Top 69 Ecclesiastical Quotes
#1. Every new and successful example of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance.
James Madison
#2. The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but ... to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.
Joseph Story
#3. For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.
Barbara Tuchman
#4. The intelligentsia ... was kept busy embroidering white stitches on the philosophical and ecclesiastical vestments of the bourgeoisie - that old and filthy fabric besmeared with the blood of toiling masses.
Maxim Gorky
#5. You might think that religion was the one area in which professional jealousy would take a back seat. But no: ecclesiastical memoirs are as viperish as any, though their envy tends to cloak itself in piety.
Craig Brown
#6. Morals consist of political morals, commercial morals, ecclesiastical morals, and morals.
Mark Twain
#7. Any church program, no matter how impressive, if it is not supported by an adequate prayer program, is little more than an ecclesiastical treadmill. It is doing little or no damage to Satan's kingdom.
Paul Billheimer
#8. Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.
James Madison
#9. The gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, Eusebius himself, indirectly confesses that he has related whatever might redound to the glory, and that he has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace, of religion.
Edward Gibbon
#10. The secular world is more spiritual than it thinks, just as the ecclesiastical world is more materialist than it cares to acknowledge.
Lionel Blue
#12. MONSIGNOR- A high ecclesiastical title, of which the Founder of our religion overlooked the advantages.
Ambrose Bierce
#13. Most ecclesiastical relics are fixed in time at the moment of their manufacture. That is why they are offered for veneration in casings that resemble pocket watches. They have lost their claim to mystery because they are so clearly the products of time.
Eugene Kennedy
#14. I believe in an America ... where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source.
John F. Kennedy
#15. Probably in all history there is no instance of a society in which ecclesiastical power was dominant which was not at once stagnant, corrupt and brutal.
George Agnew Reid
#16. The Churches belong together in the Church. What that may mean for our ecclesiastical groupings we do not know. We have not discovered the kind or outward manifestation which God wills that we shall give to that inner unity. But we must seek it.
Hugh Martin
#17. Lutheranism restricted itself to an exclusively ecclesiastical and theological character, while Calvinism put its impress in and outside the church upon every aspect of human life.
Abraham Kuyper
#18. They amuse themselves by playing an irrelevant ecclesiastical game called "Let's Pretend." Let's pretend that we possess the objective truth of God in our inerrant Scriptures or in our infallible pronouncements or in our unbroken apostolic traditions.
John Shelby Spong
#19. We bless the organized church structures and their meetings. But if there are 10,000 others that meet outside of these ecclesiastical structures, that's wonderful, too. The kingdom of God moves forward in lots and lots of ways.
Richard Foster
#20. The whole account of baptism in the New Testament is plain and intelligible, and the state of this ordinance, during the lives of the apostles, is to be gathered mostly from the book of Acts, written by Luke, the first ecclesiastical historian.
David Benedict
#21. Scripture would not only solve the individual and family divisions, but it would also solve the ecclesiastical confusion.
Tony Evans
#22. It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects ... that is was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject.
Joseph Story
#23. And if a man consider the original of this great Ecclesiastical Dominion, he will easily perceive, that the Papacy , is no other than the Ghost of the deceased Romane Empire , sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: For so did the Papacy start up on a Sudden out of the Ruines of that Heathen Power.
Thomas Hobbes
#24. Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was inundated with blood, which was shed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the ecclesiastical authorities.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
#25. In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don't baptize the children of single mothers because they weren't conceived in the sanctity of marriage. These are today's hypocrites. Those who clericalize the church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation.
Pope Francis
#26. If the Lutheran, Reformed, and Anabaptist churches in continental Europe came about due to theological or ecclesiastical issues, the Church of England came about (at least in one sense) due to hormonal issues, namely, lust.
Daryl Aaron
#27. God has appointed two kinds of government in the world, which are distinct in their nature, and ought never to be confounded together; one of which is called civil, the other ecclesiastical government.
Isaac Backus
#28. An unread author is an author who is a victim of the worst kind of censorship, indifference - a censorship more effective than the Ecclesiastical Index.
Octavio Paz
#29. He carried a highly ecclesiastical umbrella, like something real and austere, that said its prayers at night in the hatstand. I
Sebastian Barry
#30. God's grace is not limited by any ecclesiastical barriers.
Lesslie Newbigin
#31. The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians.
Angelina Grimke
#32. It is an unsufferable blasphemy to reject the public ministry or to say that people can become holy without sermons and Church. This involves a destruction of the Church and rebellion against ecclesiastical order; such upheavals must be warded off and punished like all other revolts.
Martin Luther
#33. But we can never hope for a whole jury-box full of ecclesiastical diehards.
Dorothy L. Sayers
#34. The ecclesiastical system of Rome, and particularly its leaders, for a thousand years and more thought that the earth is fixed and that everything else revolves about it.
Joseph Franklin Rutherford
#35. There is a different spelling between "rights" and "rites" - in other words, civic legislators and ecclesiastical councils have different responsibilities.
Otis Moss III
#36. Notwithstanding this high Ecclesiastical authority, he who dared accept truth only because it could be proved, or proved to be good, and disregard authority, was commonly stigmatized as an infidel.
Ethan A. Hitchcock
#37. The manner in which the Americans are subdivided into sects also conflicts with any commendable desire that may exist to build glorious temples in honor of the Deity: and convenience is more consulted than taste, perhaps, in all that relates to ecclesiastical architecture. Nevertheless,
James Fenimore Cooper
#38. In my judgment, while it is the duty of Congress to respect to the uttermost the conscientious convictions and religious scruples of every citizen ... not any ecclesiastical organization can be safely permitted to usurp in the smallest degree the functions and powers of the national government.
James A. Garfield
#39. In reality, orthodoxy comes into being only after there are choices to be made, with competing, and mutually exclusive, options. Heresy is the choice that loses. Ecclesiastical history, like any other, is written by the victors.
Eric A. Eliason
#40. I will not be influenced, governed, or controlled, in my temporal interests by any ecclesiastical authority or pretended revelation whatever, contrary to my own judgment.
Oliver Cowdery
#41. Over the pope as expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority, there stands one's own conscience which must be obeyed before all else, even if necessary against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority.
Pope Benedict XVI
#42. Doctrinal rightness and rightness of ecclesiastical position are important, but only as a starting point to go on into a living relationship - and not as ends in themselves.
Francis Schaeffer
#43. Some people have compared the Klan images to ecclesiastical figures.
Andres Serrano
#44. Although it was in primitive times and differently called the Lord's day or Sunday, yet it was never denominated the Sabbath; a name constantly appropriate to Saturday, or the Seventh day both by sacred and ecclesiastical writers.
Charles Buck
#45. An archbishop is an ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.
Ambrose Bierce
#46. The ecclesiastical description of Hell is that of a horrible place of fire and torment; in Dante's Inferno, and in northern climes, it was thought to be an icy cold region, a giant refrigerator.
Anton Szandor LaVey
#47. Often, superstition and injustice are imposed by the same ecclesiastical and secular authorities, working hand in glove. It is no surprise that political revolutions, scepticism about religion, and the rise of science might go together,
Carl Sagan
#48. My legal wife is to me dead; the only ecclesiastical authority I recognise pronounces me free; the attacks and threats of men do not disturb me. I am acting according to a clear conscience, and am doing hurt to no man. For my conduct, I will answer to my maker.
William The Silent
#49. In Europe it was once commonly believed that beasts could be possessed by demons and controlled by the evil of Satan. So animals, even birds and insects, were tried by ecclesiastical courts, just like witches and heretics. They were excommunicated, tortured and condemned to death.
Chet Williamson
#50. If naturalists go to heaven (about which there is considerable ecclesiastical doubt), I hope that I will be furnished with a troop of kakapo to amuse me in the evening instead of television.
Gerald Durrell
#51. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#52. The frightful engines of ecclesiastical councils, of diabolical malice, and Calvinistical good-nature never failed to terrify me exceedingly whenever I thought of preaching.
John Adams
#53. Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption
James Madison
#54. The ecclesiastical establishments of Europe which serve to support tyrannical governments are not the Christian religion but abuses and corruptions of it.
Noah Webster
#55. English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was the music from the streets.
Yann Martel
#56. The Athanasian Creed is the most splendid ecclesiastical lyric ever poured forth by the genius of man.
Benjamin Disraeli
#57. For, as I have already said, it is the ecclesiastical and not the secular arm which must defend us.
Teresa Of Avila
#58. The ideal of progress, freedom of thought, and the decline of ecclesiastical power go together.
J. B. Bury
#59. Sins are indispensable to every society organized on an ecclesiastical basis; they are the only reliable weapons of power; the priest lives upon sins; it is necessary to him that there be sinning.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#60. When the Lord is known as the heart of every joy, as well as the refuge from every sorrow, then the altar will be known for what it is - an ecclesiastical antique. The Father permitted but never ordained sacrifice; in tenderness to his children he ordered the ways of their unbelieving belief.
George MacDonald
#61. If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the Convention where I had the honor to preside might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it.
George Washington
#62. Jefferson found in the religion phrases of the First Amendment no vague or fuzzy language to be bent or shaped or twisted as suited any Supreme Court Justice or White House incumbent. That amendment had built a wall, with the ecclesiastical estate on one side and the civil estate on the other.
Edwin Gaustad
#63. A regular method was the levy for a crusade, which allowed ecclesiastical income within each country to be taxed by its king, who soon came to regard it as a right.
Barbara W. Tuchman
#64. It behooves us unanimously and inviolably to observe the ecclesiastical traditions, whether codified or simply retained by the customary practice of the Church.
Peter Canisius
#65. It is easy to forget, since the Catholic Church is now the only large American religious denomination whose ecclesiastical hierarchy continues to oppose birth control, that only a century ago the leaders of nearly all churches were united in their resistance to any public discussion of the subject.
Susan Jacoby
#66. In schoolbooks and in literature we can separate ecclesiastical and political history; in the life of mankind they are intertwined.
Leopold Von Ranke
#67. [There is a real need] to search out the real Church from age to age,... indeed a work of much labour and difficulty... The ore is precious, but it must be extracted from incredible heaps of Ecclesiastical rubbish.
Joseph Milner
#68. Truth and reason are eternal. They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail; however, in times and places they may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or ecclesiastical.
Thomas Jefferson
#69. For hardly any of the ecclesiastical writers have handled the Divine Scriptures more ineptly and absurdly than Origen and Jerome.
Martin Luther
