"Casuistry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at least, he had not as yet connected with his art certain faculties which become essential characteristics of his later work. There is no humour in these early poems, or (since Naddo and the critic tribe of Sordello came to qualify the assertion) but little; there is no wise casuistry, in which falsehood is used as the vehicle of truth; the psychology, however involved it may seem, is really too simple; the central personages are too abstract—knowledge and love and volition do not exhaust the soul; action and thought are not here incorporated one with the other; a deed is ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... attempted anything in reply to her casuistry; they both looked equally posed by it, for different reasons; and Agatha went on as vehemently as before, addressing herself now to one and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... act of complete revulsion she spurned it all: the moral casuistry that beguiled him, the church that cloaked him; spurned psalm and prophet and apostle, ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... itself, it as little mends our hearts as it improves our temporal circumstances. And if its eulogists claim for it such a power, they commit the very same kind of encroachment on a province not their own as the political economist who should maintain that his science educated him for casuistry or diplomacy. Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another; good sense is not conscience, refinement is not humility, nor is largeness and justness of view faith. Philosophy, however enlightened, however profound, gives no command over the passions, no influential ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... poem is a pure freak in poetry. Perhaps it might be asserted of James Thompson, without too much casuistry, that he was, poetically speaking, not a materialist but a pessimist, and that the strength of his poetic gift lay in the thirst of his imagination for an ideal world in which his reason would not permit him to believe. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... to a religious life, received holy orders, lived a life of austerity, and gave himself up to reclaim the lost and instruct the poor and ignorant; was a man of extensive learning, and found time from his pastoral labours to contribute extensively to theological literature and chiefly casuistry, to the extent of 70 volumes; was canonised in 1839; the order he founded is called by his own ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Sic et Non, and remained unpublished in the public documents of France till recent years.(269) It is a collection of alleged contradictions, which exist on a series of topics, which range over the deepest problems of theology, and descend to the confines of casuistry in ethics.(270) In the discussion of them Abelard collects passages from the scriptures and from the fathers in favour of two distinctly opposite solutions. He has however prefixed a prologue to the work, which ought to be taken as the explanation of his object.(271) He insists ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... differs very little, perhaps scarcely enough, from that appointed for the Baptism of Infants, is attributed to Griffith, the Bishop of St. Asaph. The compiler of the Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea was Bishop Sanderson, famous among English theologians as an authority on casuistry. He must have found it rather a nice case of conscience to decide whether a Stuart divine in preparing forms of prayer for a navy that had been the creation of Oliver Cromwell ought wholly to omit an acknowledgment of the nation's obligation ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... judgment he kept his vow, but not in that of his natural advisers. It is satisfactory to find that the Zoroastrian priesthood, speaking by the mouth of the chief Mobed, disclaimed and exposed the fallacy of this wretched casuistry. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... like half-past, and in that case it must have been a quarter to eight when she stood on her doorstep. Finally, there was the reason of reasons which superseded the necessity of any further attempt to persuade herself by any casuistry—she must save Cutts. ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... edition call for no remark, excepting this, perhaps, that the present little volume has no pretensions to be anything more than an Essay. To judge such it performance as if it professed to be an exhaustive Treatise in casuistry, is to subject it to tests which it was never designed to bear. Merely to open questions, to indicate points, to suggest cases, to sketch outlines,—as an Essay does all these things,—may often be a process not without its ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... The incessant and urgent demands of the Directors upon him for money may palliate, perhaps, the violence of those methods which he took to procure it for them; and the obstruction to his policy which would have arisen from a strict observance of Treaties, may be admitted, by the same gentle casuistry, as an apology for his frequent ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... behavior hangs almost entirely upon dress. Many good habits are easily got rid of in the woods. Doubt sometimes seems to be felt whether Sunday is a legal holiday there. It becomes a question of casuistry with a clergyman whether he may shoot at a mark on Sunday, if none of his congregation are present. He intends no harm: he only gratifies a curiosity to see if he can hit the mark. Where shall he draw the line? Doubtless he might throw a stone at a chipmunk, or shout at ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... self-control, and render them mere automata under the command of the fiends. This was known as possession, or obsession. It was another of the mediaeval beliefs against which the reformers steadily set their faces; and all the resources of their casuistry were exhausted to expose its absurdity. But their position in this respect was an extremely delicate one. On one side of them zealous Catholics were exorcising devils, who shrieked out their testimony to the eternal truth of the Holy Catholic Church; ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... offer sacrifices which the other party ought not to accept. It is true that in the application of this simple rule difficult problems may arise; but a little tact will generally go a long way towards solving them. In these matters an ounce of tact is worth a pound of casuistry. And in our every-day England, in all classes, it is my profound conviction that a reasonable selflessness is very far from uncommon, very far from being confined to the "converted" of any religion. For forty years I have watched it growing ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... drooping head, to lift the helpless limbs, to divine the want that can find no utterance beyond the feeble motion of the hand or beseeching glance of the eye—these are offices that demand no self-questionings, no casuistry, no assent to propositions, no weighing of consequences. Within the four walls where the stir and glare of the world are shut out, and every voice is subdued,—where a human being lies prostrate, thrown on the tender mercies of his fellow,—the ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... reasoning.] Intuition. [False or vicious reasoning; show of reason.] Sophistry. — N. intuition, instinct, association, hunch, gut feeling; presentiment, premonition; rule of thumb; superstition; astrology[obs3]; faith (supposition) 514. sophistry, paralogy[obs3], perversion, casuistry, jesuitry, equivocation, evasion; chicane, chicanery; quiddet[obs3], quiddity; mystification; special pleading; speciousness &c. adj.; nonsense &c. 497; word sense, tongue sense. false reasoning, vicious reasoning, circular reasoning; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... this resolution he sturdily adhered. Not a breach of it was ever brought home to him, or indeed—save in one instance soon to be noticed—seriously charged against him. There is not in the Diary the faintest trace of any act which might be so much as questionable or susceptible of defence only by casuistry. That he should have perpetuated evidence of any flagrant misdoing certainly could not be expected; but in a record kept with the fulness and frankness of this Diary we should read between the lines ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... forthwith began to babble, as if innumerable gossips had all at once got wind of Zenobia's secret. But, as the breeze grew stronger, its voice among the branches was as if it said, "Hush! Hush!" and I resolved that to no mortal would I disclose what I had heard. And, though there might be room for casuistry, such, I conceive, is the most equitable rule ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shocked displeasure and half-humorous astonishment that a poet should have any opinions about Russia, or, having some, should find anybody to take them seriously. It is all cant, my friends—nothing but cant; and at its base lies the old dispute between principle and casuistry. If politics and statecraft rest ultimately on principles of right and wrong, then a poet has as clear a right as any man to speak upon them: as clear a right now as when Tennyson lifted his voice on behalf of the Fleet, or Wordsworth penned his 'Two Voices' sonnet, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lunatic, or give him up at once as a sacrifice to justice. Perhaps it might be no absurd or unreasonable regulation in the legislature, to divest all lunatics of the privilege of insanity, and, in cases of enormity, subject them to the common penalties of the law; for though, in the eye of casuistry, consciousness must enter into the constitution of guilt, the consequences of murder committed by a maniac may be as pernicious to society as those of the most criminal and deliberate assassination, and the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... casuistry could ever lead her to doubt that he had heard her prayer that morning. She might reply simply to all cavil ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... raise questions of casuistry, such as that whether money dishonestly come by could ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... uneasy conscience which no casuistry would lighten. He threw himself in Mallinson's way time after time in order to ascertain whether the latter had spoken. Mallinson let no word of the matter slip from him, and for the rest seemed utterly despondent. Fielding threw out a feeler ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Renan defined the Avesta as "the Code of a very small religious sect; it is a Talmud, a book of casuistry and strict observance. I have difficulty in believing that the great Persian empire, which, at least in religious matters, professed a certain breadth of ideas, could have had a law so strict. I think, that had the Persians possessed a sacred book of this description, the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... cried, "even you could detect no casuistry here. And have you no scruple, young man, in keeping an old gentleman on the tenter-hooks of expectation whilst you are splitting hairs? Go on, like a good fellow, I was never so interested in my life. The idea ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... sorry for the misdeed, at the same time as he lamented that "his nature was so content to follow the pleasure still." Pepys compounded with his conscience for such breaches of his oath by all manner of casuistry. He excused himself for going, contrary to his vow, to the new theatre in Drury Lane, because it was not built when his vow was framed. Finally, he stipulated with himself that he would only go to the theatre once a fortnight; but if he went oftener he would give ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... but a question of casuistry. Yet I fear me it will be difficult to argue without breaking bounds. Would my lord marquis now walk forth of his castle at the king's command as certainly as he will at the voice of the nation, that is, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... same parts and application which have made me a poet might have raised me to any honors of the gown." Milton and Marvell neither lived by the Court, nor starved. Charles Lamb most ingeniously defends the Comedy of the Restoration as "the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted casuistry," where there was no pretence of representing a real world.[47] But this was certainly not so. Dryden again and again boasts of the superior advantage which his age had over that of the elder dramatists, in painting polite life, and ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... vows and death-bed alms are found, And lovers' hearts with ends of riband bound, The courtiers promises, and sick man's prayers, The smiles of harlots, and the tears of heirs, Cages for gnats, and chains to yoke a flea, Dried butterflies and tomes of casuistry. ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... "Vedas in hand," proves that in the ancient writings there was not a word that could justify polytheism. Thundering against idol worship, the great orator fights with all his might against caste, infant marriages, and superstitions. Chastising all the evils grafted on India by centuries of casuistry and false interpretation of the Vedas, he blames for them the Brahmans, who, as he openly says before masses of people, are alone guilty of the humiliation of their country, once great and independent, now fallen ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... brook through a meadow and gave Hugh opportunity to contemplate incidentally the play of air and light in Ramsey's curls without her having the slightest suspicion of him!—gave her chances to ply him with questions in autobiography and social casuistry and to enjoy keenly the ridiculous majesty of his eyes and voice, while the two dear chaperons talked apart as obliviously as if she were merely asking him how deep the ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... being anti-domestic, a shaker of the roof-tree. But in this sense Shaw may be called almost madly domestic. He wishes each private problem to be settled in private, without reference to sociological ethics. And the only objection to this kind of gigantic casuistry is that the theatre is really too small to discuss it. It would not be fair to play David and Goliath on a stage too small to admit Goliath. And it is not fair to discuss private morality on a stage too small to admit ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... excels, or perhaps simply from a happy want of intelligence, a helpful stupidity, the old nun brought formidable support to the conspiracy. They had imagined her timid; she proved herself bold, verbose, violent. She was not troubled by any of the shilly-shallyings of casuistry, her doctrine was like a bar of iron, her faith never wavered, her conscience knew no scruples. She considered Abraham's sacrifice a very simple affair, for she herself would have instantly killed father or mother at an ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... minutiae of faith,—inexplicable, because useless to explain, and argue from those minutiae against the grand and universal truth.' Pardon me again: it is the petty not the enlarged mind which prefers casuistry to conviction; it is the confined and short