Word Finder - polity

definition

An organizational structure of the government of a state, church, etc.

definition

A politically organized unit; a state.

example

Different nations have different forms of polities, from provinces and states to territories and municipalities.

In momentary peril of death for fifteen years, he restored in the Vivarais and the Cevennes Presbyterian church polity in all its integrity.

They did not get their ideas of church polity from one another, but drew it directly from the New Testament.

As one of the three principal systems of ecclesiastical polity known to the Christian Church, Presbyterianism occupies an intermediate position between episcopacy and congregationalism.

They were spoken of as" the way."4 They took with them, into the new communities which they formed, the Jewish polity or rule and oversight by elders.

Yet we do not find that the leaders of the Reformed Church succeeded in establishing at once a fully-developed Presbyterian polity.

The remarkable feature of French church polity was its aristocratic nature, which it owed to the system of co-optation; and the exclusion of the congregation from direct and frequent interference in spiritual matters prevented many evils which result from too much intermeddling on the part of the laity.

Their ecclesiastical polity came much more from Paris than from Geneva."2 To trace the history of Presbyterianism in France for the next thirty years would be to write the history of France itself during that period.

We will not open to churchmen a door for a new mastership over government and subjects, wife and child."From 1618 a modified Presbyterian polity predominated.

Episcopacy, Erastianism and Independency, though of little account in the assembly, were to bulk largely in England's future; while the church polity which the assembly favoured and recommended was to be almost unknown.

From the beginning of the 18th century the greater number of the Presbyterian congregations became practically independent in polity and Unitarian in doctrine.

This, except historically, is a misnomer, for, though descended from the old English Presbyterians, they retain nothing of their distinctive doctrine of polity - nothing of Presbyterianism, indeed, but the name.

His views on church polity were dominated by his implicit belief in the divine right of kings (not of course the divine hereditary right of kings) which the Anglicans felt it necessary to set up against the divine right of popes.

In theology, as in ecclesiastical polity, Hofmann was a Lutheran of an extreme type, although the strongly marked individuality of some of his opinions laid him open to repeated accusations of heterodoxy.

Admission to the gild was not restricted to burgesses; nor did the brethren form an aristocratic body having control over the whole municipal polity.

As has been justly said, if Newton once suffered a cerebral attack without forfeiting our veneration for the Principia, Comte may have suffered in the same way, and still not have forfeited our respect for Positive Philosophy and Positive Polity.

The ancient differences between Old and New Side were revived, and once more it was urged that there should be (1) strict subscription, (2) exclusion of the Congregationalized churches, and strict Presbyterian polity and discipline, and (3) the condemnation and exclusion of the new divinity and the maintenance of scholastic orthodoxy.

It was the task of Ezekiel to take up once more the broken threads of Israel's religious traditions, and weave them anew into statelier forms of ritual and national polity.

The government of the church is chiefly according to the congregational principle, and the women have an equal voice with the men; but annual meetings, attended by the bishops, teachers and other delegates from the several congregations are held, and at these sessions the larger questions involving church polity are considered and decided by a committee of five bishops.

He ineffectually resisted the efforts of the Calvinists, led by Caspar Olevianus, to introduce the Presbyterian polity and discipline, which were established at Heidelberg in 1570, on the Genevan model.

Christians being released, in important particulars, from conformity to the Old Testament polity as a whole, a real difficulty attended the settlement of the limits and the immediate authority of the remainder, known vaguely as the moral law.

He compiled a Jewish Calendar and wrote Discourses on the Ecclesiastical and Civil Polity of the Jews (1706).

Comte lost no time, after the completion of his Course of Positive Philosophy, in proceeding with the System of Positive Polity, for which the earlier work was designed to be a foundation.

This work is accomplished in the last three volumes of the Positive Philosophy, and the second and third volumes of the Positive Polity.

The third volume of the Positive Polity treats of social dynamics, and takes us again over the ground of historic evolution.

