The General Biographical Dictionary:: Containing an Historical and Critical Account of the Lives and Writings of the Most Eminent Persons in Every Nation; Particularly the British and Irish; from the Earliest Accounts to the Present Time..

Portada
J. Nichols and Son [and 29 others], 1815

Des de l'interior del llibre

Pàgines seleccionades

Altres edicions - Mostra-ho tot

Frases i termes més freqüents

Passatges populars

Pàgina 94 - Call', is still read as a popular and powerful book of devotion. His precepts are rigid, but they are founded on the gospel : his satire is sharp, but it is drawn from the knowledge of human life ; and many of his portraits are not unworthy of the pen of La Bruyere. If he finds a spark of piety in his reader's mind, he will soon kindle it to a flame ; and a philosopher must allow that he exposes, with equal severity and truth, the strange contradiction between the faith and practice of the Christian...
Pàgina 527 - In passing judgment upon the characters of men, we ought to try them by the principles and maxims of their own age, not by those of another. For although virtue and vice are at all times the same, manners and customs vary continually.
Pàgina 526 - The other, warmed with the admiration and gratitude, which they thought he merited as the restorer of light and liberty to the Christian church, ascribed to him perfections above the condition of humanity, and viewed all his actions with a veneration bordering on that, which should be paid only to those who are guided by the immediate inspiration of heaven.
Pàgina 217 - Testament," in a series of letters addressed to Thomas Paine, in answer to his Age of Reason, part II.
Pàgina 527 - Some parts of Luther's behaviour, which to us appear most culpable, gave no disgust to his contemporaries. It was even by some of those qualities, which we are now apt to blame, that he was fitted for accomplishing the great work which he undertook. To rouse mankind, when sunk in ignorance or superstition, and to encounter the rage of bigotry armed with power, required the utmost vehemence of zeal, as well as a temper daring to excess.
Pàgina 136 - Men suffer all their life long under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is as impossible for a man to be cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at the same time.
Pàgina 142 - He was severely whipped before he was put in the pillory. 2. Being set in the pillory, he had one of his ears cut off.
Pàgina 166 - In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz came to him, and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.
Pàgina 527 - BUT these indecencies of which Luther was guilty, must not be imputed wholly to the violence of his temper. They ought to be charged in part on the manners of the age. Among a rude people, unacquainted with those maxims which, by putting continual restraint on the passions of individuals, have polished society, and rendered it agreeable, disputes...
Pàgina 526 - It is his own conduct, not the undistinguishing censure or the exaggerated praise of his contemporaries, that ought to regulate the opinions of the present age concerning him. Zeal for what he regarded as truth, undaunted intrepidity to maintain his own system, abilities, both natural and acquired, to defend his principles, and unwearied industry in propagating them, are virtues which shine so conspicuously in every part of his behavior that even his enemies must allow him to have possessed them...

Informació bibliogràfica