"Predestination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... course of the Sacred Narrative but when he breaks silence at the scene of the Last Supper to ask the Lord a question as to predestination; and Christ replies beside the mark, or rather does not answer him at all. He was also the author of a Canonical Epistle, in which he seems to have been inspired by the Second Epistle of Saint Peter; and, according to Saint Augustine, it was he who introduced the dogma of the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Vauvenargues took the step of writing to Voltaire, then a stranger, for his opinion on that crying question, the relative greatness of Corneille and of Racine, a question to all Frenchmen like that between predestination and free-will to Milton's rebel angels. This was towards the end of 1743, when Voltaire, who had reached his fiftieth year, was recognised as the first living historian and critic in France, and had been recalled to court through the good offices of Mme du Chatelet. It was, no doubt, at a happy ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... predestination was applicable, and was applied by him, to the same purpose of fortifying and of exalting the courage of his adherents.—"If anything of the matter had happened unto us, we had not been slain here. Answer; If ye had been in your houses, verily they would have gone forth to fight, whose ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... a new song by "a gentleman of Col. McPherson's Blues, on a late Expedition against the Pennsylvania Insurgents"; and also, in rather incongruous juxtaposition, "Toplady's Translation of Zanchi on Predestination." ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Thornton, and I don't believe in predestination and foreordination. Them babies of mine was never ordained for a home—the kind you mean; and I won't put 'em there. I got room and I got money to feed 'em and clothe 'em; so ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... marriages imply much more agency on his part than anything foretold to Macbeth. This whole difficulty is undramatic; and I may add that Shakespeare nowhere shows, like Chaucer, any interest in speculative problems concerning foreknowledge, predestination and freedom. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... cannot fight against," I said passionately. "The doctrine of predestination is the devil's own doctrine. It is the doctrine set up by the sinner to excuse his sin; it is the coward's doctrine. Understand me, Margot, I love you, but I am not a weak fool. There must be an end of this folly. Perhaps you are playing with me, acting like a girl, testing me. ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... that he dedicated himself to the picturing of humanity; and he came to think that a Power beyond ours had accepted this dedication, and directed his work. He declares in the introduction that he felt a Hand ("always above my shoulder—mark the predestination"), that pushed him to the stall where he found the fated book in whose womb lay his child—The Ring and the Book. And he believed that he had certain God-given qualities which fitted him for this work. These ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... become mountains, and the congregations would go from arguing into fighting. With Parliament to help her, therefore, she established a Liturgy, in which those who wished to find the Mass could hear the Mass, while those who wanted predestination and justification by faith could find it in the Articles. Both could meet under a common roof, and use a common service, if they would only be reasonable. If they would not be reasonable, the Catholics might ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... 150:21 test and contrary to the law of divine Mind. This human view infringes man's free moral agency; and it is as evidently erroneous to the author, and will be to 150:24 all others at some future day, as the practically rejected doctrine of the predestination of souls to damnation or salvation. The doctrine that man's harmony is gov- 150:27 erned by physical conditions all his earthly days, and that he is then thrust out of his own body by the operation of matter, - even the doctrine of the superiority of matter 150:30 over Mind, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... her great-great-great-grandmother looked at her with horror. "You have been brought up as one of the heathen," said she. Then she produced a small book, and Letitia was bidden to seat herself upon a stool and learn the doctrine of predestination before breakfast. ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... mother: a strong, self-reliant, self-willed character, threaded through and through with Calvinism. She was totally unselfish, yet totally self-centred. In the same way, she was always on a battleground between the claims of her own rampant freewill and her sanctified belief in predestination. It's not an easy ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the happiness of a country is possible only to those whom inquiry and reflection have enabled to comprehend it. This doctrine is in itself pernicious as well as false; its tendency is to produce the belief of a kind of moral predestination or over-ruling principle which cannot be resisted. He that admits it is prepared to comply with every desire that caprice or opportunity shall excite, and to flatter himself that he submits only to the lawful dominion of nature in obeying the resistless authority ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... an admonition to England; an application to the Scots nobility, &c.; a letter to Mary the queen-regent, a history of the reformation; a treatise on predestination, the first and second blast of the trumpet; a sermon preached August 1565, on account of which he was for some time prohibited from preaching. He left also sundry manuscripts, sermons, tracts, &c. which have ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... keenness of his feelings had in some degree subsided, I answered him as follows:—'I will not—indeed I feel myself incompetent to argue a question of such metaphysical subtlety, as that which involves the limits betwixt free-will and predestination. Let us hope we may live honestly and die hopefully, without being obliged to form a decided opinion upon a point ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... them through Grant's lines. Had he met alone a squadron of cavalry in the field, he would, probably, have taken his stand against a pine, and aimed his musket as coolly as if a squirrel were the mark. With his sunny temper, and his gloomy gospel of predestination, his heart could swell with hope even while he fought single-handed in the face of big battalions. What concerned him, after all, was not so much the chance of an ultimate victory for the cause, as the determination in his own ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... more like the mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... poem, "The Ring and the Book." No other single work of Browning's can rival this in scope and power. It would seem as if he had, at the moment, almost a prescience of the incalculable value of this crumpled and dilapidated volume; as if he intuitively recognized what he afterward referred to as "the predestination." On his way homeward he ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... have made the world from matter. He maintains that "the hands of Destiny ever deal, in fixed and equal parts their shares of joy and sorrow, woe and weal" to all that breathe our upper air. The problem of predestination he holds in scorn. The unequality of life exists and "that settles it" for him. He accepts one bowl with scant delight but he says "who drains the score must ne'er expect to rue the headache in the morn." Disputing ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... who would with his right hand make the sign of the cross upon his eyes, he would be restored to sight. He did so, and saw: God no doubt to foreshadow by this the great things that he would eventually work through this His servant. And this predestination, as it were, He made more remarkable by another miracle, which, if it was not greater, was more acknowledged and more widely known from the number of persons who were astonished at beholding it. In a certain year, it happened that such a quantity of snow ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... shoulders to the wheel. Mr. Redhouse had done good work in his day but of late he has devoted himself, especially in the "Mesnevi," to a rapprochement between Al-Islam and Christianity which both would reject (see supra, vol. vii. p. 135). The Calvinistic predestination as shown in the term "vessel of wrath," is but a feeble reflection of Moslem fatalism. On this subject I shall have more to say in a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... them with the most lively fire of his mind. For in this matter are wont to be handled these questions: of the simplicity of Providence; of the course of Fate; of sudden chances; of God's knowledge and predestination, and of free will; which how weighty they are, thou thyself discerneth. But because it is part of thy cure to know these things also, though the time be short, yet we will endeavour to touch them briefly. But if the ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... believers of Christ united to Him, One with Him and therefore we possess every spiritual blessing the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is capable of giving. Then follows the great facts connected with our redemption in Christ. Here we find election, predestination, adoption, or putting into the Son-place, Redemption, the source of redemption as well as the ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... You have gone through too much for that. But now cheer up, Alice, it will all come right. Some of these days you will see how our dear Lord and His Holy Mother love you. Why, don't you know, you little goose, that these are signs of your predestination? Don't you remember all that you have learned about the saints, and how they prayed to ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... man. They also appealed to the general belief in prophecy and divination.[145:3] If a prophet can foretell that such and such an event will happen, then it is obviously fated to happen. Foreknowledge implies Predestination. This belief in prophecy was, in reality, a sort of appeal to fact and to common sense. People could produce then, as they can now, a large number of striking cases of second sight, presentiment, clairvoyance, actual prophecy ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... And now everything has come right. And I had a hand in bringing it about. Perhaps, as Mrs. Lynde says, everything is foreordained and it was bound to happen anyway. But even so, it's nice to think one was an instrument used by predestination. Yes indeed, it's ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... been born Advancing age diminished his tendency to other carnal pleasures All his disciples and converts are to be punished with death All reading of the scriptures (forbidden) Altercation between Luther and Erasmus, upon predestination An hereditary papacy, a perpetual pope-emperor Announced his approaching marriage with the Virgin Mary As ready as papists, with age, fagot, and excommunication Attacking the authority of the pope Bold reformer had only a new ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... two Brothers also, joint Burggraves after their Father's death, seemed to have reconciled themselves without difficulty. The elder of them was already Sigismund's Brother-in-law; married to Sigismund's and Wenzel's sister,—by such predestination as we saw. Burggraf Johann III. was the name of this one: a stout fighter and manager for many years; much liked, and looked to, by Sigismund. As indeed were both the Brothers, for that matter; always, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... your parents in their failing years! "Father and mother," you will bid them, "do not think with any anxiety of your child. From ages past poverty as well as success have both had a fixed destiny; and is it likely that separation and reunion are not subject to predestination? Though we may now be far apart in two different places, we must each of us try and preserve good cheer. Your abject child has, it is true, gone from home, but abstain from distressing yourselves on ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... itself, pernicious, as well as false; its tendency is to produce the belief of a kind of moral predestination, or overruling principle which cannot be resisted; he that admits it is prepared to comply with every desire that caprice or opportunity shall excite, and to flatter himself that he submits only to the lawful dominion of nature, in obeying ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... Benoixes, professing an older faith than his. In moments of clear vision that came to him he battled, as all thinkers must battle, with a great discouragement, a sense of helplessness that was almost terrifying. Of what use man's puny human endeavors against the forces of predestination arrayed against him—the forces of ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... adopt the maxims of the Shinto; let us imagine a great confusion of all the races of the world in which Arabian mullahs, Chinese scholars, Japanese bonzes, Tibetan lamas and Hindu pundits should all be preaching fatalism and {viii} predestination, ancestor-worship and devotion to a deified sovereign, pessimism and deliverance through annihilation—a confusion in which all those priests should erect temples of exotic architecture in our cities and celebrate their disparate rites therein. Such a dream, which ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... world at second hand from their Priests. A year ago, had I been happy enough to win your daughter, I should have tried my hardest to wean her from Rome; but I have lived and thought since then, and I have come to see that Calvinism is a religion of despair, and that the doctrine of Predestination involves contradictions as difficult to swallow as any fable of ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... to sermons full of the hopelessness of predestination; she frankly said she did not believe that Adam was her federal head and representative, and that she, therefore, was born in sin. "I'm a sinner," she said, smiling; "we're all miserable sinners, you know, Mr. Ward, and perhaps we ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... of my existence. I sometimes feel that my fate, here and hereafter, has hinged upon it—this world is globular for the same reason that a woman's tear is. Are we the creatures of the merest chance, or of eternal predestination through all time, if there be such a thing as time at all? The question is idle; for as we have never yet solved it, I begin to think we never shall. The Almighty has willed this obscurity, and therefore ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... that we recognize God working in us, I would yet warn against a too-great preoccupation with the thought. It is a sure road to sterile passivity. God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, predestination and the divine sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, "O Lord, Thou knowest." Those things belong to the deep and mysterious Profound of God's omniscience. Prying into them may make theologians, ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... she said slowly. "You see, I'm a great philosopher. I never fret or worry, because I regard it as useless; similarly, I never rebel at the way fate shapes my life—I regard that as something past helping. I believe in predestination; ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... is an outpost of a Presbyterian missionary society; this green diamond in Arrapatam marks a station of the Free Church Missionary Union. As one looks the map over, he seems to behold the whole missionary force at work. He sees, in imagination, Mr. Elmer Small, from Augusta, Maine, preaching predestination to a company of Karens, in a house of reeds, and the Rev. Geo. T. Wood, from Massachusetts, teaching Paley in Roberts ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... leaves and flowers, and the escutcheon engraved on the lid. But what if he could have guessed the part he had passively played in obtaining it for its possessor—or the part that it was still to play in his own epopee? Mark again the predestination! ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Lutheran and Reformed,—with Pre Des Bosses on Transubstantiation, and with Samuel Clarke on Time and Space,—with Remond de Montmort on Plato, and with Franke on Popular Education,— with the Queen of Prussia (his pupil) on Free-will and Predestination, and with the Electress Sophia, her mother, (in her eighty-fourth year,) on English Politics,—with the cabinet of Peter the Great on the Slavonic and Oriental Languages, and with that of the German Emperor on the claims of George Lewis to the honors of the Electorate,—and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... solace of the spirit, the polisher of intelligence, the bright sun of understanding, and has been preferred by the philosopher, its inventor, to all other means by which we arrive at wisdom.' The second advantage is in the promotion and cultivation of religion; predestination and free-will are both exemplified—the player being able to move where he will, yet always in obedience to certain laws. 'Whereas,' says the writer, 'Nerd—that is, Eastern backgammon—on the contrary, is mere free-will, while in dice, again, all is compulsion.' The third and fourth advantages ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... and an active subconscious mind will often produce very wonderful results—although not of course the more complex phenomena of full clairvoyance and prevision. Some persons have claimed that even this form of prevision implies something like fate or predestination, but this is not fully true, for we must remember the fact that in some cases it is possible to so act in accordance with a clairvoyant warning of this kind that the impending calamity may be escaped. But, on the other hand, we must ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... not been bred to the grim reading of the doctrine of predestination which had condemned poor Tam, even before he had embraced the faith of the Prophet. Boyish, and not over thoughtful, the youth, when brought face to face with apostacy, had been ready to give life or liberty rather than deny his Lord; and ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... But, after a time, the feeling passed away, and he became, somehow, a subject of religious impressions, which assumed the shape of a daily expectation of the Coming of Christ, joined with a firm belief in the doctrine of predestination. In this frame of mind, influenced by a feeling like the instinct, perhaps, of the bird which returns from the southern clime, whither the cold of winter has driven it, to seek again the tree where hung the parental nest, George Armstrong came back to the ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... unfortunate expression. James had just come from Scotland, where the Presbyterians were with their Synod, and where Calvinism was in full swing. He was much in favor of some elements of Calvinism; but he could not see how all the elements held together. Predestination, for example, which offends so many people to-day, was a precious doctrine to King James, and he insisted that his subjects ought to see how clearly God had predestined him to rule over them! But he could not tolerate the necessary logical inference ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... she believed the soothsayers who told her that her children would oppose her ideas? She might love them independent of their opposition, but how could she love them if she knew they were only born to do wrong? Volumes have been written on the subject of predestination and freewill, and the truth is that it is as impossible to believe in one as in the other. Nevertheless, prognostications have a knack of coming true, and if I am drowned crossing the lake you will be convinced of the truth of omens. Perhaps I should not write ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... making plain the knotty problems of existence, as Eliza Calvert Hall clearly shows when she makes "Aunt Jane of Kentucky" say: "How much piecin' a quilt is like livin' a life! Many a time I've set and listened to Parson Page preachin' about predestination and free will, and I've said to myself, 'If I could jest git up in the pulpit with one of my quilts I could make it a heap plainer to folks than parson's makin' it with his big words.' You see, you start out with ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... unresponsive and perverse creature, the hen. Possibly good gardening and an egg-producing hen-yard are the result of willingness to take infinite pains but, out of my disappointments and half successes, I am more inclined to hold that it is luck and predestination. So, I have reduced agricultural activities sharply, but I do know families where each fall finds cellar shelves groaning under cans of fruits and vegetables, products of the garden, and foretelling distinct economies in purchases of canned goods or ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... I wish to make some observations upon the present style of preaching as compared with the sermonizing of my day. When I occupied the pulpit, the doctrines of election and predestination were the principal themes that engaged the ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... as if it was settled, but it is not more than it was, excepting that from Captain Fitz-Roy wishing me so much to go, and from his kindness, I feel a predestination I shall start. I spent a very pleasant evening with him yesterday. He must be more than twenty-three years old; he is of a slight figure, and a dark but handsome edition of Mr. Kynaston, and, according to my notions, pre-eminently good manners. He is all for ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Mac, and he looked at me. He whispered something about predestination. Then Billy lifted his horn and made ready to give a little soft grunt, to see if the moose wouldn't move along a bit, just to oblige us. But as Billy drew in his breath, one of those fool flies that are always blundering around a man's face flew straight down his throat. Instead ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... Roman Catholic Church call gluttony a mortal sin? Why should fasting occupy a place in the disciplines of religion? What is the meaning of Luther's advice to the young clergyman who came to him, perplexed with the difficulties of predestination and election, if it be not that, in virtue of its action upon the brain, when wisely applied, there is moral and religious virtue even in a hydro-carbon? To use the old language, food and drink are creatures of God, and have therefore a spiritual ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... chapter on magic. The great mind of Rawleigh perceived how much men are formed and changed by education; but, were this principle admitted to its extent, the stars would lose their influence! In pleading for the free agency of man, he would escape from the pernicious tendency of predestination, or the astral influence, which yet he allows. To extricate himself from the dilemma, he invents an analogical reasoning of a royal power of dispensing with the laws in extreme cases; so that, though he does not deny "the binding of the stars," he declares ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... brought in its train a strong development of speculative theology. The ninth century is marked by controversy on the Eucharist, and on Predestination. The former of these controversies had an effect upon Anglo-Saxon literature, which requires us to record one or two main facts in this place. Paschasius Radbert, a monk of Corbey, who was for a short while Abbot of that famous monastery, wrote a treatise ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... considering the bulk of the volumes. Above these, grouped along in friendly, social rows, were books of all sorts, sizes, and bindings, the titles of which I had read so often that I knew them by heart. There were Bell's Sermons, Bonnett's Inquiries, Bogue's Essays, Toplady on Predestination, Boston's Fourfold State, Law's Serious Call, and other works of that kind. These I looked over wistfully, day after day, without even a hope of getting something interesting out of them. The thought that father could read and understand things like these filled ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... 72: The Civaites, too, are divided on the questions both of predestination and of free grace. The greater body of them hold to the 'monkey doctrine'; the ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... fixed aversion, which he avowed, not only where the avowal was obviously politic, but on occasions where it seemed that his interest would have been promoted by dissimulation or by silence. His theological opinions, however, were even more decided than those of his ancestors. The tenet of predestination was the keystone of his religion. He often declared that, if he were to abandon that tenet, he must abandon with it all belief in a superintending Providence, and must become a mere Epicurean. Except in this single instance, all the sap of his vigorous mind was early drawn away from the speculative ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... delicious sensation of hunger. He jumped up. Six hundred and fifty pounds of the money remained intact; and he was joyful. He struck a light to look at his watch: the watch had stopped;—that was a bad sign. He could not forget it. Why had his watch stopped? A chilling thought as to whether predestination did not govern the world, allayed all tumult in his mind. He dressed carefully, and soon heard a great City bell, with horrid gulfs between the strokes, tell him that the hour was eleven toward midnight. "Not late," ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... youth of Wee Andra's professions should presume to give any sort of an opinion whatever upon the Shorter Catechism was, in his father's eyes, nothing short of impious. But, as the young man was of that class that rush in where angels fear to tread, he had given his views on predestination without any hesitancy and had gone off to the field leaving his father in a very bad humour. Wee Andra himself was particularly happy, for he took an unfilial delight in troubling his paternal relative. At heart ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... speaker declared that the heathen were now as God had made them, and therefore just as they should be. To establish this theory he used garbled arguments of predestination. ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, as taught in the writings of Calvin and in the Presbyterian Westminster Confession, is a complete perversion of St. Paul's teaching. Calvin teaches a predestination to heaven or hell; St. Paul here speaks of an appointment to certain duties on earth. The ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... honourable. And yet, as we look more closely into the pages of history, do we not find that fatality distils her poison from the victim's own wavering feebleness, his own trivial duplicity, blindness, unreason, and vanity? And if it be true that some kind of predestination governs every circumstance of life, it appears to be no less true that such predestination exists in our character only; and to modify character must surely be easy to the man of unfettered will, for is it not constantly changing in the lives of the vast bulk of men? Is your own character, at thirty, ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... this Confession of 1616, Dr Grub says that it "agrees with the old one in all important points, the chief difference being in its more marked enunciation of the doctrine of Calvin in regard to election and predestination" (Grub's History, ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... seemed as irresistible, perfect, and pitiless as Predestination itself. Around Pompey's Amphitheatre stores of hemp caught fire, and ropes used in circuses, arenas, and every kind of machine at the games, and with them the adjoining buildings containing barrels of pitch with which ropes were smeared. In a few hours all that part of the city beyond which lay the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... two dogmas which have, more than any others, agitated the public mind—are discussed at length. Of course he accepts the latter theory, but under a different name. Free Will, he contends, inevitably leads to aristocracy, and Predestination to democracy; and the British and Scottish churches are cited as examples of the effect of the two doctrines on ecclesiastical organizations. The former is an ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Is there not predestination? Was not I predestined to be born in a gaol and reared in a gutter, educated among swindlers and scoundrels, fed upon stolen victuals, and clad in garments never to be paid for? Did no Eumenides preside ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... pure and still popular Moslem feeling; and yet the learned and experienced Mr Redhouse would confuse this absolute Predestination with Providence. A friend tells me that the idea of absolute Fate in The Nights makes her feel as if the world were a jail. [FN244] In the Book of Sindibad this is the Story of the Sandal-wood Merchant and the Advice of the Blind Old Man. Mr. Clouston (p. 163) quotes a Talmudic joke which ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Revolution was impending in Scotland, Knox was living at Geneva. He may have been engaged on his "Answer" to the "blasphemous cavillations" of an Anabaptist, his treatise on Predestination. Laing thought that this work was "chiefly written" at Dieppe, in February-April 1559, but as it contains more than 450 pages it is probably a work of longer time than two months. In November 1559 the English ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... Instead of being made happier by any apparent good, he felt convinced that every blessing would be turned into a curse to him . . . "The worst of it is, I do believe," he said. I, like all connected with him, was broken against the rock of predestination. I may be pardoned for my frequent reference to the sentiment (expressed by him), that I was only sent to show him the happiness he was forbidden ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... last? Reader, what do you suppose that they have found? What were they in search of? Why some text of Scripture which seem to support their own peculiar notions on the subject of Baptism, Election, Predestination, the Final Perseverance of the saints, &c. The zeal of such persons to propagate their opinions is not more remarkable than the confident, dogmatic manner in which they express them. It is remarkable that professors of religion who are most ignorant and depraved, those who have embraced ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... see these pernicious characteristics of the Divinity penetrating the entire economy of the Christian religion; we find them in the books which are pretended to be inspired, and we discover them in the dogmas of predestination and grace. In a word, every thing in religion announces a despotic God, whom his disciples vainly attempt to represent to us as just, while all that they declare of him only proves his injustice, his tyrannical caprices, his extravagances, so frequently ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... make no practical difference whether the source of it be regarded as natural or super-natural, material or mental: so that a man be fated to will only in certain ways—and this with all the rigour which belongs to causation as physical—it is scarcely worth while to dispute whether the predestination is of God or of Nature. There can be no question, however, that in this matter the possibility which I have supposed to be suggested by the spiritualist is more far-fetched than that which obviously lies to the hand of the materialist; ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man—never darkened across any man's road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul's mumps, and measles, and whooping-coughs, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... replied, "with the Scripture doctrine of Predestination, and, in thinking over it, in connection with the destinies of man, it must have struck you that, however much it may interfere with our fixed notions of the goodness of Deity, it is thoroughly in accordance with the actual condition ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... make up his mind as to freewill and predestination, but in spite of this doubt expressly states his desire to find out the causes ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... these realities of things, however strange the forms in which they clothe their conceptions. The doctrines of predestination, of original sin, of the innate depravity of man and the evil fate of the greater part of the race, of the primacy of Satan in this world, of the essential vileness of matter, of a malevolent Demiurgus subordinate to a benevolent Almighty, who has only lately revealed himself, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... dispute several circumstances about the resurrection of the dead, the nature of our bodies after the resurrection, and in what manner they shall be united to our souls. They also attack one another "very weakly with great vigour," about predestination. And it is certainly true, (for Bishop Taylor and Mr. Whiston the Socinian say so,) that all churches in prosperity alter their doctrines every age, and are neither satisfied with themselves, nor their ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... soul lay a confident feeling that he was destined for something particular; it was his old dream of fortune, which would not be wholly satisfied by the good conditions for all men which he wanted to help to bring about. His fate was no longer in his eyes a grievous and crushing predestination to poverty, which could only be lifted from him by a miracle; he was lord of his own future, and already he was restlessly ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... may. Some people think otherwise; that they can get the peace of God by understanding. If they could but understand more, their minds would be at rest. So they weary themselves with reading, and thinking, and arguing, perhaps trying to understand predestination, election, assurance; perhaps trying to understand which is the true Church. What do they get thereby? Certainly not the peace of God. They certainly do not set their minds at rest. They cannot. Books cannot give a live soul rest. Understanding cannot. Nothing can ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... was a country squire, a gentleman farmer, though not much given to fox-hunting or dinner hilarities, preferring to read political pamphlets, or to listen to long sermons, or to hold discussions on grace, predestination, free-will, and foreknowledge absolute. His favorite doctrine was the second coming of Christ and the reign of the saints, the elect,—to whom of course he belonged. He had visions and rhapsodies, and believed in special divine illumination. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... the theological schools of Louvain, left behind him, at his death, a treatise, posthumously published in 1640, entitled, "Augustinus," in which he professed to set forth the true opinions of St. Augustine on those century-long disputed questions of Grace, Free-Will, and Predestination. Taking ground against the Molinists, he contended for the doctrine of Predestination antecedent and absolute, a gift purely gratuitous, of God's free grace, independent of any virtue or merit in the recipient soul. This doctrine, set forth in five propositions, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... Schumann's. Still, one cannot help wondering whether the composer from the first intended to write a sonata and obtained this result—amphora coepit institui; currente rota cur urceus exit?—or whether these four movements got into existence without any predestination, and were afterwards put under one cover. [FOOTNOTE: At any rate, the march was finished before the rest of the work. See the quotation from one of Chopin's letters farther on.] With all Schumann's admiration for Chopin and praise of this sonata, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... I reached Wapping, I gave myself up as having lost my way, and, abandoning myself to the narrow streets in a Turkish frame of mind, relied on predestination to bring me somehow or other to the place I wanted if I were ever to get there. When I had ceased for an hour or so to take any trouble about the matter, I found myself on a swing-bridge looking down at some dark locks in some dirty water. Over ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... The old Norse word is rlg, which is plural, (from r Ger. ur, and lg, laws,) and means the primal law, fate, weird, doom; the Greek moira. The idea of predestination was a salient feature in the Odinic religion. The word rlog, O.H.G. urlac, M.H.G. urlone, Dutch orlog, had special reference to a man's fate in war. Hence Orlogschiffe in German means a naval fleet. The Danish orlog means ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... did not trouble them; predestination and justification by faith were not even in their curriculum; foreordination and baptism were to them problems not to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... doctrine of election and predestination impairs the glory of God and fosters pride. The covenant of life is not preached equally to all, and among those to whom it is preached does not always meet with the same reception. The reason of this discrimination belongs to the secret thing of God. This doctrine is cavilled ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Michelangelo's genius found fullest scope in illustrating the idea of predestination that obsessed the Reformers and haunted many a Catholic of that time also. In the Last Judgment [Sidenote: The Last Judgment] the artist laid the whole emphasis upon the damnation of the wicked, hurled down to external ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... personality of Deity as revealed in Nature, the spiritual nature and attributes of Deity, and the incarnation; discussing by the way the general relations of theology to science, man, and his place in Nature; and ending with a discussion of predestination and free-will, and of prayer in relation to invariable law—all in a volume of three hundred and twenty-four duodecimo pages! And yet the author remarks that many important subjects have been omitted because he felt unable to present them in a satisfactory manner from a scientific ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... he wished to be near me should a battle ensue during the time. Contrary to regulations, I granted the request. Now the question naturally arises, had he gone on his regular duties would the circumstances have been different? The soldier is generally a believer in the doctrine of predestination in the abstract, and it is well he is so, for otherwise many soldiers would run away from battle. But as it is, he consoles himself with the theories of the old doggerel quartet, which ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... infection was all in the air; that there was no such thing as contagion from the sick people to the sound; and so strongly did this whimsey prevail among people, that they run altogether promiscuously, sick and well. Not the Mohammedans, who, prepossessed with the principle of predestination, value[311] nothing of contagion, let it be in what it will, could be more obstinate than the people of London. They that were perfectly sound, and came out of the wholesome air, as we call it, into the city, made nothing of going into the ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... Revolution; about Constituents who do not constitute. The High Heavens allow it and smile, and it is well for the atoms that they think themselves free American representatives, that they do not feel the string of predestination around their ankles. The senatorial twenty, from their high carved seats, see the strings and smile, too; yes, and see their own strings, and smile. Wisdom does not wish for flight. "The people" having changed the constitution, the blackbirds are reduced from four and forty to a score. This ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the Church, but in his heart he is with the Ministry. He meets a friend at White's, and they adjourn presently to the Fleece Tavern, where the drawer brings them a bottle of New French and a neat's tongue, over which they discuss the doctrine of predestination so hotly that two mackerel-vendors burst in, mistaking their lifted voices for a cry for fish. His friend has business in the city, and so our poet strolls off to the Park, and takes a turn in the Mall with his hat in his hand, prepared for an adventure ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... his to Dr. Kennedy was,—"What, then, you think me in a very bad way?"—the usual answer to which being in the affirmative, he, on one occasion, replied,—"I am now, however, in a fairer way. I already believe in predestination, which I know you believe, and in the depravity of the human heart in general, and of my own in particular:—thus you see there are two points in which we agree. I shall get at the others by and by; but you cannot expect me to become a perfect ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... most famous among the writings of St. Fulgentius, is that entitled, On the Two-fold Predestination, to Monimus, in answer to certain difficulties proposed to him by a friend of that name. In the first book he shows, that though God foresees sin, he predestinates no one to evil, but only to good, or to grace and glory. In the second book he proves, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... as firmly in predestination as if he had been, like me, a Calvinist, for nineteen years. I do not know how he learnt the affair of the Duc du Maine; he has always kept it a great secret. But what appears the most singular to me is that he does ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... quelqne part la consistance et l'uniformite que nous voyons prendre aux connaissances humaines, aux arts les plus futiles, aux metiers les plus meprises? Ces mots d'esprit, d'immaterialite, de creation, de predestination, de grace; cette foule de distinctions subtiles dont la theologie s'est parteut remplie dans quelques pays, ces inventions si ingenieuses, imaginees par des penseurs qui se sont succedes depuis taut de siecles, n'ont fait, helas! qu'embrouiller les choses, et jamais la science la plus ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and free will, which, being strongly interwoven both with philosophy and theology had, in all ages, thrown every school and every church into such inextricable doubt and perplexity. The first reformers in England, as in other European countries, had embraced the most rigid tenets of predestination and absolute decrees, and had composed upon that, system all the articles of their religious creed. But these principles having met with opposition from Arminius and his sectaries, the controversy was soon brought into this island and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... God helps us, and this is what is