The system for which the Positive Philosophy is alleged to have been the scientific preparation contains a Polity and a Religion; a complete arrangement of life in all its aspects, giving a wider sphere to Intellect, Energy and Feeling than could be found in any of the previous organic types, - Greek, Roman or Catholic-feudal.

Not that he would have allowed the state to touch doctrine, to determine polity or discipline; but he would have had it to recognize historical achievement, religious character and capacity, and endow out of its ample resources those societies which had vindicated their right to be regarded as making for religion.

In the churches which consciously shaped their polity at or after the Reformation the principle of excommunication is preserved in the practice of church discipline.

These movements issued in the congregational system which is the present polity among Benedictines.

Thus the Benedictine polity may be described as a number of autonomous federations of autonomous monasteries.

Here we have essential Congregationalism, formulated for the first time in England as the original and genuine Christian polity, and as such binding on those loyal to the Head of the Church.

Such were the leading features of Browne's Congregationalism, as a polity distinct from both Episcopacy and Presbyterianism.

Congregationalists, on the other hand, whether Independents or Baptists, remained on the whole Trinitarians, largely perhaps in virtue of their very polity, with its intimate relation between the piety of the people and that of the ministry.

Similarly its ecclesiastical statesmen have been developing the full possibilities of its polity, to suit the demands of the time for coordinated effort.

The motives and circumstances of the emigrants determined their polity; they went out as churches and settled as church states.

The movement in the direction of union has been still further promoted by the International Councils referred to above (section on British Congregationalism ad fin.), in which the American Congregationalists have met the representatives of their brethren in Great Britain and its colonies having the same faith and polity.

The Congregational churches, as distinct from the churches retaining the same polity, but separated by the adoption of Unitarian opinions, have in times past professed to be Calvinists of stricter or more moderate types.

In 1882 he was called to Harvard where he taught as instructor in philosophy, assistant professor (1885-92), professor of the history of philosophy (1892-1914) and Alford professor of religion, moral philosophy, and civil polity (after 1914).

In foreign imperial affairs, and in the adjustment of serious parliamentary difficulties, the queen's dynastic influence abroad and her position as above party at home, together with the respect due to her character, good sense and experience, still remained a powerful element in the British polity, as was shown Austro- on more than one occasion.

Owing to the once prevalent desire of the adherents of one or another polity to find support in primitive precept or practice, the question has assumed a prominence out of proportion to its real importance, and the few and scattered references in early Christian writings have been made the basis for various elaborate theories.

Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity was accidentally destroyed.

Thus the congress of Vienna failed to institute any new system for securing the stability of the European polity, nor did it recognize those new forces of liberty and nationality which had really caused Napoleon's downfall.

While complying with the terms of the Act of Uniformity, Wallis seems always to have retained moderate and rational notions of ecclesiastical polity.

Hooker, who speaks of Jewel as "the worthiest divine that Christendom bath bred for some hundreds of years," was one of the boys whom Jewel prepared in his house for the university; and his Ecclesiastical Polity owes much to Jewel's training.

As comprehensive in their polity as the Benedictines or Franciscans, they gathered their members from, and soon scattered their possessions over, every country in Europe.

After a period of stress and uncertainty, due very largely to the variety of denominational creed and polity, matters assumed an easier condition, the missionaries recognizing the national characteristics and aiming at guidance rather than control.

Retiring to Shottesbrooke in Berkshire, and living on the produce of a small estate in Ireland, he devoted himself to the study of chronology and ecclesiastical polity.

Dodwell's works on ecclesiastical polity are more numerous and of much less value than those on chronology, his judgment being far inferior to his power of research.

A clean sweep was made of the medieval polity surviving in the somnolent local diets and corporations.

The Covenanters were thus named because in a series of bands or covenants they bound themselves to maintain the Presbyterian doctrine and polity as the sole religion of their country.

In the controversy between Walter Travers and Richard Hooker he interposed by prohibiting the preaching cf the former; and he moreover presented Hooker with the rectory of Boscombe in Wiltshire, in order to afford him more leisure to complete his Ecclesiastical Polity, a work which, however, cannot be said to represent either Whitgift's theological or his ecclesiastical standpoint.