Divines Sentence Examples

Calamy was an active member in the Westminster assembly of divines, and, refusing to advance to Congregationalism, found in Presbyterianism the middle course which best suited his views of theology and church government.

All his divines are Protestants.

Shields (1825-1904), who afterwards entered the Protestant Episcopal Church, republished and urged the adoption of the Book of Common Prayer as amended by the Westminster Divines in the royal commission of 1661; and Henry Van Dyke was prominent in the latter stage of the movement for a liturgy.

He is not known to have protested against any of the changes effected by his masters; he professed to be no theologian, and was wont, when asked theological questions, to refer his interrogators to the divines.

In 1538 an embassy of German divines visited England with the design, among other things, of forming a common confession for the two countries.

The English reformers realized this fact; and notwithstanding their insistence on the unique authority of the canon of Scripture, their appeal to the fathers as representatives of the teaching of the undivided Church was as wholehearted as that of the Tridentine divines.

British and American divines, on the other hand, are slow to suspect that a new apologetic principle may mean a new system of apologetics, to say nothing of a new dogmatic. Among the evangelicals, for the most part, natural theology, far from being rejected, is not even modified, and certain doctrines continue to be described as incomprehensible mysteries.

He was soon promoted to be one of Edward VI.'s chaplains and prebendary of Westminster, and in October 1552 was one of the six divines to whom the Forty-two articles were submitted for examination before being sanctioned by the Privy Council.

In 1604 Chaderton was appointed one of the four divines for managing the cause of the Puritans at the Hampton Court conference; and he was also one of the translators of the Bible.

The new archbishop, without being one of the English divines who have made notable contributions to theological learning, already had a great reputation for ecclesiastical statesmanship; and in subsequent years his diplomatic abilities found ample scope in dealing not only with the difficulties caused in the church by doctrinal questions, but pre-eminently with the education crisis, and with the new problems arising in the enlarged Anglican Communion.

The Latin sermons of St Augustine, of which 384 are extant, have been taken as their models by all sensible subsequent divines, for it was he who rejected the formal arrangement of the divisions of his theme, and insisted that simplicity and familiarity of style were not incompatible with dignity and religion.

Some of the most remarkable divines of this great period, however, are scarcely to be mentioned as successful writers of sermons.

For this reason, probabilism found vigorous opponents in Bossuet and other eminent divines; and various of its excesses were condemned by the popes during the latter half of the 17th century.

Four of those divines were, it is said, decidedly opposed to the admission of Anglican orders as valid; four were more or less favourably disposed to them.

They appealed not to the school divines, but to Scripture and primitive antiquity.

They lavished money on the embellishment of their capital, Gyulafehervar, which became a sort of Protestant Mecca, whither scholars and divines of every anti-Roman denomination flocked to bask in the favour of princes who were as liberal as they were pious.

When we put aside one or two exceptionally fine pieces, like the hymn of the soul in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas, the highest degree of excellence in style is perhaps attained in staightforward historical narrative - such as the account of the PersoRoman War at the beginning of the 6th century by the author who passes under the name of Joshua the Stylite, or by romancers like him who wrote the romance of Julian; by biographers like some of those who have written lives of saints, martyrs and eminent divines; and by some early writers of homilies such as Philoxenus (in prose) and Isaac of Antioch (in verse).

His learning was greater than his originality, and he was one of the least heterodox of the Italian divines who rejected Roman Catholicism.

In some of the cases the question has been raised how far the doctrine of the church could be ascertained by reference to the opinions generally expressed by divines belonging to its communion.

With Zwingli, who had arrived on the 27th of September, he had several interviews of considerable political importance before the Wittenberg divines made their appearance.

His name is the first on the list of divines appointed to make the authorized version of the Bible.

He took a prominent and truculent part in the famous conference of prelates and Presbyterian divines held at Hampton Court in 1604.

In 1643 he was elected one of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, but his sympathies with the king and with the Anglican Church were so strong that he declined to sit.

