"Conventicle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... client, Mr. Jerome—a loss which galled him out of proportion to the mere monetary deficit it represented. The attorney loved money, but he loved power still better. He had always been proud of having early won the confidence of a conventicle-goer, and of being able to 'turn the prop of Salem round his thumb'. Like most other men, too, he had a certain kindness towards those who had employed him when he was only starting in life; and just as we do not like to part with an old weather-glass ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... encouraged the shallow affectations of his great friend's weaker work, and recoiled in alarm before the daring defiance of his stronger. His criticisms on all Byron wrote and felt seriously on religion are almost worthy of a conventicle. His letters to others on Manfred, and Cain, and Don Juan, are the expression of sentiments which he had never the courage to state explicitly to the author. On the other hand, Byron was attracted beyond reasonable measure by his gracefully deferential ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... seems) are canvassed on the stage, and things of the gravest concernment there managed;" and who were the aggressors, I beseech you, but a few factious, popular hirelings, that by tampering the theatres, and by poisoning the people, made a play-house more seditious than a conventicle; so that the loyal party crave only the same freedom of defending the government, which the other took beforehand of exposing and defaming it. There was no complaint of any disorders of the stage, in the bustle that was made (even ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... gods and men—is not to be banished by conventicle or council. She will find her way back, though she has to tread strange paths, and the punishment for the elimination of natural wantonness is the appearance of hideous hypocrisy. Driven from the haunts of the Muses, expelled from the symposia ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... endeavour, by some novelty, to excite the languid devotion of his audience. No regard will be paid to truth, morals, or decency, in the doctrines inculcated. Every tenet will be adopted that best suits the disorderly affections of the human frame. Customers will be drawn to each conventicle by new industry and address, in practising on the passions and credulity of the populace. And, in the end, the civil magistrate will find that he has dearly paid for his intended frugality, in saving a fixed establishment for the priests; and that, in reality, the most decent ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... no system; and his coveting truth had another exceptional consequence: he was detached, unworldly, contemplative. When he came out of the conventicle or the reform meeting, or out of the rapturous close atmosphere of the lecture-room, he heard Nature whispering to him: "Why so hot, little sir?" No doubt the spirit or energy of the world is what is acting in us, as the sea is what rises in every little wave; but it passes through ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... but at a few conspicuous marks, Leaving a thousand others, that, in hall, Court, theatre, conventicle, or shop, 575 In public room or private, park or street, Each fondly reared on his own pedestal, Looked out for admiration. Folly, vice, Extravagance in gesture, mien, and dress, And all the strife of singularity, 580 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... spare a sup or a morsel, not worth the fourth part of a farthing, to an indigent neighbour of his own parish, who is disabled from work. A beggar native of the parish is known to the 'squire, to the church minister, to the popish priest, or the conventicle teachers, as well as to every farmer: he hath generally some relations able to live, and contribute something to his maintenance. None of which advantages can be reasonably expected on a removal to places where he is altogether unknown. If he be not quite maimed, he and his trull, and litter ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... succession of the images or of the sentences; I am reminded of the sublime prayer and hymn of praise, which MILTON, in opposition to an established liturgy, presents as a fair specimen of common extemporary devotion, and such as we might expect to hear from every self-inspired minister of a conventicle! And I reflect with delight, how little a mere theory, though of his own workmanship, interferes with the processes of genuine imagination in a man of true poetic genius, who possesses, as Mr. Wordsworth, if ever man did, most assuredly ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Bridgenorth," he said, "for he always bore him in neighbourly and kindly fashion till this last career—I could have endured him, so he would have drunk the King's health, like a true man—but to bring that snuffling scoundrel Solsgrace, with all his beggarly, long-eared congregation, to hold a conventicle in my father's house—to let them domineer it as they listed—why, I would not have permitted them such liberty, when they held their head the highest! They never, in the worst of times, found any way into Martindale Castle but what ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... who, in sacrifice to, or at, the altar of truth or falsehood, are possessed by a spirit or influence mightier than their own individuality. 'Fanatici-qui circum fana favorem mutuo contrahunt el afflant'—those who in the same conventicle, or before the same shrine, relique or image, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... the word. Their pleasure in passing dreadful sentences was very thinly disguised by certain lofty conventional phrases as to the necessity of upholding the law, morality, and religion; they were, indeed, as familiar with the name of the Deity as any ranter in a conventicle, and the 'enormity of the crime' was an expression as constantly used in the case of the theft of a loaf of bread, or of an old coat left hanging on a hedge, by some ill-clad, half-starved wretch, as in cases of ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... a powerful horse of her father's, with a pair of huge holsters at the saddle-bow. Being a small and an old man, he climbed stiffly and with some difficulty into the saddle; but, when seated there, his earnest face and resolute air made him look a hero of the covenant quitting the conventicle for the battle-field. ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... like them on Sundays and Holidays to come to church at St. George's, and sit under Doctor Dubiety, where I, as a little lad, sat many and many a time, more than fifty years ago; but my house is no Conventicle, and on all weekdays and Lawful Occasions my family is privileged to partake to their heart's content of innocent and permitted pastimes. I never set my face against a visit to the Playhouse or to the Concert-room; although to me, who ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... while holding office, were proved to have attended any Nonconformist place of worship, should forfeit the place, and should continue incapable of public employment till they should depose that for a whole year they had not attended a conventicle. A fine of L40 was added to be paid to the informer. There were other causes which assisted to help depopulate Ulster, among which was the destruction of the woolen trade about 1700, when twenty thousand left that province. Many more were driven away by the Test Act ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... transcendent ability and sagacity that lay beneath a rugged exterior, there has never been any question. He raised and trained a regiment of Puritan troops, called the "Ironsides," who were well-nigh invincible in battle, but whose camp was a "conventicle" for prayer and praise. With their help, the Royalists were defeated at Marston Moor (1644). The army was now modeled anew by the Independents. The Self-denying Ordinance excluded members of Parliament from military command. Cromwell ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... for my lord's lieutenant to speak of hypocrisy," said the boy, laughing; "it is like Satan preaching sanctity; tell the good puritans of Boston, that the French Hugonot who worshipped in their conventicle with so much decorum, is a papist, and what, think you, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... and sent it twirling high in the air. In a little while he found himself lying on the heather at the mercy of the man whom he had attacked. He asked for his life, and Alexander Gordon granted it to him, making him promise by his honor as a gentleman that whenever he had the fortune to approach a conventicle (church meeting) he would retire, if he saw a white flag elevated in a particular manner upon a flagstaff. This seemed but a little condition to weigh against a man's life, and ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... on, Witwoud. Harkee, by this light, his relations—two co-heiresses his cousins, and an old aunt, who loves cater-wauling better than a conventicle. ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... McCalyan, tried June 9, 1591, executed (burnt alive) June 25, 1591. Evidence was first given as to her practising witchcraft and consorting with well-known witches. Item, indyttit and accusit, of the conventicle had att North Berwick Kirk, tuentie dayes before Michelmas, 1590; and thair inquyring for the Kings pictour, gewin by Annie Sampsoun to the Dewill, to be inchantit, for the tressonabill distructioun of the King. Item, indyttit and accusit, for being att ane Conventioun ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... mounted, and put all their servants on coach horses, for the defence of his Majesty, and the peace of his kingdom."—Rugge's Diurnal. The notorious Thomas Venner, the Fifth-monarchy man, a cooper and preacher to a conventicle in Swan Alley, Coleman Street, with a small following (about fifty in number) took arms on the 6th January for the avowed purpose of establishing the Millennium. He was a violent enthusiast, and persuaded ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the same to the Catholics if they had been seditious. Our country required at that time one God, one faith, one master. Luckily for me, I have described my policy in a word. When Birague announced to me the defeat at Dreux—well, I said, we must go to the Conventicle.—Hate the Huguenots, indeed! I honoured them greatly, and I did not know them. How could I hate those who had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... for some time, we saw the noble work done by Messrs. Jones and Creagh, of the London Missionary Society, all being cruelly undone by the tyranny and Popery of the French. One day, in an inland walk, Mrs. Paton and I came on a large Conventicle in the bush. They were teaching each other, and reading the Scriptures which the Missionaries had translated into their own language, and which the French had forbidden them to use. They cried to God for deliverance from their oppressors! Missionaries were prohibited ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... the old Gentleman, you must behave your self very soberly, simple, and demure, and look as prew as at a Conventicle; and take heed you drink not off your Glass at Table, nor rant, nor swear: one Oath confounds our Plot, and betrays thee ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... well," said Lady Margaret, turning her back in great displeasure; "ye ken my will, Mause, in the matter. I'll hae nae whiggery in the barony of Tillietudlem—the next thing wad be to set up a conventicle in my very ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that simple item of the cricket-field and garden-ground. It has become so much the fashion among certain of us, renowned more for zeal than knowledge, to cry down all amusements for the people, as tending to the subversion and overthrow of morality, to shut them out from all but the church, the conventicle, and the gin-shop—that any recognition of this mistake in a more liberal arrangement, may be hailed as the inauguration of an era of common sense, and consequently of true morality. Amusements are absolutely necessary for mankind. The nation never existed on this earth which could dispense with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... to translate the Palace Metropolitan from one kind of dominion into another; this is but an old canonical sleight of commuting our penance. To startle thus betimes at a mere unlicensed pamphlet will after a while be afraid of every conventicle, and a while after will make a conventicle of every Christian meeting. But I am certain that a State governed by the rules of justice and fortitude, or a Church built and founded upon the rock of faith and true knowledge, cannot be so ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... work is not only historic but it is also polemic; polemic, however, not in the spirit or interest of any party or conventicle, but in the spirit and interest of science and humanity. Orthodoxy insists on doctrines whose irrationality in their current forms is such that they can never be a basis for the union of all men. Therefore, to discredit these, in preparation for more reasonable and auspicious ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... so many contrary natures as there be conflicting wills, there shall now be not two only, but many. If a man deliberate whether he should go to their conventicle or to the theatre, these Manichees cry out, Behold, here are two natures: one good, draws this way; another bad, draws back that way. For whence else is this hesitation between conflicting wills? But ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... to be suspected and taken for a Christian, for which he shall be apprehended for committing high Parliament Treason and mighty malignancy against the general Council of the Directorian private Presbyterian Conventicle." ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... preacher) —Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise At the shutting door, and entered likewise, Received the hinge's accustomed greeting, And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle, And found myself in full conventicle, —To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting, On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine, Which, calling its flock to their special clover, Found all assembled and one sheep over, Whose lot, as the weather ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... seat, not having the fear of murdered English on his hands, coaxed the Dutch driver into a long conversation, much to the delight of a very pretty Jersey-blue belle, who laughed so merrily that it was contagious; and in a few minutes, from being like unto a conventicle, we were all as wide awake as one of Christy's audiences. By sunrise we were in excellent spirits, up to all sorts of fun; and when, a little later on, our stage stopped at the first watering-place, the driver found himself the center of a group of treaters to the distilled "juice ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... another outlook, avoiding as far as possible the grimly decorated walls. If they had only left him his faithful servant he could have relieved himself of that mischievous badinage which always alternately horrified and delighted that devoted negro. But he was alone—absolutely alone—in this conventicle! ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Christ's Church had been founded on a rock, it had withstood the rain and the flood, but was crumbling down with dry rot. Calvin would have neither the rock nor the sand. Into the mud he drove the piles by the strokes of his genius, on which to erect the platform that was to uphold the conventicle of his followers, and if that did not stand, it would at least mark its site by their dejections. And dejections there are everywhere, where the Calvinists were, wrecked churches, mutilated monuments, broken glass, and shattered sculpture. Ruskin, remarking on some delicate carving at Lyons, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... milkmaid clamouring for payment of her account; "The Enraged Musician," with every conceivable pandemonium of noise congregated beneath his window; above all, "The Sleeping Congregation," collected in a conventicle of very early Georgian design, and unanimously occupied in carrying out the precept of their reverend pastor's text, "Come unto me ... and I will give Rest"—save only those two vigilant old ladies, perhaps pillars of the edifice, ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... "Oh! What does it matter? I don't pretend to be a bright specimen—like you!" When she made arrangements to come to see me at the House of Lords, which she frequently did, she always wrote it "the Lord's House," as though it were a conventicle. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Having obtained the pardon of her sins, she opened her little house for preaching, and stood firm, although threatened by some of the villagers with a drum- led mob, and eventually haled before the magistrates and fined £20 for the offence of turning her cottage into a conventicle. ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... Act passed in the time of Knox, and breathing his spirit, it was a high crime to hear mass, and the third offence was capital. [121] An Act recently passed, at the instance of James, made it death to preach in any Presbyterian conventicle whatever, and even to attend such a conventicle in the open air. [122] The Eucharist was not, as in England, degraded into a civil test; but no person could hold any office, could sit in Parliament, or ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be equally odious," said Pen, "and at the end of a few scores of years would cease to exist altogether. Would you have every man with his head shaved, and every woman in a cloister,—carrying out to the full the ascetic principle? Would you have conventicle hymns twanging from every lane in every city in the world? Would you have all the birds of the forest sing one note and fly with one feather? You call me a sceptic because I acknowledge what is; and in acknowledging that, be it linnet or lark, or priest or parson, be it, I mean, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... listen to homilies, and the cant of the conventicle," said Vargrave, vainly struggling for a haughtiness of mien that his conscience-stricken aspect terribly belied; "not I; but this wrong world is to be blamed, if deeds that strict morality may not justify, but ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "No, no, my clear aunt," said the king; "I honor you more than I do the pope, and I love my sister more than I fear him. I am not a Huguenot, but no more am I an ass. If the pope has too much of his nonsense, I will myself take Margot by the hand and carry her off to be married in open conventicle." Toligny, for his part, was so pleased with the measures that Charles IX. had taken in favor of the Low Countries in their quarrels with Philip II., and so confident himself of his influence over the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... conditions. And if the master or mistress of any family, where any such meetings shall be kept, be present within the house for the time, they are to be fined in the double of what is to be paid by them, for being present at a house conventicle. And it is hereby declared, that magistrates of burghs royal are liable, for every conventicle to be kept within their burghs, to such fines as his majesty's council shall think fit to impose; and that the master or mistress ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... strange adventure behind him, the old folks had been dead a dozen years, and the solitary cousin, whom he had always derided as a pious sneak, had so far prospered in the world's affairs that he had left the old-fashioned conventicle in which he had had his spiritual upbringing, and had become a pillar of the Established Church. The cousin had been christened Jacob and Noakes; but he had embroidered himself into James Knock Jervoyce; the Knocks being a family of some distinction in his neighbourhood, ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... at whose house the meeting was to take place. He, "living by them," knew "what spirit" the magistrates "were of," before whom Bunyan would be taken if arrested, and the small hope there would be of his avoiding being committed to gaol. The man himself, as a "harbourer of a conventicle," would also run no small danger of the same fate, but Bunyan generously acquits him of any selfish object in his warning: "he was, I think, more afraid of (for) me, than of (for) himself." The matter was clear enough to ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... cracked-voiced hymns till Ishmael felt he could have smothered her with her own feather-bed. Her lust for religion, however, was taking a new direction—it was towards the Parson and his church instead of the conventicle of Mr. Tonkin. Quite what had brought about this change was hard to say—probably chiefly the infatuation of Tonkin for Vassie, a circumstance Annie took ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... and was glad when it was over and he was back in Portman Square talking to Lady Pechell and Mrs. Mannakay while Father Rowley rested for an hour before he walked round the corner to preach in old Jamaica Chapel, a galleried Georgian conventicle that was now the Church of the Visitation, but was still generally known as Jamaica Chapel. Evensong was half over when the preacher arrived, and the church being full Mark was given a chair by the sidesman in a dark corner, which presently became darker when Father Rowley went up into the pulpit, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... persecuted, "The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church." From the auto da fe arose the anthem that thrilled the Pagan heart. From prison cells poured forth paeans of praise that caused princes to kiss the cross. From the outlawed conventicle went forth a holy zeal that carried millions to the throne of grace,—from the gloomy midnight meeting there burst a ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... little faith in political fanaticism, especially when in alliance with the frightful doctrines enunciated from conventicle pulpits, and have no hesitation in saying that Anti-State Church Associations do not touch the root of political evils. Their usefulness is great, because they give currency to a sound principle, but that principle though important, is not all-important—though ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... thing of that sort. The question is whether, after the war, young English artists will realize that they too, by reason of their vocation, of the truth that is in them, belong to a communion wider and far more significant than the conventicle to which they were bred. England, we hear, is to wake up after the war and take her place in a league of nations. May we hope that young English artists will venture to take theirs in an international league of youth? That league existed before the war; but English painters ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... reminiscence of KATE VAUGHAN; all of which al fresco entertainment is given for the benefit of the aforesaid Gooseberry within sound of the sermon and within sight of the Meeting House windows. Suddenly her rustic Quaker lover, a kind of Ham Peggotty, lounges out of the Conventicle, which, as these persons seem to leave and enter just when it suits them, ought rather to be called a Chapel-of-Ease,—and, like the clown that he is, says in effect, "I'm a-looking at yer! I've caught yer at it!" Dismay of Dook and Dancer!! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... one's friends was encouraged by the provision, "that if any man being present at any secret conventicle, shall afterwards come forward and betray his fellow-members of the congregation, he shall ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in Holland. The same conformity was required from the English soldiers and merchants abroad, who had hitherto attended without scruple the services of the Calvinistic churches. The English ambassador in Paris was forbidden to visit the Huguenot conventicle at Charenton. ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... start theatric, practised at the glass. I seek divine simplicity in him Who handles things divine; and all beside, Though learned with labour, and though much admired By curious eyes and judgments ill-informed, To me is odious as the nasal twang Heard at conventicle, where worthy men, Misled by custom, strain celestial themes Through the prest nostril, spectacle-bestrid. Some, decent in demeanour while they preach, That task performed, relapse into themselves, And having spoken wisely, at the close Grow wanton, and ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... one an importation from Caledonia's rugged hills. Roxburgh's covenanting heroes, Wigtonshire's triumphant martyrs, Dumfriesshire and her Cameronians, with their great namesake's lion heart; Ayrshire, with her bloody memories of moor and moss-hags, of quarry and conventicle, of Laud and liberty—all these had filtered through and reappeared in ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... to comply with his request the king induced some of the rebellious cardinals to issue invitations for a council to meet at Pisa (Sept. 1511). Most of the bishops who met at Pisa at the appointed time were from France. The Emperor Maximilian held aloof, and the people of Pisa regarded the conventicle with no friendly feelings. The sessions were transferred from Pisa to Milan, and finally to Lyons. As a set off to this Julius II. convoked a council to meet at Rome, the fifth Lateran Council (May 1512), for the threefold purpose of healing the French schism, of proscribing ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... to a Welshman in the word chapel. Let us go there. And WILLIAM TELL, was he not a patriot? Did he not defy the tyrant? I am sure that in his modest conventicle I can think of a thousand eloquent things. Let ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... Justice Keelin.[227] If this was Sergeant Kelynge who, the following year, was made Lord Chief-Justice, he was a most arbitrary tyrant, equaled or excelled only by Judge Jeffreys. It was before him that some persons were indicted for attending a conventicle; but it being only proved that they had assembled on the Lord's-day with Bibles in their hands without prayer-books, and there being no proof that their meeting was only under colour or pretence of religion, the jury acquitted ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... admit it; you may even be ignorant of the full meaning of this marvellous fact; you may live an exclusive life, never going beyond the walls of some small conventicle, or the barriers of some strict ecclesiastical system; you may bear yourself impatiently and brusquely toward those who differ from you; you may even brand them with your anathema: but if they are one with God, by His gracious indwelling ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... and this visit was a great event in my life. In parlour and kitchen they could not make enough of me. They taught me to cook; and I was to preach, and they got in people from the fields and I stood on a chair, and preached sermons. I might have been indicted for holding a conventicle."] She writes to his father in 1809: "I heartily hope that the sea air has been the means of setting you up, and Mrs. Macaulay also, and that the dear little poet has caught his share of bracing.... Tell Tom I desire to know how ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... of the English Friends would not mention the name of Mrs. Mott. Mrs. Stanton once asked her what she would have done after the Hicksite faction had been voted out of meeting at the World's Conventicle of Friends in London, if the spirit had moved her to speak when the chairman and members had moved that she be silent, and she answered, "Where the spirit of God is, there is liberty." This is the liberty of anarchy, ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... of clove and nutmeg. An avenue of dadap trees skirts the shore, with varied foliage of amber and carmine. The dark figures sauntering in the shade, and clad in rose-colour, azure, or orange, add deeper notes to the symphony of colour, only marred by the white-washed Dutch conventicle, like an emphatic protest against Nature's response to her Creator. Ruined arches and pillars of white Portuguese houses, standing in a wilderness of verdure amid tumbled heaps of stone and concrete, testify to the earthquakes which have continually wrecked the little port. The mixed population ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... crowded his rude benches while the comfortable pews of the church were empty, was cast into gaol, and his flock dispersed. As to the Independents, of whom my father was one, they also were under the ban of the law, but they attended conventicle at Emsworth, whither we would trudge, rain or shine, on every Sabbath morning. These meetings were broken up more than once, but the congregation was composed of such harmless folk, so well beloved and respected by their neighbours, that the peace officers ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... be said of him as of Mr. Gibson, "He is a lawyer and an Irishman of the Irish." The noble lord, moreover, is objectionable on the spiritual side of his character. To a High Churchman he smacks a little of the conventicle, and is given to "exercises" at unauthorized times and places. His university escutcheon is dim and stained compared with that of Oxford's Chancellor. On the whole Lord Cairns can never be a serious rival for the first place among the peers ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... a little aloof from all the constituted religions; but he is apparent also in the imaginative and sympathetic student of religion, who divines the informing spark of love in all sincere worship; and however far he may have been from putting forward the little conventicle with its ruins of humanity, its soul at struggle with insanity, as his own final choice, that choice symbolised in a picturesque half-humorous way his own profound preference for the spiritual good ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... was "set apart" and received Presbyterian ordination. He was immediately appointed Vicar of Auckland S. Andrew by Sir Arthur Haselrig but was ejected nine years later. He was not an extreme man but he refused to be re-ordained by Bishop Cosen. After the second Conventicle Act of 1670 he made a personal appeal to Charles II, "to reform your life, your family, your kingdom and the Church." The King was much moved and replied "I thank you, Sir," and twice looking back before he went into the Council ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... AND FIVE-MILE ACTS.—Early in the reign the services of the Anglican Church were restored by Parliament, and harsh laws were enacted against all non-conformists. Thus the Conventicle Act made it a crime punishable by imprisonment or transportation for more than five persons besides the household to gather in any house or in any place for worship, unless the service was conducted according to the forms of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... given to them, but they needed every scrap of their courage and faith during the next half-hour. Almost before the last words of the prayer died away, a loud noise was heard and the tramp of heavy feet coming round the granary wall. The officers of the law were upon them: 'What, yet another conventicle of these pestilential heretics to be broken up?' shouted a wrathful voice. The next moment the door was roughly burst open, and in the doorway appeared a much dreaded figure, no less a person than Sir William Armorer himself, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... through a mental crisis, such as, in other circumstances, and under fostering influences, has produced more than one small ecstatic enthusiast; the infant shining light of some Methodist conventicle; the saintly child visionary of some Catholic convent. But Madelon had no one to foster, nor to interpret for her these feverish visions, so inexplicable to herself, poor child! To the good-natured, careless, jovial American, she would not have even hinted at them for worlds, and not less ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... the rejection of tyrannical power was boldly proclaimed by Cargill, in preaching to thousands of Conventicle hearers, and was prominently held forth in his last testimony:—"As to the cause of my suffering," said he, "the chief is, not acknowledging the present authority, as it is established in the supremacy and explanatory act. This is the magistracy I have rejected—that which is invested ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... alert, I was easily able to detect a secret meeting of Chassidim (consisting of that minimum of ten which the sect, in this following the orthodox practice, considers sufficient nucleus for a new community), and to note the members of the conventicle as they went ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Mistress Mowdiewort," said the minister. "Ye hae aye been a guid member in full communion. Ye never gaed to a prayer- meetin' or Whig conventicle in yer life. It's a sad peety that ye couldna keep your flesh an' bluid frae companyin' an' covenantin' wi' them that lichtly ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... "'Tis vain to trifle in the matter. The light, foolish handling of them by fines is their glory and advantage. If the gallows instead of the compter, and the galleys instead of the fines, were the reward of going to a conventicle, there would not be so many sufferers." His irony was at first misunderstood: the High Churchmen hailed him as a champion, and the Dissenters hated him as an enemy. But when his true meaning became apparent, a reward of L50 was offered by the government for his discovery. His ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the "Solemn League and Covenant" and swore loyalty to the king (Five-mile Act, 1665); for repeated attendance at their meetings (conventicles) Dissenters might be condemned to penal servitude in the West Indies against (Conventicle Act, 1664); and the Corporation Act of 1661 excluded Dissenters from ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... resting-place, and cast into an unknown grave in Saint Margaret's churchyard. Episcopacy had been restored by those who hoped thus to pave the way for the re-introduction of Romanism, with its grinding tyranny and abject superstitions. The "Conventicle Act," prohibiting more than five persons, exclusive of the family, to meet together for religious worship according to any other than the national ritual, had been passed, and was rigidly enforced; the dominant party thus endeavouring to deprive the people ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... alienated all "souls," step by step, from that colossal edifice, turning against it all the meritorious, manly and noble natures that had found in the cause of Rome their own cause, their own serious purpose, their own pride. The sneakishness of hypocrisy, the secrecy of the conventicle, concepts as black as hell, such as the sacrifice of the innocent, the unio mystica in the drinking of blood, above all, the slowly rekindled fire of revenge, of Chandala revenge—all that sort of thing became master of Rome: the same kind of religion which, in a pre-existent ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... condemned. And lest the tongue should contaminate those whom the printed volume might not reach, all unlettered persons were warned not even to discuss matters of faith, the sacraments, and the polity of the church, whether at the table, in the field, or in secret conventicle.[574] ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... been bred and christened; deserted that church which he had frequented, for he could not bear to see Sir George and my Lady flaunting in their grand pew;—deserted, I say, the church, adopted the conventicle, and became one of the most zealous and eloquent supporters that Freedom has known in our time. Scully, of the house of Scully and Perkins, was a dangerous enemy. In five years from that marriage, which snatched ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had no settled dwelling-place. "The women," he gently remarks in his 'Life,' "have most of that sort of trouble, but my wife easily bore it all." In the sixth year of his marriage Baxter was brought before the magistrates at Brentford, for holding a conventicle at Acton, and was sentenced by them to be imprisoned in Clerkenwell Gaol. There he was joined by his wife, who affectionately nursed him during his confinement. "She was never so cheerful a companion to me," ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... in Connecticut that no man should ride or drive on a Sunday except to a conventicle. Well, an old Dutch governor of New York, when that was called New Amsterdam and belonged to Holland, once rode into the colony on horseback on a Sabbath day, pretty hard job it was too, for he was ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... goes his manner,—that habitual air of telling you something which you did not know before, and doing it for your good,—which stamps him as a preacher born. Under the mask of the critic is the long English face of the gospeler; that type whose persistent physiognomy was never absent from the conventicle of English thought. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... then took the title of Lord Protector, and became the most inflexible and wisest monarch we have ever had, or indeed ever hope to have. Barebone is first heard of in local history as preaching in 1641, together with Mr. Greene, a felt-maker, at a conventicle in Fetter Lane, a place always renowned for its heterodoxy. The thoughtless Cavaliers, who did not like long sermons, and thought all religion but their own hypocrisy, delighted in gaunt Barebone's appropriate name, and made fun of him in ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... however imperfect, offered to him in his own way, while the free settler would have had the doors of the national Church opened to him, or the liberty, in case of his dissenting from that, of providing for himself a separate conventicle. Where would have been the hardship of this arrangement? Or why should the voluntary system, which is, in the northern hemisphere, so highly extolled by many Irish Romanists and not a few Presbyterians, ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... Unitarians became a chapel of the Roman Catholics. They rendered to the priests the things that were Priestley's, as they were reminded by a facetious paper published at the time. But, however much the Unitarians may have been chaffed and sneered at for abandoning their old conventicle, they have lived it all down, and, if I mistake not, Joseph and his brethren, the Kenricks, the Oslers, the Beales, and others, now congregate in peace in their ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... entered a by-coffee-house that stood at the upper end of a narrow lane, where I met with a Nonjuror engaged very warmly with a laceman who was the great support of a neighboring conventicle. The matter in debate was whether the late French King was most like Augustus Caesar, or Nero. The controversy was carried on with great heat on both sides, and as each of them looked upon me very frequently during the course of their debate, I was under some apprehension ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... spare from this to studying his few books and writing. During this period he wrote among other things, The Holy City and Grace Abounding. Under the Declaration of Indulgence he was released in 1672, and became a licensed preacher. In 1675 the Declaration was cancelled, and he was, under the Conventicle Act, again imprisoned for six months, during which he wrote the first part of The Pilgrim's Progress, which appeared in 1678, and to which considerable additions were made in subsequent editions. It was followed by the Life ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Persons of the least Penetration. The Quakers might at this Time possibly have been our National Church, and our present Happiness, with regard to those Considerations, can no way be more lively and amply demonstrated than in taking a step at once from Mr. Penn's Conventicle to the Cathedral Church of ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... returned from kirk. To say nothing of McGibbet's hat, and his wife's shawl, on a chair, and his best boots on the hearth (for he was walking about in his stockings), there was a dry preceese air about them, which plainly betokened they were newly stiffened up with the moral starch of the conventicle, and were therefore well prepared to drive a hard bargain for a horse and wagon to Sydney. But what surprised me most of all was the imperturbable coolness of Picton. Without taking a look scarcely at the persons he was addressing, the ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... her complaints, whereupon he had declared that he should take her away with him at once, and had in effect caused her pony to be saddled, and he had ridden away with her to his old tower, leaving his brother, the Chevalier, to conduct the attack on the Huguenot conventicle. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... congregations which he mistook for the courts of the Lord, he rather hoped for, than found relief from his tortures. Pale and haggard in his looks, morose and sullen in his manners, restless and dissatisfied, he revived the disputations of the conventicle at the table, calling on Dr. Beaumont to tell what he thought of some points of doctrine on which his ministers could not agree. The Doctor attempted to speak, but his voice was soon drowned by the Stentorian lungs and tautological verbiage of his opponent. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... saw around us. At any rate, it was worth examination; and most of the free-thinking men of that period read the "Positive Polity" and the other writings of the founder, and spent some Sunday mornings at the little conventicle in Lamb's Conduit Street, or attended on Sunday evenings the Newton Hall lectures of ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... father was. I have seen a man hung up to a beam by his thumbs because he would not give up money which perhaps he did not possess. I have seen a woman tortured by having lighted matches put between her fingers because she would not, or could not, tell where a conventicle was being held. I did not, indeed, see the last deed actually done, else would I have cut down the coward who did it. The poor thing had fainted and the torture was over when I came upon them. Only two days ago I was ordered out with ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... all; in an Age when Faction rages, and different Parties disagree in all things— - But coming the first day to a new Play with a Loyal Title, and then even the sober and tender conscienc'd, throng as to a forbidden Conventicle, fearing the Cub of their old Bear of Reformation should be expos'd, to be the scorn of the wicked, and dreading (tho' but the faint shadow of their own deformity) their Rebellion, Murders, Massacres and Villanies, from forty upwards, should ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... of an ecstatic spirit-life to be attained by natural magic. Of course the menace of impending death drew his thoughts in the direction of religion. Among the intimate friends of the family was the devout Susanna von Klettenberg, one of the leading spirits in a local conventicle of the Moravian Brethren. This lady—afterwards immortalized as the "beautiful soul" of Wilhelm Meister—tried to have the sick youth make his peace with God in her way, that is, by accepting Christ as an ever-present personal saviour. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... to the Netherton Naesmyths. Being Presbyterians, they held to their own faith. They were prevented from using their churches,* [footnote... In the reign of James II. of England and James VII. of Scotland a law was enacted, "that whoever should preach in a conventicle under a roof, or should attend, either as a preacher or as a hearer, a conventicle in the open air, should be punished with death and confiscation of property." ...] and they accordingly met on the moors, or in unfrequented places for worship. The dissenting Presbyterians assumed ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... Conventicles, and a new Bill was introduced, and rapidly passed, declaring any meeting of more than five persons for religious services, otherwise than in accordance with the Liturgy of the Church, to be "a seditious and unlawful conventicle." The penalty for attendance was, in the case of a first offender, to be a fine of five pounds, or three months' imprisonment; ten pounds, or six months for a second offence; and thereafter transportation, or a ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... form their daily shelter, their work-shop, their place of social influence. The human interest which our author sheds about the mill, the carpenter's shop, the dairy, the village church, and even the stiff, uninviting conventicle, shows that she looks on these as having a living continuity with the people whom she sets among them. Their artistic value is but a reflection of all that they mean to those for whom they have ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... "Sabbatarianism," was I not always glad when Sunday came? The bells of London churches and chapels are not soothing to the ear, but when I remember their sound—even that of the most aggressively pharisaic conventicle, with its one dire clapper—I find it associated with a sense of repose, of liberty. This day of the seven I granted to my better genius; work was put aside, and, when Heaven ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... says Collier, "how hearty these people are in their ill-will; how they attack religion under every form, and pursue the priesthood through all the subdivisions of opinion. Neither Jews nor Heathens, Turk nor Christians, Rome nor Geneva, church nor conventicle, can escape them. They are afraid lest virtue should have any quarters, undisturbed conscience any corner to retire to, or God worshipped in any place." ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... dreadful sentences was very thinly disguised, indeed, by certain lofty conventional phrases as to the necessity of upholding the law, morality, and religion; they were, indeed, as familiar with the name of the Deity as any ranter in a conventicle, and the "enormity of the crime" was an expression as constantly used in the case of the theft of a loaf of bread, or of an old coat left hanging on a hedge, by some ill-clad, half-starved wretch, as in cases of burglary, arson, rape, ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... upon as the necrologist of the Puritans, and yet a certain coloring of Puritanism adhered to him to the last. It was his wife who had entirely escaped from the old New England conventicle. Severity was at the opposite pole from her moral nature. Tolerant and charitable to the faults of others, her only fault was the lack of severity. She believed in the law of love, and when kind words did not serve ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... of that poem will pass with his readers for the next of kin. And, perhaps, 'tis the relation that makes the kindness. Whatever the verses are, buy them up, I beseech you, out of pity; for I hear the conventicle is shut up, and the brother of ...
— English Satires • Various
... Parish see it plain, Since thou art in this pickle, Thou art an Independent quean, And lov'st a conventicle. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... him, clamorous for solution, not to be denied, insisting on a settlement to-day. He is forced to make a choice, and may either forsake the divinity he serves, falling back, for the practical and aesthetic conduct of life, on those common instincts of sensuality which oscillate between the conventicle and the tavern as the poles of duty and pleasure, or, more pathetically still, he may attempt to bring the code of the observatory to bear immediately on the vagaries of the untameable world, and suffer the pedant's disaster. A martyr to the good that is to be, he has ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... Citie! Do they not learning from their doctrine sever? Ever! Yet they pretend that they do edifie: O fie! What do you call it then, to fructify? Ay. What church have they, and what pulpits? Pitts! But now in chambers the Conventicle; Tickle! The godly sisters shrewdly are belied. Bellied! The godly number then will soon transcend. End! As for the temples, they with zeal embrace them. Rase them! What do they make of bishop's hierarchy? Archie![117] Are crosses, images, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... counsel for the defence made a last effort, and undertook to show that the words of which complaint was made, would not bear the construction put on them by the information. With this view he began to read the context. In a moment he was roared down. 'You sha'n't turn the court into a conventicle!' The noise of weeping was heard from some of those who surrounded Baxter. ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... Juvenile Anecdotes founded on Facts; Collected for the Amusement of Children, 1803, by Priscilla Wakefield. A hundred years ago Mrs. Wakefield's books for the nursery (which, if its literature is a guide, was in those days less of a nursery than a conventicle) were in every shop. She poured them forth—little rushing streams of didacticism. The present work, from which, for its quaintness, I have chosen 'The Journal,' is a kind of Ann and Jane Taylor in very obvious prose. Little girls having spent their half-crowns on themselves, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... with me," he said presently. "I know how you have been brought up, how through no fault of your own you have wandered out of the warm bosom of the true Church to sit at the clay feet of the conventicle. You doubt it? Well, let me look again, let me look. Yes, only last week you were seated in a whitewashed room overhanging the market-place. I see it all—an ugly little man with a harsh voice is preaching, preaching what I think blasphemy. Baskets—baskets? ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... A Conventicle Sabbath was a solemn day. The time and place having been fixed beforehand, the people were notified in a very private manner. A kind of wireless telegraphy seemed to have been operated by the Covenanters. The news spread ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... to show him that the lecture or address I had come to give was not an official or ministerial act; but he would not see that. I also suggested that there was no law against it. He, begging my pardon, said "The 'Conventicle Act' had not been repealed yet, and that no one could lawfully hold a meeting ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... Brigade, and though I am a born Scot, nobody remembers that, and I pass for an Englishman. And to tell the truth, I'm happier with you volunteers than among those canny Scots; they are as jealous and as bigoted as a Roundhead Conventicle, and I don't envy the man who gets promotion among them. But it ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... 'Tis they alone that can restore pointed architecture to its former glorious state; without it all that is done will be a tame and heartless copy." He points out the want of sympathy between "these vast edifices" and the Protestant worship, which might as well be carried on in a barn or conventicle or square meeting-house. Hence, the nave has been blocked up with pews, the choir or transept partitioned off to serve as a parish church, roodloft and chancel screen removed, the altar displaced by a table, and the sedilia scattered about in odd corners. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... on that account a clause was inserted in his commission permitting him to have any preacher he might choose.(1593) His granddaughter was married to Sir Robert Walpole. He was at one time alderman of Cripplegate ward, but in December, 1682, he fell foul of Charles II for attending a conventicle at Pinmakers' Hall, and the Court of Aldermen received orders to remove him.(1594) He had recently, however (6 Aug., 1687), been restored to his aldermanry and to his rank of precedence by commission from James,(1595) and now, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... night in the year 1677, a party of troopers were passing near the house of old John Brydone, and he was known to them not only as being one who was a defender of the Covenant, but also as one who harboured the preachers, and whose house was regarded as a conventicle. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... in regard to my brother Leonard, who he did greatly fear was likely to make shipwreck of the faith; and that Mr. Richardson had written him concerning the young man, telling him that he did visit the Quakers when at Newbury, and even went over to their conventicle at Hampton, on the Lord's day, in the company of the Brewster family, noted Quakers and ranters. He had the last evening had some words with the lad, but with small satisfaction. Being sorely troubled by this account, I begged him to send for Leonard, which he did, and, when he did ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... vain to trifle in this matter, the light, foolish handling of them by mulcts, fines, etc.,—it is their glory and their advantage. If the gallows instead of the Counter, and the galleys instead of the fines, were the reward of going to a conventicle, to preach or hear, there would not be so many sufferers. The spirit of martyrdom is over; they that will go to church to be chosen sheriffs and mayors would go to forty churches rather ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... mist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle. The very dew seemed to hang upon the trees later into the day than usual, as ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... this lively lady knew nothing of Nonconformists, except that they were unfashionable: she did not distinguish one conventicle from another, and Mr Apollos with his enlightened interpretations seemed to her as heavy a bore, if not quite so ridiculous, as Mr Johns could have been with his solemn twang at the Baptist chapel in the lowest suburbs, or as a ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... o' creysh (grease)! Na, thank ye. I dinna want to come unner a pour o' creysh. It wad blaud me a'thegither. Is that the gait ye baptize i' your conventicle?" ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... of mankind in his own shape, or could discover him as, lurking in the disguise of a raven, he inspired the rhetoric of a Quaker's meeting. In some cases, celestial guardians kept guard over their field-meetings. At a conventicle held on the Lomond-hills, the Rev. Mr. Blacader was credibly assured, under the hands of four honest men, that at the time the meeting was disturbed by the soldiers, some women who had remained at home, "clearly perceived as the form ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... a conventicle, Master Cairnes," I asked grimly, "an assembly of crop-eared worshippers, that you venture to lift your voice in such a howl when you wake? It will be better if you learn to keep still at such a time, if you hope to companion long ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... prayers in the adjoining church, and when the Nonjuring Conventicle was over, I visited the said Dean Hickes, who is said to be bishop of ——" [Thetford]. Both Nelson and Hickes resided at this time in Ormond Street; probably the conventicle was at one of their houses. It should be noted that Thoresby, having quitted the Conventicles of the Dissenters, had only recently joined what he calls the Church established by law. He appears to have known as much about the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... have changed; his eyes were bright and feverish; his face was drawn; his voice had lost its shipmaster's brusqueness, and had acquired the drone of the seaman's shore conventicle. There was no doubt about his earnestness; in Clay's mind, there was no doubt about the complications which would ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... all the prelates and nobles upon whom he could rely, to assemble at Worms, where he promised to meet them without fail. Twenty-four bishops and a great number of laymen hastened to obey the summons. The conventicle sat three days, and the following charges were formally preferred against the Pope: "That he had by force extracted a solemn oath from the clergy not to adhere to the king, nor to favor or obey any other Pope ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... wonder she does not turn him to Christianity; methinks a Conventicle should ill agree ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... churches fell upon me as I crossed the threshold—an awe I never fail to feel—heightened in many cases, no doubt, by the sense of antiquity and of art, but an awe which I have felt all the same in crossing the threshold of an old Puritan conventicle, as the place where men worship and have worshipped the God of their fathers, although for art there was only the science of common bricklaying, and for beauty staring ugliness. To the involuntary fancy, the air of petition and of holy need ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... entertained in the house of a pious and charitable kinsman; the most spacious room was consecrated to the uses of religious worship; and the name of Anastasia was chosen to express the resurrection of the Nicene faith. This private conventicle was afterwards converted into a magnificent church; and the credulity of the succeeding age was prepared to believe the miracles and visions, which attested the presence, or at least the protection, of the Mother of God. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... rescued on the backs of waders; the foundations of a chapel, which was building on lower ground, were reported sapped, and a staunch Churchman of our Welsh acquaintance stood rapturously contrasting the fate of the conventicle with the security of his own place of worship on the neighbouring knoll. "If Borth goes, the church won't, anyhow!" he cried, in self-forgetting fervour. No lives were lost, though several were barely saved. One of our party ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... at the mercy of the man whom he had attacked. He asked for his life, and Alexander Gordon granted it to him, making him promise by his honour as a gentleman that whenever he had the fortune to approach a conventicle he would retire, if he saw a white flag elevated in a particular manner upon a flagstaff. This seemed but a little condition to weigh against a man's ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... dispute between Catholic and Protestant must have seemed but trifles. He stayed where he had early taken root, in his Servite convent at S. Fosca, because he there could dedicate his life to God and Venice better than in any Protestant conventicle. Had Venice inclined toward rupture with Rome, had the Republic possessed the power to make that rupture with success, Sarpi would have hailed the event gladly, as introducing for Italy the prospect of spiritual freedom, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds |
