Carthusian Order

“ The real state of the case is that the rank of Cardinal is, as every degree in the Pope's Court should strictly speaking he, ecclesiastical, though it is no sacred order, but that practically it has been conferred on laymen by the intervention of a fiction like that invented to make Protestants capable of wearing the cross of St. Louis in France, which was given only for ninety-nine years to heretics, who forfeited it, if still unconverted at the end of that period. Laymen were named Cardinals only for twelve months, being bound within that period to take Deacon's orders ”

“ For, to such an extent has the superessential harmony of all things provided for the religious order and the regulated conduct of each of the rational and intellectual beings, that each rank of the Hierarchies, has been placed in sacred order, and we observe every Hierarchy distributed into first, and middle, and last Powers. ”

“ Cartesianism affirmed the two positive axioms of the supremacy of reason, and the invariability of the laws of nature; and its instrument was a new rigorous analytical method, which was applicable to history as well as to physical knowledge. The axioms had destructive corollaries. The immutability of the processes of nature collided with the theory of an active Providence. The supremacy of reason shook the thrones from which authority and tradition had tyrannised over the brains of men. Cartesianism was equivalent to a declaration of the Independence of Man. ”

“ You are mistaken, answered Don Alphonso; I am not acquainted with a single Carthusian. Pardon me, replied I; you have seen brother Ambrose at Xelva in the capacity of commissary, and Father Hilary as register to the inquisition. O heaven! exclaimed the governor with surprise, can it be within the bounds of possibility that Raphael and Lamela should have turned Carthusians? It is even so, answered I; they professed several years ago. The former is bursar and proctor to the convent, the latter, porter. ”

“ Formerly men looked upon law as the product of the conscious will of the legislator. Today they see in it a natural force. If, however, we can attribute to law the epithet ‘natural,’ it is, as we have said, in a different sense from that which formerly attached to the expression ‘natural law.’ That expression then meant that nature had imprinted in us, as one of the very elements of reason, certain principles of which all the articles of the code were only the application. The same expression ought to mean today that law springs from the relations of fact which exist between things. ”

“ On 10 Dec. they were pronounced by the commissioners sitting at Whitehall to be incapable of all preferment. Cartwright was probably one of those who advised King James to order the clergy to read the declaration for liberty of conscience in their churches, an order which led to such momentous consequences. When the order was published and the bishops were consulting as to their line of action, we find from Lord Clarendon's ‘Diary’ that they suspected Cartwright, and would not speak before him. ”

“ Theology now became influenced by Cartesianism. Roëll, professor at Franeker and Utrecht, who died A.D. 1718, taught that the divinity of the Scriptures must be proved to the reason, since the testimonium Spir. s. internum is limited to those who already believe, rejected the doctrine of the imputation of original sin, the doctrine that death is for believers the punishment of sin, and the application of the idea of eternal “generation” to the Logos, to whom the predicate of sonship belongs only in regard to the decree of redemption and incarnation. Another zealous Cartesian, Balth. ”

“ Given, however, the fundamental conception, all agree in deducing its consequences by methods in which the preponderating element is the method of philosophy. We may find kindred illustrations in the law of trusts and contracts and in many other fields. It would be wearisome to accumulate them.
⁠The directive force of logic does not always exert itself, however, along a single and unobstructed path. One principle or precedent, pushed to the limit of its logic, may point to one conclusion; another principle or precedent, followed with like logic, may point with equal certainty to another. ”

“ And as the Cartesians, more than any other school of philosophical speculation before or since, made their own minds the measure of all things, and refused, on principle, to believe that Nature had done what they were unable to see any reason why she must do, they affirmed it to be impossible that a material and a mental fact could be causes one of another. ”

“ Recognised or not recognised, a man has his superiors, a regular hierarchy above him; extending up, degree above degree; to Heaven itself and God the Maker, who made His world not for anarchy but for rule and order! It is not a light matter when the just man can recognise in the powers set over him no longer anything that is divine; when resistance against such becomes a deeper law of order than obedience to them; when the just man sees himself in the tragical position of a stirrer up of strife! ”

“ A rich, not a happy. The Order was victorious; Livonian "Sword-Brothers," "Knights of Dobryn," minor Orders and Authorities all round, were long since subordinated to it or incorporated with it; Livonia, Courland, Lithuania, are all got tamed under its influence, or tied down and evidently tamable. But it was in these times that the Order got into its wider troubles outward and inward; quarrels, jealousies, with Christian neighbors, Poland, Pommern, who did not love it and for cause;—wider troubles, and by no means so evidently useful to mankind. ”

“ The old Blackstonian theory of pre-existing rules of law which judges found, but did not make, fitted in with a theory still more ancient, the theory of a law of nature. The growth of that conception forms a long and interesting chapter in the history of jurisprudence and political science. [46] The doctrine reached its highest development with the Stoics, has persisted in varying phases through the centuries, and imbedding itself deeply in common forms of speech and thought, has profoundly influenced the speculations and ideals of men in statecraft and in law. ”

“ A full report of the discussion, including the decision against the Cathari, has reached us from several orthodox sources, but the only interest which the affair has is its marked significance in showing that heresy had fairly outgrown all the means of repression at command of the local churches, that reason had to be appealed to in place of force, that heretics had no scruple in manifesting and declaring themselves, and that the Catholic disputants had to submit to their demands in citing only the New Testament as an authority. ”

“ The constitution of the Court of Rome is therefore so far from being what it is popularly supposed, a thing of strictly limited nature, over-weighted with the encumbrance of absolute injunctions, that it will be found, when the heart of the system is reached, to be actually one of the most elastic in existence. Let only the instincts of the body representing the Church be alive to a necessity, however new, and that body can at once, without taint of illegal and revolutionary pretension, recognise the call for new conditions. ”

“ The dogmas in learning were fixed as definitely as in religion, and the solution of every question was found and duly recorded. The Philosopher was allowed to strike out a new track, but if he valued his life or his ease, he would take care to arrive finally at the conclusion favoured by authority.
Cardan may with justice be classed both with men of science and men of letters. ”

“ Leibnitz and the Cartesians, on the contrary, maintain that our volitions do not and can not act upon matter, and that it is only the existence of an all-governing Being, and that Being omnipotent, which can account for the sequence between our volitions and our bodily actions. ”

“ I have often talked over this matter, both with Cratylus and others, and cannot convince myself that there is any principle of correctness in names other than convention and agreement; any name which you give, in my opinion, is the right one, and if you change that and give another, the new name is as correct as the old- we frequently change the names of our slaves, and the newly-imposed name is as good as the old: for there is no name given to anything by nature; all is convention and habit of the users;- such is my view. ”

“ Spare Carthage, if not thyself! Spare the province, which the indication of your purpose has subjected to the threats and extortions at once of the soldiers and of private enemies.
We have no master but God. He is before you, and cannot be hidden from you, but to Him you can do no injury. But those whom you regard as masters are only men, and one day they themselves must die. Yet still this community will be undying, for be assured that just in the time of its seeming overthrow it is built up into greater power. ”

“ Princes succeed one another, and one judge passeth, another cometh; nay heaven and earth shall pass, but not one tittle of the law of nature shall pass, for it is the eternal law of God. Therefore, all the sentences of precedent judges that have ever been, cannot altogether make a law contrary to natural equity, nor any examples of former judges can warrant an unreasonable sentence or discharge the present judge of the trouble of studying what is equity in the case he is to judge from the principles of his own natural reason. ”

“ The natural law school seeks an absolute, ideal law, ‘natural law,’ the law κατ’ ἐξοχήν, by the side of which positive law has only secondary importance. The modern philosophy of law recognizes that there is only one law, the positive law, but it seeks its ideal side, and its enduring idea." [50] I am not concerned to vindicate the accuracy of the nomenclature by which the dictates of reason and conscience which the judge is under a duty to obey, are given the name of law before he has embodied them in a judgment and set the imprimatur of the law upon them. ”

“ The more one studies the regulations of the Court of Rome, the more will one he impressed by the fact, how, athwart all the dense accumulation of punctilious formalism which has been the aggregate deposit of a current setting in the same direction for centuries, there is yet preserved a cunning element of subtle elasticity that has been shrewdly cherished in secret against the event of the force of altered circumstances, making it some way desirable to seek protection in what has been so jealously suppressed and scouted in ordinary times— liberty of individual initiative. ”

“ III. Form of the Government of Carthage.—The government of Carthage was founded upon principles of the most consummate wisdom; and it is with reason that Aristotle528 ranks this republic in the number of those that were had in the greatest esteem by the ancients, and which were fit to serve as a model for others. He grounds his opinion on a reflection, which does great honour to Carthage, by remarking, that, from its foundation to his time, (that is, upwards of five hundred years,) no considerable sedition had disturbed the peace, nor any tyrant oppressed the liberty of that state. ”

“ Very often, the effect of history is to make the path of logic clear. [1] Growth may be logical whether it is shaped by the principle of consistency with the past or by that of consistency with some pre-established norm, some general conception, some "indwelling, and creative principle." [2] The directive force of the precedent may be found either in the events that made it what it is, or in some principle which enables us to say of it that it is what it ought to be. Development may involve either an investigation of origins or an effort of pure reason. ”

“ And this false point of view, which, to my thinking, is a vestige of the absolute realism of the middle ages, ends in confining the entire system of positive law, a priori, within a limited number of logical categories, which are predetermined in essence, immovable in basis, governed by inflexible dogmas, and thus incapable of adapting themselves to the ever varied and changing exigencies of life. ”

“ CATHARISTS, OR PATARENES. "Among all the sects of the Middle Ages, very far the most important in numbers and in radical antagonism to the Church, were the Cathari, or the Pure, as with characteristic sectarian assumption they styled themselves. Albigenses they were called in Languedoc; Patarenes in North Italy; Good Men by themselves. Stretching through central Europe to Thrace and Bulgaria, they joined hands with the Paulicians of the East and shared their errors. ”

“ The Carthusians have always lived thus wholly cut off from the outer world, each one in almost entire isolation. They introduced and have kept up in western Europe a life resembling that of the early Egyptian monks, as under St Anthony’s guidance monasticism passed from the utter individualism of the first hermits to the half eremitical, half cenobitical life of the Lauras (see Monasticism) . Owing to certain resemblances in external matters to the Benedictine rule and practice, the Carthusians have sometimes been regarded as one of the offshoots from the Benedictines ”

“ In Polemics against earlier and later heretics, the utmost energy and an abundance of acuteness and depth of thought were displayed. See under the history of theological discussions, § 50 ff. Positive Dogmatics. Origen’s example in the construction of a complete scientific system of doctrine has no imitator. For practical purposes, however, the whole range of Christian doctrine was treated by Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssa, Apollinaris, Epiphanius, Rufinus (Expositio Symboli Apost.) ”