It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.
Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy.
The Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of it's benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind.
The clergy know that I know that they know that they do not know.
Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.
One of the primary questions in a state-church arrangement is, 'which controls which?'. . . In Norway, for example, the liberal labor government has regularly angered Church officials by making controversial ministerial appointments against the wishes of the clergy. . . . These and other actions have strained the church-state relationship almost to the breaking point. As a result, some of the bishops have advocated disestablishment.
You know you're in a bad movie when the Catholic clergy is being played by Jews.
God looked upon His work and saw that it was good. That is where the clergy take issue with him.
The advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from [the clergy].
An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.
I never liked the Hierarchy of the Church-an equality in the teacher of Religion, and a dependence on the people, are republican sentiments-but if the Clergy combine, they will have their influence on Government
Those who are used to a clergy take very lightly those who do not have a formal divinity degree: like Paul and Peter and James and John.
The Clergy is the greatest hindrance to faith.
It was in this year, 1828, that the standard of "the Christian Party in Politics" was openly unfurled. . . This was an evident attempt, through the influence of the clergy over the female mind - until this hour lamentably neglected in the United States - to effect a union of Church and State.
The clergy [in the 14th century] on the whole were probably no more lecherous or greedy or untrustworthy than other men, but because they were supposed to be better or nearer to God than other men, their failings attracted more attention.
The clergy would have us believe them against our own reason, as the woman would have her husband against his own eyes.
Without fear of contradiction, I can safely say that every step in progress that woman has made she has been assailed by ecclesiastics, that her most vigilant unwearied opponents have always been the clergy.
And sometimes the clergy are blindsided by that. Other times they realize that ahead of time and say they're not going to use those terms. So it gets complicated for sure.
Far, far from the clergy be the love of novelty!
The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and in-grafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.