In 1553 appeared at Brzesc the Protestant translation of the whole Bible made by a committee of learned men and divines, and published at the expense of Nicholas Radziwill, a very rich Polish magnate who had embraced the Protestant doctrines.

His address to the assembled divines was "practically a declaration of war against the Ultramontane party."

Many bishops and divines considered the proposed definition a false one.

In 1644 he was appointed one of the scribes or secretaries of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster.

In 1J35 he was sent to Germany, in the hope of inducing Lutheran divines to approve of Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and four years later he was employed in negotiations connected with Anne of Cleves's marriage.

Eberhard stated the arguments for the broader view with dignity, acuteness and learning, but the liberality of the reasoning gave great offence to the strictly orthodox divines, and is believed to have obstructed his preferment in the church.

As a result the king summoned a conference of leading Puritan divines, and of bishops and other leading Anglican divines, which met under his presidency at Hampton Court in January 1604.

The result was that a conference was held in 1661, known from its place of meeting as the Savoy Conference, the church being represented by twelve bishops and the Nonconformists by twelve eminent Presbyterian divines, each side accompanied by nine coadjutors.

Jurieu defended the doctrines of Protestantism with great ability against the attacks of Antoine Arnauld, Pierre Nicole and Bossuet, but was equally ready to enter into dispute with his fellow Protestant divines (with Louis Du Moulin and Claude Payon, for instance) when their opinions differed from his own even on minor matters.

With them were associated Wesleyan and Presbyterian divines, and in September 1795 the London Missionary Society, emphasizing no one form of church government, was formed.

One hundred members, many of them foreign divines, composed this great assembly, who after 154 sittings gave their seal to the doctrines of the Netherlands Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism.

It was subscribed by many in both kingdoms and also in Ireland, and was approved by the English parliament, and with some slight modifications by the Westminster Assembly of Divines.

In the following year he published An Answere to a Certain Libel intituled an Admonition to the Parliament, which led to further controversy between the two divines.

The definitions show so much acuteness of thought and command of language, and the passages quoted from poets, divines and philosophers are so skilfully selected, that a leisure hour may always be very agreeably spent in turning over the pages.

In consultation with both Romanist and Lutheran divines a confession of faith called the Interim was drawn up; this was in the nature of a compromise and was issued as an edict in May 1548, but owing to the opposition of the Romanist princes it was not made binding upon them, only upon the Lutherans.

He visited privately many of the leading citizens of the city, statesmen, divines and merchants, and besought them to take the lead in a national movement against slavery; but they all with one consent made excuse, some of them listening to his plea with manifest impatience.

It was admitted that such obligation must be not natural but positive; but it was argued by the stricter Calvinistic divines that the proportion of one in seven is agreeable to nature, based on the order of creation in six days, and in no way specially connected with anything Jewish.

The almspeople consisted of six " poor brethren " and six " poor sisters," and the teaching and governing staff of a master and a warden, who were always to be of the founder's surname, and four fellows, all " graduates and divines," among whom were apportioned the ministerial work of the chapel, the instruction of the boys, and the supervision of the almspeople.

He held conferences with Roman divines appointed to adjust differences, and afterwards wrote an Apology for the Augsburg Confession.

In 1537, when the Protestant divines signed the Lutheran Articles of Schmalkalden, Melanchthon appended to his signature the reservation that he would admit of a pope provided he allowed the gospel and did not claim to rule by divine right.

The English Christians overcame the Celtic divines of Iona, and in 710 even in Pictland they came into the customs of western Christianity.

Nevertheless he opposed the policy of Holles and the peace party and the proposed disbanding of the army in 1647, and though one of the lay members of the assembly of divines, repudiated the claims of divine authority put forward by the Presbyterians for their church, and approved of religious tolerance.

Cheke took a fairly active share in public life; he sat, as member for Bletchingley, for the parliaments of 1547 and 1 55 2-1 553; he was made provost of King's College, Cambridge (April 1, 1548), was one of the commissioners for visiting that university as well as Oxford and Eton, and was appointed with seven divines to draw up a body of laws for the governance of the church.

There have, however, been divines who dissented from this general disapproval.

In all these matters he followed the guidance of divines and devotees, in whose congenial company he delighted.

He was a member of the convocation of 1640, and was nominated one of the Westminster Assembly of divines.

Among his many writings are An Ecclesiastical Biography, containing the Lives of Ancient Fathers and Modern Divines (8 vols., 1845-1852), A Church Dictionary, The Means of Rendering more Effectual the Education of the People, The Cross of Christ (1873), The Church and its Ordinances (sermons, 4 vols., 1876), and Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury (12 vols., 1860-1876).

He assailed the memory of Athanasius with a virulence at least equal to that with which orthodox divines had treated Arius.

In the hands of Bossuet and other eminent divines it was developed along both theological and political lines.

Bossuet and the old-fashioned divines had believed in an elaborate system of checks and balances - popes, councils, bishops, temporal sovereigns each limiting and controlling the other - just as Montesquieu and Alexander Hamilton had believed in a careful separation of the executive from the legislative power.

But the German divines were much more in touch with the world at large than were their brethren in Italy or France; and more than one interesting attempt was made to bring theology into line with modern schools of thought.

Indeed, many prominent French and German divines still denied papal infallibility altogether; and Louis Napoleon had regularly fallen back on Richelieu's old device of stirring up the embers of Gallicanism, whenever the French clergy grew restive about his alliance with Victor Emmanuel.

He was a clergyman of the old High Church school, whose adherents, untouched by the influence of the Wesleys, had moulded their piety on the doctrines on the non-jurors and the old Anglican divines.

Both groups had their scientific theologians who sought to vindicate their characteristic doctrines, the Adoptianist divines holding by the Aristotelian philosophy, and the Modalists by that of the Stoics; while the Trinitarians (Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, Novatian), on the other hand, appealed to Plato.

The Scottish divines in the Westminster Assembly were only five in number, while the assembly contained effective parties of Erastians and Independents.

Of these two Puritan divines, Vicar Prichard, who was essentially orthodox in his behaviour, forms an interesting connecting link between the learned Elizabethan translators of the Bible and the great revivalists of the 18th century, and his moral rhymes in the vernacular, collected and printed after his death under the title of The Welshman's Candle (Canwyll y Cymry), still retain some degree of popularity amongst his countrymen.

All writers agree in stating that the mass of the Welsh people at the close of the 17th century were illiterate, and many divines of Cymric nationality charge their countrymen also with immorality and religious apathy.

An honourable exception to the indolent and rapacious divines of this stamp was Thomas Burgess (bishop of St Davids), to whose exertions is mainly due the foundation of St David's College at Lampeter in 1822, an institution erected to provide a better and cheaper education for intending Welsh clergymen.

From such a fate it was largely preserved by the various translations of the Scriptures, undertaken at the command of Queen Elizabeth and performed by a number of native scholars and divines, amongst whom appear prominent the names of Bishops Davies, Morgan and Parry, and of William Salesbury of Llanrwst.

Scarcely had he refused the accusation of Buscher, when, on account of his intimacy with the Reformed divines at the conference of Thorn (1645), and his desire to effect a reconciliation between them and the Lutherans, a new charge was preferred against him, principally at the instance of Abraham Calovius (1612-1686), of a secret attachment to Calvinism.

As a youth, says Clarendon, " the ill-bred familiarity of the Scotch divines had given him a distaste " for Presbyterianism, which he indeed declared " no religion for gentlemen," and the mean figure which the fallen national church made in exile repelled him at the same time that he was attracted by the " genteel part of the Catholic religion."

In England he won the friendship of divines like Baxter, Tillotson and Burnet, and effectively promoted the union in 1691 of English Presbyterians and Congregationalists.

Even in the Roman Catholic Church a large number of the leading divines were frankly deistic, nor were they for that reason regarded as irreligious.

This effort culminated in the Westminster Assembly of divines which met in 1643, at which six commissioners from the Church of Scotland were present, and joined in the task of drawing up a Common Confession, Catechism and Directory for the three kingdoms. The commissioners reported to the General Assembly of 1644 that this Common Directory "is so begun.

