
“Miracles are the swaddling-clothes of infant churches.”
The Church History of Britain; Book 4, Section 4 http://books.google.com/books?id=AkcaAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Miracles+are+the+swaddling+clothes+of+infant+churches%22&pg=PA239#v=onepage (1655)
Claimed by American Fascist William Dudley Pelley in Liberation (February 3, 1934) to have appeared in notes taken at the Constitutional Convention by Charles Cotesworth Pinckney; reported as debunked in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 28, noting that historian Charles A. Beard conducted a thorough investigation of the attribution and found it to be false.
Misattributed
“Miracles are the swaddling-clothes of infant churches.”
The Church History of Britain; Book 4, Section 4 http://books.google.com/books?id=AkcaAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Miracles+are+the+swaddling+clothes+of+infant+churches%22&pg=PA239#v=onepage (1655)
Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter X, Part II, p. 155.
You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)
Speech in the House of Commons (16 April 1845) against the Maynooth grant, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 161-162.
1840s
Source: Sister Wendy Beckett, on same-sex marriage, from a Huffington Post interview titled 'Sister Wendy, My Semi-Spiritual Guide' dated 17 November 2007.
1963, Civil Rights Address
“Throughout the Middle Ages the sway of the Church over the moral and spiritual life of the people,”
Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 145
Context: Throughout the Middle Ages the sway of the Church over the moral and spiritual life of the people, her power to inspire and direct their enthusiasms and energies, her chance for molding their conceptions of life, were amazing and unparalleled by any other force.
Source: Seeking the pearl of great price https://mercatornet.com/seeking_the_pearl_of_great_price/8854/ (October 22, 2009)