Sentence Examples:
If two of the Apocryphal and the four Canonical Gospels are the production of the superstition and credulity of the same century, whence the marvelous contrast between them?
We find the evidences of our canonical books and of the patristic authors nearest to them, are sufficient to prove illustration in outward act of principles perpetually true, but not adequate to guarantee narratives inherently incredible or precepts evidently wrong.
In other parts of the province and in the diocese of Cadiz, two thousand of these unfortunate creatures were burnt; according to Mariana, a still greater number were burnt in effigy, and one thousand seven hundred suffered different canonical punishments.
Twelve English Roman Catholics, who are represented as "exiles for their religion," were examined as witnesses, and, after their evidence was heard and considered, "the judges pronounced their opinion that she had incurred the canonical penalties of heresy."
Through innumerable gradations of childhood would the art grow before it attained the first formal embodiment in such plays as those, so-called, of miracles, consisting just of Scripture stories, both canonical and apocryphal, dramatized after the rudest fashion.
Not only is the promise of canonical election withdrawn, but the omissions of the clauses regulating intestate succession and guaranteeing freedom to leave the kingdom (a privilege highly valued by the clergy) seem to prejudice the interests of English churchmen.
The many apocryphal Gospels, all of which have been held genuine and canonical at different times and in different places, prove that the four, which are still in use, were retained because they lack the manifest absurdities of their discarded rivals.
There is no sign of dependence upon the canonical Gospels in all this: but, on the contrary, the almost complete departure from their representations, in order and in substance, is only explicable on the hypothesis of a separate, though analogous, tradition.
In other essays I have endeavored to show that sober and well-founded physical and literary criticism plays no less havoc with the doctrine that the canonical scriptures of the New Testament "declare incontrovertibly the actual historical truth in all records."
It is not strange that archaeologists have taken great pains to identify, among the numberless works of Roman sculptors, imitations of these two canonical figures, the existence of which was naturally assumed from the great celebrity of the Greek originals.
These results, in many respects, point decisively in the direction of plenary inspiration, when the doctrine itself is rightly understood, as supplying the only consistent and logical ground on which the authority of the canonical writings can be safely based.
If secret heretics, they were dismissed with only a slight secret penance; if public heretics, they were exempted from the penalties of death and life imprisonment, and sentenced either to make a short pilgrimage, or to undergo one of the ordinary canonical penances.
This general expression, "all the rest of the king's subjects," has been thought to comprehend the Protestants, as well as the Catholics, and on this interpretation, such marriages of Protestants as were not solemnized according to the canonical forms have been annulled.
In addition to this, there is internal evidence in the writings now regarded as canonical that they have been abridged, added to, and changed, so that the sense is more or less obscured and doctrines are affirmed which were not in the original documents.
We shall agree that it is our common interest to defend the authenticity and inspiration of all those books of the Holy Scripture which we revere in common as canonical, and the historic truth of the Mosaic and Evangelical records, against infidel rationalism.
That law, of course, claimed to be not law for Episcopalians alone but for the people at large, who were treated altogether as subject to Episcopal rule; and neither creed nor worship inconsistent with canonical regulations could be tolerated for a moment.
That suspicion is at once raised by the fact that Ezra-Nehemiah is a strict continuation of the book of Chronicles, though in the Hebrew Bible Chronicles appears last, because, having to compete with Samuel and Kings, it won its canonical position later than Ezra-Nehemiah.
Be mindful, however, that we burden your conscience with this work, and we grant you, or either of you, full authority to carry it out, even if there should exist any constitution of the Apostolic See, general councils, canonical or other statutes to the contrary.
The result had not been what Anselm and the papal court expected; Henry I. and his successors strenuously used or abused the influence thus reserved to them: none but royal favorites were ever appointed, and the nominally free canonical election became a sham.
Had it been possible that a spurious book should be imposed as genuine on the churches of one region, it would certainly have met with opposition in other regions; but our four canonical gospels were everywhere received without dispute as the writings of apostles or apostolic men.
Such are the incontestable principles of genuine canonical right or law, the rules and the decisions of which ought at all times to be submitted to the test of eternal and immutable truths, founded upon natural rights and the necessary order of society.
