"Conventicle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Grange. I warrant you it will not be long that we shall be suffered to have family worship if our labouring men share in it as they are used to do; nor can Mr. Truelocke so much as expound a Psalm to us and them, but it shall straight be said we hold a conventicle here.' ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... Na, thank ye. I dinna want to come unner a pour o' creysh. It wad blaud me a'thegither. Is that the gait ye baptize i' your conventicle?" ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... are not six members in our House of Commons, who may not fairly come under this description. So that the parties among us are made up, on one side, of moderate Whigs, and on the other, of Presbyterians and their abettors; by which last I mean, such who can equally go to a Church or Conventicle, or such who are indifferent to all religion in general, or lastly such who affect to bear a personal rancour toward the clergy: These last are a set of men not of our own growth, their principles at least have been imported of late years; yet this whole party put together ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... discriminate! True Rosminians are those at Domodossola, and not those who have wives, eh? Very well then, this evening after supper I received a letter from Rome. They write me—and you must know my correspondent is one of the mighty—that precisely to-night a conventicle was to be held at the house of this false Catholic, Selva, who had summoned to it other malignant insects like himself; that probably you would wish to be present, and that I was to prevent your going. I do not know what I should have done, ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... patient and his nurse were rescued on the backs of waders; the foundations of a chapel, which was building on lower ground, were reported sapped, and a staunch Churchman of our Welsh acquaintance stood rapturously contrasting the fate of the conventicle with the security of his own place of worship on the neighbouring knoll. "If Borth goes, the church won't, anyhow!" he cried, in self-forgetting fervour. No lives were lost, though several were barely saved. One of our party rescued ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... court, as had been their fathers before them for generations. And of such to a great extent was the population of the place. Miss Oman herself claimed aboriginal descent and so did the sweet-faced Moravian lady next door—a connection of the famous La Trobes of the old Conventicle, whose history went back to the Gordon Riots; and as to the gentleman who lived in the ancient timber-and-plaster house at the bottom of the court, it was reported that his ancestors had dwelt in that very house since the days of James ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... A Conventicle Sabbath was a solemn day. The time and place having been fixed beforehand, the people were notified in a very private manner. A kind of wireless telegraphy seemed to have been operated by the Covenanters. The news spread and ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... 1 to 7 o'clock in the morning (when Mandat was killed) he was the principal leader of the insurrectional commune. Nobody was so potent, so overbearing, so well endowed physically for the control of such a conventicle as Danton. Besides, among the new-comers he was the best known and with the most influence through his position as deputy of the syndic-attorney. Hence his prestige after the victory and appointment as Minister of Justice. His hierarchical superior, the syndic-attorney ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... gods and men—is not to be banished by conventicle or council. She will find her way back, though she has to tread strange paths, and the punishment for the elimination of natural wantonness is the appearance of hideous hypocrisy. Driven from the haunts of the Muses, expelled ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... the conversion of the church into a Genevan conventicle. He wrote: "It was not long before this intruding minister had made a party in and about the said parish that was desirous to receive the sacrament as at Geneva: to which end, the day was appointed for a select ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... aunt," said the king; "I honor you more than I do the pope, and I love my sister more than I fear him. I am not a Huguenot, but no more am I an ass. If the pope has too much of his nonsense, I will myself take Margot by the hand and carry her off to be married in open conventicle." Toligny, for his part, was so pleased with the measures that Charles IX. had taken in favor of the Low Countries in their quarrels with Philip II., and so confident himself of his influence over the king, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... little while he found himself lying on the heather at the mercy of the man whom he had attacked. He asked for his life, and Alexander Gordon granted it to him, making him promise by his honor as a gentleman that whenever he had the fortune to approach a conventicle (church meeting) he would retire, if he saw a white flag elevated in a particular manner upon a flagstaff. This seemed but a little condition to weigh against a man's ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Dominies, it would be equally odious," said Pen, "and at the end of a few scores of years would cease to exist altogether. Would you have every man with his head shaved, and every woman in a cloister,—carrying out to the full the ascetic