He deplores people's credulity: " Brought up in habits of superstition ," he wrote, " people in general know not how much wickedness there is in this pretended word of God.

Angel is sceptical about the efficacy of astrology, and believes that the unfolding existential situation of Tim and Kirsten is akin to Friedrich Schiller's German Romanticism era masterpiece, the Wallenstein trilogy ( insofar as their credulity reflects the loss of rational belief in contemporary consensual reality ).

Gerald was a keen and observant student of natural history, but the value of his observations is lessened by credulity and inability to distinguish fact from legend.

No goddesses are mentioned in this earlier published work, and the tale is related as a caution against credulity.

A confidence artist is an individual operating alone or in concert with others who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty and honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility, naivety and greed.

We judge that, in the prosecution of these and all such witchcrafts, there is need of a very critical and exquisite caution, lest by too much credulity for things received only upon the Devil's authority, there be a door opened for a long train of miserable consequences, and Satan get an advantage over us ; for we should not be ignorant of his devices.

Since dikyklos ( δίκυκλος ) and tetrakyklos ( τετράκυκλος ) mean nothing but " two-wheeler " and " four-wheeler ," and since the monokyklos ( μονόκυκλος ) body is sandwiched in the Eleusis inventory between a four-wheeler body and its four wheels, to take it as anything but a one-wheeler strains credulity far beyond breaking point.

The overarching parody is of enthusiasm, pride, and credulity.

Glorified by novelists, sensationalized by historians, and distorted beyond credulity by commercial film makers, the popular image of ' the Apache ' — a brutish, terrifying semi-human bent upon wanton death and destruction — is almost entirely a product of irresponsible caricature and exaggeration.

The subject purports to be serious but is an attempt to test credulity.

Wilder-Smith wrote that ( emphasis added ) " To deny planning when studying such a system is to strain credulity more than to ask one to believe in an intelligent nipple designer, who incidentally must have understood hydraulics rather well.

Forasmuch as we have lately been informed that in our cathedral church of Chichester there hath been used long heretofore, and yet at this day is used, much superstition and a certain kind of idolatry about the shrine and bones of a certain bishop of the same, whom they call Saint Richard, and a certain resort there of common people, which being men of simplicity are seduced by the instigation of some of the clergy, who take advantage of their credulity to ascribe miracles of healing and other virtues to the said bones, that God only hath authority to grant.

" Yet a special charm lingers around the form of that graceful hero ; it is surrounded, as if with a dazzling halo ... in which Scipio with mingled credulity and adroitness always moved.

: But his credulity, in particular, seems to have been boundless, and is remarkable even for the credulous age in which he lived.

Characteristic for his opinion is this quotation from the preface to his essay of 1768: “… that all the fuss doesn't come from anything else than a vain fear, a superstitious credulity, a dark and eventful imagination, simplicity and ignorance among the people .”

It somewhat strains credulity to say that the government's promise of charity to an individual is property belonging to that individual when the government denies that the individual is honestly entitled to receive such a payment.

Another shortcoming is his rationalistic attitude toward the narratives in Talmudic sources, which leads him to see in many of the Talmudic authors shrewd impostors who played on the credulity of their contemporaries by feigning miracles ( see his presentation of Eliezer ben Hyrcanus in his Allgemeine Geschischte, ii.

When I told them that I and most of my best friends were Freemasons, and that England owed a great deal to its loyal Jews, they stared at me askance and sadly shook their heads in fear for England's credulity in trusting the chosen race.

But actually these accounts reveal the supernatural powers that the masters were in fact supposed to possess, as well as the extreme degree of popular credulity: `` Hwang Pah ( O Baku ), one day going up Mount Tien Tai which was believed to have been inhabited by Arhats with supernatural powers, met with a monk whose eyes emitted strange light.

The peasants point out upon the plain Caterhaugh, those electrical rings which vulgar credulity supposes to be traces of the Fairy revels.

Such credulity among scientists occurs only in relation to the deepest and most fundamental hypotheses for which they lack the facility to think differently in a comparably detailed and consistent way.

His credulity earned him the pejorative cognomen Asina, which means donkey in Latin.

The popular credulity as to Catholic outrages in the days of the Popish Plot was stimulated by the scandalmongers of the club, whose members went about in silk armour, supposed to be bulletproof, in which any man dressed up was as safe as a house, says North, for it was impossible to strike him for laughing ; while in their pockets, for street and crowd-work, they carried the weapon of offence invented by Stephen College and known as the Protestant Flail.

Later that year he wrote to Fox about the credulity of his " beloved Dr Gully " who when his daughter was ill, had her treated her with a clairvoyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep, John Chapman as homeopathist and himself as hydropathist, after which Gully's daughter recovered.

It was his sanguine credulity which committed the Hats to their rash and unconsidered war with Russia in 1741 – 42, though in fairness it must be added that Tessin helped them out of their difficulties again by his adroitness as party leader and his stirring eloquence.

Buell denied having known about actions of the Thomas More Law Center to which the Judge said it " strains credulity.

Boece shared in the credulity of his age ; the approach of Mair, who was writing in parallel at the same time, but with a different focus and with a more critical and less sweeping method, did not represent the current fashion.

Therefore, while Gibbon was pointing out what he perceived as a flaw in Eusebius's work, he also paid him a compliment, where by calling him ' grave ' he was ascribing the quality of sternness and a lack of credulity when it came to sifting out the fantastical from the reliable historical sources.

The factual claims of many of the Museum's exhibits strain credulity, provoking a rich array of interpretations from commentators.

Though by no means free from credulity, the freshness and ingenuity of his mind invested everything he touched with interest ; while on more important subjects his style, if frequently rugged and pedantic, often rises to the highest pitch of stately eloquence.

Soon after her death, the novel began to be read again, and from that time onward the factual claims made by the novel's narrator, and the factuality of the whole plot of the novel, have been accepted and questioned with greater and lesser credulity.

Perhaps we, from an intelligence point of view, should watch for any indication of Russian efforts to capitalize upon this present American credulity.

Goffman avers that this type of artificial, willed credulity happens on every level of social organization, from top to bottom.

But to Welch's chagrin, the police captain pooh-poohed Welch's credulity in Barco's confession.

As before, the photographs were received with mixed credulity.

Equally, gays and lesbians do not see the Bible as unequivocally true because they are forced by its use against them to read it more closely and with less credulity, leading them to note its myriad contradictions.

Randi recruited two young magicians and sent them undercover to Washington University's McDonnell Laboratory with the specific aim of exposing poor experimental methods and the credulity thought to be common in parapsychology.

Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another's credulity.

imperturbable sang-froid the words are Gautier's, artful foolishness and foolish finesse, brazen and naïve gluttony, blustering cowardice, skeptical credulity, scornful servility, preoccupied insouciance, indolent activity, and all those surprising contrasts that must be expressed by a wink of the eye, by a puckering of the mouth, by a knitting of the brow, by a fleeting gesture.

Joyce's claims to be representing the night and dreams have been accepted and questioned with greater and lesser credulity.

Confidence tricks exploit typical human characteristics such as greed, dishonesty, vanity, honesty, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility, desperation and naïveté.

Darius often accused rebels and opponents of being impostors ( such as Nebuchadnezzar III ), and it could be straining credulity to say that they all were.

" Some felt the series was getting close to overloading readers with angst in later volumes, and questioned the credulity of the sheer number of bad parents in the series.

In A Praefatory Answer to Mr. Henry Stubbe ( 1671 ) he defined the " philosophy of the virtuosi " cleanly: the " plain objects of sense " to be respected, as the locus of as much certainty as was available ; the " suspension of assent " absent adequate proof ; and the claim for the approach as " equally an adversary to scepticism and credulity ".