casuist

But with all the ardour of a neophyte and the pride of an apt learner I was at that time a great nautical casuist.

He was, then, as punctual as the Samaritan woman, and the most rigorous casuist with regard to duels could have nothing to say.

"Upon my word, Julia, you are quite a casuist on this subject.

During the youth of his sons, Lord Steyne, who was a good scholar and amateur casuist, had no better sport in the evening after dinner in the country than in setting the boys' tutor, the Reverend Mr.

Whether any one who has been subjected by the laws of his country to an unjust judgment is right in attempting to escape, is a thesis about which casuists might disagree.

They are superficial casuists. They are Jesuitical.

The casuists have become a byword of reproach; but their perverted spirit of minute discrimination was the shadow of a truth to which eyes and hearts are too often fatally sealed,--the truth, that moral judgments must remain false and hollow, unless they are checked and enlightened by a perpetual reference to the special circumstances that mark the individual lot.

We shall leave casuists to determine how far she resembled any other believers in this particular, and proceed directly with the matter before us.

The last is called by some casuists the refusal assentive.

More than that, we become casuists, we learn to be Jesuitical and for a time maybe we can soothe ourselves, we can persuade ourselves that it is one's duty for a good object.

Her "mistake" is enough for Smith to discount her testimony altogether, regardless of the event that that testimony clearly indicates (though perhaps fails to represent clearly), and the historian's explanation is seen as the hair-splitting of the base casuist.

(32) The playwright's sympathetic portrayal of the countess as a woman who insists upon a sacramental interpretation of her vows while her chastity is under siege appears intended as a casuist argument to create empathy in Elizabeth for noblemen's wives who sought to maintain their observance of the Old Faith.