principle? Would you have conventicle hymns twanging from every lane in every city in the world? Would you have all the birds of the forest sing one note and fly with one feather? You call me a sceptic because I acknowledge what is; and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wealth, the preventable suffering, the reckless waste of effort, which we saw around us. At any rate, it was worth examination; and most of the free-thinking men of that period read the "Positive Polity" and the other writings of the founder, and spent some Sunday mornings at the little conventicle in Lamb's Conduit Street, or attended on Sunday evenings the Newton Hall lectures ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... cook. He presented himself at the castle of the noble family of the Ostrorogs, was warmly welcomed by the Countess, and held a service in her rooms. The Count was absent, heard the news, and came in a state of fury. He seized a whip. "I will drag my wife out of this conventicle," he exclaimed; and burst into the room while the service was proceeding, his eyes flashing fire and the whip swinging in his hand. The preacher, Cerwenka, calmly went on preaching. "Sir," said George Israel, pointing to an empty seat "sit down there." The Count of Ostrorog meekly obeyed, listened ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... saw the noble work done by Messrs. Jones and Creagh, of the London Missionary Society, all being cruelly undone by the tyranny and Popery of the French. One day, in an inland walk, Mrs. Paton and I came on a large Conventicle in the bush. They were teaching each other, and reading the Scriptures which the Missionaries had translated into their own language, and which the French had forbidden them to use. They cried to God for deliverance from their oppressors! Missionaries were prohibited from teaching the Gospel to the ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... surroundings which men construct for themselves, and which form their daily shelter, their work-shop, their place of social influence. The human interest which our author sheds about the mill, the carpenter's shop, the dairy, the village church, and even the stiff, uninviting conventicle, shows that she looks on these as having a living continuity with the people whom she sets among them. Their artistic value is but a reflection of all that they mean to those for whom they have made ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... supporters of Presbyterianism in the days of Charles II. were the Mores of Harleston, Norfolk. Glorying in the risk incurred of proscription and imprisonment, they turned their dwelling into a conventicle. Here the faithful gathered stealthily at midnight to hear the Gospel preached, whilst one of the house, with drawn sword, stood at the threshold prepared to defend with his life both minister and congregation. From this sturdy stock sprang Jacob, the father ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... hope to please all; in an Age when Faction rages, and different Parties disagree in all things— - But coming the first day to a new Play with a Loyal Title, and then even the sober and tender conscienc'd, throng as to a forbidden Conventicle, fearing the Cub of their old Bear of Reformation should be expos'd, to be the scorn of the wicked, and dreading (tho' but the faint shadow of their own deformity) their Rebellion, Murders, Massacres ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... are as numerous as the breaths of His creatures; hence they consider religious toleration as a duty." Toleration does not mean simply abstinence from the thumbscrew and the rack or even the repeal of the Conventicle or the Five Mile Act, but appreciation of the religious opinions and practices of others, and due respect for them. Without formal union there may not only be peace and goodwill between bodies which keep up their separate organisations, they might also act together heartily and effectively ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... little he found himself lying on the heather at the mercy of the man whom he had attacked. He asked for his life, and Alexander Gordon granted it to him, making him promise by his honour as a gentleman that whenever he had the fortune to approach a conventicle he would retire, if he saw a white flag elevated in a particular manner upon a flagstaff. This seemed but a little condition to weigh against a man's life, and ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... sudden, surprising, and bloody; and as he hath thirsted after and shed the blood of the saints, he shall not go to his grave in peace, &c." The youth went home, and at supper the bishop asked him, If he had been at a conventicle? He said, He was. He asked, What his text was, and what he said? The man told him several things, and particularly the above message from Mr. Welwood. The bishop made sport of it. But his wife said, I advise you to take more notice of that, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... that it is as vital as ever. Even a European war cannot kill a thing of that sort. The question is whether, after the war, young English artists will realize that they too, by reason of their vocation, of the truth that is in them, belong to a communion wider and far more significant than the conventicle to which they were bred. England, we hear, is to wake up after the war and take her place in a league of nations. May we hope that young English artists will venture to take theirs in an international league ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... O'Drive, where did you pick up this jargon of the conventicle—but that reminds me, by the by—you are not a convert to the Established Church. You belong to the Dissenters, and owe your change of opinions ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... colligation^; compilation, levy, gathering, ingathering, muster, attroupement^; team; concourse, conflux^, congregation, contesseration^, convergence &c 290; meeting, levee, reunion, drawing room, at home; conversazione [It] &c (social gathering) 892; assembly, congress; convention, conventicle; gemote^; conclave &c (council) 696; posse, posse comitatus [Lat.]; Noah's ark. miscellany, collectanea^; museum, menagerie &c (store) 636; museology^. crowd, throng, group; flood, rush, deluge; rabble, mob, press, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Elstow, in Bedfordshire, in the year 1628— just three years before the birth of Dryden. He served, when a young man, with the Parliamentary forces, and was present at the siege of Leicester. At the Restoration, he was apprehended for preaching, in disobedience to the Conventicle Act, "was had home to prison, and there lay complete twelve years." Here he supported himself and his family by making tagged laces and other small-wares; and here, too, he wrote the immortal Pilgrim's Progress. After his release, he became pastor of the Baptist congregation at Bedford. ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... are objectionable everywhere, but the slang and twang of the conventicle—as bad in its way as that of the House of Commons, and nothing worse can be said of it—should be studiously avoided under such circumstances as I describe. The avoidance was not complete on this occasion. Nor was it quite agreeable to see the preacher addressing his pet 'points' to his ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... course of the same night, a conventicle, consisting of ten deputies of the Council of Five Hundred, met at the house of S——; thither Bernadotte repaired. They settled, that at nine o'clock next morning the Council should hold a sitting, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... table of precedence, and the punctual discharge of his irksome duties. But unfortunately the felicity of those who surrounded him was less complete. His Court, it was murmured, was as gloomy as a conventicle, and the most dismal of all the sufferers was his wife. "Pas de plaisanteries, madame!" he had exclaimed to the unfortunate successor of the Princess Charlotte, when, in the early days of their marriage, she had attempted a feeble joke. Did she not understand that the consort of a constitutional ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... continued, "plodding through the mud this wet night, going to preach at Milldean opposition shop. As I told you, I heard Barraclough bellowing in the midst of a conventicle like a possessed bull; and I find you, gentlemen, tarrying over your half-pint of muddy port wine, and scolding like angry old women. No wonder Supplehough should have dipped sixteen adult converts ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... this was Sergeant Kelynge who, the following year, was made Lord Chief-Justice, he was a most arbitrary tyrant, equaled or excelled only by Judge Jeffreys. It was before him that some persons were indicted for attending a conventicle; but it being only proved that they had assembled on the Lord's-day with Bibles in their hands without prayer-books, and there being no proof that their meeting was only under colour or pretence of religion, the jury acquitted them. Upon this he fined each of the jury-men ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of a High Churchman, he says: "'Tis vain to trifle in the matter. The light, foolish handling of them by fines is their glory and advantage. If the gallows instead of the compter, and the galleys instead of the fines, were the reward of going to a conventicle, there would not be so many sufferers." His irony was at first misunderstood: the High Churchmen hailed him as a champion, and the Dissenters hated him as an enemy. But when his true meaning became apparent, a reward of L50 ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the narrow slit windows, high up the walls, pointed to a dim network of wooden rafters half lost among the shadows, and then came the dark vault of the roof. Cheerless and unalluring, for all the red light, it certainly was, reminding me of some unused conventicle, bare of pews or pulpit, ugly and severe, and I was forcibly struck by the contrast between the normal uses to which the place was ordinarily put, and the strange and medieval purpose which had brought us under ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... great event in my life. In parlour and kitchen they could not make enough of me. They taught me to cook; and I was to preach, and they got in people from the fields and I stood on a chair, and preached sermons. I might have been indicted for holding a conventicle."] She writes to his father in 1809: "I heartily hope that the sea air has been the means of setting you up, and Mrs. Macaulay also, and that the dear little poet has caught his share of bracing.... Tell Tom I desire to know how 'Olaus' ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... that the lecture or address I had come to give was not an official or ministerial act; but he would not see that. I also suggested that there was no law against it. He, begging my pardon, said "The 'Conventicle Act' had not been repealed yet, and that no one could lawfully hold a meeting of ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... and his coveting truth had another exceptional consequence: he was detached, unworldly, contemplative. When he came out of the conventicle or the reform meeting, or out of the rapturous close atmosphere of the lecture-room, he heard Nature whispering to him: "Why so hot, little sir?" No doubt the spirit or energy of the world is what is acting in us, as the sea is what rises in every little wave; but it passes ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... I am sorry to say that Mary did not flinch from these conditions quite so much as I could have hoped. Ezra, however, rejected them for her with manly scorn, until he was reminded that the high wages would speed the end of his own ambitions—namely, to replace his barn with a conventicle of brick. So he let his wife loose into Eden with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... having led to his first public persecution. He was detained in prison for seven months, and treated with much severity. In 1669 he had the satisfaction of being reconciled to his father. He was one of the first sufferers by the passing of the Conventicle Act, in 1670. He was imprisoned in Newgate, and tried for preaching to a seditious and riotous assembly in Gracechurch Street; and this trial is remarkable and celebrated in criminal jurisprudence for the firmness ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... liberality all denominations in the ban of her disapproval. She would have deemed it an unpardonable crime, had the young man deserted the Church of his fathers in order to join the Congregation, some ranting conventicle. But if her respectability was shocked at the idea of his becoming a Methodist, her better feelings were outraged when she found, as she said, that he "belonged to nothing." She viewed with dislike and distrust all forms of religion that differed from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... restore pointed architecture to its former glorious state; without it all that is done will be a tame and heartless copy." He points out the want of sympathy between "these vast edifices" and the Protestant worship, which might as well be carried on in a barn or conventicle or square meeting-house. Hence, the nave has been blocked up with pews, the choir or transept partitioned off to serve as a parish church, roodloft and chancel screen removed, the altar displaced by a ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... satisfaction. Meanwhile, you also voice a tonic truth—this universe of ours, and, reverently speaking, the Maker of this universe as well, is under no actual bond to be intelligible in dealing with us." He laughed at this season and fell into a lighter tone. "Do I preach like a little conventicle-attending tradesman? Faith, you must remember that when I talk gravely Judith listens as if it were an oracle discoursing. For Judith loves me as the wisest and the best of men. I protest her adoration frightens me. What if she were to find ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... holsters at the saddle-bow. Being a small and an old man, he climbed stiffly and with some difficulty into the saddle; but, when seated there, his earnest face and resolute air made him look a hero of the covenant quitting the conventicle for the battle-field. ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... a clergyman, who, wanting both merit and luck to get preferment, or even to keep his curacy in the established church, formed a new conventicle, which he called an Oratory. There, at set times, he delivereth strange speeches, compiled by himself and his associates, who share the profit with him. Every hearer payeth a shilling each day for admittance. He is an absolute dunce, but generally ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... called The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. He wrote as if he were very angry indeed with the Dissenters. He said they had been far too kindly treated and that if he had his way he would make a law that "whoever was found at a conventicle should be banished the nation and the preacher be hanged. We should soon see an end of the tale—they would all come to Church, and one age would make ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... minister, Master Breckinridge, whose discourses had often crowded his rude benches while the comfortable pews of the church were empty, was cast into gaol, and his flock dispersed. As to the Independents, of whom my father was one, they also were under the ban of the law, but they attended conventicle at Emsworth, whither we would trudge, rain or shine, on every Sabbath morning. These meetings were broken up more than once, but the congregation was composed of such harmless folk, so well beloved and respected by their neighbours, that the ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was decidedly to his taste. It was, therefore, a severe mortification when he found himself compelled to minister Sunday after Sunday in a building that was ugly enough for a conventicle, and to listen to the florid voices of a mixed choir, instead of the orderly array of men and boys in white surplices to which he had been accustomed. If he had been combative by nature,—one who loved to gird his armor about him and to plunge into every sort of melee,—he ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... bibles. If Achitophel signify the brother of a fool, the author of that poem will pass with his readers for the next of kin. And, perhaps, 'tis the relation that makes the kindness. Whatever the verses are, buy them up, I beseech you, out of pity; for I hear the conventicle is shut up, and the brother of Achitophel out ...
— English Satires • Various
... to the transcendent ability and sagacity that lay beneath a rugged exterior, there has never been any question. He raised and trained a regiment of Puritan troops, called the "Ironsides," who were well-nigh invincible in battle, but whose camp was a "conventicle" for prayer and praise. With their help, the Royalists were defeated at Marston Moor (1644). The army was now modeled anew by the Independents. The Self-denying Ordinance excluded members of Parliament from military command. Cromwell was made an ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... which we have described. He was not a Puritan. He was not a freethinker. He was not a Royalist. In his character the noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmonious union. From the Parliament and from the Court, from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... place. He, "living by them," knew "what spirit" the magistrates "were of," before whom Bunyan would be taken if arrested, and the small hope there would be of his avoiding being committed to gaol. The man himself, as a "harbourer of a conventicle," would also run no small danger of the same fate, but Bunyan generously acquits him of any selfish object in his warning: "he was, I think, more afraid of (for) me, than of (for) himself." The matter was clear enough to Bunyan. At the same time it was not to be decided in a ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... you ignorant peasant! What do you come here for, spoiling our enjoyment, and keeping us awake at nights? Don't you know this is no common conventicle? It is the place where the king says his prayers! Away with you, or we will take off your head!" So said Amaziah, the priest, and so says many a one to-day. Cannot you let us rest in the enjoyment of our sins? You seem to forget that ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... with the enemy of mankind in his own shape, or could discover him as, lurking in the disguise of a raven, he inspired the rhetoric of a Quaker's meeting. In some cases, celestial guardians kept guard over their field-meetings. At a conventicle held on the Lomond-hills, the Rev. Mr. Blacader was credibly assured, under the hands of four honest men, that at the time the meeting was disturbed by the soldiers, some women who had remained at home, "clearly perceived as the form of a tall man, majestic-like, stand ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... this for a conventicle, Master Cairnes," I asked grimly, "an assembly of crop-eared worshippers, that you venture to lift your voice in such a howl when you wake? It will be better if you learn to keep still at such a time, if you hope ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... the old Gentleman, you must behave your self very soberly, simple, and demure, and look as prew as at a Conventicle; and take heed you drink not off your Glass at Table, nor rant, nor swear: one Oath confounds our Plot, and betrays thee to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... FIVE-MILE ACTS.—Early in the reign the services of the Anglican Church were restored by Parliament, and harsh laws were enacted against all non-conformists. Thus the Conventicle Act made it a crime punishable by imprisonment or transportation for more than five persons besides the household to gather in any house or in any place for worship, unless the service was conducted according to the forms of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... where his father was. I have seen a man hung up to a beam by his thumbs because he would not give up money which perhaps he did not possess. I have seen a woman tortured by having lighted matches put between her fingers because she would not, or could not, tell where a conventicle was being held. I did not, indeed, see the last deed actually done, else would I have cut down the coward who did it. The poor thing had fainted and the torture was over when I came upon them. Only two days ago I was ordered out with a party who pillaged ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... required from the English soldiers and merchants abroad, who had hitherto attended without scruple the services of the Calvinistic churches. The English ambassador in Paris was forbidden to visit the Huguenot conventicle at Charenton. ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... which al fresco entertainment is given for the benefit of the aforesaid Gooseberry within sound of the sermon and within sight of the Meeting House windows. Suddenly her rustic Quaker lover, a kind of Ham Peggotty, lounges out of the Conventicle, which, as these persons seem to leave and enter just when it suits them, ought rather to be called a Chapel-of-Ease,—and, like the clown that he is, says in effect, "I'm a-looking at yer! I've caught yer at it!" Dismay of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... bad in principle, as perpetually separating within wooden walls members of the same communion; unwholesome in practice, confining in those antre-like parallelograms the close-pent air; unsightly in appearance, as any one will testify, whose soul is exalted above the iron beauties of a plain conventicle; expensive in their original formation, their fittings and repairs; and, when finished, occupying perhaps one-fourth of the area of a church already ten times too small for its neighbouring population. Fixed benches, or a strong muster of chairs, or such modes of congregational ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... rigging!" interrupted the Buccaneer, whose enraged spirit sought some outlet, "No conventicle lingo here—you forget your company, Sir Willmott. What of ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Roman Catholics. They rendered to the priests the things that were Priestley's, as they were reminded by a facetious paper published at the time. But, however much the Unitarians may have been chaffed and sneered at for abandoning their old conventicle, they have lived it all down, and, if I mistake not, Joseph and his brethren, the Kenricks, the Oslers, the Beales, and others, now congregate in peace in their un-Unitarian-looking ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... friends was encouraged by the provision, "that if any man being present at any secret conventicle, shall afterwards come forward and betray his fellow-members of the congregation, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... worldling, and, as such, a superficial critic. He encouraged the shallow affectations of his great friend's weaker work, and recoiled in alarm before the daring defiance of his stronger. His criticisms on all Byron wrote and felt seriously on religion are almost worthy of a conventicle. His letters to others on Manfred, and Cain, and Don Juan, are the expression of sentiments which he had never the courage to state explicitly to the author. On the other hand, Byron was attracted beyond reasonable measure by his gracefully deferential manners, paid too much regard ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... political fanaticism, especially when in alliance with the frightful doctrines enunciated from conventicle pulpits, and have no hesitation in saying that Anti-State Church Associations do not touch the root of political evils. Their usefulness is great, because they give currency to a sound principle, but that ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... yet another instance of the Jew-Puritan abhorrence of the word God as an obscene or blasphemous term when uttered outside the synagogue or the conventicle? If so, we might read—and believe that the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... once to a conventicle on a mountain side, in company of a very sage intelligent gentleman, who, seeing the preacher want two joints of each ring finger, having a nail upon the third, he immediately took horse and rode away. I asked him what ailed him? He said, 'God had set a mark upon that man, and he was sure ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... trifle in this matter, the light, foolish handling of them by mulcts, fines, etc.,—it is their glory and their advantage. If the gallows instead of the Counter, and the galleys instead of the fines, were the reward of going to a conventicle, to preach or hear, there would not be so many sufferers. The spirit of martyrdom is over; they that will go to church to be chosen sheriffs and mayors would go to forty churches rather ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... gathering, ingathering, muster, attroupement[obs3]; team; concourse, conflux[obs3], congregation, contesseration|, convergence &c. 290; meeting, levee, reunion, drawing room, at home; conversazione &c. (social gathering) 892[It]; assembly, congress; convention, conventicle; gemote[obs3]; conclave &c. (council) 696; posse, posse comitatus[Lat]; Noah's ark. miscellany, collectanea[obs3]; museum, menagerie &c. (store) 636; museology[obs3]. crowd, throng, group,; flood, rush, deluge; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and its products; you can also do nothing by being too much afraid of them, by letting them choke and stifle your own life. Let the new wine have its new bottles if it must, and never mind words. Be content to be a new "sect," "conventicle," or what not, so long as you feel that you are something with a life and purpose of its own, in ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from his protection and favor. In 1668, he first appeared as a preacher and as an author among the Quakers; and, in consequence of some controversial dispute, he was sent to the Tower, where he remained in confinement for seven months. The passing of the conventicle act soon after again sent him to prison in Newgate, from which he was released by the interest of his father, who about this time was reconciled to him, and left him, on his decease some time after, a valuable estate of about ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... returned Mr Bigg.—"Are we to have the pleasure of your company in our conventicle tomorrow?" he added, after a little pause. "Dr Blare is going ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... with me," he said presently. "I know how you have been brought up, how through no fault of your own you have wandered out of the warm bosom of the true Church to sit at the clay feet of the conventicle. You doubt it? Well, let me look again, let me look. Yes, only last week you were seated in a whitewashed room overhanging the market-place. I see it all—an ugly little man with a harsh voice is preaching, ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... And this is a conventicle of young matrimonial victims to practise cookery in seclusion, upon which ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Commemoration, that no sound proceeding from a great multitude can be discordant. In the present instance, certainly, the separate voices qualified and softened down each other, so as to produce a good compound. Of the sermon I cannot speak so favourably, for in truth it savoured somewhat of the conventicle style. Its theme was chiefly the raptures which persons experience under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and it was calculated to discourage all whose imaginations were not strong enough to assist in working them into this state. The manner of the preacher ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... Now this lively lady knew nothing of Nonconformists, except that they were unfashionable: she did not distinguish one conventicle from another, and Mr Apollos with his enlightened interpretations seemed to her as heavy a bore, if not quite so ridiculous, as Mr Johns could have been with his solemn twang at the Baptist chapel in the lowest suburbs, or as a local preacher among ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... from Caledonia's rugged hills. Roxburgh's covenanting heroes, Wigtonshire's triumphant martyrs, Dumfriesshire and her Cameronians, with their great namesake's lion heart; Ayrshire, with her bloody memories of moor and moss-hags, of quarry and conventicle, of Laud and liberty—all these had filtered through and reappeared in ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... Milan, with all their wealth and elaborate ceremonial, exist and are kept up solely because, things of earth as we are, we cannot be depended upon to praise God lovingly within the white-washed walls of a conventicle, or according to the simple ritual of the Society of Friends. We would not, even if we could, pray habitually among such surroundings, where we could afford to better them. We have before us the principle of St. Thomas (1a 2a, q. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... not made in last year's fashion, and her mantua-maker did not put her off with Venice ribbon when she wanted Tours, it mattered nothing at all to Gertrude whether she attended mass or went to the nearest conventicle. Nor had the fears spread yet towards Mistress Grena, who still appeared at mass on Sunday and holy-days, though with many inward ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... a few conspicuous marks, Leaving a thousand others, that, in hall, Court, theatre, conventicle, or shop, 575 In public room or private, park or street, Each fondly reared on his own pedestal, Looked out for admiration. Folly, vice, Extravagance in gesture, mien, and dress, And all the strife of singularity, 580 Lies to the ear, and lies to every sense— Of these, and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... an account from Whitchurch, in Shropshire, that the Dissenters there having prepared a great quantity of bricks to erect a spacious conventicle, a destroying angel came by night and spoiled them all, and confounded their Babel in the beginning, to their ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... series of ordinances, reasonable enough under the circumstances, and perhaps necessary, but which made life hard for such stout and frank dissenters as the Quakers. At the time of Penn's return from Ireland, it had been determined to enforce the Conventicle Act, which prohibited all religious meetings except those of the Church of England. There was, therefore, a general arresting of these suspicious friends of Penn's. In the middle of the summer Penn himself ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... populous cities, or in princes' courts, for a courtier's life (as Budaeus describes it) "is a [1825]gallimaufry of ambition, lust, fraud, imposture, dissimulation, detraction, envy, pride; [1826]the court, a common conventicle of flatterers, time-servers, politicians," &c.; or as [1827] Anthony Perez will, "the suburbs of hell itself." If you will see such discontented persons, there you shall likely find them. [1828]And which he observed of the markets of ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... rejection of tyrannical power was boldly proclaimed by Cargill, in preaching to thousands of Conventicle hearers, and was prominently held forth in his last testimony:—"As to the cause of my suffering," said he, "the chief is, not acknowledging the present authority, as it is established in the supremacy and explanatory act. ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... practices of the Roman Catholic Church. We travel abroad, through these converted lands, over the round world. We enter, at the call of the Sabbath morning light, the place of assembled worshippers; let it be the newly planted conventicle on the edge of the Western forest, or the missionary station at the extremity of the Eastern continent; let it be the collection of Northern mountaineers, or of the dwellers in Southern valleys; let it be in the plain village meeting-house, or in the magnificent ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Couriers were despatched to every part of the empire, with commands to all the prelates and nobles upon whom he could rely, to assemble at Worms, where he promised to meet them without fail. Twenty-four bishops and a great number of laymen hastened to obey the summons. The conventicle sat three days, and the following charges were formally preferred against the Pope: "That he had by force extracted a solemn oath from the clergy not to adhere to the king, nor to favor or obey any other Pope than himself; ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... exploited. He was dazed by the exuberance of the meeting and was glad when it was over and he was back in Portman Square talking to Lady Pechell and Mrs. Mannakay while Father Rowley rested for an hour before he walked round the corner to preach in old Jamaica Chapel, a galleried Georgian conventicle that was now the Church of the Visitation, but was still generally known as Jamaica Chapel. Evensong was half over when the preacher arrived, and the church being full Mark was given a chair by the sidesman in a dark corner, which presently became darker when Father Rowley went up into the pulpit, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... tried June 9, 1591, executed (burnt alive) June 25, 1591. Evidence was first given as to her practising witchcraft and consorting with well-known witches. Item, indyttit and accusit, of the conventicle had att North Berwick Kirk, tuentie dayes before Michelmas, 1590; and thair inquyring for the Kings pictour, gewin by Annie Sampsoun to the Dewill, to be inchantit, for the tressonabill distructioun of the King. Item, indyttit and accusit, for being att ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... hat, and his wife's shawl, on a chair, and his best boots on the hearth (for he was walking about in his stockings), there was a dry preceese air about them, which plainly betokened they were newly stiffened up with the moral starch of the conventicle, and were therefore well prepared to drive a hard bargain for a horse and wagon to Sydney. But what surprised me most of all was the imperturbable coolness of Picton. Without taking a look scarcely at the persons he was addressing, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... from convenire, to come together), a term applied to an association of persons secluded from the world and devoted to a religious life, and hence to the building in which they live, a monastery or (more particularly) nunnery. The diminution "conventicle" (conventiculum), generally used in a contemptuous sense as implying sectarianism, secrecy or illegality, is applied to the meetings or meeting-places of religious or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... founded on a rock, it had withstood the rain and the flood, but was crumbling down with dry rot. Calvin would have neither the rock nor the sand. Into the mud he drove the piles by the strokes of his genius, on which to erect the platform that was to uphold the conventicle of his followers, and if that did not stand, it would at least mark its site by their dejections. And dejections there are everywhere, where the Calvinists were, wrecked churches, mutilated monuments, broken ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... was not a Puritan. He was not a freethinker. He was not a Royalist. In his character the noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmonious union. From the Parliament and from the court, from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... suspected and taken for a Christian, for which he shall be apprehended for committing high Parliament Treason and mighty malignancy against the general Council of the Directorian private Presbyterian Conventicle." ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... on the servant-maid telling him, caught her by the scruff of the neck, beat her violently, flung her down in the passageway, and went upstairs to his bed fasting and without a light. It was three in the morning when my lady returned from that conventicle, and, hearing of the assault (because the maid had sat up for her, weeping), went to their common chamber with a lantern in hand and stamping with her shoes so as to wake the dead; it was supposed, by those that heard her, from a design to have it out ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had declared that he should take her away with him at once, and had in effect caused her pony to be saddled, and he had ridden away with her to his old tower, leaving his brother, the Chevalier, to conduct the attack on the Huguenot conventicle. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... authority I did these things. I replied, "By the authority of Jesus Christ, conveyed to me by the Archbishop of Canterbury, when he laid his hands on me." He said, "This is contrary to the Act of Parliament; this is a conventicle. Besides, your preaching frightens people ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... effects of their sermons upon me. Effects of sundry Eastern experiences. Mohammedan worship at Cairo and elsewhere. The dervishes. Expulsion of young professors from the American Missionary College at Beyrout; noble efforts of one of them afterward. The Positivist Conventicle in London. The "Bible for Learners." Summing up of my experience. Worship—public and private; reasonableness of both. Recognition of spiritual as well as of physical laws. Recognition of an evolution in religious beliefs. Proper attitude of thinking men. Efforts for evolution rather than for revolution. ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... Levant; and he feels not a little beholden to the Vice-Chancellor, who, when the Parliamentary triers had pronounced him incompetent, interfered and retained him in his living. Passing the gate of Wadham he meets the upbreaking of a little conventicle. That no treason has been transacting nor any dangerous doctrine propounded, the guardian of the University has ample assurance in the presence of his very good friends, Dr. Wallis the Savilian Professor, and Dr. Wilkins the Protector's brother-in-law. The latter ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... chapter, and then a long-winded prayer, after the Presbyterian way." Very displeased were the Chief Justice and the other Judge of Assize; and their dissatisfaction was not diminished on the following day when on entering Exeter a rumor met them, that "the judges had been at a conventicle, and the grand jury intended to present them and all their retinue ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson |
