Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 2, 2025
And indeed if you mark it, you shall see, that they be such kind of people, who at this day are so carried away with the quakers' delusions; namely, a company of loose ranters, and light notionists, with here and there a legalist, which were shaking in their principles from time to time, sometimes on this religion, sometimes on that.
Legalist thinking remained an important undercurrent for many centuries to come, but application of the equalitarian principle was from now on never seriously considered. Against the growing influence of the officials belonging to the gentry there came a last reaction. It came as a reply to the attempt of a representative of the gentry to deprive the feudal princes of the whole of their power.
Legalism, as a scheme of life, is based on the assumption that development along the lines of Man's nature is a movement towards perdition; and to reproach the legalist for having arrested the growth of the human spirit by the pressure of the Law were to provoke the rejoinder that he had done what he intended to do.
This Rabbi is a rigid legalist, the slightest of slips suffices to render the divorce invalid. According to certain commentators the name Hillel is spelled incorrectly in the document. After the He a Yod is missing! Thus is the happiness glimpsed by Bath-shua shattered forever! Her fate is not unique the Bath-shuas are counted by the legion in the ghetto.
'He therefore that went before, Vain-confidence by name, not seeing the way before him, fell into a deep pit, which was on purpose there made by Giant Despair to catch vain-glorious fools withal, and was dashed in pieces with his fall. Beware, O legalist, civilian, or formalist! Ed. How deplorably and inexcusably they will perish, who perish by their own willful unbelief under the gospel!
But his form being without the power and spirit of godliness, it will leave him in his sins; nay, he standeth now in them in the sight of God, and is one of the many that "will seek to enter in, and shall not be able." The legalist comes next, even him that hath no life but what he makes out of his duties. This man hath chosen to stand or fall by Moses, who is the condemner of the world.
Our legalist is like unto this top, Without a whip he doth not duty do; Let Moses whip him, he will skip and hop; Forbear to whip, he'll neither stand nor go. Must we unto the pismire go to school, To learn of her in summer to provide For winter next ensuing. Man's a fool, Or silly ants would not be made his guide. But, sluggard, is it not a shame for thee To be outdone by pismires?
The strict legalist tries, as we have seen, to bring the whole of human life under the direct control of the Law; and when he finds, as the Puritan did in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that whole aspects of life have in point of fact escaped from the control of religion and won from the latter a tacit acceptance of themselves as secular, he not unnaturally tends to regard these non-religious aspects of life as "carnal," and therefore as unacceptable to God.
Then the next thing that he is grieved with, is, because I said, there are none but a company of light notionists, ranters, with here and there a legalist, that was shaking in their principles, that were carried away by the Quakers, &c. And whereas thou sayest I am like the Pharisees, who said, none believe, but a company of poor people, which know not the law. Answ.
But, this spirit is not confined to the Jew. It pervades the human race. Man is naturally a legalist. He desires to be justified by his own character and his own works, and reluctates at the thought of being accepted upon the ground of another's merits. This Judaistic spirit is seen wherever there is none of the publican's feeling when he said, "God be merciful to me a sinner."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking