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Laity

noun
1.
In Christianity, members of a religious community that do not have the priestly responsibilities of ordained clergy.  Synonym: temporalty.






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"Laity" Quotes from Famous Books



... clergy do not deny the laity the cup.-Letter to Montague. He took care to regulate his patron's warmth within the pale of his own advantage.-Memoires, vol. ii. p. 197. Come over to the pale ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... station before me; they seem not to have heard the rumour. When I was there I heard many shocking tales, for my informants were men speaking with the plainness of the laity; and I heard plenty of complaints of Damien. Why was this never mentioned? and how came it to you in the retirement of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... between the court and the clergy is made up amicably, both parties have yielded something; the king being afraid of losing more of his soul, and the clergy more of their revenue. Those gentlemen are very skillful in making the most of the vices and the weaknesses of the laity. I hope you have read and informed yourself fully of everything relative to that affair; it is a very important question, in which the priesthood of every country in Europe is highly concerned. If you ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... time over the gloves: sometimes as a thumb-ring, and often of very large size. The ornaments of the clergy became more massive as the wealth of the Church increased. As the clergy were during church service separated from the laity, many of the latter were at a considerable distance from them. This may be a reason for the size adopted for episcopal rings. A late Dean of St. Patrick's had in his collection a very large ring of this kind, represented in Fig. 125, from a sketch made by the author ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt

... Protestant sects the Quakers went furthest in stripping off from Christianity its non-essential features of doctrine and ceremonial. Their ideal was not a theocracy but a separation between church and state. They would abolish all distinction between clergy and laity, and could not be coaxed or bullied into paying tithes. They also refused to render military service, or to take the oath of allegiance. In these ways they came at once into antagonism both with church and with state. In doctrine their chief peculiarity was the assertion ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... of the laity are earnestly petitioning the clergy for "a hearty service." Could they make a more absurd request? The heart is in the worshipper, not in the service. And who can bring his heart to ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt

... been the scene of so many great sermons, he was laid to rest, with room for Melanchthon beside him. Here one may enter that other church where he first administered the communion in both kinds to the laity; may read the immortal theses, now in enduring bronze on the doors of the castle church; may pluck a leaf from the oak-tree planted on the spot outside the city gate where he burned the papal bull; may sit in the window-seat ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... the deputation; (2) his own sense of responsibility in regard to the feelings of the weaker brethren; (3) his appreciation of the value of the counsel of practical men in many affairs of the Church; (4) the existing position of the Church in regard to the laity; (5) the friendly relations that had always existed between himself personally and the clergy of his extensive diocese; (6) his earnest and prayerful desire that these relations might be strengthened; (7) the insecurity of a house divided ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore

... funeral train at Caen, it was met by Gislebert, bishop of Evreux, then abbot of St. Stephen's, at the head of his monks, attended by a numerous throng of clergy and laity; but scarcely had the bier been brought within the gates, when the report was spread that a dreadful fire had broken out in another part of the town, and the duke's remains were a second time deserted. The monks alone remained; and, fearful and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various

... duty in this particular—none of the physicians of a community being, as a rule, willing that others should instruct the public, however vital this might be for the general good. As a consequence, that class of vultures known as medical quacks has furnished to the laity by far the greater proportion of their instruction on hygienic subjects, with the result that the average man has a greater misconception and less real knowledge of such matters than of anything else in which he ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris

... had gone on with his forest prosecutions, and there as before against clergy as well as laity. Apparently the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas had secured for the Church nothing in the matter of these offences. The bishops did not interfere to protect the clergy, says one chronicler; and very likely in these cases the Church acknowledged the power rather ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... Savoy. Yet, though his memory has received no mercy at the hands of historians and song-writers of his day, though his example did much to swell the tide of ill-repute in which many of the clergy of all ranks were held (for the laity, says the song-writer, are apt to pay less attention to the doctrine than to the life of their teachers), we ought not to leave out of sight that he did much to improve the fabric of the Cathedral, and bequeathed liberal gifts to its foundation ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher

... except that one—the Nebular Theory. Upon that one his flow of words was full and free, he was a geyser. The official astronomers disputed his facts and deeded his views, and said that he had invented both, they not being findable in any of the books. But many of the laity, who wanted their nebulosities fresh, admired his doctrine and adopted it, and it attained to great prosperity in spite of the hostility of the experts."—The Legend of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... was something like a revolution, but it was sternly repressed. [Sidenote: The acceptance in the West.] In 731 a council, at which the archbishops of Ravenna and Grado were present, and ninety-three other Italian prelates, with a large representation of the laity, under Pope Gregory III., ordered that if anyone should stand forth as "a destroyer, profaner, and blasphemer against the veneration of the holy images, that is of Christ and His sinless Mother, of the blessed Apostles and the Saints, he should be excluded from the body and ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton

... was carrying away. The clearest idea present to my mind was that the priests of Rome and their religion had very little in common with my father and Don Andreis, or with the religion professed by them and by the priests and the devout laity of Turin. I had not been able to detect the slightest trace of that which in the language of asceticism is called unction. I know not why, but that grave and downcast aspect, enlivened only by a few occasional flashes of ponderous clerical wit, the atmosphere depressing as the plumbeus auster ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... Huguenot education were: an emphasis on the education of the laity; training for "the republic" and "society" as well as for the Church; insistence upon virtue as well as knowledge; the wide-spread demand for education, and a view of it as essential to liberty of conscience; a comprehensive working system of elementary, collegiate, and university training ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... had some merit; but, to prevent the worst, I gave a copy of it to a friend, who was very fond of such things, and told him that I could not guess who was the author of it, but that I thought it pretty clever. With a certain description of the clergy, as well as laity, it met with a roar of applause. "Holy Willie's Prayer" next made its appearance, and alarmed the kirk-session so much, that they held several meetings to look over their spiritual artillery, if haply any of it might be pointed against profane rhymers. Unluckily for me, my wanderings ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... making and then enforcing the standards of creeds, has done violence to the conscience of both the clergy and the laity. Conscienceless persons subscribe to the creed without any particular hesitation, but the truly conscientious suffer the greatest embarrassment They must either refuse altogether and withdraw ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith

... to say that the Bible is above the Church?" exclaimed the Inquisitor. "Why, fool, it is through the Church that you have a Bible; but it is not fit that the laity should possess it, for they can only, as we have evidence that you and others have done, make a most improper use of it. Therefore it is a prohibited book, and yet you dare to acknowledge that you have both possessed one and studied it. Ay, ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston

... peasant and a married man was made Patriarch of Alexandria against his will, because his dying predecessor had a vision that the man who should bring him a present of grapes on the next day should be his successor! In course of time visions became rarer among the laity, but continued frequent among the monks and clergy. And so the class which furnished most of the shining lights of Mysticism was that in which these experiences ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... used in our own day by the small fry, the unlearned clergy and their immediate followers, as a term of reproach for all Unitarians. I suspect they have a kind of liking for the word; it sounds like so sinful. The learned clergy and the higher laity know better: they know that the bulk of the modern Unitarians go farther than Socinus, and are not correctly named as his followers. The Unitarians themselves neither desire nor deserve a name which puts them one point nearer to orthodoxy than they put themselves. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... Bishops, clergy, and laity of the Church of England who refused to take the oaths to William and Mary and George I., when tendered to them, were amply justified in the Court of Conscience. They were ridiculed by the politicians of the day for their supersensitiveness; but what were they to do? If they took ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... return was displayed in the epitaph set up over him, describing him as a Nero, as death to the laity, a viper to the clergy, a liar and a drunkard. [1] But malignity of disappointed ambition and repressed vice did not go so far as to caricature his face. The graver had to copy the epitaph given him, but the sculptor reproduced the face ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... to speak of you. You must have thought me cantankerous, and so I have been sometimes, but always by conviction and on principle. I could not countenance the fashionable morality that is corrupting the manhood of the laity, or endure the toleration that is making the clergy thoroughly wicked; I could not without a pang see you cater to the world's appetites or be drawn into its gaieties and frivolities; and it was ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... says nothing about two causes which undoubtedly contributed to degrade the Church in the eyes of the laity: its close association with party politics, and the spread of latitudinarianism, a conspicuous epoch in which was marked some twenty-six years later in the ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... Majesty pardons freely the cardinals, bishops, priests, and laity who have incurred his disgrace in consequence ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... writ by the Bishop of Ghent for the diffusion of religious sentiment by the aid of the senses, and was an average specimen of theatrical exhibitions so long as they were in the hands of the clergy. But, in course of time, the laity conducted plays, and so the theatre, I learn from the ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... only be compared to the singular apathy with which they endured, and often admired the gross novels which Chaucer, Dunbar, Boccacio, Bandello, and others, composed upon the bad morals of the clergy. It seems as if the churchmen in both instances had endeavoured to compromise with the laity, and allowed them occasionally to gratify their coarse humour by indecent satire, provided they would abstain from any grave question concerning the foundation of the doctrines on which was erected such an immense fabric of ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... Slawkenbergius has here changed his metaphor—which he is very guilty of:—that as a translator, Mr. Shandy has all along done what he could to make him stick to it—but that here 'twas impossible.) of religious orders, &c. what a carnival did his nose make of it, in those of the laity!—'tis more than my pen, worn to the stump as it is, has power to describe; tho', I acknowledge, (cries Slawkenbergius with more gaiety of thought than I could have expected from him) that there is many a good ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... which is not healthy for any sect or party. Hence Mather and the divines of his time appear in their writings very much like so many Puritan bishops, jealous of their prerogatives, magnifying their apostolate, and careful to maintain their {352} authority over the laity. Mather had an appetite for the marvelous, and took a leading part in the witchcraft trials, of which he gave an account in his Wonders of the Invisible World, 1693. To the quaint pages of the Magnalia our modern authors have resorted as to a collection ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... respected gentleman was wholly sincere. The Puritanical distinction between clergy and laity had scarcely faded in his mind. The pastor of the First Church had belonged to a cherished class,—a class whose moral and intellectual consequence must be maintained by avoidance of all dangerous inquiries, common interests, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... who represented the most respected laity of the community, were bowls of cheese cut into tiny cubes. The spectators consisted of two groups of women, who sat some distance apart in compact masses, the "horns" of their headdresses almost interlocked. Their costumes were marvels of brilliance. They looked like a flock of ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... eleventh century St. Peter Damian urgently exhorted the faithful to participate in the ecclesiastical "hours" of prayer. And when gradually participation in the ecclesiastical prayer ceased, Divine Providence supplied the Rosary to take for the laity the place of the breviary. It may thus properly be called the "lay breviary." In fact it reminds of the breviary of priests, for it contains verbal prayer and meditation, and the hundred and fifty "Hail Marys" of the Rosary correspond ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings

... the Queen would not take one step without them. The clergy, who are always great examples of slavish servitude themselves, preached it to others under the plausible title of passive obedience. Thus both clergy and laity were, in an instant, become the devotees ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... religion. The content of his sermons and instructions should be the affairs of men, for these raise the questions for which the gospel was given. The discussion of religion apart from life produces a laity who, in their life in the world, are unable to represent the message of the gospel, because they do not know that the message of the gospel has any relation to the affairs of life. Then we hear such laymen say to any minister who might try to speak relevantly to human ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe

... took place in almost every part of the civilised world during the eighteenth century, and which obtained in France its most terrible and signal triumph. Each of these memorable events may be described as a rising up of the human reason against a Caste. The one was a struggle of the laity against the clergy for intellectual liberty; the other was a struggle of the people against princes and nobles for political liberty. In both cases, the spirit of innovation was at first encouraged ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Empire, it is impossible to overlook the evil that the Christians, so admirable when in the desert, did to the State when they were in power. "When I think," said Montesquieu, "of the profound ignorance into which the Greek clergy plunged the laity, I am obliged to compare them to the Scythians of whom Herodotus speaks, who put out the eyes of their slaves in order that nothing might distract their attention from their work . . . . No affair of State, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... several witnesses, some of who cited cases from their own experience. An erroneous idea seems to be prevalent among certain sections of the laity that the total abolition of pain during labour is possible for every patient. The fear that such relief will be withheld has been suggested as a cause for women seeking the abortionist. It would seem, however, that, with ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan

... what I have already said as to the jealous guarding of the privacy of that inner shrine, and how not only the common herd of the laity, but the whole of the priesthood, with the solitary exception of its titular head, were shut out from ever entering it. In the old times of Israel there was only one man alive at once who had ever been beyond the veil. And now that it is rent, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... their days of national thanksgiving, and our anxieties, with their days of national fasting, tended to deepen a sense of religion in every heart. Men of God, in rapid succession, rose in all the Churches. A pious laity began to take the lead in advancing the cause of evangelism. In Parliament there was one man, who, by the purity of his private life, the noble consistency, uncompromising honesty, and unwearied philanthropy of his public career, along with his faithful published testimony for the truth as it is ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... bodily wants of the sick and poor. He died in 1202. He wrote against the strict views concerning the celibacy of the clergy promulgated by Pope Gregory VII., and declared that the doctrine and the actual practice made a great scandal to the laity. Dean Milman suspects that he was much moved herein by the condition ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham

... any wine, which thing I observed with a marvellous continencie. Then behold the day approached, when as the sacrifice should be done, and when night came there arrived on every coast, a great multitude of Priests, who according to their order offered me many presents and gifts: then was all the Laity and prophane people commanded to depart, and when they had put on my back a linnen robe, they brought me to the most secret and sacred place of all the temple. You would peradventure demand (you studious reader) what was said and done there, ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... in a moment, but becomes a fact as the falsities of the former Church are removed. For what is new cannot enter where falsities have previously been engendered, unless these are eradicated; which will take place with the clergy, and so with the laity. ...
— The Gist of Swedenborg • Emanuel Swedenborg

... a world of sarcasm in these three words; for about the only advantage the physician has over the laity is that he can do his own dosing. As a general fact, he does no more to prevent bodily ailings than other people, and is just as liable to become the victim ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... most of the succeeding time. I am not, of course, forgetting the Oxford Movement, but, important as that was and is, in its earlier years it was almost entirely confined to clerical circles, exercising comparatively little influence on the laity and practically none at all on that great middle class which had been so much affected by the Wesleys, Whitefield, Scott, Newton, and the other pundits of Evangelicanism. Take the characteristic novel of the movement, ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... the Greek church; but their extreme ignorance gives their priests occasion to impose several new notions upon them. These fellows, letting their hair and beard grow inviolate, make exactly the figure of the Indian bramins (sic). They are heirs-general to all the money of the laity; for which, in return, they give them formal passports signed and sealed for heaven; and the wives and children only inherit the house and cattle. In most other points they follow the Greek church.—This little digression ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... Westminster on the third Sunday in Lent.(797) The king and queen landed at Dover with a small retinue on the 1st February, and after a few days' rest at Canterbury, entered the city of London amid tokens of welcome and respect from the laity and clergy. They took up their abode at the Tower, whence they were conducted on the day appointed for the coronation to Westminster by the citizens ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... a proper subject, not for reproof, but for medical treatment. The problem of his case need embarrass nobody. It is as purely physical as one of small-pox. When this truth is as widely understood among the laity as it is known by physicians, some progress may be made in staying the frightful ravages of opium among the present generation. Now, indeed, it is a difficult thing to prevent relatives from exacerbating the disorder and ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... should be appointed trustees for the natives for the remainder of their lands, "to preserve them from the intrigues of designing men." Before the year 1839, twenty millions of acres had been purchased by the clergy and laity for a few guns, axes, and other trifles, and the Maoris were fast wasting their inheritance. But the titles were often imperfect. When a man had bought a few hundreds of acres for six axes and a gun, and had paid the price agreed on to the owner, another owner ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... believing part of the Christian Laity will never adopt this System, (though the unbelieving part probably gladly will) but would be extremely shocked on being told by their Clergy, that the passages quoted from the Old Testament by the writers of the New, ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English

... but after the Restoration, with ultramontanism in the ascendant, intercourse was favoured; and the most thoroughgoing principles of clerical supremacy, with the most militant methods of controversy, found lodgment here. In both private and public life, among clergy as well as laity, each of the ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... ministers of Mohra and Elfdale, to report the various transactions at their spiritual seances. To such a height increased the terrified excitement of the people, that a commission was appointed by the king, consisting of both clergy and laity, to enquire into the origin and circumstances of the matter. It commenced proceedings in August 1670. Days for humiliation and prayer were ordered, and a solemn service inaugurated the judicial examinations. ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... number of liberal Churchmen of the laity, including some of rank, supported Lindsey's movement. An indication of changing moods is given in the fact that in 1770 an Act was passed permitting the Dissenting ministers to preach provided that they made a declaration of belief in the Scriptures as containing ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant

... They have arrogated to themselves the honourary title of "clergy;" and for the sake of distinction, and to give plausibility to their ambitious pretensions, call the membership of the church the "laity,"—contrary to the express decision of the unerring Spirit. Peter cautions the "elders" that they be not as "lords over God's heritage,"—lot, clergy; where it is obvious that the body of the people, as distinguished from their rulers, are denominated the clergy. Moreover, it is evident ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... of affairs, as I anticipated, was felt immediately. The Laity, who must always form the basis of a successful meeting, now came forward and took hold of the work. On Saturday night the Spirit fell on the people in great power. Before the conclusion of the sermon it was manifest that there would be, to change the reference, an abundance of rain. ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... it felt at home there. As late as the eighth century Han Yu, the greatest writer of the age, ridiculed the relics of Buddha and called on his people to "burn their books, close their temples, and make laity of their monks." ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... orchards, and vineyards, belonging to our monasteries, proving, that even in the time of the Danes, horticulture continued "silently to advance," and that at the time of the arrival of the Normans, gardens were generally in the possession of the laity, as well as of the ecclesiastics; and he refers to Doomsday Book for his assertion, that "there is no reason to doubt, that at this period, every house, from the palace to the cottage, was possessed of a garden of some size." He concludes with interesting references to the gardens, vineyards, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... influential members of the new, in menaces and insults. At the Court, in the drawing-rooms of Paris, and much more in the provinces, by newspapers, pamphlets, and conversation, and in the daily conduct of their private lives, the nobles and the citizens, the clergy and the laity, the emigrants and the purchasers of national property, allowed their animosities, their ill humour, their dreams of hope and fear, to exhibit themselves without disguise. This was nothing more than the natural and ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... is difficult to find a chemical journal of any month of issue that does not contain one or more articles bearing on the subject. Such a rapid rise to public notice suggests an importance that justifies investigation by the laity as well as the chemist and in the pages that follow has been outlined in simple language the biography of this newest and lustiest of ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy

... other, for several reasons that are very obvious. In the first place, the sovereign of the nation is not the head of the church; and, in the second, by means of a very superior degree of art and attention, during the dark ages, when the laity were sunk in ignorance, the catholic clergy contrived to entail the church property, from generation to generation, upon the whole body: at the same time, enjoining celibacy, by which all chance ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... and Catholic laity as well, never think of acknowledging, in the full acceptation of the word, any other spiritual superior than the Pope, and there can be nothing in this deserving repression. Again, no Catholic may consistently with Catholic principles, refuse to accept as ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... notion myself, that the piece had some merit; but to prevent the worst, I gave a copy of it to a friend who was fond of such things, and told him that I could not guess who was the author of it, but that I thought it pretty clever. With a certain description of the clergy as well as the laity, it met with a ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... ministry, the rule was still incredulous of exceptions. One might as well have looked in the Nedahma Conference for a divergence of opinion on the Trinity as for a difference in political conviction. Indeed, even among the laity, Theron could not feel sure that he had ever known a Democrat; that is, at all closely. He understood very little about politics, it is true. If he had been driven into a corner, and forced to attempt an explanation of this tremendous partisan unity in which he had a ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... thirteenth century, on the authority of Philippe de Beaumanoir, the celebrated editor of "Coutumes de Beauvoisis," there were three states or orders amongst the laity, namely, the nobleman (Fig. 22), the free man, and the serf. All noblemen were free, but all free men were not necessarily noblemen. Generally, nobility descended from the father and franchise from the mother. But according to many other customs of France, the child, as ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... ever been the growth of a polished age, and are the sure marks of a highly finished condition of society. It is not difficult to anticipate the effects likely to be produced on vital Religion, both in the clergy and the laity, by such a state of external prosperity as has been assigned to them respectively. And these effects would be infallibly furthered, where the country in question should enjoy a free constitution of government. We formerly had occasion to ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... with the consent of the Church buy oblations such as loaves and so forth, and they do so for no other reason than that they may make use thereof themselves. Therefore oblations may have reference to the laity. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... establishment of St. Cross is but the wreck of its two ancient institutions; it having been severely fleeced, though not quite destroyed, like so many other hospitals at the Reformation. Instead of seventy residents, as well clergy as laity, who were here entirely supported, besides one hundred out-members, who daily received their meat and drink, the charity consists at present but of ten residing brethren and three out-pensioners, exclusive of one chaplain and the master. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various

... is regarded as necessary, it is rather mended than ended. Thirdly, many of the acts that seem corrupt to us, gave little offence to contemporaries, for they were universal. If the church sold offices and justice, so did the civil governments. If the clergy lived impure lives, so did the laity. Probably the standard of the {21} church (save in special circumstances) was no worse than that of civil life, and in some respects it was rather more decent. Finally, there is some reason to suspect of exaggeration the charges preferred by the innovators. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... began. On one side the noise of the drum, and the march of the national guard, indicated that military mass was about to be performed; on the other, the procession of priests, robed and officiating—the elevation of banners—and the sonorous responses of both laity and clergy—put the whole town into agitation, and made every inmate of every mansion thrust his head out of window, to gaze at the passing spectacle. We were among the latter denomination of lookers on, and recognised, with no small gratification, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... expulsion of the fetus between the 16th and the 28th week the term miscarriage is applied; and when the expulsion of the fetus takes place after the 28th week, but before full term, we use the term premature labor. The laity does not like the term abortion, as it is under the impression that the term always signifies criminal abortion; it therefore prefers to use the term miscarriage ("miss"), regardless of the time at which the expulsion of the fetus ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... by the laity to "catching cold"—is characterised by hyperaemia and congestion of the tonsils and mucous membrane of the pharynx, soft palate, and uvula. It is often met with in those who are much exposed to air contaminated with organisms—for example, patients who have ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... Atharvan is repudiated by southern Br[a]hmans. But there is no doubt that sub rosa, the silliest practices inculcated and formulated in the Atharvan were the stronghold of a certain class of priests, or that such priests were feared and employed by the laity, openly by the low classes, secretly ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... day. He sat (sure enough with 'unaffected simplicity') in a Windsor chair, his low-crowned black felt hat by his side; a dark, weak, harmless, pathetic little man, clad in the hue of mourning, his coat longer than is usual with the laity, his neck enclosed in a collar without a parting, his neckcloth pale in hue and simply tied; the whole outward man, except for a pointed beard, tentatively clerical. There was a thinning on the top of Pitman's ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... small percentage of all who had actually been attacked by the disease. One of the reasons why consumption had come to be regarded as such a deadly disease was that the milder cases of it were never recognized. It was, and is yet, a common phrase in the mouths of both the laity and of the medical profession: "He was seriously threatened with consumption"; "She came very near falling into a decline,"—but they recovered. If they didn't die of it, it wasn't "real" tuberculosis. Now we ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... of the clergy, but in our time the responsibility cannot be confined to these. Even in the Church of England the laity have now a considerable influence, and in the other Protestant bodies they have even more power in the control of policy. No doubt the duty of initiative and of work in such matters lies mainly with the more leisured and more official interpreters of the Christian ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe

... collegiate system for Ireland. That basis was recognised in the system of national education which was accepted and approved of by the whole Catholic Hierarchy, with one exception, and most warmly sanctioned by the Catholic priesthood and laity. Extreme bigots of the Protestant school opposed and denounced it as unscriptural and Godless, and one extreme bigot of the Catholic school echoed the objurgation. It was not to be supposed that a principle thus sanctioned, tried, and efficient as applicable to the ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... ANTHONY DURIER, Bishop of Natchitoches, La., in a circular letter to the clergy and laity of the diocese, printed in the New Orleans Morning Star, September ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... edification of the church, except the human frailty of disputants. Had these subjects been discussed in our religious papers with calmness, and in a Christian spirit, they would have been alike instructive and edifying both to ministers and laity. The discussion would have infused into laymen a deeper interest for the welfare of the church, and a larger liberality in the support of her institutions. Are we not commanded to prove all things, and hold fast that which is good; and to be always ready to give to him that asked us a reason ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker

... in defence of some of the peculiar tenets of the Church of Rome. As to the giving the bread only to the laity, he said, 'They may think, that in what is merely ritual, deviations from the primitive mode may be admitted on the ground of convenience, and I think they are as well warranted to make this alteration, as we are to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... priesthood and to give the English Government a right of veto on episcopal appointments, and they warmly, efficiently, and unanimously supported the Union. The great majority of the Catholic landed gentry and probably of the lower priests were on the same side; but in general the Catholic laity seem to have shown little interest and to have taken little part in the contest. In Dublin, Catholics as well as Protestants were generally hostile, but Catholic Cork was decidedly favourable, and an assurance that the Government ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... explain the sacred texts in the upas'rayas (separate buildings for monks like the Buddhist viharas). The principle of extreme carefulness not to destroy any living being has been in monastic life carried out to its very last consequences, and has shaped the conduct of the laity in a great measure. No layman will intentionally kill any living being, not even an insect, however troublesome. He will remove it carefully without hurting it. The principle of not hurting any living being thus bars them from many ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... emperor, the primate to the king, an archbishop to a duke, a bishop to an earl, a priest to a knight. But all these are merely grades of the order of priests. There are but seven orders of the ministry—priests, deacons, sub-deacons, acolytes, exorcists, readers and door-keepers. Of the laity Gilbert says little. They are of two classes; husbandmen and soldiers. Their duties are to attend church, to pay first-fruits, tithes and oblations, to avoid evil and do good, ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor

... were excluded, in order that your amusements should be the more unbridled. You with a few servants undertook to direct and lead those dances. It is said that nothing is now talked of in Siena but your frivolity. Certain it is that here at the baths, where the concourse of ecclesiastics and laity is great, you are the topic of the day. Our displeasure is unutterable, since all this reflects dishonourably upon the sacerdotal estate and office. It will be said of us that we are enriched and promoted not to the end that we may lead blameless ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... from the secular and religious clergy, inasmuch as they had taken no orders, or only minor orders, held no benefice or cure, and had entered into no conventual community. They were still more sharply distinguished from the laity, whom they scorned as brutes, and with whom they seem to have lived on terms of mutual hostility. One of these vagabond gownsmen would scarcely condescend to drink with ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... the manner of the Jews, the Indians have their prophets, high priests, and others of a religious order. As the Jews have a Sanctum Sanctorum, so have all the Indian nations. There they deposit their consecrated vessels—none of the laity daring to approach that sacred place. The Indian tradition says, that their forefathers were possessed of an extraordinary divine spirit by which they foretold future events; and that this was transmitted to their offspring, provided ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... Sixth died on the 6th of July, and the persecution of the Protestants being revived during the reign of Queen Mary, most of the Reformed ministers and many of the laity made their escape, and sought refuge in foreign countries, in ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... as freely as the South Dakotan Presbyterians who can change partners with a facility that scandalizes the old world; and were his Church to dare a further step towards Christianity and enjoin celibacy on its laity as well as on its clergy, marriages would still be contracted for the sake of domesticity by perfectly obedient sons and daughters of the Church. One need not further pursue these hypotheses: they are only suggested ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw

... with bare feet, in order that his sandals should not be in his secrets. He appeared to her by the light of the lamp in the manner in which monks generally appear during the night—that is, in a marvellous state, which the laity find it difficult long to sustain; and the thing is an effect of the frock, which magnifies everything. Then having let her see that he was all a monk, he made the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... fifty thousand within reach of his voice, and never so much as a nodder, even, among them! And from what a Bible can he choose his text,—a Bible which needs no translation, and which no priestcraft can shut and clasp from the laity,—the open volume of the world, upon which, with a pen of sunshine or destroying fire, the inspired Present is even now writing the annals of God! Methinks the editor who should understand his calling, and be equal thereto, would truly deserve that ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... Struggle for Life." Like its predecessors, it was a firebrand thrown into the scientific camp. Like his predecessors, the author drew down obloquy and anathemas from the clergy, sarcasm and vituperation from the laity, and a host of replies from writers of all grades. Like his predecessor, the author of the "Vestiges," he might have said, in the words ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... in the country, the baker who prepares the sacramental wafer, must be appointed and authorized to do it by the Catholic bishop of the district, as appears by the advertisement inserted in that curious book, published annually, The Catholic Laity's Directory. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various

... to me a very courteous and appreciative note, and I should think you would enjoy speaking before that kind of an audience, all of them picked men, trained and scientific and able to take in shades of meaning and distinctions that are wasted on the laity. Unless you are keeping something back, I should say, accept by all ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... both, often with seeming contradiction. Good architecture is the work of good and believing men; therefore, you say, at least some people say, 'Good architecture must essentially have been the work of the clergy, not of the laity.' No—a thousand times no; good architecture has always been the work of the commonalty, not of the clergy. What, you say, those glorious cathedrals—the pride of Europe—did their builders not form Gothic ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... christology. Some of the more unsuccessful of these attempts have since been grouped under the heads of Dynamistic and of Modalistic Monarchianism ( 40). At the same time Montanism was excluded from the Church ( 41), as subversive of the distinction between the clergy and laity and the established organs of the Church's government, which in the recent rise of a theory of the necessity of the episcopate (see above, 27) had become important. In the administration of the penitential discipline ( 42) the position of the clergy and the realization of a hierarchically ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... whose souls are entrusted to the clergy here, and in order to fulfil that trust they must mix on some degree of equality with the gentry, and with the middle classes who are well-to-do. Then again, consider both as to clergy and laity here. If they were all to lower themselves a peg or two, and give up many not only luxuries, but comforts, numbers of tradesmen, and others working under them, aye, even merchants, manufacturers, and commercial men of all sorts, would be to some extent thrown out of employ. The artificial and ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... both elegant dinners and suppers, and the best claret, and, which was best of all, he furnished the entertainment with the most instructive and pleasing conversation, for he assembled whosoever were most knowing and agreeable among either the laity or clergy. For innocent mirth and agreeable raillery I never knew his match....He took much to the company of the younger clergy, not from a wish to bring them over to his opinions, for he never attempted to overturn any man's principles, but they best understood his notions, and could ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... I am right in taking her at her word. I confess there seems a touch of selfishness in it. Apart from her being what she is, of course, a luxury for a fogy like me, it will set me right in the eyes of the clergy and orthodox laity, who have never forgiven me for letting her go. So I may get back in some ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... literature are ultimately only parts of one indivisible entity: Philology—though the fact often escapes us. "The most effective work," said Gildersleeve,[91] "is done by those who see all in the one as well as one in the all." And strange as it appears to the laity, a linguistic fact may convey a universal lesson. I hesitate to generalize, but I believe most of our colleges need to emphasize the language side of ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... nation. Fortunately we have an opportunity of testing whether there is any truth in the statement of O'Connell to which I have already referred—that the Irish Catholics did not assent to the Union. The evidence shows conclusively that the Roman Catholic peerage, episcopate, priesthood and laity all gave the movement their hearty concurrence and co-operation. Lords Kenmare and Fingall assured Lord Cornwallis that the Catholics were in favour of a Union; the entire episcopate—that is, the four archbishops and nineteen bishops, three sees being vacant—expressed ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... themselves. To propitiate public opinion, the government has changed its course, and after making war upon the Romans to establish the pontifical throne, now tells the Pope that he must submit to place the government in the hands of the laity. This change of policy has occasioned a good deal of surprise and an infinite deal of discussion. Whatever may be its consequences, there is one consequence which it can not have, that of recovering to the President and his ministry ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... bishoprics, besides that of their own immediate care, the societies of Niskeyuna and Mount Lebanon. They will not even (and this is good policy) allow themselves those expensive conveniences of life which are so common among the laity of their sect. But extreme neatness is the most prominent characteristic of both them and their subordinates. They speak much of the model enjoined by Jesus, that whosoever would be the greatest should be ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... the struggle till 1203, though deserted by the Welsh clergy. "The laity of Wales," he said, "stood by me; but of the clergy whose battle I was fighting, scarce one." He was proclaimed as a rebel, and had some narrow escapes of imprisonment or worse—escapes which he owed to his ready wit and which he delights to tell. At last he gave way, and during ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little

... all preach, none practise, and yet everybody is content to hear. The master thinks it good doctrine for his servant, the laity for the clergy, and the clergy ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston

... although his kingdom could but ill spare him, he made every preparation to leave it. Pope Innocent IV. applauded his zeal and afforded him every assistance. He wrote to Henry III. of England to forward the cause in his dominions, and called upon the clergy and laity all over Europe to contribute towards it. William Longsword, the celebrated Earl of Salisbury, took the cross at the head of a great number of valiant knights and soldiers. But the fanaticism of the people was not to be ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... by the learning that Queen Marguerite of Navarre had introduced among the companions of her daughter, had rendered her superior to most of those with whom she came in contact: and the Huguenot ministers, who were much more dependent on their laity than the Catholic priesthood, for the most part treated her as not only a devout and honourable woman, an elect lady, but as a sort of State authority. That she had the right-mindedness to respect ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... magnificent prose, the profound joy of the world of the Renaissance at the recovery of the Bible, and free liberty of reading it, after it had been shut away from the laity by the organized Church. Equally intense, and more exuberant, was the delight of scholars and artists, when the asceticism and pessimism of the Middle Ages, which had given birth to such bodies as the Carmelite monks and the mendicant ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... the five observances, or universal precepts, called the Pancha Sila, which are imposed on the laity in general? ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott

... faith of our forefathers, both laity and clergy—that the Lord was King, be the people never so unquiet; that men were His stewards and His pupils only, and not His vicars; that they were equal in His sight, and not the slaves and tyrants of each other; and that the help that was ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... unargumentative, and insensible; that men came gradually to disbelieve in witchcraft, because they came gradually to look upon it as absurd; and that this new tone of thought appeared, first of all, in those who were least subject to theological influences, and soon spread through the educated laity, and, last of all, took ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... Malaysia, North America, Japan, and scattered Maoris from Hawaii to New Zealand all had religious ceremonies in which the gaining and showing of power over fire was a miracle seen and believed in by priests and laity. Modern saints and quasi-scientists had claims to similar achievements. Dr. Dozous said he saw Bernadette, the seeress of Lourdes, hold her hands in a flame for fifteen minutes without pain or mark, he timing the incident exactly by his watch. Daniel ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... what one can remember out of the many things studied in them, but for the system and mental discipline as well as the social culture through which one passes. The interests of the church demand that the pulpit shall lead the pew. Considering the influence which the Negro ministry has over its laity, the demand becomes more and more imperative. It is not a learned ministry but a cultured ministry, a ministry with higher tastes and aspirations, a ministry which in spite of the materialism of the times will make the time ...
— The Defects of the Negro Church - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 10 • Orishatukeh Faduma

... the only defence which (as far as I know) the pretended followers of Antiquity make for the nomination of bishops by the Crown. In the third and fourth centuries, it is well known that every new bishop was elected by the universal suffrage of the laity of the church; and it is to these centuries that the High Episcopalians love to appeal, because they can quote thence out of Cyprian[2] and others in favour of Episcopal authority. When I alleged the dissimilarity in the mode of election, as fatal to this argument in the ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... with this fact is the other, namely, that nine-tenths of the five and a half million ascetics, sadhus, and fakhirs of India are universally recognized as pestilential in their morals, and as distinguished examples of what the laity of the land should ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... to be more ready to adopt this work than in the Methodist Episcopal Church, because women members have been accustomed to exercise nearly all the obligations and duties, and many of the privileges, that are accorded the laity of the great connection, and they are prepared to accept new duties in new relations. This Church has over a million women enrolled as members, able to serve it in every capacity, from the lady in her home dispensing gracious Christian ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... old obligation in the old way. These became prostitutes, either for life or for a term of years, at one of the temples: dedicated to the service of religion, they were invested with a sacred character, and their vocation, far from being deemed infamous, was probably long regarded by the laity as an exercise of more than common virtue, and rewarded with a tribute of mixed wonder, reverence, and pity, not unlike that which in some parts of the world is still paid to women who seek to honor their Creator in a ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... Assembly of the Kirk nor the Imperial Parliament could show anything to rival. Hume wrote in 1755 to Allan Ramsay, who had by that time gone to settle in Rome, that the Select Society "has grown to be a national concern. Young and old, noble and ignoble, witty and dull, laity and clergy, all the world are ambitious of a place amongst us, and on each occasion we are as much solicited by candidates as if we were to choose a member of Parliament." He goes on to say that "our young friend Wedderburn has acquired a great character by the appearance he has ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... management of several millions of women, form together a powerful machine. The unity it possesses in our days might, one would suppose, alarm the state. This is so far from being the case, that whilst the state prohibits association among the laity, it has encouraged it among the ecclesiastics. It has allowed them to form a most dangerous footing among the poorer classes, the union of workmen, apprentice-houses, association of servants who are accountable to priests, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... easy reception in England, where a mild and rational system of laws had been long established, as it did upon the continent; and, though the monkish clergy (devoted to the will of a foreign primate) received it with eagerness and zeal, yet the laity who were more interested to preserve the old constitution, and had already severely felt the effect of many Norman innovations, continued wedded to the use of the common law. King Stephen immediately published a proclamation[c], forbidding the study ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... ministry and gravitate to a concept of the church that is hard to distinguish from a middle-class country club or a social service center. Another complicating influence is the current emphasis on the lay ministry. The general stress on the priesthood of all believers had made both clergy and laity less sure about the role of the clergy, even to the point, figuratively speaking, of seeming to unordain the ordained, and without clearly defining the ministry ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe

... inhabitants,"[78:1] and for all these there were six ministers. The six soon dribbled away to three, and for ten years these three continued without reinforcement. This extreme feebleness of the clergy, the absence of any vigorous church life among the laity, and the debilitating notion that the power and the right to preach the gospel must be imported from Holland, put the Dutch church at such a disadvantage as to invite aggression. Later English governors showed no scruple in violating the spirit of the terms of surrender ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... others than Episcopalians united in the establishment of the college, and partly that there could be no ground of opposition to it on account of its name. Among the corporators associated with Bishop Brownell were some of the prominent clergy and laity of the diocese, such as the Rev. Drs. Harry Croswell and N. S. Wheaton, Gov. John S. Peters, the Hon. Nathan Smith, the Hon. Elijah Boardman, the Hon. Asa Chapman, Com. McDonough, and Mr. Charles Sigourney; ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various

... She herself was longing to show her gratitude to Providence by restoring the authority of the pope; and the pope intended, if possible, to recover his first-fruits and Peter's pence, and to maintain the law of the church which forbade the alienation of church property.[272] The English laity {p.118} were resolute on their side to keep hold of what they had got; and to set the subject at rest, and to prevent unpleasant discussions on points of theology, Paget, with his friends, desired that the session should last but a few days, and that ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... system of self-discipline and self-control is necessary to effect a cure of these various forms of mind-distress as is necessary in the successful treatment of dread of disease. To none of these other forms, however, is attached the same degree of seriousness by the laity as they attach unjustly to nosophobia. The conditions are all the same, but they reason that the dread of darkness or dirt or mice or height cannot possibly bring death or seriously affect the health or happiness, while sickness and the dread of it, means—so they imagine—pain and ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... been granted for the converting of Subalterns into Scarf-Officers; insomuch that within my Memory the price of Lute-string is raised above two Pence in a Yard. As for the Subalterns, they are not to be numbred. Should our Clergy once enter into the corrupt Practice of the Laity, by the splitting of their Free-holds, they would be able to carry most of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... opinion, that so strange a circumstance ought to be communicated to the Holy Father at Rome. They now became infuriated, and nothing but the midday bell had power to separate them. From that moment, all Mayence, clergy and laity, divided into two parties; and for many years nothing was heard, spoken, or dreamt of, but the Devil, the white nun, and Father Gebhardt. The matter was argued from the pulpit of every sect: mountebanks, Capuchins, and dog-doctors, made it their theme; while the ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... Papists, who, like me, were to take the Anglican oaths which they disbelieved, by virtue of a dispensation from Rome, and thus in due time were to bring over to that unprincipled Church great numbers of the Anglican Clergy and Laity. Bishops gave their countenance to this imputation against me. The case was simply this:—as I made Littlemore a place of retirement for myself, so did I offer it to others. There were young men in Oxford, whose testimonials for Orders had been refused by their Colleges; there were ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... between the lines, Ellen, you would have seen that I have been trying to save the clergy from themselves. They are so convinced of their own importance that they forget that after all there must be a laity." ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... "Amongst the laity, not much; we, however, kept a vigilant eye upon our own body, but, upon the whole, were rather tolerant in these matters, knowing that the infirmities of human nature are very great indeed: we rarely ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... your impatience. We of the Cloister are wont to move slowly, with measured tread—each step a careful following up of the step which went before—not with the leaps and bounds and capers of the laity. In due time we shall reach ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... his preaching, nay, they encouraged it," said Catharine, "while the vices of the laity, the contentions of the nobles, and the oppression of the poor were the subject of his censure, and they rejoiced in the crowds who, attracted to the Carthusian church, forsook those of the other convents. But ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... been saying shows that the priests are right in teaching that the Bible is a dangerous book in the hands of the ignorant, and should therefore be withheld from the laity," ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley

... them. We admitted their clergymen and laymen to the Councils of the diocese on equal terms with the whites; but that custom has been steadily changing. Some twenty years ago South Carolina and Virginia, dreading too great an increase of negro clergy and laity, led the way to new conditions. South Carolina excluded them entirely from the Diocesan Council, without any further provision for them. Virginia did not disturb those already having seats in the Council, ...
— Church work among the Negroes in the South - The Hale Memorial Sermon No. 2 • Robert Strange

... more devout flagellated and slashed themselves and others with knives and thongs, and carried heavy crosses up steep acclivities. In all ultra-Catholic countries the priests, in imitation of the ancient custom, expose in the churches figures representing the dead Saviour, over which the laity, especially the women, weep and mourn; and the more devout men cut and slash themselves, and each other, with knives and thongs; and, in imitation of the imaginary tramp of Jesus with his cross up Calvary's rugged side, bear heavy crosses up ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... and girls were not invited to be present. You and a few servants were the leaders and inspirers of this orgy. It is said that nothing is now talked of in Siena but your vanity, which is the subject of universal ridicule. Certain it is that here at the baths, where Churchmen and the laity are very numerous, your name is on every one's tongue. Our displeasure is beyond words, for your conduct has brought the holy state and office into disgrace; the people will say that they make us rich and great, not that we may live a blameless life, but that we may have means to gratify ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... now gazing on her in the attitude which he had learnt from plays and poems conveyed to the laity the best conception ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston

... and respected by all. He organized the Episcopal Church in New Zealand upon a basis which showed a rare insight into the democratic character of the community with which he had to deal. The basis of his system is found in the representative synods of clergy and laity which assemble annually in each New Zealand diocese. The first draft of this Church constitution came indeed from the brain and hand of Sir George Grey, but for the rest the credit of it ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... me, he would give it."—What he farther says, in speaking of the "carnal" anxiety of Parents for the temporal welfare of their children, though applied by himself to the clergy in particular, is equally applicable to the laity. "I often think what St. Paul would say to ministers in our days, on this ground; when of those in his days he says,—All seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ—(see my note on the passage.) I have long lamented that we cannot serve God by the day, and leave it to ham ...
— Christian Devotedness • Anthony Norris Groves

... occasion mainly contributed to the preservation of that purity of manners and that genuine piety, which subsisted in this town longer than in any other of France! But the election of the Virgin was not sufficient: a representative of St. Peter was also to be found among the clergy; and the laity were so far favored that they were permitted to furnish the eleven other apostles. This done, upon the fourteenth of August the Virgin was laid in a cradle of the form of a tomb, and was carried early in the morning, attended by her suite ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... admiration for him induced his friends to overlook what they must have acknowledged to be defects in his character. Though he had a good living—at least, what the laity in speaking of clerical incomes is generally inclined to call a good living, we will say amounting in value to four hundred pounds a-year—he was always in debt. This was the more inexcusable as he had no children, and had ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... the church became so exacting that the body of Christians was divided into two classes of people: the clergy, who were the officials of the community; the rest, the faithful, who were termed the laity. ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... the Nervous System—Locomotor Ataxia.—The ways in which late syphilis can attack the nervous system form the real terrors of the disease to most people. Locomotor ataxia and general paralysis of the insane (or softening of the brain) are the best known to the laity, though only two of many ways in which syphilis can attack the nervous system. Though their relation to the disease was long suspected, the final touch of proof came only as recently as 1913, when Noguchi and Moore, of the Rockefeller Institute, found the germs of the ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... seized upon, made a prisoner, forced to appear bare-footed and bare-headed before his enemies, and compelled to subscribe an abject recantation. This was followed by a severe persecution against the Albigenses; and express orders that the laity should not be permitted to read the sacred scriptures. In the year 1620 also the persecution against the Albigenses was very severe. In 1648 a heavy persecution raged throughout Lithuania and Poland. The cruelty of the Cossacks was so excessive, that the Tartars themselves were ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... educated classes. It was subject to the jurisdiction of the Church courts alone; but bodily punishment could only be inflicted by officers of the lay courts, and so great had the jealousy between clergy and laity become that the bishops no longer sought civil aid but restricted themselves to the purely spiritual punishments of penance and deprivation of orders. Such penalties formed no effectual check upon crime, and while preserving 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

... introduce the unsoiled soul of her child to evil, by reading straight through the successive chapters of the Bible. It has been left for Protestant piety to excel Romanists and Jews in superstition. The Church of Rome, as you know, discourages the use of the Bible by her laity, erring in the other extreme. The Jewish rabbis had a saying that no one should read the Canticles before he was thirty years of age. If you follow the public readings of the Bible in this church from your own Bibles, you must often appreciate the relief this liberty of omission ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... rather it was because he was easy-going and loved pleasure for its own sake. He had fought and starved, and now for the jingle of the guinea in his pocket and the junkets of the gay! The prodigality of these creative beings is not fully understood by the laity, else they would forgive more readily the transgressions. Besides, the harbor of family ties is a man's moral bulwark; and Warrington drifted hither and thither with no harbor ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... newly elected Bishop of Clonfert, is pertinent:—'There is another cause also—i.e. in addition to the absence of university education for Roman Catholic laymen—which has hindered the employment of the laity in the past. Till very recently, the secondary Catholic schools received no assistance whatever from the State, and their endowment from private sources was utterly inadequate to supply suitable remuneration for lay teachers. It is evident that ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett

... for many years was a resident of Boston, in which city from her social position and her piety and benevolence she was widely known. She is a devout member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, greatly trusted and respected both by clergy and laity. ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... instructed and instruct its children all are agreed: where men differ is with respect to the manner of the teaching. On the one side are those who would safeguard the faith by committing the teaching of it to a small body of carefully trained men, the clergy, whilst the majority of the Christians, the laity, remain unlearned and accept what is taught by the trained official teachers: on the other side are those who would boldly commit the faith to all, opening to all the door of learning. The one party would preserve the faith in the hands of a select few, ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen

... Allington; at Trowbridge in 1820, and again at Trowbridge in 1830. The preacher probably held his discourses quite as profitable at one stage in the Church's development as at another. In this estimate of clerical responsibilities Crabbe seems to have remained stationary. But meantime the laity had been aroused to expect better things. The ferment of the Wesley and Whitefield Revival was spreading slowly but surely even among the remote villages of England. What Crabbe and the bulk of the parochial clergy called "a sober and rational conversion" seemed to those who had ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger

... entirely confined to synodal orations and some ascetic writings. The spirit of the present age in Russia is strictly orthodox; and the monocracy of the Greek Church is the great object for which clergy and laity exert themselves; especially in the Baltic provinces. Among sermons, those of Innocenz, vicar of the metropolitan of ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... Rabelais and Montaigne, smiling with the fine malice of the one, laughing outright with the gaiety of the other, all the world joining in the laugh—well, at the silliness of the clergy, who seem indeed not to know their own business. It is we, the laity, he would urge, who are serious, and disinterested, because sincerely interested, in these great questionings. Jalousie de metier, the reader may suspect, has something to do with [66] the Professional leaders ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... tendency has been to turn the religious education of children over to the school of the church. The minister, priest, or rabbi is the chief teacher of faith and duty, but in the Sunday-school the laity also has found instruction of the young people to be one of its functions. Instruction by both of these is supplemented by schools of a distinctly religious type and by a religious press. As long as society at large does not undertake to perform this function of religious education, the church ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... most bloody persecutor, was then governor of Spain. The emperors Dioclesian and Maximian published their second and third bloody edicts against the Christian clergy in the year 303, which in the following year were put in force against the laity. It seems to have been before these last that Dacian put to death eighteen martyrs at Saragossa, who are mentioned by Prudentius, and in the Roman Martyrology, January the 16th, and that he apprehended Valerius and Vincent. They spilt some of their blood at Saragossa, but were thence conducted ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... 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 in the seventeenth century, and was predominant in the last century and the first third ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... have become thoroughly subservient, and during the century will be mere appendages to the nobility and squirearchy. The intellectual change is parallel. The great divines of the seventeenth century speak as members of a learned corporation condescending to instruct the laity. The hearers are supposed to listen to the voice (as Donne puts it) as from 'angels in the clouds.' They are experts, steeped in a special science, above the comprehension of the vulgar. They have been trained in the schools of theology and have been thoroughly drilled in the art of 'syllogising.' ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... in the commencement of Queen Mary's reign, they had suffered dreadfully by the hostile invasions. For the English, now a Protestant people, were so far from sparing the church-lands, that they forayed them with more unrelenting severity than even the possessions of the laity. But the peace of 1550 had restored some degree of tranquillity to those distracted and harassed regions, and matters began again gradually to settle upon the former footing. The monks repaired their ravaged shrines—the feuar again roofed his small fortalice which the enemy had ruined—the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... display initiative or assert themselves in opposition to himself or his order. There is much in this proviso. Having come to regard his own judgment as almost divine, and the hierarchy of which he has the honour to form a part as a sacrosanct institution, he tolerates the laity so long as they labour quietly and peaceably at their vocations and do not presume to inter-meddle in high matters of State. That is the heinous offence. And frank criticism of official acts touches a lower depth ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant

... of innocent jollity, Where was the play-boy could claim an equality At comicality, Father, wid you? Once the Bishop looked grave at your jest, Till this remark set him off wid the rest: "Is it lave gaiety All to the laity? Cannot the clargy be Irishmen too?" Chorus: Here's a ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... is not well fitted for self-prescription by the laity, and the medical profession is not accountable for such administration, or for the ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... of judiciously pursuing the mechanical treatment of every variety of hernia (rupture) cannot be too strongly urged upon the laity by the profession. In both sexes it should be carefully conducted the moment that the slightest protrusion shows itself; whether the hernia occurs in infancy, youth, middle age or at later periods of ...
— Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured • Chas. Cluthe & Sons

... to some other condition. On the other hand, women sometimes suspect that they are pregnant when they are not; and such mistakes occur because certain symptoms which are implicitly trusted by the laity as manifestations of pregnancy are occasionally associated with conditions quite foreign to it. It is clear that one interested in the matter must know not only what the manifestations of pregnancy are and when ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... that the creed itself is losing its power. I venture to say that a very small majority of the millions of persons worshipping in the various forms of the Christian Church really and truly believe what they publicly profess. Clergy and laity alike are tainted with this worst of all hypocrisies—that of calling God to witness their faith when they know they are faithless. It may be asked how I dare to make such an assertion? I dare, because I know! It would be impossible to the people of this or any other country to honestly ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli



Words linked to "Laity" :   the great unwashed, lay, multitude, hoi polloi, layperson, mass, layman, secular, masses, clergy, people



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