an indignity or injury offered to blasphemy the Almighty, by denying what is his due and of right belonging to him; or by attributing to the creature that which is due only to the Creator.

The primitive church distinguished blasphemy into three sorts. 1. The blaspheming of apostates, whom the heathen prosecutors obliged not only to deny, but to curse, Christ. These blasphemers were punished with the highest degree of ecclesiastical censure. 2. The blasphemy of heretics, and other profane Christians. In this sense, they included not only those who maintained impious doctrines, but those who uttered profane or blasphemous words, derogatory to the majesty and honour of God. The same punishment that was inflicted upon heretics and sacrilegious persons, was consequently the lot of this sort of blasphemers. 3. The blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, concerning which the opinions of the ancients varied. Some apply it to the sin of lapsing into idolatry and apostasy, and denying Christ in time of persecution. Others made it to consist in denying Christ to be God; others, in denying the divinity of the Holy Ghost; and others place it in a perverse and malicious ascribing the operations of the Holy Spirit to the power of the devil, and that against express knowledge and conviction of conscience.

Blasphemy, among the Jews, was punished by stoning the offender to death. In England, it is punishable at common law, by fine and pillory. And by a statute of William III. if any person shall, by writing or speaking, deny any of the persons in the Trinity, he shall be incapable of any office; and for the second offence, be disabled to sue in any actions, to be an executor, &c. According to the law of Scotland, the punishment of blasphemy is death.