And this kind of prophecy, as it were compacted and commingled of both the others in the ancient canonical books, containing historical narratives, is of very great significance, and has exercised and exercises greatly the wits of those who search holy writ.
Again, the frequent applications for and concessions of dispensations in canonical irregularities by the Roman congregations were likely to make a bad impression, and to arouse the suspicion that wholesome regulations were being abandoned for the sake of the dispensation fees paid to the officials.
Pronunciation has naturally varied in one mouth or another, in this family or that, and when a formal occasion calls for writing, each takes leave to spell his baptismal name in his own way, without a passing thought that there may be a canonical form.
In a word, the form of these assumed original documents was hypothetically explained from the actual form of our three synoptic gospels; the very reverse of the true problem, which was to explain, from some reliable data, the form of the canonical gospels themselves.
I have not yet met with the argument anywhere that, because none of the early Fathers quote our Canonical Gospels, or say anything with regard to them, the fact is unambiguous evidence that they were well acquainted with them, and considered them apostolic and authoritative.
Our divines deny it to be a sacrament; yet retained the celebration, till prudently a late parliament recovered the civil liberty of marriage from their encroachment, and transferred the ratifying and registering thereof from the canonical shop to the proper cognizance of civil magistrates
Their utterances in Chronicles lay less direct stress on moral considerations than the writings of the canonical prophets, not because of any indifference to morality, but because, seen in the distance of a remote past, all other sins seemed to be summed up in faithlessness to Jehovah.
Paul, then a prisoner at Rome, who there converted and baptized him, and sent him, with his canonical letter of recommendation, to Philemon, by whom he was pardoned, set at liberty, and sent back to his spiritual father, whom he afterwards faithfully served.
And it may be admitted that verse, owning, as it does, a professed and canonical allegiance to music, sometimes carries its devotion so far that thought swoons into melody, and the thing said seems a discovery made by the way in the search for tuneful expression.
The canonical books of the New Testament fall back into the general mass of literature recording the earliest knowledge and consciousness of the disciples, neither detached, as a mysterious whole, from other productions of their time, nor excluding the greatest diversities of value among themselves.
On the one hand, conservative scholars insist upon the close material relation between the constituent sources; critical scholars, on the other hand, while recognizing much that is relatively untrustworthy, refrain from departing from the general outlines of the canonical history more than is absolutely necessary.
And the means to remove these obstacles are to purify the conscience, science, to mortify the passions, to guard the sense and to have an intelligent knowledge of the duty and requirements of a proper fulfillment of the daily task of the saying of the Canonical Hours.
The history of the legal profession and its monopoly of legal aid is intricate, and at some points still obscure; but the influence of the canonical system is evident: the English attorney corresponds to the canonical proctor, and the English barrister to the canonical advocate.
Considering the disastrous consequences of not forming associations, it is not surprising that some Catholics, and even some priests, were disposed, once more, to retreat before the enemy by forming some kind of Janus-faced association, canonical on one side, and in conformity with the law on the other.
Against its having been a canonical foundation, the most legal and strongest of claims, and to a continuous, undisturbed, unquestioned and clear possession for one hundred twenty years, the Provincial offered that his order had claimed the curacy within a few days of its establishment.
It is scarcely necessary to add that the author of the Homilies has no idea whatever of any canonical writings but those of the Old Testament, though even with regard to these some of our quotations have shown that he held peculiar views, and believed that they contained spurious elements.
That a writer who had our canonical Gospels before him should so depart from their lines, alter every representation without dogmatic purpose, insert contradictory statements, and omit episodes of absorbing interest and passages which would have enriched his narrative, is a theory which cannot be established.
We have no proof that the four Gospels made canonical by the early ecclesiastical councils were the original writings of the evangelists, even if we were sure that they wrote anything, nor have we any proof that the copies adopted were genuine and authentic and the best then extant.
We recollect, when brass buttons were universally worn on men's coats, a wag undertook to prove that they were very unhealthy, from the fact that more than half the persons who wore them suffered from chronic or acute disease, and died before they had reached a canonical age.
Nominally, this deputation was to claim from the Empress and the legate a confirmation of the chapter's canonical right of free election; but, in fact, it was composed of William's adherents, who purposed to secure from the Empress and the legate letters to the chapter in his favor.
Although the episode of the washing of the hands (of which so much more is made by the author of the first Synoptic, who alone of the canonical Evangelists refers to it) must have been introduced, we have no means of knowing how far the two accounts may have agreed.
And to a plain man, ignorant of canonical statute law, and incapacitated by his low estate from comprehending the difference between princely honor and vulgar individuals' honor, it would surely seem that Francesco's moral and religious duty was to keep his promise and marry his mistress.
If a secular priest to whom the curacy has been given permanently by canonical institution can resign it, and the law does not therefor disqualify him, why cannot the regulars make that same resignation in order not to live with the risks from having so many superiors?
What reason have we for rejecting the verdict of ecclesiastics and theologians of the fourth and fifth centuries, who were well aware of the doubts which had been raised respecting the authority of the Epistle, and after full and prolonged consideration decided that it possessed full canonical authority.
This canonical standard of moral estimation is too flattering to their pride and indolence to be parted with in a hurry; and nothing will try their patience or provoke their humility so much as to suppose that there is any truer stamp of merit than the badge of their profession.
She was a lusty lass, already arrived at the age of discretion, as Le Sage says, that is to say, she had passed her fortieth year, the canonical period for the servants of Cures, but was fair and fresh still, in spite of some wrinkles and her hair growing gray.
Truly intelligent families living round about the city of Oxford had, and even to this day have, a habit of naming their male babies after the books of the Bible, in their just canonical sequence; while infants of the better sex are baptized into the Apocrypha, or even the Epistles.
In other instances, and probably far the more numerous (though this would be difficult to prove), they were registered among the canonical baptisms; and the fact of their being performed by Dissenting Ministers is only discoverable by reference to the Dissenting Register, when it happens to have been preserved.
He and his successors built temples afterwards to be furnished, as before, with statues of the deities and outwardly ornamented with sculptures; but they took their models from those earlier works which, elevated to a typical and canonical importance, were not to be surpassed, and employed themselves simply in reproducing.
For Don Juan de Palafox had a great plenty of secular priests who were very suitable in learning and virtue for choosing and presenting for the missions, which the orders were abandoning, because they refused to submit to the rigor of the canonical collation in the appointments to the missions.
I suppose you had your reasons for it; but you ought to know that a parish priest has, by every law, natural and canonical, the right to know about his sick or distressed poor people, and that a curate has no right to be keeping these things a secret from him.
The Court was grave rather than gay, as had befitted the circumstances of a royal widow, and now of an orphan still under canonical protection and busied in serious study, but this allowed the wit and wisdom of learned men free scope, and thus invited and encouraged their residence.
There is thus no evidence whatever directly connecting any of the canonical Gospels with the writers to whom they are popularly attributed, and later tradition, of little or no value in itself, is separated by a long interval of profound silence from the epoch at which they are supposed to have been composed.
It is probable, from many circumstances, that the latter was a meal not originally in use among our Saxon forefathers: perhaps their only meal at an earlier period was the dinner, which was always their principal repast; and we may, perhaps, consider noon as midday, and not as meaning the canonical hour.
Nor let them force others to drink intemperately, but let their entertainments be cleanly and sober, not luxuries, ... and that, unless some necessary infirmity compel them, they do not, like common tipplers, help themselves or others to drink, till the canonical, that is the ninth hour, be fully come.
For, even granting that some books of the period were inspired, they were certainly few amongst many; and those who selected the canonical books, unless they themselves were also inspired, must be regarded in the light of mere critics, and, from the evidence they have left of their intellectual habits, very uncritical critics.
We find cultivated ladies, pious and of high rank, doctors of law, civil and canonical, laymen of character, even curates, daily witnessing this spectacle of fanaticism and horror in silence, instead of opposing it with all their force; nay, they applaud it by their presence, even by their countenance and their conversation!
If the theologists should happen to criticize this story, and perhaps accuse me of far-reaching ignorance, because I enumerate one cardinal sin more than they knew of, or of the crime of classifying man as a sort of hog, I reply that, still another new canonical sin could be discovered that they have never studied.
The Holy See, moreover, was pleased to confirm all the parochial appointments which Reginald had made during the period of his disputed appointment, adding only the clause, that the clergy thus appointed by him should otherwise be free from all canonical impediments, and capable of discharging the functions confided to them.
What would he say now if he were alive on earth, and saw men like Luther and Calvin manufacturing Bibles, filing down Old and New Testament with a neat pretty little file of their own, setting aside, not the book of wisdom alone, but with it very many others from the list of Canonical Books?
Throughout the Middle Ages learned authors repeated the conflicting utterances of the Fathers concerning the canon, without being disturbed by their inconsistency; in practice, the Old Testament comprised all the books that were usually found in copies of the Greek or Latin Bible, without regard to the fine distinctions of "canonical" and "ecclesiastical."
Heinrich had gone to Nathalie's, indulging the (highly improbable) anticipation that she would at once unhesitatingly accept and act upon his friend's deposition of evidence in his capacity of an eye- and ear-witness concerning Rosa's canonical impedimenta (or ecclesiastical marriage disabilities), and it was his disappointment on this score which was so gnawing upon his mind.
He was continually becoming absorbed in some thought or study, and forgetting all the rules, and then painfully he would turn back and retrace his steps; sometimes spending weeks in absorbing study, and then remembering he had neglected his canonical hours, and depriving himself of sleep for nights to make up the missing prayers.
The Greek of the "rest of" Esther differs much more in style and tone from that of the canonical book to which it is attached than does the Greek of Susanna from that of the canonical Daniel; and, so far as this fact goes, it points to a closer linguistic connection in this case than in the other.
The provost and the officers of justice, from respect for the liberties of the clerical order, do not dare to lay hands on them; and if you, my son, wish to stop these disorders, the culprits at once appeal to us, invoke our authority, ignore your jurisdiction, escape the canonical punishment, and continue with audacity their lawless habits.
This canonical Office was a marvelous rosary of psalms; every bead of each of these hours bore reference to the different phases of human existence, followed, little by little, the periods of the day, the decline of destiny, to end in the most perfect of offices, in Compline, that provisional absolution of a death, itself represented by sleep.
Only it frequently happens, when the passions are greatly excited, that instead of teaching the people the priests are obliged to follow them, and discipline not having the material authority that it has with us, these eager temperaments are only restrained by the hands of canonical obedience, though at the same time these are usually sufficiently powerful.
If this system of elaborate and perverted ingenuity were applied to these Gospels, as it has been to the fragment, and every kind of false exegesis, childish reasoning, and wild interpretation, such as was current amongst the Fathers, brought forward to explain the construction of the four canonical works, the consequence would be terribly surprising to pious readers.
Two very able and honest English judges (Bayley and Park), on trying a woman for bigamy, had decided that, according to the English law, a marriage in a private house, without special license or in canonical hours, was void; and, of course, the woman was acquitted, having been united to her first husband in Ireland without those requisites.
The minister, therefore, still piqued himself on his skill at both games, and occasionally practiced them, as strictly canonical, although David Deans, whose notions of every kind were more rigorous, used to shake his head, and groan grievously, when he espied the tables lying in the parlor, or the children playing with the dice boxes or backgammon men.
It has been argued that, in saying that these Memoirs were recorded by the Apostles and their followers, Justin intentionally and literally described the four canonical Gospels, the first and fourth of which are ascribed to Apostles, and the other two to Mark and Luke, the followers of Apostles; but such an inference is equally forced and unfounded.
Then the faculty of jurisprudence and canonical law was established (the establishment of which the Dominican corporation had endeavored to secure years before), because with the increase of the native and mestizo population, and with the consolidation upon a religious basis of the social life of these peoples, there was not a sufficient number of lawyers for the administration of justice.
Abide by the canonical law in all things and obey the precepts of the holy fathers always, that your life may be an example of sanctity to all, and your holy admonitions be observed by the whole world, and that your light may so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father which is in heaven.
The only possible answer which can be returned to these questions is that the phenomena of the Canonical Gospels are inconsistent with the supposition that their miraculous narratives are the invention of men who were the prey either of credulity or dense superstition; they must have been men well able to distinguish between a genuine miracle and a mythic parody of one.
Practically all the prophets to whom books are ascribed in Chronicles are mentioned in the canonical books, and probably they were regarded as the authors of the sections in which their names occur, so that the books of Samuel, Nathan and Gad would be none other than the relevant portions of Samuel and Kings, or of the midrash of these books.
I don't find that the Indians have any other distinction in their dress, or the fashion of their hair, than only what a greater degree of riches enables them to make, except it be their religious persons, who are known by the particular cut of the hair and the unusual figure of their garments; as our clergy are distinguished by their canonical habit.
Some savants have pretended that one should remove from the canonical books all incredible matters which might be a stumbling block to the feeble, but it is said that these savants were men of corrupt heart and that they ought to be burned, and that it is impossible to be an honest man unless you believe that the Sodomites desired to ravish the angels.
The ceremony, however, was performed within the canonical hours, the rector a little tremulous and apparently suffering from sore throat; and as the happy pair drove away, madame, remembering her advent and her objects more than a year ago now, could not but confess that she had done better than she expected, and, her conscience whispered, better than she deserved.
On which the intruder took up the word, as characteristic of the competitors, and repeated it every stroke that was given, making such a ludicrous use of it that several of the onlookers were compelled to laugh immoderately; but the players were terribly nettled at it, as he really contrived, by dint of sliding in some canonical terms, to render the competitors and their game ridiculous.
He is the first writer who mentions that Matthew and Mark were believed to have written any works at all; but whilst he shows that he does not accord any canonical authority even to the works attributed to them, his description of those works and his general testimony comes with crushing force against the pretensions made on behalf of our Gospels to Apostolic origin and authenticity.
Whether we accept the canonical Hebrew books as a revelation or simply as part of an ancient literature, makes no difference to the fact that we find there the strongly characterized portraiture of a people educated from an earlier or later period to a sense of separateness unique in its intensity, a people taught by many concurrent influences to identify faithfulness to its national traditions with the highest social and religious blessings.
Before we pass on to the last evidences offered by Paley, which necessitate a closer investigation into the value of the testimony borne by the patristic, to the canonical, writings, it will be well to put broadly the fact, that these Fathers are simply worthless as witnesses to any matter of fact, owing to the absurd and incredible stories which they relate with the most perfect faith.
Now such being the distinctions of Stow itself, of course the "Perpetual Curate" of Stow, on receiving the awful impressment of episcopal hands, and the mysterious investiture of canonical habits, together with the comfortable appointment of the patron to the vacant curacy, entered on the discharge of his spiritual functions with strong notions of the altitude of his office, and of the plenary powers attached thereto.
The Roman and Canonical theory of law under the influence of ancient traditions even as early as the eleventh century attempts to unite the two elements in that, upon the basis of a contract, it either makes the people part with their rights to the prince, and accordingly makes the government the state, or it considers the prince simply as the authorized agent of the people and so makes the latter and the state identical.
And also exactly what would be complained of in all the literature which is great enough and old enough to have attained canonical rank, officially or unofficially, were it not that books are admitted to the canon by a compact which confesses their greatness in consideration of abrogating their meaning; so that the reverend rector can agree with the prophet Micah as to his inspired style without being committed to any complicity in Micah's furiously Radical opinions.
Clap but a civil gown with a welt on the one; and a canonical cloak with sleeves on the other: and give them a few terms in their mouths, if there come not forth as able a doctor, and complete a parson, for this turn, as may be wish'd, trust not my election: and, I hope, without wronging the dignity of either profession, since they are, but persons put on, and for mirth's sake, to torment him.
The prohibition applies most to those books which treat of theology, and the canonical laws, particularly if they are well written, and contain the doctrines taught by the fathers, the councils, and even by the popes who reigned in the seven first centuries, but which have been forgotten or opposed by the theologians of the barbarous times, who wished to establish the system of the union of the two powers in the person of the sovereign pontiff.
The religious also consider that although the virtue of justice is one for all, and alike for all, and the efficacy of canonical institution is also one for persons who are qualified for the same office, to the secular cleric with the onerous duty of parish priest is given all that can favor him; but to the religious, while the entire burden is laid upon him, all his energy is checked on account of not giving him all which can relieve that burden.
In saying his office, it often happened to him to leave, for five or six times successively, the same canonical hour, for the good of souls, and he quitted it with the same promptitude that afterwards he resumed it: he broke off his very prayers when the most inconsiderable person had the least occasion for him; and ordered, when he was in the deepest of his retirements, that if any poor man, or even but a child, should desire to be instructed, he might be called from his devotions.