Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When Tillotson made suit for the hand of his stepdaughter, Wilkins, upon her desiring to be excused, said, "Betty, you shall have him, for he is the best polemical Divine this day in England." Though excellence in polemical divinity has not an attraction for most women, she consented, and they were married in 1664.
Now before I venture to make use of the word Nose a second time to avoid all confusion in what will be said upon it, in this interesting part of my story, it may not be amiss to explain my own meaning, and define, with all possible exactness and precision, what I would willingly be understood to mean by the term: being of opinion, that 'tis owing to the negligence and perverseness of writers in despising this precaution, and to nothing else that all the polemical writings in divinity are not as clear and demonstrative as those upon a Will o' the Wisp, or any other sound part of philosophy, and natural pursuit; in order to which, what have you to do, before you set out, unless you intend to go puzzling on to the day of judgment but to give the world a good definition, and stand to it, of the main word you have most occasion for changing it, Sir, as you would a guinea, into small coin? which done let the father of confusion puzzle you, if he can; or put a different idea either into your head, or your reader's head, if he knows how.
No matter how pedantic or polemical the old judge became, Hardy was willing to listen to him; and Lucy, hovering in the background, would often smile to hear them argue, the judge laying down the law and equity of the matter and Rufus meeting him like an expert swordsman with parry and thrust.
Neither the polemical Erasmus nor the witty humorist had been lost in the erudite divine and the disillusioned reformer. The paper-warrior we would further gladly have dispensed with, but not the humorist, for many treasures of literature. But the two are linked inseparably as the Colloquies prove.
These fragments have been the subject of one of the earliest, most laborious, and most successful attempts made in modern times to reconstruct the lost work of an ancient author. For Erasistratus our chief source of information are two polemical treatises directed against him by Galen.
One of Zola's polemical delusions was to suppose that a fiction ought not to be selective, and that his own fictions were not selective, but portrayed the fact without choice and without limitation. The fact was that he was always choosing, and always limiting. Even a map chooses and limits, far more a picture. Yet this delusion of Zola's and its affirmation resulted in no end of misunderstanding.
He devoted himself to the improvement of schools and the diffusion of learning, and through his influence the Protestant princes of Germany patronized native literature, established public libraries, and promoted the general education of the people. The earnest polemical writings of the age must be passed over, as they belong rather to ecclesiastical and political than to literary history.
In their polemical writings the learned men of the age seem to exhaust a zoological park in their frantic search for striking epithets to hurl at their opponent. It was an age of strong feeling and sturdy diction. It is also true that Luther was a man of the people. With a sort of homely pride he used to declare: "I am a peasant's son; all my forbears were peasants."
'If ever, wrote Southey, with perfect truth, 'true Christian charity was manifested in polemical writing, it was by Fletcher of Madeley. There is but one passage in which Fletcher condescends to anything like personal scurrility, in spite of the many grossly personal insults which were heaped upon him and his friends.
Some instances there are; but even Hammond, who died unmarried, was going to marry, when his mother wished it. On the other hand, if you look out for types of our Church can you find truer than the married excellence of Hooker the profound, Taylor the devotional, and Bull the polemical?
Word Of The Day