Eradicate

“ Full of life and generous vigor, you bind to your heart a putrefying corpse! You court your own destruction, clinging to a vain belief in privileged orders, in worn-out relics, in the bones of dead men, in mouldering escutcheons and forgotten coats of arms—and yet in your inmost heart you are forced to acknowledge that your brother nobles have deserved their punishment, that forgetfulness were mercy for them! ”

“ Is extermination an example of the mercy of priests and their gods, "whose justice is subservient to mercy," "whose punishments originate in his abhorrence to sin,"—and whose commands to massacre, to butcher, and to exterminate, "are only benevolent warnings?"—You dare Mr. Paine to prove, that the young women were kept for debauchery; and you triumphantly add, "that if he does, you will allow Moses to be the horrid monster he describes him, and the Bible a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy." ”

“ Oh! clemency, forgiveness!—Do the traitors forgive? Are the conspirators clement? scoundrels, parricides multiply unceasingly; they spring up from underground, they swarm in from all our frontiers,—young men, who would have done better to perish with our armies, old men, children, women, with every mark of innocence, purity, and grace. They are offered up a sacrifice,—and more victims are ready for the knife!... You can see, Élodie, I must needs renounce love, renounce all joy, all sweetness of life, renounce life itself. ”

“ If thou wouldst yet escape the punishment which speedily awaits thine atrocities, hasten to bow, in penitence, before those altars thou hast dared to pollute, and make full reparation to the holy ministers of religion for the unheard of insults and injuries thou hast offered them. Do this, or thine everlasting doom is fixed; death shall speedily overtake thee, and thou shalt writhe amidst the ineffable torments of never-ceasing flames. ”

“ They have driven your fathers from their ancient inheritance—they have destroyed them with the sword and poisonous liquors—they have dug up their bones, and left them to blanch in the wind, and now they aim at completing your wrongs, and insuring your destruction, by cheating you into the belief of that divinity, whose very precepts they plead in justification of all the miseries they have heaped upon your race. ”

“ Thou knowest my case and that which hath befallen me with this tyrannical King, and I, Thine oppressed servant, beseech Thee, of the abundance of Thy mercy, to deliver me from the hand of this unjust ruler and send down on him Thy vengeance; for Thou art not unmindful of the unright of every oppressor. Wherefore, if Thou know that he hath wronged me, loose on him Thy vengeance this night and send down on him Thy punishment; for Thy rule is just and Thou art the Helper of every mourner, O Thou to whom belong the power and the glory to the end of time! ”

“ This is why this record of destruction will be shown to you Gentiles, to give you the chance to repent, that you may not allow these murderous combinations to get above you. If you do build up and support these secret combinations, then the work of destruction will come upon you as the Eternal God's sword of justice falls upon you, causing your overthrow. ”

“ They may contemplate the effects of, what was so improperly called, ancient simplicity, and good faith; humanity groaning under implacable superstition; the avarice and ambition of a few, staining with human blood, the thrones and palaces of kings; secret treasons, and public massacres; every noble a tyrant over the people; and the ministers of the gospel of Christ, bathing their hands in blood, in the name of the God of all mercy. We may talk as we please of the corruption and degeneracy of the present age, but happily we see no such horrid examples of cruelty and oppression. ”

“ Oh, my God! when the justice of Heaven permits the Evil one to carry out a scheme of vengeance—when its execution is committed to the lost and terrible victim of sin, who owes his own ruin to the man, the very man, whom he is commissioned to pursue—then, indeed, the torments and terrors of hell are anticipated on earth. ”

“ This will be reported to thee and do thou send for him and bespeak him gently and say to him, “O thou that strivest for thine own destruction, what moveth thee to blame us among our subjects? Verily, thou deservest present death at our hands; but the ancients say, ‘Clemency is of the attributes of the noble.’ Know that our delay in answering thy master’s letter arose not from neglect on our part, but from our much business and lack of leisure to look into thine affair and write a reply to thy king.” ”

“ I gratify no private malice, no private feud, in pronouncing judgment of death upon a villain who stands outlawed by both kingdoms. And the terror of such a judgment may have a salutary effect upon the many lawless ruffians who infest the marches, and, by their depredations, [Pg 113] give constant causes for disturbing the peace of these kingdoms.”
“By destroying my life,” replied the outlaw—“a life placed at your mercy by an act of the foulest treachery—you shall gratify your own malice more than redress the sufferings of your dependants. ”

“ Let the force of this hereditary destruction be acknowledged and judged of by the guilt and fault involved, by our proneness and declination to evil, by our evil nature, and by the punishment which is laid upon it.
“Actual sins are the fruits of original sin, and do burst out within, without, privily and openly, by the powers of man; that is, by all that ever man is able to do, and by his members, transgressing all those things which God commandeth and forbiddeth, and also running into blindness and errors worthy to be punished with all kinds of damnation.” ”

“ They trample upon thy people, they oppress thine inheritance, God of vengeance, Lord God of vengeance, show thyself, punish the proud! The Lord is to sit in judgment upon the peoples; He shall be judge of all flesh! ”

“ The dread and trouble of the times filling all minds, men wished to be forehanded with the decrees of Providence. Into this brooding silence the low, vibrating tones of this mysterious voice entered, and this is what we heard:
“Doom! doom! For him—the one—the betrayer—the passing bell is tolling. Hear it, ye weak ones and grow strong. Hear it, ye mighty and tremble. Not alone for him will it ring. For ye! for ye! if the decree of the linked rings goes forth—-”
Here there was a perceptible quiver of the drapery back of the dais. ”

“ Where they "believe that their miserable bodies must take eternal refuge in the grave, and the last puff of their nostrils will send their souls to annihilation, they laugh at the solemnity of an oath and tell you that the grave into which they sink as a log, forms an intrenchment against the throne of God, and the vengeance of exasperated justice!" ”

“ I saw men and women too, no longer like living beings, but like pale, hideous spectres, and they threw themselves in despair on the earth, calling out, "Mercy! mercy! Is then the guilt of our crimes so enormous, that thou, oh Lord, givest unto our Arch-Enemy power to destroy, and render vain the sin-offering of our blood?" ”

“ May the roar of Faction, thirsting for evil, never in this place be heard, nor the dust that drinks the dark blood of fellow-citizens bring to the State, from passion for revenge, the doom of retaliation. ”

“ Will not the fell instruments of destruction fall guiltless from the shaking hands of their contrite pursuers? Will not remorse seize their inmost souls, and vibrate through the hallowed habitation, in one universal cry of, "O men of God! ”

“ Unfit art thou, O my gentle one, to do battle with the wickedness of wicked men, and with the cunning arts of the adversary. Verily thou wilt be led as a lamb to the slaughter. Hast thou fathomed the depth of the pit of destruction? ”

“ Now execute your tyrant's will, and lead me To bonds or death, 'tis equally indifferent. Bel. Let those, who view this sad example, know What fate attends the broken marriage vow; And teach their children, in succeeding times, No common vengeance waits upon these crimes, When such severe repentance could not save From want, from shame, and an untimely grave. ”

“ Religion and tyranny have marched hand in hand together along the highways of the past, and with the stake, the javelin, the executioner’s ax, and every conceivable instrument of torture, have left behind them ruin, desolation and death as fitting and enduring monuments of their utter unrighteousness. Does this terrible history, so replete with evil, offer us evidences of Godlike excellence? ”

“ If the thought of the destruction of a statue made by man and the gift of a Cæsar rouse indignation in your mind, should you not be more moved to see the destruction of living men, as in the shows of the arena—the slaughter of men, the work of God’s hands? ”

“ Entring upon Sequester'd Livings had been Oppression: taking away mens Estates had been Robbery; Imprisoning of their Persons had been Tyranny; using the name of God to all This, would have been Hypocrisy, forcing of Contradictory Oaths had been Impiety, and Shedding the Blood both of the King, and his People, had been Murther: And all This would have appear'd so to be, if the Cause had come to be Try'd by the Known Laws either of God, or of Man. ”

“ Those fugitive figures, he would declare, were the enemies of the temple and all that it contained; conspirators against the Emperor and the gods; wretches who were to be driven forth as outcasts from humanity; whose appellation was 'Christian'; and whose impious worship, if tolerated, would deprive him of the uncle whom he loved, of the temple that he reverenced, and of the priestly dignity and renown which it should be his life's ambition to acquire. ”

“ He judged that enemy by himself, and he knew that he would not stop in the search after vengeance, that nothing short of the fullest and direst ruin—nothing, in fact, short of death itself would satisfy him. ”

“ I regarded the Great Disposer of events as a persecutor of the human race, who took delight in their miseries. I asked why my innocent child had been smitten down into the grave?—and why my darling wife, whose first object, I knew, had ever been to serve and glorify her Maker, should have been thus tortured and desolated by the cruelest calamity which the malignity of a demon could have devised? ”

“ Wherever there is a sacrifice, then there is an executioner, and there traitors! Sacrifice—that is suffering for one and disgrace for all the others! Traitors, traitors, what have ye done with the world? Now they look at it from above and below, and laugh and cry: ‘Look at that world, upon it they crucified Jesus!’ And they spit on it—as I do! ”

“ While they see vanity unto thee, while they divine a lie unto thee, to bring thee upon the necks of them that are slain, of the wicked, whose day is come, when their iniquity shall have an end.—Destruction will come even when the worldly-wise are mistakenly asserting that it will not come nigh them. ”

“ Finding that the promised pardon and mercy were synonymous with murder, arson, and rapine, such a revulsion of feeling had taken place that the authors of these cruelties were literally sleeping on a volcano; and where patriotism had so lately been invoked in vain, hope of revenge was now turning every man, woman, and child into either an open or a secret foe to the despoilers of their homes. ”

“ But suppose one pass, as is permissible in philology, from the word itself to its softened synonym, then, instead of committing an ignoble assassination you make an `elimination;' you merely and simply remove from your path the individual who is in your way, and that without shock or violence, without the display of the sufferings which, in the case of becoming a punishment, make a martyr of the victim, and a butcher, in every sense of the word, of him who inflicts them. ”

“ The same word is thrice employed in verses 11 and 12 to express 'corruption' and in verse 13 to express 'destruction.' A similar usage is found in 1 Corinthians iii. 17, where the same Greek word is translated 'defile' and 'destroy.' This teaches us that, in deepest reality, corruption is destruction, that sin is death, that every sinner is a suicide. God's act in punishment corresponds to, and is the inevitable outcome of, our act in transgression. So fatal is all evil, that one word serves to describe both the poison-secreting root and the poisoned fruit. ”

“ Destruction implied for him an automatic reconstruction, a miraculous survival and rebirth. Uncrown the king, and some noble prophet or philosopher will guide—not rule—the [Pg 157] people. Unfrock the priest, and the erstwhile congregation will perfect itself in the practice of virtue. Take the arms from the soldier and the policeman, the cap and gown from the college president, authority from the judge, and control from the father. The nations will then be peaceful, the mobs orderly, the students studious, the criminals virtuous, the children well-behaved. ”

“ Do what you will, these all achieve the same end. Ah, but the beasts will mangle the body! As though fire would deal with it any more gently; when we are angry with our slaves that is the punishment which we consider the most severe. ”

“ Tyrants and your kings, who, putting away all fear of the gods, plunder and pillage the treasuries of temples; who by proscription, banishment, [3] and slaughter, strip the state of its nobles? who, with licentious violence, undermine and wrest away the chastity of matrons and maidens,—these men you name indigites and divi; and you worship with couches, altars, temples, and other service, and by celebrating their games and birthdays, those whom it was fitting that you should assail with keenest [4] hatred. ”