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Theology   /θiˈɑlədʒi/   Listen
Theology

noun
(pl. theologies)
1.
The rational and systematic study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truth.  Synonym: divinity.
2.
A particular system or school of religious beliefs and teachings.  Synonym: theological system.  "Roman Catholic theology"
3.
The learned profession acquired by specialized courses in religion (usually taught at a college or seminary).



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"Theology" Quotes from Famous Books



... is—and it has not as yet happened on this earth—equal fighting between properly manned and equipped ironclads at sea. (And the well-bred young gentlemen of means who are privileged to officer the British Army nowadays will be no more good at this sort of thing than they are at controversial theology or electrical engineering or anything else that demands ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... so to produce a large supply of individuals. In the published accounts there is no hint that the blood is supposed to have atoning power. There is no sense of wrongdoing or unworthiness on the part of the performers, or of any relation to a deity. The theology of Central Australia is still obscure—the general religious situation in that region has ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... temple had pylons a hundred and fifty feet high, and which possessed an immense library of papyruses, and on the walls of which were written and depicted, as it were, an encyclopedia of the geography, astronomy, and theology of that period. He visited the quarries in Chennu, in Nubia, or Kom-Ombo; he made offerings to Horus, the god of light, and to Sebek, the spirit of darkness. He was on the island Ab, which among dark cliffs seemed an emerald, produced the best dates, and was called the Capital of Elephants, ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... not even thought whether she was a Christian or not. She had not even once put her finger on her spiritual pulse, to gauge the evidences of her faith. A system of theology would have been unintelligible to her. She could not have defined one doctrine so as to have satisfied a sound divine. She had not even read the greater part of the Bible, but, in her bitter extremity, the Spirit of God, employing ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... of yours, which you swallowed whole, contain all sorts of things that were merely local, the respect for the chief of your clan, or such things; the village ghost, the family feud, or what not? Did you not take in those things, too, along with your theology?" ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... Christianity without assimilating the intellectual subtleties of the Eastern Church, and for the most part in consequence adopted the Arian form. But when the Frankish horde descended, Clovis accepted the orthodox theology, thereby in effect giving it permanence and obliterating Arianism in the West. Theodoric, the Gothic king of Italy, in nominal subjection to the emperor, was the last effective upholder of toleration for his own Arian creed. Almost simultaneous with his death ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... Books of theology and controversial divinity, commentaries, and polyglots, sets of the fathers, and sermons, which might each furnish forth ten brief discourses of modern date, books of science, ancient and modern, classical authors in their best and rarest forms; such formed the late ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... an Aristotelian basis, are antecedent to Natural Theology. They belong rather to Natural Anthropology: they are a study of human nature. But as human nature points to God, so Ethics are not wholly irrespective of God, considering Him as the object of human happiness and worship,—the Supreme Being without whom all the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... that there was good supply, as well as those of Ainsworth and Clyfton and of the works of William Ames, the renowned Franeker Professor, the controversial opponent but sincere friend of Robinson: the founder of evangelical "systematic theology," [method—Methodist? D.W.] whom death alone prevented from becoming the President of Harvard College. We may be equally sure that the few cases of books in the freight of the Pilgrim ship included copies of the publications of the "hidden and hunted press" of Brewster ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... which proves," concluded the ex-student of theology, "that in all its sinful life this unfortunate reptile has never attended mass—at least, I've never seen him among the many other caymans ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... Jobs." This was soon abbreviated to the simple "Professor," which had a singular significance also when applied to one who, in addition to all his other excellencies, believed himself to be pretty well posted up in law, physic, and theology, upon either of which he would stop in his work to hold forth to anyone ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... treatment is restricted to general outlines, with an aim simply to clarify current ideas of miracle and the supernatural, so as to find firm holding ground for tenable positions in the present "drift period" of theology. The chief exception made to this general treatment is the discussion given to a class of miracles regarded with as much incredulity as any, yet as capable as any of being accredited as probably historical events—the raisings of the "dead." The insistence of some writers on the virgin ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton

... a strange fate that down to the most recent times art has pictured Jesus all meek and gentle, and theology has emphasized his passive suffering? Yet he was high-power energy. His epigrams and hyperboles crack like a whip-lash. He was up before dawn. He always rose to the sight of human need. To do the will of ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... modernised in an epilogue, does not lose its dignity, for now the recoming of Arthur is the recoming of Christ in a wider and fairer Christianity. We feel here how the new movement of religion and theology had sent its full and exciting wave into Tennyson. Arthur's death in the battle and the mist is the death of a form of Christianity which, exhausted, died in doubt and darkness. His advent as a modern gentleman is the coming ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... promising. Considering the unorthodoxy in religious matters which is generally said to have characterized Laplace in later years, it is interesting to note that when he was a boy the subject which first claimed his attention was theology. He was, however, soon introduced to the study of mathematics, in which he presently became so proficient, that while he was still no more than eighteen years old, he obtained employment as a mathematical teacher ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... completely English in training, method, and tradition, showing nothing distinctively American in their writings except the incidental subject. The first authors whom we may regard as characteristic of the new country—leaving out the productions of speculative theology—devoted their genius to politics. It is in the political writings immediately preceding and following the Revolution—such as those of Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Franklin, Jefferson—that the new birth of a nation of original force and ideas is declared. It has been said, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... lines each, was the unit on which the rental charges were based. Such a sheet at the beginning of the thirteenth century rented for about twenty cents a term; and since an ordinary textbook of philosophy or theology or canon law contained many sheets, these charges constituted no inconsiderable part of the cost of instruction. The books must be returned before the student left the university; sales were at first surreptitious and illegal, but became common early in the fourteenth century. Reasonable ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater

... this great Bishop in thus founding an institution on these lines for the study of Theology, is remarkable as illustrating the spirit of revolt from the absorption by monks and friars of all existing educational affairs. The College was strictly limited to secular clerks, who were "sent down" if they chose to join any of the regular Orders. The subsequent ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How

... its essence was absolutely simple. Its founder summed it up in two sentences: expressing the duty of man to man, and of man to God. That was all the theology ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... have translated some of the prayers into the language of the country, I was unable to obtain a copy. The only religious teachers now in this part of the country are two gentlemen of color, natives of Goa. The one who officiates at Tete, named Pedro Antonio d'Araujo, is a graduate in Dogmatic Theology and Moral Philosophy. There is but a single school in Tete, and it is attended only by the native Portuguese children, who are taught to read and write. The black population is totally uncared for. The soldiers are marched every Sunday ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... gratitude. He has made the world more beautiful to us, and unsealed our ears to voices of praise and messages of love that might otherwise have been unheard. We commend the volume not only as a valuable appendix to works of natural theology, but as a series of prose idylls of unusual ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... one fruit to another, I have expressed my own views frankly; at the same time, I think the reader will remember that I have taken no little pains to give the opinions of others. Dogmatism in pomology is as objectionable as in theology. I shall be glad to have my errors pointed out, and will ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... demons. On the morning of St. Bartholomew's massacre, Charles IX was conscientious toward the cathedral and attended mass during three hours; in the evening he filled the streets of Paris with rivers of blood. John Calvin was conscientious toward his logical system. He was very faithful to his theology, but he had no conscience toward his fellows, and burned Servetus without ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... Poor "Tawny Rachel!" The theology was imperfect enough; but so had been her education and advantages. Yet as surely as her scrupulous, never-failing honesty, and unmurmuring self-denial, must have been inspired by something beyond human teaching; ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty

... have heard from her upon the subject. And yet notwithstanding all his care she suspected him, by instinct, not by knowledge. For his part he was proud of her and would listen with pleasure when, still a mere child, she engaged his guests boldly in argument, for instance a bishop or a dean on theology, or a statesman on current politics. Already he had formed great plans for her future; she was to marry a peer who took an active part in things, or at any rate a leading politician, and to become a power in the land. But of ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... doubt they were bribed into it by the companion picture of a green unbounded Paradise; but, O my friend, what an unworthy kind of goodness, the mere mask of virtue! And now that the Inferno has practically disappeared from our theology, the belief in eternal life simply means unlimited cakes and ale, for good and evil alike, for all eternity. How such a belief can be moralising I fail to understand. To my mind, indeed, far from ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne

... inner and real Burr, had far to fall. His visible divergence from first conditions was as striking as, no doubt, it was natural. As the grandson of Jonathan Edwards, the son of the Reverend Aaron Burr, and reared by relatives of that same morbid, hideous, unhuman school of early New England theology, it only needed a wayward nature in addition to brain and spirit to send him flying on his own tangent as soon as he was old enough to think. After that his congenital selfishness did the rest. For a time he ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... Titania, with a face and voice so sparkling that two musty habitues of the shop popped their heads out of the alcoves marked ESSAYS and THEOLOGY and peered in amazement. One of these even went so far as to purchase the copy of Leigh Hunt's Wishing Cap Papers he had been munching through, in order to have an excuse to approach the group and satisfy his bewildered eyes. When Miss Chapman took the ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... this so far, that an old musty Hebrew concordance, which we had in a present from a neighbouring priest, by mere dint of applying it, as doctors do a blistering plaster, between his shoulders, Stitch, in a dozen pilgrimages, acquired as much rational theology as the said priest had done by forty ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... amount of optimistic theology or philosophy can restore the child's leg, or ears, or eyes. It is utter nonsense to say that miracles like these can ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Greek in the "dark" ages has long been known to be a figment of ignorance itself, circumstances connected with, though not confined to, the concentration of learning and teaching in the clergy brought about a disproportionate attention to theology. The result was that the completest Anglo-Saxon library of which we can form any well-based conception would have contained about ten cases of religious to one of non-religious books, and would have held in that eleventh ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... philosophers to popular religion. The second is Decharme, La critique des traditions religieuses chez les Grecs (Paris, 1904); it is not fertile in new points of view, but it has suggested several details which I might else have overlooked. Such books as Caird, The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers (Glasgow, 1904), or Moon, Religious Thought of the Greeks (Cambridge, Mass., 1919), barely touch on the relation to popular belief; of Louis, Les doctrines religieuses des philosophes grecs, I have not been able to make use. I regret that Poul Helms, The Conception ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... power that man acquires who masters it. He who can lead himself, or others, into a habit can do anything. Even Religion is, in fact, nothing else. "Religion," said the reviewer of "The Evolution of the Idea of God," by GRANT ALLEN, "he defines as Custom or Practice—not theory, not theology, not ethics, not spiritual aspirations, but a certain set of more or less similar observances: propitiation, prayer, praise, offerings, the request for Divine favors, the deprecation of Divine anger, or other misfortunes"—in ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland

... know where I should stop: for, indeed, God made the world just as much for me as for any one else. Perhaps I may go out with something that I had not got before. I need not tell you that to me reformations in morals are as meaningless and vulgar as Reformations in theology. But while to propose to be a better man is a piece of unscientific cant, to have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered. And such I think ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde

... for this trip, sir. But having come so far I'm going to earn out my pay. What's done will not be on my conscience. The shipmaster's blameless in these matters; it's the owner who drives him that earns his punishment in the hereafter; and that's sound theology." ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... of Methodism into Nova Scotia was not the establishment of a sect or a party in dogmatic theology, but it was the revival of spiritual Christianity, exempt from the trammels of ecclesiasticism and the exclusiveness of dogmatism. As such it became a strong and elevating factor in the social life of the people, imparting lofty ideals, which were wrought out ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean

... an intellectual novelty in the shape of a religious philosophy. Socinian theology and the philosophy of Hartley had become distasteful. 'Whatever is against right reason, that no faith can oblige us to believe.' Coleridge quotes these words from Jeremy Taylor. And yet ever since the dawn of the Renaissance, had subsisted a conflict between reason ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... could have got home just as well without me, but I had taken a fancy to my new acquaintance, and found a strange charm in his conversation. He talked incessantly and on many subjects. He discoursed on theology, literature, science, the weather, the army, the navy, music, painting, sculpture, photography, engraving, geology, chemistry, and on a thousand other arts and sciences, in all of which he showed himself deeply versed, and far beyond my depth. He had a brogue, and I had none, but as for ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... not yet proven that there are other inhabited worlds. I an only dealing with questions of practical theology," he answered, with some heat and an attempt to ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... philosophical comprehension, and with distinguished ability. Faithful to the substantial deductions of science, it strenuously defends the received principles of religion and presents, from its elevated point of view, a variety of conclusions of no less importance to natural theology, than to a lucid conception of the structure ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... principle into her, and Henry Esmond might have married his young kinswoman had he been more masterful and self-confident. Thackeray takes us to a larger and gayer scene than Scott's Edinburgh of narrow streets and gloomy jails and working people and old-world theology, but yet it may be after all Scott is stronger. No bit of history, for instance, in Esmond takes such a grip of the imagination as the story of the Porteous mob. After a single reading one carries that night scene ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren

... Drake's theology was at variance with that of the Founder of our faith. His method was rigid self-assertion, and the power of the strong. The affront he conceived to have been laid upon him and upon the country he represented ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... in interest is the Commedia. Any attempt to explain it, by narrowing that interest to politics, philosophy, the moral life, or theology itself, must prove inadequate. Theology strikes the keynote; but history, natural and metaphysical science, poetry, and art, each in their turn join in the harmony, independent, yet ministering to the whole. If from the poem itself we could be for a single moment in doubt of the reality ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... and where that life was to be passed the Romans were in doubt. We have noticed above how little the common people accepted the belief of the poets in Jupiter and Pluto and the other gods, or rather how little their theology had been influenced by Greek art and literature. In their conception of the place of abode after death, it is otherwise. Many of them believe with Virgil that it lies below the earth. As one of ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott

... disturbing influence was religion, or rather theology; not, of course, religion in the proper sense of the word, or theology based on critical principles, but theological conceptions deduced from a slavish adherence to texts of Scripture, very often seriously misunderstood. To quote a single example: when it is said in Ezekiel ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... to study theology, he, in the fall of the same year in which he graduated from Biddle, entered Princeton Theological Seminary. At the same time he entered Princeton College to study the History of Philosophy and Psychology under ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... Boyd,—I won't ask you to forgive me for not writing before, because I know very well that you would rather have not heard from me immediately.... And so, you and Mrs. Mathew have been tearing to pieces—to the very rags—all my elaborate theology! And when Mr. Young is 'strong enough,' he is to help you at your cruel work! 'The points upon which you and I differed' are so numerous, that if I really am wrong upon every one of them, Mrs. Mathew has ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... He had begun with theology; but the story of the quarrel between Jacob and Esau had led him to take up the study of law. As a law student he had come across an interesting poisoning case, which had proved to him that a study ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... appeared several years after his death, was equally dedicated to the defence of the Talmud. It has, moreover, considerable scientific merit, being one of the first research works in the domain of talmudic theology. A number of other publications by Levinsohn deal with Hebrew philology and lexicography. All these efforts support Levinsohn's claim to the title of Founder of a modern Jewish Science in Russia, though his scholarly ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... addressed his discourses more to the emotions than to the reason of his hearers. His system of future rewards and punishments was of the most simple and concrete character, and formed the staple of his sermons. He had no patience with the refinements and reticences of modern theology, and in his later years observed with scorn and sorrow the progress of education and scholarly training in his own communion. After listening one day to a prayer from a young minister which shone more ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... Military experts?—since what she had come to apply for was an army and the privilege of leading it to battle against the enemies of France. Oh no; it was a great bench of priests and monks—profoundly leaned and astute casuists—renowned professors of theology! Instead of setting a military commission to find out if this valorous little soldier could win victories, they set a company of holy hair-splitters and phrase-mongers to work to find out if the soldier was sound in her piety and had no doctrinal leaks. The rats were devouring the house, but ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... Apostolical succession, or the general order of the Church, will form within our pale an intolerant party, intriguing for dominion, restless and oppressive, never to be satisfied until they have crushed or excluded all who have dared to profess their rejection of the Calvinistic theology. ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull

... institution in the appropriate company of one of the most distinguished Free Church missionaries in India; and was shown by the rector of the college, with the utmost courtesy and kindness, all that was most remarkable about the place. The library is extensive, and contains some rare works on theology and canon law; and in the Borgian Museum annexed to it there is a rich collection of Oriental MSS., heathen idols, and natural curiosities sent by missionaries from various parts of the world. We were especially struck with the magnificent "Codex Mexicanus," a loosely-bound, bulky ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... long." But that arrival will require a Chapter to itself;—most important arrival, that, of all! The least important, again, is probably that of Candidatus Linsenbarth, in these same weeks;—a rugged poverty-stricken old Licentiate of Theology; important to no mortal in Berlin or elsewhere:—upon whom, however, and upon his procedures in that City, we propose, for our own objects, to bestow a few glances; rugged Narrative of the thing, in singular exotic dialect, but true every word, having ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... his Natural Theology, and then gather his peas for dinner, very likely gathering some hint for his work at the same time. He would converse with his classical neighbour, Mr. Yates, or he would reply to his invitation that he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various

... all, some refusing to regard the question in any but a purely religious light, and objecting to associate in the task of legislation for those whom they regarded as adherents of an idolatrous superstition; while those who mingled political reasoning with that founded on theology dwelt also on the danger to be apprehended to the state, if political power were given to those whose allegiance to the King was divided with another allegiance which they acknowledged to a foreign prelate. And he had presently an unmistakable proof ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... unknown to the Moslems; and the sages of the law are the guides of their conscience and the oracles of their faith. From the Atlantic to the Ganges, the Koran is acknowledged as the fundamental code, not only of theology, but of civil and criminal jurisprudence; and the laws which regulate the actions and the property of mankind are guarded by the infallible and immutable sanction of the will of God. This religious servitude is attended with ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... subject of this scandalous story was an English girl, educated at Cologne, who left her home in man's disguise with her lover (the monk Folda), and went to Athens, where she studied law. She went to Rome and studied theology, earning so great a reputation that, at the death of Leo IV., she was chosen his successor. Her sex was discovered by the birth of a child, while she was going to the Lateran Basilica, between the Coliseum and the church of St. Clement. Pope ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... for him the cognomen of "Squeaky Sandy," and a most irritatingly persistent temper. Into his hands, while candidates and examiners were disporting themselves in the calm waters of Systematic Theology, fell poor Dick, to his confusion and the temporary withholding of his license. It was impossible but that in the college itself, and in the college circles of society, this event should become a subject of much ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... the people of the real presence of the deity, though a plain mortal had personated her and performed her office. But we have no such design of imposing on our reader; and therefore those who object to the heathen theology, may, if they please, change our goddess into the above-mentioned basket-woman. Our intention, in short, is to introduce our heroine with the utmost solemnity in our power, with an elevation of stile, and all ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... only did he miscalculate. Lord Torrington knew something about boats, possessed that little knowledge which is in all great arts, theology, medicine and boat-sailing, a dangerous thing. He knew, after the first immersion of the gunwale, when the water flowed in, that the boat was sure to upset. He knew that the greatest risk on such occasions lies in being entangled in some rope and perhaps pinned ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... authority than the faculty of theology at Paris determined, by a formal decree of the 28th of May, 1448, that this worship was very proper; for that, to use their words, "Non repugnat pietati fidelium credere quod aliquid de sanguine Christi effuso ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... Theology, dogmatic or polemic, is an explanatory defence of some particular faith. Together with mythology and symbolism, it furnishes the material from which the Science and Philosophy of Religion seek to educe the laws and frame the generalizations ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... spite of the important place which it occupies in the theological system of St. Paul, we have no right to assign to it, in the form in which we put it, the decisive dogmatic importance which it still occupies in many conceptions of Christian theology. For we cannot question the right of the natural sciences to enter into the discussion of this question, and to look for a solution of it. As soon as we make this concession, it necessarily and naturally follows from it, that we must no longer make ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... Faith."—If to an unlearned but earnest and thoughtful neighbour I give the advice;—"Use the Old Testament to express the affections excited, and to confirm the faith and morals taught you, in the New, and leave all the rest to the students and professors of theology and Church history! You profess only to be a Christian:"—am I ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... Christian. Instead of retiring from the congregation, when the voice of the deacon dismissed the profane multitude, he prayed with the faithful, disputed with the bishops, preached on the most sublime and intricate subjects of theology, celebrated with sacred rites the vigil of Easter, and publicly declared himself, not only a partaker, but, in some measure, a priest and hierophant of the Christian mysteries. The pride of Constantine might assume, and his services ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... following Catalogues:—John Leslie's (58. Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn) Catalogue of English and Foreign Theology, including several works of very rare occurrence, and forming the largest portion of the valuable library of the Rev. W. Maskell, M.A.; C. Gancia's (73. King's Road, Brighton,) Second Catalogue of a Choice ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various

... responsibility in the matter. But a training in restraint, when carried through a long series of generations, is the best preparation for freedom. The law laid on the earlier generations, as old theology stated the matter, has been the schoolmaster to bring the later generations to Christ; or, as new science expresses exactly the same idea, the later generations have become immunized and have finally acquired a certain degree of protection against the virus which would ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... lad, who, by living on beggar's fare, managed to get an education in theology and medicine, must evermore stand as one of the great pioneers of Central African exploration. When on the last day of October, 1816, that memorable year in missions, he set sail for the Cape of Good Hope, he was only twenty years of age. But ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... fighting, dare-devil Corps, able and willing to drive Hell before it, that Corps must be possessed, and that fully, by this spirit of life. Nothing else can effectively take its place. No education, learning, Bible knowledge, theology, social amusements, or anything of the kind will be a satisfactory substitute. The Corps that seeks to put any of these things in the place of life will find them a mockery, a delusion, and a snare; ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... refinement of touch, in beauty of colour, in the human faculties of order and grace, they are long since, evidently, past the flint and bone stage,—refined enough, now,—subtle enough, now, to learn anything that is pretty and fine, whether in theology or any other matter. ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... profound branch of his subject. But he saw the importance of it for all that. In his Frederick the Great, he tells us how the young prince's iron-handed father employed a learned university professor to teach the boy theology. The doctor dosed his youthful pupil with creeds and catechisms until his brain whirled with meaningless tags and phrases. And in recording the story Carlyle bursts out upon the dry-as-dust professor. 'In heaven's name,' he cries, 'teach the boy nothing ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... preparation of young men for the Christian ministry, that they might go into all the world and preach the Gospel. One truth he bade them bear in mind: that this training was to be given without sectarian theology; that his brethren themselves represented a revolution among believers, having cast aside the dogmas of modern teachers, and taken, as the one infallible guide of their faith and practice, the Bible simply; so making it their sole work to bring all modern believers together into one church, ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... agreeing with this estimate of the ancient Egyptians. Their progress in mechanical arts, their hieroglyphical literature, and even their theology, with its mystic trine, marked them as a people far surpassing their contemporaries; and they were not the less great because their greatness is now extinct. The Arian{C} tribes, though unskilled in many of the most useful arts of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... to the University of Gttingen as a student of theology, which science, however, he shortly abandoned for the more congenial one of philology. The propriety of this charge he amply attested by his Essay on the Geography of Homer, which displayed both an intelligent and comprehensive ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... never committed the folly of ordering any solemnity. He neither learned nor repeated any prayer of the Koran, as many persons have asserted; neither did he advocate fatalism, polygamy, or any other doctrine of the Koran. Bonaparte employed himself better than in discussing with the Imaums the theology of the children of Ismael. The ceremonies, at which policy induced him to be present, were to him, and to all who accompanied him, mere matters of curiosity. He never set foot in a mosque; and only on one occasion, which I shall hereafter mention, dressed himself in the Mahometan costume. He ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... other healthful sports robbed him of a certain dignity in their eyes. Some of the women of the congregation had been inclined to side with the deacons, for it hurt their vanity that the pastor found so many other interests when he might have been sitting in dark, stuffy rooms discussing theology with them; but Douglas had been either unconscious of or indifferent to their resentment, and had gone on his way with a cheery nod and an unconquerable conviction of right, that had only left them floundering. He intended ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo

... of any but a very small proportion of the people in the world. Thus the character of God appeared unlovely, and it was wicked not to love God; and this was my condemnation. I had learned the shorter catechism with the proofs from Scripture, and I understood the meaning of the dogmatic theology. Watts's hymns were much more easy to learn, but the doctrine was the same. There was no getting away from the feeling that the world was under a curse ever since that unlucky appleeating in the garden of Eden. Why, oh! why had not the sentence of death been carried out at once, and a new start ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... Padre Michele had been in time, we should have been sure of the fact. You see the Rector did not think I knew enough of theology to decide. I am a submissive child of the Church," replied the husband. "As for the ghost, I took care to provide against forgetting my folly. On the top shelf of the laboratory I hung up the bullet-pierced ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... am glad to believe that the matchless melody and the chiseled beauty of Tennyson's verse will charm the senses of men to whom his curious mixture of pantheism and Broad Church theology, which the middle classes of England and America in the latter decades of the nineteenth century welcomed as the ultimate massage of philosophy, will not be ridiculous only because it will be meaningless. But I am unable to think of the men of the future ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... brilliant grandson of President Edwards. Graduating at Princeton at the early age of seventeen, he studied theology a year, then law, which on the outbreak of the Revolution he deserted for army life at Boston. He went in Arnold's expedition to Canada, was promoted to be colonel, and served on Washington's staff. In Canada he did service as a spy, disguised as a priest and speaking French or Latin ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... intensely modern work, the distinguished author sums up the states of science, faith and theology in their bearing, separately and collectively, upon religion and immortality; and it constitutes, therefore, an extremely valuable contribution to the literature of the present important crisis in ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... He exhorted them to erect schools in every cathedral and monastery. Schools were accordingly established throughout his vast dominions: they were divided into two classes; arithmetic, grammar, and music were taught in the lower, the liberal arts and theology in ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler

... points, in treating which extended discussions might be demanded. If I had been governed by such notions as the Reviewer seems to entertain, my book, which he complains of as too long, would have been lengthened to the dimensions of a cyclopaedia of theology, biography, and philosophy. For keeping to my subject, and not diverting attention to writings of no inherent value, in any point of view, and which would contribute nothing to the elucidation of my topics, I am charged by this Reviewer, in the baldest terms, with ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... company is silent, and except when the conversation touches a sympathetic chord in her nature, little given to demonstration. Then she will talk earnestly on great matters, generally on philosophy or theology, but in vain will you seek to draw her into conversation on the little matters of ordinary chit-chat. She lives in a small circle of friends, where she can say and do as she pleases. Her son is a poor, weak-brained creature, perpetually annoying the whole neighbourhood by beating on ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... faith, and not on works; and when he declaimed against the Law of God. To what length some of his sect pushed this verbal doctrine is known; but the real notions of this Agricola probably never will be! Bayle considered him as a harmless dreamer in theology, who had confused his head by Paul's controversies with the Jews; but Mosheim, who bestows on this early reformer the epithets of ventosus and versipellis, windy and crafty! or, as his translator has it, charges him with "vanity, presumption, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... full of spirit, of modest pride in their position, were familiar with much good literature, could converse with piquancy and understanding on subjects of general interest, were trained in the subtleties of a solid theology, and bore themselves in any company with that traditional breeding which we associate with the name of lady. Such strong native sense had they, such innate refinement and courtesythe product, it used ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... questioning. "And I am going after Stranger that way, too, if ever they leave the front door to my house unlocked. It is wicked to shut up a little boy, and the devil would help me get him out." Charlotte's purpose was high if she did slightly mix her theology. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... dependence upon this agency. Religion is the social attitude toward the non-human environment." This is not synonymous with sectarianism, creeds, dogmas or ceremonies. Creeds and ceremonies have to do with ecclesiasticism not with religion per se. Creeds are developments of theology and dogma is an outgrowth of religion and not religion. Modes of worship developed into rites and ceremonies are ecclesiastical means of fostering the religious spirit but not religion. Religion is not a feeling to be imposed from without. Religion is a life and a life-long ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... Estella was placed, Mrs. Brandley by name, was a widow, with one daughter several years older than Estella. The mother looked young, and the daughter looked old; the mother's complexion was pink, and the daughter's was yellow; the mother set up for frivolity, and the daughter for theology. They were in what is called a good position, and visited, and were visited by, numbers of people. Little, if any, community of feeling subsisted between them and Estella, but the understanding was established that they were necessary ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... wish to know what was the exact theology of Thot, of Zerdust, of Sanchuniathon, of the first Brahmins, and we are ignorant of the inventor of the shuttle! The first weaver, the first mason, the first smith, were no doubt great geniuses, but they were ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... all the nations sent their representatives. It was commerce which made Alexandria so rich and beautiful, for which it was more distinguished than both Tyre and Carthage. Unlike most commercial cities, it was intellectual, and its schools of poetry, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, and theology were more renowned than even those of Athens during the third and fourth centuries. For wealth, population, intelligence, and art, it was the second city of the world. It would be a great capital in ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... and though their scrupulous adherence to a stern code of ceremonies often exposed them to much obloquy, they succeeded, notwithstanding, in making many converts in most of the places where they resided. [12:1] A prominent article of their creed was adopted in a quarter where their theology otherwise found no favour, for the Unity of the Great First Cause was now distinctly acknowledged in the schools of ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... conversion, shows how stage by stage he relinquishes worldly things, scientific renown, and above all woman, and finally, when nothing more binds him to this world, takes the vows of a monk and enters a monastery where no dogmas or theology, but only broadminded humanity and resignation hold sway. What, however, in an inner sense, distinguishes Strindberg's drama from the Bible narrative is that the conversion itself—although what leads up to it is convincingly described, both logically ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... Poet's Troubles Echoes from the City Love's Wiles Hazard in Love A Mother's Love "The Shadow of the Cross" Curates and Colliers: on reading in a Comic Paper absurd comparisons between the wages of Curates and Colliers Wanted—a Wife: a Voice from the Ladies Sympathy A Fragment Law versus Theology: on an Eminent County Court Judge The Broken Model Impromptu: on an Inveterate Spouter A Character Couplet Pause: on the hesitation of the Czar to Force a Passage of the Danube, June, 1877 The Test of the ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... convent to convent, in quest of what was called "Hospitality," that is, obtaining board and lodging on the condition of holding a debate in Latin, on some point theological or metaphysical, with any monk who would become the champion of the strife. Now, as the theology was Catholic, and the metaphysics Aristotelian, Stanton sometimes wished himself at the miserable Posada from whose filth and famine he had been fighting his escape; but though his reverend antagonists always denounced ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... attest his prodigious industry. In his own eyes and those of his contemporaries the most important among these were the commentaries and homilies upon various books of the Bible which he had drawn from the writings of the Fathers. But he was far from confining himself to theology. In treatises compiled as textbooks for his scholars, Baeda threw together all that the world had then accumulated in astronomy and meteorology, in physics and music, in philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, medicine. But the encyclopaedic ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... coprolites, and the excrements of the Ichthyosauri, have been found in such abundance in England (as, for instance, near Lyme Regis), that, according to Buckland's expression, they lie like potatoes scattered in the ground. See Buckland, 'Geology considered with reference to Natural Theology', vol. i., p. 188-202 and 305. With respect to the hope expressed by Hooke "to raise a chronology" from the mere study of broken and fossilized shells "and to state the interval of time wherein such or such castrophes and mutations ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... forms one of the most beautiful episodes of the poem. The third circle includes gluttons; the fourth misers and spendthrifts; each succeeding circle embracing what the poet deems a deeper shade of guilt, and inflicting appropriate punishment. The Christian and heathen systems of theology are here freely interwoven. We have Minos visiting the Stygian Lake, where heretics are burning; we meet Cerberus and the harpies, and we accompany the poet across several of the fabulous rivers of Erebus. A fearful scene appears in the deepest circle of the infernal abodes. Here, among those ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... House of Commons or from among the members of the Senate and House of Representatives combined. I take it to be incontrovertible that a list representing such eminence and so great accomplishment in so many fields (theology, statesmanship, war, literature, government, science, and affairs) could not be produced from the legislative chambers of any ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... critics say is that a man must not discuss religion unless he is an expert in theology. When I try, as I have once or twice tried, to criticise some current conception of a Christian dogma, the theological reviewer, with a titter that resembles the titter of Miss Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby, says that a writer who presumes to ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... of the Roman Catholic religion as you can be: and no man who talks such nonsense shall ever tithe the product of the earth, nor meddle with the ecclesiastical establishment in any shape; but what have I to do with the speculative nonsense of his theology, when the object is to elect the mayor of a county town, or to appoint a colonel of a marching regiment? Will a man discharge the solemn impertinences of the one office with less zeal, or shrink from the bloody boldness of the other with greater timidity, because the blockhead ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... of men is into those of expansive and those of conservative temper. The word conservative commonly suggests a dose of religious and political prejudice, and a fondness for traditional opinions. Mr. Boott was a liberal in politics and theology; and all his opinions were self-made, and as often as not at variance with every tradition. Yet in a wider sense he ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... anomalies of our country would disappear. Under such a system, where qualification would not be parliamentary, but personal, even statesmen would be educated; we should have no more diplomatists who could not speak French, no more bishops ignorant of theology, no more generals- in-chief who never ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... the state or the state govern the priests Schism in the Church had become a public fact That cynical commerce in human lives The voice of slanderers Theological hatred was in full blaze throughout the country Theology and politics were one To look down upon their inferior and lost fellow creatures Whether dead infants were hopelessly damned Whether repentance could effect salvation Whose mutual hatred was now artfully inflamed ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger

... nothingness, the laughableness, the flat and faded folly of those imitations of the French theatre, which were in turn imitated from the Greek. But he became the founder of modern German literature, not only by his criticism, but by his own works of art. This man pursued with enthusiasm and sincerity art, theology, antiquity, and archaeology, the art of poetry, history—all with the same zeal and to the same purpose. There lives and breathes in all his works the same great social idea, the same progressive humanity, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... he went to church himself, and everybody else ought to go. It was as much a social gathering as the dinner at the market ordinary, or the annual audit dinner of their common landlord. The dissenter, who declined to pay church-rates, was an unsocial person. He had left the circle. It was not the theology that they cared about, it was the social nonconformity. In a spiritual sense, too, the clergyman was the father of the parish, the shepherd of the flock—it was a part of the great system. To go a step ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... since prevailed. He was in favor of sending men and women into missionary fields who showed, by their physical, intellectual, and spiritual make-up, that they were fitted for their noble work, whether or not their theology stood the test of certain arbitrary standards in vogue with a faction ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... philosophy, my answer will be such as I suppose you already prepared to receive. I understand by a first philosophy, that which deserves the first place on account of the dignity and importance of its objects, natural theology or theism, and natural religion or ethics. If we consider the order of the sciences in their rise and progress, the first place belongs to natural philosophy, the mother of them all, or the trunk, the tree of knowledge, out of which, and in proportion to which, like so many branches, ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke

... progress with my lessons, and remembered easily the sense of what I read, but I had the greatest difficulty in learning by heart; only at catechism were my efforts crowned with success. The Chaplain called me his little "Doctor of Theology,"[7] no doubt ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... the knowledge of God as He is. And it is dying out among us in these days. Much of what is called theology now is nothing but experimental religion, which is most important and useful when it is founded on the right knowledge of God, but which is not itself theology. For theology begins with God, but experimental religion, right or wrong, begins with ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley

... Paul's epistles. If you are looking for rules of moral conduct, you turn to the last part. And between these two sections there is, as a rule, one connecting word. It is the word "therefore." The maxims, that is to say, are the consequences of the philosophy. The theology of Paul is to him an immediate cause of the better conduct of life. "I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord,"—he says to the Ephesians. "If, therefore, there is any comfort in Christ," he says to the Philippians, {39} "I beseech you, therefore, by the mercy ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody



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