"Theocracy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... democratic feeling was spreading; over forty newspapers were published in America at the outbreak of the Revolution; politics claimed more attention than formerly, and theology less. With all this intercourse and mutual reaction of the various colonies upon one another, the isolated theocracy of New England naturally relaxed somewhat of its grip on the minds of the laity. When Franklin was a printer's apprentice in Boston, setting type on his brother's New England Courant, the fourth American newspaper, he got hold ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... never realizes that his body is a kingdom, governed by Emperor Soul on the throne of the cranium, with subsidiary regents in the six spinal centers or spheres of consciousness. This theocracy extends over a throng of obedient subjects: twenty-seven thousand billion cells-endowed with a sure if automatic intelligence by which they perform all duties of bodily growths, transformations, and dissolutions-and fifty million substratal thoughts, emotions, and ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... theology and the diabology of the time. Mr. Cotton's Theocracy was a royal government, with the King of kings as its nominal head, but with an upper chamber of saints, and a tremendous opposition in the lower house; the leader of which may have been equalled, but cannot have been surpassed by any of our earth-born politicians. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that the franchise would be productive of great good in opening the eyes of these women to the knowledge of the power invested in them, to free themselves from the superstitious obedience with which their vicegerent had enchained them; but the folly of endowing them with our privilege so long as theocracy exists, has been fully demonstrated. To ask for rights which are cheerfully conceded to woman in every other section of the country, would be utterly useless in Utah. The law of suffrage like all other ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... known in Washington, the Senate, on January 16, 1863, called for a report by the Committee on Territories concerning the suppression of the message, and they got one from its chairman, Benjamin Wade, pointing out that Utah Territory was in the control of "a sort of Jewish theocracy," affording "the first exhibition, within the limits of the United States, of a church ruling the state," and declaring that the governor's message contained "nothing that should give offence to any legislature willing to be governed ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... under Calvin's regime was a curious theocracy of which Calvin himself was both religious leader and political "boss." The minister of the reformed faith became God's mouthpiece upon earth and inculcated an unbending puritanism in daily life. "No more festivals, no more jovial reunions, no more theaters or society; the rigid ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Luther and Zwingli, which shall be dealt with later, the Anabaptists and others continued to destroy the harmony of the self-styled reformers. The Anabaptists seized the city of Munster, proclaimed a democratic theocracy with John of Leyden, a tailor, at its head, and pronounced their intention of taking the field for the overthrow of tyrants and impostors. But their success was short-lived. Conrad, bishop and prince of Munster, raised an army, laid siege to the ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... then, that Christ in describing himself as a king, and at the same time as king of the Kingdom of God—in other words as a king representing the Majesty of the Invisible King of a theocracy—claimed the character first of Founder, next of Legislator; thirdly, in a certain high and peculiar sense, of Judge, of a new ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... idea that his erudition had carried him into regions in which it was impossible to follow him. The gist of his argument was to show that audacity in Reform was the very backbone of Conservatism. By a clearly pronounced disunion of Church and State the theocracy of Thomas a Becket would be restored, and the people of England would soon again become the faithful flocks of faithful shepherds. By taking away the endowments from the parishes, and giving them back in some complicated way to the country, the parishes would be better able than ever to ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... not tolerate either kings or aristocracies or democracies. Its implicit command to all its adherents is to make plain the way to the world theocracy. Its rule of life is the discovery and service of the will of God, which dwells in the hearts of men, and the performance of that will, not only in the private life of the believer but in the acts and order ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... became necessary to bring some order out of the spiritual, intellectual and physical chaos through the application of arbitrary force, and so came absolutism in government, the tyranny of the new intellectualism, the Catholic Inquisition and the Puritan Theocracy. ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... seeking freedom of faith, founded their first settlements in the new country, one of their earliest efforts was directed toward firmly establishing their own religion. This, though nominally free, was eventually, under the Mathers, to become a theocracy as intolerant as that faith from which they had fled. The rocks upon which this religion was builded were the Bible and the Catechism. In this history of toy-books the catechism is, however, perhaps almost the more important to consider, for it ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... the patriarchal theory as untenable, and shrinking from asserting the divine origin of government, lest they should favor theocracy, and place secular society under the control of the clergy, and thus disfranchise the laity, modern political writers have sought to render government purely human, and maintain that its origin is conventional, and that it is founded in compact or agreement. Their theory originated ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... Supreme Ruler, when he became the civil as well as the religious Head of the Jewish theocracy, furnish an example which it would be well for all attentively to consider, when forming plans for the apportionment of time and property. To properly estimate this example, it must be borne in mind, that the main object of God was, to set an example ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... their outward success. Judged by their own ideals, the Puritans failed. They would neither recognize nor approve the civilization that has sprung from the seeds of their planting. They tried to establish a theocracy; they stand in history as the heroes of democracy. Alike in their social and religious aims they ignored ineradicable elements in human nature. They attempted the impossible. How then have their deeds become the source of song ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... severally—to smite them hip and thigh, even till the going down of the sun; the mock sun or marshy meteor that served only to deepen the darkness encompassing on every side the doubly dark ages—the ages of monarchy and theocracy, the ages of death and of faith. To Panurge, therefore, it was unnecessary and it might have seemed inconsequent to attribute other gifts or functions than are proper to such intelligence as may accompany the appetites of an animal. That most irreverend father in God, Friar John, belongs ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... subjects connected therewith, published biographies of Anne Hutchinson, William Penn, Count Rumford, Jared Sparks, and Charles W. Upham. His volumes on The Red Man and the White Man in North America, The Puritan Theocracy, and others, show his historical ability and his large grasp of his subjects. Joseph Henry Allen published an Historical Sketch of the Unitarian Movement since the Reformation, in the American Church History series. In Our Liberal Movement ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... back through the eighteen centuries of Christian history, we can observe many events which may now be seen to have been each a coming of Christ. When, at the destruction of Jerusalem, the Mosaic theocracy went down before the iron power of Rome, amid those scenes of horror the firmest believers in Christ might have feared only evil. It seemed to be the overthrow of everything most sacred—the triumph of Paganism ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... delinquent"; and who had ever in their mouths the text that "blood defileth the land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it."[40] They had visions of a theocracy, and were impatient of an ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... could be raised in these States. Islamism is always antagonistic to national progress. It seems to petrify or congeal national life, placing each individual in the position of a member of a pure theocracy, rather than in that of a patriotic citizen of a country, or member of a nationality. In these States law, government and social customs have no existence apart from religion, and, indeed, they ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... the Establishment was transferred, in the seventeenth-century New England, to the minister. The minister imposed himself upon the popular imagination, partly through sheer force of personal ascendency, and partly as a symbol of the theocracy,—the actual governing of the Commonwealth by the laws and spirit of the sterner Scriptures. The minister dwelt apart as upon an awful Sinai. It was no mere romantic fancy of Hawthorne that shadowed his countenance with a black veil. The church organization, ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... of a nation in its origin was in a way physical, unitary, and crude; then as aggregations increased, government advanced by a decomposition of the primitive rule, more or less skilfully managed. For example, in remote ages national strength lay in theocracy, the priest held both sword and censer; a little later there were two priests, the pontiff and the king. To-day our society, the latest word of civilization, has distributed power according to the number of combinations, and we come to the forces called business, thought, money, and eloquence. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... pretended that M. Lamennais, preaching now a theocracy, now universal democracy, has been always consistent; that, under different names, he has sought invariably one and the same thing,—unity. Pitiful excuse for an author surprised in the very act of contradiction! What would be thought of a man who, by turns ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... necessary, later they regard the useful, the convenient, the agreeable and attractive, until the luxury sprung from the sense for the beautiful degenerates into a foolish misuse of things. Vico divides antiquity into three periods: the divine (theocracy), the heroic (aristocracy), and the human (democracy and monarchy). The same course of things repeats itself in the nations of later times: to the patriarchal dominion of the fanciful, myth-making Orient correspond the spiritual ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... of the sovereign is made so immediate that he can neither lose sight of it nor escape from its obligations, that surely must be the worst in which one man thinks and judges for all, and, by an unnatural union of spiritual and temporal attributes, is raised above all human responsibility,—a theocracy, with man to interpret the will of God, and to enforce ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the vermilion-painted face, the chaplet of oaken leaves in gold, belonged alike to the Roman god and to the Roman king. It would be a great error, however, to regard the Roman constitution on that account as a theocracy: among the Italians the ideas of god and king never faded away into each other, as they did in Egypt and the East. The king was not the god of the people; it were much more correct to designate him as the proprietor of the state. Accordingly the Romans knew nothing of special divine grace granted ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... The reason is that you have polities, but other states are mere aggregations of men dwelling together, which are named after their several ruling powers; whereas a state, if an 'ocracy' at all, should be called a theocracy. A tale of old will explain my meaning. There is a tradition of a golden age, in which all things were spontaneous and abundant. Cronos, then lord of the world, knew that no mortal nature could endure the temptations of power, and therefore ...
— Laws • Plato
... to the same object, abused the credulity of the ignorant. In the gloom of their temples, behind the curtain of the altar, they made their gods act and speak; gave forth oracles, worked miracles, ordered sacrifices, levied offerings, prescribed endowments; and, under the names of theocracy and of religion, the state became tormented by the passions ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... Bible is literally inspired; that the preachers are the perhaps inspired interpreters of the Bible, and that the country must imitate the old Hebrew persecution of "idolaters," that is, mainly Catholics. All this meant a theocracy of preachers elected by the populace, and governing the nation by their General Assembly in which nobles and other laymen sat as elders. These peculiar institutions came hot from Geneva, and the country could never have been blessed with them, as we have observed, but for that instrument of ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... a description of the approaching theocracy, which he dared to prophesy, Bridgenorth, who appeared for a time to have forgotten the presence of Julian, whilst with stern and fixed attention he drunk in the words of the preacher, seemed suddenly to collect himself, and, taking Julian by the hand, led him out of the gallery, of which ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... They are familiar, unquestioned, popular, and they are always current above their value. They always reveal the invincible tendency of the masses to mythologize. They are personified and a superhuman energy is attributed to them. "Democracy" is not treated as a parallel word to aristocracy, theocracy, autocracy, etc., but as a Power from some outside origin, which brings into human affairs an inspiration and energy of its own. The "People" is not the population, but a creation of mythology, to which inherent faculties and capacities are ascribed beyond what can be verified within experience. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner |
