Section: 2A6 - Rightness of Ceremonies.
Number of quotes: 40
Cathars: Perfect Heresy, The
Stephen O’Shea
Book ID: 261 Page: 232
Section: 2A6
Peter must have repeatedly bitten his tongue at these pious moments, for he would later say that making the sign of the cross was useful only for batting away flies. He even suggested alternate wording for the gesture: “Here is the forehead and here is the beard and here is one ear and here is the other.”
Quote ID: 6622
Time Periods: ?
Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical
Frank C. Senn
Book ID: 54 Page: 31
Section: 2A6
Augustine of Hippo spoke of the visibility of the word: “The word comes to an element, and so there is a sacrament, that is, a sort of visible word.”. . . .
If we ask why we need such visible words, there is also a standard answer in the Christian tradition. Thomas Aquinas summarized it when he noted that human beings are “composed of body and soul, to whom the sacramental medicine is proportioned, that through a visible thing touches the body and through a word is believed by the soul.” It is by its visibility, its sign-value, its sacramentality, that God’s word to us is no mere transmission between pure spirits, but communication between persons. In our communion with God and with one another, we communicate through our bodies. Our bodily selves are our real selves. God takes that into account when communicating with us. The God whose word to us is sacramental is the God who comes to us to be spoken to and to speak. This is the God who has body and blood, the God who can enter deeply into our own flesh.
Quote ID: 1210
Time Periods: 47
Christian Priesthood Examined
Richard Hanson
Book ID: 55 Page: 60
Section: 2A6,2D3B
Whoever therefore obeys all these heavenly commands is a worshipper of the true God, whose sacrifices are gentleness of mind and an innocent life and good actions. Whoever manifests all these, sacrifices as often he performs any good and pious act. For God does not want a victim consisting of a dumb animal nor its death nor blood, but that of a man and his life....And so there is placed on the altar of God, which is really the Great Altar and which cannot be defiled because it is situated in man’s heart, righteousness, patience, faith, innocence, chastity, temperance. (Div. Inst. VI.24, 27-29). . . .
. . .gift means integrity of mind, sacrifice praise and hymnody (25.7). Sacrifice on our part can only consist of blessing, made by words. There is no need for a temple in this worship; it can just as well be given at home: “in fact each man has God always consecrated in his heart because he is the Temple of God” (25.16). In this radical doctrine of offering there is no room at all for a priest offering the sacrifice of Christ to God.
Pastor John’s note: Lactantius
Quote ID: 1238
Time Periods: 34
Christian Symbol and Ritual
Bernard Cooke
Book ID: 56 Page: 8
Section: 2A6
Rituals and symbols without bodies just don’t make sense. This was so clear to medieval writers that they argued that only embodied humans need symbols and rituals. Angels, demons, and even animals don’t have them and don’t need them. Angels and demons perceive things directly; they don’t need the intermediaries of the senses.
Quote ID: 1245
Time Periods: 27
Christian Symbol and Ritual
Bernard Cooke
Book ID: 56 Page: 44
Section: 2A6
This, then, is what constitutes Jesus’ “institution” of the Christian sacraments. He did not begin and he did not mandate the rituals themselves that emerged in the early church. But because those rituals are memorials of his life and death and resurrection, they require that he lived and died and rose. He did not establish these memorial rituals; he did that which they remember and thereby introduced a new meaning into human life.
Quote ID: 1250
Time Periods: 2
Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance, The
John Hale
Book ID: 202 Page: 117
Section: 2A6
To Luther, as to many of his less passionately radical contemporaries, a reconsideration of Christian belief through concentrating on the words and lives of Christ and those who wrote and spread the gospel close to his lifetime, led them to doubt what amounted to commentaries and inventions. Apart from the gospels’ baptism and communion, the subsequently evolved sacramental apparatus – confirmation, marriage (as a sacrament as opposed to a contract) confession and penance, extreme unction, ordination – fell away, and with it the need for the miracle-aiding caste of priests that had kept it in place.
Quote ID: 4621
Time Periods: 7
Clement of Alexandria, LCL 092
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 140 Page: 307
Section: 2A6,2D3B
The Rich Man’s SalvationSalvation does not depend upon outward things, whether they are many or few, small or great, splendid or lowly, glorious or mean, but upon the soul’s virtue . . .
Quote ID: 3041
Time Periods: 23
Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Volume 1.1-2, The
Edited by John Nicholas Lenker
Book ID: 336 Page: 99
Section: 2A6
THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT.Therefore, works do not belong to the Gospel, as it is not a law; only faith belongs to it, as it is altogether a promise and an offer of divine grace.
Quote ID: 7836
Time Periods: 7
Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Volume 4.1-2, The
Edited by John Nicholas Lenker
Book ID: 337 Page: 167
Section: 2A6
FITH SUNDAY IN LENTBut Christ, in God’s sight, purifies the conscience of dead works; that is, of sins meriting death, and of works performed in sin and thereafter dead. Christ purifies from these, that we may serve the living God by living works.
Quote ID: 7849
Time Periods: 7
Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Volume 7, The
Edited by Eugene F. A. Klug
Book ID: 339 Page: 89/90
Section: 2A6
NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY…so also the fanatics can do nothing but speak contemptuously of the Word and sacraments and merely cry, Spirit! Spirit! But we know that the Holy Spirit does not want to carry on his work apart from the Word and sacraments. For this reason we dare not distain the Word and sacraments, but we should cherish them as the very best and noblest of treasures.
Quote ID: 7863
Time Periods: ?
Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Volume 7, The
Edited by Eugene F. A. Klug
Book ID: 339 Page: 105
Section: 2A6
TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY18. The punishment for nor recognizing or attending to the time of visitation—we had the Word, the Sacrament, baptism, gospel, absolution, and yet did not believe in or benefit from them—is that we shall have to endure everlasting captivity, darkness, torment, weeping, and gnashing of teeth.
Pastor John’s note: Damnation for not partaking
Quote ID: 7864
Time Periods: ?
Documents of the Christian Church
Edited by Henry Bettenson & Chris Maunder
Book ID: 74 Page: 340/341
Section: 2A6
XII. Concerning BaptismAs there is one Lord and one faith, so there is one baptism; which is not the putting away the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience before God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And this baptism is a pure and spiritual thing, to wit, the baptism of the Spirit and fire, by which we are buried with Him, that being washed and purged from our sins, we may walk in newness of life; of which the baptism of John was a figure which was commanded for a time, and not to continue for ever. As to the baptism of infants, it is a mere human tradition, for which neither precept nor practice is to be found in all the Scripture.
XIII. Concerning the Communion, or Participation of the Body and Blood of Christ
The Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ is inward and spiritual, which is the participation of His flesh and blood, by which the inward man is daily nourished in the hearts of those in whom Christ dwells; of which things the breaking of bread by Christ with His disciples was a figure, which they even used in the Church for a time, who had received the substance, for the cause of the weak; even as abstaining from things strangled, and from blood, the washing one another’s feet and the anointing of the sick with oil; all of which are commanded with no less authority and solemnity than the former; yet seeing they are but the shadows of better things, they cease in such as have obtained the substance.
Pastor John’s Note: See page 337 for source
Above Source: XII. The Quakers
The Chief Principles of the Christian religion, as professed by the people called the Quakers
[These fifteen propositions were drawn up in 1678 by Robert Barclay, an educated disciple of George Fox. They form the headings of the fifteen chapters of his Apology for the Quakers.]
Quote ID: 2078
Time Periods: ?
Early Liturgy: To the Time of Gregory the Great, The
Josef A. Jungmann
Book ID: 216 Page: 11/12
Section: 2A6
Stephen the Protomartyr shed his blood for the concept that the liturgy of the Old Testament and the cult connected with the Temple of Jerusalem had to cease and that a new sort of worship which is inward and spiritual must take its place.Now the new worship was indeed a spiritual sort; it was worship “in spirit and in truth.” For it was worship paid God by men who were moved by the Holy Spirit. Yet its inwardness was not to debar all outward expression. This worship was not to consist exclusively in the individual’s private prayer; it was not to be inimical to liturgy. For our Lord did not reveal doctrine, He founded a Church, a visible Church, a Church with visible men as leaders to guide the Church in His name, a Church into which entrance was to be gained by the visible sign of baptism, a Church whose members would gather together visibly in a communal meal, whose members were to honor God in common. He had established a new liturgy, the liturgy of the New Testament.