termed grace. He helps us gratuitously, as is indicated by the word "grace"—if He wishes and when He wishes and in the measure that He wishes. From this arises the doctrine of "predestination," by which it is preordained whether a man is to be ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... it first with wheat, I shall defy his attempts." That his Calvinism was not very dark or sulphureous, seems to be shown from his repeating with gusto the saying of one of the old women of Olney when some preacher dwelt on the doctrine of predestination—"Ah, I have long settled that point; for if God had not chosen me before I was born, I am sure he would have seen nothing to have chosen me for afterwards." That he had too much sense to take mere profession for religion appears from his describing the Calvinists of ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... frivolous that these things were meant to be so. As the Aryan saying has it, looking forward there are a dozen ways, looking backward on the way each man has traveled, there is but one. Crude tragedy carries with it its own conviction of predestination. It would be absurd to suggest that Togral Beg killed thirteen million people by accident or by an extraordinary succession of chances. Admit there is such an element as chance, and between it and Fate is room for a thousand doubts. It is ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... in some, from unconquerable indolence of body; in others, from the intoxication produced by the fumes of tobacco and of opium; but in most of my brother Turks it arose from the confidence which the belief in predestination inspired. When a bullet killed one of their companions, they only observed, scarcely taking the pipes from their mouths, 'Our hour is not yet come: it is not the will of Mahomet that we ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... the next thing in this wonderful confession of faith of the Presbyterians is the decree of predestination. [Reads the decree.] I am pleased to assure you that it is not necessary to understand this. You have only to believe it. You see that by the decree of God some men and angels are predestinated to heaven and others to eternal hell, and you observe that their number is so certain and ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... lost in the wilderness. In the parlour was a serious-looking gentleman, with a glass of something before him. With him, as I sipped my brandy and water, I got into discourse. The discourse soon took a religious turn, and terminated in a dispute. He told me he believed in divine predestination; I told him I did not, but that I believed in divine prescience. He asked me whether I hoped to be saved; I told him I did, and asked him whether he hoped to be saved. He told me he did not, and as he said so, he tapped with a silver tea-spoon on the rim of his glass. I said ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... "Necessitarian not Predestinarian." "Philosophical Necessity and Predestination One Thing and The Same." "Whatever is not, is." "Whatever ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... was a thing to have astounded scientists: And Honora grew to womanhood and reflection before she had. guessed or considered that her aunt was possessed of intense emotions which had no outlet. Her features were regular, her shy eye had the clearness of a forest pool. She believed in predestination, which is to say that she was a fatalist; and while she steadfastly continued to regard this world as a place of sorrow and trials, she concerned herself very little about her participation in a future life. Old Dr. Ewing, the rector of St. Anne's, while conceding that no better or more ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... latter days of her illness she had repeatedly dreamed of a child with the stranger's voice; and, vaguely and shamefacedly, Barbara believed that dreams had an influence on life and were glimpses beyond the veil of the unknown. She was coming to believe, too, in predestination as the one cause able to explain a long series of isolated acts for which she could not hold herself responsible; and to-night predestination would be put to the test, for half-a-dozen people had already invited her to meet Eric Lane and for one reason or another she had never been able ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... between predestination and free will serves admirably as an example of the sort of deadlock I mean. Take life at the level of common sensation and common experience and there is no more indisputable fact than man's freedom of will, unless it is his complete moral responsibility. But make only the least penetrating ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... elder of Mauchline, and an austere and hollow pretender to righteousness, he reserved the fiercest of all his lampoons. In "Holy Willie's Prayer," he lays a burning hand on the terrible doctrine of predestination: this is a satire, daring, personal, and profane. Willie claims praise in the singular, acknowledges folly in the plural, and makes heaven accountable for his sins! in a similar strain of undevout satire, he congratulates Goudie, of Kilmarnock, on his Essays on Revealed Religion. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Luther and John Frederic, he brought on himself the bitter enmity of those calling themselves "Gnesio-Lutherans," or "Genuine Lutherans." Melanchthon abolished congregational hymn-singing, and published his true views, hitherto dissembled, on predestination and the sacrament. He was attacked by Flacius the historian, and by many others. The dispute was taken up by still others and went to such lengths that for a minor heresy a pastor, Funck, was executed by his fellow-Lutherans in Prussia, in 1566. "Philippism" ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... hostility must result. And in this Democracy, so-called, all the really good people are in the business of forcing others to their own way of thinking. I must tell you also of a branch of the Presbyterian church which separated from the old church on the question of predestination and infant damnation. Of Baptists, Methodists, and others there are numerous sects, which in England would be frowned upon as various forms of ludicrous non-conformism. De Tocqueville's book, for which my thanks to you, dear grandmama, ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... knowing whether an absolute predestination (fatalism, regulating the universe in advance in all its details) exists or not, is a question of pure metaphysics, the solution of which is quite beyond human comprehension, and need not occupy us here. We must simply depend on the scientific postulate of determinism, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... pleasure her certainty that he would follow the train of her thought; and he decided to try to get another rise out of the round-eyed little clergyman. "Oh, if it weren't the Negro problem, Mr. Bayweather, it would be free-will or predestination, or capital and labor. Mr. Welles suffers from a duty-complex, inflamed to a morbid degree by a life-long compliance to a ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... The doctrine of predestination, the consciousness of being chosen soldiers of Christ, inspired those puritans, who founded the commonwealths of England, of Holland, and of America, with a contempt of toil, danger, and death which enabled them to accomplish ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... has reasons that reason does not understand; and if Cornelia is Hyde's by predestination, as well as by choice, vainly we shall worry and fret; all our opposition will come to nothing. Give Cornelia this interval, and tithe it not; in a few days Arenta will have gone away; and as for Hyde, any hour ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... Thou, who didst with Pitfall and with Gin Beset the Road I was to wander in, Thou wilt not with Predestination round Enmesh me, and impute my ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... if our party has a fault, it is in a certain lack of system. We have only a titular chief and no real leader. Miller thinks that post is his by predestination. Your coming is beginning to worry him already. It was entirely on your account he paid me that visit ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ruler, the Prince of darkness; and stranger yet, that the bulk of mankind should seemingly be "children of the devil," born of the flesh, and incapable of salvation. The difficulty exists, but it has been exaggerated. St. John does not touch either the metaphysical problem of the origin of evil, or predestination in the Calvinistic sense. The vivid contrasts of light and shade in his picture express his judgment on the tragic fate of the Jewish people, The Gospel is not a polemical treatise, but it bears traces of recent conflicts. St. John wishes to show that the rejection of ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... leader. The bookroom was given up to us, and there in the morning we drew, worked, read, copied and practised music, wrote out extracts, and delivered our youthful minds to one another on all imaginable topics from 'slea silk to predestination.' ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have decided on your departure, perform the journey as rapidly as possible, and bring here, into my house, in the Rue de Babylone (what predestination! that I should dwell in the street of BABYLON,—a name which must at least accord with the ear of an Oriental),—you will bring hither, I say, this dear prince, who is so happy as to have been born in a country of flowers, diamonds, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... could be hired at any price,—at least, none could be found in an hour's search from one hotel or livery-stable to another. Chip, whose sleepless night and meditated fraud had not left much of the saint in him, swore the whole of Waltham as deep as the grimmest view of predestination would allow. And he restrained himself from being still more profane only lest his wrath should awaken inconvenient suspicions. After all, there was one old tavern a little way out, where possibly a one-horse affair could be raised. The Birch House was a sort of seedy, dried-up, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... 11, and the judicious remark there on the mere accommodation in the 'prae' of predestination. But the subject was too tempting ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... speak too much of my wretched affairs. But I'll tell you what I think. To endure this revolting destitution a man must be an Arab. Now, I cannot pretend to be an Arab; I would not adopt their ideals if I could. And yet, alas! I am beginning to believe in predestination, as they do; to believe that our faults and our virtues are distilled beforehand in the silent laboratory of the past. A sad creed, to think of men born to misfortune; to be obliged to consider yourself—how do you say ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... the program which he was to carry out. Whenever this happened, was it not his duty to endeavor to repair the damage? Were not penances imposed on him in the confessional for every default? Luther is said to have been led into still deeper gloom by his study of the doctrine of predestination. True, but even this study did not lead Luther off into fatalism. It terrified him, because he studied that profound doctrine without a true perception of divine grace and the meaning of the Redeemer's work. However, this study did not at any time permanently affect his vigorous ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... the fundamental proofs of religion and of authority. Compare the conduct of our Parliament with that of the Genevese tyrant. Again: Bolsee was brought to trial for "having other ideas than those of Calvin on predestination." Consider these things, and ask yourselves if Fourquier-Tinville did worse. The savage religious intolerance of Calvin was, morally speaking, more implacable than the savage political intolerance of Robespierre. On a larger stage than that ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... deserve. The intellectual man is favored without reason and the fool is handicapped without mercy. Some come into the world with salvation assured by being well born while others are foredoomed to failure. Predestination goes logically with ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... of vital importance by those who justly estimate the grand principles of Christianity. The whole strength of the intellects which had long been engaged in the conflict for national and religious liberty, was now directed to metaphysical theology, and wasted upon interminable disputes about predestination and grace. Barneveldt enrolled himself among the partisans of Arminius; Maurice became ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... Predestination—the two dogmas which have, more than any others, agitated the public mind—are discussed at length. Of course he accepts the latter theory, but under a different name. Free Will, he contends, inevitably leads to aristocracy, and Predestination to democracy; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... thee,' answered he. 'Henceforth we must lie apart, for that which is the master's is forbidden to the slave.' 'O my lord,' exclaimed she, 'let us leave this, for all things happen according to fate and predestination.' But be refused, and the fire was loosed in her heart and she clung to him and said, 'By Allah, we will not sleep but together!' 'God forbid!' answered he, and he prevailed against her and lay apart till the morning, whilst love and longing and distraction redoubled on her. They ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... years ago, I was travelling homewards from Shields to Blyth on foot, when a man with a cart overtook me, and asked me to get in and ride. I did so. The man and I were soon busy discussing theology. We talked on saving faith, imputed righteousness, predestination, divine foreknowledge, election, reprobation and redemption. We differed on every point, and the man got very warm. He then spake of a covenant made between God the Father and His Son before the creation of the world, giving me all the particulars of the engagement. I told him I had ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... them a kind of predestination which makes them surmount all obstacles, which makes them escape all dangers, up to the moment which a wearied Providence has marked as the rock ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... whereas the fall of the sky is too remote a contingency, such a thing never having been known to happen within the memory of man. As to Mencius, there is a passage in his works which states that a thread of predestination runs through all human life, and that those who accommodate themselves will come off better in the end than those who try to oppose; it is in fact a statement of the [Greek: ouk uper moron] principle. On ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... of employment—as he that lives on shore against him that goes to sea, or a young man against an old man, or a shopkeeper against a soldier, are unequal. I do not pretend to determine the controverted point of predestination, the foreknowledge and decrees of Providence. Perhaps, if a man be decreed to be killed in the trenches, the same foreknowledge ordered him to list himself a soldier, that it might come to pass, and the like of a seaman. But this I am sure, speaking of second causes, a seaman or ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... Todgers tried his new-born hopes to quell, And Miss Tee made resolutions, but she did not make them well, For they went to smash at daybreak, and she softly murmured ''Tis Kismet! Fate! Predestination! If he'll have me I am his.' While Todgers sang 'There's Only One Girl in This World for Me,' Or its music ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... what he ailed. Cole on "God's Sovereignty" was put into his hands to clear his dull head, and make him quite orthodox; but still he could not see how God could be just in condemning men for exactly doing what he had decreed them to do. After many conflicts, your little piece, entitled, "Predestination Calmly Considered" fell into his hands; he read it over with that attention which both the doctrine and performance deserve; and never had a doubt, from that day to this, that God is loving to every man. You will, ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... morning on the cast-iron chafing dish which stood all day in the black angle of the grate; his dinner came in from a cookshop; and our old porter's wife went up at the prescribed hour to set his room in order. Finally, a whimsical chance, in which Sterne would have seen predestination, had named the man Gobseck. When I did business for him later, I came to know that he was about seventy-six years old at the time when we became acquainted. He was born about 1740, in some outlying suburb of Antwerp, of a Dutch father and a Jewish ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... allusiveness of Boswell to books and to matters beyond the scope of general readers, his interest in all things going forward in the Johnsonian circle, his shewing himself in some metaphysical points—predestination, for example—fully a match for Johnson, and his own words in the Journal—'he had thought more than anybody supposed, and had a pretty good stock of general learning and knowledge'—all conspire to shew that, if he had no more learning than ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... had been many years before the pastor of the little church in a neighboring village. Elder Welcome was one of the old-fashioned sort not so common in these days, a good man, but stern and somewhat harsh. He preached only the terrors of the law, dwelt much upon the doctrines, the decrees, election, predestination, and eternal punishment, and rarely lingered over such themes as the fatherhood of God, his love to mankind, and his wonderful gift to a lost world. The son followed in his father's footsteps. He was a hard, austere, melancholy man, undemonstrative and reticent, shutting out all brightness ...
— Story-Tell Lib • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... Providence for ecclesiastical approbation, and she felt interiorly assured that this would come. She had given her daughters an example of the most heroic virtues, most of her actions being really of the heroic order, and such as might have been expected from a daughter of predestination. In every sense of the word, she had a truly great soul. In the routine of daily life, she was to her Sisters a perfect model. She gave them frequently instructions suitable to their strength, and proper to excite their zeal ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... of their earthly existence. Here the question arises why should a man be held responsible throughout eternity for the works which he was forced or predestined to perform by the will of the Lord of the universe? The theory of predestination and grace, instead of explaining the difficulty, makes God partial and unjust. If the omnipotent personal God created human souls out of nothing, could He not make all souls equally good and happy? Why does He make one to enjoy ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... archdeacon, "that it would be better worth while to operate upon a ray of Sirius. But 'tis exceeding hard to obtain this ray pure, because of the simultaneous presence of other stars whose rays mingle with it. Flamel esteemed it more simple to operate upon terrestrial fire. Flamel! there's predestination in the name! Flamma! yes, fire. All lies there. The diamond is contained in the carbon, gold is in the fire. But how to extract it? Magistri affirms that there are certain feminine names, which possess a charm so sweet and mysterious, that it suffices to pronounce them during the operation. Let ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... longitude, latitude evolution, revolution oriental, occidental pathos, bathos sacred, profane military, civil clergy, laity capital, labor ingress, egress element, compound horizontal, perpendicular competition, cooeperation predestination, freewill universal, particular extrinsic, intrinsic inflation, deflation dorsal, ventral acid, alkali synonym, antonym prologue, epilogue nadir, zenith amateur, connoisseur anterior, posterior stoic, epicure ordinal, cardinal centripetal, centrifugal stalagmite, stalactite orthodox, heterodox homogeneous, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... prevenient grace, or the advantages of female emigration, or the functions of the deaconess, would be far preferable to this. She would irritate, but she would not fill the soul with everlasting despair, as the pretty vapid creature does. To discuss predestination and election over dinner is not nice, but still less is it nice to have to make talk with a fool, and to be obliged to answer her ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... among whom Locke and Leibniz were the great lights. Pope is to the deists and semi-deists of his time what Milton was to the Puritans or Dante to the Schoolmen. At times he writes like a Pantheist, and then becomes orthodox, without a consciousness of the transition; he is a believer in universal predestination, and saves himself by inconsistent language about 'leaving free the human will;' his views about the origin of society are an inextricable mass of inconsistency; and he may be quoted in behalf of doctrines which he, with the help ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... What a study is this! To attain a dim reflection of it, is the ambition of angels—higher they can not soar. "To be conformed to the image of His Son!"—it is the end of God in the predestination of His Church from all eternity. "We shall be like Him!"—it is the Bible picture ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... or the relation of things in such an order. And we have seen, that things singly are good, and together very good, in Thy Word, in Thy Only-Begotten, both heaven and earth, the Head and the body of the Church, in Thy predestination before all times, without morning and evening. But when Thou begannest to execute in time the things predestinated, to the end Thou mightest reveal hidden things, and rectify our disorders; for our sins hung over us, and we had sunk into the dark deep; and Thy good Spirit ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... it concerned himself or not. He had peculiar theories, and one of them was, as he would tell you, that if you overheard a remark apparently not intended for you, you were to make yourself quite easy, as it was "a point of predestination" that you should at that particular moment, consciously or unconsciously, play the eavesdropper. The reason of it would, he always averred, be explained to you later on in your career. The well-known saying "listeners never hear any good of themselves" was, he declared, a most ridiculous ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... for a narrowly conceived scheme of vocational education to perpetuate this division in a hardened form. Taking its stand upon a dogma of social predestination, it would assume that some are to continue to be wage earners under economic conditions like the present, and would aim simply to give them what is termed a trade education—that is, greater technical efficiency. Technical proficiency ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... of predestination is well known. They reconcile themselves to all dispensations, by saying, "They are written on the forehead" of him, to whose ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... be fought between Auxerre and Reims.[1584] When such predictions were not fulfilled they were forgotten. Besides, it was admitted that true prophets might sometimes utter false prophecies. A subtle theologian distinguished between prophecies of predestination which are always fulfilled and those of condemnation, which being conditioned, may not be fulfilled and that without reflecting untruthfulness on the lips that uttered them.[1585] Folk wondered that a peasant child should be able to forecast the future, and with the Apostle they cried, "I praise ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... the idea of unconditional predestination is implied in the writing of the names in the book of life. There is nothing in the figure itself to lead to that, and the text from Jeremiah suggests, on the contrary, that the voluntary attitude of men to God determines their being or not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... point of connection in man, and therefore there is no possibility of an enduring prophetism, which is the fundamental principle of Christianity. From this separation of God and man, the Mohammedan doctrine of predestination, in distinction from the Christian, acquires its abstract and fatalistic character, whereby man, instead of being regarded as a being in whose free activity God's power and life are glorified, is conceived ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... chair, noticed the cushion behind it, solemnly fished it up, and sat on it the whole evening. Such a wreck of a cushion as it was! Poor Miss Ada asked me today, still smiling, but oh, so reproachfully, why I had allowed it to be sat upon. I told her I hadn't—that it was a matter of predestination coupled with inveterate Sloanishness and I wasn't ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... when he takes up some philosophic dilemma, or some quaint abstraction (viz., Certainty, Predestination, Idleness, Uxoricide, Prohibition, Compromise, or Cornutation) and sets the idea spinning. Beginning slowly, carelessly, in a deceptive, offhand manner, he lets the toy revolve as it will. Gradually the rotation accelerates; ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... said Skippy, beginning to be convinced of his own predestination for the gallows, as he instinctively felt the sentimental value of the role. "Men like myself don't get a chance to know women like you. I wish to heaven—" He stopped, a lump in his throat, and gazed into the sentimental ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson |
