Religious veil

“ We may reasonably suppose that on its entrance into religion, by making profession of the vows, the Christian soul obtains remission of all its sins. Not that the religious profession, considered in itself, possesses a sacramental virtue, operating by its own intrinsic and independent office, or that it can, like baptism and penance, blot out the stain of sin ”

“ It is by a living Saviour, who, though he was dead, is alive; and it is a way that gives life and lively hope to those who enter into it. 4. It is a way that Christ has consecrated for us through the veil, that is, his flesh. The veil in the tabernacle and temple signified the body of Christ; when he died, the veil of the temple was rent in sunder, and this was at the time of the evening sacrifice, and gave the people a surprising view into the holy of holies, which they never had before. Our way to heaven is by a crucified Saviour; his death is to us the way of life. ”

“ Have you considered that much of all that you call morals is indeed the effect of their religious teaching?”
“That is religion not the priest.”
“I speak for the instrument, I confess; but a clergyman is to religion what an army is to a war—and you might as well think of conducting a national contest without officer and soldier, as a moral, religious contest without a clergy. And I doubt whether you have any idea of religion, unless it be a sort of restraint upon certain actions and passions. ”

“ It was the folly and the crime of all ancient religions that their priesthoods veiled them; whenever the veil was rent, like the veil of Isis, it was not God that men found behind it: it was nothing. The religions of the future will have no veils. As far as they can set before their worshippers truth at all, it will be truth as open as the day. ”

“ We preach a devil and everlasting punishment.
At first they come to the church full of arrogance and curiosity, to see the wandering priest; but when they hear our solemn words on life, death, and the judgment, they are soon prostrate; crushed and trembling before the black draped altar, they soon force their way to our confessional. They deny themselves bread until the setting of the sun, they put sand into their shoes and go on pilgrimages to distant churches and isolated chapels to pray for pardon.
Before each church we erect a high, bare cross. ”

“ The ritual of the Catholic Church is the ritual of a race shut out from Nature, holding no communion with the powers of earth and air, but turning the spirit inwards and aiming at the concentration of the whole soul upon an unseen God. ”

“ Certain attitudes of prayer and reverence, the use of incense and of lamps burning day and night in the sanctuary, the offering of ex-votos as a testimony to benefits received, all these are man’s natural expressions of piety and gratitude towards a divine power, and it would be strange indeed if their equivalents were not met with in all religions. ”

“ Holy Church, of its infinite mercy and great love to all such detestable sinners as thou manifestly art, doth study how to preserve thy soul from hell in despite of thyself. And because there is nought so purging as fire, to the fire art thou adjudged except, thy conscience teaching thee horror of thine apostacy, thou wilt abjure thy sin and live. And because nought may so awaken conscience as trouble of mind and pain of body, therefore to trouble and pain doth Holy Church adjudge thy sinful flesh, by water, by fire, by rack, pulley and the wheel. ”

“ The priests have always sought to impress and awe the common people by conducting the religious ritual in an ancient tongue and by sundry magical passes so to mystify the worshipers as to enhance their own piety and authority. The great danger in all this is that the ritual tends to become a substitute for religion. ”

“ Is the light to enter at last your haughty and diabolical soul? Will you at last submit in all humbleness your words and acts to the Church militant, the enormities of your acts! your monstrous words! according to the infallible judgment of the priests of the Lord? Reflect and answer! If not, the Church will abandon you to the secular arm and your body will go up in the flames of the pyre. ”

“ Against the terrors of the night, and the temptations of the devil, grant me the gift of faith, and defend me with the sign of the Holy Cross as with an impregnable shield, that the cruel enemy, who here and everywhere lays snares for my soul, may not prevail against me. ”

“ The mystic, who considered himself to be communing directly with God and who held meditation and mental prayer to be the highest of religious acts, was apt to feel himself released from ecclesiastical precepts and to regard with indifference, if not with contempt, the observances enjoined by the Church as essential to salvation. ”

“ Sacrifices and ceremonies become detested as idolatry, and religion becomes conviction of sin, a fiery determination to fight with the whole soul against appetite, vanity, self-seeking, and every mean propensity which the most sensitive alarm can detect. ”

“ Ye persecutors, who beneath the veil of a religion, whose essence is charity, have believed that homage was to be rendered to your Creator, by immolating human victims on his altars, and committing the most horrible atrocities. Ye, who make religion consist in vain ceremonies, and the gospel a rampart for the defence of your base interests, come forward before the tribunal of charity, and if it be yet possible, let this admirable sentence penetrate your hearts. ”

“ They say, ‘The man may repent,’ and then? Would he go to heaven? What kind of a heaven would be suitable for him? What society is he fitted to enjoy? What delight would he take in anything that is pure and holy? That is another of the false, baneful teachings of the Church, that the vilest of men may in a dying hour, by a few words of the priest, by partaking of the communion, by the anointing of oil, or the sprinkling of a few drops of so-called holy water, in an instant, be fitted to go into the presence of God and associate with angels and the pure and good. ”

“ In His crucifixion He thus reveals the law of sanctification. Holiness is the full entrance of our will into God’s will. Or rather, Holiness is the entrance of God’s will to be the death of our will. The only end of our will and deliverance from it, is death to it under the righteous judgment of God. It was in the surrender to the death of the cross that Christ sanctified Himself, and sanctified us, that we also might be sanctified in truth. ”

“ And even as thou didst once snatch the Child Jesus from the danger of death, so now defend the Holy Church from the snares of the enemy and from all adversity. Grant us thy perpetual protection, so that, sustained by thy example and thy help, we may live in holiness, and die in piety, and reach the everlasting blessedness of heaven. ”

“ Hundreds of dying Saints, around whose flesh and souls still clung the fair white robe of their unforfeited baptismal whiteness,- trembled in every limb as they pondered the possible judgments of Infinite Purity, beneath whose judicial eye they were about to stand. ”

“ Every Catholic kneels in prayer, and even the unimaginative Pretestant feels the influence of a religion which speaks so audibly. And, in this more sombre land, the sad bell that tolls for death strikes more melancholy to the heart than the plumed hearse or any other pageantry of woe. ”

“ All chantries of prayer for the dead should be suppressed: one hundred religious houses would be enough for the spiritual wants of the realm. Pilgrimages, the worshipping of the Cross or images, or reliques, is idolatry. ”

“ Let the devils rap, then, and let them talk, and mutter, and have their mediums; what do I care, so long as the Priesthood is upon the earth, and the Apostleship is upon the earth, and the government of God, and the light and influence of the Holy Ghost, are upon the earth? ”

“ In prayer the truly devout Roman Catholic weeps, afflicts himself, gesticulates, touches the ground with his forehead, kisses it, strikes his breast, and reveals, by his whole physiognomy and exterior actions, a vehemence and intensity which his physical frame appears scarcely able to sustain. ”

“ Therefore shall my heart not fail, albeit the signs and mighty works of the Church seem now to be passing away, and devils be not now cast out as of old; nor are the sick so often healed; and the saints speak less oft with tongues. For if the signs of righteousness and mercy and truth abide in the Church, those other signs may perchance be suffered to pass away. ”

“ May the Father who creates man, curse him. May the Son, who suffered for us, curse him! May the Holy Ghost who is poured out in baptism, curse him! May the Holy Cross, which Christ for our salvation, triumphing over his enemies, ascended, curse him! ”

“ Being now without any positive form of religion, any unattractive symbols, or mysterious rites, we are in the less danger of stopping at surfaces, of accepting a mediator instead of the Father, a sacrament instead of the Holy Ghost. ”

“ Cease, then, O my soul, to despair, self-accused though thou be of so many sins. Entangled as thou art in the snares of so many evil lusts, assailed as thou art by so many temptations, thou hast still, unhappy one, the hope of life: bowels of mercies yearn for thee — of this the Cross, the Nails, the Lance, all the blood-stained Wounds of Jesus are witnesses. Hide thyself, O my soul, hide thyself within the deep Wounds of the Crucified, kiss the wales of His Stripes, clasp with loving arms the Tree of life, hold fast to that most sure pledge of thy Salvation, Jesus hanging on the Cross. ”

“ The great mass of the Spirit begotten (Levites) had gone astray from God after their man-made idols of earthly honor, power and wealth; and they had served the evil tendencies of church members in their idol worship. Between the people and the clergy every conceivable abomination in the sight of God had been practiced, and will require cleansing and a wholesome memory of it, to safeguard against future outbreaks and to manifest continual appreciation of the holiness of any service of God.—Ezek. ”

“ Some compromise between the fear and the conscience of the new converts, at a time when the church no longer consisted exclusively of saints, martyrs, and confessors, the disciples of inspired Apostles, led them, and even their priestly guides, subject like themselves to human passions and errors, to resort as a charm, if not as an act of worship, to those sacrifices, words, and ritual, by which the heathen, whom they had succeeded, pretended to arrest evil or procure benefits. ”

“ And it would be absurd to think of the Apostle describing the worship of idols as a real act of adoration and sacrifice to devils, and as impressing a real character by a power upon them for evil in those who join in such worship, and not to see that he must allow an equal act of sacrifice, adoration, and homage in the sacrifice and the altar which he speaks of as the Christian’s constant privilege to frequent ”

“ In arranging for church discipline, he advised that men should uncover the head, and women should wear the veil. But he said, in reference to that veil, that "woman should have power on her head, because of the angels." The angels are spoken of in the New Testament as veiling their faces in the very presence of the Creator. In that truer symbolism of Christianity, man was to uncover his head in token of reverence to God and acceptance of the responsibility of the guardianship of the earth. ”

“ The conflict is keen at first; the Church authorities fight tooth and nail against these relics of heathenism, these devilish rites; but mankind's instinctive paganism is insuppressible, the practices continue as ritual, though losing much of their meaning, and the Church, weary of denouncing, comes to wink at them, while the pagan joy in earthly life begins to colour her own festival. ”

“ Being thus freed from the condemning power of original sin, and regenerated by baptism, men were expected to work their way to heaven by observing the laws of God and the rites of the church. These rites were fasting, masses, saying of prayers, pilgrimages, and the like, and in practice crowded the moral law out of mind. ”

“ Unless the church will follow on in His opening providence, accepting every ray of light, performing every duty which may be revealed, religion will inevitably degenerate into the observance of forms, and the spirit of vital godliness will disappear. ”

“ The veil prevents vision and shuts out light, and that is the picture of humanity as it presents itself before this prophet—a world of men entangled in the folds of a dark pall that lay over their heads, and swathed them round about, and prevented them from seeing; shut them up in darkness and entangled their feet, so that they stumbled in the gloom. ”

“ It is possible, because our right of access rests not in what we are, but in the blood of Jesus. ‘Having boldness to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, let us draw near.’ In the Passover we saw how redemption, and the holiness it aimed at, were dependent on the blood. In the sanctuary, God’s dwelling, we know how in each part, the court, the holy place, the Most Holy, the sprinkling of blood was what alone secured access to God. ”

“ Most of the ritual prescriptions that accompany vows arc intended to guard inviolate the sanctity or taboo, the atmosphere of holiness or ritual purity, which envelops the persons or objects vowed or reserved to the god, and thereby separated from ordinary secular use. ”

“ You will see that the devil will mingle them together again ... the sword of the Spirit and the secular sword.... Our squires, the nobles and the Princes, who now go about equipped with authority and desire to teach the preachers what they are to preach and to force the people to the sacrament according to their pleasure, will cause us much injury ”