According to the balance on the side of merit or demerit is judgment pronounced.
Those who are now taken will go from this to prison, be tried, and receive the due demerit of their crimes.
However, present goods or evils are not the subject of merit or demerit except in so far as they are directed to a future reward, as stated above (I-II, Q.
Merit and demerit belong to the state of a wayfarer, wherefore good is meritorious in them, while evil is demeritorious.
But "we do notdemerit by the passions, even as neither do we incur blame thereby," as stated in Ethic.
Therefore a man maydemerit while asleep; and thus nocturnal pollution would seem to be a sin.
Further, after death there accrues to man no merit or demeritthat he had not before, according to Eccles.
From the habit of underrating the divine law and justice, the extent and demerit of human disobedience, men easily slide into the habit of underestimating the grace which has provided an atonement for sin.
This peril leads to another, that of underrating the evil of sin, the extent of it, the demerit of it.
There is neither merit nor demerit and the criminal is not culpable; only he is outside order, and everything must be in order.
At death, the merit and demerit of the soul are balanced, and the next condition of the wandering soul determined according to a system of debit and credit.
Doubtless by this time the caretaker has worked off the demerithe earned that day, by devoting some of the money he then received to purchasing merit in one of the many ways known to him.
If then no man's face can outdare the law and judgment of God, then the king's majestic face must not do it; but as to the demerit of blood, he must be subject as well as another.
But as for the demerit of that fact, he himself pronounced the sentence out of his own mouth, 2 Sam.
The grace called by the theologians sufficient is held in aversion by the Jansenists; it is a grace which has for them the demerit of not being efficacious.
So long as with the consciousness of demerit there blends that thought--which often is used to produce the consciousness, viz.
The first result of this was a new conviction of his own hollowness and evil; and then, side by side with that sense of demerit and sin, came this other trembling apprehension of personal consequences.
Current popular taste and the popular sense of merit and demerit are notoriously affected in some degree by pecuniary considerations.
These "commercial" conceptions of merit and demerit are derived from business experience.
Such an implication of merit or demeritis an untoward circumstance in any theoretical inquiry.
On the contrary, it would be more ready to perform its functions, and more powerful in impressing upon our minds the demerit or wickedness of an action committed by another, than if we ourselves had committed it.
Then, and then only does the pupil of Nature, who has not had the benefit of previous moral instruction, begin to decide on the merit or demerit of actions.
The question will arise with respect to grace as well as to sin: How can the theory that all moral government has respect only to the merit or demerit of personal acts be applied to our justification?
Because where the idea of the good and liberty are wanting, merit and demerit are also wanting, which alone authorize reward and punishment.
Either this conclusion must be admitted, or the two great principles previously admitted, that God is just, and that the law of merit and demerit is an absolute law, must be rejected.
Omit the idea of this law, and the judgment of merit and demerit is without foundation.
The law of merit and demerit is the direct demonstration of this.
Even were reward and punishment not to take place, merit and demerit would subsist.
When these conditions are fulfilled, merit and demerit manifest themselves, and involve reward and punishment.
The judgment of merit and demerit is essentially tied to the judgment of good and evil.
Merit and demerit suppose the distinction between good and evil, obligation and liberty, and give birth to the idea of reward and punishment.
In fact, he who does an action without knowing whether it is good or bad, has neither merit nor demerit in doing it.
In a word, if it is in general very true that the law of merit and demerit is fulfilled in this world, it is not fulfilled with mathematical rigor.
The law of merit and demerit seems here suspended.
The laws of this world are general; they turn aside to suit no one: they pursue their course without regard to the merit ordemerit of any.
Merit is the natural right we have to be rewarded; demerit the natural right that others have to punish us, and, if we may thus speak, the right that we have to be punished.
Therefore, as certain as Christ suffered he was not God, but whether he is supposed to be God or man, or both, he could not in justice have suffered for original sin, which must have been the demerit of its perpetrators as before argued.
That he had formerly been implacable toward them for no demerit of theirs, what would he do now, when exasperated that they had come to Rome to complain of him?
Now every demerit must be of a personal nature, as it proceeds from a man's own will, over which he is supposed to exercise a perfect controul.
And hence it follows, that if in addition to the demerit of an offence, any new grounds of obligation should arise connected with the punishment, they must be discharged not properly as a punishment, but as a debt.
So that it is not for the sake of example only that punishment is inflicted, but because the obligation thereto arises from the demerit of the offending party.
In what manner, then, could a knowledge of the Divine justice, or of the demerit of sin in the sight of God, be conveyed to the minds of the Jews?
Conscience, the great arbiter of the merit and demerit of human conduct, has little intuitive sense of right, and is not guided entirely by reason, but is governed in a great measure by what men believe.
Having ascertained these premises, we return to the inquiry, How could the demerit of sin in the sight of God, or the idea of God's attribute of justice, be conveyed to the minds of the Jews?
A lawgiver can manifest his views of the demerit of transgression in no other way than by the penalty which he inflicts upon the transgressor.
M] [Footnote 10: After observing that the demerit of the Cappadocians rose in proportion to their rank and riches, he inserts a more pointed epigram, which is ascribed to Demodocus.
The descendants of Clovis had lost the inheritance of his martial and ferocious spirit; and their misfortune or demerit has affixed the epithet of lazy to the last kings of the Merovingian race.
It was a demerit in some, and in all whom he had favoured, not to make the court their ordinary residence; in others a demerit to visit it rarely; and it was a sure disgrace never to visit it at all.
The unconditional obedience required by the pope is inconsistent with all ideas of merit and demerit in human conduct.
It derives its merit or demerit from the objects on which it dwells, and the manner in which it employs its faculties.
Principles of the justness of God and the law of merit and demerit necessary to faith, 706-u.
Justice of God and the law of merit and demerit the foundations of human faith, 706-u.
The judgment of merit and demerit is intimately connected with the judgment of good and evil.
God's justice and the law of merit and demerit the foundations of faith, 706-u.
But, though the principle of merit and demerit ought not to be the determining principle of virtuous action, it powerfully concurs with the moral law, because it offers virtue a legitimate ground of consolation and hope.
It owes nothing to that law of merit and demerit that accompanies it, but is not its basis.
To reject the two principles, that God is just, and the law of merit and demerit absolute, is to raze to the foundations the whole edifice of human faith.
Merit is the natural right which we have to be rewarded; demerit the natural right which others have to punish us.
Punishment and reward are the satisfaction of demerit and merit, 724-u.
The spirituality of the soul is the condition and necessary foundation of immortality: the law of merit and demerit the direct demonstration of it.
The principle of merit and demerit within us is absolute: every good action ought to be rewarded, every bad one punished: 2d.
But whether the reward is received, or the punishment undergone, or not, the merit or demerit equally subsists.
It looks like rain, and you know it means a demerit to have soiled books.
No one is likely to see me, and I might as well get a demerit for this as for having a rain-soaked algebra.
But on account of the demerit of sin some are punished by God with temporal punishments, as appears from the Sodomites, Gen.
Consequently, by his action, he acquires merit or demerit in God's sight.
Further, an instrument acquires no merit or demerit in the sight of him that uses it; because the entire action of the instrument belongs to the user.
Man is not ordained to the body politic, according to all that he is and has; and so it does not follow that every action of his acquires merit or demerit in relation to the body politic.
Further, a human action acquires merit ordemerit through being ordained to someone else.
Therefore not every good or evil action acquires merit or demerit in God's sight.
For we speak of merit or demerit in relation to retribution, which has no place save in matters relating to another person.
Therefore every human action, both good and evil, acquires merit or demerit in God's sight.
Consequently it is evident that human actions acquire merit or demerit in reference to Him: else it would follow that human actions are no business of God's.
Turning then towards his disciples, he added, with a grave countenance, that what they had now witnessed was the just punishment inflicted on him under the influence of the demerit created and generated by his former evil doing.
As soon as a system of worlds is constituted, Buddhists boldly assert and perseveringly maintain that the law of merit and demerit is the sole principle that regulates and controls both the physical and moral world.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "demerit" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word. Other words: break; bust; deficiency; degrade; downgrade; fault; imperfection; shortcoming; sin; stigma
