Abnegation

“ Such a serious representation will make the stoutest and proudest heart to fall down, and faint for fear of that infinite intolerable weight of deserved wrath, and then the soul is in a sensible bondage, that before was in a real, but insensible bondage,—then it is environed about with bitter accusations, with dreadful challenges,—then the law of God arrests and confines the soul within the bounds of its own accusing conscience. ”

“ Abner looked at his young mistress with a world of sympathy in his steady, deep-set eyes, and slowly shook his head.
“There be many of us ask that same question, my Ladybird, as we go on in life, and none of us can rightly answer it. And yet may be the answer is under our hand all the while. It is the sin of man that brought the curse into the world; and ever since the hardness of man’s heart has been making him choose the evil and the curse instead of the way of the Lord and the blessing, and every generation sinks the world deeper and deeper into the slough.” ”

“ The pain which it produces is a pain of apprehension: a pain grounded on the apprehension of suffering such mischiefs or inconveniences, whatever they may be, as it is the nature of the primary mischief to produce. It may be styled, in one word, the alarm. The danger is the chance, whatever it may be, which the multitude it concerns may in consequence of the primary mischief stand exposed to, of suffering such mischiefs or inconveniences. For danger is nothing but the chance of pain, or, what comes to the same thing, of loss of pleasure. ”

“ I have searched my soul for some sin that, unbeknown to myself, I might have committed. Did I find any? No, indeed to goodness, now, I didn’t. Yet the Big Man’s hand is hard on the innocent. My clean heart is bowed with shame. ”

“ Yet she had tried to control her suspicions, convince herself that there was no cause for investigation or accusation. This flare of hers was unexpected and unguarded—dangerous too.
A shudder of misery shot through both of them at their own coarseness. But they were launched. ”

“ Consequently all differences, by the way inexplicable and logically impossible, which may exist on the other side of the abyss, in matter, should be to the soul null and void, and neither can nor should exercise any influence over it. ”

“ I doubt, if there be a corner set apart, in the infernal region, in which certain condemned ones must meditate forever over their evil deeds, whether their mental agony will be a tittle of the writhing anguish that besieged my soul, until I was left a wreck of my former self. ”

“ Envy and anger, which are the source of contention, cause inconstancy on the part of the appetite, to which power the origin of inconstancy is due, as stated above.
Reply Obj. 3: Continency and perseverance seem to be not in the appetitive power, but in the reason. For the continent man suffers evil concupiscences, and the persevering man suffers grievous sorrows (which points to a defect in the appetitive power) ; but reason stands firm, in the continent man, against concupiscence, and in the persevering man, against sorrow. ”

“ Know for certain, that that God whom I have served, and for whose cause I now suffer, will avenge me; for vengeance is the Lord’s, and he will repay it one way or other, except thou speedily repentest.’ At this saying the justice began to tremble, and crying out, said, ‘I will do you no more hurt than I will do my own soul. ”

“ CORPULENCE. Of all the parasites that affect humanity I do not know of, nor can I imagine, any more distressing than that of Obesity, and, having just emerged from a very long probation in this affliction, I am desirous of circulating my humble knowledge and experience for the benefit of my fellow man, with an earnest hope it may lead to the same comfort and happiness I now feel under the extraordinary change,—which might almost be termed miraculous had it not been accomplished by the most simple common-sense means. ”

“ But again, since to depart from iniquity is a work of time, of all thy time, no wonder if it dogs thee, and offereth to return upon thee again and again; for sin is mischievous, and seeks nothing less than thy ruin. Wherefore, thou must in the first place take it for granted that thus it will be, and so cry the harder to God for the continuing of his presence and grace upon thee in this blessed work, that as thou hast begun to depart from iniquity, so thou mayest have strength to do it to the last gasp of thy life. ”

