Word Finder - heresies

definition

A doctrine held by a member of a religion at variance with established religious beliefs, especially dissension from Roman Catholic dogma.

definition

A controversial or unorthodox opinion held by a member of a group, as in politics, philosophy or science.

His identity was unknown to the authorities of Basel, who had no suspicion of his heresies.

It must have been at this time that an addition was made by Waynflete to the Eton college statutes, compelling the fellows to forswear the heresies of John Wycliffe and Pecock.

The fifteen condemnatory clauses, prefacing the sentence at Geneva, set forth in detail that he was guilty of heresies, blasphemously expressed, against the foundation of the Christian religion.

The most important of these polemical treatises is the Refutation of all Heresies, which has come to be known by the inappropriate title of the Philosophumena.

In the very earliest centuries we find the episcopate, united in council,, drawing up symbols of faith, which every believer was bound to accept under pain of exclusion, condemning heresies, and casting out heretics.

The rest sat on, discussing the constitution, drawing up lists of damnable heresies and of incontrovertible articles of faith, producing plans for the reduction of the army and demanding - consolidating his rule and power.

This, the latest of his works in the domain of church history (it was written after 451), is a source of great though not of primary importance for 'the history of the old heresies.

In consequence of the occupants of the thrones of Constantinople and Alexandria falling successively into opposite heresies, the question arose how " patriarchs " were to be judged.

But be this as it may, he had no sooner adopted his new creed than he resolved to profess it; " a momentary glow of enthusiasm " had raised him above all temporal considerations, and accordingly, on June 8, 1753, he records that having " privately abjured the heresies" of his childhood before a Catholic priest of the name of Baker, a Jesuit, in London, he announced the same to his father in an elaborate controversial epistle which his spiritual adviser much approved, and which he himself afterwards described to Lord Sheffield as having been " written with all the pomp, the dignity, and self-satisfaction of a martyr."

Letters and writings of his own (1527-1528) proved him to hold strongly anti-Lutheran heresies, and both Catholics and Lutherans urged the duke of Liegnitz to dismiss him.

He guided it through the controversies as to Robertson Smith's heresies, as to the use of hymns and instrumental music, and as to the Declaratory Act, brought to a successful issue the union of the Free and United Presbyterian Churches, and threw the weight of the united church on the side of freedom of Biblical criticism.

The statute De haeretico comburendo had just been introduced for the purpose of stamping out heresy, but it had not become law when Sawtrey was summoned to St Paul's and was charged with denying transubstantiation, with refusing to adore the cross except as a symbol, and with six other heresies.

It has suspected and amended its author, it has expunged his heresies; but whether it has put anything better or more tenable in their place may be gravely questioned.

Then came a theological and disciplinary controversy with Virgil, the Irish bishop of Salzburg, who held, among other heresies, that there were other worlds than ours.

And hence at a much later date (in the beginning of the 13th century) his name was invoked to cover the pantheistic heresies of Amalrich of Bena.

The same thing is seen from the fact that the heresy of the Marcionites was already showing itself in this district, for (in Tixeront's words) " heresies, in the first centuries at feast, only spread in already constituted Christian communities."

Moreover, heresies are not to be confounded with tentative and faulty hypotheses broached in a period prior to the scrutiny of a topic of Christian doctrine, and before that scrutiny has led the general mind to an assured conclusion.

A very good list of writers on heresy, ancient and medieval, is given in Burton's Bampton Lectures on Heresies of the Apostolic Age (1829).

The Athanasian Creed is an instruction designed to confute heresies which were current in the 5th century.

But in that case we must either reject the testimony of the same Hegesippus that up to their death, and that of Symeon son of Clopas, successor in the Jerusalem see of James the Lord's brother, " who suffered martyrdom at the age of one hundred and twenty years while Trajan was emperor and Atticus governor," " the church (universal) had remained a pure and uncorrupted virgin " free from " the folly of heretical teachers "; or else we must reject the superscription, which presents the grandfather in vehement conflict with the very heresies in question.

But even if we date the rise of heresies in the reign of Domitian instead of Trajan, 2 the attributing of this epistle against 2 O n this point (date of the outbreak of heresy) there is some inconsistency in the reported fragments of Hegesippus.

The direct result of this investigation is not known, but it is impossible to disconnect from it the promulgation by Pope Alexander V., on the 20th of December 1409, of a bull which ordered the abjuration of all Wycliffite heresies and the surrender of all his books, while at the same time - a measure specially levelled at the pulpit of Bethlehem chapel - all preaching was prohibited except in localities which had been by long usage set apart for that use.

For Austria, Bavaria and the great ecclesiastical states in the south definitely sided with the pope against Luther's heresies, and to this day they still remain Roman Catholic. In the north, on the other hand, it became more and more apparent that the princes were drifting away from the Roman Catholic Church.

In his work against the Heresies and in his letter to Florinus, about 185-191, he tells how he had himself known Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, and how Polycarp " used to recount his familiar intercourse with John and the others who had seen the Lord "; and explicitly identifies this John with the Zebedean and the evangelist.

He accused the bishop of favouring the Christological heresies of the Monarchians, and, further, of subverting the discipline of the Church by his lax action in receiving back into the Church those guilty of gross offences.

His religious unorthodoxy was condoned because he never scoffed; his political heresies, after their first effect was over, seemed harmless from the very want of logic and practical spirit in them, while part at least of his literary secret was the common property of almost every one who attempted literature.

Up till that time, in spite of the schism of East and West and of innumerable heresies, the idea of the Church as Catholic, not only in its faith but in its organization, had been generally accepted.

The continuation of these labours was seen in a Dictionary of Sects and Heresies (1874), an Annotated Bible (3 vols., 1878-1879), and a Cyclopaedia of Religion (1884), and received recognition in the shape of the D.D.

The works of Tertullian, on the chronology of which a great deal has been written, and which for the most part do not admit of being dated with perfect certainty, fall into three classes - the apologetic, defending Christianity against paganism and Judaism; the polemical dogmatic, refuting heresies and heretics; and the ascetic or practical, dealing with points of morality and church discipline.

He introduced many reforms in the various monastic orders and took vigorous measures against the heresies of the time.

They naturally found in his prophetic words the anticipation of heresies current in their own age.

More serious still, from the point of view of the Church, was the association of these wandering mendicants with the mystic heresies of the Fraticelli, the Apostolici and the pantheistic Brethren of the Free Spirit.

They had evolved or inherited anti-papal heresies much like those of the reformers of 1559, but James turned their trial into a jest.

The first part, entitled KE4aXaca dicXococAuca, is an exposition and application of theology of Aristotle's Dialectic. The second, entitled HEpi aipiVEcov ("Of Heresies"), is a reproduction of the earlier work of Epiphanius, with a continuation giving an account of the heresies that arose after the time of that writer.

Such heresies were now corrected; and the Buddhism of southern Asia practically dates from Asoka's council.

Orthodoxy needed to counter heretical logic not with mysticism, itself the fruitful mother of heresies, but with argument.

Her first idea had been to combat alike the heresies and the worldliness of her time by a return to the austerities of a more heroic age.

Internally, Catholicism in the United States has been free from any noteworthy schisms or heresies that might impede its development - its doctrinal history offers nothing of importance.

Devoid of criticism, devoid of sound learning, devoid of a firm hold on the realities of life, these heresies passed away without solid results and were forgotten.

Karl Schwarz happily remarks that, as the English apologists of the 18th century were themselves infected with the poison of the deists whom they end eavoured to refute, so Tholuck absorbed some of the heresies of the rationalists whom he tried to overthrow.

As a theologian, Ephraim shows himself a stout defender of Nicaean orthodoxy, with no leanings in the direction of either the Nestorian or the Monophysite heresies which arose after his time.

Having recanted his heresies, he was readmitted after an excommunication of fifteen years, but was soon excommunicated a second time.

His enemies have attributed to him certain doctrinal heresies, but their accusations do not bear examination.

Not a few such traditions Irenaeus has embodied in his work Against Heresies, so preserving in some cases the substance of Papias's Exposition (see Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, 1891, for these, as for all texts bearing on Papias).

The author's extraordinary power, learning and originality were acknowledged on all hands, though he excited censure and suspicion by his tenderness to the alleged heresies of Conyers Middleton.

The pseudo-Tertullian in the short treatise Against all Heresies lets us know that the being whom the Most High God came down to seek was Wisdom.

We are little troubled, of course, with heresies, and are not shocked by the outbreaks of theological zeal; but where thought as well as action does not reach beyond the limits of earth and time, we do not find man in his best estate.

Above all, his polemic is directed against the dying heresies of the 3rd century; and he writes with an absence of constraint which is not the language of one who lives amidst violent controversies or who is conscious of being in a minority.

Theodoret has an outline of theology in the last book (v.) of his treatise Against Heresies.

These Conclusions really contain the sum of Wycliffite teaching; and, if we add that the principal duty of priests is to preach, and that the worship of images, the going on pilgrimages and the use of gold and silver chalices in divine service are sinful (The Peasants' Rising and the Lollards, p. 47), they include almost all the heresies charged in the indictments against individual Lollards down to the middle of the 15th century.