Quote ID: 5381
Time Periods: 12
Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism
Rosemary Radford Ruether
Book ID: 88 Page: 37
Section: 2A6
For Philo, it is as wrong to abandon the letter of the Torah for a “purely spiritual religion” that imagines it can dispense with the outward observance, as it would be for a man to imagine that he can live purely in the soul while abandoning the body: It follows that, exactly as we take thought for the body because it is the abode of the soul, so we must pay heed to the letter of the laws.
Quote ID: 2337
Time Periods: 12
From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopy in the Early Church
Francis A. Sullivan, S.J.
Book ID: 91 Page: 35
Section: 2A6
A Catholic might ask whether the apostles also engaged in what we would call sacramental ministry. One must reply that the New Testament provides very scanty evidence of this.
Quote ID: 2364
Time Periods: 1
God’s Bestseller
Brian Moynahan
Book ID: 98 Page: xx/xxi
Section: 2A6
The ‘Bible-men’ denied all rituals that were non-biblical. They ate meat on fast days. They did not keep Sunday as a special day. They did not confess. They failed to gaze up when the Host was elevated at mass. Some held that the sacramental bread had not even a symbolic significance. Eleanor Higges of Burford was arraigned for putting the sacrament in her oven and eating it.. . . .
Lollards maintained that only God could beatify; the pope was powerless to make a saint. The sacraments were described as ‘dead signs of no value . . . a mouthful of bread with no life’.
Quote ID: 2509
Time Periods: ?
God’s Bestseller
Brian Moynahan
Book ID: 98 Page: xvi
Section: 2A6,2A3
He held that auricular confession, heard by a priest, was superfluous; the only effective confession was that made silently by the sinner to God. He ridiculed pilgrimages, prayers to saints, the sale of pardons and indulgences, and the veneration of relics – all parts of the fabric of medieval faith, and cash cows for the Church – as non-scriptural and inefficacious.
Quote ID: 2507
Time Periods: 7
Jesus and The Spirit
James D.G. Dunn
Book ID: 117 Page: 349
Section: 2A6
Clearly then the vision of charismatic community has faded, ministry and authority have become the prerogative of the few, the experience of the Christ-Spirit has lost its vitality, the preservation of the past has become more important than openness to the present and future. Spirit and charisma have become in effect subordinate to office, to ritual, to tradition - early Catholicism indeed! Why it should be so we cannot tell. Perhaps the enthusiasts won the day in the Pauline churches after his death, and the conclusion was drawn that charismatic community is unworkable and leads inevitably to anarchy and self-destruction.
PJ: Describing the letters to Timothy and Titus. This note is worthless.
Quote ID: 2754
Time Periods: 23
Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 200
Section: 2A6
You have no need of a second circumcision, though you glory greatly in the flesh. The new law requires you to keep perpetual sabbath, and you, because you are idle for one day, suppose you are pious, not discerning why this has been commanded you: and if you eat unleavened bread, you say the will of God has been fulfilled. The Lord our God does not take pleasure in such observances: if there is any perjured person or a thief among you, let him cease to be so; if any adulterer, let him repent; then he has kept the sweet and true sabbaths of God. If any one has impure hands, let him wash and be pure.
PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, XII.
Quote ID: 9677
Time Periods: 2
Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 201
Section: 2A6
But you have understood all things in a carnal sense, and you suppose it to be piety if you do such things, while your souls are filled with deceit,
PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, XIV.
Quote ID: 9679
Time Periods: 2
Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 203
Section: 2A6
For we too would observe the fleshly circumcision, and the Sabbaths, and in short all the feasts, if we did not know for what reason they were enjoined you, - namely, on account of your transgressions and the hardness of your hearts.
PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, XVIII.
Quote ID: 9681
Time Periods: 2
Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 203
Section: 2A6,2A1
“This circumcision is not, however, necessary for all men, but for you alone, in order that, as I have already said, you may suffer these things which you now justly suffer. Nor do we receive that useless baptism of cisterns, for it has nothing to do with this baptism of life.
PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, XIX.
Note: Justin says the works of the Law were given to Israel because of their wickedness.
Quote ID: 9682
Time Periods: 2
Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 204
Section: 2A6
Justin teaches that the sabbaths were instituted on account of the people’s sins, and not for a work of righteousness.
PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, XXI.
Quote ID: 9683
Time Periods: 2
Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 205
Section: 2A6
so also were the law’s sacrifices and oblations.
PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, XXIII.
Quote ID: 9684
Time Periods: 2
Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 208/209
Section: 2A6
What need, then, have I of circumcision, who have been witnessed to by God? What need have I of that other baptism, who have been baptized with the Holy Ghost?
PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, XXIX.
Quote ID: 9686
Time Periods: 2
Monumenta Bulgarica
Thomas Butler
Book ID: 154 Page: 209
Section: 2A6
Art. 49. To those [Bogomils] who reject and revile the holy and sacred liturgy and the whole Episcopal organization, saying that these are the Devil’s inventions, anathema!….
Art. 50. To those who reject and revile the communion of the holy body of our Lord Jesus Christ, as well as the mystery of all that our Lord Jesus Christ /did/ for our salvation, anathema!
Quote ID: 3290
Time Periods: 7
Music and Worship In Pagan and Christian Antiquity
Johannes Quasten
Book ID: 156 Page: 53
Section: 2A6,2D3B,2B2
Philosophy continued to sharpen the notion of the “spiritual sacrifice.” The hymn which constituted this divine service was expounded ever more allegorically: the life of each individual person had to become a hymn to the glory of God. This exaggerated spiritualistic tendency would ultimately have eliminated every official cult.Apuleius distinguished visible gods, the heavenly bodies, and invisible gods. Among these latter he ranked the twelve Olympians, descendants of the highest god and themselves eternal, blessed spirits. Most men worship these gods, but in a completely perverse way. The demons are similar to the gods, for they are immortal like them. They are also like men in that they possess passions, are susceptible to anger and various other experiences and permit themselves to be won over by gifts. The demons are the true objects of the cults of the gods. The customs and rites of the religions of the nations differ completely according to the nature of these demons: the Egyptian gods take pleasure in lamentation, the Greek gods in dancing, and those of the barbarians in the din of tambourines, drums and flutes.{13}
Quote ID: 3317
Time Periods: 2
Music and Worship In Pagan and Christian Antiquity
Johannes Quasten
Book ID: 156 Page: 54
Section: 2A6,2A6,2D3B
Philo was persuaded that one cannot truly offer thanks to God as the vast majority of men do, with external effects, consecrated gifts and sacrifices..., but rather with songs of praise and hymns--not such as the audible voice sings, but such as are raised and re-echoed by the invisible mind.{17}
Quote ID: 3318
Time Periods: 01
Organization of the Early Christian Churches, The
Edwin Hatch, M. A.
Book ID: 255 Page: 187
Section: 1A,2D3B,2A6
Lecture VIIThere are some who will look back with lingering eyes at that earlier time in which there was no formal association of Churches, but only what Tertullian calls the ‘communication of peace, the appellation of brotherhood, the token of hospitality, and the tradition of a single creed’ {50}. There are some who will think that the effect of the enormous power which the Roman Empire in the first instance, and the fall of the Roman Empire in the second instance, gave to the association has been to exaggerate its importance, and to make men forget that there is a deeper unity than that of external form.
For the true communion of Christian men – the ‘communion of saints’ upon which all Churches are built – is not the common performance of external acts, but a communion of soul with soul and of the soul with Christ. It is a consequence of the nature which God has given us that an external organization should help our communion with one another: it is a consequence both of our twofold nature, and of Christ’s appointment that external acts should help our communion with Him.
Pastor John’s note: Wow
Quote ID: 6450
Time Periods: 12
Origen: Contra Celsum
Henry Chadwick
Book ID: 164 Page: 385
Section: 2A6,2D3B
The Saviour said to the Samaritan woman: ‘The hour is coming when neither in Jerusalem nor in this mountain shall you worship the Father; God is Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. By these words he taught that God must not be worshipped in the flesh and carnal sacrifices, but in spirit. Moreover, Jesus himself would be understood to be spirit in proportion to the degree in which a man worships him in spirit and with the mind. Furthermore, the Father must not be worshipped by external signs but in truth, the truth which came by Jesus Christ.
Quote ID: 3454
Time Periods: 2
Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 40
Section: 2A6
In effect, the Catholic Mass that developed out of the fourth through sixth centuries was essentially pagan. The Christians stole from the pagans the vestments of the pagan priests, the use of the incense and holy water in purification rites, the burning of candles in worship, the architecture of the Roman basilica for their church buildings, the law of Rome as the basis of “canon law,” the title Pontifex Maximus for the head bishop, and the pagan rituals for the Catholic Mass. {17}
Quote ID: 3524
Time Periods: 4
Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 59
Section: 2A6
Finney believed that the NT did not teach any prescribed forms of worship. {130}
Quote ID: 3534
Time Periods: ?
Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 125
Section: 2A6
The message of the steeple is one that contradicts the message of the NT. Christians do not have to reach into the heavens to find God. He is here! With the coming of Emmanuel, God is with us. {200} And with His resurrection, we have an indwelling Lord. The steeple defies these realities.
Quote ID: 3577
Time Periods: ?
Perth Assembly
David Calderwood Edited by Greg Fox
Book ID: 177 Page: 31
Section: 2A6
5. The admitting of some opened the door to the rest, and the multitude of such make us inferior to the Jews in two respects. 1. Their Ceremonies were all divine. 2. In number fewer than ritual Christians do observe betwixt the Pasche Passover, and the Pentecost,….with the multitude of frivolous ceremonies true piety was extinguished and the force of the Spirit which ought to be powerful in us.
Quote ID: 3916
Time Periods: 2
Perth Assembly
David Calderwood Edited by Greg Fox
Book ID: 177 Page: 32
Section: 2A6
The more the heap of rites and Ceremonies in the Kirk increaseth, the more is derogated, not only from Christian liberty, but also from Christ and his faith.
Quote ID: 3917
Time Periods: ?
Perth Assembly
David Calderwood Edited by Greg Fox
Book ID: 177 Page: 34
Section: 2A6
By contrary doctrine we understand, whatsoever men by Laws, Councils, or Constitutions have imposed on the consciences of men without the express commandment of God’s word, as keeping of the holy days commanded by man, the feast of Christmas, other feasts.
Quote ID: 3918
Time Periods: ?
Priest and Bishop (Biblical Reflections)
Raymond E. Brown, S.S.
Book ID: 184 Page: 40/41
Section: 2A6
Paul never mentions that he presided at the Eucharist, …. {24}. . . .
[Footnote 24] The fact that Paul mentions the Eucharist in only one of his letters (I Cor 10:16-17; 11: 23-34) weakens the force of the silence in his case. Yet it is worth noting that in the eighteen months that he was in Corinth (Acts18:11), he seems to have baptized only two people and a household (I Cor 1: 14-15). Evidently he was not primarily involved in administering sacraments.
. . . .
In point of fact, however, in the NT we are never told that any of them actually presided at the Eucharist.
Quote ID: 4094
Time Periods: 2
Shape of the Liturgy, The
Dom Gregory Dix
Book ID: 272 Page: 2/3
Section: 2A6
In considering the primitive history of the eucharist we have to keep in mind continually the circumstances of a church life whose conditions were profoundly different from our own. The New Testament documents, in sharp contrast with the fulness of Old Testament directions for worship, contain no instructions as to the form of the eucharistic rite, or detailed accounts of its celebration, beyond the brief notices of its institution. There are a number of N.T. allusions to its existence, and S. Paul regulates certain points in connection with it for the Corinthians. But such information as the N.T. offers is theological or disciplinary rather than liturgical, i.e. it deals with the meaning and effects of the rite and the spirit in which it is to be performed, rather than the actual way in which it is to be performed, which the N.T. everywhere takes for granted.
Quote ID: 6836
Time Periods: 012
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 428/429
Section: 2A6
‘He invaded the churches of Gaul,’ said Jerome, ‘and instead of the standard of the cross he carried the banner of the devil.’ Such is the monk’s language to express our presbyter’s honest attempt to remove superstitious rites and observances-‘the very master-piece of Satan’ -from the church, and to restore the ensign of the gospel of Christ. . .
Quote ID: 7245
Time Periods: 45
Western Society And The Church In The Middle Ages
R. W. Southern
Book ID: 286 Page: 342
Section: 2A6,4B
If people could form associations without authorization, choose a superior in some unknown manner, adopt a monastic type of life without the sanction of a monastic Rule, read the Scriptures together in the common tongue, confess their sins to one another and receive counsel and correction from no one knew whom, there could be an end to all order in the church.
Quote ID: 7319
Time Periods: 27
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