sight of Ignorance which, unable to comprehend the great bearings of truth, pries only into its narrow and obscure corners, occupying itself in scrutinizing the atoms of a part, while the eagle eye of Wisdom contemplates, in its widest scale, the luminous ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... although we are accustomed to use the club freely throughout the daytime. All the more reason, then, that once in a while—I need a distraction and there are some interesting psychological deductions—But hang casuistry; it is enough to say that we ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... pursued Mr. Candish, only half conscious that Mrs. Fenton had come to his aid, "that Bishop Blougram represents the most dangerous spirit of the age. His paltering with truth is a form of casuistry of which we ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... deference, for her judgment upon them. A change came over his habits of thought and his literary tastes; the harsh, rude disputant, the tough, dry logician, found himself addressing to his young friend epistles in verse on doctrinal points and matters of casuistry; Westminster Catechism in rhyme; the Solemn League and Covenant set to music. A miracle alone could have made Baxter a poet; the cold, clear light of reason "paled the ineffectual fires" of his imagination; ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... had sustained no injury from the dangerous and alarming situation in which she had been placed. Satisfied on this topic, he proceeded to revise the memoranda which he had taken down from the mouth of the person employed to interrupt the funeral service of the late Lord Ravenswood. Bred to casuistry, and well accustomed to practise the ambidexter ingenuity of the bar, it cost him little trouble to soften the features of the tumult which he had been at first so anxious to exaggerate. He preached to his colleagues of the privy council ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... man to save himself the trouble of reasoning. It encourages the indolent propensity of deciding difficulties by precedent instead of principles. Macaulay, for example, was once required to argue the point of political casuistry as to the degree of independent action permissible to members of a Cabinet. An ordinary mind would have to answer by striking a rough balance between the conveniences and inconveniences likely to arise. It would be forced, that is to say, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... lest it perish. Ah, yes, you spoke truly. Miserable, miserable wretches that we are, our timorous souls are so afraid of any reality that they dare not think a sympathy which has taken possession of them capable of surviving an interview with the person who gave it birth. Yet, in spite of this fine casuistry, I simply must confess to you—no, no, nothing. Guess if you can, and forgive me for this banal letter. Or rather, read between the lines, and perhaps you will find there a little bit of my heart and a great deal ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... shrugged his shoulders. "I can't split hairs," he said, "or enter on an argument of sentimental casuistry. But I tell you this, Morris, although you are my only son, and the last of our name, that rather than do such a thing, under all the circumstances, it would be better that you should take a pistol and blow your ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... large a sum. I doubt if the old house could sell to-day for enough to clear it, anyhow." These were some of the suggestions which the devil kept whispering into Stephen's ear, in these long hours of perplexity and misgiving. It was a question of casuistry which might, perhaps, have puzzled a finer moral sense than Stephen's. Why should he treat old Mrs. Jacobs with any more consideration than he would show to a man under the same circumstances? To be sure, she was a helpless old woman; but so was his own mother, and surely ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... this was too dazzling not to captivate a young and high-spirited woman, bold through very ignorance of the obstacles she had to surmount, heroic in the hour of danger through levity; able to endure all but ennui, and ready to lull any misgivings with the casuistry ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... though new to it, yet come to be adopted by a majority, should be left open questions also. Of course, of novelties in doctrine we do not speak,—we trust that within the Free Church none such will ever arise; we refer rather to those semi-metaphysical points of casuistry, and nice questions of conduct, in which the differences that perplex non-established Churches are most liable to originate,—matters in which one man sees after one way, and another man after another,—and which, until heaped up into importance, wave-like, as if by the wind, pertain ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... small share of casuistry to construe this declaration into an acceptance of the bargain, but the Saracens, having heard the offer of their sovereign, deliberately counted out the stipulated sum on the mantle of Sir Isumbras; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... commentator as a possible policy, and has no support either in the practice of nations or the works of publicists";—but the editor never condescends to meet the French writer upon his own field of casuistry and speculation. And in this we think he is right. The discussion of rules existing only in a text-writer's belief in their abstract justice, would be entirely useless labor in any writer in the English language; for whatever may be the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... it was altogether inefficient as a means of binding the supple and slippery consciences of cunning priests, who, while affecting to hold the Jesuits in abhorrence, were proficients in that immoral casuistry which was the worst part of Jesuitism. Some grave divines had openly said, others had even dared to write, that they had sworn fealty to William in a sense altogether different from that in which they had sworn fealty to James. To James they had plighted the entire faith which a loyal subject ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... endeavour to estimate its value, or the merits of the attack and defence on particular points. The subject is one by itself, more or less entering into the whole question of morals, and especially the immense fabric of casuistry or moral theology built up by successive teachers in the Jesuit schools. Trained, as he was, a devout disciple of the Roman Church, enthusiastic on behalf of its doctrines and preachers, Pascal had apparently ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... the casuistry of grief brought Theophil the reflection that, as Isabel was the only woman he knew whom Jenny had known too, and that as Jenny had loved her also, she was thus destined for him even by Jenny herself. Besides, as he had realised no unfaithfulness to Jenny in his love for Isabel during Jenny's ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... in the ninth century the Papacy completed its moral aberration. Most of the Popes were still men of good character, and they no doubt persuaded themselves that, since the income of these estates was needed for the fulfilment of their spiritual task, it was proper to defend them by the sword. But casuistry of this kind has never prospered indefinitely, and few historians will doubt that this temporal development led directly to that degradation of the Papacy which rendered it unfit to exercise moral influence ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... honors, taken visible shape, or become, so to speak, conscious of its own purposes. But its doctrinal views, its peculiar vein of religious sentiment, its respect for antiquity and tradition, its proneness to casuistry, its taste for symbolism, were already potent influences working on the more susceptible of the younger minds. On Mr. Gladstone they told with full force. He became, and never ceased to be, not merely a High-churchman, but what may be called an ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... fortunes either way. One of the most bitter thoughts of all was that a secular priest named Serjeant, who, with another named Morris, was of Gallican views, had given evidence in public court against the Jesuits' casuistry. ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... that I could obtain that aid only by facing a vast company of critical or sneering faces, I might, perhaps, shrink basely from the duty. It is true that no such case had ever actually occurred; so that it was a mere romance of casuistry to tax myself with cowardice so shocking. But, to feel a doubt, was to feel condemnation; and the crime that might have been was, in my eyes, the crime that had been. Now, however, all was changed; ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... between his deaconship and priesthood. He had been ordered to read the work of Abbe Craisson, the superior of the great seminary at Valence: 'De rebus Veneris ad usum confessariorum.' And he had risen from this book terrified and choking with sobs. That learned casuistry, dealing so fully with the abominations of mankind, descending to the most monstrous examples of vice, violated, as it were, all his virginity of body and mind. He felt himself for ever befouled. Yet every time he heard confessions he inevitably recurred to that catechism of shame. ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... Waterland, by Whiston, by Blackburne, and by some of the more ardent Calvinists, was strong, and felt to be so. In appearance, if not in reality, there was clearly something equivocal, some appearance of casuistry and reserve, if not of insincerity, in subscribing to formularies, part of which were no longer accepted in the spirit in which they had been drawn up, and with the meaning they had been originally intended to bear. The Deistical and Arian controversies of the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... sir, or sir simply without the epithet good, which implies something of familiarity. Polonius, in his superstitious respect for ranks and degrees, provides four forms of address applying to four separate cases: such is the ponderous casuistry which the solemn courtier brings to bear upon the most trivial ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the persuasive casuistry peculiar to the minds of the Southern Secession leaders. It is naturally followed by a touch of that self-confident bluster, also at that time peculiar to ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... and probably does, put MILLIONS into the pockets of the people living between the Roanoke, and Mason and Dixon's line; still we think it would require some casuistry to show that the present slave-trade from that quarter is a whit better than the one from Africa. One thing is certain—that its results are more menacing to the tranquillity of the people in this quarter, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... aspect of the play at this juncture. Vanderdecken is merely a greedy, selfish skipper who, having got into some trouble, is anxious that a pure young maiden should throw away her life that he may be comfortable. Not any casuistry or splitting of hairs ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... worrying until her own interests seemed threatened. But the dog evidently thought of the welfare of his absent master, and had a vague troubled sense that something was wrong. He waddled up to the intruder, and gravely smelled of him. By some canine casuistry he arrived at the same conclusion which society had reached—that Haldane was a suspicious character, and should be kept at arm's-length. Indeed, the sagacious beast seemed to feel toward the unfortunate youth precisely the same impulse which ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... questions entertained by their instructors. The fathers were right. When the life of the nation is concerned,—in the struggle with foreign or domestic foes,—there is a right and a wrong in politics which casuistry may seek to confuse, but which sound moral sentiment cannot mistake, and which those who have schools of learning in charge should be held to respect. Better the College should be disbanded than be a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... inspired we discover that their inspiration has very little to do with India and a great deal to do with Mr Kipling's impulse to celebrate the work of the world, and even more to do with his impulse to escape the intellectual casuistry of his generation in a region where life is simple and intense. These aspects of his work will be more clearly revealed at a later stage. For the moment we are considering the Indian tales simply as tales of India; ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... exactly after my own prescription; so I could not help tasting it,—and, returning Mons. Dessein his bow, without more casuistry we walk'd together towards his Remise, to take a view ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... This is, I take it, some confused allusion to the great Dominican Doctor, S. Thomas Aquinas, who was regarded as being the supreme Master of scholasticism and casuistry. Casuistry must be taken in its true and original meaning—the balancing and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... with the echoes of this casuistry in his brain. It seemed to him but a part of the ingenious system of evasion whereby a society bent on the undisturbed pursuit of amusement had contrived to protect itself from the intrusion of the disagreeable: a policy summed up in Mr. Langhope's concluding advice that Amherst should take ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... minute in the literal observance of their vows, and as shamefully subtile in their artful evasion of them. The Pharisees could be easy enough to themselves when convenient, and always as hard and unrelenting as possible to all others. They quibbled, and dissolved their vows, with experienced casuistry. Jesus reproaches the Pharisees in Matthew xv. and Mark vii. for flagrantly violating the fifth commandment, by allowing the vow of a son, perhaps made in hasty anger, its full force, when he had sworn that his father should never be the better for him, or anything he had, and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Mivart's hypothesis, must have used language studiously calculated to deceive His creatures and worshippers, is "no religion worthy of the name." "Incredible est, Deum illis verbis ad populum fuisse locutum quibus deciperetur," is a verdict in which, for once, Jesuit casuistry concurs with the healthy moral sense ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to act the invalid unless the spring ran down altogether; was keen for exercise and for mixing among men—his native servants if no others were near by. Here is a bit of confession and casuistry quite a la Stevenson: ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... how he contrived to get into a mess about taking bribes, when so many other fellows had done it quietly enough before the Lord of Verulam's day, and even yet more quietly since—agreeably instigated thereto by the casuistry of Escobar. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... been his personal friend and benefactor; all this, too, not on any ground of fact, but on an assumed probability that the crown will prove a sacrament of evil, and transform him into quite another man. A strange piece of casuistry indeed! but nowise unsuited to the spirit of a man who was to commit the gravest of crimes, purely from a ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... one of the council then took his hand and administered the oath of secrecy, and led him to what seemed to be a large divan, where he sat, shoulder to shoulder, between other members of the council. He listened long to the casuistry of learned men touching prayer, atonement, and sacrifice. It led at last to some discussion ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... of Choiseul, I detest Madame du Barri and her faction. You, who are a Foreign Minister, and can distinguish like a theologian between the two natures perfectly comprehend all this; and, therefore, to the charity of your casuistry I recommend myself in this jumble of contradictions, which you may be sure do not give me any sort of trouble either way. At least I have not three distinctions, like Chatelet when he affronted Czernichew, but neither in his ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... have gained my respect. Frankness in a Jesuit? Come; what has the Society come to that frankness replaces cunning and casuistry? Bah! There never was an age but had its prude to howl 'O these degenerate days!' Corrupt and degenerate you say? Yes; that is the penalty of greatness, richness, and idleness. It began with the Egyptians, ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... guardians drawn, Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn, Gasps, as they straighten at each end the cord, And dies, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... or measurable—like sticks and stones, or like pains and pleasures. 'Fictitious' as they may be, therefore, the fiction enables us to express real truths, and to state facts which are of the highest importance to the moralist and the legislator. Bentham discusses some cases of casuistry in order to show the relation between the tendency of an action and the intention and motives of the agent. Ravaillac murders a good king; Ravaillac's son enables his father to escape punishment, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... engagement. Don't think it presumptuous,' he went on, as he held the umbrella over her; 'I am sure any man would speak as I do. A distinct permission to be with you on probation—that was what you gave me at Carlsruhe: and flinging casuistry on one side, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... sharp as the old lady was, versed in the habits of the people, and long trained to suspect a certain air of dulness, by which, when asking the explanation of a point, they watch, with a native casuistry, to see what flaw or chink may open an equivocal meaning or intention, she was thoroughly convinced by the simple and unreasoning concurrence this humble man gave to every proviso, and the hearty assurance he always gave 'that her honour knew what was best. God reward and keep her long in the ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... war therefore inevitable, and must we not prepare diligently for it? I will answer all these questions quite simply and directly without casuistry and logic-chopping, and honestly desiring to avoid paradox and "cleverness." And these quite simple answers will not be in contradiction with anything that I have written, nor will they invalidate any of the principles I ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... or in the decay of the doctrine of eternal damnation, we have the same point illustrated. Right through history it has been the social instincts that have acted as a corrective to religious extravagance. And it is worth noting that with the exception of a little gain from the practice of casuistry, religions have contributed nothing towards the building up of a science of ethics. On the contrary it has been a very potent cause of confusion and obstruction. Fictitious vices and virtues have been created and the real moral problem lost sight of. It gave the world the morality of the prison ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... had been anticipating a long struggle to bring the young criminal to see the error of his ways; but instead, he found that he had to use his skill in casuistry to convince the boy that he was not hopelessly sullied. And when at last Samuel had been persuaded that he might take up his life again, there was nothing that would satisfy him save to go back where he had been before, and take up ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... in a week, and they were glad to see him, as well as to hear the hopeful tidings. But the girls had quite a bit of casuistry in their talk that night as they were going to bed, partly as to how Charles could be so glad, and partly whether one ought to be glad under all circumstances, when events happened that did not ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... leave it to you. I am certain you and Mr. O'Donnell know best. It's too difficult and delicate for me. I am horribly blunt. Forgive me if I seemed to pretend to casuistry. I am sure I had no such meaning. I said what I thought. I always do. I never meant that it was not a very clever letter; and if it does exactly what you require it should be satisfactory. To-morrow evening John and I dine with you, and I look forward to plenty of controversy ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... vicious reasoning; show of reason.] — N. intuition, instinct, association, hunch, gut feeling; presentiment, premonition; rule of thumb; superstition; astrology^; faith (supposition) 514. sophistry, paralogy^, perversion, casuistry, jesuitry, equivocation, evasion; chicane, chicanery; quiddet^, quiddity; mystification; special pleading; speciousness &c adj.; nonsense &c 497; word sense, tongue sense. false reasoning, vicious ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... unlikely that Royston would keep to his virtuous resolutions. The first half of them he carried out perfectly: he did go straight to Cecil Tresilyan, and tell her of his intentions to depart. She did not betray much of her disappointment or surprise, but she argued with so fascinating a casuistry against the necessity of such a sudden step, that it was no wonder if she soon convinced her hearer of the propriety of at least delaying it. In a case like this an excuse of "urgent private affairs" that would suffice for the most rigid martinet that ever tyrannized over a district or a division ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... casuistry, Wilks, and I want you, as a judge of what a loyal citizen should do, to say what is our duty in regard to ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... of any party conviction, especially whilst in the centre of fiery partisans. But sorrow, in such a case, is a sentiment of deeper vitality than anger; and this sorrow for the result will co-operate with the original scruples on the casuistry of the questions, to reproduce the demur and the struggle many times over, in consciences of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... like answering West's pepper-fire of casuistry by throwing Eva Bernheimer at his head. Despite his determination to avoid a "scene," he felt his bottled-up indignation rising. A light showed ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... asleep upstairs in their little cribs, as on the whole the proper measure. Laura went into the nursery to look at them when she came home—it was her habit almost any night—and yearned over them as mothers and maids do alike over the pillow of rosy childhood. They were an antidote to all casuistry; for Selina to forget them—that was the beginning and the end of shame. She came back to the library, where she should