favor. The King was not converted by a sudden miracle; he believed the traditions in which he had been trained; his eyes, like the eyes of others, opened but slowly; and unquestionably, had he conquered for himself in their fulness the modern principles of toleration, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... required of the priests a double degree of parity, in comparison of that required of the people, of which he gives several instances immediately. It was for certain the case also among the first Christians, of the clergy, in comparison of the laity, as the Apostolical Constitutions and Canons every where ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... At the Court, in the drawing-rooms of Paris, and much more in the provinces, by newspapers, pamphlets, and conversation, and in the daily conduct of their private lives, the nobles and the citizens, the clergy and the laity, the emigrants and the purchasers of national property, allowed their animosities, their ill humour, their dreams of hope and fear, to exhibit themselves without disguise. This was nothing more than the natural and inevitable consequence of the extreme novelty of the ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... now familiar, into various terrible shapes and is practically the same as the spouse of Siva, celebrated in the Tantras under countless names. Twenty-one Taras are often enumerated in a list said to be well known even to the laity[1044] and there are others. Among them are (a) the Green Tara, the commonest form in Tibet. (b) The White Tara, much worshipped by Mongols and supposed to be incarnate in the Tsar of Russia, (c) Bhrikuti, a dark blue, angry, frowning form, (d) ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... some of them began to don clothing of a more sober hue than was fashionable at the time. Clerical vestments were developed from two pieces of ancient Roman dress—the tunic and the toga. [4] Thus the clergy were gradually separated from the people, or laity, by differences in dress, by their celibate lives, and by their abstention ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... all worldly elements. We are in the presence of Christ's agony, relieved and tempered by the sunlight of those beauteous female faces. All is solemn here, still as the convent, pure as the meditations of a novice. We pass the septum, and find ourselves in the outer church appropriated to the laity. Above the high-altar the whole wall is covered with Luini's loveliest work, in excellent light and far from ill preserved. The space divides into eight compartments. A Pieta, an Assumption, Saints and Founders ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... state of affairs, as I anticipated, was felt immediately. The Laity, who must always form the basis of a successful meeting, now came forward and took hold of the work. On Saturday night the Spirit fell on the people in great power. Before the conclusion of the sermon it was manifest that there would ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... expected, whether as composer, as organist, or as administrator, to do his best according to his lights: it was his accepted business, as presumably knowing more about the matter than the artistic laity, to lead their taste, not to follow. Then came the reign of men like Dykes and Stainer and Gounod, whose normal attitude involved the sacrifice by the musician of some of his musicianship in the supposed interests ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... respectable post of much trust. His father was, as Ursula Tetzel had said in the school, a luteplayer; but he had long been held the head and chief of teachers of the noble art of music, and was so greatly respected by the clergy and laity that he was made master and leader of the church choir, and even in the houses of the city nobles his teaching of the lute and of singing was deemed the best. He was a right well-disposed and cheerful old man, of a rare good heart and temper, and of wondrous good devices. When ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the laity to drive conviction home upon the clergy, and prove to them that pretence has its penalty, and to bring to the mourners' bench that trinity of offenders, somewhat ironically designated as the Three Learned Professions, and ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... and his clergy departed to the priory, but the greater number of the laity remained for the evening banquet at the hall, served with all the magnificence for which the Normans were so renowned, while the prior and his brethren entertained the ecclesiastics at ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... young, to preach and instruct the people. Dacian, a most bloody persecutor, was then governor of Spain. The emperors Dioclesian and Maximian published their second and third bloody edicts against the Christian clergy in the year 303, which in the following year were put in force against the laity. It seems to have been before these last that Dacian put to death eighteen martyrs at Saragossa, who are mentioned by Prudentius, and in the Roman Martyrology, January the 16th, and that he apprehended ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... of making friends again. I need not tell you that a jail could not go on in which the governor and the chaplain did not pull together. The fact is, Mr. Jones, the clergy, of late, have been assuming a little too much, and that has made the laity a little jealous. Now, although you are a clergyman, you are her majesty's servant so long as you are here, and must co-operate with the general system of the jail. Come, sir, you are younger than I am; let me give you ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... differs materially before the law from voluntary religious bodies; that certain privileges, such as the right to collect tithes, secured to it by law, beget corresponding obligations towards the laity. One obligation is to give ecclesiastical sepulchre to its members. The proceedings against Guibord had been legally insufficient to deprive him of this right; he had not been excommunicated personally and by name, but merely ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... denomination."—"Now," says Sir Edward Coke, "observe the conclusion of this tragedy. In that very parliament, when the great and opulent priory of St. John of Jerusalem was given to the king, and which was the last monastery seized on, he demanded a fresh subsidy of the clergy and laity: he did the same again within two years; and again three years after; and since the dissolution exacted great loans, and against law obtained them."—Life of Reginald Pole; vol. i., p. 247-9: edit. 1767, 8vo. Coke's ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... sharp, ready, cool, never-rusting brazen tongues in each head, and an hundred garrulous, loud, unceasing voices from each tongue, they could not recount, or narrate, or enumerate, or tell what all the Gaedhil suffered in common—both men and women, laity and clergy, old and young, noble and ignoble—of hardship, and of injury, and of oppression, in every house, from these valiant, wrathful, purely pagan people. Even though great were this cruelty, oppression, and tyranny, though numerous were the oft-victorious clans ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... course, in the front. A courteous young gentleman, to whom I had been accredited at the beginning of the day—all guests were so attended—explained to me that, as this was the national as opposed to the religious ceremony, the Vladika, who is the official representative of the laity, took command here. The ecclesiastics were put prominently forward, simply out of courtesy, in obedience to the wish of the people, by whom they were all ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... owing implicit obedience to the elder. Every part of the extensive territory over which their communities were scattered was visited at least once a year. Pastors, unless aged, remained no longer than three years in one place. While supported in part by the laity, they were compelled to engage in manual labor to such an extent as to interfere much with their spiritual office and preclude the study that was desirable. The most objectionable feature in their practice was that they did not themselves ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... to Trinity College, Dublin? Only a very few do, although the education is said to be quite as good as at either of the great English Universities. A far tighter hold is kept, however, on the Roman Catholic laity in Ireland than in England. It always surprises English people to learn that, in Ireland, Roman Catholics are not allowed to enter Protestant churches to attend either funerals or weddings. Nor do I think there is much probability ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... at this day, in the country, the baker who prepares the sacramental wafer, must be appointed and authorized to do it by the Catholic bishop of the district, as appears by the advertisement inserted in that curious book, published annually, The Catholic Laity's Directory. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... the clergy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries supported both in practice and theory the Witchcraft Delusion, but when we find the ablest minds of the laity bursting into print with a vehement defense of this belief, it is difficult for us, in the present day, to conceive of such folly. And yet, today, we have able minds defending a precept of which the Witchcraft ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... little else than democracies with a single head, ruling through one man, one representative, instead of an assembly of representatives. And if Priesthoods still govern, they now come before the laity to prove, by stress of argument, that they ought to govern. They are obliged to evoke the very reason which they are bent ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... forty-five pages are devoted to a hasty sketch of the basilica. For five hundred years enormous wealth and fanatical piety have worked together and in rivalry to beautify this spot. The boundless riches of the Church and the boundless superstition of the laity have left their traces here in every generation in forms of magnificence and beauty. Each of the chapels—and there are twenty-one of them—is a separate masterpiece in its way. The finest are those of Santiago and St. Ildefonso,—the former built by the famous Constable Alvaro de ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... was easy-going and loved pleasure for its own sake. He had fought and starved, and now for the jingle of the guinea in his pocket and the junkets of the gay! The prodigality of these creative beings is not fully understood by the laity, else they would forgive more readily the transgressions. Besides, the harbor of family ties is a man's moral bulwark; and Warrington drifted hither and thither with no ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... is life—and fruit—there is hope. When this truth is realised by the laity nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand professors of the healing art will be obliged to abandon their profession and take ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel
... hand that established the universe and tapestried it with morning and evening, and if its gates and archways, its altar, columns, and courts be given in trust to chosen stewards as a divine priesthood, then the highest problem of being is not a human problem, and the mind of the laity has nothing more important to do than to play with the flowers of gallant love and heroism. Such was the feeling, perhaps the unconscious reasoning, of the founders of modern literature, as they began their labors in the alcoves of that church architecture which covered Christendom, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... I laughed outright; but it was as much the fashion for gentlemen of the cloth to affect a mighty solemnity in those days as it was for the laity to let out an oath at every other word, and the young divine only ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... D.) that the first Christian catechetical school was established at Alexandria, in accord with Christian requirements. Such schools soon became numerous and efficient, and were under the superintendence of the Bishops. The priests, as well as the laity, were educated in them. At the end of the fourth century they had entirely superseded the schools of the grammaticus, when ancient ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... the better sort of Saxons, both clergy and laity, got into the habit of visiting Rome; while Rome, in her turn, sent emissaries to England. Thus, while the one insensibly imbibed new knowledge as well as devotion from the great centre, the other brought ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... ground (as a more secrett thing), vailed with a matt, sitts their Okeus, an image ill-favouredly carved, all black dressed, with chaynes of perle, the presentment and figure of that god (say the priests unto the laity, and who religiously believe what the priests saie) which doth them all the harme they suffer, be yt in their bodies or goods, within doores or abroad; and true yt is many of them are divers tymes (especyally offendors) shrewdly scratched as they walke alone ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... is a very dangerous book, if read by the laity, without the proper interpretation of those deputed by Holy Church to explain its meaning," emphatically ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... says nothing about two causes which undoubtedly contributed to degrade the Church in the eyes of the laity: its close association with party politics, and the spread of latitudinarianism, a conspicuous epoch in which was marked some twenty-six years later ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... for the self-glorification of the priests of any art, but for the enjoyment of priests and laity alike. He is the best art-priest who brings most beauty most home to the hearts of most men. If any one tells an artist that part of what he has brought home is not his but another's, "Yea, let him take all," should be his answer. He should know no self in the matter. ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... provided religious teaching in the last half hour of school and, where numbers warranted, a teacher of the same faith as the pupils. The compromise was violently denounced by the Roman Catholic hierarchy but, except in two cities, where parochial schools were set up, it was accepted by the laity. ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... teaching, if not all, was founded upon the still-prevailing systems of the Kabbalistae and philosophers. There were grades observed in the orders of ministry. The diaconate, the {72} presbyter, priest or elder, and the [Greek: episkopos] or bishop. So there were three grades of the laity—catechumens, (not yet baptized,) baptized persons, and "the faithful." The policy of the apostles (who, when they were taught to be harmless, were to be wise) adapted itself to the then existing state ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... is not well fitted for self-prescription by the laity, and the medical profession is not accountable for such administration, or for the enormous evils ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... triumph far greater and wider. Everywhere among the leading modern nations the same general tendency is seen. During the quarter-century just past the control of public instruction, not only in America but in the leading nations of Europe, has passed more and more from the clergy to the laity. Not only are the presidents of the larger universities in the United States, with but one or two exceptions, laymen, but the same thing is seen in the old European strongholds of metaphysical theology. At my first visit to Oxford and Cambridge, forty years ago, they were entirely ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Catechism is truly the Bible of the laity (or common people), wherein is contained the entire doctrine necessary to be known by every Christian for salvation. Here we have first the Ten Commandments of God, the doctrine of doctrines, by which the will of God is known, what God would have us to do and what ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... state may come about; nothing will so advance it as greater knowledge of spiritual pathology on our own part. For this, three things are necessary; firstly, absolute freedom in experiment for us the clergy; secondly, absolute knowledge of what the laity think and do, and of what thoughts and actions result in what spiritual conditions; and thirdly, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... this country. But it did not meet with the same easy reception in England, where a mild and rational system of laws had been long established, as it did upon the continent; and, though the monkish clergy (devoted to the will of a foreign primate) received it with eagerness and zeal, yet the laity who were more interested to preserve the old constitution, and had already severely felt the effect of many Norman innovations, continued wedded to the use of the common law. King Stephen immediately published ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... of them the holy table, facing the congregation. The cancelli, the lattice or bar, which in the civil tribunal had divided the court from the litigants and the public, now served to separate clergy and laity. This arrangement still survives in some of the ancient churches of Rome; it has been revived in many Protestant places of worship. It symbolized principally an official distinction; but with the theocratizing of the empire in the East and its decay in the West ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... be found fault with. Every house in Lhasa is taxed at this time, and the slightest offence is punished with unsparing rigour by fines. This severity of the Jalno drives all working classes out of the city till the twenty-three days are over. But if the laity go out, the clergy come in. All the Buddhist monasteries of the country for miles round about open their gates and disgorge their inmates. All the roads that lead down into Lhasa from the neighbouring mountains are full ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... many of their Lamas as incarnations of a Buddh, and accordingly worship them as living Gods, although they do not consider them as equal to Sakya, who is the Lama of Lassa. There is among the Lamas no prohibition against the laity from studying any character or any book; but they must have wonderfully degraded the human understanding, when they can induce the people to swallow the belief in the deities living among them. It ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... his Church to avail himself of the divorce laws, marries as freely as the South Dakotan Presbyterians who can change partners with a facility that scandalizes the old world; and were his Church to dare a further step towards Christianity and enjoin celibacy on its laity as well as on its clergy, marriages would still be contracted for the sake of domesticity by perfectly obedient sons and daughters of the Church. One need not further pursue these hypotheses: they are only suggested ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... translator, Mr. Shandy has all along done what he could to make him stick to it—but that here 'twas impossible.) of religious orders, &c. what a carnival did his nose make of it, in those of the laity!—'tis more than my pen, worn to the stump as it is, has power to describe; tho', I acknowledge, (cries Slawkenbergius with more gaiety of thought than I could have expected from him) that there is many a good simile now subsisting in the ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... of the judges, who represented the most respected laity of the community, were bowls of cheese cut into tiny cubes. The spectators consisted of two groups of women, who sat some distance apart in compact masses, the "horns" of their headdresses almost interlocked. Their costumes were marvels of brilliance. They looked like a flock of gorgeous ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... admit the laity, even married, into their company. This fact is certain. There is no doubt that Des Noyers, Secretary of State under Louis XIII., was of this number, or that many others have been so too. These licentiates make the same vow as the Jesuits, as far as their condition ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... different religious ceremonies began. On one side the noise of the drum, and the march of the national guard, indicated that military mass was about to be performed; on the other, the procession of priests, robed and officiating—the elevation of banners—and the sonorous responses of both laity and clergy—put the whole town into agitation, and made every inmate of every mansion thrust his head out of window, to gaze at the passing spectacle. We were among the latter denomination of lookers on, and recognised, with no small gratification, our clerical friends Messieurs ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... congregation with a whole series of writings during this time, and only regretted that he was not entirely at its disposal. Of such writings we mention: Explanation of the Lord's Prayer for the simple Laity (an elaboration of the sermons of 1517); Brief Explanation of the Ten Commandments; Instruction concerning certain Articles, which might be ascribed and imputed to him by his adversaries; Brief Instruction how to Confess; Of Meditation ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... Malaysia, North America, Japan, and scattered Maoris from Hawaii to New Zealand all had religious ceremonies in which the gaining and showing of power over fire was a miracle seen and believed in by priests and laity. Modern saints and quasi-scientists had claims to similar achievements. Dr. Dozous said he saw Bernadette, the seeress of Lourdes, hold her hands in a flame for fifteen minutes without pain or mark, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... of Bishop Elphinstone," said the late Principal Sir William Geddes, "and his age, the choir-screen was intended to partition off the sacred clerus from the non-clerus or laity, and, by the predominance of anthems and songs in the choir-service, to image forth the conception of the blest society in heaven, where there is only praise; but the 'Collegium' which he constituted has, through historical causes, given ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... there is a clear passage through the centre of the nave, called the aisle, signifying the straight and narrow way from the seat of darkness to immortal life. On each side of this aisle are seats for the laity, with room for standing and kneeling. The nave was usually divided from the chancel by an open screen of wood or stone, signifying that although the Christian might have some insight into the mysteries of the priest's office, at the same ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... Henry de Knyghton, a learned monk of that day, said: "This Master John Wiclif hath translated the gospel out of Latin into English, which Christ had intrusted with the clergy and doctors of the Church that they might minister it to the laity and weaker sort, according to the state of the times and the wants of men. But now the gospel is made vulgar and more open to the laity, and even to women who can read, than it used to be to the most learned of ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... of the Goldsmiths' Company, and is now Master of the Guild of Plumbers for the second time. In this capacity he has taken great interest in all matters connected with sanitation and hygiene. He is a leading member of the Roman Catholic laity in England. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... war, then, on the part of Great Britain," rejoined the Abbe, "a gratuitous exertion of generosity? Was there no fear of the wide-wasting spirit of innovation which had gone abroad? Did not the laity tremble for their property, the clergy for their religion, and every loyal heart for the Constitution? Was it not thought necessary to destroy the building which was on fire, ere the conflagration ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... globe, so that the Holy See is in daily, nay hourly communication with every bishop and every local Catholic community; but never has there been a time when so many thousands, nay tens of thousands of Catholic clergy and laity, even from the remotest lands, have actually seen the Vicar of Christ with their own eyes, heard his voice, received his personal benediction. Well may we say to Pius X. as to Leo XIII.: "Lift up thy eyes round about and see; ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... estimation. The reading of them aloud formed part of the stated service of the congregations, and one or other of the passages brought, at the time, under the notice of the auditory, usually constituted the groundwork of the preacher's discourse. Their perusal was recommended to the laity; [447:1] the husband and wife talked of them familiarly as they sat by the domestic hearth; [447:2] and children were accustomed to commit them to memory. [447:3] As many of the disciples could not read, and as the expense of manuscripts ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... acceptable to the other powers of Italy. He established a municipal government for the city of Rome, which had hitherto remained without one; and he created a Council of State for all his dominions, to consist chiefly of the laity, one person being chosen for each Province by the sovereign, out of a list of three, nominated by the provincial authorities. This Council was to sit in Rome, and aid the Government with its advice in putting the various departments in order, in constituting municipalities, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... of this difficulty by the Primate himself prosecuting the obtruder? The Queen hopes that the meeting of the archdeacons with Dr Lushington may do some good; she cannot say that she is pleased with the Archbishop's answer to the laity published in to-day's Times, which leaves them without a remedy if the clergymen persist in Puseyite Rituals! The Queen will return Lord Minto's letter with ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... in a potential voice in all such crises as that supposed. It might also, perhaps, be designed obliquely to intimate, that, 'whatever the clergy and the theologians of different parties might wish to realize, it was, after all, the powerful and independent class of the laity who were the "mastermen," and would not succumb to any spiritual guides whatever, even though called by the specious names of Wisemen and Newmen. The mere singularity of the names alone ought to decide the point. And what further confirms our view is, that it is impossible ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... bishops complained of the diminution of their incomes and the circumscription of their sees; the abbots and monks had not only lost power and income, but had received in exchange rigid censors of their morals. Noble and simple, laity and clergy, united against the common foe, and while all singly struggled for some petty private interest, the cry appeared to come from the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... in philanthropic movements; and, if considered simply as prosperous country-gentlemen, little fault could be found with them. While, however, every commonplace motive pointed so directly towards a career of subserviency to the ruling class among the laity, it could not be expected that they should take a lofty view of their profession. The Anglican clergy were not like the Irish priesthood, in close sympathy with the peasantry, or like the Scottish ministers, the organs of strong convictions spreading through the great mass ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... to do in order to please God, beyond living a good life, is false service" False service is the false subordination of the pure faith of reason to the statutory faith, by which the attainment of the goal of religious development is hindered and the laity are brought into dangerous dependence upon the clergy. Priestcraft, hypocrisy, and fanaticism enter in the train of fetich service. The church-faith is destined little by little to make itself superfluous. It has been necessary as a vehicle, as a means for the introduction and extension of the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... loses ground. Mingled with religion, there is diffused a more secular spirit. The nations grow to be more distinct from one another. Political relations come to be paramount. The national spirit grows strong,—too strong for outside ecclesiastical control. Within each nation the laity is inclined to put limits to the power and privileges of the clergy. In several of the countries, monarchy in the modern European form gets a firm foothold. The enfranchisement of the towns, the rise of commerce, the influence gained by the legists and by the Roman law, of which they were ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... spread through the apartment, accredited the knight's suspicion that the