Apologist

“ The trouble seems to be with those who commit themselves to written observations that they never appear as apologists, but condemn, from the start, anything and everything which falls below a certain preconceived standard which they may have unknowingly set. ”

“ These apologists rise against philosophy also, out of which they themselves had arisen, in the full consciousness of their faith open to all and not only to the cultured few, the certainty of which, based upon revelation, cannot be replaced by uncertain human wisdom, which, moreover, is self-contradictory in its most important representatives. ”

“ He denounces the dishonesty of christian apologists, and perpetually misrepresents them; he inveighs against their inconsistencies, and falls himself into repeated contradictions. The characteristics of the old political debater are preserved intact in the philosopher. ”

“ We have been forced by these bald and unsupported assertions of apologists to go at such length into these questions at the risk of being very wearisome to our readers, but it has been our aim as much as possible to make no statements without placing before those who are interested the materials for forming an intelligent opinion. ”

“ Now, what are the pretexts, which, in your eyes, soften or justify the vice of evil-speaking? In the first place, it is the lightness of the faults you censure: we persuade ourselves, that as it is not a matter of culpability, there cannot likewise be much harm in censuring it. Secondly, it is the public notoriety, by which, those to whom we speak being already informed of what is reprehensible in our brother, no loss of reputation can be the consequence of our discourses. Lastly, zeal for truth and the glory of God, which does not permit us to be silent on those disorders which dishonour him. ”

“ The invectives against idolatry of the early Jewish and Christian apologists, of Philo, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Arnobius, Lactantius and others, are very good reading and throw much light on the question how an ancient pagan conceived of his idols. One capital argument of the Christians was the absurdity of a man making an idol and then being afraid of or adoring the work of his own hands. ”

“ For is it not evident, how oppression of those who believe themselves to be possessed of truth important to mankind, serves but to bind them the more closely to their opinions? Are they, for a little suffering, to show themselves such cowards as to desert their own convictions, and prove false to the interests of multitudes? Rather, say they, let us rejoice, in such a cause, to bear reproach. This is the language of our nature. Nay, such persons come to prize suffering, to make it a matter of pride and boasting. ”

“ The dark and uncertain notions, not to say the absolute disbelief, which they entertained of a future state, is the only apology that can be offered for this reasoning. But while we censure their tenets, let us not adopt their errors; errors which would be infinitely more inexcusable in us, who, from the clearer views which revelation has given us, shall not have their ignorance or their doubts to plead. ”

“ He that writes an apology for a single action, to confute an accusation, to recommend himself to favour, is, indeed, always to be suspected of favouring his own cause; but he that sits down calmly and voluntarily to review his life for the admonition of posterity, or to amuse himself, and leaves this account unpublished, may be commonly presumed to tell truth, since falsehood cannot appease his own mind, and fame will not be heard beneath the tomb. ”

“ For the language I have made use of in exposing bad men, and more particularly a notorious political impostor, who when indulging his deep-rooted prejudices and violent passions, cares not how he throws off the common feelings of humanity, or sets truth and decency, or the principles of honour and honesty at defiance, scarce any apology is necessary. ”

“ He makes it his boast before all men in the most extravagant language that it is through his machinations that my indictment has been procured. In truth he has some reason for self-congratulation. For he is the organizer of every lawsuit, the deviser of every perjury, the architect of every lie, the seed-ground of every wickedness, the vile haunt and hideous habitation of lust and gluttony, the mark of every scandal since his earliest years: in boyhood, ere he became so hideously bald, the ready servant of the vilest vices ”

“ Nor because the pagans regarded the close meetings of the Christians usually held in private houses as mysteries in which incest and cannibalism were rife, does it follow that the Christians themselves accepted the comparison. On the contrary, as a thousand passages in the earlier apologists attest, they viewed the pagan mysteries with horror and detestation. ”

“ Too shortsighted to reach my full meaning, too narrow-minded to comprehend the largeness of my views, too disingenuous to admit my moral aim—they will, I fear, almost frustrate my good intentions, and pretend to discover in my work an apology for the very vice which it has been my object to condemn, and will perhaps make the poor poet, to whom anything rather than justice is usually accorded, responsible for his simplicity. ”

“ If I have rebutted all their charges, word by word, if I have refuted all their slanders, if I am beyond reproach, not only as regards their accusations but also as regards their vulgar abuse, if I have done nothing to impair the honour of philosophy, which is dearer to me than my own safety, but on the contrary have smitten my adversary hip and thigh and vanquished him at all points, if all my contentions are true, I can await your estimate of my character with the same confidence with which I await the exercise of your power ”

“ If I perform good works, and I be praised there for, I find that I can bring an accusation against my mind whilst I flee from the love of approbation, and I can say that I do not deserve this praise, but blame belongeth to evil works, and how shall I be able to comfort my heart, because men are offended at me? ”

“ If criticism is liable to abuse, it has yet a great and humane apology. When my sentiments aspire to be universal, then my neighbor has an equal interest to see that the expression be just, with myself. ”

“ Those who are attempting, sir, to deceive others, and whose character is exalted, in their own opinion, in proportion to the success of their endeavours, have surely a sense of shame, though they have none of virtue, and cannot, without pain, find their artifices detected, and themselves made the objects of ridicule, by those stratagems which they employ for the deception of others. ”

“ Did I not, moreover, make it an apology for a certain absence, which some of your friends may have experienced, when you have not on a sudden made recognition of them in a casual street-meeting; and did I not strengthen your excuse for this slowness of recognition by further accounting morally for the present engagement of your mind in worthy objects? Did I not, in your person, make the handsomest apology for absent-of-mind people that was ever made? ”

“ Besides, those who, before influencing by their own solid virtue and unimpeachable sincerity, and before reaching the heart by the example of their own disregard for name and fame, go and preach charity and duty to one's neighbour to wicked men,—only make these men hate them for their very goodness' sake. Such persons are called evil speakers. And those who speak evil of others are apt to be evil spoken of themselves. ”

“ What apology then, is there to be found for the man, who, in the face of all these facts, and against the convictions of a conscience, if he had one, took occasion upon the going forth of a solemn public document, to parade the absurd crudity of his own "that he held it to be a self-evident truth, that all men were created equal?" ”

“ He must have established deceivers to mislead them with lies, to terrify them with the wrath of God, in case they stir hand or foot, or so much as a thought, to mend their doleful condition; as if the good God was the sanctifier of all villainy, the patron of the worst of all villains! ”

“ A curious incident of the criticism is the discovery that the actual empire of virtue is not always secured by virtuous means—that is, that false assumption, defamation, and deception contribute to the result. ”

“ In the passage in question I apologize for saying out in controversy charges against the Church of Rome, which withal I affirm that I fully believed at the time when I made them. What is wonderful in such an apology? There are surely many things a man may hold, which at the same time he may feel that he has no right to say publicly, and which it may annoy him that he has said publicly. The law recognizes this principle. In our own time, men have been imprisoned and fined for saying true things of a bad king. The maxim has been held, that, "The greater the truth, the greater is the libel." ”

“ Finding that they could neither answer nor controvert my principles, nor put me down, they have been base enough to resort to slander, and to the most wanton and barefaced falsehoods, which they have trumped up to blacken me. ”

“ And you accept the vile slander of men with a grievance—men who hate him—you let them poison your mind! 'Common talk of the people of New Rome!' You listen to some vile gossip—I don't know what—and then come to me and say you know! ”

“ When listening to the sneaking apologies that are put forward in extenuation of such conduct, we feel as if the mere common thief might rise in self respecting wrath and kick the pettifogging poltroon out of his society. ”

“ I might pretend not to know aught of what has been said; I might attempt some elaborate apology. It would be worse than folly from me to you. Let me tell you, that could I have shielded you from this insult with my life, I would have done it.”
“Yes, yes,” she hurriedly answered. ”

“ Que vos explications devant le public n'aillent pas ressembler à une apologie, et songez encore moins à vous retrancher dans quelque haineuse préface, à vous créneler dans une disgrâce, pour tirer, de là, sur tous ceux que vous n'avez pas pu séduire. ”

“ For the greater part of that time I could expatiate on the meanness of dishonesty, on the villany of falsehood, on the despicable arts of calumny; in a word, upon all those deformities of character which awaken the natural indignation of the human heart against the pests and the disturbers of human society. ”

“ Had the grief been as genuine as it was imaginary the apology is manifestly futile; for the man whose mind is sufficiently calm to permit him to sing his woes in polished verse, must have passed beyond the stage when he is incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. The plea might have justified the sentiments in a drama where the speaker was represented as pouring out his feelings while the calamity was fresh, but in an elegy the poet embodies his own opinions at the time of composition, and the bad morality becomes deliberate doctrine. ”

“ Hypocrites, with the appearance but without the reality of virtue, condemn from the teeth outwardly the Laughter and Jesting which they sincerely approve in their hearts; and many sincere virtuous Persons also account them criminal, either from Temperament, Melancholy, or erroneous Principles of Morality. ”

“ My answer is, that malevolence is ever more active than good intention; that, at the present day, the power of wit overrules good sense, and obscures at pleasure the most luminous points; and that, to have submitted these important subjects to public discussion would have been to consign them to the mercy of party-spirit, passion, intrigue, and gossiping, while the infallible result would have been discredit and opposition. ”

“ Will you suffer them to insult your understanding, and to stamp you as incorrigible fools, with impunity? This, indeed, is one of the cases in which we do not know what to admire most—the towering impudence of the imposters, or the unfathomable stupidity of the victims. ”

“ As all honest truths affect such men, whatever is said against ill men, they construe to be said against them: And even when they are praised, they cry they are abused, and that such praise is rank irony. ”

“ Every fresh effort he made to speak caused a renewal of the uproar, and many very offensive and opprobrious epithets were applied to him. Surely this was disgraceful, disgusting! What had he done to deserve such treatment? Had he been guilty of offering some gross indignity and outrage to every person present, individually, could he have fared worse than he did? He had conducted his canvass with scrupulous and exemplary honor and integrity—with the utmost courtesy to all parties, whether adverse or favorable. ”

“ They speak proudly and contemptuously, as if the righteous, whom God has honoured, were the most despicable people in the world, and not worthy to be set with the dogs of their flock. One would think they thought it no sin to tell a deliberate lie if it might but serve to expose a good man either to hatred or contempt. ”

“ The continual spectacle of woe blunts the finer feelings, and the necessity of bearing with the sight, renders it familiar. In like manner, are many of the moral obligations of society weakened, till the custom of acting by necessity becomes an apology, where it is truly a crime. ”

“ Begging your pardon for passing between you and the text proper, this is to say that if anything I have reported or confessed offends your sense of propriety, you are to read the offending passage a second time, whereupon you surely will discover evidences of an authorial humility incompatible with real irreverence. And if this apology sounds trite and lame, bear in mind that prefaces are written last, when a man (as when he has just parted from one of you) is completely quelled by a thought of the good things he might, or at least should, have said. ”

“ How long will it take an individual or a nation to conquer prejudices, by continuing to practice and excuse them;—substituting general acknowledgements of their guilt, for immediately and thoroughly repudiating them? ”