United States or Romania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Priests! you are rewarded, honoured and paid for deceiving mortals, and you cause those to be punished who undeceive them. The follies of men procure you benefices, offerings, and expiations; while those, who announce the most useful truths, are rewarded only with chains, gibbets and funeral-piles. Let the world judge between us.
Think of a spiritual despotism so complete that confessors and spiritual fathers could impose or remove these expiations, and thus open the door to heaven or hell!
He neglected it when it told him to be just; from thence he saw it was in contradiction with itself, that it was useless to preach equity to a deified mortal; besides, he was assured the gods would pardon every thing, as soon as he should consent to recur to his priests, always ready to reconcile them; the most wicked of their subjects reckoned in the same manner upon their divine assistance: thus superstition, far from restraining vice, assured its impunity; its menaces could not destroy the effects which its unworthy flattery had produced in princes; these same menaces could not annihilate the hope which its expiations had furnished to all.
The advice of the college of pontiffs was taken on the subject of the expiations to be made, on account of the treasures in the temple of Proserpine, at Locri, having been touched, violated, and carried out of it. The tribunes of the people, who went with the praetor and ten deputies, were Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Marcus Cincius Alimentus.
The officer perceived that he had to do with one of those unequivocal hypocrites if such a word can properly be applied to him who scarcely thought deception necessary who then made a traffic of expiations of this nature; a pursuit that was common enough at the close of the seventeenth and in the commencement of the eighteenth centuries, and which has not even yet entirely disappeared from Europe.
The irrational people, instead of amusing themselves with expiations for their pretended crimes, seeking to render themselves acceptable to imaginary powers; should they not rather have sought in a more healthy administration, the true means of avoiding those scourges, to which they were the victims?
They did not dispute Saint Augustine, but they adhered to penances and expiations, which entered so largely into the piety of the Middle Ages. The idea of penances and expiations, pushed to their utmost logical sequence, was salvation by works and not by faith.
Hypocritical by hypocrisy. For Rudolph had chosen this venerable abbe to be the agent for the restitutions and expiations imposed upon Jacques Fervand, because he wished doubly to punish him for having, by his detestable hypocrisy, obtained the esteem and affection of the good priest.
But of this be sure: you behold in me one of the most striking examples of the miraculous power of grace; and if I could make known to you the tale of my religious life, of my terrors, my remorse, and my expiations, you would certainly be touched by it. But of what avail the indulgence and compassion of man, if the pity of God will not deign to absolve me?
Be assured that you are in a good way. How then shall this be done? Be willing at length to be approved by yourself, be willing to appear beautiful to God, desire to be in purity with your own pure self and with God. Then when any such appearance visits you, Plato says, Have recourse to expiations, go a suppliant to the temples of the averting deities.
Word Of The Day