(blasphemia, or blasphemium), in middle-age writers, denotes simply the blaming or condemning of a person or thing. The word is Greek, blasphemia, from blasphéo, ledo. Among the Greeks to blaspheme was to use words of evil omen, or that portended something ill, which the ancients were careful to avoid, substituting in lieu of them other words of softer and gentler import, sometimes the very reverse blasphemy, of the proper ones.
Blasphemy is more peculiarly restrained to evil or reproachful words spoken of the Deity. Augustin says, Jam vulgus blasphemia non accipitur nisi mala verba de Deo dicere.
According to Lindwood, blasphemy is an injury offered to God, by denying that which is due and belonging to him; or attributing to him what is not agreeable to his nature. By the Mosaic law, blasphemy was punished with death; Levit. chap. xxiv. ver. 13—16. As also by the civil law; Novell. 77. In Spain, Naples, France, and Italy, the pains of death are not now inflicted. In the Empire, either amputation or death is made the punishment of this crime.
By the canon law, blasphemy was punished only by a solemn penance; and by custom either by a pecuniary or corporal punishment. By the English laws, blasphemies of God, as denying his being or providence, and all contumelious reproaches of Jesus Christ, &c. are offences by the common law, and punishable by fine, imprisonment, and pillory. And, by the statute law, he that denies one of the persons in the Trinity, or affirms there are more than one, or denies Christianity to be true, for the first offence is rendered incapable of any office; for the second, adjudged incapable of suing, being executor or guardian, receiving any gift or legacy, and to be imprisoned for three years.
According to the law of Scotland, the punishment of blasphemy is death. The first species thereof consists in railing at or cursing God; and here the single act constitutes the crime. The second consists in denying the existence of the Supreme Being, or any of the persons of the Trinity; and therein obstinately persevering to the last. For reiterated denial does not fully constitute the crime, because the stat. of Charles II. 1661, admits of repentance before conviction, as a complete expiation.
This statute of 1661 is ratified by a statute of king William, whereby the calling in question the existence of God, or of any of the persons of the Trinity, or the authority of Scripture, or the Divine Providence, is made penal: For the first offence, imprisonment till satisfaction given by public repentance in sack-cloth; for the second, a fine of a year's valued rent of the real estate, and twentieth part of the personal estate; and the trial in both these cases is competent to inferior judges. The trial of the third offence is death, to be tried only by the justices.
Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Divines are not agreed with respect to the nature of the crime thus denominated (Matt. chap. xii. ver. 31.), and the grounds of the extreme guilt ascribed to it. Dr Tillotson maintains, that it consisted in maliciously attributing the miraculous operations which Christ performed by the power of the Holy Ghost to the devil. Dr Whitby refers it to the dispensation of the Holy Ghost, which commenced after our Lord's resurrection and ascension; and those were guilty of the crime who persisted in their unbelief and blasphemed the Holy Ghost, representing him as an evil spirit. The crime was unpardonable, because it implied a wilful opposition to the last and most powerful evidence which God would vouchsafe to mankind, and precluded the possibility of a recovery to faith and repentance.