medicine chiefly consisted of what were then termed distilled waters, a preparation known in the monasteries for some time before that comfortable secret had reached the laity in general. The abbot, neither overawed by the strength nor by the quantity of the potion, took it off with what he himself would have called a feeling of solace and pleasance, and his voice became much more composed; he signified himself as comforted extraordinarily ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... society. They were advanced to honours which had been considered hitherto as the peculiar rewards of military virtue. They were entrusted with offices of the highest dignity and most extensive power. Thus, another profession than that of arms came to be introduced among the laity, and was reputed honourable. The functions of civil life were attended to. The talents requisite for discharging them were cultivated. A new road was opened to wealth and eminence. The arts and virtues of peace were placed in their proper rank, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... told so by some of their bishops in their pastoral letters, particularly by one[3] among them of great merit and distinction, who yet, in his own practice, hath all his lifetime taken a course directly contrary. But I am deceived, if an awkward shame and fear of ill usage from the laity, have not a greater share in this mistaken conduct, than their own inclinations: However, if the outward profession of religion and virtue, were once in practice and countenance at court, as well as among all men in office, or who have any ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... of the funeral train at Caen, it was met by Gislebert, bishop of Evreux, then abbot of St. Stephen's, at the head of his monks, attended by a numerous throng of clergy and laity; but scarcely had the bier been brought within the gates, when the report was spread that a dreadful fire had broken out in another part of the town, and the duke's remains were a second time deserted. The monks alone remained; and, fearful and resolute, they bore their founder "with candle, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... to speak of you. You must have thought me cantankerous, and so I have been sometimes, but always by conviction and on principle. I could not countenance the fashionable morality that is corrupting the manhood of the laity, or endure the toleration that is making the clergy thoroughly wicked; I could not without a pang see you cater to the world's appetites or be drawn into its gaieties and frivolities; and it was agony to me to fear that a girl of your pure if passionate nature might perhaps fall a victim to a gamester ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... inward demands. The vice of the imagination is its inevitable exaggeration. It is our own weakness and dulness that we try to hide from ourselves by this partiality. Therefore it was said that the images were the Bible of the laity. Bishop Durandus already in the thirteenth century declared that it is only where the truth is not yet revealed that this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... gross novels which Chaucer, Dunbar, Boccacio, Bandello, and others, composed upon the bad morals of the clergy. It seems as if the churchmen in both instances had endeavoured to compromise with the laity, and allowed them occasionally to gratify their coarse humour by indecent satire, provided they would abstain from any grave question concerning the foundation of the doctrines on which was erected such an ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... Ridicule, to keep in Countenance Vice and Irreligion, and with a petulant and unrestrain'd Liberty, to deride the Principles and Practices of the wisest and best of Men. The Conversation of ingenious Libertines generally turns upon Reveal'd Religion and the venerable Teachers of it; or on those of the Laity, who seem most sincere in the Belief of Christianity, and express the greatest Conformity in their Actions to the Precepts of it. Nothing gives so high a Seasoning to their Raillery, and more improves the Taste of their Jests, than some ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... point, you see, Pascal is the countryman of Rabelais and Montaigne, smiling with the fine malice of the one, laughing outright with the gaiety of the other, all the world joining in the laugh—well, at the silliness of the clergy, who seem indeed not to know their own business. It is we, the laity, he would urge, who are serious, and disinterested, because sincerely interested, in these great questionings. Jalousie de metier, the reader may suspect, has something to do with [66] the Professional leaders on both sides of the controversy; but at the ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... their intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater severities on each other, than they had experienced from the zeal of infidels. During the ages of ignorance which followed the subversion of the Roman empire in the West, the bishops of the Imperial city extended their dominion over the laity as well as clergy of the Latin church. The fabric of superstition which they had erected, and which might long have defied the feeble efforts of reason, was at length assaulted by a crowd of daring fanatics, who from the twelfth to the sixteenth ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... have the highest opinion in the world in your excellent judgement in all matters within the scope of your understanding; but permit me to say, that there must be a wide difference between the established forms of ceremony amongst the laity, and those which regulate the clergy; for, give me leave to observe that I consider the clerical office as equal in point of dignity with the highest rank in the kingdom—provided that a proper humility ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen |
