And he woke with a start full of terror of himself at the moment when, in his impious sacrilege, he felt the chaste bosom of the Mother of God quiver beneath his kisses.

But, when he continued the most cruel persecutor of all those who differed in the least article of the Popish religion, which was then the national and established faith, his seizing on those lands, and applying them to profane uses, was absolute sacrilege, in the strongest sense of the word; having been bequeathed by princes and pious men to sacred uses.

Nay let him come no more to raise the fees Of this foul sacrilege beyond report!

Listened in terror to every word of the dreadful sacrilege.

The injuries he committed lightly when he regarded his fellow-creatures simply as animals who added to the fierceness of the brute an ingenuity and forethought that made them doubly noxious, become horrible sacrilege when he sees in them no longer the animal but the Christ.

He did not disguise from me in the least that there was no crime that he had not committedmurder, rape, arson, immorality of the most hideous, sacrilege, the basest betrayal of his best friendshe was not only savage and outlaw, he was deliberate anarchist and murderer.

Other priests, as we know, more fortunate than he, had forewarnings of such impending sacrilege, and were able to anticipate the mob, and bury their beautiful images in safe and secret places, there to await, after the lapse of twelve centuries, the glorious resurrection of the Renaissance.

This memorable sacrilege had much to do with the insurmountable antipathy of the Quercynois for the English.

This profusion of impure mockeries and foul shames were marked in the career of the Marquis de Sade, who garnished his terrible pleasures with outrageous sacrileges.

Such stupendous sacrilege as this, in robbing the true God of his honour, filled me with the greatest astonishment and reflection: which soon turning to rage and fury, I rode up to the image, and cut in pieces the bonnet that was upon his head with my sword, so that it hung down by one of the horns, while one of my men that was with me pulled at it by his sheep-skin garment.

I beheld with horror all the outrages thus offered to our Lord, whether by neglect, irreverence, and omission of what was due to him; by open contempt, abuse, and the most awful sacrileges; by the worship of worldly idols; by spiritual darkness and false knowledge; or, finally, by error, incredulity, fanaticism, hatred, and open persecution.

Situated as we were in one of the wildest portions of the empire, and accused of the basest sacrilege, that is to say of violating the home of a dead man, we could hope for but small mercy.

The pleasures of sacrilege were unravelled from the skein of this idea, but these were debatable sacrileges, in any case, and hardly serious, since he really loved these objects and did not pollute them by misuse.

Oh, double sacrilege on things divine, To rob the relic, and deface the shrine!