"Polemical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Polemical divinity about this time was putting the country half mad, and I, ambitious of shining in conversation parties on Sundays, between sermons, at funerals, etc., used a few years afterwards to puzzle Calvinism with so much heat and indiscretion, that I raised a hue and cry of heresy against me, which ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... metaphysician. There is no discipline which so well consists with solitude, none which so instantly enfranchises the mind from the tyranny of mean self-interest or vain and envious polemics. Men do not grow sour and quarrelsome about the Absolute: everything that is polemical is inspired, as Michelet once said, by some temporal and momentary interest. The man who has climbed to the Idalian spring comes down benevolent. He does not grudge this toiling ant his grain, that snarling dog his bone, but is content to live ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... very interpretation of the church, that, according to my conviction, constituted the first and fundamental apostasy; and I hold it for one of the greatest mistakes of our polemical divines, in their controversies with the Romanists, that they trace all the corruptions of the gospel faith ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... is, in the present state of opinion, to undertake a polemic against exclusive naturalism, an attitude which is itself philosophical, and as such is well known in the history of philosophy as positivism or agnosticism. I have avoided the polemical spirit and method so far as possible, but have, nevertheless, here taken sides against a definite philosophical position. This chapter, together with the Conclusion, is therefore an exception to the purely introductory and expository ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... contention. Here are written many things concerning the development of doctrine which commend themselves to minds conversant with the application of historical criticism to the whole dogmatic structure of the Christian ages. The purpose is with Newman entirely polemical, the issue exactly that which one would not have foreseen. Precisely because the development of doctrine is so obvious, because no historical point can be found at which the growth of doctrine ceased and the rule of faith was once for all settled, therefore an ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... sake," I said, "no polemical discussions! Whether you're right or wrong, that's not what I'm talking about. What I want to know is this:—you are going to teach people about God and Jesus Christ. Do you delight in God? Do you love Jesus Christ? Never mind what I do, or think, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... that it is manifestly unfair to compare a mystical writer like Emerson with a polemical or historical one, I am not concerned to answer the objection, for let the comparison be made with whom you will, the unparalleled non-sequaciousness of Emerson is as certain as the Correggiosity of Correggio. You never know what he will be at. His sentences fall over you ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... independent of that powerful host of inferences and analogies which the advance of physical discovery, and the establishment of a historical order, have since then brought into men's minds. The direct aggressions of old are for the most part abandoned, because it is felt that no fiercest polemical cannonading can drive away the impalpable darkness of error, but only the slow and silent presence of the dawning truth. Cain remains, a stern and lofty statement of the case against that theological tradition which so outrages, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... nominalist. Many questions in science and astrology, such as the reform of the calendar, attracted his attention. His other works consisted of theological essays, ascetic or exegetic, questions of ecclesiastical discipline and reform, and of various polemical writings called forth for the most part by the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and James were as little averse as the old divines themselves to a State-paid ministry, and desiderated only that it should be a good one. There were two other Seceders engaged as masons at the work—more of the polemical and less of the devout type than the foreman or my new comrade the labourer; and they also used occasionally to speak, not merely of the doubtful usefulness, but—as they were stronger in their language than their more self-denying and more consistent co-religionists—of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... saw it was one of Chasters' books, he took it up, it was "The Core of Truth in Christianity," and he felt an irrational shock at the idea of Clementina reading it. In spite of his own immense changes of opinion he had still to revise his conception of the polemical Chasters as an evil influence in religion. He fidgeted past his wife to the mantel in search of an imaginary mislaid pencil. Clementina came down with some bandage linen she was cutting out. He hung over his wife in a way that he felt must convey his desire for a conversation. Then he picked ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... endless change of human things it alone remains unchanged, ever with the same spirit, can we then wonder if many look up to it as the Rock unmoved amid the roaring billows of centuries?" And he adds in a note, "This is not a polemical statement, ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... face took on all the different colors that are generally supposed to express anger. She had been attacked more openly than the others, it is true; but her attitude toward the prayer-class would go to show that she was naturally polemical. ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... doctrines of Socialism. To that excellent practice, no doubt, much of Lenine's skill as a lucid expositor and successful propagandist is due. He has written a number of important works, most of them being of a polemical nature and dealing with party disputations upon questions of theory and tactics. The work by which he was best known in Socialist circles prior to his sensational rise to the Premiership is a treatise on The Development of Capitalism ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... made a sermon, at least never one he had judged worth preaching to a congregation. He had rather a high idea, he thought, of preaching, and these sermons of his uncle he considered really excellent. Some of them, however, were altogether doctrinal, some very polemical: of such he must now beware. He would see of what kind was the next in order; he would read it and make sure it contained nothing he was not, in some degree at least, prepared to hold his face to and defend—if he could not absolutely swear ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... Ibsen's earlier dramas on the stage in Copenhagen, with management of which she had official connection from 1867 to 1874. "New Year" ringing o'er the Northland. Shortly before Christmas, 1816, Heiberg published his polemical romantic comedy Yule Jests and New Year's Jokes, a brilliant revelation of his superiority as a wit and a satirist. Attacking the excessive sentimentality of Danish literature and taste at that time, it made a sensation and led to the ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... of mind. Still, he thought it of great importance, and a necessity of the times, that he should write a book against the Christians, whose opinions were, he knew, making such progress as raised the suspicion that they would prevail over all others, and in a short time become universal. This polemical treatise ran to fifteen books, and "exhibited considerable acquaintance with both the Jewish and the Christian scriptures."[14487] It is now lost, but its general character is well known from the works of Eusebius, Jerome, and others. The style ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... weapons than before. Soon afterwards, the intemperate zeal of another individual, armed to the teeth—not, however, like the martial sheriff and his forces, with arquebus and javelin, but with the still more deadly weapons of polemical theology,—was very near causing a general outbreak. A peaceful and not very numerous congregation were listening to one of their preachers in a field outside the town. Suddenly an unknown individual in plain clothes and with a pragmatical demeanor, interrupted the discourse ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... upon a very different plea. Common sense is neither priestcraft nor state-policy. Yet 'there's the rub that makes absurdity of so long life,' and, at the same time, gives the sceptical philosophers the advantage over us. Till nature has fair play allowed it, and is not adulterated by political and polemical quacks (as it so often has been), it is impossible to appeal to it as a defence against the errors and extravagances of mere reason. If we talk of common sense, we are twitted with vulgar prejudice, and asked how we distinguish the one from the other; but common and received opinion is ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... they are—and posterity has applied to him one of his own rules of criticism, judging him by the best rather than the average of his achievement, a thing posterity is seldom wont to do. On the losing side in politics, it is true of his polemical writings as of Burke's—whom in many respects he resembles, and especially in that supreme quality of a reasoner, that his mind gathers not only heat, but clearness and expansion, by its own motion—that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... this great movement towards mental freedom was contained in the general trend of the time, which was striving to free itself from the fetters of the Middle Ages in customs and education as well as dogma. It was chiefly a polemical movement, a fight between contentious savants. The writings of the Humanists at this naively sensuous period were full of the joy of life and love of pleasure; but scarcely any simple feeling for Nature can be found in them, and there was neither poet ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... of Mazliach, on the other hand, was a native of the Holy Land, and though an eager polemical writer against the Rabbinites, he bore a smaller part than Salman in the practical development of Karaism. His "Hebrew Grammar" (Sefer Dikduk) and his Lexicon (Leshon Limmudim) were very popular. Unlike the work of other Karaites, ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... appeal written by a Quaker against the religion of another. Satisfied with their own religious belief, they seem to have wished only to be allowed to enjoy it in peace. For when they have appeared as polemical writers, it has been principally ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... great instance of the abuse of publicity to such ends. The polemical writings which a hundred years earlier Poggio and his opponents interchanged, are just as infamous in their tone and purpose, but they were not composed for the press, but for a sort of private circulation. Aretino made all his profit out ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Christian instruction. (In one passage the Dialogue expressly refers to the Apology.) From Justin's time onward the apologetic polemic of the early Church appears to have adhered throughout to the same method. This consisted in giving the polemical writings directed against the Greeks the form of an introduction to Christian knowledge, and in continuing this instruction still further in ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... that he discloses points of view which give it fresh interest to those who most cordially disagree with him. The brilliancy of his journalistic powers is not confined, however, to his leaders. The Standaard has another and more purely polemical feature, its 'Driestars'—short paragraphs, separated in the column by three asterisks, whence their name. These 'Driestars' are the pride and the wonder of the Dutch Press, on account of their trenchant, clever, courageous wording, a wording which ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... the papal bull of excommunication; made his speech before the Diet of Worms in 1521; taken prisoner and confined in the Wartburg, he there translated the New Testament; later translated the Old Testament, and published a hymn-book; in 1525 married a nun; published numerous polemical pamphlets against the Church; had great influence in the formation of the present literary language ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... clever to make a comfortable wife. The minister's son especially hated talented, intellectual, and strong-minded women; he had been heard to describe the torments of Naglok [FN60] as the compulsory companionship of a polemical divine and a learned authoress, well stricken in years and of forbidding aspect, as such persons mostly are. Amongst womankind he admired — theoretically, as became a philosopher —the small, plump, laughing, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... writer who discusses unsettled questions takes up every gauntlet thrown down to him, polemical writing will absorb much of his energy. Having a power of work which unfortunately does not suffice for executing with anything like due rapidity the task I have undertaken, I have made it a policy to avoid controversy ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... which make the French polemical literature of the eighteenth century the despair of bibliographers, Diderot cites as his authority a Life of Saunderson, by Dr. Inchlif. He sets forth the title with great circumstantiality, but no such book exists or ever did exist. The Royal Society ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... at that time; but the long interview of Emmet with Sarah Curran, the night before his execution, is a fair specimen of the accuracy of these works. The songs were intense enough, occasionally controversial, commonly polemical, always extravagant; the Granu Wails and Shan-Van-Vochts of the Catholic agitation cannot be too soon ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... post-Reformation bishops who have held the see. He was made Bishop of Chichester in 1605, Bishop of Ely in 1609, and moved to Winchester nine years later. As a pious and austere man, a powerful preacher (an "angel in the pulpit," he was called), a scholar versed in patristic literature, and a polemical writer, he is well known. Milton's elegy suffices to prove the great respect and admiration which he inspired in his contemporaries, and he held a considerable influence over James I.; but his "Manual of Devotion" is the only volume of all his writings that can fairly be said to ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... No. 224 of the Tatler, Addison, speaking of polemical advertisements, says: "The inventors of Strops for Razors have written against one another this way for several years, and that with great bitterness." See also Spectator, Nos. 428, 509, and the Postman for March 23, 1703: "The so much famed strops for setting razors, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... safety, and the monk from the common custom of the convent, had prevented the possibility of their hitherto recognizing each other in the opposite parts which they had been playing in the great polemical and political drama. But now the Sub-Prior exclaimed, "Henry Wellwood!" and the preacher replied, "William Allan!"—and, stirred by the old familiar names, and never-to-be-forgotten recollections of college studies and college intimacy, their hands were for a moment locked ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Stockton was descended. On the female side he was descended from the Gardiners, also of New Jersey. His was a family with literary proclivities. His father was widely known for his religious writings, mostly of a polemical character, which had a powerful influence in the denomination to which he belonged. His half-brother (much older than Frank) was a preacher of great eloquence, famous a generation ago ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... therefore, find myself in a polemical relation to Aristotle, for I by no means contest the Unity of Action properly understood: I only claim a greater latitude with respect to place and time for many species of the drama, nay, hold ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... instance, as the theory of absolute weight and lightness, which Aristotle had unfortunately taught. The Stoics too were corporealists, and found such science as they required in the system of Heraclitus, though they also adopted for polemical purposes much of Aristotle's Logic, taking pains, however, to alter his terminology. Both these schools, in fact, while remaining faithful to the idea of philosophy as conversion, forgot that it had always been based on science in its best days. It was ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... opposite sects, is a certain proof that they have never reached any serious persuasion with regard to these remote and sublime subjects. Even those who are the most impatient of contradiction in other controversies, are mild and moderate in comparison of polemical divines; and wherever a man's knowledge and experience give him a perfect assurance in his own opinion, he regards with contempt, rather than anger, the opposition and mistakes of others. But while men zealously maintain what they neither clearly comprehend nor ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... Neither the polemical Erasmus nor the witty humorist had been lost in the erudite divine and the disillusioned reformer. The paper-warrior we would further gladly have dispensed with, but not the humorist, for many treasures of literature. But the two are linked ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... above our strength." His body was forcibly penetrated by the fire, and the blood flowed abundantly from the heart; as if to verify his constant desire that his heart's blood might be shed in defence of the gospel. His polemical and friendly letters are lasting monuments of his integrity and talents. It has been before said, that public disputation took place in April, 1554, new examinations took place in Oct. 1555, previous to the degradation and condemnation of Cranmer, Ridley, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... of the Entente has been full of citations from German political writers. In England, in particular, the names and works of Bernhardi and of Treitschke have become more familiar than they appear to have been in Germany prior to the war. This method of selecting for polemical purposes certain tendencies of sentiment and theory, and ignoring all others, is one which could be applied, with damaging results, to any country in the world. Mr. Angell has shown in his "Prussianism in England" how it might be applied to ourselves; ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... few other instances, the polemical zeal natural to men who had sacrificed their worldly all for the sake of religion, was observed to degenerate among the refugees into personal quarrels disgraceful to themselves and injurious to their noble cause, it ought on the other hand to ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... sickness in 1802, the testament which he wrote at that time, and some remarks upon the "Christ on the Mount of Olives," these chapters are devoted to the "Heroic Symphony,"—its history, its explanation, and a polemical discourse directed against the views of Wagner, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... you may imagine, were not of a highly doctrinal, still less of a polemical, cast. They perhaps did not search the conscience very powerfully; for you remember that to Mrs. Patten, who had listened to them thirty years, the announcement that she was a sinner appeared an uncivil heresy; but, on the other hand, they made no unreasonable demand on the ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... parables, more than by their doctrines. Both were translated into Pehlevi in the reign of Chosroes, and from that watershed floated off into the literatures of all the great creeds. In Christianity alone, characteristically enough, one of them, the Barlaam book, was surcharged with dogma, and turned to polemical uses, with the curious result that Buddha became one of the champions of the Church. To divest the Barlaam-Buddha of this character, and see him in his original form, we must take a further journey and seek him in his home ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... his son John, Susannah the widow of Thomas, and Mary the relict of John; but it does not appear that any of them all were rich. The women, after the decease of their husbands, engaged in a paper war, which was carried on about this time in polemical advertisements. Dr. Kirleus and Dr. Case (see No. 20) are said to have been sent for to prescribe to Partridge in his last illness. Garth ("Dispensary," ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... did not, which could not have belonged to him while on earth—precisely the point we contend. But how is it that in this epistle he comes to be designated as a priest at all? It was probably due to the exigencies of controversy. The epistle must be looked upon as a polemical pamphlet directed against those Hebrews who refused to embrace the new reform and derided its absence of priest, sacrifice and altar. Conscious that Jesus left no priesthood behind him, that his teaching was anti-sacerdotal and non-sacramental, there was nothing for the ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... adoptive and temporary subjection to another sovereign, they must naturally have been led to reflect upon the relative rights and duties of allegiance and subjection. They had resided in a city, the seat of a university, where the polemical and political controversies of the time were pursued with uncommon fervor. In this period they had witnessed the deadly struggle between the two parties, into which the people of the United Provinces, ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... is human nature, he can hardly distinguish or disentangle the appeal to his reason from the lure to his interests—here a text, and there a dowry!—here Protestantism, there Jemima!—Own, my friend, that the soberest casuist would see double under the inebriating effects produced by so mixing his polemical liquors. Appeal, my good Mr. Dale, from Philip drunken to Philip sober!—from Riccabocca intoxicated with the assurance of your excellent lady, that he is about to be "the happiest of men," to Riccabocca accustomed to his happiness, and carrying it off with the seasoned equability of one grown ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... Authorized Version of the Bible, which this semi-theological tractate necessitated, had much to do with the clarification of the author's style. At all events, from this time forth, Nash drops, except in polemical passages where his design is provocative, that irritating harshness in volubility which had hitherto marked his manner of writing. Here, for example, is a passage from "Christ's Tears" which is not ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... attack; and the minister of the New Meeting, Mr. Bowen, an advocate of religious freedom, charged the Baptists (particular though they were) with reviving old Calvinistic doctrines and spreading Antinomianism and other errors in Birmingham; with the guileless innocence peculiar to polemical scribes, past and present. Mr. Dissenting minister Bowen tried to do his friends in the Bull Ring a good turn by issuing his papers as from "A Consistent Churchman." In 1763 the chapel was enlarged, and at ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... which fused the populations of States and acquainted men better with their neighbors; the coming in of millions of Catholic foreigners whose every breath was an aspiration for liberty; the rise, culmination, and collapse of the anti-Catholic movement termed Know-nothing-ism; the polemical warfare of Bishop Hughes himself and of his contemporaries—these and other causes have made it possible, nay necessary, to treat non-Catholics in a different spirit from what wisdom dictated fifty ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... thoughtful New Essays concerning the Human Understanding Leibnitz develops his theory of knowledge in the form of a polemical commentary to Locke's chief work.[1] According to Descartes some ideas (the pure concepts) are innate, according to Locke none, according to Leibnitz all. Or: according to Descartes some ideas (sensuous perceptions) come from without, according to Locke all do so, according to Leibnitz ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... dimly known periods, critics are perhaps most apt to show their defects of temper, and Scott often commented on the acerbity of spirit which such studies seem to induce. "Antiquaries," he said, "are apt to be both positive and polemical upon the very points which are least susceptible of proof, and which are least valuable if the truth could be ascertained; and which therefore we would gladly have seen handled with more diffidence and better temper in proportion ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... was often used in this way, e.g., the translation of AEsop's fables by Marie de France was called Ysopet, and Cato's moral maxims had the title Catonet, or Parvus Cato. Modern Fr. pamphlet, borrowed back from English, has always the sense of polemical writing. In Eng. libel, lit. "little book," we see a similar restriction of meaning. A three-quarter portrait of fixed dimensions is ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... this not merely as regards the choice of subjects taught, but as regards cleanliness, healthiness, good order, good manners, relations between teachers and pupils, selection of models in prose and verse, and the literary as contrasted with the polemical use ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... to which it had given rise. Catholicism, it was thought, if it were to hold the field as a world-wide religion, must be remodelled so as to bring it better into line with the conclusions of modern philosophy. Less attention should be paid to dogma and to polemical discussions, and more to the ethical and natural principles ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... converted to Social Democracy. Berlin was covered with a network of societies, which became the places of worship of the new faith. Handbills, pamphlets, newspapers, partly polemical, partly literary, in which the mob made their statements and professed their faith stoutly; these, although written very badly, yet by their monotony, their angry reproaches, their invocations, reminded one ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... element, better still probably the most important of all the elements! It was certainly a rare good fortune! It couldn't help but make him the observed among observers. This may have occasioned the hue and cry against his polemical essays on government and church to become more frequent and in some ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... going to marry, when his mother wished it. On the other hand, if you look out for types of our Church can you find truer than the married excellence of Hooker the profound, Taylor the devotional, and Bull the polemical? The very first reformed primate is married; in Pole and Parker, the two systems, Roman and Anglican, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... Florentines themselves, in whom the traces of rebellion were beginning to appear. Mingled with these vehement invectives, couched in Savonarola's most impassioned style and heightened by his most impressive imagery, are political harangues and polemical arguments against the Pope. The position assumed by the friar in his war with Rome was not a strong one, and the reasoning by which he supported it was marked by curious self-deception mingled with apparent efforts to deceive his audience. He had not the audacious ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... two might sometimes be made simply interchangeable. But fortune was kinder to Lodge than to his friend and collaborator. Nor does he seem to have had any occasion to "tread the burning marl" in company with conny-catchers and their associates. Lodge began with critical and polemical work—an academic if not very urbane reply to Stephen Gosson's School of Abuse; but in the Alarum against Usurers, which resembles and even preceded Greene's similar work, he took to the satirical-story-form. Indeed, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... publicity in general, played in the rebellion of the Netherlands. Through this organ one restless spirit spoke to millions. Besides the lampoons, which for the most part were composed with all the low scurrility and brutality which was the distinguishing character of most of the Protestant polemical writings of the time, works were occasionally published which defended religious liberty in the fullest sense ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... which are added to this confession; with a defence of his principles and practice, proving them to be peaceable and true. In all this an unlettered man displays the acumen of a thoroughly educated polemical theologian. The author was driven to these publications to defend himself from the slanders which were showered down upon him, by all parties, for nearly eighteen years, and by the attempts which were ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that numerous tribe of Texas titans who can "unhorse" me as easily as turning a hen over; and having accorded you unlimited space in which to acquire momentum, I would certainly dread the shock were I cursed with an atom of polemical pride. Frankly, I wish you success—trust that you can demonstrate beyond a peradventure of a doubt that all my objections to the Single Tax are fallacious, that it is indeed the correct solution of that sphinx riddle which we must ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... friend was not now so dear to him as when in old days he would come down to that farm-house, almost as penniless as the curate himself. Then they would walk together for hours along the rock-bound shore, listening to the waves, discussing deep polemical mysteries, sometimes with hot fury, then again with tender, loving charity, but always with a mutual acknowledgement of each other's truth. Now they lived comparatively near together, but no opportunities arose for such discussions. At any rate once a quarter Mr. Crawley was ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... A shrewd polemical expression beamed from Father Beret's eyes, and a very expert physiogomist might have suspected duplicity from certain lines about ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Catholic opponent Witzel happened to call out to Jonas, a friend of Luther's, in the heat of a quarrel, 'I might call the father of your Luther a murderer.' Twenty years later the anonymous author of a polemical work which appeared at Paris actually calls the Reformer 'the son of the Mohra assassin.' With these exceptions, not a trace of any story of this kind, in the writings of either friend or foe, can be found ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... Adrian's Bull, given some years previously, he was in no small trepidation at the possible prospect of losing his English dominions, as an excommunication and an interdict were even then hanging over his head. Political and polemical writers have taken strangely perverted views of the whole transaction. One writer,[293] with apparently the most genuine impartiality, accuses the Pope, the King, and the Irish prelates of the most scandalous hypocrisy. ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... His polemical disposition again revived. He had now been safe so long, that he forgot his fears, and published a Treatise of true Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and the best means to prevent the growth ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... Ranferlie. When he left the grammar school, he was sent to the university of St. Andrews, to study under Mr. John Mair, (a man of considerable learning at that time), and had the degree of master of arts conferred upon him, while very young. He excelled in philosophy and polemical divinity, and was admitted into church orders before the usual time appointed by the canons. Then laying aside all unnecessary branches of learning, he betook himself to the reading of the antients, particularly Angustine's and Jerome's works, with whom he was exceedingly ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... opinion, such an answer might, without much difficulty, be written, but declined the controversy on the plea of reverence for the memory of his deceased master. This plea the King considered as the subterfuge of a vanquished disputant. [47] Had he been well acquainted with the polemical literature of the preceding century and a half, he would have known that the documents to which he attached so much value might have been composed by any lad of fifteen in the college of Douay, and contained nothing which had not, in the opinion of all Protestant ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... believe, is never without his polemical intentions, and I should like, for a moment, to ask whether his discussion of his problem, taken on its own merits, is altogether the best way to discuss things. Mr. Shaw has an ideal of life: he asks that men and women should be perfectly reasonable, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... of king James, those minds which might, perhaps, with less disturbance of the world, have been engrossed by war, were employed in controversy; and writings of all kinds were multiplied among us. The press, however, was not wholly engaged in polemical performances, for more innocent subjects were sometimes treated; and it deserves to be remarked, because it is not generally known, that the treatises of husbandry and agriculture, which were published about that time, are so numerous, that it can scarcely be imagined by whom they ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... His theology was grim, solemn, and angular, and he was as combative as one of Cromwell's disputatious troopers. In his capacious pocket, he always carried a copy of the New Testament—as, of old, the carnal controvertists bore a sword buckled to the side. Thus armed, he was a genuine polemical "swash-buckler," and would whip out his Testament, as the bravo did his weapon, to cut you in two without ceremony. He could carve you into numerous pieces, and season you with scriptural salt and pepper; and he would do it with a gusto so serious, that it would have been no unreasonable ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... Shakespeare took hold of it, our information is full and clear, not only in the specimens that have survived, but in the criticisms of contemporary writers. A good deal of the criticism, however, is so mixed up with personal and polemical invective, as to be unworthy of much credit. George Whetstone, in the dedication of his Promos and Cassandra, published in 1578, tells us: "The Englishman in this quality is most vain, indiscreet, and out of order. He first grounds his work on impossibilities; ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... hiding the loss of his twice-cropped ears under a woollen cowl or nightcap, and mostly sitting alone among his books and papers in his chamber in Lincoln's Inn, taking no regular meals, but occasionally munching bread and refreshing himself with ale, he had at once resumed his polemical habits and mixed himself up as a pamphleteer with all that was going on. As many as thirty fresh publications, to be added to the two-and-twenty or thereabouts already out in his name, had come from his pen between 1640 and 1645, bringing him through about one-fourth part of the series of some ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... perhaps, be thought misplaced as a polemical subject. But in relating what may be conceived as the true motive that incited Sir Edward Stanley to the founding of that beautiful structure Hornby Chapel, we may be allowed to show the operation as well as the effect—to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... rest. Not only did he write the best lyrics, but the best tragedy, the best translations, and the best familiar poems of his century. As a satirist and humourist, I cannot place him so high as some of his admirers do; and the purely polemical portions of his poems, those in which he puts forth his antagonism to tyrants and religions and custom in all its myriad forms, seem to me to degenerate at intervals ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Pirckheimer and Lienhard Groland also frequently forgot the fresh salmon and young partridges, which were served in succession, to share this brilliant novelty. The Abbot of St. AEgidius, too, showed his pleasure in the fortunate discovery, and did not grow quieter until the conversation turned upon the polemical writing which Reuchlin had just finished. It had recently appeared in Frankfort under the title: The Eye Mirror, and assailed with crushing severity those who blamed him for opposing the proposal to destroy the books ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of perhaps still more doubtful value. The book of Daniel was freely drawn upon, and yet it is certain that it was not written until the year which saw the death of Antiochus Epiphanes. The book of Daniel is polemical, not historical; the Babylon in which its scene is laid is a Babylon of the imagination; the writer chose it as the best framework for his lessons to the Israelites, and for the menaces he wished to pour out upon their ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... are strange times,' observed the President, 'when a doctor of divinity and an undergraduate set forth, like a knight-errant and his squire, in search of a stray damsel. Methinks I am an epitome of the church militant, or a new species of polemical divinity. Pray Heaven, however, there be no such encounter in store for us; for I utterly forgot to provide myself ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... the fruits of the place and of the moment, and born out of convenience and a covenant. Skepticism enters through all the breaches. With regard to Christianity it at once enters into open hostility, into a bitter and prolonged polemical warfare; for, under the title of a state religion this occupies the ground, censuring free thought, burning writings, exiling, imprisoning or disturbing authors, and everywhere acting as a natural and official adversary. Moreover, by virtue of being an ascetic religion, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... too often confounded the practical benefits of civilization with the abstract benefits of the Church, and their instruction had been simple and coercive. There had been no necessity for argument or controversy; the worthy priest's skill in polemical warfare and disputation had never been brought into play; the Comandante and Alcalde were as punctiliously orthodox as himself, and the small traders and artisans were hopelessly docile and submissive. The march of science, which had been stopped by the local fogs of Todos Santos some fifty years, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... Leslie, Stephens, Child and Neal. In fiction, they have Cooper, Paulding, Bird, Kennedy, Thomas, Ingraham, and many others. They have, notwithstanding the mosquitoes, produced some very good poets: Bryant, Halleck, Sigourney, Drake, etcetera; and have they not, with a host of polemical writers, Dr Channing, one of their greatest men, and from his moral courage in pointing out their errors, the best friend to his country that America has ever produced! Indeed, to these names we might fairly add their legal writers—Chancellor Kent and Judge Story, as well as Webster, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat) |