It was the joint work of several divines of the brotherhood, and was first printed at Kralice in Moravia in 1593.

Some of the Reformers, notably Melanchthon, expected to effect a reunion of Christendom by means of the Easterns, cherishing the same hopes as the modern Old Catholic divines and their English sympathizers.

In 1839 he also published Eucharistica (from the old English divines), to which he wrote an introduction, Agathos and other Sunday Stories, and a volume of University Sermons, and in the following year Rocky Island and other Parables.

In 1618-1619 he attended the synod of Dort, and took a prominent part in its deliberations, being one of the six divines appointed to draw up the account of its proceedings.

The parliament having gained the ascendancy, Hale signed the Solemn League and Covenant, and was a member of the famous assembly of divines at Westminster in 1644; but although he would undoubtedly have preferred a Presbyterian form of church government, he had no serious objection to the system of modified Episcopacy proposed by Usher.

Lambert was also one of the divines who took part in the great conference of Marburg in 1529; he had long wavered between the Lutheran and the Zwinglian view of the Lord's Supper, but at this conference he definitely adopted the Zwinglian view.

The Lutheran divines who came to England in 1538 with a project for a theological union were rebuffed; the parliament elected in 1539 was Catholic, and only the reforming bishops in the House of Lords offered any resistance to the Six Articles which reaffirmed the chief points in Catholic doctrine and practice.

Charles, who might reasonably have exerted himself to secure a fair liberty for all opinions, promoted these unpopular divines to bishoprics and livings, and the divines in turn exalted the royal prerogative above parliamentary rights.

Still, this contrast enters into the meaning of divines when they say that they are at work upon a science.

Unfaltering use is made of that conception as a key to all religious and moral problems. Usually, apologists and divines are hampered by the fact that, beyond a certain limited range, men cannot be regarded as separable moral units.

Arminianism is less fully worked out by Arminius than by later Dutch divines, of whom the " conciliatory " Litnborch is sometimes used as a Methodist text-book.

And the influence of the liberal divines of the Church of England afterwards showed itself in his spiritual development.

The latter system gave the simplest and most obvious answer to the inquiry after ultimate good for man; but besides being liable, when developed consistently, to offend the common moral consciousness, it conspicuously failed to provide the " completeness " and " security " which, as Aristotle says, " one divines to belong to man's true 'Good."

But in spite of the strong interest taken in the theological aspect of this question by the Protestant divines of the 17th century, it does not appear that English moralists from Hobbes to Hume laid any stress on the relation of free-will either to duty generally or to justice in particular.

Caroli brought a counter-charge against the Geneva divines of Sabellianism and Arianism, because they would not enforce the Athanasian creed, and had not used the words "Trinity" and "Person" in the confession they had drawn up. It was a struggle between the thoroughgoing humanistic reformer who drew his creed solely from the "word of God" and the merely semi-Protestant reformer who looked on the old creed as a priceless heritage.

In a synod held at Bern the matter was fully discussed, when a verdict was given in favour of the Geneva divines, and Caroli deposed from his office and banished.

In 1643 he was offered a seat in the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, but declined it publicly in terms which drew upon him the anger of the House of Commons, and an order for the confiscation of his library was averted only by the interposition of Selden.

During his residence in Wales a hyper-Calvinistic work entitled A Body of Divinity; or the Sum and Substance of the Christian Religion, was published under his name by John Downham; and, although he repudiated the authorship in a letter to the editor, stating that the manuscript from which it was printed was merely a commonplace-book into which he had transcribed the opinions of Cartwright and other English divines, often disapproving of them and finding them dissonant from his own judgment, yet it has been persistently cited ever since as Usher's genuine work, and as lending his authority to positions which he had long abandoned, if he ever maintained them.

At Cambridge he was strongly influenced by the philosophical views of Ralph Cudworth and Henry More, who proposed an unusual degree of toleration within the boundaries of the church and the limitations imposed by its liturgy and episcopal government; and his intercourse in Holland with foreign divines of different Protestant sects further encouraged his tendency to latitudinarianism.

The appalling list may be read in the State of the Protestants by William King, archbishop of Dublin, one of many divines converted by the logic of events to believe in the lawfulness of resistance.

Coverdale was already on his way back to England, and in October 1548 he was staying at Windsor Castle, where Cranmer and some other divines, inaccurately called the Windsor Commission, were preparing the First Book of Common Prayer.

Lightfoot was also one of the original members of the Westminster Assembly; his "Journal of the Proceedings of the Assembly of Divines from January 1, 1643 to December 31, 1644," now printed in the thirteenth volume of the 8vo edition of his Works, is a valuable historical source for the brief period to which it relates.

He became a close student of the fathers and of that school of Anglican divines who had continued, or revived, in the 17th century the main traditions of pre-Reformation teaching.

But many divines supported Arnauld; and no official action was taken against his party till 1649.

This was the famous Marrow of Modern Divinity, by Edward Fisher, a compendium of the opinions of leading Reformation divines on the doctrine of grace and the offer of the Gospel.

While in England, he wrote De Regno Christi, which strongly influenced many English divines.

Her final word on herself rings true, " Toujours tourmentee des choses divines."

In 1642 the Long Parliament abolished Episcopacy (the act to come into force on the 5th of November - 1643) and summoned an assembly of divines to meet at Westminster in June 1643 to advise inster W J 43 parliament as to the new form of Church government.

He was unable, owing to the opposition of the divines and of the merchants, to secure the full recognition of the right to reside in England of the former who had for some time lived in small numbers and traded unnoticed and untroubled in the country; but he obtained an opinion from two judges that there was no law which forbade their return, and he gave them a private assurance of his protection, with leave to celebrate their private worship and to possess a cemetery.

If Socinianism had challenged natural theology - Christ, according to it, was the prophet who first revealed the way to eternal life - it had glorified the natural powers of man; and the learning of the Arminian divines (friends of Grotius and Locke) had helped to modernize Christian apologetics upon rational lines.

But, though the invention of the terms " Roman Catholic " and " Roman Catholicism " early implied the retention by the English Church of her Catholic claim, her members were never, after the Reformation, called Catholics; even the Caroline divines of the 17th century, for all their " popish practices," styled themselves Protestants, though they would have professed their adherence to " the Catholic faith " and their belief in " the Holy Catholic Church."

And when the excommunication of Dellinger and other anti-infallibilist divines (1871) led to the formation of an independent Old Catholic Church (see OLD Catholics) Bavaria, Switzerland and other countries gave it a warm welcome.

On the other hand, the ethical optimism of Shaftesbury, rather broadly impressive than exactly reasoned, and connected as it was with a natural theology that implied the Christian scheme to be superfluous, challenged attack equally from orthodox divines and from cynical freethinkers.

Patera (Father) Silk, the protagonist, is a priest and auger; he divines the intention of the gods through the reading of animal entrails.

As the Anglican divines soon ceased to attend the assembly, and the Independents were few in number, it was the work of Presbyterians only, the Scottish members carrying their proposal to make it an independent document and not a mere revision of the Thirty-nine Articles.

We must note, however, that the Baptist divines who were excluded from the Westminster Assembly issued a declaration of their principles under the title, " A Confession of Faith of seven Congregations or Churches in London which are commonly but unjustly called Anabaptists, for the Vindication of the Truth and Information of the Ignorant."

The Church when it had once conquered the world allowed such precepts to lapse and fall into the background, and no one save monks or Manichaean heretics remembered them any more; indeed modern divines affect to believe that marriage rites and family ties were the peculiar concern of the Church from the very first; and few moderns will fail to sympathize with the misgivings of the barbarian chief who, having been converted and being about to receive Christian baptism, paused as he stepped down into the font, and asked the priests if in the heaven to which their rites admitted him he would meet and converse with his pagan ancestors.

He dealt with only twenty divines of other countries.

This same Elector Frederick invited two young divines, Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus,, to prepare the afterwards celebrated Heidelberg catechism, which in 1563 superseded Calvin's catechism in the Palatinate.