“ Among the good things, I put what we may call certain Christian virtues, renunciation, resignation, sympathy with suffering, and the desire to relieve sufferers, but out of those things spring very bad ones, useless renunciation, asceticism for its own sake, mortification of the flesh with nothing to follow, no corresponding gain that is, and that awful and terrible disease which devastated England some centuries ago, and from which by heredity of spirit we suffer now, Puritanism. ”

“ That anything may change your purpose? that you may ever amend your life? that you may meditate flight or think of voluntary banishment? I wish the gods may give you such a mind; tho I see, if alarmed at my words you bring your mind to go into banishment, what a storm of unpopularity hangs over me, if not at present, while the memory of your wickedness is fresh, at all events hereafter. But it is worth while to incur that, as long as that is but a private misfortune of my own, and is unconnected with the dangers of the republic. ”

“ Have I not prayed before, and not only no answer was vouchsafed, but no sensation of a listening Power, a loving Presence, assuaged my pain. Yet, human or brute, we must make our groans, though futile, when we are in the grasp of a mortal agony. ”

“ Revenge, says Lord Bacon, is a sort of wild justice, obstinacy is untutored firmness,—and so exactingness is untrained ideality; and a vast deal of misery, social and domestic, comes, not of the faculty, but of its untrained exercise.
The faculty which is ever conceiving and desiring something better and more perfect must be modified in its action by good sense, patience, and conscience, or it induces a morbid, discontented spirit, which courses through the veins of individual and family life like a subtle poison. ”

“ COMMAND VIII. That we must flee from evil, and do good works.
I HAVE told thee, said he, that there are two kinds of creatures of the Lord, and that there is a two-fold abstinence. From some things therefore thou must abstain, and from others not.
2 I answered, Declare to me, sir, from what I must abstain, and from what not. Hearken, said he, Keep thyself from evil, and do it not; yet abstain not from good, but do it. For if thou shalt abstain from what is good, and not do it, thou shalt sin. Abstain therefore from all evil, and thou shalt know all righteousness. ”

“ In my preaching of the word, I took special notice of this one thing, namely, that the Lord did lead me to begin where His word begins with sinners; that is, to condemn all flesh, and to open and allege, that the curse of God by the law, doth belong to, and lay hold on all men as they come into the world, because of sin. Now this part of my work I fulfilled with great sense; for the terrors of the law, and guilt for my transgressions, lay heavy on my conscience: I preached what I felt, what I smartingly did feel ”

“ The inevitable fruit of negation is apathy. Indeed apathy might be defined as negation of the soul, a spiritual inhibition. This fancy swiftly crossed my mind as I looked at Mrs. Willkit, followed by the thought that possibly a change might be a good thing for her. ”

“ Every result has its cause, and it is surely our duty, as far as observation and reason can guide us, to discover the causes which operate against us. The great majority of the afflictions and misfortunes which befall us are punishments for the breakage of some law, the committal of some sin physical or moral, and this being the case, it behoves us to find out what law has been transgressed, what the nature of the sin committed. ”

“ Their school-books told them in swinging rhyme that they lived in a world of undiscovered souls, that 'twas Heaven's decree to have these lost souls brought forth; that man should assert his dignity and not allow "brutes" to look upon him. ”

“ Let no one, therefore, look for an efficient cause of the evil will; for it is not efficient, but deficient, as the will itself is not an effecting of something, but a defect. For defection from that which supremely is, to that which has less of being,—this is to begin to have an evil will. Now, to seek to discover the causes of these defections,—causes, as I have said, not efficient, but deficient,—is as if some one sought to see darkness, or hear silence. ”

“ I say, if, when thou art a hearing, there is but one vain thought, or in praying, but one vain thought, or in any other thing whatsoever, let it be civil or spiritual, one vain thought once in all thy lifetime will cause the law to take such hold on it, that for that one thing it doth even set open all the floodgates of God's wrath against thee, and irrecoverably by that covenant it doth bring eternal vengeance upon thee ”

“ III. If it be in the present life, and from the ordinary coursed of nature, not purposely modified by the interposition of these will of any human being, nor by any extraordinary interposition of any superior invisible being, that the pleasure or the pain takes place or is expected, it may be said to issue from or to belong to the physical sanction. ”

“ God seems to speak as if he were astonished at the inundation of evil which the woman by her sin had overflowed the world withal: "What is this that thou hast done!" Thou hast undone thyself, thou hast undone thy husband, thou hast undone all the world; yea, thou hast brought a curse upon the whole creation, with an overplus of evils, plagues, and distresses. ”

“ But your children—the curse would hang over them. One and all, they too might suffer. Though you should hold to your self-mastery, there would still be a chance,—epilepsy, insanity, your own form of the curse! ”

“ These be the heads of iniquity which spring from the lust of the flesh, of the eye, or of rule, either singly, or two combined, or all together; and so do men live ill against the three, and seven, that psaltery of ten strings, Thy Ten Commandments, O God, most high, and most sweet. But what foul offences can there be against Thee, who canst not be defiled? ”

“ Fourth, As the just shall arise spiritual bodies, so the unjust shall arise only as mere and naked lumps of sinful nature; not having the least help from God, to bear them up under this condition. Wherefore, so soon as ever they are risen out of their graves; they will feel a continual sinking under every remembrance of every sin, and thoughts of judgment; in their rising they fall—fall, I say, from thenceforth, and for ever. ”

“ Sins washed so freely, in so precious a fountain, and yet to defile again, sins forgiven so readily and easily, the debt whereof, in justice, the whole creation was not able to pay, and yet to offend so gracious a Father, a soul being thoroughly convinced of the vanity, folly, and madness of sin, of the deceitfulness and baseness of its pleasures, and set in a posture against it, as the most deadly enemy ”

“ Against another we may be secure, but against himself what one of us is safe? A man may have no fear of your Hebrew God, Abner, or your Assyrian Devil, and yet, his own mind may turn against him and fill him full of terror. ”

“ When God setteth iniquities before him, and that which is the soul's secret, beginneth to imprint it in visible characters on the rod, and writeth his sin on his punishment, then no wonder that days be spent in vanity and grief, since they are passed over in his wrath, Job xiii. 25. Then doth a soul loathe its dainty meat, and then doth the ox low over his fodder. ”

“ They may even be done for the mere pleasure in another man’s pain, as the spectators of gladiatorial shows or the people who deride and mock at others. These are the major forms of iniquity that spring out of the lust of the flesh, and of the eye, and of power. ”

“ Take heed of over-looking, or of shutting your eyes upon your own guilt: 'He that covereth his sins, shall not prosper.' It is incident to some men, when they find repentance is far from them, to shut their eyes upon their own guilt, and to please themselves with such notions of deliverance from present troubles, as will stand with that course of sin which is got into their families, persons, and professions, and with a state of impenitence: But I advise you to take heed of this. ”

“ All this while God has not left the sinner, nor is come to the end of his patience towards him, but stands at least with the door of grace a-jar in his hand, as being loth as yet to bolt it against him.
4. Art thou followed with affliction, and dost thou hear God’s angry voice in thy afflictions? Doth he send with thy affliction an interpreter to shew thee thy vileness; and why, or wherefore, the hand of God is upon thee, and upon what thou hast; to wit, that it is for thy sinning against him, and that thou mightest be turned to him? ”

“ The 'Vengeance of the Law' is a phrase not easy to forget; but among humane and highly-civilized peoples the word Vengeance should be replaced by another, the best that I can think of is—Regeneration. ”

“ This question can be asked; for the reader evidently knows that a panic had prevailed, and that the intelligence had come. If, then, we are to use balance inversion, we must so reconstruct the sentence that the words containing the essential answer to this question become the subject; we must change 'somewhat lightened' into 'some alleviation'. 'From this proof...Thames, resulted some alleviation of the provincial panic'. That is the best that inversion will do for us; it is not quite satisfactory, and the reason is that the sentence is made to do too much. ”