best hear the sound of her sister's return; the hours passed as she sat there, ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... trifle when one considers the vast number of similar incidents in which religion has played the role of barrier to progress. These examples, though few, are sufficient to impress the mind of any clear-minded, intelligent individual with the conviction, in spite of all the sophistry and casuistry of the ecclesiastical apologies, that progress in this world has taken place in direct proportion to the degree that the mind of man has liberated itself from the control of theology and ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... the bucolic, the romantic, the reflective, the epic. The latter has to do with those towering creatures of action—Othello, Coriolanus, Virginius, Macbeth—somewhat deficient, whether good or evil, in the casuistry of more subtile dispositions, but giants in emotion, and kingly in repose. They are essentially masculine, and we connect their ideals with the stately figure, the deep chest-utterance, the slow, enduring majesty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... that Germany plans, the steel had entered the hearts of all Belgians with red corpuscles; and King Albert and his "schipperkes" were still fighting the Germans at Dixmude. A British army appearing before Brussels would end casuistry; and pessimism would pass, and the German residents, too, with the huzzas of all Belgium as the gallant king once more ascended the ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... questions of casuistry which it is not the business of a soldier to decide. We leave that to gownsmen. But pray, Mr. Penn, what right had you ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... apples and plums and so on are quite safe, though the turnip-tops are not: there is a subtle casuistry involved here—the distinction between the quasi-wild and the garden product. He is not a poacher in the sense of entering coverts, or even snaring a rabbit. If the pheasants are so numerous and so ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... and in the almost incredible space of forty-two short days, on the 27th of the 12th Month (March) 1671-2, he had fully analysed 'The Design,' exposed the sophistry, and scripturally answered the gross errors which abound in every page of this learned and subtle piece of casuistry. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... an incest-dream would not prove an incest-desire in the living psyche. Rather the contrary, a living fear of the automatic conclusion: the soul's just dread of automatism. And though this may sound like casuistry, I believe it does explain a good deal of the dream-trick.—That which is lovely to the automatic process is hateful to the spontaneous soul. The wakeful living soul fears automatism as it fears death: death ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... missionary. Itried to defend the labors of the paternal missionary against disparaging criticisms. Itried to account for the small success of controversial missions, by showing how little is gained by mere argument and casuistry at home. And I pointed to the indirect missionary influence, exercised by every man who leads a Christian life in India or elsewhere, as the most encouraging sign of the final triumph of a pure and living Christianity. It ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... dishonored life, with little or no chance of recovering its character, inflicting cruel disgrace upon the unlucky family of ideas, no matter what their own innocence and respectability, to which it happens to belong. Thus Casuistry, if not a very useful, was at least a perfectly harmless, member of society, and moved in the best circles, until in an evil hour she became too ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... also refer to the Catholic confessional, about which of late years a good deal has been written. I may recall the disquisitions on the moral teaching of Liguori. The father confessors have to read books in which are discussed the questions of casuistry with which they have to deal, in order to learn what authoritative decisions have been given regarding the concrete cases on which they are asked to pass judgment. In these books, sexual misconduct plays a leading part. This is also true of the confessional manuals ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... All his afternoons must have been those of a faun—a faun who with impeccable solicitude put on paper what he saw in the heart of the bosk or down by the banks of secret rivers. The sad turpitudes, the casuistry of concupiscence, the ironic discolourations and feverish delving into subterranean moral stratifications were as yet afar. He was young, handsome, with a lithe, vigorous body and the head of an aristocratic Mephistopheles, a head all profile, like the heads of Hungary—Hungary itself, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... strain The sick'ning stars fade off the ethereal plain; As Argus' eyes, by Hermes' wand oppress'd, Closed one by one to everlasting rest;— Thus, at her fell approach and secret might, Art after Art goes out, and all is night. See skulking Faith to her old cavern fled, Mountains of casuistry heaped o'er her head; Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before, Shrinks to her second cause and is no more. Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, And, unawares, Morality expires. Nor public ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Law was assumed in the course of time by most Christian churches, and the interests of morality and religion were claimed to be identical. The Roman church with its developed casuistry is ready to prescribe the proper course of conduct in every emergency; and if we turn to many theological writers of other churches, Dick's Philosophy of Religion for instance, we find moral conduct regarded as the important aim of the Christian life. Morality without religion, works ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... Tomas Sanchez endeavored at much length to establish rules for the complicated problems of delectation that thus arose, but he was constrained to admit that no rules are really possible, and that such matters must be left to the judgment of a prudent man. At that point casuistry dissolves and the modern point of view emerges (see, e.g., Lea, History of Auricular Confession, vol. ii, pp. 57, 115, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Deontology is the science of Duty, as such. Natural Law (antecedent to Positive Law, whether divine or human, civil or ecclesiastical, national or international) determines duties in detail,—the extension of the idea I ought,—and thus is the foundation of Casuistry. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... apparent sanction of the religious governor of a civilised community, must be taken to reflect the terrible pressure of suffering which made such inhuman reprisals possible. The savage nature of this vengeance was softened to the eyes of many by the poor casuistry of the Jesuits, who gave out, and believed, that the soul of the Mohawk would go straight to Paradise on the wings ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... reason, for a woman—" It was the answer she would have given to Popple or Van Degen, but she saw in an instant the mistake of thinking it would impress her father. In the atmosphere of sentimental casuistry to which she had become accustomed, she had forgotten that Mr. Spragg's private rule of conduct was as simple as his ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... of more than ten years, he at length found it in the hands of a poor man who dared not offer it for sale. Once in his possession, the thought of giving it up, or of letting the owner redeem it, had never even occurred to him. Yet the treasure made him rejoice with a trembling which all his casuistry would have found it hard to explain; for he would not confess to himself its real cause—namely, that his God-born essence was uneasy with a vague knowledge that it lay in the bosom of a thief. "Don't you think, sir," said Dawtie, "that whoever has that cup ought to send it back ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... had a long upper lip, which she was in the habit of drawing still further down; it gave her an air of great diplomatic caution, almost of casuistry. Her face was pale and narrow. She had eyes that desired to be very penetrating, and a flat little stooping figure with a suggestion of extreme neutrality within her voluminous draperies. She carried ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Medwin's distinction is that he left two bad books which were and still are valuable, but whether the Byron Conversations and the Life of Shelley should be called the two most valuable bad books of the century or the two worst valuable books of the century is a hard point in casuistry." Medwin, we may admit, even if he was not the "perfect idiot" he has been called, would have been a dull fellow enough if he had never met Shelley or Byron. But he did meet them, and as a result he will live to all eternity, or near it, a little gilded by their rays. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... I ever knew a woman who was a more perfect 'gentleman.' Scorning all that was not direct, and true, and simple, she herself hated disguise or casuistry in any form. Her eyes looked through your soul and out at the other side, but you never felt that her judgment, whatever it was, would be harsh. She was curiously detached, and yet you always wanted her sympathy, and if she loved you it never failed you. She ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... attachment to it. So far it is a source of agreeable reflection. But I feel very different emotions when I find it almost daily resorted to in questions of little importance. When by strained and fanciful constructions it is made an instrument of casuistry, it is to be feared it may lose something in our minds in point of certainty, and more in ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... invests his disquisitions upon morals, upon conscience, upon human foibles and failings, is the charm of the humorist always—never the grimness of the moralist or the coldness of the philosopher. He observes all human traits, whether of moral sophistry or ethical casuistry, with the genial sympathy of a lover of his kind irradiated with the riant comprehension of the humorist. And yet at times there creeps into his tone a note of sincere and manly pathos, unmistakable, irresistible. One has only to read ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... of the Gospel that were most carefully preserved by these people were those relating to Pilate and Mary Magdalene:—"What is truth?" and the story of the blessed foolish virgin.—And their boulevard Christs were horribly loquacious and well up in all the latest tricks of worldly casuistry. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... casuistical debate on the legitimacy of men ostensibly, not to say ostentatiously, on foot to New York picking up chance rides in this way. The argument had gone into pursuit of very fine distinctions, and almost rivalled in its casuistry the famous old Duns Scotus—or was it Thomas Aquinas?—debate as to how many angels can dance on the point of a needle. Once we had come to a deadlock as to the kind of vehicle from which it was proper to accept such hospitality. Perhaps it was ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... ought not to be kept; the essence of a safe and economical currency being an interminable series of broken promises. There seems to be a difference among the learned as to the way in which the promises ought to be broken; but I am not deep enough in this casuistry to enter ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... taboos, defilements, and purifications. Read Mark 7:1-23. Jesus was so indifferent about the religious ablutions that he was brought to book for it by the pious. He replied that these regulations were not part of the divine law, but later accretions the product of theological casuistry, and that they tended to obscure the real divine duties. He cited a flagrant case. By eternal and divine law a man owes love and support to his parents. But the scribes held that if a man vowed to give money to the temple, this obligation, being toward God, superseded the obligation ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... secret, it will not be necessary to disguise the Bible style, and we may follow the text exactly. Let me try the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, omitting seven verses which refer to subtleties of Hebrew casuistry, for which we should have to go to Lyman Abbott or St. Alphonsus to ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... Macbeth, such clear, strong, and vivid descriptions of historical events and characters as The Caesars, Joan of Arc, and The Revolt of the Tartars, and such acute essays on unfamiliar topics as The Toilette of a Hebrew Lady, The Casuistry of Roman Meals, and ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... denial of Peter forms a subject of Christian casuistry in patristic literature, and this passage recalls the famous classical parallel in Euripides (Hipp. 612), "the tongue hath sworn: yet unsworn is the heart." Cf. Augustine, cont. mendacium: "In that denial he held fast the truth in ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... He ransacked cosmography, astrology, alchemy, optics, the canon law, and the divinity of the schoolmen for ink-horn terms and similes. He was in verse what Browne was in prose. He loved to play with distinctions, hyperboles, paradoxes, the very casuistry and ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... could be right to do evil that good might come, perhaps this motive might justify it. And then came the question how much, in the Contessa's code, was evil, of these proceedings? She was silenced, if not satisfied. There is a certain casuistry involved in the most Christian charity: "thinketh no evil," sometimes even implies an effort to think that there is no harm in evil according to the intention in it. Lucy's intellect was confused, though not that unobtrusive faculty of judgment in her which was ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... misfortunes, quoth the corporal to himself, are twice as many at least as are needful to be talked over at one time;—the mischief the cow has done in breaking into the fortifications, may be told his honour hereafter.