"Priestcraft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... established on the ruins of the Apostolic faith by the episcopal confederation, which mainly depended on it for its own maintenance. In other words, it is considered by some persons to be a system of priestcraft, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... could the Bishop resist the enthusiasm. In fact, the condition of the Texans touched him on its religious side very keenly. For the fight was quite as much a fight for religious as for political freedom. Never in old Spain itself had priestcraft wielded a greater power than the Roman priesthood in Texas. They hated and feared an emigration of Americans, for they knew them to be men opposed to tyranny of all kinds, men who thought for themselves, and who would not be dictated to by monks and ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... him if there lingers in the depth of his mind any taint of the temptation to serve his own ends, or to exalt himself or his order, by trading on the fears of irrational and credulous humanity. Against such priestcraft as this the true priest must array himself, together with the scientist, the statesman, the physician. Against all personal and priestly domination all lovers of liberty and God must combine. Theirs is the sin of Simon Magus, the sin of Hophni, the sin of Caiaphas; ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... lord, I am not skilled in wit Nor wise in priestcraft, but I know That fear to man is spur and bit To jog and curb his fancies' flow. He fears and loves, for love and awe In mortal souls may well unite To fashion forth the perfect law Where ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... man called a priest, and mysteriously efficacious in his lips, and his alone, you petrify a truth into death and unreality. I have been striving to show that absolution is not a Church figment, invented by priestcraft, but a living, blessed, human power. It is a power delegated to you and to me, and just so far as we exercise it lovingly and wisely, in our lives, and with our lips, we help men away from sin: just so far as we do not exercise ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... and propagation of his theory that Christianity is part of an epoch (or rather an aberration, since it began as recently as 6000BC and is already collapsing) produced by the necessity in which the numerically inferior white races found themselves to impose their domination on the colored races by priestcraft, making a virtue and a popular religion of drudgery and submissiveness in this world not only as a means of achieving saintliness of character but of securing a reward in heaven. Here you have the slave-morality view formulated by a Scotch philosopher ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... and writers, steeped in the rhetoric and the commonplace of ancient Rome, and totally strange to the real duties of government; on the other side the populace of Paris, such as centuries of despotism, privilege, and priestcraft had made it: sanguinary, unjust, vindictive; convulsed since the outbreak of the Revolution with every passion that sways men in the mass; taught no conception of progress but the overthrow of authority, and acquainted with no title to power but that which ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... you in sympathy with the priestcraft that would keep people virtuous through ignorance?" said the minister, laughing. "Alf must learn to do right, knowing all the facts. I don't believe he will shy a stone at a bird this coming year unless it is ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... considering as common to all the natives of India, Hindustanis as well as Hindus, those customs and restrictions which are peculiar to the Hindus alone. Among the latter, as is well known, both the priestcraft of the Brahmins, and the impediments to the marriage of a widow,[20] exist in full force at this day; and it would have been more candid on the part of the Khan, even at the expense of a little of his Moslem pride, to have set his fair opponent right on these points, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... worthy subjects, became more and more annoying, and we daily strengthened ourselves in our aversion from him. He could never have done with degrading religion and the sacred books for the sake of injuring priestcraft, as he called it; and thus produced in me many an unpleasing sensation. But when I now learned, that to weaken the tradition of a Deluge, he had denied all petrified shells, and only admitted them as lusus naturae, he entirely ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... heaven into a doctrine of immortality and deification, prophecy into a learned exegesis and theological science, the bearers of the spirit into clerics, the brethren into laity held in tutelage, miracles and healings into nothing, or into priestcraft, the fervent prayers into a solemn ritual, renunciation of the world into a jealous dominion over the world, the "spirit" ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... coxcomb whom Moliere ridiculed; the schoolmaster remains at best a pedantic child farmer and at worst a flagellomaniac; arbitrations are more dreaded by honest men than lawsuits; the philanthropist is still a parasite on misery as the doctor is on disease; the miracles of priestcraft are none the less fraudulent and mischievous because they are now called scientific experiments and conducted by professors; witchcraft, in the modern form of patent medicines and prophylactic inoculations, is rampant; the landowner who is no longer ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... are no millionaires—and therefore next to no Socialists. As to why there are no millionaires, it is a mystery, and best studied among the mysteries of the Middle Ages. By some of the dark ingenuities of that age of priestcraft a curious thing was discovered—that if you kill every usurer, every forestaller, every adulterater, every user of false weights, every fixer of false boundaries, every land-thief, every water-thief, you afterwards discover by a strange indirect miracle, or disconnected ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... frank but dry, blunt, and he has hitherto been ruder, more ignorant, more fond of quarrel and drinking, more given up to superstition and old things than others; for his land was the home of priestcraft and monkery. You may ever distinguish the national Bavarian by his nervous squat body, small round head, and beer-belly, immediately beneath which the trousers begin; hence the braces or belt is indispensible. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... display a banner because of the truth, but let love always be our flag-staff. Let us be jealous for the truth, but let it be a godly, that is to say, a loving jealousy. When we contend for purity of doctrine and for purity of worship, when we protest against popery and priestcraft, when we resist rationalism and infidelity, when we do battle now for national religion, as we call it, and now for the freedom of the church, let us do it all in love to all men, else we had better not do it at all. If we ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... by the by they degenerate into that appalling subtlety which is their ruling passion gone crooked. And then comes a new revelation and a great simplifying. They want to live face to face with God without a screen of ritual and images and priestcraft. They want to prune life of its foolish fringes and get back to the noble bareness of the desert. Remember, it is always the empty desert and the empty sky that cast their spell over them—these, ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... and Norwegian stateliness." His favourite names are Greek: Cythna, Ianthe, and the like. The ruined cathedral in "Queen Mab"—a poem only in its title romantic—is coupled with the ruined dungeon, in whose courts the children play; both alike "works of faith and slavery," symbols of the priestcraft and kingcraft which Shelley hated, now made harmless by the reign of Reason and Love in a regenerated universe. How different is the feeling which the empty cathedral inspires in Lowell; once thronged with worshippers, now ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... just administration, and a bursting energy which manifested itself in a multitude of ways—in literature, in commerce, in politics, in scientific thought. And all this had come into existence in a nation which had curbed the power of the monarchy, done away with priestcraft, established the liberty of the Press, set its face against every kind of bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and, through the means of free institutions, taken up the task of governing itself. The inference was obvious: in France also, like causes would lead to like results. When he was ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... than he entered into an investigation of the Hebrew tongue, in which he was a connoisseur; and the doctor at the same time attacked the mendicant on the ridiculous maxims of his order, together with the impositions of priestcraft in general, which, he observed, prevailed so much among those who profess the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... up into some ebullition of very low church zeal; there was some talk of an evening lecture, the schools were to be remodelled, certain tracts were actually distributed. But Lord Marney soon stopped all this. "No priestcraft at Marney," said this gentle proprietor ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... indiscreet, it was because he was blinded by the success that attended his efforts, and he failed to see the clouds that were gathering. {225a} Borrow saw the danger of Graydon's reckless evangelism, and although he himself had few good words for the pope and priestcraft, he recognised that a discreet veiling of his opinions was best calculated to further the ends he ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Antichrist, sufficiently distinguished from the Western. The western combination against real Christianity never attained to power by successful conquest of the nations; but on the contrary by chicanery, insidious policy, flattery of princes and priestcraft. This enemy is described with sufficient accuracy and peculiar precision in the subsequent part of the Apocalypse. Prophecy has a determinate meaning; and we are not at liberty to give loose reins to our imagination: otherwise we ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... the image with his battle-axe. The helpless statue offers no resistance. Another blow rolls the head of the idol on the floor. It is said that a colony of frightened rats ran forth from its interior. The kingcraft, and priestcraft, and solemn swindle of seven hundred years are exploded in a shout of laughter; the god is broken to pieces, his members dragged through the streets. The recesses of the Serapion are explored. Posterity is edified by discoveries of frauds by ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... to workout their realization myself. I shall begin by being German myself. I intend to do away with ceremony, priestcraft, and foreign influence. To that intent, my lord chamberlain, you will see that all foreigners are dismissed from the palace, and their places supplied by Germans. My two Italian valets I make over to Porhammer. Nothing but German shall be spoken at court. I will have ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... crucifix in one of the sanctuaries of the great teocalli. There Father Olmedo celebrated Mass, and the Te Deum was chanted by the soldiers, side by side with the sacrificial stone; the abominable war-god's image, and all the attendant machinery of its savage priestcraft. ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... leaving a drinking-shop. Your grandsons both owe Max more than three thousand francs. The scoundrel told the lads to try and find out our intentions; he reminded them that you had once thought of getting round my uncle by priestcraft, and declared that nobody but you could guide me; for he thinks, fortunately, that I am nothing more ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... physiological science affords of the Law of Universal Development: let us close this part of our subject with the illustrations afforded by the rise and progress of Science as a whole. The first germs of science were very simple, existing in connection with Art, and subserving the purposes of priestcraft. For a long time the range of scientific inquiry was so limited that the same individual was able to grasp it entire. But one branch after another has sprung up, diverging more and more into the realms of the unknown, until no one mind can hope to obtain even a general knowledge ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a plain white dress, is standing erect before his idol at his devotions, with his ministers behind him. On the other two sides he is at his favourite field sports. What strikes one most in all this is the entire absence of priestcraft. He wanted all his revenue for his soldiers; and his tutelary god seems, in consequence, to have been well pleased to dispense with the mediatory services of priests.[17] There are few temples anywhere to be seen in the territories of these Jat chiefs; and, as ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the fact. I don't believe she would do anything contrary to its teachings as she understands them. We men may think what we please, but we have confidence in a woman who looks as she does now. She is not in the least inclined to devotional rhapsodies or to subserviency to priestcraft, like so many women abroad. She merely appears to recognize a divine power as she accepts nature, only more reverently and consciously. I suppose I am an agnostic as much as anything, yet I should only be too glad to have Stella at my side with such an expression on her face. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... emotion as when she first visited the Fujinami house. Now, she had heard her father's authentic voice. She knew his scorn for pretentiousness of all kinds, for false conventions, for false emotions, his hatred of priestcraft, his condemnation of the family wealth, and his contempt for the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... not merely to be happy, but to have what they called their "rights" respected; a protest against authority, not only because it was cruel, but because it was arbitrary, tyrannical. Hence it was aimed against priestcraft as well as against monarchy. It was based on the conviction that no one is so justly entitled to pass judgment on a man's affairs as a man himself. But it was a cry from the depths, the bitter resentment of a long-standing abuse. Therefore it took the ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... the first French Revolution; and how utterly inconsistent are the arguments of M. Comte and the Positive School with those of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists. Formerly, Religion was wont to be ascribed to priestcraft; it was supposed to have been invented by fraud, supported by falsehood, and professed in hypocrisy; and the Church, but especially the hierarchy of Rome, was the object of incessant ridicule or malignant abuse. But now, Religion is discovered to be the natural, necessary, and salutary result of ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... to the Parson, of which he ought to have thought long before—viz., the Papistical religion of the Italian. Dr. Riccabocca was professedly a Roman Catholic. He so little obtruded that fact—and, indeed, had assented so readily to any animadversions upon the superstition and priestcraft which, according to Protestants, are the essential characteristics of Papistical communities—that it was not till the hymeneal torch, which brings all faults to light, was fairly illumined for the altar, that the remembrance of a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... To believe, and yet to scoff at, a present miracle is little less than impossible. Sejanus should have been made to suspect priestcraft and ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... nose," sufficiently apparent in his portrait, was a favourite theme for contemporary personalities. Of the moral essays, the most remarkable are a set of four papers, entitled An Apology for the Clergy, which may perhaps be regarded as a set-off against the sarcasms of Pasquin on priestcraft. They depict, with a great deal of knowledge and discrimination, the pattern priest as Fielding conceived him. To these may be linked an earlier picture, taken from life, of a country parson who, in his simple and dignified surroundings, even ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... and fought on our side at the battle of Mons, and who believe that miracles occur quite frequently at Lourdes, nevertheless boggle at the miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, and reject it as a trick of priestcraft. I cannot tell why people who will not believe Matthew's story of three kings bringing costly gifts to the cradle of Jesus, believe Luke's story of the shepherds and the stable. I cannot tell why people, brought up to believe the Bible in the old literal way as an infallible ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... to do with the isolation in which they live. Since a period long preceding that time, bitter jealousy existed between the Spano-Mexican and Anglo-American races. This feeling had been planted by national animosity, and nursed and fomented by priestcraft. Events that have since taken place had already cast their shadows over the Mexican frontier; and Florida and Louisiana were regarded as but steps in the ladder of American aggrandisement; but the understanding of these matters was of course ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... The Rouen physicians treated with utter scorn this surgeon, this barber fellow, this mere sawbones. The Court gave him no encouragement. Still, he held on his way in a treatise which will live yet. He accepts this battle of science against priestcraft, declaring, as Wyer did in the sixteenth century, that "in all such matters the right judge is not the priest but the man of science." With great difficulty he found some one bold enough to print, but no one willing to sell his little work. So in broad daylight ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... provoked by the mixture of kingcraft and priestcraft discernible throughout this great enterprise, and the mistaken zeal and self-delusion of many of its most gallant and generous champions. The romantic coloring seemed to belong to the nature of the subject, and was in harmony with what I had seen in my tour through ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... be obliged to worship the creative power, whether under the name of the Animus Mundi, or any other whatsoever. The interference of the Deity in the affairs of mankind he entirely disowned, having proved to his own satisfaction that the idea originated entirely in priestcraft. In short, with the shadowy metaphysical exception aforesaid, Mr. Joshua Bletson of Darlington, member for Littlefaith, came as near the predicament of an atheist, as it is perhaps possible for a man to do. But we say this with the necessary salvo; for we ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... economy of instruction from heaven. Reflect that it was in nations where even the sovereign authority professed homage to the religion of Christ, and adopted and enforced it as a grand national institution, that the popular mass was thus reduced to a material fit for all the bad uses to which priestcraft could wish to put the souls and bodies of its slaves. And then consider what should have been the condition of this great aggregate, wherever Christianity was acknowledged by all as the true religion. The people should have consisted of so many beings having ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... how little used he had been to receive command from any, it will be easily understood how this wild, tanned, quaintly dressed band filled the inhabitants of the towns through which they passed with terror and dismay. Garibaldi's violent tirades against priests and priestcraft; the liberation of a gang of miscreants arrested by order of the Roman Government, had not prepossessed men of order and of discipline in his favor; and although personal contact dispelled all unfavorable prepossessions, one sees ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... And slyly winked and sagely shook his head. "My fawning dog," the sage satanic said, "Wags not his tail for me but for my bread. Brains rule to day as they have ruled for aye, And craft grown craftier in this modern day Still rides the fools, but in a craftier way; And priestcraft lingers and survives its use; What was a blessing once is now abuse: Grown fat and arrogant on power and pelf, The old-time shepherd has become a wolf And only feeds his flocks to feast himself. To clink of coin the pious juggler jumps, For still he thinks, as in the days of old, The key ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... question of a different kind whether the sacerdotal spirit which has of late years so largely spread in the English Church can extend without producing a violent disruption. To cut the tap roots of priestcraft was one of the main aims and objects of the Reformation, and, for reasons I have already stated, I do not believe that the party which would re-establish it has by any means the strength that has been attributed to it. It is true that the Broad Church ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... thunder of His power who can understand?" That all this is some of the world's great poetry does not in the least alter the fact that it is an abasement of the soul, an hysterical perversion of the facts of life, and a preparation of the mind for the seeds of Priestcraft. ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... since those epochs which seemed to presage the Revolution, when the spirit of philosophy rose and reflected upon the history of the past, France has been the prey of many convulsions. Feudalism, the Crusades, the Reformation, the struggle between the monarchy and the aristocracy. Despotism and Priestcraft have so closely held the country within their clutches, that woman still remains the subject of strange counter-opinions, each springing from one of the three great movements to which we have referred. Was it possible that the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... exclusive of the address," tells the whole story? and when we have read that "the insurgents are triumphant everywhere, the king left the capital at four o'clock, a provisional government was proclaimed this morning," and suchlike, what do we care for the sonorous periods in which official priestcraft chants ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... MOTT said: It is not Christianity, but priestcraft that has subjected woman as we find her. The Church and State have been united, and it is well for us to see it so. We have had to bear the denunciations of these reverend (irreverend) clergymen, as in New York, of late. But if we look to their authority ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the old worn-out thunder of the Vatican, which lately made a feeble noise in America, has rolled through France with the same assertion, 'Discussion cannot be tolerated'; and what has been the result? Simply this,—that all the intellectual force of the country is arrayed against priestcraft;— and the spirit of an insolent, witty, domineering atheism and materialism rules us all. Even young children can be found by the score who laugh at the very idea of a God, and who fling a jeer at the story of the Crucifixion ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... not, as Villehardouin would say, fighting for the truth; they were not even, as Voltaire would say, fighting for what they thought was the truth; this was only what they thought they thought, and they were really thinking of something entirely different. They were not moved either by piety or priestcraft, but by a new and unexpected nomadism. They were not inspired either by faith or fanaticism, but by an unusually aimless taste for foreign travel. This theory that the war of the two great religions could ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... rationalism of the end of the eighteenth century. The reason having been long repressed revenges itself, usurping everything. The explanation of the rise of positive religion and of the claim of revelation is sought in the hypothesis of deceit, of ambitious priestcraft and incurable credulity. The religion of those who thus argue, in so far as they claim any religion, is merely the current morality. Their explanation of the religion of others is that it is merely ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... duties he had no inclination to practice, and condemn faults he did not like to renounce. It is no wonder, therefore, that Humphreys wrought himself into a most patriotic resolution, no longer to submit to tyranny and priestcraft, and to vow that the next time the Doctor admonished him, he would retort with "Ye take too much upon ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Anglican Church in the Queen's reign has not hesitated to assert that the tenets against which Lord John Russell protested in the Durham Letter were, in his judgment, of a kind which are 'destructive of all reasonable faith, and reduce worship to a mere belief in spells and priestcraft.' Cardinal Vaughan, it is needless to say, does not sympathise with such a view. He, however, has opinions on the subject which are worthy of the attention of those who think that Lord John was a mere alarmist. His Eminence delivered a suggestive address ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... such priests as these—and I should say such priests form a full half of the North Italian priesthood—are perfectly free from that bad furtive expression which we associate with priestcraft, and which, when seen, cannot be mistaken: their faces are those of our own best English country clergy, with perhaps a trifle less flesh about them and a trifle more of a ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... doctrines, as the peculiar appanage of their own class. They invented endless fables which gave rise to Mythology. They ruled the people by the might of superstition, and acquired wealth, honor, and power, for themselves.[17] We arrive then at nearly the culminating point of Egyptian priestcraft, the days of "wise men," "sorcerers," and "magicians."[18] Such men ever {20} have, and we presume ever will employ secrecy as the chief element of their clever jugglery. Mankind love to be deceived. Let an Adrian, ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... ambassadors of God, to preach His message of forgiveness; to bring the Saviour in His human life to those who have never understood Him; to save the perishing, and bind them as with golden chains to the feet of God. They are battling with error, and breaking up the iron systems of priestcraft, inhumanity, and wrong, which have enslaved men for ages, and have shut off from them the light and love of their Heavenly Father. They are staying the progress of crime; they lay the hand of law on the slaveholder; they appeal to the drunkard; ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... tight to ten years' labor as well as yoursel', Faulkner; and neither man nor de'il can come between him and his religion; but—' 'BUT,' shouted Faulkner; 'there is no BUT! It is God and our right! God and our right, against priestcraft and despotism!'" ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... still call this Religion, and cast aside the crucifix for the sword, the gun and the firebrand. The Inferno has never yet been portrayed or even outlined. Its name is Priestcraft and Intolerance under ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... the ignorant multitude; as in sacred groves a tree might have been made to speak by the simple contrivance of a man concealed within the hollow stem, which to outward appearance would have been considered solid. The devices of priestcraft to bring grist to their mill are not yet obsolete, as will be seen in many ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... apostles and the Church of which they would be in charge; then the destruction of Jerusalem, with all the horrors of merciless warfare was to follow; and this in turn was to be succeeded by a long period of priestcraft and apostasy with bitter sectarian dissension and cruel persecution of the righteous. The brief reference to the non-localized, universal phenomena, by which His advent is to be signalized, is a parenthetical demonstration of the false claims as to where Christ would be found; later the Lord ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... equal right to happiness? Nature made no other distinction than that of higher and lower degrees of power of mind and body. But what mysterious distribution of character has the craft of statesmen, more fatal than priestcraft, introduced? ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... all, except Sandy, quite free from slaveholding priestcraft. It was in vain that we had been taught from the pulpit at St. Michael's, the duty of obedience to our masters; to recognize God as the author of our enslavement; to regard running away an offense, alike against God and man; to deem our enslavement a merciful and beneficial arrangement; ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... has rendered you superstitious, Cornelius. I have no faith in the religious cant of the present day, in priests or priestcraft.' ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... living body calls itself Protestant; the living body abjures Catholicism, flings off the name and the thing, hates the Church of Rome, laughs at sacramental power, despises the Fathers, is jealous of priestcraft, is a Protestant reality, is a Catholic sham. This existing reality, which is alive and no mistake, you wish to top with a filagree-work of screens, dorsals, pastoral staffs, croziers, mitres, and the like. Now most excellent Bateman, will you hear my ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... fumes of some intoxicating drug or powerful gas or vapour, or drinking some beverage which produced a temporary suspension of the reason, the mind of the enquirer was predisposed to feverish dreams:[21] if priestcraft were concerned in the interpretation of such dreams, or eliciting senses from the wild effusions of the disordered brain of the Pythoness, Science presided over the investigation of the causes of this phrenzy, and the advantages which the Thaumaturgists might derive from it. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... say how many This noble woman led, To break their bonds asunder, Who were to priestcraft wed? And as I close this ballad, Historically true, Learn, reader, that its heroes Toiled not ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... my dear Sir, of bigotry in politics and religion have we gone through. The barbarians really flattered themselves they should be able to bring back the times of Vandalism, when ignorance put every thing into the hands of power and priestcraft. All advances in science were proscribed as innovations. They pretended to praise and encourage education, but it was to be the education of our ancestors. We were to look backwards not forwards for ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... but I can be always warm if I like in my winter-garden. I turn my horse's head to the red wall of fir-stems, and leap over the furze-grown bank into my cathedral, wherein if there be no saints, there are likewise no priestcraft and no idols; but endless vistas of smooth red green-veined shafts holding up the warm dark roof, lessening away into endless gloom, paved with rich brown fir-needle—a carpet at which Nature has been at work for forty years. Red shafts, green roof, and here and there ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... homes, a large quantity of beer and spirits, while it was setting the misguided world right on science, politics, and religion. The marvel, indeed, to Foster and his friends was how ignorance, bigotry, priestcraft, and tyranny could venture to hold up their heads in Crossbourne after his club had continued its meeting regularly for the ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... ceremonial of ancestor worship the thin end of the wedge of priestcraft was rigorously excluded. "For the words of prayer and blessing and those of benediction to be kept hidden away by the officers of prayer of the ancestral temple, and by the sorcerers and recorders, is a violation of the rules of propriety. This may be called keeping ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... there can be to the trouble of the world. Each man must realize this for himself, each man will do so surely in time, and all will come into the haven of rest. Surely this is a simple faith, the only belief that the world has known that is free from mystery and dogma, from ceremony and priestcraft; and to know that it is a beautiful faith you have but to look at its believers and be sure. If a people be contented in their faith, if they love it and exalt it, and are never ashamed of it, and if it exalts them and makes them ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... has ceased to demand any heavy effort of self-sacrifice, they either revile the superstition or pity the ignorance which made such large mistakes on the nature of religion—and, loud in their denunciations of priestcraft and of lying wonders, they point their moral with pictures of the ambition of mediaeval prelacy or the scandals of the annals of the papacy. For the inner life of all those millions of immortal souls who were struggling, with such ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... quitted the world with composure and peace. Well she might. She had not that insupportable weight of iniquity which sinks me to despair. She found consolation in that religion which I have ridiculed as priestcraft and hypocrisy. But, whether it be true or false, would to Heaven I could now enjoy the comforts ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... N. church, churchdom; ministry, apostleship^, priesthood, prelacy, hierarch^, church government, christendom, pale of the church. clericalism, sacerdotalism^, episcopalianism, ultramontanism^; theocracy; ecclesiology^, ecclesiologist^; priestcraft^, odium theologicum [Lat.]. monachism^, monachy^; monasticism, monkhood^. [Ecclesiastical offices and dignities] pontificate, primacy, archbishopric^, archiepiscopacy^; prelacy; bishopric, bishopdom^; episcopate, episcopacy; see, diocese; deanery, stall; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... well cared for. No children nor wives cluttered the devil devil doctor's house. Several old women, a fly-flapping girl of eleven, and two young men who had graduated from the canoe house of the youths and who were studying priestcraft under the master, composed the household and waited upon Jerry. Food of the choicest was his. After Agno had eaten first-cut of pig, Jerry was served second. Even the two acolytes and the fly-flapping maid ate after him, leaving the debris for the several old women. ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... Jacobin party hailed it with joy. Up to this time they had a lingering fear that the First Consul was about to play the part of Monk. The pomp of the Tuileries and the hated Concordat seemed to their crooked minds but the prelude to a recall of the Bourbons, whereupon priestcraft, tithes, and feudalism would be the order of the day. Now at last the tragedy of Vincennes threw a lurid light into the recesses of Napoleon's ambition; and they exclaimed, "He is one of us." It must thenceforth be war to the knife between the Bourbons and Bonaparte; and his rule ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... understanding of its meaning. A large association of ignorant men can not for any considerable period oppose a successful resistance to tyranny and oppression from the educated few, but will inevitably sink into acquiescence to the will of intelligence, whether directed by the demagogue or by priestcraft. Hence the education of the masses becomes of the first necessity for the preservation of our institutions. They are worth preserving, because they have secured the greatest good to the greatest proportion of the population of any ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... many a weary hour; But thou nor swell'st the victor's strain, nor ever Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power. Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee (Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee), Alike from Priestcraft's harpy minions, And factious Blasphemy's obscener slaves, Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions, The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves! And there I felt thee!—on that sea-cliff's verge, Whose pines, scarce travell'd ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... constituted on the principles of fraternity and equality; but the passion of my life, to which I have sacrificed military position, and perhaps," he added in a lower tone, "perhaps even military fame, has been to destroy priestcraft, and, so long as the pope rules in ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before the presence of the Divine glory with exceeding joy (Jude 24). The Gospel of "the Word made flesh" is not the meaningless cant of some petty sect nor yet the cunning device of priestcraft, though it has been distorted in both these directions; but it can give a reason for itself, and is founded upon the deepest laws of the threefold constitution of man, embracing the whole man, body, soul and spirit. It is not opposed to Science but is ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... great divinity of the Algonkian tribes of the Great Lakes, Dr. D. G. Brinton says: "Michabo, giver of life and light, creator and preserver, is no apotheosis of a prudent chieftain, still less the fabrication of an idle fancy, or a designing priestcraft, but, in origin, deeds, and name, the not unworthy personification of the purest conceptions they possessed concerning the Father of All" ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Christian priestcraft turns a dreadful face to children. There is a real wickedness of the priest that is different from other wickedness, and that affects a reasonable mind just as cruelty and strange perversions of instinct affect it. Let a former Archbishop of Canterbury speak ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... join any already established body of Christians, anathemas are hurled at their heads, and they are told that they are guilty of the heinous crime of schism—schism, in the sense they give it, a figment of sacerdotalism, priestcraft, and imposture. But does the crime of schism not exist? Ay, it does; but it is schism from the true Church of Christ, the Church of which He is the head corner-stone, the beautified in Heaven, the ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... altogether a useful, pursuit. Of his tragedies, so famous in their day—the "Baptist," the "Medea," the "Jephtha," and the "Alcestis"—there is neither space nor need to speak here, save to notice the bold declamations in the "Baptist" against tyranny and priestcraft; and to notice also that these tragedies gained for the poor Scotsman, in the eyes of the best scholars of Europe, a credit amounting almost to veneration. When he returned to Paris, he found occupation at once; and, as his Scots ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... proposed by the abolishing of Christianity is, that it would very much enlarge and establish liberty of conscience, that great bulwark of our nation, and of the Protestant religion, which is still too much limited by priestcraft, notwithstanding all the good intentions of the legislature, as we have lately found by a severe instance. For it is confidently reported, that two young gentlemen of real hopes, bright wit, and profound judgment, who, upon a thorough examination of causes and effects, and ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... observation, and may here elucidate one phenomenon by another—the past by that which still exists. Oppression, insecurity, and the influence of a very rude priestcraft, are the powerful causes which operated on the Germans and Italians of the Middle Ages, as they now continue to operate on the Abyssinians of the present day. However these people may differ from us in their descent, their manners and their customs, the ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... banished, or sent to the galleys, and the children of Protestants were taken from their parents, and committed to the care of their nearest Catholic relations, or such persons as judges appointed. All the terrors of military execution, all the artifices of priestcraft, were put forth to make converts and such as relapsed were subjected to cruel torments. A twentieth part of them were executed, and the remainder hunted from place to place. By these cruelties, France was deprived of nearly six hundred thousand of the best people in the land—a great misfortune, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord |
