"Nonconformist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hutchinson and Neal in regard to such persecutions, and remonstrances by the Rev. Drs. Owen and T. Goodwin, and other Nonconformist ministers ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... CHIEF-JUSTICE—Did she ask thee whether that man knew anything of a question she had asked thee, and that was only of being a nonconformist? ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... near Liverpool Street Station, is located the house, chapel, burial-grounds, and tomb of John Wesley. Across the street, in an old Nonconformist cemetery, are the graves of James Watt, Daniel Defoe, and John Bunyan. Across the narrow street to the north is the tabernacle of Whitefield. We learned that Friday, July 7th, was reopening day for Wesley's Chapel. What a distinguished ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... BURTON, "asked why this drastic, this dishonest, this catchpenny, this gerrymandering Bill should have been brought in?.... They had heard much of late about the Nonconformist Conscience, which was said to be the backbone of the Liberal Party. He firmly believed that the Bill had been brought forward to suit the Nonconformist Conscience, to pander to the hypocritical self-righteousness, and the sham respectability of a certain class."—Lord ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... appear that the figure represents one of the daughters, or possibly the wife, of the sixth Earl of Devon. An interesting inscription in the south transept perpetuates the name of John Wilkins, who was minister from 1647 to 1660 when, as a Nonconformist, he was ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... managers were the Bishop, who cannot be hurt by having his name mentioned, a very active and loyal Nonconformist Divine, a lady in the highest favor at Court, with whom Beatrix Esmond had communication, and two noblemen of the greatest rank, and a member of the House of Commons, who was implicated in more transactions than one in behalf of ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... nonconformist, visited him in his confinement. 'When I was there,' he writes, 'there were about sixty dissenters besides himself, taken but a little before at a religious meeting at Kaistor, in the county of Bedford, besides two eminent dissenting ministers, Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Dun, by which ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... course—especially since their own tenants had committed the outrage! Still, to welcome a man who had gone out of his way to come down here and stump the country against her own son, was rather a tall order. It might have been worse, no doubt. If; for instance, he had been some 'impossible' Nonconformist Radical! This Mr. Courtier was a free lance—rather a well-known man, an interesting creature. She must see that he felt 'at home' and comfortable. If he were pumped judiciously, no doubt one could find out ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... gathered about Anne Hutchinson, who claimed to be moved by the spirit and denied that an outward conformity to the letter of the covenant was a sufficient test of true religion unless accompanied with a change in the inner life. She was a nonconformist among those who, refusing to conform to the Church of England, had now themselves become conformists of the strictest type. To Mrs. Hutchinson the "vexatious legalism of Puritanism" was as abhorrent as had been the practices of ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... be urged, an essential part of the policy of Home Rule. I admit that this is so. But this makes it the more necessary that English electors should realise what this essential characteristic of Home Rule means, or may mean. The Nonconformist conscience exposed Irish Home Rulers to painful humiliation and possible ruin by forbidding them to follow the political leader of their choice to whom they had deliberately renewed their allegiance. ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... member of some Nonconformist sect. That, too, will be a valuable element, for it will teach him the solemn fact of his own personality; his direct responsibility to God for his ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... town, I subsequently undertook the production of "The Keighley Spectator." The paper went on nicely for eleven months, its circulation and our revenue increasing greatly. We had for some time received articles for insertion from a Nonconformist parson in the town, the Rev Mr Gray. The contributions, being on subjects foreign to our non-political and non-sectarian principles, had almost invariably been rejected, until the writer appealed to the printer, who was the proprietor ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... see the boy, Challis. Personally I am, of course, satisfied, but we must not give Crashaw opportunity to raise endless questions, as he can and will. There is Mayor Purvis, the grocer, to be reckoned with, you must remember. He represents a powerful Nonconformist influence. Crashaw will get hold of him—and work him if we see Purvis first. Purvis always stiffens his neck against any breach of conventional procedure. If Crashaw saw him first, well and good, Purvis would immediately jump to the conclusion ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... story had suffered in accuracy before it reached Miss Barrett, who, of course, was unable to attend church, and whose own ignorance on the subject may be accounted for by remembering that she had been brought up as a Nonconformist. With a little correction, however, the story may be added to the many others on record with respect ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... Baxter, the Nonconformist, and Sir Hans Sloane once inhabited what was, in their time, called Southampton Square, from Southampton House, which occupied one whole side of Bloomsbury Square, and was long the abode of Lady Rachel Russell, after the execution of her lord. Like every other part of what ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... individuals among us. Our sexes are already nearly assimilate. Women are becoming nearly as rare as ladies, and it is only at the music-halls that we are privileged to see strong men. We are born into a poor, weak age. We are not strong enough to be wicked, and the Nonconformist Conscience makes cowards ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... secure his own ease by efforts after conciliation —some of them more questionable in law, and more insidious in their motives, even than his ill-considered promises to the Nonconformist ministers. To what lengths his own Roman Catholic sympathies went it is difficult to say. But there were many influences at Court which were working for the abandonment of the penal laws against the Catholics. ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... contempt, slid his knife up his sleeve once more, while the Colonel, frantic with impotent anger, was seized by the bystanders, and dragged, raving with fury, back to his forlorn party. His hands were lashed with a camel-halter, and he lay at last, in bitter silence, beside the delirious Nonconformist. ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... rumors as to Cliffe's private character had entered into the decisive defeat—in a constituency largely Nonconformist—which had befallen that gentleman at the polls. Poor Lady Tranmore! He saw her anxieties in her face, and was truly sorry for her. At the same time, inveterate gossip that he was, he regarded her with a kind ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... possible ignoring of all dull boundaries. This being the case a superhuman charity alone could have forborne to believe that his opportunities had been neglected in the heyday of his youth. Wealth and lady of limitations in themselves would have been quite enough to cause the Nonconformist Victorian mind to regard a young—or middle-aged—male as likely to represent a fearsome moral example, but these three temptations combined with good looks and a certain mental brilliance were so inevitably the concomitants of elegant iniquity that the results might ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wrote a celebrated sentence; "And I must express my tendency to believe that his longevity is (to say the least of it) extremely problematical:" and that it was to another, who had been insisting somewhat obtrusively on dissenting and nonconformist superiorities, he addressed words which deserve to be no less celebrated; "The Supreme Being must be an entirely different individual from what I have every reason to believe him to be, if He would care in the least for the society of your relations." There was a laugh in the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... named in the second stanza, is intended, no doubt, Henry Barrow, the Nonconformist enthusiast who was executed at Tyburn in 1592. A follower of Robert Browne, founder of the Brownists, whence sprang the sect of Independents, he brought upon himself, by his zeal and imprudence, a vengeance which his wary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... grinned diabolically. He knew that Beaumont-Greene's father was endeavouring to establish a credit-account with the Recording Angel. Originally a Nonconformist, he had joined the Church of England after he had made his fortune (cf. Shavings from the Workshops of our Merchant Princes, which appeared in the pages of "Prattle"). Then, the famous inventor of the Imperishable Boot had taken to endowing churches; and he published pamphlets ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Church is a great deal worse. There is something fine, however, about a heartily intolerant man: you like him, though you disapprove of him. Even if I were inclined to Whiggery, I should admire the downright dictum of Dr. Johnson, that the devil was the first Whig. Even if I were a Nonconformist, I should like Sydney Smith the better for the singular proof of his declining strength which he once adduced: 'I do believe,' he said, 'that if you were to put a knife into my hand, I should not have vigour enough ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... On Nonconformist, as on Orthodox, is laid the burden of severe fasting; as Master Chancellour tells us, in 1553, "This people hath four Lents,"—indeed, the eating working year is reduced to some 130 days. In the ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... given rise to grave doubts in the minds of many members—of the family—, especially those who, like Soames, had been to public schools, and were accustomed to niceness in such matters. Could he really be considered a butler? Playful spirits alluded to him as: 'Uncle Jolyon's Nonconformist'; George, the acknowledged wag, had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... him to go to Owens College, I confess, but I did not care so much about Mill Hill. That was his mother's fancy; she was very strong about that. It is a Nonconformist school, but I am not a Nonconformist. I do not much admire dogmas, but I am a Churchman as my fathers were. However, John Hampden is not to go to Mill Hill. He has gone to a sort of college near Oxford, which the archbishop recommended to us; the ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... in that place of wisdom and of subtlety, but not of God . . . In this wicked place the scholars are the rudest, most giddy, and unruly rabble, and most mischievous." But this strange and unfriendly critic was a Nonconformist, in times when good Churchmen showed their piety by wrecking chapels and "rabbling" ministers. In our days only the Davenport Brothers and similar professors of strange creeds suffer from the ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... where Force for centuries has failed," added the Philosopher. "One notices the tendency even in public affairs. It is bad form nowadays to belong to the Opposition. The chief aim of the Church is to bring itself into line with worldly opinion. The Nonconformist Conscience grows every day a ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... their veins. The Judsons had been an obscure family—people of "no account," my landlord told me, until Joseph Judson, chapman and cloth merchant in a very small way, was so fortunate as to win the heart of Ruth Haygarth, only daughter of the wealthy Nonconformist grocer in the market-place. This marriage had been the starting-point of Joseph Judson's prosperity. Old Haygarth had helped his industrious and respectable son-in-law along the stony road that leads to fortune, and had no doubt given him many a lift over the stones which bestrew that ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... amazing, gorgeous luck! Me—the waster, the unwanted, the do-nothing. Marcella—Lord, what's the use of words? I'm getting your trick of not being able to find words for what I mean. But you wait. Just you wait. There's a new Louis born to-night, in a funny little Nonconformist chapel. Look at him, girlie—can't you ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... manners high, too; and if his morals were not white, his cravat, that was like a parson's, more than made up for the defect. It was not surprising then that among the fraternity he was known as His Reverence, because his bearing gave the impression of a Nonconformist Minister about to conduct a ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... the Satires, i. 131. Dr. James Foster, the Nonconformist preacher. Johnson mentions 'the reputation which he had gained by his proper delivery.' Works, viii. 384. In The Conversations of Northcote, p. 88, it is stated that 'Foster first became popular from the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... greater still since any earlier election at which a poll was taken. And it was certainly hoped that the increase would have been altogether favourable to the Liberal side. Among the new electors there was a large lay element, a certain Nonconformist element; even among the clergy a party was known to be growing who had found the way to reconcile strict Churchmanship with Liberal politics, and whose Christianity was not of the kind which is satisfied to walk hand-in-hand with the Turk. In these different ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... impostors? We have all encountered such spiritual perils,—and happy may we feel that with whatever faults and failings, there is an orthodox and established form of religion amongst us in the land. For my own part, I go freely to any house of prayer, national or nonconformist, where the Gospel is preached and the preacher is capable: all I want is a good man for the good word and work—and if he has the true Spirit in him, I care next to nothing for his orders: though to many less independent minds human authorisation may be a ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... called names. This is the great difference between some recent developments of Nonconformity and the great Puritanism of the seventeenth century. It was the whole point of the Puritans that they cared nothing for decency. Modern Nonconformist newspapers distinguish themselves by suppressing precisely those nouns and adjectives which the founders of Nonconformity distinguished themselves by flinging at kings and queens. But if it was a chief claim ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... there is not much to choose between him and them. One line of counter attack they did indeed hit upon, which was followed up for generations with no small success against the Nonconformists, and that is the charge of hypocritical abuse of the influence which the Nonconformist teachers early acquired over women. The germs of the unmatched passages to this effect in The Tale of a Tub may be found in the rough horseplay of Pap with a Hatchet and An Almond for a Parrot. But the spirit of the whole controversy is in fact a ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... newspapers listed above as Northern in sentiment The Liberator names for Great Britain as a whole Westminster Review, Nonconformist, British Standard, Birmingham Post, Manchester Examiner, Newcastle Chronicle, Caledonian Mercury, Belfast Whig, and some few others of lesser importance. (Liberator, June 30, 1863.) The attitude of the Manchester Guardian seemed to The Liberator to be like ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... Cole, once was a nonconformist, especially in the matter of ecclesiastical vestments, but eventually got rid of his objections. Ecclesiastical Commissioners then decided to have an object lesson in properly dressed clergymen at Lambeth. Mr. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... the will of the people. It was the Hohenzollerns and the Romanoffs, the firebrands of the French Cabinet, and your own clumsy, thick-headed efforts to get the best of everybody and yet keep your Nonconformist conscience. The people did not make this war, but it is the people who ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the war. "I cannot" he wrote, "but regard your decisive utterances upon the question [of human slavery] as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country[954]." Nonconformist England now came vigorously to the support of the North. Spurgeon, in London, made his great congregation pray with him: "God bless and strengthen the North; give victory to their arms[955]." Further and ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... of the church than in that of letters. But all the writers of this age are wanting in that impressiveness and force of undisciplined eloquence which distinguished the first half of the seventeenth century. Among the nonconformist clergy, Howe (d. 1715) wrote the "Living Temple," which is ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... What do you do on holidays? What is your middle name?" sort of thing. I was afraid I should laugh, so I asked him questions instead; and all the time he seemed to be studying me in a puzzled, surprised way, as if I were a duck that had just stepped out of a chicken egg, or a goblin in a Nonconformist home. (If he keeps on doing this, I shall have to find out what he means ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... so named from the turning stiles which in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries stood at their north ends to prevent the cattle straying from Lincoln's Inn Fields. The Holborn Music-hall in Little Turnstile was originally a Nonconformist chapel. After 1840 it served as a hall, lectures, etc., being given by free-thinkers, and in 1857 was adapted ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... very rare characteristic, in the sense in which we understand it,—an intense love of truth, which ever stimulated him to search after it as the chief part of his being's aim and end, and which never permitted him to swerve a hair's breath from it in practice. This made him a nonconformist, a separatist, an exile, an independent; a growing Christian, a profound theologian, an able controversialist; a student at Leyden University, although he had previously graduated and held a fellowship at Cambridge; a diligent attendant ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... then were: (1) the Presbyterians; (2) the Independents, or Congregationalists; (3) the Baptists; (4) the Society of Friends, or Quakers. Originally the name "Nonconformist" was given to those who refused to conform to the worship of the Church of England, and who attempted to change it to suit their views or else set up their own form of faith as an independent church. The name ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... not neglect such doughty auxiliaries in the memorable war which they waged against cruelty, ignorance, and irreligion, and in their less momentous skirmishes with the votaries of the stage, the racecourse, and the card-table. Without the aid of nonconformist sympathy, and money, and oratory, and organisation, their operations would have been doomed to certain failure. The cordial relations entertained with the members of other denominations by those among whom his youth was passed did much to ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... "It's your duty. What a dear old chap he must be!—so thoroughly prosy and honest. I'm sure I should love him. I know just the sort of man he is. A downright Nonconformist minister of the midland counties, who was consecrated ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... study the particular journal and write what was suitable to it. And, partly by accident and ignorance and partly through the real rabid certainties of youth, I cannot remember that I ever wrote any article that was at all suitable to any paper. . . . I wrote on a Nonconformist organ like the old Daily News and told them all about French cafes and Catholic cathedrals; and they loved it, because they had never heard of them before. I wrote on a robust Labour organ like the old Clarion and defended mediaeval theology and ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... King Edward has no more loyal subjects than the Welshmen, but apparently they do not greatly incline towards admitting his claims as their spiritual head. The Church of England in Wales is greatly inferior in numbers and influence to the various nonconformist branches. This is especially true ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... never proved); and Gentleman Starkey, once an usher in a public school and still dainty in his ways of killing; and Skylights (Morgan's Skylights); and the Irish bo'sun Smee, an oddly genial man who stabbed, so to speak, without offence, and was the only Nonconformist in Hook's crew; and Noodler, whose hands were fixed on backwards; and Robt. Mullins and Alf Mason and many another ruffian long known and ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... Diabolic, exists. Its emissaries spread over the islands, fattening themselves at the expense of their dupes, and exercising no small political authority, which has been ere now, and may be again, dangerous to society. In Jamaica, I was assured by a Nonconformist missionary who had long lived there, Obeah is by no means on the decrease; and in Hayti it is probably on the increase, and taking—at least until the fall and death of Salnave—shapes which, when made public in the civilised world, will excite ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... Roman Catholics in England who incurred legal and social penalties in the 16th century and afterward for refusing to attend services of the Church of England. Dissenter; a nonconformist. ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... Mountclere, the viscount's brother. There also hovered near her the learned Doctor Yore; Mr. Small, a profound writer, who never printed his works; the Reverend Mr. Brook, rector; the Very Reverend Dr. Taylor, dean; and the undoubtedly Reverend Mr. Tinkleton, Nonconformist, who had slipped into the fold ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... departure from the ways of his fathers is misery and pain. Generally he has a hard struggle with himself before he can give up, for the superlative truth which has taken possession of him, all the habits, the pious traditions of his life. He is the real Nonconformist—half martyr, half victim, of his convictions. But that Nonconformity which has come to be the faith in which a large number of people are trained is a totally different business, and affects a very different kind of sentiments. Personal and independent conviction has no more to do with it than ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... relation of these denunciations to Marcionite doctrine, I will suppose a parallel. I take up a book written by a Nonconformist, and I find in it an attack (I am not concerned with the truth or falsehood of the opinions attacked) on the doctrines of episcopal succession, of sacramental grace, of baptismal regeneration, and the like. It is wholly silent about claims to Papal domination, about ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... books so admirable, that merely general criticism subsides into "Read, it will satisfy you." Dr. Pauli's work is of this kind.' —NONCONFORMIST. ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... great and small, conformist or nonconformist, were proud of their rector. It was no unusual sight for a dozen or more carriages from a distance to be seen waiting at the church door for the close of the service, not only on a Sunday morning, ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... anxious to know if Thomas Heywood, the dramatist, was in any way related to Nathaniel Heywood or Oliver Heywood, the celebrated Nonconformist ministers in the seventeenth century? Could any of your correspondents give me information ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... undue elevation of the pulpit and debasement of the Altar to which exclusive preference of preaching had led. Missions had, since the days of Carey's first opening of the subject become so predominant a thought with the Nonconformist bodies, and were often conducted so irregularly, that there was certain dread and distrust of them among the sober-minded and orthodox; but Heber was one of the first English churchmen who perceived that ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... religion? Catholic or Protestant? Anglican or Nonconformist? . . . I won't ask you to give away your own side. So we'll take the Protestant Nonconformists. There are a good many down at the Club: you heard some of the things they said and printed during the Election; and while your charity ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Articles, and brother of a Separatist preacher of London. What was his position in relation to church parties is shown by his letter to his cousin, the "arch-Puritan," William Gouge, written after three years' residence in Virginia, urging that nonconformist clergymen should come over to Virginia, where no question would be raised on the subject of subscription or the surplice. What manner of man and minister he was is proved by a noble record of faithful work. He found a true workfellow in Dale. When this statesmanlike and soldierly governor ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... the government of William, and had led for many years a useful and studious life, maintaining a far higher standard of clerical duty than was common in his time. His mother was the daughter of an eminent Nonconformist minister, who had been ejected in 1662, and was a woman of rare mental endowments, of intense piety, and of a strong, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... evils are exposed in the light of the word of the Lord. They complain of the general lack of finesse and Latin; the licence of the pulpit has usurped the reverence of the altar. It is perfectly true that statements are sometimes made in nonconformist pulpits which are bald and offensive to the ear of scholarly accomplishment. But the complaint of secularization is singularly inept. Nothing could be more secular in the way of complacent acceptance of the worldly reasons for leaving awkward questions ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... a prominent member of the Dominion Legislature, and in none of his not over frequent letters said a word about his promise to send for her. Now, her father was some time dead; her stepmother had married Mr. Saulsbury, an elderly Nonconformist minister, who was shocked at all the ways of Alceste's admirer, and with whom she could not get on. It would take a very sweet and resigned nature to make one who had had these experiences absolutely in love with the human race, and especially with men; and Alceste accordingly ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... Handbook of London, under the head of St. James' Market, Jermyn Street, St. James', tells us that "here, in a room over the Market House, preached Richard Baxter, the celebrated Nonconformist. On the occasion of his first Sermon, the main beam of the building cracked beneath the weight of the congregation." We recollect the old market and Market House, which must have stood on the ground now ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... State practically wholly Christian, is now crowded, and indeed considerably overcrowded, into a corner of an Empire in which the Christians are a mere eleven per cent of the population; so that the Nonconformist who allows his umbrella stand to be sold up rather than pay rates towards the support of a Church of England school, finds himself paying taxes not only to endow the Church of Rome in Malta, but to send Christians to prison for the blasphemy of offering Bibles for sale in the streets of ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... rebel against the degrading servility of what we have come to call the "Nonconformist Conscience" Byron must always have his place in the tragically slow emancipation of the human spirit. The reluctance of an ordinary sensitive modern person, genuinely devoted to poetry, to spend any more time with Byron's verses than what those great familiar lyrics printed ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... elusive common soul. It is a gathering together of all the smaller interests which find themselves at a disadvantage against the big established classes, the leasehold tenant as against the landowner, the retail tradesman as against the merchant and the moneylender, the Nonconformist as against the Churchman, the small employer as against the demoralising hospitable publican, the man without introductions and broad connections against the man who has these things. It is the party of the many small men against the fewer prevailing men. It has no more essential ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... fire from the Three Cranes to the other side of the bridge, and in a bow up the hill, for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it." Vincent also likens its appearance at this juncture to that of a bow. "A dreadful bow it was," writes this eloquent nonconformist preacher, "such as mine eyes have never before seen; a bow which had God's arrow in it with a flaming point; a shining bow, not like that in the cloud which brings water with it, and withal signifieth God's covenant not to destroy the ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... had not the initial impulse to depart from ancient usage that my father had in his habitual scepticism. He had always been a nonconformist in his heart; she bore lovingly the yoke of prescribed conduct. Individual freedom, to him, was the only tolerable condition of life; to her it was confusion. My mother, therefore, gradually divested herself, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... been set up by voluntary effort, and is only inadequately and indirectly endowed by the State.[42] Slowly and very reluctantly governments in England have come to recognise the fact that the trend of Catholic opinion in Ireland is as clearly in the direction of denominationalism as the trend of Nonconformist English opinion is in the direction of undenominationalism, and that it is impossible to carry on the education of a priest-ridden Catholic people on the same lines as a Protestant one. Primary education has become ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... course of these debates served to band Nonconformists and reformers in a close alliance. Hitherto they had alike supported Pitt and the royal prerogative, especially at the time of the Regency struggle. In May 1789, when Pitt opposed the Nonconformist claims, Dr. Priestley wrote that Fox would regain his popularity with Dissenters, while Pitt would lose ground.[23] Now, when the doors of the franchise and of civic privilege were fast barred, resentment and indignation began to arouse the groups of the unprivileged ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Puritans, and he was sent to school with the idea that he should become a Nonconformist minister. But Defoe did not become a minister; perhaps he felt he was unsuited for such solemn duty. "The pulpit," he says later, "is none of my office. It was my disaster first to be set apart for, and then to be set apart from the honor of ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... movement opposes the Natives' Land Act it must be religious, for Anglican Bishops in South Africa have denounced this law in their episcopal charges (vide 'Church Chronicle', 1913, October issues), and Anglican Bishops in South Africa are nothing if they are not religious. Nonconformist Ministers have condemned this law in their annual synods and conferences. Ex-Premier W. P. Schreiner, K.C., C.M.G., at present the London representative of the Union of South Africa, is the son of an old South African missionary. He was member of the Union Parliament when this law ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... use this word for want of a better, though it is not strictly accurate as applied to Upper Canada, where there were no clearly prescribed standards of religious faith from which non-supporters of Episcopacy could be said to dissent. The word "Nonconformist" is ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... and returned in a few minutes in the character of an amiable and simple-minded Nonconformist clergyman. His broad, black hat, his baggy trousers, his white tie, his sympathetic smile, and general look of peering and benevolent curiosity were such as Mr. John Hare alone could have equaled. It was not merely that Holmes changed his costume. His expression, his manner, his ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... Bunyan was warned, and was advised to stay at home that night, or else to conceal himself. His departure had been already arranged; but when he learnt that a warrant was actually out against him, he thought that he was bound to stay and face the danger. He was the first Nonconformist who had been marked for arrest. If he flinched after he had been singled out by name, the whole body of his congregation would be discouraged. Go to church he would not, or promise to go to church; but he was willing to suffer whatever punishment the ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... fifteenth child of his father, a sturdy English Nonconformist who some years before had emigrated from Banbury in England to Boston in America. As the family was so large the children had to begin early to earn their own living. So at the age of ten Benjamin ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... TAYLOR asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he had received memorials from many thousands of persons, including clergymen of the Church of England, Nonconformist ministers, and persons of high literary and scientific position, asking for a mitigation of the sentences of George William Foote and William James Ramsey, now imprisoned in Holloway Gaol on a charge of blasphemy; whether they have already suffered five months' imprisonment, ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... NONCONFORMIST, with open mind on the subject of gambling, but modest means and conscientious objection to hard work, is desirous of meeting liberal-minded philanthropist who will advance him L750 to operate infallible system ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... was Sir Edwin Sandys. Son of a Puritan Archbishop of York, he had studied at Oxford under Richard Hooker, whose famous book he had read in manuscript. The Ecclesiastical Polity had perhaps confirmed Sandys in a republican way of thinking; and in the year 1618 he was probably a nonconformist—a "religious gentleman," as Edward Winslow called him: at all events, a man of humanitarian and anti-prerogative instincts; a friend of the Earl of Southampton, and leader of those in the company who ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... hordes of religious papers (it is stated that several hundred are published in London alone) I shall make no attempt to deal. But it may be well to say that many of them pay very badly and many of them do not pay at all. The best, speaking from a journalistic point of view, is the British Weekly, a Nonconformist journal which prints all sorts of things, and which is edited with brilliant skill; unfortunately it has the bad habit of not returning ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... little of either the Tories or the Whigs, 'but acted with the Radicals.' He had modified his first estimate of the composition of the House. This Radical group largely represented the industrial towns and Nonconformist interests. It included Peter Rylands, member for Warrington; Peter Taylor, member for Leicester; Henry Richard, member for Merthyr Tydvil; George Anderson, member for Glasgow; and Llewellyn Dillwyn, member for Swansea. Some, such as Peter Taylor, were theoretical Republicans, but all were ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... E. Forster, who had taken a much more prominent part in public life, was the only other possible nominee, but he declined to stand. Lord Hartington's rank no doubt told in his favour, and Mr Forster's education bill had offended the Nonconformist members, who would probably have withheld their support. Lord Hartington's prudent management in difficult circumstances laid his followers under great obligations, since not only was the opposite party ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... died in peace, A.D. 1387. Rome revenged itself by digging up his bones and burning them, about thirteen years later. Rebellion spread even among the monks of the Church, and a vast number of some nonconformist Franciscan monks, termed Spirituals, were burned for their refusal to obey the pope on matters of discipline. The intense hatred between the Franciscan and Dominican orders made the latter the willing instrument of the papacy; and, in their character as inquisitors, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... real mind get mixed up together, he ceases to be an artist. That is why Swinburne has gone off so much. If you want to write really fine erotic poetry, you must live an absolutely rigid and entirely respectable life. The 'Laus Veneris' could only have been produced by a man who had a Nonconformist conscience. I am certain that Mrs. Humphrey Ward is the most strictly orthodox Christian whom we have. Otherwise, her books against the accepted Christianity could never have brought her in so many thousands of pounds. I never read her, of ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Scripture in support of it. Rather curiously, while the diary of Archbishop Laud shows so much superstition regarding dreams as portents, it shows little or none regarding comets; but Bishop Jeremy Taylor, strong as he was, evidently favoured the usual view. John Howe, the eminent Nonconformist divine in the latter part of the century, seems to have regarded the comet superstition as almost a fundamental article of belief; he laments the total neglect of comets and portents generally, declaring that this neglect betokens want of reverence for the Ruler of the world; he expresses ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... was born about 1674, and educated in London as a Nonconformist Minister; but he soon conformed to the Church of England, and held in succession several benefices. In 1709 he went to Ireland as chaplain to Lord Wharton, when Lord Lieutenant; and afterwards became, in 1721, Bishop of Ferns and Leighlin, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... a right good English stock, both on his father's and his mother's side. His grandfather, Dr Andrew Reed, a Nonconformist minister of note in his day, left his mark in some of the soundest philanthropic undertakings of the century. His thoughtfulness and self- sacrificing energy have lightened the sufferings and soothed the old age of many thousands. He was one of the founders of the London, Reedham, and Infant ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... ministers who are wholly free from the fault he pointed out; but in the purely rural districts, in the small villages where the small men are found, it is certainly common to hear unpleasant things said of the parish priest by his Nonconformist rival; and should the parson have some well-known fault or make a slip, the other is apt to chuckle over it with a very manifest ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... "the Christian Carrier," by Claverhouse in the previous week was an affair of another character. Claverhouse did not exceed his orders, and ammunition and treasonable papers were in Brown's possession; he was also sheltering a red-handed rebel. Brown was not shot merely "because he was a Nonconformist," nor was he shot by the hand ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... social weapons, and retaliate. Political parties are wrecked and public careers undone by a single indiscretion. A man had better have all the statues in London to supper with him, ugly as they are, than be brought to the bar of the Nonconformist Conscience by Donna Elvira. Excommunication has become almost as serious a business as it was in the ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... explanation of this tedious moralizing is that Lyly, wit and euphuist, possessed the Nonconformist conscience: "Beneath the courtier's slashed doublet, under his ornate brocade and frills, there stood the Puritan." This I believe to be a mistaken view of the case. As we shall later see reason to ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... village to Oulton Hall), the speakers repaired to the Hall to supper. One of the guests, an independent minister, became involved in a heated argument with a Church of England clergyman, who reproached him for holding Calvinistic views. The nonconformist replied that the clergy of the Established Church were equally liable to attack on the same ground, because the Articles of their Church were Calvinistic, and to these they had all sworn assent. The reply was that the words were not necessarily ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Jethro Bass, Chairman of the Board, in the honored seat of Deacon Moses Hatch, the perquisite of the church in Coniston! The idea was heresy. As a matter of fact, Jock himself uttered it as a playful exaggeration. Certain nonconformist farmers, of whom there were not a few in the town, had come into Jonah Winch's store that morning; and Jabez Miller, who lived on the north slope, had taken away the breath of the orthodox by suggesting that Jethro Bass be nominated ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... an excellent thing for killing moth in carpets, and Time,—when one is compelled to bestow it upon dull people; and a perfectly healthy, Nonconformist conscience must be a comfortable lodger. But as regards the sacred roof, and the defended table, it's a question how long both British institutions remain intact, with those big guns getting into position round us...." She waved her small hand, its ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... came on at Guildhall, a crowd of those who loved and honoured Baxter filled the court. At his side stood Doctor William Bates, one of the most eminent of the Nonconformist divines. Two Whig barristers of great note, Pollexfen and Wallop, appeared for the defendant. Pollexfen had scarcely begun his address to the jury, when the Chief Justice broke forth: "Pollexfen, I know you well. I will set ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... as represented by some ministers not only of the Church of England, but also of the Nonconformist Churches, ministers of the gospel of peace on earth and good-will towards man—what an attitude did it assume! Surely if these clergymen had been as eager to promote peace as they were zealous to set in motion the waters of strife, they might, have ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... which I have never even heard. There must, I am sure, be statements of the League of Nations idea forthcoming from various religious standpoints, but I do not know any sufficiently well to recommend them. It is incredible that neither the Roman Catholic Church, the English Episcopal Church, nor any Nonconformist body has made any effort as an organization to forward this essentially religious end of peace on earth. And also there must be German writings upon this same topic. I mention these diverse sources not in order ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... weeks together; they had better have stayed at home. Next came a room full of people who had some sort of appointment, and here one would find smart-looking people, brilliantly dressed, nervous women hiding behind magazines, nonconformist divines, clergy in gaiters, real business men, these latter for the most part gentlemen in admirable morning dress who stood up and scrutinised my uncle's taste in water colours manfully and sometimes by the hour together. Young men again were here ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... cannot be said that the author is partial; clergymen and Nonconformist divines, Liberals and Conservatives, lawyers and tradesmen, all come under his lash.... The sketches are worth reading. Some of the characters ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... with him, which now I cannot call to mind: and I fear I have already tired your Lordship. I shall only add one circumstance. That on his deathbed, he declared himself a Nonconformist, and had a Fanatic [the political designation of Dissenters] preacher to be ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... Nonconformist divine and scholar, was born of yeoman stock in 1570/1 at Swanton Morley, Norfolk. He was for four years from December 1587 a scholar of Caius College, Cambridge, and, after associating with the Puritan party in the Church, eventually joined the Separatists. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... writings have been received by a large section of those readers who should naturally have enjoyed them. He is a poet, of fantastic wit and often reckless imagination, and he has been travestied in a long black coat and white choker, as though he were an embodiment of the Nonconformist conscience. ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... deck-house as he came up the ladder—a thin little man habited much like a Nonconformist minister, and wearing—of all amazing head-gear—a top-hat, the brim of which shed moisture in a steady trickle. A grey plaid shawl swathed his shoulders, and the fringe of this dripped too, as he gained the deck and stepped briskly aft, without so much as ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The Whigs, however, did much. They succeeded in obtaining a law in the provisions of which a philosopher will doubtless find much to condemn, but which had the practical effect of enabling almost every Protestant Nonconformist to follow the dictates of his own conscience without molestation. Scarcely a law in the statute-book is theoretically more objectionable than the Toleration Act. But we question whether in the whole of that vast mass ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... could have given more delight to Sir Geoffrey. He could forgive a stout able-bodied sectary or nonconformist, who enforced his doctrines in the field by downright blows on the casques and cuirasses of himself and other Cavaliers. But he remembered with most vindictive accuracy, the triumphant entrance of Hugh Peters through the breach of his Castle; and for ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Lord Kitchener, who, in this affair, became the scapegoat for many sins he had never committed. The question of the Concentration Camps was made the subject of interpellations in the House of Commons, and indignation meetings were held in many parts of England. The Nonconformist Conscience was deeply stirred at what was thought to be conduct which not even the necessities of war could excuse. Torrents of ink were spilt to prove that at the end of the nineteenth century measures and methods worthy of the Inquisition were resorted to by British Government officials, ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... "Mundus vult decipi"; the world wishes to be deceived; certainly the Anglican world does. But no one else is taken in. The Dissenter, the Nonconformist, and others who have no axe to grind, know well that "fine words butter no parsnips," and are far too shrewd to be deluded. Why, even the old Catholic cathedrals with their holy-water stoups, their occasional altars of stone, ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... of divine authority to something we will insist on doing though it brings no good, even causes harm, to ourselves and offends and injures others, or the giving a name which should be sacred as commanding what we want to do for other reasons. A staunch Nonconformist—one of the clearest thinkers and probably the finest preacher of the last generation—how he would have hated the phrase, but one cannot pause for another!—truly said of the passive resisters in his day, "There is a deal more of ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... freak, freak of Nature, weirdo, mutant; rouser, snorter* [U.S.]. individuality, idiosyncrasy, originality, mannerism. aberration; irregularity; variety; singularity; exemption; salvo &c. (qualification) 469. nonconformist; nondescript, character, original, nonesuch, nonsuch[obs3], monster, prodigy, wonder, miracle, curiosity, flying fish, black sheep, black swan, lusus naturae[Lat], rara avis[Lat], queer fish; mongrel, random ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... French of the French. You have served under the Tricolor and under the Union Jack. You are an embodiment of L'Entente Cordiale. You almost reconcile me to that detestable Dawson, but not quite. He is of the provincial English, what you call a Nonconformist—bah! He is clever, but bourgeois. He grates upon me; for I, his subordinate in this service, am aristocrat, a Count of l'ancien regime, catholique, presque royaliste. His blood is that of muddy peasants, ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... royal donor of these lands, when the grant was first made. The second point was, that the admission of this inherent right of the Church of England to be an established church in Upper Canada, would extinguish the right of each one of the nonconformist bodies to the status of a Church. It can well be understood that in a contest which involved vital questions like these (that is, of the exclusive endowment of one Church, and its consequent superior status as a dominant Church), the struggle would be a protracted ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... a flood of cackling protest and panic from the hastily departing fowl. Calmness under misfortune is not an attribute of either hen-folk or womenkind, and while Mrs. Saunders declaimed over her onion bed such portions of the slang dictionary as are permitted by the Nonconformist conscience to be said or sung, the Vasco da Gama fowl was waking the echoes of Toad-Water with crescendo bursts of throat music which compelled attention to her griefs. Mrs. Crick had a long family, and was therefore licensed, in the eyes of her world, to have a short temper, ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro) |
