Sectary

“ Sectarianism, it is vaguely supposed, is the normal condition of religion. Now a sect is, by its very nature, instinctively adverse to a scientific theology; it feels that it is short-lived, without a history, and unconnected with the main stream of ecclesiastical progress, and it is inspired with hatred and with contempt for the past, for its teaching and its writings. Practically, sectaries hold that a tradition is the more surely to be rejected the older it is, and the more valuable in proportion to the lateness of its origin. ”

“ Inwardly transported by this blissful persuasion, though outwardly presenting in their aspect and manners a shocking air of lunacy and distraction, the sectaries roamed from place to place, attired in the most fantastic apparel and begging their bread with wild shouts and clamour, spurning indignantly every kind of honest labour and industry as an obstacle to divine contemplation and to the ascent of the soul towards the Father of spirits. In all their excursions they were followed by women with whom they lived on terms of the closest familiarity. ”

“ Open the door to toleration, mutual hatred relaxes among the sectaries, their attachment to their particular modes of religion decays; the common occupations and pleasures of life succeed to the acrimony of disputation; and the same man who, in other circumstances, would have braved flames and tortures, is induced to change his sect from the smallest prospect of favor and advancement, or even from the frivolous hope of becoming more fashionable in his principles. ”

“ Let me by no means be understood to censure all the sectaries without discrimination. Many of them, and some who by the unhappy circumstances of the times became objects of notice in a political view, were men of great erudition, deep views of Religion, and unquestionable piety: and though the writings of the puritans are prolix; and according to the fashion of their age, rendered rather perplexed than clear by multiplied divisions and subdivisions; yet they are a mine of wealth, in which any one who will submit to some degree of labour will find himself well rewarded for his pains. ”

“ A man of abilities and character, of any sect whatever, may be admitted to any office or public trust under the United States. I am a friend to a variety of sects, because they keep one another in order. How many different sects are we composed of throughout the United States? How many different sects will be in congress? We cannot enumerate the sects that may be in congress. And there are so many now in the United States that they will prevent the establishment of any one sect in prejudice to the rest, and will forever oppose all attempts to infringe religious liberty. ”

“ The religious opinions of sectaries have a tendency like the water of some springs, to become soft and mild, when freely exposed to the open day. Who can recognise in the decent and industrious quakers, and ana-baptists the wild and ferocious tenets which distinguished their sects, while they were yet honoured with the distinction of the scourge and the pillory? ”

“ We must let them frame our people to the sectarian model—a few more forward ones among themselves, by privy meetings, to be the godly party; and the congregation, the rest, to be the rascally malignant multitude; so that the body of our people are to be cast out of all churches; and the few who are countenanced, are fitted, as sundry of them already have done, to embrace the errors of the time for their destruction. ”

“ German sectaries with serious-minded devotion to one or another of a multiplicity of sects, but withal deeply responsive to the call of the religious spirit, and the English Quakers all furnish a foundation of emotional responsiveness to religion and a readiness to find a new heaven and a new earth in politics as well as in religion. ”

“ The extreme Church party, perhaps naturally, held that the creed established by law in the land should be taught in these new schools; extreme supporters of other creeds, and a majority of ordinary people of all creeds or of no creeds, objected to a new establishment of a sectarian doctrine, even though that sectarian doctrine were the doctrine of the national religion. ”

“ To raise a party or sect, to exist certainly not more than twelve years, and now not more than three years, - you cannot suppose it to be an object. Again, thousands, and even tens of thousands more of you can witness, that I have begged of you to make no divisions in your churches or sects; that we had more than enough already. I have advised all men of every sect not to separate from their brethren, if they could live among them and enjoy christian privileges. ”

“ Christianity is overwhelm'd with Sects enough already, without our studying to multiply them chimerically.... Besides the Religion which serves God in the Church of England, and which is the reigning Religion in England, there are several Sorts of Sectaries; the Presbyterians are the Chief and most numerous.... The Independents were a Branch of Presbytery, but they are now united again. Arminianism (if the Propositions of Arminius ought to give the odious name of a Sect) is spread every where. ”

“ This wily, worldly, tranquil-seeming, but most ambitious sect, having in many quarters joined themselves to the cause of democracy, sit quietly by, looking for the result of their work, and watching, like a tiger that seems to dose, for the moment when they may avenge themselves for the long fast from power, during which they have been gnawing their heart-strings. ”

“ Sects wrangled, and each, as it gained the power, persecuted the other, until the soil of the whole Christian world was watered with the blood, and fattened on the flesh, and whitened with the bones, of martyrs, and human ingenuity was taxed to its utmost to invent new modes by which tortures and agonies could be prolonged and made more exquisite. ”

“ Does not sect rage against sect? And the bishops, those gold-bedecked magnates, who call themselves the chief shepherds of the church! Do they yield even to the great men of the court in greed and ambition and sycophancy——? ”

“ The sectaries commenced with a thousand professions of brotherly love, and a great parade of Christian charity; indeed they pretended that they had emigrated in order to enjoy a higher degree of religious liberty than was now to be found in America, where men were divided into sects, thinking more of their distinguishing tenets than of the Being whom they professed to serve. ”

“ In that seasonable and necessary warning and declaration, concerning present and imminent dangers, given at Edinburgh July 27. sess. 27. they first say of the sectaries, 'That prevailing party of sectaries in England, who have broken the covenant, and despised the oath of God, corrupted the truth, subverted the fundamental government, look upon us with an evil eye, as upon these who stand in the way of their monstrous and new fangled devices in religion and government ”

“ The sectaries I have mentioned—around whom, without adopting or even understanding their principles, gradually gathered all the better elements of society, every man of intellect and spirit who had not been murdered, with a still larger proportion of women—seceded separately or in considerable numbers at once; established themselves in those parts of the planet whose less fertile soil or less genial climate had caused them to be abandoned, and there organised societies on the old principles of private ownership and the permanence of household ties. ”

“ This clamor and outcry, this uproar and conflagration, are the consequences of instigation, temptation, incitement, and provocation. For thirty years there has been no rumor of disturbance or rebellion, nor any sign of sedition. Notwithstanding the duplication of adherents and the increase and multiplication of this body, through many admonitions and encouragements to virtue this sect are all in the utmost repose and stability: they have made obedience their distinctive trait, and in extreme submissiveness and subordination are the loyal subjects of the King. ”

“ Respect for persons, tolerance for opinions; but disdain for the sects that crawl at your feet and advise you only in order to better compromise you. The sects are the vipers of the Revolution, the people are not of any sect. ”

“ I do not recall a year that has not given birth to several new sects in India. The stronger the current, the more the whirlpools and eddies. Sects are not signs of decay, they are a sign of life. Let sects multiply, till the time comes when every one of us is a sect, each individual. ”

“ The countless sects evoked by the machinations and worldly ambition of the clergy had, by mutual recrimination, revolting crimes, relentless persecution of their adversaries, and obstinate refusal to listen to any plan of reconciliation, almost destroyed the faith of reasonable men in every religion. ”

“ The realization of this grand ideal of the restoration of the New Testament standard of church membership, government, and authority, is impossible within the sect system. For the sects to turn all the people of God loose from subjection to every foreign yoke and make them free to associate without restriction with all the saved of God, would be an act of suicide. Only by division and by holding the grasp of ecclesiastical rule can sects survive. ”

“ Let sects alone until holiness prevails! What a device of the enemy! How can we expect to bring forth permanent fruits into holiness, if we allow the plowshare of God's truth to slip over this fallow ground of sin? Sects are the devil's "high places" in the land, the groves of his own planting, and gods that he has set up to corrupt Israel, and "provoke God." ”

“ For in some parts of the nation care had been timely taken, by some not of the lowest rank, to choose out some particular persons—men of sharp wit, close countenances, pliant tempers, and deep dissimulation—and send them forth among the sectaries, so called, with instructions to thrust themselves into all societies, conform to all or any sort of religious profession, Proteus-like change their shapes, and transform themselves from one religious appearance to another as occasion should require. ”

“ Sect, Sectarianism.—The Supreme Court of Nevada defines “sect” as follows: “A religious sect is a body or number of persons united in tenets, but constituting a distinct organization or party, by holding sentiments or doctrines different from those of other sects or people. ”

“ It seems many of our people may incline to venture their lives, either alone or with the English army, if it come near, against them who now are employed. I am not for any such matter. For fear of sectaries, we have not joined with malignants. If we should join with sectaries, it would be to me abominable. We who resolve neither to join with malignants nor sectaries, may fall into great inconveniencies; but the Lord’s will be done.
Our approaching general assembly is like to be a dangerous one. The moderator’s task will be hard. I am in doubt if I shall be at his election. ”

“ Is it not to be apprehended that, for every proselyte whom she allures from the meeting house, ten of her old disciples may turn away from her maimed rites and dismantled temples, and that these new separatists may either form themselves into a sect far more formidable than the sect which we are now seeking to conciliate, or may, in the violence of their disgust at a cold and ignoble worship, be tempted to join in the solemn and gorgeous idolatry of Rome? ”

“ There is no middle course, in dealing with religious sectaries, between the persecution that exterminates, and the toleration that satisfies. They were wise in their generation, the Loaisas and Valdes of Spain, who kindled the fires of the inquisition, and quenched the rising spirit of protestantism in the blood of a Seso and a Cazalla. But sustained by the favouring voice of his associates, and still more by that firm persuasion which bigots never know how to appreciate in their adversaries, a puritan minister set at nought the vexatious and arrogant tribunal before which he was summoned. ”

“ And when these morbid grumblers happen to be imbued, as is often the case, with a sectarian spirit, and take rank with high churchmen or with bigoted Dissenters, the moment they see a conjunction of the different orders, they tremble for the safety of the ark of their covenant, and raise a hue and cry against the union of the sects—become bitter in their spirit and censorious in their speech—and appear in a light very unbecoming the genuine disciples of our Lord. ”

“ In the middle of the seventeenth century, both the beliefs and the practices of the sect were in an inchoate state, and the vagaries of many of its adherents from the lower walks of life seem not only to have called forth unparallelled torrents of abuse from all quarters, but to have made men fear that these inoffensive people were to repeat the excesses of some of the frenzied sects of a century earlier. ”

“ If the existence of sects is "a real blessing," why not increase the number of sects, and get more benefit out of them! But if it is a curse, as we poor converts imagine it to be, why not attempt to annihilate it, and make Methodism, Presbyterianism, Congregationalism, Quakerism, and all other harmless and harmful isms into one great united whole. ”

“ Our sciolists would persuade us that the different sects are hot-beds of sedition, because they are nurseries of public spirit, and independence, and sincerity of opinion in all other respects. They are so necessarily, and by the supposition. ”