Community Meaning

"[W]e are not borne to our ſelues alone, but the prince, the countrie, the parents, freends, wiues, children and familie, euerie of them doo claime an intereſt in vs, and to euerie of them we muſt be beneficiall: otherwiſe we doo degenerate from that communitie and ſocietie, which by ſuch offices by vs is to be conſtrued, & doo become moſt vnprofitable: […]" — 1586, Giraldus Cambrensis [i.e., Gerald of Wales], “The Irish Historie Composed and Written by Giraldus Cambrensis, […] ”, in Iohn Hooker alias Vowell [i.e., John Hooker], transl., The Second Volume of Chronicles: […] , [s.l.]: [s.n.], →OCLC:

"Nor wanting here, to entertain the thought, / Creatures, that in communities exist, / Less, at might seem, for general guardianship / Or through dependance upon mutual aid, / Than by participation of delight / And a strict love of fellowship, combined." — 1814, William Wordsworth, The Excursion, being a Portion of The Recluse; a Poem, London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, Paternoster-Row, →OCLC, book the fourth (Despondency Corrected), page 161:

"Henry VII obtained from his first parliament a grant of tonnage and poundage during life, according to several precedents of former reigns. But when general subsidies were granted, the same people […] twice broke out into dangerous rebellions; and as these, however arising from such immediate discontent, were yet connected a good deal with the opinion of Henry's usurpation, and the claims of a pretender, it was a necessary policy to avoid too frequent imposition of burdens upon the poorer classes of the community." — 1827, Henry Hallam, “On the English Constitution from Henry VII to Mary”, in The Constitutional History of England from the Accession of Henry VII to the Death of George II, volume I, Paris: Printed for L. Baudry, at the English, Italian, German and Spanish Library, No. 9, rue du Coq-Saint-Honoré; Lefèvre, bookseller, No. 8, rue de l'Éperon, →OCLC, page 17:

"As one reads history—not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time—one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment, than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime." — 1891 March 15, Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man under Socialism”, in Oscar Wilde, William Morris, W[illiam] C[harles] Owen, The Soul of Man under Socialism, The Socialist Ideal—Art and The Coming Solidarity (The Humboldt Library of Science; no. 147), New York, N.Y.: The Humboldt Publishing Company, 28 Lafayette Place, →OCLC, pages 14–15:

"The process of coming to faith and growing in the life of faith is fundamentally a process of participation. […] The Presbyterian Confession of 1967 says that "the new life takes shape in a community in which [human beings] know that God loves and accepts them in spite of what they are." In words that capture an older language, God uses the community of faith as "means of grace."" — 2005, Craig Dykstra, “Growing in Faith”, in Growing in the Life of Faith: Education and Christian Practices, 2nd edition, Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, →ISBN, page 40: