Idomeneus

“ But this orator was exceedingly addicted to amorous indulgences, as Idomeneus tells us. Accordingly, being in love with a youth named Aristarchus, he once, when he was intoxicated, insulted Nicodemus on his account, and struck out his eyes. He is related also to have been very extravagant in his table, and his followers, and in women. Therefore, his secretary once said, "But what can any one say of Demosthenes? For everything that he has thought of for a whole year, is all thrown into confusion by one woman in one night." ”

“ But in the case of innate ability, the respect in which it is held increases, and not only does honour accrue to the man himself, but whatever has attached itself to his memory is passed on from one to another. [4]
7. In order that Idomeneus may not be introduced free of charge into my letter, he shall make up the indebtedness from his own account. It was to him that Epicurus addressed the well-known saying [5] urging him to make Pythocles rich, but not rich in the vulgar and equivocal way. ”

“ Examine yourselves, and see what, and how much, sin claims of you; and how much of this claim you admit as valid, or comply with. The knowledge of evil that brings on repentance is the most hopeful stage of mortal mentality. Even a mild mistake must be seen as a mistake, in order to be corrected; how much more, then, should one's sins be seen and repented of, before they can be reduced to their native nothingness!
Ignorance is only blest by reason of its nothingness; for seeing the need of somethingness in its stead, blesses mortals. ”

“ We cannot “serve the living God” without this preparatory purification of conscience. If our guilt is uncancelled—if the love of sin is not dethroned—the service of the knee, and the lip is nothing but hypocrisy. “If we regard iniquity in our hearts, the Lord will not hear us.” Cherishing what He hates, all our offerings are an abomination to Him; and we can no more stand in His holy presence than the dry stubble can stand before a flaming fire. He who has an evil conscience flees from the face of God, as did Adam in the garden. ”

“ By day, Adonai commands His kindness, and at night, His song is with me, a prayer to the God [who guards] my life. 10. I will say to God, my Rock, "Why have You forgotten me? Why should I walk in gloom under the oppression of the enemy?" 11. With murder in my bones, my oppressors have reproached me by saying to me all day long, "Where is your God?" 12. Why are you downcast, my soul, and why do you moan over me? Hope to Elohim, for I will yet thank Him for the salvations of my countenance and my God. ”

“ NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH [hotly] There, that is the most terrible blasphemy! God has given us just one sacred tool for finding the truth—the only thing that can unite us all, and we do not trust it!
PRIEST. How can we trust in it, when there are contradictions?
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Where are the contradictions? That twice two are four; and that one should not do to others what one would not like oneself; and that everything has a cause? Truths of that kind we all acknowledge because they accord with all our reason. ”

“ It is not only the words of God but even more His deeds that show us what He is and how He acts. His severity in punishing sin in creatures for which He had shown such generous love exhibits the utter abomination He has for moral evil.
3. I must stir up my will to detest that same evil, to dread my own weakness which exposes me to sin again, to regret my past offenses, and to form strong resolutions for the future, praying earnestly for God’s help.
POINT III. St. Ignatius bids us consider a third sin, namely that of some person who has gone to Hell for one mortal offense. ”

“ A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena.
Jonathan Edwards, the dear old soul, who, if his doctrine is true, is now in heaven rubbing his holy hands with glee, as he hears the cries of the damned, preached this doctrine; and he said: "Can the believing husband in heaven be happy with his unbelieving wife in hell? Can the believing father in heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in hell? Can the loving wife in heaven be happy with her unbelieving husband in hell?" ”

“ And you, Imogen, are a heroine. The Gods will watch over us. Silence and darkness have nothing in them at which innocence should be terrified. Till then let us reconcile ourselves to our situation. Let us endeavour, by secrecy and stilness, not to attract to us the attention of the enemies with which we are surrounded. Let us banish from them curiosity and suspicion. And let us trust in the Gods, propitious to rectitude, that they will look down with favour upon a design prompted by virtue and urged by oppression. ”

“ Whoever had caught it from the institute of Ignatius was a scholar without pride; a man disengaged from his own conveniences; indifferent to his employment, to country, to climate; submissive to guidance; capable of living alone, and of edifying in public; happy in solitude, content in tumult; never misplaced. In a word, great purity of manners, cultivated minds, knowledge without pretensions, close study without recompence, obedience without reasoning though not without reason, love of labour, willingness to suffer, and, finally, fervor of zeal ”

“ If we do not feel that we ourselves in similar circumstances should have experienced the same feelings and acted in the same way, our pity would not be awakened. It is, therefore, important that we should be able to follow in all its concatenation the action that is represented to us, that we should see it issue from the mind of the agent by a natural gradation, under the influence and with the concurrence of external circumstances. It is thus that we see spring up, grow, and come to maturity under our eyes, the curiosity of Oedipus and the jealousy of Iago. ”

“ Oh, tender conscience! Yet an Heathen's. Where dwells the Christian that excelleth? Hard to be found among the great rabbies of Christendom.
III. Ignatius, [76] who lived within the first hundred years after Christ, left this, amongst other things, behind him, who was torn in pieces of wild beasts at Rome, for his true faith in Jesus, "There is nothing better than the peace of a good conscience;" intimating there might be a peace to wicked consciences, that are past feeling anything to be evil, but swallowed up of the wickedness of the world. ”

“ On Purity of Conscience The main purpose of the first part of the Spiritual Exercises, or what St. Ignatius calls the first week, is to purify the soul from all stains of sin, and to strengthen it against all temptations to sin in future. Of course mortal sin is the principal evil to be destroyed, it is the greatest evil in the world. Since the religious life is essentially the way of perfection, it presupposes the destruction of mortal sin; being the way of the counsels, it supposes the observance of the Commandments. ”

“ Anybody, able to perceive the incongruity between God's ideal and poor humanity, ought to be able to discern the distinction that I make between man as God's ideal, made in His image and likeness, and the mortal and material Adam.
The apostle says, “If a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.” This idea of human nothingness, which I preach, enrages the carnal mind, and is the chief objection of my critic. ”

“ The order of the soul subsists in such a way, that one part of it is the reasoning power, another is anger, and another is desire. And the reasoning power, indeed, has dominion over knowledge; anger over impetus; and desire intrepidly rules over the appetitions of the soul. When therefore these three parts pass into one, and exhibit one appropriate composition, then virtue and concord are produced in the soul. But when they are divulsed from each other by sedition, then vice and discord are produced in the soul. ”

“ Ignatius remarks that when an evil thought is promptly dismissed, there is merit, not sin; and if it returns again and again and is always resisted, there is more and more merit. But a venial sin is committed when one listens to the evil suggestion so as to dwell a little on it, or to admit some carnal delight, or to be somewhat negligent in rejecting it. A grievous sin supposes that the thought or desire is fully consented to. ”

“ This is exactly Iago with Othello—believing in virtue, using, despising it. These idolators of self think the virtuous worship imaginary, unreal Gods. But they never doubt the sincerity of the worship; and therein show a larger intelligence, a clearer insight, than those other idolators who, shut up in their own character, ascribe their own motives to all; and in virtues can see only different shapes of hypocrisy.
TALBOYS.
The Devil himself knows better, sir. He knows that Virtue exists; only he flatters himself that he can undermine its foundations. ”

“ The worship of Immalee, it is told, is chiefly practised by the younger generation, by whom the ferocious rites of the old religion are, accordingly, forgotten, [Pg 236] which circumstance does not fail to excite much anger and disapproval among the old devotees, who are aroused to opposition against the new order of things. This it would have been quite sufficient briefly to state; but the fact that there exist, or have existed, revolting and inhuman forms of religious exercise, seems to have been a cancer constantly preying on Maturin’s mind, nor could he ever say enough on the subject. ”

“ Ignorance of the divine idea betrays at once a greater ignorance of the divine Principle of the idea — ignorance of Truth and Love. The understanding of Truth and Love, the Principle which works out the ends of eternal good and destroys both faith in evil and the practice of evil, leads to the discernment of the divine idea. ”

“ Ignatius, who had been a proud soldier, when he came to know himself better, looked on himself as a running ulcer flowing with corruption. And yet in sinning, this vile being, man, rises up to insult God.
c. On the other hand consider the greatness of God, by comparison with the littleness of man: compare His power with man’s weakness, His knowledge with man’s ignorance, His eternity with man’s short span of life, His bounty with man’s selfishness, etc. ”

“ For, since Logos, and Monogenes, and Zoe, and Phōs, and Soter, and Christus, and the Son of God, and He who became incarnate for us, have been proved to be one and the same, the Ogdoad which they have built up at once falls to pieces. And when this is destroyed, their whole system sinks into ruin,—a system which they falsely dream into existence, and thus inflict injury on the Scriptures, while they build up their own hypothesis. ”

“ NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Very well; but we first tried to prove the truth itself, and now we are trying to prove the reliability of the guardian of the truth.
PRIEST. Well here, as a matter of fact, we require faith.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Faith—yes, we need faith. We can't do without faith. Not, however, faith in what other people tell us, but faith in what we arrive at ourselves, by our own thought, our own reason ... faith in God, and in true and everlasting life.
PRIEST. Reason may deceive. Each of us has a different mind. ”

“ Ignorance was the first condition of sin in the allegory of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Their mental state is not desirable, neither is a knowledge of sin and its consequences, repentance, per se; but, admitting the existence of both, mortals must hasten through the second to the third stage, — the knowledge of good; for without this the valuable sequence of knowledge would be lacking, — even the power to escape from the false claims of sin. To understand good, one must discern the nothingness of evil, and consecrate one's life anew. ”

“ VII. Ignorance is the parent of tyranny, sophistry, hypocrisy; and the arms against this trinity of error are power, wisdom, love, the three main attributes of God.
VIII. Human egotism inclines men to deny the spiritual life of the universe, to favour their own nation, to love their individual selves exclusively, to eliminate the true God from the world, to worship false gods fashioned from them selves, and at last to fancy themselves central and creative in the Cosmos. Adami calls this sonnet scoprimento stupendo.
IX. The quatrains set forth the condition of the soul besotted with self love. ”

“ In the days of Eden, humanity was misled by a false personality, — a talking snake, — according to Biblical history. This pretender taught the opposite of Truth. This abortive ego, this fable of error, is laid bare in Christian Science.
Human theories call, or miscall, this evil a Child of God. Philosophy would multiply and subdivide personality into everything that exists, whether expressive or not expressive of the Mind which is God. Human wisdom says of evil, “The Lord knows it!” ”

“ This, says he, may not only happen when a man prays for what is mischievous in its own nature, as Œdipus implored the gods to sow dissension between his sons; but when he prays for what he believes would be for his good, and against what he believes would be to his detriment. This the philosopher shows must necessarily happen among us, since most men are blinded with ignorance, prejudice, or passion, which hinder them from seeing what things are really eligible for them. And all this, as his manner is, the philosopher teaches by examples. ”