"Laity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... substantially united with France by Louis XIV., great numbers of small proprietors, who had done well enough under the Spanish rule, found themselves forced, by the pressure of taxation, to part with their land, and there was a marked increase in the great estates, not only of the clergy but of the laity. After the First Consul took the country in hand, and began to reorganise it socially, on the principle laid down by him so often and so energetically, in his dealings with his councillors, that 'true civil liberty in a State depends upon the absolute safety of property,' there ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... clergymen and laymen to the Councils of the diocese on equal terms with the whites; but that custom has been steadily changing. Some twenty years ago South Carolina and Virginia, dreading too great an increase of negro clergy and laity, led the way to new conditions. South Carolina excluded them entirely from the Diocesan Council, without any further provision for them. Virginia did not disturb those already having seats in the Council, but simply refused to let any more come in on the same terms. She erected ...
— Church work among the Negroes in the South - The Hale Memorial Sermon No. 2 • Robert Strange
... with full powers to act. Their efforts proved fruitless, because Philippe Auguste was no less indifferent than the provincial lords, who actually favoured the [77] heretics in many cases; the Roman Catholic bishops also were jealous of the pope's legates and refused to support them. Not only the laity but many of the clergy had been seduced: the heretics had translated large portions of scripture (translations which still remain to us) and constantly appealed to the scriptures in opposition to the canon laws and the immorality of Rome. They had a full parochial and diocesan ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... tithe of vicarious leisure levied on the laity, there are also special classes of persons—the various grades of priests and hierodules—whose time is wholly set apart for a similar service. It is not only incumbent on the priestly class to abstain from vulgar labor, especially so far as it is lucrative ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... forward any boys of promise.[54] It seems clear also, as the Reformation drew nearer, while the clergy were sinking lower and lower, a marked change for the better became perceptible in a portion at least of the laity. The more old-fashioned of the higher ranks were slow in moving; for as late as the reign of Edward VI.[55] there were peers of parliament unable to read; but on the whole, the invention of printing, and the general ferment which was commencing all over the world, had produced marked ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... case, in this volume, simply to interest the "laity," I shall forestall the intelligent lady, who relates it, in nothing; and after due consideration, I have determined, therefore, to abstain from presenting any precis of the learned Doctor's reasoning, or extract from his statement ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of the early Minorites was their characteristic. One is tempted to say it was a mere accident that these men were not sectaries, so little in common had they with the ecclesiastics of the time, so entirely did they live and labour among the laity of whom they were and with ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... like me, were to take the Anglican oaths which they did not believe, and for which they got dispensation from Rome, and thus in due time were to bring over to that unprincipled Church great numbers of the Anglican clergy and laity. Bishops gave their countenance to this imputation against me. The case was simply this:—as I made Littlemore a place of retirement for myself, so did I offer it to others. There were young men in Oxford, whose testimonials for Orders had been refused by their ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... effect of the BISHOP'S appeal to the "loyal laity," to come down heavily with Easter Offerings to the Clergy, will be? Rather an exciting day for me. Hard-up is not the word for my condition at present. Can't keep myself, and have to keep a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various
... the thirteenth century, on the authority of Philippe de Beaumanoir, the celebrated editor of "Coutumes de Beauvoisis," there were three states or orders amongst the laity, namely, the nobleman (Fig. 22), the free man, and the serf. All noblemen were free, but all free men were not necessarily noblemen. Generally, nobility descended from the father and franchise from the mother. But according to many other customs of France, the child, as a general rule, succeeded ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... knowledge of men. As it was, he wasted his genius in mountain squabbles, and in regulating the discipline of his little church; suspending priests, interdicting monks, and inflicting public penance on the laity. He rather resembled De Retz than Talleyrand, for he was naturally turbulent and intriguing. He could under no circumstances let well alone. He was a thorough Syrian, at once subtle and imaginative. Attached to the House of Shehaab by policy, he was devoted to ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... "It is all there!—'Whosoever will come after me let him deny himself,' LET HIM DENY HIMSELF! That is the secret of it. Self-denial! And this age is one of self- indulgence. We are on the wrong road, all of us, both Church and laity,—and if the Master should come He will not ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... spiritual and bodily wants of the sick and poor. He died in 1202. He wrote against the strict views concerning the celibacy of the clergy promulgated by Pope Gregory VII., and declared that the doctrine and the actual practice made a great scandal to the laity. Dean Milman suspects that he was much moved herein by the ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... generality—indicating ordinary rank or popular affiliations—have in many instances suffered the same decline. Trivial meant three ways; it was what might be heard at the crossroads or on any route you chanced to be traveling, and its value was accordingly slight. Lewd meant belonging to the laity; it came to mean ignorant, and then morally reprehensible. Common may be used to signify ill-bred; vulgar may be and frequently is used to signify indecent. Sabotage, from a French term meaning wooden shoe, has come to be applied to the deliberate and systematic scamping of one's ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... 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 century assumed the popular character ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... rejects only poisons, and adopts everything else. I welcome anything that possesses remedial value, provided it is in accordance with the laws of Nature, and am equally ready to accept suggestions from the laity, as from fellow practitioners. I am ready to submit everything thus presented, to the test of experiment, and ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... the other." 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, ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... difference between a doctor and a nurse. The doctor goes by what he sees, the nurse by what she feels. Nine times out of ten the doctor'll see wrong and the nurse'll feel right—and there you are! You can't go by doctors. A lot of guess-work gumps, I often think; and yet the laity need them ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... century. In 1674, one Robert Bartlett left money for the setting up of a free school in New London, for the teaching of Latin to poor children, but the hope was richer than the fulfilment. In truth, of education for the laity at this time in New England there was scarcely more than the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic. The frugal townspeople of New England generally deemed education an unnecessary expense; the school laws were evaded, and when complied with ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... Bible can a man choose his text to-day! A Bible which needs no translation; and which no priestcraft can close from the laity,—the open volume of the world, upon which, with a pen of sunshine and destroying fire, the inspired Present is even now writing the annals of God. Methinks the editor who should understand his calling, and be ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... rather it was because he 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 harbor in ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... process, especially in rural communities. "You cannot play with human chemicals any more than with real ones. You have to know something of chemistry," said Winston Churchill. Thousands of foreigners have been lost to the faith because many of our own, clergy and laity, did not know the first elements of "human chemistry." The great leakage from the Church in the West is among Catholic immigrants. Unscrupulous proselytisers on the specious plea of "Canadianization" have weaned them from the faith of their fathers. This nefarious process is still ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... virulence which animated the parties denominated High Church and Low Church, we must remember that until the time of William of Orange, the Church of England, as a body—her sovereigns and bishops, her clergy and laity—comes under the former designation; while those who sympathised with the Dissenters were comparatively few and weak. As soon as William was head of the Church, he opened the floodgates of Puritanism, and admitted into the church what previously had been more or less external to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... villages, and 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 showed no scruple in violating the spirit of the terms of surrender and using ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... talk to be spread among the people, will have an account to render. 81. This unbridled preaching of pardons makes it no easy matter, even for learned men, to rescue the reverence due to the pope from slander, or even from the shrewd questionings of the laity. ...
— Martin Luther's 95 Theses • Martin Luther
... the clergy, but in our time the responsibility cannot be confined to these. Even in the Church of England the laity have now a considerable influence, and in the other Protestant bodies they have even more power in the control of policy. No doubt the duty of initiative and of work in such matters lies mainly with the more leisured and more official interpreters of the Christian ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe |
