Hannah Adams

“ ILLUMINATI, or ILLUMINEES, i. e. the enlightened, a term in the primitive church applied to such as had been instructed and baptized, but has since been adopted by different sects and parties. Such a sect appeared in Spain in 1575. They were charged with maintaining, that mental prayer and contemplation had so intimately united them to God, that they were arrived to such a state of perfection, as to stand in no need of good works, or the sacraments of the church; and that they might commit the grossest crimes without sin. ”

“ Can it be believed that a mere man could be advanced at once so high as to be above angels, and to be qualified to rule and judge the world ? Do not all things rise gradually, one acquisition laying the foundation for another, and perhaps for higher acquisitions? The power, in particular, which the scriptures teach us Christ possesses, of raising to life all who have died, and all who will die, is equivalent to the power of creating a world. ”

“ Who would not be touched by the spectacle of a young man of distinguished talents, equally sought by the world of science, and of fashion, extending a helping hand, and devoting a portion of his valuable time, to a timid and helpless female, shrinking from the ills of life; but who indeed derived her happiness from the same sources that he did, literature and religion! When, from indisposition, she omitted for any length of time her visits, a kind note, or a still kinder call alleviated the infirmities of her health. ”

“ He taught that the universe existed from eternity, but admitted the existence of a Deity, whom he styled the first Mover; and whose nature he represented as somewhat similar to a principle of power, giving motion to a machine. In producing motion, he taught, that the Deity acts not voluntarily ,but necessarily;—not for the sake of other beings, but for his own pleasure; and that happy in the contemplation of himself, he is entirely regardless of human affairs. Nothing occurs in his writings, which decisively determines whether he supposed the soul of man mortal or immortal. ”

“ To conform, therefore, to the great end of our creation, we must prefer God to ourselves, and not desire our own happiness, but for his glory; otherwise we shall go contrary to his order. As the perfections of the Deity are intrinsically amiable, it is our glory and perfection to go out of ourselves, to be lost and absorbed in the pure love of infinite beauty. ”

“ The whole essence of faith is nothing else but the echo of the heart, answering the foregoing voice of the Spirit, and word of grace; the former declaring, Thy sins are forgiven thee; the latter answering, My sins are forgiven me. God sees no sin in believers, nor does he afflict them on this account. Repentance and confession of sin are not necessary to forgiveness. A believer may certainly conclude before confession, yea, as soon as he hath committed sin, the interest he hath in Christ, and the love of Christ embracing him. ”

“ They believe the resurrection, according to the scripture, not only from sin, but also from death and the grave. They believe that as our Lord Jesus was raised from the dead by the power of the Father, and was the first fruits of the resurrection, so every man in his own order shall arise; they that have done well to the resurrection of eternal life, but they that have done evil to everlasting condemnation. And as the celestial bodies do far exceed the terrestrial, so they expect our spiritual bodies in the resurrection shall far excel what our bodies now are. ”

“ The virtues and excellences of her character, her blameless life, her sensibility, the warmth of her affections, her sincerity and candor, call forth a flow of feeling that cannot be restrained. To an almost child-like simplicity, and singleness of heart, she united a clear and just conception [Pg 107] of character; to a deep and affecting humility, a dignity and elevation of thought, that commanded the respect and veneration of those around her. Amidst many infirmities she retained the freshness and enthusiasm of youth. Society never lost its charms. ”

“ For how are we capable of performing our duty, or of regulating our actions by a law, commanding good and forbidding evil, if our minds are bent to nothing but what is evil? Then sin must be natural to us; and if natural, then necessary with regard to us; and if necessary, then no sin. For what is natural to us, as hunger, thirst, &c. we can by no means hinder; and what we can by no means hinder, is not our sin. Therefore mankind are not totally depraved. ”

“ Now there is nothing without or foreign to the Deity but matter: therefore matter is the centre and source of all evil. Having assumed these principles, they proceeded further, and affirmed that matter was eternal, and derived its present form, not from the will of the supreme God, but from the creating power of some inferiour intelligence, to whom the world and its inhabitants owed their existence. ”

“ The noblest people (says Dr. Robertson) that ever entered upon the stage of the world, appear to have been only instruments in the divine hand for the execution of wise purposes concealed from themselves. The Roman ambition and bravery paved the way, and prepared the world for the reception of the Christian doctrine. They fought and conquered, that it might triumph with the greater ease. (See Isai. x. 7.) By means of their victories, the overruling providence of God established an empire, which really possesses that perpetuity and eternal duration which they vainly arrogated to their own. ”

“ The general himself is responsible to none but the pope. He nominates all the functionaries of the order, and can remove them at pleasure. Every novice, who offers himself as a candidate for entering into the order, is obliged to confess to his superiour, or to a person appointed by him, not only his sins and defects, but to discover the inclinations, the passions, and the bent of his soul. The society, not satisfied with penetrating in this manner into the inmost recesses of the heart, directs each member to observe the words and actions of novices ”

“ Confucius, like Socrates, did not dive into abstruse notions, but confined himself to speak with the deepest regard of the great Author of all beings, whom he represents as the most pure and perfect essence and fountain of all things; to inspire men with greater fear, veneration, gratitude, and love of him ”

“ The Calvinists maintain, that "justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ, imputed to us and received by faith alone." The Hopkinsians teach that, though the righteousness of Christ is the only ground of a sinner's justification, his righteousness is not transferred to them. According to their system, neither sin nor holiness can be transferred, either from Adam to his posterity, or from Christ to his people. ”

“ After the soul transmigrates through various animal mansions, it ascends up the great sideral ladder of seven gates, and through the revolving spheres, which are called in India, the bobuns of purification. ”

“ The more we see of virtue, the more it ought to attract our love and admiration. Virtue becomes visible only by its effects. The diamond we value for its intrinsic worth. But when it is polished and set, its essential beauty appears more refulgent. So external accomplishments, and accidental causes, set forth the original beauty of virtue, and serve to heighten its charms. There are particular circumstances in which every virtue will shine with peculiar lustre. For instance, humility has intrinsic excellence. ”

“ He supposes that our first parents in innocency were pure spirits, and that the material world was not then made; but that in consequence of the fall, that mankind might not sink into utter destruction, the world was produced, and men clothed with material bodies; and that all the human race will, in their turn, be invested with such bodies, and in them enjoy a state of probation for immortal happiness. ”

“ DESTRUCTIONISTS, a denomination of Christians who teach that the final punishment threatened in the gospel to the wicked and impenitent, consists not in external misery, but in a total extinction of being ”

“ As a man, as a prophet, though of the highest order, the Jews constantly and uniformly looked for their Messiah. Christ never claimed any honour or respect on his own account, but such as belonged only to a prophet, an extraordinary messenger of God. He in the most decisive terms declares the Lord God to be one God, and the sole object of worship. He always prayed to him as God and Father. He always spoke of himself as receiving his doctrine and power from him, and again and again disclaimed having any power of his own. ”

“ And whatever real good any man doth, it proceedeth not from his nature, as the son of Adam; But from the seed of God in him, as a new visitation of life, in order to bring him out of his natural condition. ”

“ Besides the first Being, or Great Spirit, they hold an infinite number of genii, or inferiour spirits, both good and evil, who have each their peculiar form of worship. They ascribe to these beings a kind of immensity and omnipresence, and constantly invoke them as the guardians of mankind; and they only address themselves to the evil genii, to beg of them to do them no hurt. They believe in the immortality of the soul, and say that the region of their everlasting abode lies so far westward, that the souls are several months in arriving at it, and have vast difficulties to surmount. ”

“ Mr Thacher, unlike his friend, was doomed to see death approach by slow and faltering steps. If there is a trial on earth that mocks the power of human fortitude, it is to feel the usefulness of life cut off, and to be compelled to remain idle during the toils of the day, while cares and labors are thronging around. How nobly he endured this affliction, how justly he reasoned that the part assigned him was to wait, must be well remembered. The teachings of Heaven are as various as our wants. ”

“ On the habitual state of disinterested divine love, the attainment of which was said to be inculcated in Fenelon's writtings, Fenelon himself uniformly declared his opinion that a permanent state of divine love, without hope, and without fear, was above the lot of man; and Bossuet himself allowed that there might be moments, when a soul, dedicated to the love of God, would be lost in heavenly contemplation, and love, and adore without being influenced either by hope or fear, or being sensible of either. ”

“ Every nation had its respective gods, over which one more excellent than the rest presided; yet in such a manner that the supreme Deity was himself controlled by the rigid decrees of fate, or by what the philosophers called eternal necessity. The gods of the east were different from those of the Gauls, the Germans, and other northern nations. The Grecian divinities differed from those of the Egyptians, who deified plants, and a great variety of the productions both of nature and art. Each people had also their peculiar manner of worshipping and appeasing their respective deities. ”

“ This self-love is, every degree of it, enmity against God: it is not subject to the law of God, and is the only affection that can oppose it. It is the foundation of all spiritual blindness, and the source of all idolatry and false religion. It is the foundation of all covetousness and sensuality; of all falsehood, injustice, and oppression; as it excites mankind, by undue methods, to invade the property of others. Self-love produces all the violent passions ”

“ They looked upon matter as the source of all evil, and argued in this manner: There are many evils in this world, and men seem impelled by a natural instinct to the practice of those things which reason condemns; but that eternal mind, from which all spirits derive their existence, must be inaccessible to all kinds of evil, being of a most perfect and beneficent nature. Therefore the origin of those evils with which the universe abounds, must be sought somewhere else than in the Deity. ”

“ She had early in life been brought up in indulgence; and poverty had come upon her at an age, when the sensibility of the heart are most alive. There can hardly, indeed, be a suffering more acute to a feeling mind, that has experienced the pleasure of bestowing, than to find its means of benevolence cut off, and all its powers necessarily turned into a weary, wasting struggle for self-preservation. ”

“ This denomination maintain that repentance and a good life are of themselves sufficient to recommend us to the divine favour; and that nothing is necessary to make us in all situations the objects of his favour, but such moral conduct as he has made us capable of; that Christ did nothing by his death, or in any other way, to render God merciful to sinners; but that God is, of his own accord, disposed to forgive men their sins, without any other condition than the sinner's repentance. ”

“ The object of benevolence is universal being, including God and all intelligent creatures. It wishes and seeks the good of every individual, so far as is consistent with the greatest good of the whole, which is comprised in the glory of God, and the perfection and happiness of his kingdom. The law of God is the standard of all moral rectitude, or holiness. This is reduced into love to God, and to our neighbour: and universal good-will comprehends all the love to God, our neighbour, and ourselves, required in the divine law ”

“ In all this the Supreme Deity is to be considered as the first cause; and Christ as his gift to fallen man, and as acting under that eternal and self-existent Being, compared with whom no other being is either great or good ”

“ There are few who were more calculated for the enjoyment of friendship and society than Miss Adams. Yet for a long period she seems to have been in a great measure deprived of both. It is difficult to say what effects might have been produced by the action of other minds upon her own. It might have roused it to more inventive exertion; or, on the other hand, in the fulness of enjoyment, her mental powers might have sunk into indolence. But one thing is certain, that her happiness would have been greatly increased by it. ”

“ It inspires him with the most grateful feelings of heart, that he has opportunity to be in the hand of God, as clay in the hand of the potter; and as he considers himself in this humble light, he submits the nature and size of his future vessel entirely to God. As his pride is lost in the dust, he looks up with pleasure towards the throne of God, and rejoices with all his heart in the rectitude of the divine administration."↑ Hopkins on Holiness, p. ”

“ I remember that my first idea of the happiness of Heaven was, of a place where we should find our thirst for knowledge fully gratified. From my predominant taste I was induced to apply to reading, and as my father had a considerable library, I was enabled to gratify my inclination. I read with avidity a variety of books, previously to my mind’s being sufficiently matured, and strengthened, to make a proper selection. I was passionately fond of novels; and, as I lived in a state of seclusion, I acquired false ideas of life. ”