"Casuistry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gospel,' then. How grand the unity and simplicity thus breathed into our duties and through our lives! All duties are capable of reduction to this one, and though we shall still need detailed instruction and specific precepts, we shall be set free from the pedantry of a small scrupulous casuistry, which fetters men's limbs with microscopic bands, and shall joyfully learn how much mightier and happier is the life which is shaped by one fruitful principle, than that which is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to its use, and we call it a fundamental principle of government. Whatever we want to do is hallowed and justified, if it can be made to appear as a deduction from that sentence. To put new wine in old bottles is one of the aims of legal casuistry. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... The faculty which in Gladstone, the statesman, applied to realities and inspired only by the desire to discover the truth and to clothe it in language, assumes, in the minds of superficial observers, the air of casuistry from the nicety of its distinctions and the earnest desire of the speaker to present truth in its finest shades— in Follett, the advocate, applied indiscriminately to the development of the specious shows of things as of their essences, wore all the semblance of sincerity; ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... had been disqualified. Those were the simple facts; and no casuistry by the cleverest of London lawyers could get ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... message is a simpler thing than we have supposed. One can go into a theological library today and find stacks and stacks of volumes on religion, ethics, theology, casuistry, exegesis, philosophy, the Bible, ecclesiastical history, mysticism, apologetics, metaphysics and a dozen other subjects, all designed to illuminate, define and expound the realities that Jesus taught; but somehow they ...
— Hidden from the Prudent - The 7th William Penn Lecture, May 8, 1921 • Paul Jones
... however, there would seem to be no pressing need of his long soliloquy. He being ex proposito a man of few words, his sudden volubility is a little surprising, though it should be duly noticed that the soliloquy is not a self-defense. There is no casuistry in it. Tell does not argue the case with himself, like one in doubt about the rightness of his conduct. That is as clear as day to him, and he never wavers for a moment. But he has time to think while waiting, and his soliloquy is only his thinking made audible. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... a happy want of intelligence, a helpful stupidity, the old nun brought formidable support to the conspiracy. They had imagined her timid; she proved herself bold, verbose, violent. She was not troubled by any of the shilly-shallyings of casuistry, her doctrine was like a bar of iron, her faith never wavered, her conscience knew no scruples. She considered Abraham's sacrifice a very simple affair, for she herself would have instantly killed father or mother at an order from above, and nothing, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... his own peculiar point of view was morally justified in twice marrying, is a question of casuistry which has often haunted me. The reasons he alleged in extenuation of his conduct with regard to Harriet prove the goodness of his heart, his openness to argument, and the delicacy of his unselfishness. But they do not square with his expressed code of conduct; nor is it easy to understand how, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... though new to it, yet come to be adopted by a majority, should be left open questions also. Of course, of novelties in doctrine we do not speak,—we trust that within the Free Church none such will ever arise; we refer rather to those semi-metaphysical points of casuistry, and nice questions of conduct, in which the differences that perplex non-established Churches are most liable to originate,—matters in which one man sees after one way, and another man after another,—and which, until heaped up into importance, wave-like, as if ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... the field of battle.—"I do not know," he said, "whether I did right or not; but I always took the man I came to first—French or English."—I only know that my heart did not wait for the opinion of my head on the matter. I loved the old man the more that he did as he did. But as a question of casuistry, I am doubtful about ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... is not a syllogism; It is not casuistry, it is not polemics, or the science of squabble. It is blood-red fact; it is warm-hearted invitation; it is leaping, bounding, flying good news; it is efflorescent with all light; it is rubescent with all glow; it ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... first half of them he carried out perfectly: he did go straight to Cecil Tresilyan, and tell her of his intentions to depart. She did not betray much of her disappointment or surprise, but she argued with so fascinating a casuistry against the necessity of such a sudden step, that it was no wonder if she soon convinced her hearer of the propriety of at least delaying it. In a case like this an excuse of "urgent private affairs" that would suffice for the most rigid martinet that ever tyrannized over a district or ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Medea's strain, The sickening stars fade off the ethereal plain; As Argus' eyes, by Hermes' wand oppress'd Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest; Thus, at her felt approach and secret might, Art after art goes out, and all is night. See skulking truth to her old cavern fled, Mountains of casuistry heap'd o'er her head. Philosophy, that lean'd on heaven before, Shrinks to her second cause, and is ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... sex; he debars himself from marriage and paternity; through isolation, he escapes all family influences, curiosities and indiscretions; he belongs wholly to his office. He has prepared himself for it long beforehand, he has studied moral theology together with casuistry and become a criminal jurist; and his sentence is not a vague pardon bestowed on penitents after having admitted in general terms that they are sinners. He is bound to weigh the gravity of their errors and the strength of their repentance, to know the facts and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... famous one "to the Free-thinkers:"—"I could never approve the custom of dedicating books to men whose professions made them strangers to the subject. A Discourse on the Ten Predicaments to a Leader of Armies, or a System of Casuistry to a Minister of State, always appeared to me ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... measurable—like sticks and stones, or like pains and pleasures. 'Fictitious' as they may be, therefore, the fiction enables us to express real truths, and to state facts which are of the highest importance to the moralist and the legislator. Bentham discusses some cases of casuistry in order to show the relation between the tendency of an action and the intention and motives of the agent. Ravaillac murders a good king; Ravaillac's son enables his father to escape punishment, or conveys poison to his father to enable him to avoid torture by suicide.[401] What is the inference ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... forgotten that we are discussing a question of casuistry, one which is 'stuff o' the conscience,' and where ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... students. The scribes, who interpret the law and apply it to life, obtain great influence and become the virtual rulers of the nation. While no doubt guided in the main by the noble spirit of their religion, they are led by their system into many absurdities, and their casuistry even becomes at times immoral. They afford the classical example of the results which flow from the doctrine of verbal inspiration, thoroughly worked out; and the life of the Jews under them becomes highly unnatural ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... American Church to slavery, and the duties of private Christians, the whole casuistry of this portion of the question, so momentous among descendants of the Puritans,—have been discussed with great acuteness and rare common-sense by Messrs. Garrison, Goodell, Gerrit Smith, Pillsbury, and Foster. They have ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... hypothetical case can indicate, how far he is bound to see his client through, and how far he may play the keeper of his client's conscience. And nearly every day there happens instances where the most subtle casuistry will fail and the finger of conscience point unhesitatingly. One may have worried long in the preparation and preliminaries of the issue, one may bring the case at last into the final court of conscience in an apparently hopeless tangle. Then ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... him. I detest casuistry and I claim him. I have only one other question. You knew him well—intimately—for many years. On your conscience, Mr. Shawn, what interment in your opinion ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... detain her when her peace of mind is at stake. How few, how very few are there, of all the various young women I know, who would have the good sense and resolution, I will say it, the integrity of mind, to act as she does! There is usually some sentimental casuistry, some cowardly fear, or lingering hope, that prevents young people in these circumstances from doing the plain right thing—any thing but the plain right thing they are ready to do—and there is always some delicate reason for not telling the truth, especially to their friends; but our ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... remark, excepting this, perhaps, that the present little volume has no pretensions to be anything more than an Essay. To judge such it performance as if it professed to be an exhaustive Treatise in casuistry, is to subject it to tests which it was never designed to bear. Merely to open questions, to indicate points, to suggest cases, to sketch outlines,—as an Essay does all these things,—may often be a process not without its own ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... attending to, outside the little limits of their own supercilious superiority. Why did Jesus Christ come from 'the men of the earth,' as the Rabbis called all who had not learned to cover every plain precept with spiders' webs of casuistry? Why, for one thing, in accordance with the general law that the great reformers and innovators always come from outside these classes, that the Spirit of the Lord shall come on a herdsman like Amos, and fishermen and peasants spread the Gospel ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... and extremely attached to the Duchess of Choiseul, I detest Madame du Barri and her faction. You, who are a Foreign Minister, and can distinguish like a theologian between the two natures perfectly comprehend all this; and, therefore, to the charity of your casuistry I recommend myself in this jumble of contradictions, which you may be sure do not give me any sort of trouble either way. At least I have not three distinctions, like Chatelet when he affronted Czernichew, but neither in ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... while the donor resolutely declined to buy split-cane rods, deeming high-class greenhearts sufficient for beginners, though the vicar argued that it was always wise in tuition to begin as you intend to proceed. This casuistry cousin heeded not. ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... The anxious casuistry in which he sought relief, and the alternation of wistful hope and blank despair, in which for many a dismal day he was tossed to and fro, none but himself can properly describe. They are deeply affecting, and ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... to the necessity of protecting their property and their lives; and did not take into account the massacres, the cruelties of every description, which had been at one time encouraged, or at least not condemned by the general voice. The casuistry of the human heart, in most instances, concealed the true state of the case, and many, if not the majority, felt the virtuous indignation which some only affected. At any rate, they set about the hunting down and capture of the aborigines, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... libraries, booksellers shops and warehouses, in this kingdom, for such books as are of no use to the owner, or to the public, viz. all comments on the Holy Scriptures, whether called sermons, creeds, bodies of divinity, tomes of casuistry, vindications, confutations, essays, answers, replies, rejoinders, or sur-rejoinders, together with all other learned treatises and books of divinity, of what denomination or class soever; as also all comments on ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... Abbey. Iknow of no nobler life than that of a true missionary. Itried to defend the labors of the paternal missionary against disparaging criticisms. Itried to account for the small success of controversial missions, by showing how little is gained by mere argument and casuistry at home. And I pointed to the indirect missionary influence, exercised by every man who leads a Christian life in India or elsewhere, as the most encouraging sign of the final triumph of a pure and living Christianity. ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... this good advice? I have consulted God and demigod; the nymph of the river, and what I far more admire and trust, my blue-eyed Minerva. Both have said the same. My own heart was telling it already. Action, then, be mine; and into the deep sea with all this paralysing casuistry. I am happy to-day for the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was then thought of the influence on young minds of the right or wrong views of political questions entertained by their instructors. The fathers were right. When the life of the nation is concerned,—in the struggle with foreign or domestic foes,—there is a right and a wrong in politics which casuistry may seek to confuse, but which sound moral sentiment cannot mistake, and which those who have schools of learning in charge should be held to respect. Better the College should be disbanded than be a nursery of treason. Better these halls even now should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... furious outcry, and Bristol was as blind and as boisterous as Manchester and Glasgow. Burke not only spoke and voted in favour of the commercial propositions, but urged that the proposed removal of restrictions on Irish trade did not go nearly far enough. There was none of that too familiar casuistry, by which public men argue themselves out of their consciences in a strange syllogism, that they can best serve the country in Parliament; that to keep their seats they must follow their electors; and that therefore, in the long run, they serve the country best by acquiescing ...
— Burke • John Morley
... language can be low and degenerate enough?" In the Apology for Smectymnuus, Milton sets forth his own defence of his acrimony and violence: "There may be a sanctified bitterness," he remarks, "against the enemies of the truth;" and he dares to quote the casuistry of Electra in Sophocles:— ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... instant; but that his conscience troubled him may be fairly inferred from the fact that he withheld from the World for twenty years afterward the knowledge that he was their author. It is probable that in this case, as in others, he was a victim of that casuistry which teaches that "the end justifies the means;" that he hoped and believed that the assertion of these baleful doctrines would act solely as a check upon any tendency to further centralization of power in the General Government and insure that strict ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... No earthly casuistry could ever lead her to doubt that he had heard her prayer that morning. She might reply simply to all cavil ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... consent to act the invalid unless the spring ran down altogether; was keen for exercise and for mixing among men—his native servants if no others were near by. Here is a bit of confession and casuistry quite a ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... my wife reasoned it all out with him. She convinced me, perfectly, so that what Tedham proposed to do seemed not only sentimental and foolish, but unnatural and impious. I confess that I admired her casuistry, and gave it my full support. She was a woman who, in the small affairs of the tastes and the nerves and the prejudices could be as illogical as the best of her sex, but with a question large enough to engage the hereditary ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... Socrates should have lived and preferred to a glorious death the good which he might still be able to perform. 'A rhetorician would have had much to say upon that point.' It may be observed however that Plato never intended to answer the question of casuistry, but only to exhibit the ideal of patient virtue which refuses to do the least evil in order to avoid the greatest, and to show his master maintaining in death the opinions which he had professed in his life. Not ...
— Crito • Plato
... proves that in the ancient writings there was not a word that could justify polytheism. Thundering against idol worship, the great orator fights with all his might against caste, infant marriages, and superstitions. Chastising all the evils grafted on India by centuries of casuistry and false interpretation of the Vedas, he blames for them the Brahmans, who, as he openly says before masses of people, are alone guilty of the humiliation of their country, once great and independent, now fallen and enslaved. ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... of casuistry, Amelie, like others of her sex, placed a hand of steel, encased in a silken glove, upon her heart, and tyrannically suppressed its yearnings. She was a victim, with the outward show of conquest over her feelings. In the consciousness of Philibert's ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... pillar which he had sworn not to pass. In his own judgment he kept his vow, but not in that of his natural advisers. It is satisfactory to find that the Zoroastrian priesthood, speaking by the mouth of the chief Mobed, disclaimed and exposed the fallacy of this wretched casuistry. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... Haig about one thing: women were hell! And here was Claire siding with Marion against him; and calling him a ruffian! Was he a ruffian? What had he said to merit that? Couldn't they take a joke? But this casuistry did not go down, though he tried to hammer it down with many violent gestures. He began to have certain qualms that he recognized as premonitory signs of weakening; and he struggled to bolster up his anger. Damn Haig! If he had only finished him that day in the timber, when the others had wanted ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... and as shamefully subtile in their artful evasion of them. The Pharisees could be easy enough to themselves when convenient, and always as hard and unrelenting as possible to all others. They quibbled, and dissolved their vows, with experienced casuistry. Jesus reproaches the Pharisees in Matthew xv. and Mark vii. for flagrantly violating the fifth commandment, by allowing the vow of a son, perhaps made in hasty anger, its full force, when he had ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to property, and especially as to the right of creating perpetuities. This speech appears to have made a very strong impression upon his hearers. In the last months of his residence he had charge of a bill upon oaths and declarations, which suggests some curious points of casuistry. What, for example, is to be done in regard to people who believe that they will be damned if their sworn statements are inaccurate, unintentionally or otherwise, and who, inferring that damnation ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... passed the point of casuistry too. "Well, of course I don't know, Mrs. Saunders. Has she said anything about ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... had told her of his business transactions, it was impossible for her to think of him as a criminal. That he had been the tool of others, she knew, but it remained a question in her mind how clearly he had perceived the immorality of his course, and of theirs. He had not been given to casuistry, and he had been brought up in a school the motto of which he had once succinctly stated: the survival of the fittest. He had not been, alas, one ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... principles, the condemnation of Servetus by a civil tribunal, which had no authority over him, and no jurisdiction over his crime—the most aggressive and revolutionary act, therefore, that is conceivable in the casuistry of persecution—was highly approved by Melanchthon. He declared it a most useful example for all future ages, and could not understand that there should be any who did not regard it in the same favourable light.[242] ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... thrown from his horse, and had not felt much concern. But then he was not a friend; and he fell into a soft ditch: and there was something ridiculous in it which prevented people from caring about it. With such nice casuistry she went on pretty well; and besides, she was so innocent—so ignorant, that it was easy for her to be deceived. She went on, telling herself that she loved Beauclerc as a brother—as she loved the general. ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... like answering West's pepper-fire of casuistry by throwing Eva Bernheimer at his head. Despite his determination to avoid a "scene," he felt his bottled-up indignation rising. A light showed in his ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... aspect of the play at this juncture. Vanderdecken is merely a greedy, selfish skipper who, having got into some trouble, is anxious that a pure young maiden should throw away her life that he may be comfortable. Not any casuistry or splitting of hairs ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... and he goes to hear a sermon On the Growing Habit of Careful Patient Investigation as Encouraging Casuistry. [October 1897.] ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... thought and emotion. A zealous Irishman, especially if he lives much out of Ireland, spends his time in a never-ending argument about Oliver Cromwell, the Danes, the penal laws, the rebellion of 1798, the famine, the Irish peasant, and ends by substituting a traditional casuistry for a country; and if he be a Catholic, yet another casuistry that has professors, schoolmasters, letter-writing priests, and the authors of manuals to make the meshes fine, comes between him and English literature, substituting ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... the work of Abbe Craisson, the superior of the great seminary at Valence: 'De rebus Veneris ad usum confessariorum.' And he had risen from this book terrified and choking with sobs. That learned casuistry, dealing so fully with the abominations of mankind, descending to the most monstrous examples of vice, violated, as it were, all his virginity of body and mind. He felt himself for ever befouled. Yet every time he heard confessions he inevitably ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... him," answered the Duke, smiling at her casuistry. "Nor had I any scruple in disappointing him. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... employment a few honest Jacobites who were generally too dull to be mischievous; but it was altogether inefficient as a means of binding the supple and slippery consciences of cunning priests, who, while affecting to hold the Jesuits in abhorrence, were proficients in that immoral casuistry which was the worst part of Jesuitism. Some grave divines had openly said, others had even dared to write, that they had sworn fealty to William in a sense altogether different from that in which they had sworn fealty to James. To ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... scarcely enough, from that appointed for the Baptism of Infants, is attributed to Griffith, the Bishop of St. Asaph. The compiler of the Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea was Bishop Sanderson, famous among English theologians as an authority on casuistry. He must have found it rather a nice case of conscience to decide whether a Stuart divine in preparing forms of prayer for a navy that had been the creation of Oliver Cromwell ought wholly to omit an acknowledgment of ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... continue to reside with them. As her son too, George II., had thoughts of bringing her over and declaring her Queen Dowager, one can hardly believe that a ceremonial divorce had passed, the existence of which process would have glared in the face of her royalty. But though German casuistry might allow her husband to take another wife with his left hand, because his legal wife had suffered her right hand to be kissed in bed by a gallant, even Westphalian or Aulic counsellors could not have pronounced that such a momentary adieu constituted adultery; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... purpose to enter into the range of this great controversy, or to endeavour to estimate its value, or the merits of the attack and defence on particular points. The subject is one by itself, more or less entering into the whole question of morals, and especially the immense fabric of casuistry or moral theology built up by successive teachers in the Jesuit schools. Trained, as he was, a devout disciple of the Roman Church, enthusiastic on behalf of its doctrines and preachers, Pascal had apparently no knowledge of the details of Jesuit doctrine and morality before he ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... announcement of the supreme fact of moral obligation in general, that is, the duty of unconditionally obeying the right when the right is known to us. It is no more the duty of the moral law to set about codifying laws than it is of the conscience to practise casuistry. Conscience is not a theoretical instructor, but a practical commander. The intelligence, the reason in man it is to which is allotted the function of formulating laws and of deciding what is and what is not in conformity with right. Once that is decided, according to its light, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... Chapman was not dowered with the penetrating imagination that reveals as by a lightning flash unsuspected depths of human character or of moral law. But he has the gnomic faculty that can convey truths of general experience in aphoristic form, and he can wind into a debatable moral issue with adroit casuistry. Take for instance the discussion (II, i, 149-79) on the legitimacy of private vengeance, or (III, i, 10-30) on the nature and effect of sin, or (V, ii) on Nature's "blindness" in her workings. In lighter vein, but winged with the shafts of a caustic humour are Bussy's invectives against courtly ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... the last in severity, had not rendered the path of the judges, whether lay or ghostly, altogether easy. There were found prisoners, accused of holding and teaching heretical doctrines, well skilled in holy lore, however ignorant of the casuistry of the schools, who made good their assertion that they could give a warrant for all their distinctive tenets from the Sacred Scriptures. Their arguments were so cogent, their citations were so apposite, that the auditors who had come with the expectation of witnessing the confusion of a heretic, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... add that my conscience was somewhat aided by a piece of casuistry from the most brilliant scholar in the Yale faculty of that time, Professor James Hadley. I had been brought up with a strong conviction of the necessity of obedience to law as the first requirement in any State, and especially in ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... from a respectful attachment to it. So far it is a source of agreeable reflection. But I feel very different emotions when I find it almost daily resorted to in questions of little importance. When by strained and fanciful constructions it is made an instrument of casuistry, it is to be feared it may lose something in our minds in point of certainty, and more in ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... almost incredible space of forty-two short days, on the 27th of the 12th Month (March) 1671-2, he had fully analysed 'The Design,' exposed the sophistry, and scripturally answered the gross errors which abound in every page of this learned and subtle piece of casuistry. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... code—its contemporary in part. In the treatment of a criminal it is almost quixotically humane. It abhors the shedding of blood, and no man can be put to death on circumstantial evidence. Many of its injunctions are intensely minute and hair-splitting to the extreme of casuistry. Yet these elements are familiar in the interpretation of law, not only in the olden time, but in some measure even to-day. There are instances where Talmudic law is tenderer than the Biblical; for example, the lex talionis is ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... the echoes of this casuistry in his brain. It seemed to him but a part of the ingenious system of evasion whereby a society bent on the undisturbed pursuit of amusement had contrived to protect itself from the intrusion of the disagreeable: a policy summed up in Mr. Langhope's concluding advice that Amherst ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... Oxford. In these logic and scholastic divinity were for centuries the reigning subjects of pursuit. The works of Aristotle were studied with great eagerness. Upon the logic of Aristotle was founded the cultivation of scholastic theology and casuistry, which is a department of morals; its object is to lay down rules for directing us how to act where there is any room for doubt or hesitation. To this belongs the decision of what are called cases of conscience, that is, cases in which we are under obligation, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various
... the men attempted anything in reply to her casuistry; they both looked equally posed by it, for different reasons; and Agatha went on as vehemently as before, addressing herself now to one and now to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... children's things to pack, luncheon to be got ready, and the Fontainebleau pension to be telephoned to, there was little time to waste on moral casuistry; and Susy asked herself with a certain irony if the chronic lack of time to deal with money difficulties had not been the chief cause of her previous lapses. There was no time to deal with this question either; no time, in short, to do anything but rush forward ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... dangerous points of casuistry, may be reckoned the question so much agitated in the present hour,—Whether, after the people have discharged themselves of their original power by an habitual delegation, no occasion can possibly occur which may justify the resumption of it? This question, in this latitude, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... profit. Charles Sumner happened to be the partner to receive these stolen goods, but between his friend and his father the boy felt no distinction, and, for him, there was none. He entered into no casuistry on the matter. His friend was right because his friend, and the boy shared the glory. The question of education did not rise while the conflict lasted. Yet every one saw as clearly then as afterwards that a lesson of some sort must be learned and understood, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... as of that misinformed Moral Sense which finds in the Atonement of our LORD nothing but a stone of stumbling and a snare. It is true of Popish error also;—for what else is this but a setting up of the Human above the Divine,—(Tradition, the worship of the Blessed Virgin, the casuistry of the Confessional, and the like,)—and so, once more substituting the creature for the Creator?—What again is the fashionable intellectual sin of the day, but the self-same detestable offence, under quite a different disguise? ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... on Casuistry lay on the top shelf. She opened it—more from curiosity than from guidance this time, it must be observed—at a chapter bearing on her own problem, 'The disciplina arcani, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... was, besides, one of those good, simple-minded creatures, educated abroad, who, when invited to fight, simply bow, and load two pistols, and get themselves called at six; instead of taking down tomes of casuistry and puzzling their poor brains to find out whether they are gamecocks ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... against any possible infringement." And they contrived, by an artful and technical interpretation, to find statutes which favored their ends. They wrought out asceticism into a system, and observed the most painful ceremonials—the ancestors of rigid monks; and they united a specious casuistry, not unlike the Jesuits, to excuse the violation of the spirit of the law. They were a hierarchical caste, whose ambition was to govern, and to govern by legal technicalities. They were utterly deficient in the virtues of humility and toleration, and as such, peculiarly offensive ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... be attained to. This is all— there is nothing more—is the iterated preaching of house-life. Remain; becontent; go round and round in one barren path, a little money, a little food and sleep, some ancient fables, old age and death. Of all the inventions of casuistry with man for ages has in various ways which manacled himself, and stayed his own advance, there is none equally potent with the supposition that nothing more is possible. Once well impress on the mind that it has already all, that ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... which in fact was indifferent to neither, where neither properly was called in question; that happy breathing-place from the burthen of a perpetual moral questioning—the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted casuistry—is broken up and disfranchised, as injurious to the interests of society. The privileges of the place are taken away by law. We dare not dally with images, or names, of wrong. We bark like foolish dogs at shadows. We dread infection from the scenic representation of disorder; ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... "I can't split hairs," he said, "or enter on an argument of sentimental casuistry. But I tell you this, Morris, although you are my only son, and the last of our name, that rather than do such a thing, under all the circumstances, it would be better that you should take a pistol and blow your ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... verses by no means destitute of merit, but they are so few, in comparison to the bulk of his work, that they may be neglected. Taylor's strong point was not accuracy of statement or logical precision. His longest work, the Ductor Dubitantium, an elaborate manual of casuistry, is constantly marred by the author's inability to fix on a single point, and to keep his argumentation close to that. In another, the Unum Necessarium, or Discourse on Repentance, his looseness ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... found himself at liberty, his ambition suggested casuistry sufficient to justify to him the violation of an oath, which had been extorted from him by fear, and which, if fulfilled, might be attended with the subjection of his native country to a foreign power. He continued still to practise every art ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... was commissioned to attack the Prince of Orange in his winter quarters. The meaning latent under this specious phrase was that the Prince's throat was to be cut as he went in his coach from Richmond to Kensington. It may seem strange that such fallacies, the dregs of the Jesuitical casuistry, should have had power to seduce men of heroic spirit, both Whigs and Tories, into a crime on which divine and human laws have justly set a peculiar note of infamy. But no sophism is too gross to delude minds distempered by ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... after which two of them were discharged. But the third, in a singular strain of morality, insisted upon it, that it was no crime in an Englishman to plunder an Indian plantation. The method taken by our commander to refute his casuistry, was to send him back to his confinement, and not, permit him to be released, till he had been punished with ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... no ethical creed which does not temper the rigidity of its laws, by giving a certain latitude, under the moral responsibility of the agent, for accommodation to peculiarities of circumstances; and under every creed, at the opening thus made, self-deception and dishonest casuistry get in. There exists no moral system under which there do not arise unequivocal cases of conflicting obligation. These are the real difficulties, the knotty points both in the theory of ethics, and in the conscientious guidance of personal conduct. They are ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... have often quite unexpected turns of humour, and are filled with oversubtle questions of casuistry and curious reasonings. From one point of view the novel is a huge, commonplace book, into which Dostoevski put all sorts of whimsies, queries, and vagaries. Smerdakov, the epileptic, is a thorn ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... Romans; the ideal is more above us, and the aspiration after good has often lent a strange power to evil. And sometimes, as at the Reformation, or French Revolution, when the upper classes of a so-called Christian country have become corrupted by priestcraft, by casuistry, by licentiousness, by despotism, the lower have risen up and re-asserted the natural sense of ...
— Philebus • Plato
... Council at the summons of the Emperor; at another time she takes the initiative. St. Cyprian re-baptizes heretics; St. Stephen accepts their baptism. The early ages administer, the later deny, the Holy Eucharist to children.[22] Who shall say that in such practical matters, and especially in points of casuistry, points of the when, and the where, and the by whom, and the how, words written in the fourth century are to be the rule ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... with an uneasy conscience which no casuistry would lighten. He threw himself in Mallinson's way time after time in order to ascertain whether the latter had spoken. Mallinson let no word of the matter slip from him, and for the rest seemed utterly despondent. Fielding threw out a feeler ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Malcolm; "—but—I so well remember when Mr Graham first made me see that the question of duty does not always lie between a good thing and a bad thing: there would be no room for casuistry then, he said. A man has very often to decide between one good thing and another. But indeed I can hardly tell without more time to think, whether that comes in here. If a man wants to be generous, it must at least be at his ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... a thought, and by a definition which may convey that thought into the mind of another—to occupy, or cover, a certain area of the phenomena of experience, as the Just. And what happens thereupon is this, that by means of a certain kind of casuistry, by the allegation of certain possible cases of conduct, the whole of that supposed area of the Just is occupied by definitions of Injustice, from this centre or that. Justice therefore- -its area, the ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... at large how very little difference America's participation in hostilities would make. When America tacitly negatived this theory by the energy with which she raised billions and mobilised her industries, Hun propagandists, by an ingenious casuistry, spread abroad the opinion that these mighty preparations were a colossal bluff which would redound to Germany's advantage. They said that President Wilson had bided his time so that his country might strut as a belligerent for only the last six months, and so obtain a voice ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... incensed against the blind and bigoted priesthood, against the malicious and murderous servants who ate the bread of a holy and harmless Master, against "their intolerance of light and hatred of knowledge, their fierce yet profoundly contemptible struggles with one another, the scandals of their casuistry, their besotted cruelty." [273] We have been betrayed into speaking thus strongly of the extreme lengths to which superstition will carry those who yield themselves to its ruthless tyranny. But perhaps we have not gone far from our subject, after ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... night-watches, to bear up the drooping head, to lift the helpless limbs, to divine the want that can find no utterance beyond the feeble motion of the hand or beseeching glance of the eye—these are offices that demand no self-questionings, no casuistry, no assent to propositions, no weighing of consequences. Within the four walls where the stir and glare of the world are shut out, and every voice is subdued—where a human being lies prostrate, thrown on the tender mercies of his fellow, the moral relation of man to man is reduced ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Church? A man who lives with a woman and does not hide it, who even declares his firm intention of continuing to live with his concubine—can he be admitted to baptism? Augustin has to answer all these questions, and go into the very smallest details of casuistry. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... occasion of our ride with the apple-farmer, awhile back, had held subtle casuistical debate on the legitimacy of men ostensibly, not to say ostentatiously, on foot to New York picking up chance rides in this way. The argument had gone into pursuit of very fine distinctions, and almost rivalled in its casuistry the famous old Duns Scotus—or was it Thomas Aquinas?—debate as to how many angels can dance on the point of a needle. Once we had come to a deadlock as to the kind of vehicle from which it was proper to accept such hospitality. ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... This is, I take it, some confused allusion to the great Dominican Doctor, S. Thomas Aquinas, who was regarded as being the supreme Master of scholasticism and casuistry. Casuistry must be taken in its true and original meaning—the balancing ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... of complete revulsion she spurned it all: the moral casuistry that beguiled him, the church that cloaked him; spurned psalm and prophet and apostle, ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... curiosity, conscious that, at all events, his first impulsive feeling was that he ought not to examine these papers without the presence of his host or some other authorized witness. Had he exercised any casuistry about the point, however, he might have argued that these papers, according to all appearance, dated from a period to which his own hereditary claims ascended, and to circumstances in which his own rightful interest was as strong as that of Mr. Eldredge. ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... them to; but this did not greatly affect our fortunes either way. One of the most bitter thoughts of all was that a secular priest named Serjeant, who, with another named Morris, was of Gallican views, had given evidence in public court against the Jesuits' casuistry. ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... ought not to accept. It is true that in the application of this simple rule difficult problems may arise; but a little tact will generally go a long way towards solving them. In these matters an ounce of tact is worth a pound of casuistry. And in our every-day England, in all classes, it is my profound conviction that a reasonable selflessness is very far from uncommon, very far from being confined to the "converted" of any religion. For forty years I have watched it growing ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... damnation, we have the same point illustrated. Right through history it has been the social instincts that have acted as a corrective to religious extravagance. And it is worth noting that with the exception of a little gain from the practice of casuistry, religions have contributed nothing towards the building up of a science of ethics. On the contrary it has been a very potent cause of confusion and obstruction. Fictitious vices and virtues have been created and the real moral problem lost sight of. It gave the world ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... Mr. Mortimer. They sounded like half-past, and in that case it must have been a quarter to eight when she stood on her doorstep. Finally, there was the reason of reasons which superseded the necessity of any further attempt to persuade herself by any casuistry—she must save Cutts. ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... or, as in another place, that the principle broached "is merely a suggestion of the learned commentator as a possible policy, and has no support either in the practice of nations or the works of publicists";—but the editor never condescends to meet the French writer upon his own field of casuistry and speculation. And in this we think he is right. The discussion of rules existing only in a text-writer's belief in their abstract justice, would be entirely useless labor in any writer in the English language; for whatever may be the system of Continental Europe, neither the United States, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... general to be of any use, because the application of them is still left to be adjusted by a reference to particular circumstances; and that, if a revelation were framed, it ought to take in all the limitations of action, and furnish, in fact, a complete system of casuistry; otherwise it would be of no avail. Were there none who attempted ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... been walking the floor at night in the struggle to reconcile the teachings of the church with his own doubts—knowing that Eternal Damnation was held to be the reward for doubt of Christ's divinity—was so horrified by the casuistry of the man who could be an orthodox minister and yet speak of preaching as just one way to make a living, that he swung sharply from any wish to ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... analogous divisions of poetry: for instance, the satirical, the bucolic, the romantic, the reflective, the epic. The latter has to do with those towering creatures of action—Othello, Coriolanus, Virginius, Macbeth—somewhat deficient, whether good or evil, in the casuistry of more subtile dispositions, but giants in emotion, and kingly in repose. They are essentially masculine, and we connect their ideals with the stately figure, the deep chest-utterance, the slow, enduring ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... this shameful robbing of the people of their Divine birthright that the just soul of Jesus, abhorring both casuistry and oppression under the cloak of religion, gave utterance to that fine invective that he used on several occasions, the only times that he spoke in a condemnatory or accusing manner: "Now do ye, Pharisee, make ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... were summoned to seek aid for a perishing fellow-creature, and that I could obtain that aid only by facing a vast company of critical or sneering faces, I might, perhaps, shrink basely from the duty. It is true that no such case had ever actually occurred; so that it was a mere romance of casuistry to tax myself with cowardice so shocking. But, to feel a doubt, was to feel condemnation; and the crime that might have been was, in my eyes, the crime that had been. Now, however, all was changed; and for any thing which ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... College, London. The subject referred to by De Morgan is his expression of opinion in his Theological Essays (1853) that future punishment is not eternal. As a result of this expression he lost his professorship at King's College. In 1866 he was made Knightbridge Professor of Casuistry, Moral Theology, and Moral Philosophy ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... quite forgotten Camusot. To Lousteau he had expressed the utmost disgust for this most hateful of all partitions, and now he himself had sunk to the same level, and, carried away by the casuistry of his vehement desire, had given ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... love which it accomplishes;' or, when Leone Leoni, steeped in passion and crime, but talented and adorned with manly beauty, exclaims to his beloved, 'As long as you hope for my amendment you have never loved my personal self.' It also appears to correspond with this casuistry of erotic fancy, when the heroes of her tragedies, of sky-storming earnestness, but adorned with all unnatural qualities, give themselves up to the latter as to an intoxicating spell, and in the delirium of self-delusion hold sin for virtue, and the unnatural ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... HERMANN (1600-1668), Jesuit theologian, was born at Nottelen in Westphalia. He attained fame as a master of casuistry, and out of his lectures to students at Cologne grew his celebrated book Medulla theologiae moralis, facili ac perspicua methodo resolvens casus conscientiae (1645). The manual obtained a wide popularity ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... your casuistry, I might think that to attack the enemy from behind was not a particularly fine thing to do, for even I would rather see a man's face than his rear—particularly in the case of my brother and sister, who are both handsome ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the early portions of the Bible is clearing its offensive portions of the grossness which characterized them as literal histories, by resolving them into nature-myths, or into social traditions, symbolical stories of casuistry, "token-tales," whose original meaning had been lost by the time they were committed ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... naturally the most violent act, a fortiori approves all lesser acts. But the establishment, by parity of reason, retained upon its rolls all the degrees, all the modifications, all who had exercised a wise discretion, who, in so great a cause, had thought it a point of religion to be cautious; whose casuistry had moved in the harness of peace, and who had preferred an interest of conscience to a triumph of partisanship. We honour them for that policy; but we cannot hide from ourselves, that the very principle which makes such a policy honourable at the moment, makes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... impressions. Liberty (the philosopher's and the poet's bride) had fallen a victim, meanwhile, to the murderous practices of the hag, Legitimacy. Proscribed by court-hirelings, too romantic for the herd of vulgar politicians, our enthusiast stood at bay, and at last turned on the pivot of a subtle casuistry to the unclean side: but his discursive reason would not let him trammel himself into a poet-laureate or stamp-distributor, and he stopped, ere he had quite passed that well-known "bourne from whence no traveller ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... time when eminent prelates of the older Church were eulogizing debauched princes like Louis XV, and using the unspeakably obscene casuistry of the Jesuit Sanchez in the education of the priesthood as to the relations of men to women, the modesty of the Church authorities was so shocked by Linnaeus's proofs of a sexual system in plants that for many years his writings were prohibited in the Papal States ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... taken refuge in casuistry and told the king that it was not for a pope to be bound to the cardinal's promises, in which contention he would have been supported by the Jesuits. However, in his heart Ganganelli had no liking for the Jesuits. He was a Franciscan, and not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... yet, in 1831, when Mr. Gladstone won his degree with double first- class honors, taken visible shape, or become, so to speak, conscious of its own purposes. But its doctrinal views, its peculiar vein of religious sentiment, its respect for antiquity and tradition, its proneness to casuistry, its taste for symbolism, were already potent influences working on the more susceptible of the younger minds. On Mr. Gladstone they told with full force. He became, and never ceased to be, not merely a High-churchman, but what may be called an Anglo-Catholic, in his theology, deferential not ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... man who dared not offer it for sale. Once in his possession, the thought of giving it up, or of letting the owner redeem it, had never even occurred to him. Yet the treasure made him rejoice with a trembling which all his casuistry would have found it hard to explain; for he would not confess to himself its real cause—namely, that his God-born essence was uneasy with a vague knowledge that it lay in the bosom of a thief. "Don't you think, sir," said Dawtie, "that ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... old lady was, versed in the habits of the people, and long trained to suspect a certain air of dulness, by which, when asking the explanation of a point, they watch, with a native casuistry, to see what flaw or chink may open an equivocal meaning or intention, she was thoroughly convinced by the simple and unreasoning concurrence this humble man gave to every proviso, and the hearty assurance he always gave 'that her honour knew what was best. God reward and keep her long in the ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... he heard of a promise so rash, so fatal; but his was not the casuistry which could release his master from the fetters with which his unwary confidence had bound him. It was otherwise with Wilkin Flammock. He stared—he almost laughed, notwithstanding the reverence due to the Castellane, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... have any opinions about Russia, or, having some, should find anybody to take them seriously. It is all cant, my friends—nothing but cant; and at its base lies the old dispute between principle and casuistry. If politics and statecraft rest ultimately on principles of right and wrong, then a poet has as clear a right as any man to speak upon them: as clear a right now as when Tennyson lifted his voice on behalf of the ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... moral, or religious, of the mythological fables. Ovid's Art of Love, of which more than one rendering was made, aided in the formation or development of the mediaeval theory of love and the amorous casuistry ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... had gone there to see: what would she think of him? He knew well enough that her trenchant classifications of life admitted no overlapping of good and evil, made no allowance for that incalculable interplay of motives that justifies the subtlest casuistry of compassion. Miss Talcott was too young to distinguish the intermediate tints of the moral spectrum; and her judgments were further simplified by a peculiar concreteness of mind. Her bringing-up had fostered this tendency and she was surrounded by people who focussed life in the same ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... All his afternoons must have been those of a faun—a faun who with impeccable solicitude put on paper what he saw in the heart of the bosk or down by the banks of secret rivers. The sad turpitudes, the casuistry of concupiscence, the ironic discolourations and feverish delving into subterranean moral stratifications were as yet afar. He was young, handsome, with a lithe, vigorous body and the head of an aristocratic Mephistopheles, a head all profile, like the heads of Hungary—Hungary itself, which is ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... "Let casuists decide the casuistry, but the compassion the heart decides for itself. But, sir," deepening in seriousness, "as I now for the first realize, you but a moment since introduced the word irresponsible in a way I am not used to. Now, sir, though, out of ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... answer, dated March 10. My offer was an honest one, and surely could only be construed as such even by the most malignant casuistry. I could answer you, but it is too late, and it is not worth while. To the mysterious menace of the last sentence, whatever its import may be—and I cannot pretend to unriddle it—I could hardly be very sensible even if I understood it, as, before it can take place, I shall be where ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... casuistry Aunt Deborah quieted her conscience, and carefully put the ring away among ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil,' said the Jews, to Jesus, in Jerusalem.... A Samaritan egg, as the hen laid it, could not be unclean, but what of a boiled egg? Yet interest and convenience strove, by subtle casuistry, to invent excuses for what intercourse was unavoidable. The country of the Cuthites was clean, so that a Jew might, without scruple, gather and eat its produce. The waters of Samaria were clean, so ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... would have ventured to put up, before the eyes of Mary in Majesty, above the windows so dear to her, any object that she had not herself commanded. Whether a miracle was necessary, or whether genius was enough, is a point of casuistry which you can settle with Albertus Magnus or Saint Bernard, and which you will understand as little when settled as before; but for us, beyond the futilities of unnecessary doubt, the Virgin designed this rose; not perhaps in quite the same perfect spirit in which she designed the lancets, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... the pedant are neighbours. Their kinship is visible in the fop. The subtile is derived from the sensual. Gluttony affects delicacy, a grimace of disgust conceals cupidity. And then woman feels her weak point guarded by all that casuistry of gallantry which takes the place of scruples in prudes. It is a line of circumvallation with a ditch. Every prude puts on an air of repugnance. It is a protection. She will consent, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... efforts to fix upon a definite ratio of income or property of universal obligation, will give constant ground for questions of casuistry inevitably tending rather to screen the conscience, than to stimulate to ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... grapes were sour. However, we had excellent beds. In my room there was a small collection of books, on a dusty shelf, which I should not have expected to find in such hands. Among them were some old works of theological casuistry, Metastasio, a translation of Voltaire's plays, and a geographical dictionary in Italian. I learnt that they had belonged to the proprietor's uncle, a medico at Padua, and were heirlooms with his property, which our host inherited. The position of these small proprietors is much to be ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... that if he made a fresh choice it would fall on an object as worthy of his heart. So let him enjoy a happiness which belongs to the simple peasant as it does to kings." This hypocritical twaddle, this licentious casuistry, was "very good style" in Germany then, and ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... [False or vicious reasoning; show of reason.] — N. intuition, instinct, association, hunch, gut feeling; presentiment, premonition; rule of thumb; superstition; astrology^; faith (supposition) 514. sophistry, paralogy^, perversion, casuistry, jesuitry, equivocation, evasion; chicane, chicanery; quiddet^, quiddity; mystification; special pleading; speciousness &c adj.; nonsense &c 497; word sense, tongue sense. false reasoning, vicious reasoning, circular reasoning; petitio principii ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... in this sense Shaw may be called almost madly domestic. He wishes each private problem to be settled in private, without reference to sociological ethics. And the only objection to this kind of gigantic casuistry is that the theatre is really too small to discuss it. It would not be fair to play David and Goliath on a stage too small to admit Goliath. And it is not fair to discuss private morality on a stage too small to admit the enormous ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... here, in this case, Brandonia was convicted by her own confession. He maintained that, if homicide is to be committed at all, poison is preferable to the knife, and then he went on to weave a web of ineffectual casuistry in support of his view, which moved the Court to pity and contempt. He cited the Lex Cornelia, which doomed the common people to the arena, and the patricians to exile, and claimed the penalty last-named ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... eavesdropping—when a man may listen, when he may not, and for how long he may, to what end, for what motives, in what causes, and on what provocations. It may be that the Roman Divines, who, as I understand, are greatly adept in the science of casuistry, have accomplished already the task I indicate. I know not; at least I have nowhere encountered the result of their labours. But now I sat still behind the great chair and listened without doubt or hesitation. Yet how long I could have controlled myself I know not, for his Grace made light of scruples ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... the standard of the monarchy—all this was too dazzling not to captivate a young and high-spirited woman, bold through very ignorance of the obstacles she had to surmount, heroic in the hour of danger through levity; able to endure all but ennui, and ready to lull any misgivings with the casuistry of a ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... customs union or annexation that Germany plans, the steel had entered the hearts of all Belgians with red corpuscles; and King Albert and his "schipperkes" were still fighting the Germans at Dixmude. A British army appearing before Brussels would end casuistry; and pessimism would pass, and the German residents, too, with the huzzas of all Belgium as the gallant king once more ascended ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... as much personal freedom as at all comports with the public good. He is, indeed, a most sneaking democrat, who finds it necessary to consult a neighbourhood before he can indulge his innocent habits and tastes. It is sheer meddling, and no casuistry can fitly ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... eminent persons, and particularly those of kings, bishops, and ministers. In Spain, as in all other places, they took a large share in politics, they patronised good studies, and accumulated great wealth. If jesuitical casuistry had not its birth in Spain, at least the greater part of its ecclesiastical writers, who propagated and defended that absurd and immoral conceit, were Spaniards, as may be seen on reference to the catalogue of them published by Pascal, in his Lettres ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... of his Parliamentary management which proved disastrous to his cause, and this was his tendency to what the vulgar call hair-splitting and the learned casuistry. At Oxford men are taught to distinguish with scrupulous care between propositions closely similar, but not identical. In the House of Commons they are satisfied with the roughest and broadest divisions between right and wrong; they see no shades of colour ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... documents of France till recent years.(269) It is a collection of alleged contradictions, which exist on a series of topics, which range over the deepest problems of theology, and descend to the confines of casuistry in ethics.(270) In the discussion of them Abelard collects passages from the scriptures and from the fathers in favour of two distinctly opposite solutions. He has however prefixed a prologue to the work, which ought ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... themselves receive will therefore give one some idea of what they teach their scholars. Unluckily, their course of instruction was stereotyped ages ago, when learned men devoted themselves to writing huge books on divinity, casuistry, logic, and metaphysics; concealing their ignorance of facts under an affectation of wisdom and clouds of long words; demonstrating how many millions of angels could dance on a needle's point; writing treatises "de ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... I leave it to you. I am certain you and Mr. O'Donnell know best. It's too difficult and delicate for me. I am horribly blunt. Forgive me if I seemed to pretend to casuistry. I am sure I had no such meaning. I said what I thought. I always do. I never meant that it was not a very clever letter; and if it does exactly what you require it should be satisfactory. To-morrow evening ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... maintained by Waterland, by Whiston, by Blackburne, and by some of the more ardent Calvinists, was strong, and felt to be so. In appearance, if not in reality, there was clearly something equivocal, some appearance of casuistry and reserve, if not of insincerity, in subscribing to formularies, part of which were no longer accepted in the spirit in which they had been drawn up, and with the meaning they had been originally intended to bear. The ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Raphael, of which Mr. Fuseli has availed himself with great spirit in his Lectures, is by Steele.[131] I owed this acknowledgment to a writer who has so often put me in good humour with myself, and every thing about me, when few things else could, and when the tomes of casuistry and ecclesiastical history, with which the little duodecimo volumes of the Tatler were overwhelmed and surrounded, in the only library to which I had access when a boy, had tried their tranquillising effects upon me ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... you have gained my respect. Frankness in a Jesuit? Come; what has the Society come to that frankness replaces cunning and casuistry? Bah! There never was an age but had its prude to howl 'O these degenerate days!' Corrupt and degenerate you say? Yes; that is the penalty of greatness, richness, and idleness. It began with the Egyptians, it struck Rome and Athens; it strikes ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... established between the sexes. Polygamy, divorce, and concubinage with bondmaid's have been perpetuated, as we have seen, by Islam for all time; and the ordinances connected therewith have given rise, in the laborious task of defining the conditions and limits of what is lawful, to a mass of prurient casuistry defiling the books of Mohammedan law. Contrast with this our Saviour's words, "He which made them at the beginning made them male and female.... What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder."[i] From which simple utterance have ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... Peter forms a subject of Christian casuistry in patristic literature, and this passage recalls the famous classical parallel in Euripides (Hipp. 612), "the tongue hath sworn: yet unsworn is the heart." Cf. Augustine, cont. mendacium: "In that denial he held fast the truth in his heart, while with his lips he uttered falsehood." For a striking ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... and thence partly arose the sanctity of the hospitable board; but to the east of the Mediterranean the full ritual of a sacrifice must have been preserved in all banquets, long after it had faded to a form in the less superstitious West. This we may learn from that point of casuistry treated by St. Paul,—whether a Christian might lawfully eat of things offered to idols. The question was most urgent; because a Christian could not accept an invitation to dine with a Grecian fellow-citizen who still adhered to paganism, without eating things offered to ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey |
