Bad faith

“ They can see clearly the lens of their telescope is not dim. Who drifts into unbelief? Those whose hearts are full of the smoke of sin, of the mist of evil passions; those who are averse to the holy truths of religion and detest its threats and admonitions on account of the sinful lives they are leading. It would be wonderful indeed, if such persons could see as clearly as those who, free from evil passions, follow after truth.
3. Yes, it is vice, evil, unruly, unbridled passions, which deprive men of their faith. ”

“ On the contrary, while it could not make man better, it has made him worse; for in preferring blind faith in things unseen and un­known to virtue and morality, in directing his at­tention from the known to the unknown, from the real to the imaginary, from the certain here to a fancied hereafter, from the fear of himself, of the natural result of vice and crime, to some whimsi­cal despot, it perverted his judgment, degraded him in his own estimation, corrupted his feelings, destroyed his sense of right, of justice, and of truth, and made him a moral coward and a hypo­crite. ”

“ Therefore all the truths which such persons had learned from the Word and from the doctrine of the church, and had called the truths of their faith, are taken away from them, and they are imbued, instead, with every false persuasion which is in agreement with the evil of their life; for all are let into their own loves, and into the falsities which agree with them; and then they hate and turn from and thus reject truths, because they are repugnant to the falsities of evil in which they are. ”

“ If you were to ask me why it is that there are nowadays so many who swear, who take false oaths, who utter frightful curses and imprecations and repudiate God, I would reply that these same people, who give themselves up to such horrible practices, are those who have neither faith, nor religion, nor conscience, nor virtue. ”

“ Yet, casting our eyes around, we see, on the other hand, with what blindness, with what persistent error, whole peoples are hurrying to eternal ruin. And this thought strikes bitterly to our heart—how many Christians, led away by the license of hearing and of thought, absorbing with avidity the intoxicating errors of false doctrine, go on day by day dissipating and destroying the grand gift of the faith. ”

“ Were these men, therefore, to discover suddenly that a Man, Who hath been living in their midst, Who, with respect to every human limitation, hath been their equal, had risen to abolish every established principle imposed by their Faith—principles by which for centuries they have been disciplined, and every opposer and denier of which they have come to regard as infidel, profligate and wicked,—they would of a certainty be veiled and hindered from acknowledging His truth. ”

“ For, my brethren, we live in times in which the faith of many has been wrecked; in which a wretched philosophy, like a mortal venom, spreads in secret, and undertakes to justify abominations and vices, against the belief of future punishment and rewards. This evil has passed from the palaces of the great even to the people, and every where the piety of the just is insulted by the discourses of irreligion and the maxims of freethinking. ”

“ And such has been the blinding effect of this delusion upon all who have fallen victims to its influence, that the numerous errors and evils of our popular system of religious faith, which constitutes its legitimate fruits, have passed from age to age, unnoticed by all except scientific and progressive minds, who are constantly bringing these errors and evils to light. ”

“ Arise in the mind of man in all the ardor of thy splendor—dissipate the clouds of credulity—show him, that faith, which is not founded on the conviction of the senses, is folly, thy most dangerous enemy, which through so many ages of ignorance has induced mankind to mistrust thy only representative, reason, and to sacrifice happiness by rebellion against thy beneficent sovereignty. ”

“ Even the Divine Founder of our Faith and Religion was stigmatized as the broacher of false opinions, and one who misled the people, by his ignorant and malicious accusers, whose frauds and delusions it was the object of his mission to confound and overthrow, as well as to free mankind from the bondage of their errors. ”

“ He only desires of you and your people that you shall abandon your errors and accept the true faith which he has commissioned me to announce. You are living under a false religion. You are worshipping senseless blocks, made by your own hands. ”

“ This letter contains sentiments, on the subject of religious toleration, which would be highly ornamental, if placed in golden characters, upon the walls of all our churches—“Our fault is, we are apt to be mighty hot upon speculative errors, and break all bounds in our resentments; but we let practical ones pass without remark, if not without repentance! as if a mistake about an obscure proposition of faith were a greater evil, than the breach of an undoubted precept. ”

“ He demands faith—he gives no creed. What is it you teach? a plain-speaking man would exclaim; where is your church? have you also your thirty-nine articles? have you nine? have you one stout article of creed that will bear the rubs of fortune—bear the temptations of prosperity or a dietary system—stand both sunshine and the wind—which will keep virtue steady when disposed to reel, and drive back crime to her penal caverns of remorse? What would you answer, O philosopher! if a simple body should ask you, quite in confidence, where wicked people go to? ”

“ Christian hearts overflowing with hate! Christian, pens reeking with ridicule because other Christians sought to do their needy fellows good! No wonder that faith grew weak and unbelief ran riot through all the land when men looked upon the spectacle! ”

“ If there be another world, which you cannot disprove, with what horror will your spirit, when disembodied, enter it, to meet her fearful and merited doom, to dwell for ever amongst the devil and his angels?
"'The efforts which you are now making to induce others to reject the Christian faith as an imposition on human credulity, will receive AT LAST a recompense; and what will that be?—their bitterest curses, which will be an aggravation to your misery, far beyond the capability of human conception. ”

“ Again, on the other hand, are to be considered the evils that may, and undoubtedly do, spring from a spirit of too much faith — a spirit of excessive credulity — which in the name of religion is ever ready to grasp every and all ridiculous beliefs and superstitious practices. ”

“ Hence, too, the zeal with which other minds call for the destruction of every belief, but especially religious belief, not based on evidence, and with which they denounce faith as the one unpardonable sin. ”

“ The alarming spectacle which the Christian world exhibits at the present day, the novel but formidable forms in which error presents itself, and the manifold [Pg 304] evils and perils by which the Church is encompassed, must be evident to the most superficial observer. It is no longer a single heresy or an eccentric fanaticism, the denial of some revealed truth, or the excesses of some extravagant error, but a comprehensive, all-pervading, well-digested system of unbelief, suited to every capacity and reaching every intellect, that corrupts and desolates the moral world. ”

“ When persons unhumbled, unrenewed by grace, suddenly leap up into full assurance of faith, without any chastening from the law or tenderness of conscience, a few scraps of divinity in the head, and at the same time treat with contempt the meek, the dejected, the broken-hearted seeker, thinking lightly of contrition, godly sorrow and repentance, unto life or obedience of faith, such are Hypocrites. ”

“ Instead of refining their manners by their faith, they had suffered their faith to be corrupted by their manners; true religion being almost defaced, both in doctrine and discipline, after a long course of time, among a people wholly sunk in ignorance and barbarity. ”

“ And the opponents of each particular form of faith invariably take just such good men and women, with all their limitations, as the only true exponents of that especial creed, which they then proceed to tear in pieces with all the ease such an undue advantage of false premise gives them. ”

“ Even our religion has been corrupt, and our ideas of morality have been wrong; our politics, law, and philosophy have all been wrenched, twisted, and perverted; our customs, habits, and associations have been wrong; and all that we have come out from is vanity, evil, corrupting, and damnable in its nature. ”

“ What proof have you that God is right, and men are wrong? Has no one ever doubted that One being wise and the other being weak and sinful? How strange that the word of your One God should be allowed to weigh against the will and inclination of the whole world! Your cause is hardly a good one, when hundreds and millions are opposed in deed and opinion to one! ”

“ But the certitude of faith, so consoling to the righteous soul, is no longer for the sinner who still believes but an inexhaustible fund of inward anxieties and cruel terrors. For, the more that sinners like you, who bear upon your conscience the sink of a whole life of irregularity, are convinced of the truths of faith, the more inevitable must the punishments and the misery appear with which it threatens such sinners. ”

“ And whosoever tries to escape from that great truth, when he sees a man whose doctrines are wrong doing a right act, by imputing bad motives to him, or saying: “His actions must be evil, however good they may look, because his doctrines are wrong,”—that man is running the risk of committing the very same sin as the Pharisees, and blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, by calling good evil. ”

“ And so we are likely to lose faith in the people, and come to the conclusion that it is nothing but sin and guilt that causes them to reject our message. The next step is to forget our own weaknesses, trust in ourselves that we are right, and treat with hate and contempt those who differ from us. Treating our opponents with hate and scorn, we lose both our humility and Christian character, and develop into the most hideous and ungodly characters on earth, self-righteous Pharisees. ”

“ Even the official mouthpieces of established beliefs now usually represent a bad heart as only one among other possible causes of unbelief. It divides the curse with ignorance, intellectual shallowness, the unfortunate influence of plausible heresiarchs, and other alternative roots of evil. They thus leave a way of escape, by which the person who does not share their own convictions may still be credited with a good moral character. ”

“ For, when faith is more useful, more effective, more convincing than conscious hypocrisy, by instinct that hypocrisy forthwith becomes innocent: first principle towards the understanding of great saints. ”

“ I have gained the world, and lost—heaven. Until yesterday, I derided and scorned all religions. It has been my lot in life to become entangled and betrayed by hypocrites of various professions. They disgusted and embittered me with all religion. I tried to think you a hypocrite, and cursed your patience and good works as so many snares for gain. ”

“ Your faith will often be beset, not merely by the avowed patrons of error, but by such as “hold the truth in unrighteousness;” who, never having experienced the renovating power of divine truth, will be among the first and foremost to ridicule and oppose its genuine influence. ”

“ All which opinions are a contradiction to religion and scripture, an affront to common-sense, and utterly destructive of all civil and religious liberty, and of all human happiness: Nor would any of them, or any like them, have ever entered into the heart of any man, unless he were first deceived, or found his account in deceiving. ”

“ You cannot denounce the immorality of the old dogmas with the infidel, and then proclaim their infinite value with the believer. You defend the doctrine by showing that in its plain downright sense,—the sense in which it embodied popular imaginations,—it was false and shocking. The proposal to hold by the words evacuated of the old meaning is a concession of the whole case to the unbeliever, and a substitution of sentiment and aspiration for a genuine intellectual belief. ”

“ All sin is foolish upon many accounts; as proceeding from ignorance, error, inconsiderateness, vanity; as implying weak judgment, and irrational choice; as thwarting the dictates of reason, and best rules of wisdom; as producing very mischievous effects to ourselves, bereaving us of the chief goods, and exposing us to the worst evils. What can be more egregiously absurd than to dissent in our opinion and discord in our choice from infinite wisdom; to provoke by our actions sovereign justice, and immutable severity: to oppose almighty power, and offend immense goodness ”

“ In addition to all this, the infidel must believe that the men who were engaged in the compilation of these monstrous fictions, chose them as the vehicle of the purest morality; and, though the most pernicious deceivers of mankind were yet the most scrupulous preachers of veracity and benevolence! ”

“ Hell is said, in the strong language of controversial divinity, to be ‘paved with good intentions.’ Heaven, according to some fanatical creeds, is ‘paved with mock-professions.’ Devotees and proselytes are passed on like wretched paupers, with false certificates of merit, by hypocrites and bigots, who consider submission to their opinions and power as more than equivalent to a conformity to the dictates of reason or the will of God. ”

“ The evident result of all these considerations must be, that he who has a lively faith and a blind zeal for opinions contradictory to common sense, is more irrational, and consequently more wicked than the man whose mind is untainted by such detestable doctrines ”

“ Let the devil and his children say all manner of evil of us. And let them go on deceiving each other, and being deceived. But ye need not be deceived also.――Or if you are, if you will believe all they say: be it so, that we are weak, silly, wicked men; without sense, without learning, without even a desire or design of doing good: yet I insist upon the fact. Christ is preached and sinners are converted to God. ”