The church so hated these good people (the Albigenses - a 'heretical' sect of thirteenth century France) whose Christ-like compassion was such a judgement on its own pagan and anti-Christian violence, that their vegetarian habits were not only represented as signs of a diabolical heresy, but were also used as a means to detect and convict them. For when prisoners were taken, sheep were led to them and knives were provided for their butchery. Those who refused to kill the animals were burnt at the stake, and the majority did refuse since to take sentient life violated the very basis of their faith.
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The world could not long ignore a holy church. The church is not despised because it is holy: it is despised because it is not holy enough. There is not enough difference between the people inside the church and those outside to be impressive. A church in which saints were as common as now they are rare would convict the world, if only by contrast. Sanctity cannot be ignored. Even a little bit is potent. So far from the gates of hell prevailing against it, it hammers on their triple steel.
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And what have you laymen made of hell? A kind of penal servitude for eternity, on the lines of your convict prisons on earth, to which you condemn in advance all the wretched felons your police have hunted from the beginning -- enemies of society, as you call them. You're kind enough to include the blasphemers and the profane. What proud or reasonable man could stomach such a notion of God's justice? And when you find that notion inconvenient it's easy enough for you to put it on one side. Hell is not to love any more, Madame. Not to love any more!
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If you convict and remove President Clinton on the basis of these allegations, no president of the United States will ever be safe from impeachment again, ... And it will happen. And people will look back at us and they will say we should have stopped it then before it was too late. Don't let this happen to our country ... Do not throw our politics into the darkness of endless recrimination.
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John 16:8:
When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment:
(NIV)
And when He comes, He will convict and convince the world and bring demonstration to it about sin and about righteousness (uprightness of heart and right standing with God) and about judgment:
(AMP)
And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:
(KJV)
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Ephesians 5:11:
Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.
(NIV)
Take no part in and have no fellowship with the fruitless deeds and enterprises of darkness, but instead [let your lives be so in contrast as to] expose and reprove and convict them.
(AMP)
And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.
(KJV)
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Being a sex symbol was rather like being a convict.
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Titus 1:9:
He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.
(NIV)
He must hold fast to the sure and trustworthy Word of God as he was taught it, so that he may be able both to give stimulating instruction and encouragement in sound (wholesome) doctrine and to refute and convict those who contradict and oppose it [showing the wayward their error].
(AMP)
Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers.
(KJV)
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John 12:48:
There is a judge for those who reject me and do not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day.
(NIV)
Anyone who rejects Me and persistently sets Me at naught, refusing to accept My teachings, has his judge [however]; for the [very] message that I have spoken will itself judge and convict him at the last day.
(AMP)
He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.
(KJV)
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