Idolatrous Sentence Examples
This coincides with the Hebrew use of the term as idolatrous priests, Hos.
Pele in idolatrous times was the dreaded goddess of Kilauea.
He is described as a wicked and idolatrous king, and was slain by Jehu, son of Nimshi.
At an age when the high places were regarded as idolatrous it was considered only natural that the good kings should not have tolerated them.
They were to be left for all time coming to their own traditional idolatrous notions and practices.
A later development, however, by which certain lights themselves came to be regarded as objects of worship and to have other lights burned before them, was condemned as idolatrous by the synod of Noyon in 1344.10 The passion for symbolism extracted ever new meanings out of the candles and their use.
The idolatrous reaction in the reign of Manasseh appears to have restored all the evils of the past and added to them.
Doubtless such a reform met with strong resistance from the disestablished and vested interests, but it was firmly supported by royal influence and by the Jerusalem priesthood as well as by the true prophets of Yahweh who had protested against the idolatrous usages and corruptions of the high places.
He pointed out that God "before all temples prefers the upright heart and pure," and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth, and not with the idolatrous accessories of incense, sandal-wood and burnt-offerings.
Idolatrous cults repose so largely on make-believe and credulity that the priests who administered them, perhaps oftener than we know, fell into the kind of imposture and trickery of which the legend of Bel and the dragon represents a classical example.
AdvertisementCertain priests of idolatrous Judean shrines (distinguished by him as " Levites ") he deprives of priestly functions, degrading them to the rank of temple menials; and he takes from the civil ruler all authority over public religion, permitting him merely to furnish material for sacrifices.
And though there was positive gain in the removal of idolatrous and corrupt modes of worship, there was also positive loss in the disappearance of this old genial phase of Hebrew social life and worship. It involved a vast difference to many a Judaean village when the festival pilgrimage was no longer made to the familiar local sanctuary with its hoary associations of ancient heroic or patriarchal story, but to a distant and comparatively unfamiliar city with its stately shrine and priesthood.
Other canons treat of intercourse with heretics, admission of penitent heretics, baptism, fasts, Lent, angel-worship (forbidden as idolatrous) and the canonical books, from which the Apocrypha and Revelation are wanting.
But in the 4th century this puritanic zeal gave way; and this and other pagan feasts were taken over by the Church; a century earlier in Asia Minor Gregory the Thaumaturge was actively transforming into shrines and cult of martyrs the temples and idolatrous rites of heroes and demigods.
Pictures and stories, carved or painted, seemed no longer necessary now that the open Bible was in the hands of the common people; they had been too often prostituted, moreover, to idolatrous uses, - and " idolatry " was the worst of blasphemies to the re-discoverers of the Old Testament.
AdvertisementAs late as 1230 human sacrifices were still being offered up in Prussia and Lithuania, and, in spite of all the efforts of the Teutonic Knights, idolatrous practices still lingered amongst the people, while amongst the Lapps, though successful missions had been inaugurated as early as 1335, Christianity cannot be said to have become the dominant religion till at least two centuries later.
It is urged by many critics that Moses cannot have prohibited the worship of Yahweh by images; for the subsequent history shows us a descendant of Moses as priest in the idolatrous sanctuary of Dan.
The grossly idolatrous practices, however, still so largely prevalent in the Dravidian South, show how superficial, after all, that influence has been in those parts of India where the admixture of Aryan blood has been so slight as to have practically had no effect on the racial characteristics of the people.
Even granting the reasonableness of the triple manifestation of the Divine Spirit, how is one to reconcile all these idolatrous practices, this worship of countless gods and godlings, demons and spirits indwelling in every imaginable object round about us, with the pantheistic doctrine of the Ekam Advitiyam," the One without a Second "?
Within the Catholic body itself there was even at this time a more or less pronounced anti-Roman movement, a reflection of the Gallican and Febronian tendencies on the continent of Europe, and the " Catholic Committee," consisting for the most part of influential laymen, which had been formed to negotiate with the government, was prepared to go a long 1 This declaration, which denounced the mass as " idolatrous and superstitious," was taken by all office-bearers, including bishops on taking their seats in the House of Lords, until the Relief Act of 1829.
AdvertisementIn his first year abroad he consulted Calvin and Bullinger as to the right of the civil "authority" to prescribe religion to his subjects - in particular, whether the godly should obey "a magistrate who enforces idolatry and condemns true religion," and whom should they join "in the case of a religious nobility resisting an idolatrous sovereign."
By the recognition of this law the church was constituted as an ordered community, essentially distinct from the State; the distinction between the two was emphasized by the withdrawal of the early Christians from civic life, to avoid the performance of idolatrous ceremonies imposed as official expressions of loyalty, and by the persecutions which they had to endure, when the spread of an association apparently so hostile to the framework of ancient society had at length alarmed the imperial government.
Pure and austere, it enjoined the strictest morals in the midst of corruption, and the most dignified self-respect in face of idolatrous servility.
To this petition Ambrose replied in a letter to Valentinian, arguing that the devoted worshippers of idols had often been forsaken by their deities; that the native valour of the Roman soldiers had gained their victories, and not the pretended influence of pagan priests; that these idolatrous worshippers requested for themselves what they refused to Christians; that voluntary was more honourable than constrained virginity; that as the Christian ministers declined to receive temporal emoluments, they should also be denied to pagan priests; that it was absurd to suppose that God would inflict a famine upon the empire for neglecting to support a religious system contrary to His will as revealed in the Scriptures; that the whole process of nature encouraged innovations, and that all nations had permitted them, even in religion; that heathen sacrifices were offensive to Christians; and that it was the duty of a Christian prince to suppress pagan ceremonies.
In a letter home he described Rome as "the most wonderful place on earth," but the Roman Catholic religion as "polytheistic, degrading and idolatrous."
AdvertisementAnd then we have become subtly idolatrous, because we aspire to be lords over God's word.