HKB
5 passages · search this phrase →
Often appears with: prayer and worship · justice as a virtue · crime and punishment · worship vs service · the nature and attributes of God · the fear of death · simony (introduced as next topic) · saint worship · sacrifice and ritual · sacredness from deputation to divine worship · sacred vs profane places · sacred things
Usually: argument (3) · censure (2) · detachment (2) · reflection (1) · speech or oration (1) · crisis of belief (1) · injustice endured (1) · curiosity (1) · reverence (1) · skepticism (1)
“Not every circumstance that makes a moral action better or worse, changes its species.” Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) · precept
“Therefore Zechariah, when speaking of the restoration of the Church, expressly declares, not only that “there shall be one Lord,” but also “that his name shall be one;” Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Vol. 1 of 2) · insight
“Through whom we implore you, conscript fathers, by your honour, not to perform any thing in Italy or in Africa, until you have expiated their guilty deed, lest they should atone for the crime they have committed, not with their own blood only, but by some disaster affecting their country.” Livy, The History of Rome, Books 27 to 36 · insight
“The sacrilegious man cannot do God any harm, for He is placed beyond his reach by His divine nature; yet he is punished because he seems to have done Him harm: his punishment is demanded by our feeling on the matter, and even by his own.” Lucius Annaeus Seneca, L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits · insight
The ambassadors add that sacrilege against Proserpina’s temple at Locri brought divine punishment, describing Pyrrhus’s loss of sacred money and claiming Pleminius’s impious acts will force Roman expiation and bring disasters.
ever suffer. All the enormities which the most cruel and savage tyrants are wont to perpetrate upon their oppressed subjects, Pleminius has perpetrated upon ourselves, our children, and our wives. 18. "There is one circumstance, however, in complaining of which particularly we may be allowed to yield to our deeply-rooted sense of religion, and indulge a hope that you will listen to it; and, if it shall seem good to …
A circumstance can place an action in the species of good or evil when it has special relation to reason—e.g., stealing from a holy place (a sacrilege) makes the action specifically evil.
or worse, makes it differ in goodness and malice. Therefore it causes it to differ in species. Therefore every circumstance that makes an action better or worse, constitutes a species. Obj. 2: Further, an additional circumstance either has in itself the character of goodness or malice, or it has not. If not, it cannot make the action better or worse; because what is not good, cannot make a greater good; and what is …
Thomas argues that sacrilege is the violation of something sacred: sacred things are deputed to divine worship, and any irreverence toward them injures God.
is due to it, which reverence is referred to God. Therefore whatever pertains to irreverence for sacred things is an injury to God, and comes under the head of sacrilege. Reply Obj. 1: According to the Philosopher (Ethic. i, 2) the common good of the nation is a divine thing, wherefore in olden times the rulers of a commonwealth were called divines, as being the ministers of divine providence, according to Wis. 6:5,…
Calvin rejects the latria/dulia distinction used to justify saint worship, arguing that worship and service of God cannot be parceled out to creatures without sacrilege, and cites biblical warnings against giving worship to others.
extinguished, except that we retain some faint notion of his supreme power; but, at the same time, deceived with such impostures, we are seduced to the worship of various deities. II. On this account was invented the distinction of *latria* and *dulia*, as they express themselves, by which they conceived they might safely ascribe divine honours to angels and deceased men. For it is evident, that the worship which pa…
Seneca explains paradoxes about sacrilege using the argument of Bion, then distinguishes sacred from merely worldly places, concluding the wise man can be “robbed” only where he owns property.
from another point of view is his. In the same way the wise man in his mind possesses everything, in actual right and ownership he possesses only his own property. VII. Bion is able to prove by argument at one time that everyone is sacrilegious, at another that no one is. When he is in a mood for casting all men down the Tarpeian rock, he says, "Whosoever touches that which belongs to the gods, and consumes it or co…