The History and Fate of Sacrilege Author:Sir Henry Spelman General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1846 Original Publisher: J.Masters Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can selec... more »t from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: SECTION III. Of the other sorts of Sacrilege, commonly so called, as of time, persons, function, place, and other things consecrated to the worship of God. And first of time, in profaning the sabbath. I Come now to the second part, which indeed is that which the schoolmen and canonists only call sacrilege, as though the former were of too high a nature to be expressed in this appellation: so exorbitant a sin, as that no name can properly comprehend it: Oeopa-xia, a warring against God, and 8eoflafteia, a direful violence upon Divine Majesty, a superlative sacrilege. The other and common kind of sacrilege is (as was said) a violating, misusing, or a putting away of things consecrated or appropriated to divine service or worship of God: it hath many branches -- tune, persons, function, place: and materially. All (saith Thomas Aquinas) that pertains to irreverent treatment of holy things, pertains to the injury of God, and comes under the character of sacrilege.3 This description of sacrilege may well enough be extended further than Aquinas did perhaps intend it, to the former or superlative kind. Sacrilege of time is, when the sabbath or the Lord's day is abused or profaned: this God expressly pu- " Omne illud quod ad irreverentiam rerum sacrumm per- tinet, ad injuriam Dei pertinet, et habet sacrilegii ratioaem." Seeunda Secundae, (Ju. 99, Art. I. nished in the stick-gatherer. Some canonists seem not to reckon this under the common kind of sacrilege.8 So that in all that followeth we shall run the broken way of the schoolmen and canonists. SECTION IV. Sacrilege of Pe...« less