Marie Corelli Quotes

Heresy is a word which, when it is used without passion, signifies a private opinion. So the different sects of the old philosophers, Academians, Peripatetics, Epicureans, Stoics, &c., were called heresies.

I started saying things in church that didn't meet with a lot of approval - like 'Jesus isn't coming back.' They started throwing Bibles.

Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels

Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error… the only difference between our Churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is, the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong.

When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of "Orthodoxy, True and False" and demonstrates that the True is his heresy.

The apostles and their successors are God's vicars in governing the Church which is built on faith and the sacraments of faith. Wherefore, just as they may not institute another Church, so neither may they deliver another faith, nor institute other sacraments.

Heretics cannot themselves appear good unless they depict the Church as evil, false, and mendacious. They alone wish to be esteemed as the good, but the Church must be made to appear evil in every respect.

If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the Church which is different from that which the Church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.

In France, even heresy rapidly hardens into dogma.

It doesn't do to say that heresy produces the development of doctrine, because that annoys the theologians. But it is true to say that as a matter of history the development of doctrine has been largely a reaction on the Church's part to the attacks of heresy.

But why do some people support [the heretics]?" "Because it serves their purposes, which concern the faith rarely, and more often the conquest of power." "Is that why the church of Rome accuses all its adversaries of heresy?" "That is why, and that is also why it recognizes as orthodoxy any heresy it can bring back under its own control or must accept because the heresy has become too strong.

If the Church of England were to fail, it would be found in my parish

For the same man to be an heretick and a good subject, is incompossible.

What! Have you no monks to teach, to dispute, to govern, to intrigue and to burn people who do not agree with them?

In every age the church is threatened by heresy, and heresy is bound up in false doctrine. It is the desire of all heretics to minimize the importance of doctrine. When doctrine is minimized, heresy can exercise itself without restraint.

As a Fundamentalist I had discovered while I was in college that it is possible to dismiss the entire Church as having gone off the rails by about AD 95. That is, we, with our open Bibles, knew better than did old Ignatius or Clement, who had been taught by the very apostles themselves, just what the Church is and what it should look like.

The Church is built on the rock of Peter, and he who eats the Lamb outside this holy dwelling is reprobate .. .He who eats the Lamb outside this Apostolic See has no part with God!

Blasphemy and sedition (meaning the truth about Church and State).

What is held by the whole Church, and that not as instituted by Councils, but as a matter of invariable custom, is rightly held to have been handed down by authority.

"President Monson, I may never see the Prophet. I may never hear the Prophet. But President, far better, now that I am a member of this Church, I can obey the Prophet."

Piety is different from superstition. To carry piety to the extent of superstition is to destroy it. The heretics reproach us with this superstitious submission. It is doing what they reproach us with.

I'm not denouncing the church, and I'm not interested in people who want me to denounce the church. It's not a church worthy of denouncing.

Religion should be about your relationship with God, not what the church says you can and can't do.

It is the function of the Church to oppose all original experience, because this can only be unorthodox.

The Church of Christ, zealous and cautious guardian of the dogmas deposited with it, never changes any phase of them. It does not diminish them or add to them; it neither trims what seems necessary now grafts things superfluous . . . but it devotes all its diligence to one aim: To treat tradition faithfully and wisely; to consolidate and to strengthen what already was clear; and to guard what already was confirmed and defined.