United States or Iraq ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But the English Formalists have here somewhat to say, which we will hear. Mr Hooker tells us, that ceremonies are scandalous, either in their very nature, or else through the agreement of men to use them unto evil; and that ceremonies of this kind are either devised at first unto evil, or else having had a profitable use, they are afterwards interpreted and wrested to the contrary.
The "formalists" or entomologists hold that the natural flies actually on the water should be studied and imitated by the fly-maker, down to the most minute particulars. This is the old theory, and whole libraries have been written to prove and illustrate it, from the Boke of St. Albans, written by the Dame Juliana Berners in 1486, down to the present day.
It was very obvious that no impression was to be made upon the man by formalists. Poor Berty having conjugated his paradigm conscientiously through all its moods and tenses, returned to his green board in the council-room with his proces verbal of the conference.
I can understand all about it, for I've met them often Sabbath-keeping folks; preaching and praying folks; worrying, bothering, fussy-religious folks: formalists, Pharisees, mint-anise and-cummin Christians: awfully anxious about your soul, and so forth, and doing their very best to make you as miserable all the time as a slave at the torture! I don't wonder you ran away from them.
The really soul-inspiring teachers have not been formalists nor drill-masters alone. Friedrich August Wolf, for example, the great German philologist, was probably the most inspiring teacher of classical languages that Germany has had. But to what was his remarkable influence as a teacher of young men due?
Look to yourselves, O Formalists, for you stand here upon such slippery places, that you cannot hold both your feet. Sect. 1. It followeth according to the order which I have proposed, to show next, that the ceremonies are idolatrous, participativè.
It was very natural, therefore, that the common people, by a quibble, which is the same in Flemish as in English, should call the proposed "Moderation" the "Murderation." The rough mother-wit of the people had already characterized and annihilated the project, while dull formalists were carrying it through the preliminary stages.
How the laws of the church may be said to bind. 3. What is the judgment of formalists touching the binding-power of ecclesiastical laws. Sect. 2. This description is too imperfect, and deserves to be corrected. For secluding all respect of punishment, and not considering what will follow, the very obliging of the conscience for the time, ad assensum, is a binding of it. Sect. 3.
But the use of the sign of the cross pretended by Formalists, is not to separate us in the time of judgment, but to teach that at no time we ought to be ashamed of the ignominy of Christ. Shortly, the sign wherewith they in Jerusalem were marked, was for preservation from judgment; but the sign of the cross is used for preservation from sin.
"Ask what questions you please," cried Margrave, impatiently, "later if I have strength left to answer them; but do not interrupt me, while I husband my force to say what alone is important to me and to you. Disappointed in the hopes I had placed in you, I resolved to repair to Paris, that great furnace of all bold ideas. I questioned learned formalists; I listened to audacious empirics.
Word Of The Day