Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Priesthood   Listen
noun
Priesthood  n.  
1.
The office or character of a priest; the priestly function.
2.
Priests, taken collectively; the order of men set apart for sacred offices; the order of priests.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Priesthood" Quotes from Famous Books



... after the event they went to confess to a priest of their nation, and revealed every detail of the tragic story. This unworthy minister of the Lord supposed that in a Mahommedan country, where the laws of the priesthood and the functions of a confessor are either unknown or disapproved, no examination would be made into the source of his information, and that his evidence would have the same weight as any other ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... church was to govern, temporally as well as spiritually. She sought to supply to men from her own store all the knowledge which was necessary for their welfare, and that knowledge was limited to dogmas and beliefs which would strengthen the power of the priesthood. A strict and absolute acceptance of the truths of Christianity as she defined them, and a humble obedience to the clergy were made the sole and necessary conditions of salvation. A questioning of those truths or a violation of that obedience was a crime before which murder and license faded into ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... powers—"I give," quoth he, "My first-born learning; 'twill a portion be:" Unhappy gift! a portion for a son! But all he had: —he learn'd, and was undone! Better, apprenticed to an humble trade, Had he the cassock for the priesthood made, Or thrown the shuttle, or the saddle shaped, And all these pangs of feeling souls escaped. He once had hope—Hope, ardent, lively, light; His feelings pleasant, and his prospects bright: Eager of fame, he read, he thought, he wrote, Weigh'd the Greek page, and added note ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... she presents the situation, turning in vain to every quarter whence help might come. To the whole body of the priesthood; to the timid monastic orders; to pious laymen honestly devout, yet touched by no flame of sacrificial passion such as she felt might bring salvation. It is never the sins of the world that most torture Catherine: always, as here, the ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... subjugating Arabia, Pompey, in 63 B.C., marched directly into Judaea. Espousing the candidature of Hyrcanus, Pompey marched against Jerusalem, within the walls of which he was admitted by the party of Hyrcanus. Aristobulus and his supporters, with the priesthood, withdrew to the Temple and prepared for an obstinate defence. At the end of three months, and after great loss of life, the Romans made themselves masters of the Temple. "The conduct of the Roman General excited at once the horror and the admiration of the Jews. He entered the Temple, ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock

... elder times, filled with such entries as bespoke a very strange condition of society. The inquisitorial practices and punitive power of the ministry could not be exceeded in countries enslaved by the priesthood of the Church of Rome. Forced confessions, the denial of religious rites even on the bed of death, excommunication, shameful exposures, and a rigid and minute interference in every domestic or private concern, indicated a state of things which must have been ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... in the second half of the first verse, with the sad cessation of divine revelations in that dreary time of national laxity. A demoralised priesthood, an alienated people, a silent God,—these are the outstanding features of the period when this fair life of continuous worship unfolded itself. This flower grew in a desert. The voice of God had become a tradition of the past, not an ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... time Henrik went to the valleys of the mountains in western America, Marie accompanied him. They were married in the Temple, made man and wife for time and eternity by the authority of the Priesthood. That event was among their supremely happy ones. Rachel witnessed the ceremony, and the smile on her face was sweeter ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson

... have been taught to think of others. I was sent to open up the gospel in the Eastern States because I had been endowed with almost the open vision. It was my call to help in the setting up of the Messiah's latter-day kingdom. Besides, we may never question the commands of the holy priesthood, even if our wicked ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... those days, the clever boy had been noticed by the Prince,—or, perhaps, thrust into notice by his father, who was reasonably proud of him. The lad had been taken out of his surroundings and thoroughly educated for the priesthood in Rome, but by the time he had attained to the age necessary for ordination, his artistic gifts had developed to such an extent that in spite of his father's disappointment, even the old Prince—the brother of Sister Maria Addolorata—advised Angelo Reanda to give up the Church, and to ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... childhood I had felt a vocation to the priesthood, so that all my studies were directed with that idea in view. Up to the age of twenty-four my life had been only a prolonged novitiate. Having completed my course of theology I successively received all the minor orders, and my superiors judged me worthy, despite my youth, ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier

... new King came who was not content with the capital of his fathers, so he ordered its removal. A sycophantic priesthood was loud in prophecies of the great future of the new capital to be built some few miles away, but Mandalay is this day the provincial centre of the government of a race alien to those who founded the city; the race of Kings, the last scion of which abandoned the city ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... was correct, then what a drama was her meeting with me! A person who despised money, who had proven it by grim deeds—and this a person of her own money-worshipping sex! What was the meaning of this phenomenon—this new religion that was challenging the priesthood of Mammon? So some Roman consul's daughter might have sat in her father's palace, and questioned in wonder a Christian slave woman, destined ere long to face the lions in the ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... thoughts after a maid young enough to be his daughter! Where's his religion, I should like to knaw?" This was Annie's own explanation, and even she realised that against Boase no charge of thinking about women could be brought—that quality of priesthood even her ignorance unconsciously admitted. She approached Boase on the subject of his creed and met with scant encouragement, which made her the more earnest. If the Parson had been anxious to receive her into the path he trod, she would have lagged; as ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... He disguised himself as a young Catholic priest. In this order of men he was willing to repose confidence. He knew that the French Catholics were not satisfied with their situation under the provincial government; but especially the priesthood. Feeling no apprehension for his own safety from treachery, he proceeded to a learned and reverend father of the church, to whom he communicated frankly who he was, and what was his object. Burr was master of the Latin language, and had an imperfect knowledge of the French. The priest was an ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... dreadful memories for the Tsar, who wished to build a new fort looking out upon the Baltic Sea. Its ancient churches and convents did not attract him, for religion was strongly associated in his mind with the stubborn opposition of the priesthood, which invariably met ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... tradition and the mist of legends. We know more of their administration and social condition, for the Spanish conquerors saw all with their own eyes. The constitution was communistic. All the land, fields, and pastures was divided into three parts, of which two belonged to the Inca and the priesthood, and the third to the people. The cultivation of the land was supervised by a commissioner of the government, who had to see that the produce was equitably distributed, and that the ground was properly manured with guano from the islands on the west coast. Clothes and domestic animals ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... willing to leave the question of religion on one side if the ecclesiastics would let them alone. This is true in spite of the fact that the pot-house rationalism of Germany and France in the eighteenth century found the main butt of its ridicule in the priesthood and the Church. On its sober side, in the studies of scholars, in the bureaux of statesmen, in the laboratories of discoverers, it found more solid work. It accomplished results which that other trivial aspect must not hide ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... susceptible to personal influence; and, just as that of the Fitzgeralds largely accounts for the rising in Kildare, so does the personality of Father John Murphy explain the riddle of Wexford. The son of a peasant of that county, he was trained for the priesthood at Bordeaux, and ardently embraced the principles of the French Revolution and the aims of United Ireland. His huge frame, ready wit, and natural shrewdness brought him to the front in Wexford; and he concerted the plan of establishing an Irish Republic on a strictly Romanist basis, a programme ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... ever at the cry of the strong for help the gospel has had just these three great prime factors to present for the solution of the problems of every age: first, the home, with its priesthood of the father and mother, the sanctuary of the house and the ministrations of family life; secondly, the school; and thirdly, between the home and the school, the church. When our Lord himself, from all possible ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various

... you imagine that citizen Schneider has not thrown off the absurd mummery of priesthood? If you were a little older you would go to prison for calling him Father Schneider—many a man has died for less;" and he pointed to a picture of a guillotine, which was hanging ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... this Rhamda. Men of his type could form but one kind of priesthood: exalted, and devoted to the advance of intelligence. If Rhamda Avec were of the same sort, then he was a man to be looked up to, not to hate. As for the Jarados—Watson could not make out who he had been; a prophet or teacher, seemingly, looming out ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... very compatible with severe study, and that an author is seldom loose in his life, even if he be licentious in his writings. A calm inquirer might, perhaps, have been of opinion that a solitary sage may be the antagonist of a priesthood without absolutely denying the existence of a God; but there never are calm inquirers. The world, on every subject, however unequally, is divided into parties; and even in the case of Herbert (Lord Byron) ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... convictions that the dogmas are radically absurd and immoral, or that the whole claim to authority is opposed to all rational progress. In the Manning articles he ends by accepting the issue as between the secular view and the claims of a priesthood to authority. In the last resort it is a question whether State or Church shall rule. He prefers the State, because it has more rational aims, uses more appropriate means, has abler rulers, produces verifiable results, and has generally 'less nonsense about ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... alienation from popular sympathies. Wycliffe represented this national feeling when he appealed to national authority to reform a corrupt Catholic church, and when he finally denied that power of miraculous transubstantiation, upon which ultimately was based the claim of the priesthood to special privileges and estimation. But his association with the extreme forms of social agitation, which accompanied the Lollard ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... upon them to mark whatsoever may be amiss in their conduct. Their virtues, their learning, their holy lives—nothing will avail them, if one blot can be discovered in their character. There must be no moral blemish in the priesthood. In the Catholic religion, where more is professed, still more is demanded, and the errors of one padre or one ecclesiastic seem to throw a shade over the whole community to which ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... and our mathematical investigations assure us on every hand—notwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant of the priesthood—that space, and therefore that bulk, is an important consideration in the eyes of the Almighty. The cycles in which the stars move are those best adapted for the evolution, without collision, of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... learned nun, For whose sake Abeilard, I ween, Lost manhood and put priesthood on? (From Love he won such dule and teen!) And where, I pray you, is the Queen Who willed that Buridan should steer Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine?... But where are ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... not long remain in the hands of the priesthood. Struck by the extreme beauty of the spot, "for that it seemed exceeding profitable and commodious, because situate so near the Thames, the wood fit for game, and many other particulars lying there, meet and necessary for kings—yea, a place very convenient for his ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... our day, seen an order of priesthood in the church of Rome, annihilated by the consent of the European princes, which ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... ruins of old aristocratic and municipal institutions that had long guarded and sustained popular freedom, a coarse, leveling tyranny, sometimes democratic, sometimes imperial, established; in the church the oppression of the priesthood, a heartless religious indifferentism, undignified even by attempts at philosophic speculation, propagated and encouraged; and through the poisoned channels of education the taint of infidelity transmitted to generations yet unborn. Such were ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... officers, or headmen, Pangulus, in all villages, and every hamlet of more than forty houses has its mosque and religious officials, though Mohammedanism does not recognize the need of a priesthood. If one see a man, with the upper part of his body unclothed, paddling a log canoe, face forward, one is apt to call him a savage, specially if he be dark-skinned; but the Malays would be much offended if they were called savages, and, indeed, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... hours, under the oaks of the Mission Dolores, he bears to the calm priests his budget of port and town. He tells of the new marvellous mines, of the influx of gold hunters. He cannot withhold his astonishment that the priesthood should not have discovered the gold deposits. The astute clergy inform him calmly that for years their inner circles have known of considerable gold in the possession of the Indians. It was a hope ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... Buddhism abdication entered upon a new phase. In imitation, it would seem, of the retirement for the purpose of religious contemplation of the Head Priests of Buddhist monasteries, abdicating sovereigns shaved their heads and entered the priesthood, and when subsequently the custom came to be employed for political purposes, the cloak of religion was retained. From the throne the custom spread to Regents and high officers of state, and so universal had its observance amongst officials of the high ranks become in the twelfth century ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... pictured women more charming, more graceful, more intelligent, than they are commonly to be found in real life. I knew then, and I even exaggerated to myself, the cost of the sacrifice I was making, when I renounced the love of those women for the purpose of elevating myself to the dignity of the priesthood. I know well how much the charms of a beautiful woman are enhanced by rich attire, by splendid jewels, by being surrounded with all the arts of refined civilization, all the objects of luxury produced by the indefatigable labor and the skill of man. I knew ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... healthy effort at rooting out some deep-seated pollution from the State. The gloomy record of the religious persecutions of the past made it still more difficult for a government, which prided itself on the retention of the ancient control of morals, which gloried in its monopoly of an historic priesthood that had often set its hand to the work of extirpation, to stifle such a cry. The demand for atonement was the voice of the conserver of Rome's moral life, of the patriotic devotee who was striving earnestly to reclaim the waning favour of her tutelary gods. If it was further ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... Hindoos, who live entirely on vegetable aliment, possess a mildness and gentleness of character and disposition directly the reverse of the Tartar; and I have no doubt, had India possessed a more popular form of government, and a more enlightened priesthood, her people, with minds so fitted for contemplation, would have far outstripped the other nations of the world in manufactures, and in the ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... the Pope upon the throne of the Caesars; to attribute to him powers weightier than all which the Caesars had possest . . . It was a magnificent idea. A politic idea, too; for it would cover the priesthood with all the prestige of ancient Rome, and enable them to face the barbarian in the name of that great people whose very memory still awed him; whose baths, aqueducts, palaces, he looked on as the work of demons; whose sages and poets were to ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... schools, and oblige parents to send their children to them, and not to Public Schools—to the grave of Catholicity. It is then, also, and not till then, that we shall see more young people called to the priesthood, and to such religious orders as devote themselves especially to the education of youth. In Europe, the bishops and priests, together with the laity, fight for the liberty of educating the children according to Catholic ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... only known it in its resuscitated and decidedly dominant state can easily conceive. In 1823 a new Irish Catholic Association was set on foot, of which he was the visible life and soul. It is curious to note how little enthusiasm its proceedings seem at first to have awakened, especially amongst the priesthood. At a meeting on February 4, 1824, the necessary quorum of ten members running short, it was only supplied by O'Connell rushing downstairs to the book-shop over which the association met, and actually forcing upstairs ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... penance six year; and then Sir Launcelot took the habit of priesthood of the Bishop, and a twelvemonth he sang mass. And there was none of these other knights but they read in books, and holp for to sing mass, and rang bells, and did bodily all manner of service. And so their horses went where they ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... vision. The poet flings forth his melody, and to the gross ear it seems a mere tinkle of inanity. That is simply because the crowd who worship at the shrine of the Sminthean Apollo have been accustomed by an old-fashioned and ridiculously incompetent priesthood to look for an instant and mechanical relation between sound and sense. I would not exaggerate, sire; but the kind of poetry lately cultivated, not only at Delphi, but in Delos ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse

... it, and live wholly in it, is the condition of all genuine virtue, knowledge, freedom; and the end, therefore, of all spiritual effort in every age. Literary men are the appointed interpreters of this divine idea; a perpetual priesthood, we might say, standing forth, generation after generation, as the dispensers and living types of God's everlasting wisdom, to show it in their writings and actions, in such particular form as their own particular times require it in. ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... congregation, sisters, poor old mutched wifies, were going home together. They were distantly related to the schoolmaster, whom they regarded as the honour of the family, as their bond of relation with the world above them in general and with the priesthood in particular. So when Elspeth addressed Meg with reference to the sermon in a manner which showed her determination to acknowledge no failure, Meg ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... peculiar business it is to take care of religion, and those who instruct the people therein. These were searched and sought out through the whole nation, by the prince and his wisest counsellors, among such of the priesthood as were most deservedly distinguished by the sanctity of their lives and the depth of their erudition, who were indeed the spiritual fathers of the ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... set of men and women then specialise off to study how these spirits can be managed, and so arises a priesthood; and the priests, or medicine men as they are called in their earliest forms, gradually, for their own ends, elaborate and wrap round their profession ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... adopted to promote the welfare and prosperity of the masses. It can hardly be questioned that these measures were right and proper in themselves, but they were on that account none the less obnoxious to the Brahmin priesthood, or distasteful to the Natives generally. In some cases also they were premature, and in others they were not carried out as judiciously as they might have been, or with sufficient regard to the feelings ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... council with his family and, half an hour later, a second one with the more influential members of the priesthood. It was decided, in both cases, that the occasion was favourable for a long-deferred contest between the Powers of Light and the powers of darkness, the Catholic Church and modernism, the Clergy of Nepenthe and the secular authority of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... Marseilles, and my right name is Jean Fouchet. My father intended me for the priesthood, and gave me a good college education in Paris. His hopes, however, were destined to disappointment. In college I formed the habit of gambling, and a year after my graduation found me at Monte Carlo. While there I quarrelled with a gambling accomplice ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... obtain a formula by the payment of a coat, a quantity of cloth, or a sum of money. Like the Celtic Druids of old, the candidate for the priesthood in former times found it necessary to cultivate a long memory, as no formula was repeated more than once for his benefit. It was considered that one who failed to remember after the first hearing was not worthy ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... Fortunately, priesthood had tried its mailed hand on the slow and sluggish Dutch, with the result that the Spaniards were driven from the Netherlands. Holland was the home of freedom. Amsterdam became a Mecca for the oppressed. The Jews flocked thither, and among others ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... Jose de Calasanz, on his return from America, had not learned much theology, at any rate he had learned more about life than in the early years of his priesthood, and had turned into a cunning hypocrite. His passions were of extraordinary violence, and despite his ability in concealing them, he could not altogether hide his ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... even more certainty, I prophesy that mere necessity, a necessity arising out of continual collisions with sceptical philosophy, will, in a few years, carry all churches enjoying a learned priesthood into the disputes connected with this doctrine of development. Phil., meantime, is no friend to that Newmanian doctrine; and in sect.31, p.66, he thus describes it:—'According to these writers' (viz., the writers 'who advocate the theory of development'), 'the progressive and gradual ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... construct roads, to annex territories, and to enter upon more intimate relations with the border tribes. The most marked incident in that policy has been the retention of Chitral. This act was regarded by the tribesmen as a menace to their independence, and by the priesthood as the prelude to a general annexation. Nor were they wrong, for such is the avowed aim of the "Forward Policy." The result of the retention of Chitral has been, as I have already described, that the priesthood, ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... Churchdom.— N. church, churchdom; ministry, apostleship[obs3], priesthood, prelacy, hierarch[obs3], church government, christendom, pale of the church. clericalism, sacerdotalism[obs3], episcopalianism, ultramontanism[obs3]; theocracy; ecclesiology[obs3], ecclesiologist[obs3]; priestcraft[obs3], odium theologicum[Lat]. monachism[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... contrary, The Apostle says (Heb. 7:12): "The priesthood being translated, it is necessary that a translation also be made of the law." But the priesthood is twofold, as stated in the same passage, viz. the levitical priesthood, and the priesthood of Christ. Therefore the Divine law is twofold, namely the Old Law and ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... who first gave to religious thought that metaphor which has survived temple and sacrifice and priesthood, and will survive even earth itself; for 'I am the Good Shepherd' is as true to-day as when first spoken by Jesus, and 'the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them,' and be their ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... me to leave off the trade of stone cutting and prepare for the priesthood, where I could make an easier living, working on the fears, egotism ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... he said, "the mother of wealth, the aunt of colour, and the grandmother of drugs, is a mystery to the layman. The highest, if not the best known, of its priesthood, is my old friend Caldegard. Some little time ago he penetrated too far into the arcana of his cult; and on one of the branches of that terrific tree he found and coaxed into blossom a bud which grew into the fruit which his daughter has named Ambrotox—as if it were a beef essence ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming

... abomination is carefully hidden under a close veil of tinsel and finery, and foolish, empty ceremonies, in all ages the charlatan's conditio sine qua non. Is not this comparison of mine between the priesthood and the military caste interesting and logical? Here the riassa and the censer; there the gold-laced uniform and the clank of arms. Here bigotry, hypocritical humility, sighs and sugary, sanctimonious, unmeaning ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... Hindu custom of the wife's burning herself with the corpse of her husband; in these cases, perhaps, fear of the priesthood, &c., is a stronger motive than love ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli

... Marbeuf in particular, were of the opinion that he could profit to a certain extent at least by securing for his children an education at the expense of the state. While it is likely that from the first Joseph was destined for the priesthood, yet there was provision for ecclesiastical training under royal patronage as well as for secular, and a transfer from the latter to the former was easier than the reverse. Both were to be placed at the college ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... priest and medicine man. Originally, there was no sharp distinction between the priest and the medicine man. One person performed both functions, and in many cases this person was a woman. Later, those who made use of supplication and entreaty constituted the priesthood, while those who attempted to frighten the gods were known as ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp

... is the choro ([Greek: choros]), which is danced on the village green to the strains of the gaida or bagpipe, and the gusla, a rudimentary fiddle. The Bulgarians are religious in a simple way, but not fanatical, and the influence of the priesthood is limited. Many ancient superstitions linger among the peasantry, such as the belief in the vampire and the evil eye; witches and necromancers are numerous ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... Beneath this cone, in unconsecrated ground, A friend to the liberties of mankind directed his body to be inurned. May the example contribute to emancipate thy mind From the idle fears of Superstition, And the wicked Act of Priesthood! ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... and spoke in detail of the preaching of Jesus, of His miracles, of His hatred for the Pharisees and the Temple, of His perpetual infringement of the Law, and eventually of His wish to wrest the power out of the hands of the priesthood, and to set up His own personal kingdom. And so cleverly did he mingle truth with lies, that Annas looked at him more attentively, and lazily remarked: "There are plenty of impostors ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... rigid virtue; and thinking that the offer of the Count de Lure would not affect my intended destination, my father accepted it, judging that some years passed in a family so distinguished would give me a taste for the more serious studies necessary to fit me for the priesthood. I set out, therefore, with the Count de Lure, much grieved at leaving my parents, but pleased also at the same time, as is usual with one at my age, with new scenes. The count took me to one of his estates near Tours, where I was received with the greatest kindness by ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... simplicity of Catholicism experienced, but they confuse with the points of faith, not only the scientific accounts the theologians give of them, but mere rules of discipline, and pious opinions also. It is supposed popularly, for instance, to be of Catholic faith that celibacy is essential to the priesthood. This as a fact, however, is no more a part of the Catholic faith than the celibacy of a college fellow is a part of the Thirty-nine Articles, or than the skill of an English naval officer depends on his not having his wife with ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... want of intellect, their want of character, their greed, and to keep insisting on the unchangeability of human character, on the virtues of rulership and leadership, on the spiritual unselfishness and intellectual priesthood of the classes born to freedom. Where was this heaven-nurtured priestly virtue sleeping when Wrong straddled the land and the great crime was wrought? It was composing feeble anthologies and pompous theories, cooking its culture-soup, confusing, with ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... Ochtertyre, with a Roman Catholic actress. His father followed the pair to London, and there, it would seem, prevailed on the erratic neophyte to abandon his fair partner, whose existence would certainly have been a fatal barrier to the proposed priesthood. At least, like his friend Gibbon of later days, if he sighed as a lover, he obeyed as a son, and a compromise by which he was to enter on the profession of arms was effected. His father called on Archibald, Duke of Argyll, an old ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... decadence; it is the universal law. Through imperceptible degrees men fell away from the faith of their fathers, and the worship of the god had become unfashionable. The devotees were reduced to a handful of women; of the once all-powerful priesthood, Prosper alone remained, and he was ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... institution as the clergy; it grew naturally out of the increasing needs of the community . . . the intellectual element in religion requires some one to express it, and this, in some form or other, will be the clergy"?[1] Surely if there were no "orders" in the beginning, then a priesthood was no creation of Jesus, his apostles were no priests, they created, therefore, no priests, and a priestly caste grew up as an intrusion in Christendom just as it arose in the religion of the holy Buddha in India, and attempted, though unsuccessfully, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... seen in the Snake Dance as many as nine groups of three, all circling the plaza at once. But in recent years the number is smaller, in some villages not more than four, for the old priests are dying off and not every young man who inherits the priesthood upon the death of his maternal uncle (priest) is willing to go on, though there are some novices almost every year. This year (1932) the eleven year old brother of a Hopi girl in the writer's employ went ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett

... strange and less kinglike than the others—undertaking to abolish all the imposts and all the laws that press upon the commons, and (is this a holy and pious stipulation?) to inquire into the exactions and persecutions of the priesthood of our Holy Church!" ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the Chapter was involved," said Monsieur de Watteville; "and then the Archbishop's pride, his conscience, everything that makes up the life of the priesthood, was at stake. That Savaron does not know what he did for the ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac

... energy were certain to be strongly represented in the organization which Mr. Gladstone hoped to lead back to office. The Spirit of Dissent was all powerful among the English householders. The Irish tenant, whose electoral strength, directed by the Roman priesthood, had been exhibited with much effect in 1852, was sure to receive a great increase of power under the new Reform Bill. To combine these influences was one of the conditions of any prolonged tenure of office by the Liberal party. The Irish ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... consolation to be able to add that the late government of the State of Mexico had sufficient firmness to suppress this abominable festival of the Church, much to the pecuniary disadvantage of the saint and his priesthood. Indeed, there is now no public gambling, not even in the city of Mexico, except the lottery of the Academy of Fine Arts, and the lottery which is monthly drawn to promote the adoration of our Lady of Guadalupe. This last is one of the most corrupting of all lotteries. Tickets for as small ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... was for ever striving to erect, their extravagance as perpetually undermined. I further commented upon the insecurity of any institution dependent solely upon prescription. Finding these suggestions unpalatable, I next addressed myself to the priesthood. ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... patterns of virtue. These several trials, and the consequent distractions in which they involved him, made him more disgusted than ever with the world; and his desire to consecrate himself to God in the holy priesthood became stronger and stronger every day. The Almighty seemed to have some special mission in view for this spotless child of St. Patrick, when his mercy had conducted him, like the children in the fiery furnace, so early through such ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... of our meditations, panting under his iron grasp. The afflictions of her life are now consummated. The husband of her youth, his follies and faults against her, now are forgotten in the bitter thought that he is dead, has gone unrepentant to the bar of God to give account of his priesthood—her venerable father-in-law alone, with no friend to cheer his dying agonies, has also departed from earth—her people are defeated in battle, and worse than all, the ark of God is fallen into the hands ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... having been in "the puddle of papistry." He loathes what he has left behind him, and it is natural to guess that, in his first years of priesthood, his religious nature slept; that he became a priest and notary merely that he "might eat a morsel of bread"; and that real "conviction" never was his till his studies of Protestant controversialists, and also of St. Augustine and the Bible, and the teaching of Wishart, raised him ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... myths of the origin of man and of the world, we shall begin by considering those current among the most backward peoples, where no hereditary or endowed priesthood has elaborated and improved the popular beliefs. The natives of Australia furnish us with myths of a purely popular type, the property, not of professional priests and poets, but of all the old men and full-grown warriors of the country. ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... perfect. Here is the true relation between the forms and the end of religion. The priesthood, the altar and all its ceremonies, must vanish from between the sinner and his God. When the priest forgets his mediation of a servant, his duty of a door-keeper to the temple of truth, and takes ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... thou have been the dupes of priesthood. Your hand. The father of this gen'rous pair I cannot choose but love. My noble lord, I pray you pardon my scant courtesy And sluggish duty, which so tardy-paced Do ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker

... religion that is always shaping its form to fit the spirit, the one religion that will never for long be fettered in dogmas. It is a religion without a priesthood; and it is well that the new spirit should not be committed to the hands of priests. The new spirit is in the hands of the artists; that is well. Artists, as a rule, are the last to organise themselves into official castes, and such castes, when organised, rarely impose on the choicer ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... and "Old Nick"; Weland, the forger of weighty shields and sharp-biting swords, who found a later home in the "Weyland's smithy" of Berkshire; AEgil, the hero-archer, whose legend is one with that of Cloudesly or Tell. A nature-worship of this sort lent itself ill to the purposes of a priesthood; and though a priestly class existed it seems at no time to have had much weight among Englishmen. As each freeman was his own judge and his own lawmaker, so he was his own house-priest; and English worship lay commonly in the sacrifice which the ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... with those military expressions he so freely used, causing those present to indulge in bursts of laughter, in which even the curate himself joined, and said, "Monseigneur, if you had continued your studies for the priesthood you would have become a cardinal at least."—"Very likely," observed one of the officers; "and if the Abbe Maury had been a sergeant-major in '89, he might to-day be marshal of France."—"Or dead," added the Duke of Dantzic, using ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... Synoptics, or indeed in any book of the New Testament, except the Epistle to the Hebrews: yet, notwithstanding this, of all the books of the New Testament, this Gospel is the one which sets forth the reality of Christ's Priesthood. For what is the distinguishing function of the Priesthood? Is it not Mediation and Intercession, and the Fourth Gospel more than all sets forth Christ as Mediator and Intercessor? As Mediator when He says so absolutely: "No man cometh unto the Father ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler

... sections 16-34 the sacrificial theory of the Roman Church is rejected; sections 35-31 discuss (1) in how far we may speak of making an offering in the sacrament, and (2) what follows for the conception of a true priesthood in the Church, viz., the priesthood of all believers. Sections 33-39 deal, among other things, with the abuses to which an unscriptural conception of the Lord's Supper has led. Of special interest is section 12, in which Luther gives a summary ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... arbitrary and puerile, life outside has made him lukewarm. Therefore it seems that God has withdrawn Himself from him, and the proof of this is that He has taken away all ability from the priesthood. There are no priests now who have talent, either in the pulpit or in books; the laity have inherited that grace which was so common in the Church of the Middle Ages. Another example proves it still more, priests make so few conversions. In these days the being who pleases Heaven does without ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... them, as unto lawful, scriptural parish ministers. For besides that there is nothing due unto them, their office having no divine authority; so there being under the New Testament a change of the priesthood, there is also a change of the law, respecting tithes; according to 2 Cor. vi, 17; ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... those which yet exist there. The Federalists have been the true liberals throughout the disturbances and troubles of a generation, and, though not faultless, are better entitled to the name of patriots than are the men by whom they have been opposed. They have been the foes of the priesthood, and have often sought to lessen its power and destroy its influence. If they could have had their will any time during the last thirty-five years, the priests would have been reduced to a condition of apostolic simplicity, and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... priests are of the kind above referred to. Many of them are honest, respectable, well-intentioned men, who conscientiously fulfil their humble duties, and strive hard to procure a good education for their children. If they have less learning, culture, and refinement than the Roman Catholic priesthood, they have at the same time infinitely less fanaticism, less spiritual pride, and less intolerance towards ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... North. We say Protestant denominations advisedly; for we do not believe that the Roman Catholic Church would for a moment entertain the notion of excluding a man either from its sacraments, its worshiping assemblies, or its priesthood, on the ground of color, or would recognize in its worshiping assemblies any distinction except the broad one between clergy and laity. To do so would be to violate all its traditions ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various

... proportion to the amount of grace he received, and in proportion, also, to the amount of his own free co-operation with this grace. Some received the grace of the apostleship, and all, except one, corresponded with that grace. Others received the grace of martyrdom; others received the grace of the priesthood; others the grace of trampling under foot the honors and pleasures of this world, by consecrating themselves to God in religious communities; while others, again, received the grace of becoming saints, ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux

... man's nature—a spiritual service rendered to a God who is a spirit, and who requireth to be worshiped in spirit and in truth. Of such Peter says: "ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." In pursuance of this idea, the apostle, in our text, after speaking of the presenting of the body as a living sacrifice, and of such a presentation as a reasoning service, gives us the key ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.

... and the rest subordinate gods. For a long time these connate forms of government—civil and religious—remain closely associated. For many generations the king continues to be the chief priest, and the priesthood to be members of the royal race. For many ages religious law continues to include more or less of civil regulation, and civil law to possess more or less of religious sanction; and even among the most advanced nations these two controlling agencies are by ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... insult to a citizen's wife as she was quietly walking home through the Cheap. Her husband and brother, who were nearer at hand than he guessed, avenged the outrage with such good wills that this disgrace to the priesthood was left dead on the ground. When such things happened, and discourses like Beale's were heard, it was not surprising that Ambrose's faith in the clergy ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... educated, a great reader, and fond of dress. The pope, who is much liked by the local landowner, is not poor, and lives in comfort on his own land. He is a sensible man, belongs to the younger generation, but he leads too worldly a life for the priesthood, as is the custom in landed society. He reads French books, and smokes, for instance; things that are unsuited to the priestly garb. Every glance of Veroshka's, every mood of hers is sacred to Natalie Ivanovna; whatever she may say is wise and good. This suits Vera, who does not want a friend, ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... present were, however, of opinion, that if every lady in the room whose character corresponded with the verses had taken him at his word; the poet would in all probability have been beaten to death. All his life long he evinced a great animosity towards the priesthood, and his famous poem abounds with passages reflecting upon their avarice, cruelty, and immorality. At his death he left a large box, filled with some weighty material, which he bequeathed to the Cordeliers, as a peace-offering, for the abuse he had lavished upon ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... body, that the body may be "inChristed," to {61} use an old phrase of the mystics; that is, indwelt by Christ and transfigured into the likeness of Christ. Only thus, as "a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people," can it "shew forth the virtues of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light." And who is the Christ that is thus to be manifested? From the throne he ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon

... Submit they must to David's government: Impoverish'd and deprived of all command, Their taxes doubled as they lost their land; And, what was harder yet to flesh and blood, Their gods disgraced, and burnt like common wood. This set the heathen priesthood in a flame; For priests of all religions are the same. Of whatsoe'er descent their godhead be, 100 Stock, stone, or other homely pedigree, In his defence his servants are as bold, As if he had been born of beaten gold. The Jewish rabbins, though their ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... occupied much attention. It was the appropriation of certain funds—whether they should be applied towards increasing their seminary, so as to fit it for the proper education of ministers for their church, or whether they should not be applied to some other purpose, and their priesthood be still allowed to spring uncultured from the mass. The different opinions expressed regarding this, finely developed the progress of mind throughout the land. Some white-headed fathers of the sect, old refugees, who had left the bounds of civilization before they had received any education, ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan

... neglected: that through them also runs the great Law of Evolution, of the widening thoughts of men; so that now, in civilized countries at least, the churches persecute to the death no longer. You know what the Egyptian Priesthood would have done with me at my trial. What the Mediaeval hierarchy would have done. What the Protestant or the Catholic theology of two centuries ago might have done. Now mankind is developing better ideas of these little arrangements ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... breastpin set, as I honestly believe, with genuine pearls, and appears habitually with a very smart cap, from under which her gray curls come out with an unmistakable expression, conveyed in the hieratic language of the feminine priesthood, to the effect that while there is life there is hope. And when I come to reflect on the many circumstances which go to the making of matrimonial happiness, I cannot help thinking that a personage of her present ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... such profound significance as here, where the contrast between the world and pity was developed in a more pregnant, more precise, more plastic form than in any other nation. It is very significant for that reason that almost all the great Spanish poets took refuge in priesthood in the second half of their lives. It is a unique phenomenon that from this refuge, and after conquering life by ideal means, these poets were able to describe the same life with greater certainty, purity, warmth, and precision than they had been capable of while they still were in the midst ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... themselves entitled to provide with ministers; and where the episcopal government prevails, the Bishop has no power to reject a man nominated by the patron, but for some crime that might exclude him from the priesthood. For the endowment of the church being the gift of the landlord, he was consequently at liberty to give it according to his choice, to any man capable of performing the holy offices. The people did not choose him, because the people ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... conscience sake say I will not, Monsieur. You, when you enter your priestly life, put all your past behind you. It is dead for ever: all its deeds and thoughts and desires, all its errors—sins. I have entered on a life here which is to me as much a new life as your priesthood is to you. Shall I not have the right to say, that may not be disinterred? Have I not the right to say, Hands off? For the past I am responsible, and for the past I will speak from the past; but for the deeds of the present I will speak only from the present. I am not a Frenchman; I did not steal ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... priesthood chants the Hymn of Hate, Like incense will you lift to God your breath In praise that you are privileged by fate To do His little ones ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various

... was the doubt it left on the minds of thousands of the best Irishmen whether there was not some malign plot in which the Church was associated with the ban-dogs of the Liberal Party for dishing Home Rule by overthrowing Parnell. It was recalled that the Catholic priesthood, with a few glorious exceptions, stood apart from Parnell when he was struggling to give life and force to the Irish movement, and thus it came to pass that for many a bitter year the part of the Irish priest ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... does not fear his antagonist at the head of the Roman army, because, should the worst come to the worst, he has his machines ready, which, if necessary, will miraculously rekindle the dead fire of Vesta. In this way, even though Julia should escape the sacrifice, the power of the priesthood ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... is an indication of the splendour of a family. But, further, by my mother I am of the royal blood; for the children of Asmonaeus, from whom that family was derived, had both the office of the high-priesthood and the dignity of a king for ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... favours, nor by the prospect of future friendship: but I have heard the just and temperate plea advanced by his emissaries, and I rise to advocate the claims of religion, the interests of our community, the duties of the priesthood; I charge you, thwart not the pious intention of a mighty prince, nor deprive the God of an offering which in the intention of the donor is already his, and which is destined to serve as an eternal threefold record,—of the sculptor's art, of inventive cruelty, and of righteous retribution. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... Carolus. "I aspire to high philosophy and sound literature. According to my idea, art is a priesthood—." ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... either tolerance or humanity in any way advocated by the priests, who are generally as illiterate and narrow-minded as their flocks, and whose influence, which is very great, is generally employed for evil. The priesthood are divided into Archimandrite, Igumens (chiefs of monasteries), Monks, and Priests, all of whom are natives of the province, where their whole lives have been passed. Of late years, however, many have been sent to receive their ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... work and pleasure. He quarreled with Rosseau about this time, and a little later visited England. He remained away from France three years. Upon his return to Paris he again brought out plays, and was everywhere admired and worshiped. But the priesthood hated him. ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... background of purple, to prefigure the royal birth of the Son; between Melchizedec, the mitred patriarch, holding the censer, and Aaron, in the curious red cap bordered with lemon yellow, representing prophetically the Priesthood of Christ. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... whispering—The Thunderers. And Tamanund must hear my speech and read my heart. And the long roll of our Mohican dead must be recited—here and alone by me—the only one who has that right since Uncas died and the Mohican priesthood ended, save for the Sagamores of ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... similarly paramount and unchallenged position. It never attempted to extirpate its rivals. It coexisted with a mass of popular superstition which it only gently reprobated and with a powerful hereditary priesthood, both intellectual and pliant, tenacious of their own ideas and yet ready to countenance almost any other ideas as the price of ruling. Neither Islam nor Christianity had such an adversary, and both of them and even Judaism resemble ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... Jesus, 5 They, the best corrupting, had made it worse than the vilest. Wherefore Heaven decreed th' enthusiast warrior of Mecca, Choosing good from iniquity rather than evil from goodness. Loud the tumult in Mecca surrounding the fane of the idol;— Naked and prostrate the priesthood were laid—the people with mad shouts 10 Thundering now, and now with saddest ululation Flew, as over the channel of rock-stone the ruinous river Shatters its waters abreast, and in mazy uproar bewilder'd, Rushes dividuous ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... of fear is ever the deepest. And men hated the Jewish taint, as once in Jerusalem they hated the leprosy, because even whilst they raved against it, the secret proofs of it might be detected amongst their own kindred, even as in the Temple, whilst once a king rose in mutiny against the priesthood, (2 Chron. xxvi 16-20,) suddenly the leprosy that dethroned him, blazed out upon his forehead.] whilst from her grandmother, Juana drew the deep subtle melancholy and the beautiful contours of limb which belong to the Indian race—a race destined silently and slowly to fade from the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... of the Church, and had seen too much of the abuses of the Saxon priesthood, (perhaps, with few exceptions, the most corrupt and illiterate in all Europe, which is saying much,) to instil into his children that reverence for the spiritual authority which existed abroad; and the enlightenment, which in him was ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... St. Peter say (1st Epistle, chap, ii.), 'Ye are a royal priesthood'? What then! if ye are kings, princes, and priests yourselves, must ye needs pay for other kings, princes, and priests? Can ye not govern yourselves? can ye not pray for yourselves? In my opinion, yes! Doth not the same St. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... here were doubtless sent, from all parts of the papal states, those daughters of Venus who were willing to minister to the joys of His Holiness. To cap the climax, imagine the effrontery of a pope who dared, in the face of the ecclesiastical rule enjoining celibacy upon the priesthood, to parade his delinquencies before the eyes of all the world, and seat himself in state, for a solemn pageant at Saint Peter's, with his daughter Lucrezia upon one side of his throne and his daughter-in-law Sancia upon the other! It was once said by a witty and epigrammatic ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... they should be amongst the leading chivalries of Europe, in very fact they are, for political or social purposes, the most powerless gentry in existence. Acting in a corporate capacity, they can do nothing. The malignant planet of this low-born priesthood comes between them and the peasantry, eclipsing oftentimes the sunshine of their comprehensive beneficence, and always destroying their power to discountenance[20] evil-doers. Here is the sad excuse. But, for all that, we must affirm that, if the Irish landed ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... still alive, but suffered a great deal from gout and the capricious young wife he had married in his old age. Hangemarx had grown melancholy and, after all, ended his life by the rope, though by his own hand. Dark-skinned Xaver had entered the priesthood and was living in Rome in high esteem, as a member of a Spanish order. The abbot still presided over the monastery and had a great deal of time for his studies; for the school had been broken up and, as part of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... and Citizen then will agree, (That's English, you know; quite English, you know,) The Press and the Priesthood alike will be free (That's English, you know; quite English, you know). Then will France to her ancient pre-eminence rise; The German will watch her with reverent eyes; All the Powers rush forward to be her allies (That's French, you know; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various

... the emulative and lower animistic proclivities are substantially useful for the devout purpose seems to be placed beyond question by the fact that the priesthood of many denominations is following the lead of the lay organizations in this respect. Those ecclesiastical organizations especially which stand nearest the lay organizations in their insistence on practical religion have gone some way towards ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... mortals, how defective are those syllogisms which make thee downward beat thy wings! One was going after the Laws, and one after the Aphorisms,[1] and one following the priesthood, and one to reign by force or by sophisms, and one to rob, and one to civic business; one, involved in pleasure of the flesh, was wearying himself, and one was giving himself to idleness, when I, loosed from all these things, with Beatrice, was thus gloriously ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... of the Whig remodelling of the order of the Commons has been this—that it has placed the nomination of the Government in the hands of the popish priesthood. Is that a great advance of public intelligence and popular liberty? Are the parliamentary nominees of M'Hale and Kehoe more germane to the feelings of the English nation, more adapted to represent their interests, than the parliamentary nominees of a Howard ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... whether calling themselves priests, or merely ministers and preachers—have been in all ages tempted to talk as if Divine Providence was exercised solely on their behalf; in favour of their class, their needs, their health and comfort; as if the thunders of Jove never fell save when the priesthood needed, I had almost said commanded, them. Thus they have too often arrogated to themselves a right to define who was cursed by God, which has too soon, again and again, degenerated into a right to curse men in God's name; while they have too often taught men to believe only in a Providence ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley



Words linked to "Priesthood" :   priest, ministry, rabbinate, clergy



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com