—Trim's casuistry and address, under the cover of his low bow, prevented all suspicion in my uncle Toby, so he went on with what he had to ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... whose answer to my angry missive of April came to me towards autumn, and who wrote back from Virginia with war for war, controlment for controlment. These menaces, however, frightened me little: my poor mother's thunder could not reach me; and my conscience, or casuistry, supplied me with other interpretations for her texts of Scripture, so that her oracles had not the least weight with me in frightening me from my purpose. How my new loves speeded I neither informed her, nor any other members of my maternal ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... necessity of protecting their property and their lives; and did not take into account the massacres, the cruelties of every description, which had been at one time encouraged, or at least not condemned by the general voice. The casuistry of the human heart, in most instances, concealed the true state of the case, and many, if not the majority, felt the virtuous indignation which some only affected. At any rate, they set about the hunting down ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... Troubadours, were the masters of the Italians, and particularly of Petrarch. Their favorite pieces were Sirventes (satirical pieces), love-songs, and Tensons, which last were a sort of dialogue in verse between two poets, who questioned each other on some refined points of loves' casuistry. It seems the Provencials were so completely absorbed in these delicate questions as to neglect and despise the composition of fabulous histories of adventure and knighthood, which they left in a great measure to the poets of the northern part of ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... is the Roman pontiff; without whose sanction you can neither promise nor perform. In his name I absolve your perjury and sanctify your arms: follow my footsteps in the paths of glory and salvation; and if still ye have scruples, devolve on my head the punishment and the sin." This mischievous casuistry was seconded by his respectable character, and the levity of popular assemblies: war was resolved, on the same spot where peace had so lately been sworn; and, in the execution of the treaty, the Turks were assaulted by the Christians; to whom, with some reason, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... honest and reasonable men, led by the strongest contemporary minds, have repudiated it and exposed its crude rascality. From Shakespear and Dr. Johnson to Ruskin and Mark Twain, the natural abhorrence of sane mankind for the vivisector's cruelty, and the contempt of able thinkers for his imbecile casuistry, have been expressed by the most popular spokesmen of humanity. If the medical profession were to outdo the Anti-Vivisection Societies in a general professional protest against the practice and principles of the vivisectors, every doctor in the kingdom would gain ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... man's mind is occupied in reflecting on the errors, and perhaps the crimes, of a long and variegated life; when his ties to this world are loosened, and his interest in eternity becomes more lively, and near; a religion that enables a zealous or interested priest (aided by the casuistry and argument of centuries) to barter a promise of everlasting bliss, for lands and tenements bequeathed to the church, provides amply for the acquisition of earthly treasure, for its ministers, and those devoted to a life of religious pursuits. It is, indeed, wonderful, that, with ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... weakness that had blasted his life adhered to him still. They were doubtless in terrible need of the guinea, and since it was not by any means certain that the real owner would be found, he saw no great harm in appropriating it; but Mary wasted no casuistry on the matter. That the money was not legitimately theirs, and that they had no right to retain it, was all she saw; and so seeing, she acted unhesitatingly on ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... of red wine, but sometimes of white, with the addition of sugar and spices. Sir Walter Scott ("Quarterly Review," vol. xxxiii.) says, after quoting this passage of Pepys, "Assuredly his pieces of bacchanalian casuistry can only be matched by that of Fielding's chaplain of Newgate, who preferred punch to wine, because the former was a liquor nowhere spoken against ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... throughout: and I am not certain that Parson Trulliber's majestic doctrine that no man, even in his own house, shall drink when he "caaled vurst" is not a demoniacally ingenious travesty of Pamela's characteristic casuistry, when she says that she will do anything to propitiate Lady Davers, but she will not "fill wine" to her in ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... attracted the greatest attention. The Scholastic system of philosophy had been abandoned in favour of the teaching of the Leibniz-Wolf school and of Kant. The entire course of study for ecclesiastical students underwent a complete reorganisation. Scholasticism, casuistry, and controversy were eliminated. Their places were taken by Patrology, Church History, Pastoral Theology, and Biblical Exegesis of the kind then ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... of the American Church to slavery, and the duties of private Christians, the whole casuistry of this portion of the question, so momentous among descendants of the Puritans,—have been discussed with great acuteness and rare common-sense by Messrs. Garrison, Goodell, Gerrit Smith, Pillsbury, and Foster. They have never attempted to judge the American Church by any standard ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... themselves with surrendering to the enemy those who had concluded it as personally responsible for its fulfilment. Impartial history can attach little importance to the question whether in so doing the casuistry of Roman advocates and priests kept the letter of the law, or whether the decree of the Roman senate violated it; under a human and political point of view no blame in this matter rests upon the Romans. It was a question of comparative ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... friends, the Gospel is not a syllogism; It is not casuistry, it is not polemics, or the science of squabble. It is blood-red fact; it is warm-hearted invitation; it is leaping, bounding, flying good news; it is efflorescent with all light; it is rubescent with all glow; it is arborescent ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... The subject referred to by De Morgan is his expression of opinion in his Theological Essays (1853) that future punishment is not eternal. As a result of this expression he lost his professorship at King's College. In 1866 he was made Knightbridge Professor of Casuistry, Moral Theology, and Moral ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... approved and reaffirmed.[438] But, as the Court has pointed out, it is not "an easy matter to reconcile all of the decisions of the court in this class of cases,"[439] and, as Justice Frankfurter quite justifiably stated in a dissent, "the subject is not free from casuistry."[440] Justice Douglas' characterization of Land v. Dollar, "this is the type of case where the question of jurisdiction is dependent on decision of the merits,"[441] is ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... too general to be of any use, because the application of them is still left to be adjusted by a reference to particular circumstances; and that, if a revelation were framed, it ought to take in all the limitations of action, and furnish, in fact, a complete system of casuistry; otherwise it would be of no avail. Were there none who ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... him, she forgot that the boy whom she had brought up was no longer a child, and thus she unpardonably ignored his rights as a man. And now Miss Josephine's disapproval was vindicated, and her own casuistry was doubly punished. Miss Rieppe's astute journey of investigation—for her purpose had evidently become suspected by some of them beforehand—had forced Miss Eliza to disclose the truth about the phosphates to her nephew before it should ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... all practical interests. "What shall we do?" was an idle question, for, as a matter of course, man could do nothing. But "what must I be?" was the all-important and searching inquiry. Thus ethics glided into radical casuistry, and, in this form, became united ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst |
