Sydney Smith Quotes
What a pity it is that we have no amusements in England but vice and religion!
Holland, Saba Smith. A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith. Vol. 1, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855, p. 288.
Spinoza’s ideas were considered so radical and dangerous that he was the only man in history who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims.
Gregory the Great. “Emoluments” included the income from all lands and other church property, gifts and tithes, and income of any sort. This formula characterized the division of resources for the better part of Christian history. By today’s standard, the proportion for these Bishops (there were those who chose poverty) and his household seems astoundingly high—his income and sustenance was the equal of all the priests in the bishopric. It illustrates the affluence of the bishops who were major forces in their territories. One of the rationales for such an affluent bishop (the assets were not all personal but he had control of them) was that he should be at least the equal of any in the area including kings and nobles for he was to have as much influence as they. It is difficult today to look at modern bishops and realize how their role, power, relative wealth, and influence has changed. Bishops had their own armies, judiciary, accountants, attorneys and were a government unto themselves.
Tenskwatawa, though an Indian, used the same claims and approach that messiahs and prophets have in many different religions, times and places.
At that time, and in much of the world today, religious preaching and those who do it are licensed by the state. Lucian’s response was one of the first statements that governments and temporal powers endorsement was not required, nor was any formal ordination or grant of authority from a formal church as existed among the pagans of the time where the religion was seen as another extension of the state. Even in America there is some ambivalence on this point. Many religions require not only training but a grant of authority from the religious hierarchy. Others such as some Baptists and many Protestant Fundamentalist groups believe that no specific authority is needed other than the “calling of god.” Lucian was apparently the first person to claim the authority as an individual. He was burnt alive for his position. There is a second Saint Lucian. To distinguish the latter is often referred to as Saint Lucian the Syrian.
Although this is one of Marx’s more famous quotations, he had Napoleon Bonaparte {39959} to thank for the concept of the use of religion as a political tool. A Napoleon contemporary Chartist, Charles Kingsley, {441604} in 1848 also made the analogy between religion and opium for political control.
Sydney Smith was an English wit, writer and Anglican cleric.
