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'It was early, probably before 6 A.M. A hurried meeting of the Sanhedrim had condemned Jesus to death, and the next thing was to get the Roman authority to carry out the sentence. The necessity of appeal to it was a bitter pill, but it had to be swallowed, for the right of capital punishment had been withdrawn. A 'religious' scruple, too, stood in the way very characteristic of such formalists.
Sect. 8. The question thus stated, Formalists deny, we affirm. Their negative is destroyed, and our affirmative confirmed by these reasons:—
Deep philosophers are no triflers; brave sans-culottes are no formalists. They will no more regard a Marquis of Tavistock than an Abbot of Tavistock; the Lord of Woburn will not be more respectable in their eyes than the Prior of Woburn; they will make no difference between the superior of a Covent Garden of nuns and of a Covent Garden of another description.
Wherefore, although your church do keep the Jewish rites with another meaning than God ordained them for the Jews, &c., yet this of Peter showeth that the thing is Jewish, and you to Judaise who keep them.” By the very same reasons prove we that Formalists do Romanise by keeping the popish ceremonies, though with another meaning, and to another use, than the Romanists do.
Professor Santayana has, indeed, mediated between the formalists and the idealists; but his theory would lead us to attributions of beauty from which common sense revolts; and we have seen the secret of its deficiency to lie in the confusion of the personal with the aesthetic attitude.
Yet it stands in the direct line of the Christian tradition: written by a man who was brought up in the Church, and loved it with all his heart and soul, and was driven out by the formalists and hypocrites in high places; a man who thinks of Jesus more frequently and with more devotion than he thinks of any other man that lives or has ever lived on earth; and who has but one purpose in all that he says and does, to bring into reality the dream that Jesus dreamed of peace on earth and good will toward men.
But the kneeling in question is such, therefore, &c. The proposition is necessary. This is so undeniable that it dasheth Bishop Lindsey, and makes him give a broad confession, that it is idolatry to kneel at the sacrament for reverence to the elements. The assumption I prove from the confession of Formalists.
And we may perceive out of Franciscus a Sancta Clara, that they despair of any agreement with Puritans, yet hoping that Formalists will agree with them. In these hopes they are still more and more confirmed whilst they observe this conformity in ceremonies to be yet prevailing and proceeding, and not like to take a stand. Sect. 3.
On their side priesthoods know these leaders of rebellion by an unerring instinct and pursue them to the death. The ministers of New England were formalists to the core, and the society over which they dominated was organized upon the avowed basis of the manifestation of godliness in the outward man.
In a short time the congregation was beside itself with rage, and the pretended righteous indignation of a flock of hypocrites and formalists who had heard themselves described in disrespectful terms by one they regarded as an upstart young man from the lower classes of their virtuous community.
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