An Essay on the Spirit and Influence of the Reformation of Luther

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W. Flint, Old Bailey, 1805 - Church history - 490 pages
 

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Page 73 - Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom.
Page 73 - But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded ; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
Page 152 - ... even to that of minister. They were the spiritual guides of almost every person eminent for rank or power. They possessed the highest degree of confidence and interest with the Papal Court, as the most zealous and able champions for its authority. The advantages which an active and enterprising body of men might derive from all these circumstances are obvious.
Page 152 - Before the expiration of the sixteenth century, the Jesuits had obtained the chief direction of the education of youth in every Catholic country in Europe. They had become the confessors of almost all its monarchs ; a function of no small importance in any reign, but under a weak prince superior even to that of minister.
Page 240 - It was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance ; and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement, in them, of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.
Page 240 - All the penal laws of that unparalleled code of oppression, which were made after the last event, were manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people ; whom the victors delighted to trample upon, and were not at all afraid to provoke.
Page 149 - To his commands they were required not only to yield outward obedience, but to resign up to him the inclinations of their own wills and the sentiments of their own understandings. They were to listen to his injunctions as if they had been uttered by Christ himself.
Page 75 - Persons of the highest rank, and in the most eminent stations, could not read or write. Many of the clergy did not understand the breviary which they were obliged daily to recite ; some of them could scarcely read it.
Page 148 - He can be of no benefit to mankind, but by his example and by his prayers. On the contrary, the Jesuits are taught to consider themselves as formed for action. They are chosen soldiers, bound to exert themselves continually in the service of God, and of the pope, his vicar on earth. Whatever tends to instruct the ignorant ; whatever can be of use to reclaim or to oppose the enemies of the holy see, is their proper object.
Page 154 - As the prosperity of the order was intimately connected with the preservation of the papal authority, the Jesuits, influenced by the same principle of attachment to the interests of their society, have been the most zealous patrons of those doctrines, w^ich tend to exalt ecclesiastical power on the ruins of civil government.

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