(βλασφημία, from βλάσπειν, I hurt, and φημί, I speak) means literally defamation or evil speaking. In the middle ages it was used to denote simply the blaming or condemning of a person or thing.

Blasphemy is more peculiarly restricted to an indignity offered to the Deity by words or writing. Hence Augustin says, *Jam ergo blasphemia non accipitur nisi mala verba de Deo dixeris.* According to Angelus Clavasius, it is three-fold:—1. When something is ascribed to God which is not suitable to his nature; and this is, as the divines call it, a sin contra misericordiam; 2. when some attribute which is essential to his Godhead is denied, which is a sin contra justitiam; 3. when that which is only proper to the divine Creator of all things is attributed to the creature; and this is termed a sin contra majestatem Dei. Lindwood defines blasphemy to be an injury offered to God, by denying that which is due and belongs to him, or by attributing to him what is not agreeable to his nature.

Under the Mosaic law blasphemy was punished with death; and the same punishment was also awarded by the civil law. By the canon law blasphemy was only visited by a solemn penance, and introduced the commutation of corporal punishment into a pecuniary fine. According to Blackstone, the offence of "blasphemy against the Almighty, by denying his being or providence, or by contumelious reproaches of our Saviour Christ," is "punishable at common law by fine and imprisonment, or other infamous corporal punishment; for Christianity is part of the laws of England." In like manner, the offence of composing, printing, or publishing a blasphemous libel is left to the common law, but on a second conviction the punishment is such as may by law be inflicted in cases of high misdemeanours (60th Geo. III., and 1st Geo. IV., cap. 5, § 4). The power to inflict the sentence of banishment also conferred having been repealed by the 11th Geo. IV., and 1st Will. IV., cap. 73, § 1, and by the 9th and 10th Will. III., cap. 32, § 1, any person, having been educated in, or at any time having made profession of, the Christian religion within this realm, who shall deny one of the persons in the Trinity, or assert that there are more than one God, or deny Christianity to be true, or the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be of divine authority, is for the first offence rendered incapable of any office, and for the second is adjudged incapable of suing, being executor or guardian, receiving any gift or legacy, and ordered to be imprisoned for three years. These provisions, however, so far as relate to denying the holy Trinity, were repealed by the 53rd Geo. III., cap. 160, § 2.

By the law of Scotland, as it originally stood, the punishment of blasphemy was death. By an act passed in the first parliament of Charles II., whoever, "not being distracted in his wits," should curse God or any person of the blessed Trinity was punishable with death; and by a statute of King William's reign (1695, cap. 11), any person reasoning against the being of God, or any person of the Trinity, or the authority of the holy Scriptures, or the providence of God in the government of the world, was to be imprisoned for the first offence until he should give public satisfaction in sack-cloth to the congregation; to be punished more severely for the second offence; and for the third doomed to death. The capital punishment was in the year 1696 executed against a blasphemous student of divinity named Thomas Aikenhead, whose chief offence was the folly of embarking in speculations beyond his capacity. An account of his trial and condemnation, which excited the indignation of Locke, will be found in the fifteenth volume of the State Trials. Both the Scottish statutes were repealed by the 53rd Geo. III., cap. 160, § 3.

BLASPHEMY against the Holy Ghost. Divines are not agreed with respect to the nature of the crime thus denounced, and the grounds of the extreme guilt ascribed to it. Dr Tillotson maintains that it consists in maliciously attributing to the devil the miraculous operations which Christ performed by the power of the Holy Ghost. But Dr Whitby refers it to the dispensation of the Holy Ghost which commenced after our Lord's resurrection and ascension; and contends that those were guilty of the crime who persisted in their unbelief, and blasphemed the Holy Ghost, representing him as an evil spirit. This crime implied a wilful opposition to the last and most powerful evidence which God had vouchsafed to mankind, and precluded the possibility of a return to faith and repentance.