Badness

“ Your pride, malice, hatred, anger, revenge, lust. Think of your sinful nature, totally alienated from the life of God. How is your whole soul prone to evil, void of good, corrupt, full of all abominations! Feel, that your carnal mind is enmity against God. ”

“ Who can tell the countless temptations to evil which flow in from a neglected, disordered, deranged nervous system,—temptations to anger, to irritability, to selfishness, to every kind of sin of appetite and passion? ”

“ In former days it was—"love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." What is the fruit of the spirit of evil? Envy, malice, hatred, evil-speaking, lying and slandering one another and towards other people. ”

“ Returning now to speak of that second evil, which contains within itself innumerable other evils, it is impossible to describe with the pen or to express in words the lengths to which it can go, but this is not unknown or secret, nor is the extent of the misery that arises from the setting of our rejoicing on natural beauty and graces. ”

“ Where are the disturbing emotions which are in passion, and the profane thought, and every thing which is evil? Where are envy, and hatred, and contentiousness? Where are wrath and wickedness? Where are pride of heart and the words which are cruel? ”

“ The stains of life. No harm shall come to thee,
Nor in those chill dark waters shall thy feet
Slip, nor thy life be swallowed. It is thine
To bear in thy strong arms the fainting souls
Of pilgrims who press onward day and night
Seeking the Lord of Light. Thou, who so long
Didst serve the Lord of Evil, now shalt serve
A higher; and because great penances
Are fitting for great wrong, here shalt thou toil
Long time till haply thou shalt lose the stain
Of sense and of the world, then shall thy eyes
See that thou wouldst.
Go suffer and be strong. ”

“ The noble and majestic features of manhood have often been transformed by these vices into the frightful and disgusting image of demoniac furies,—the angelic beauties of earth's fairest daughters as often transformed by vice into objects of mingled pity and contempt: but cease my soul, no longer dwell on these awful scenes; my heart is faint, my soul is sick, my spirit grieves within me; and mine eyes are suffused with tears while contemplating upon the scenes of wretchedness and misery which sin has produced in our world. O misery, how hast thou triumphed! O death, how many are thy victories! ”

“ Is that fancy paints future torments worse.
The Wise assure him Hell is not; in vain;
Life, his, is Hell; Eternity of pain.
To wrongdoers and wronged too brief a space
Human life has seemed to avenge a race
On heinous crimes against it; hence rose Dis,
Balanced by Elysian fields of bliss.
But you, the Multitude, why are you sad
That life is short, you, neither good, nor bad? ”

“ I knew that I stood upon the borders of the Middle State. Believing that more is to be gained by descriptions of the good and excellent than by exciting the horror of deformity, I forbear, in this introductory volume, to recount the terrors of the awful Hell of the vicious and the self-damned soul.
Suffice it that I beheld scenes of lust, insanity, debauchery, and all vileness, sufficiently dreadful to appal the stoutest heart of any sane one who dwells in the same awful phantasies, insanities and evils. ”

“ The outward covering of infantile and childish innocence, with which those passions and propensities were enveloped, is broken through; those hidden evils, coming forth, cast off their gilded covering, and, with it, also, the beauty and the joy which it communicated. And then the anxieties and pains which evil and sin always bring in their train, nay, which belong to their very nature and are inseparable from them, begin to be felt. ”

“ On the other hand, those evil spirits, who by long custom, have contracted in the body, habits of lust, sensuality, malice and revenge, an aversion to every thing that is good, just, or laudable, are naturally seasoned and prepared for pain and misery. Their torments have already taken root in them; they cannot be happy when divested of the body, unless we may suppose, that Providence will in a manner create them anew, and work a miracle in the rectification of their faculties. ”

“ By looking in the which thou shalt conceive a great annoy.
Thus have I caught thee in thy pride, and brought thee to damnation;
So that thou art a pattern true of God's just indignation:
Whereby each man may warned be the like sins to eschew,
Lest the same torments they incur, which in thee they shall view.
PHILOLOGUS.
O painful pain of deep disdain, O griping grief of hell!
O horror huge, O soul suppress'd, and slain with desperation!
O heap of sins, the sum whereof no man can number well! ”

“ What is 'good' and 'bad'? Who knows? To sin as Nature, the great mother, dictates, and then to bow down to the dust, and pray forgiveness with streaming eyes, and then to sin again—what is the good? what is the bad? ”

“ In brief, every time we are weak, downcast, horror-stricken, alone with our sin, the victims of evil fortune or of our own baseness, we stand, as we all know, not only in presence of agonising fragmentary experiences, but in presence of besetting problems, which in fact constitute the very heart of our calamity. ”

“ In the abyss of evil into which I am plunged, I feel the blows reach me, without perceiving the hand by which they are directed or the means it employs. Shame and misfortune seem of themselves to fall upon me. ”

“ O infinite God, whose wrath is terrible, but yet just, against those who are angry without measure, clear the eyes of my soul, that, considering the terrible chastisements that proceed from Thy sacred indignation, I may restrain those evil and vehement passions that proceed from mine! Amen.
POINT II.
1. Secondly, I will consider the evils and chastisements of this vice, as well those it brings with it as those which God of His justice adds in this life and in the life to come.
i. Anger destroys our likeness to Almighty God, [115] whose works are full of great tranquillity. ”

“ This is designed to arrest our attention, and call forth our love, wonder, admiration, and praise—to lead us to the contemplation of his Agony and bloody Sweat—when in a cold night, such was the agitation of his Soul, beneath the Wrath of God, the Guilt of our Sin, and his Struggles with the Powers of Hell, that he exclaimed My Soul (being truly human) is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. ”

“ All that the mind would shrink from of excesses;
All that the body perpetrates of bad;
All that we read, hear, dream, of man's distresses;
All that the devil would do if run stark mad;
All that defies the worst which pen expresses;
All by which hell is peopled, or as sad
As hell -- mere mortals who their power abuse --
Was here (as heretofore and since) let loose. ”

“ Kill not for food, and where Necessity Demands the sacrifice of sentient life, Kill with all kindness and with due regard To Physical—and Mental—feelings. Pain Is a nerve-racking, dread experience, Especially unto the dumb Creation, Who cannot question, yet are forced to bear That dread experience, all unwillingly. ”

“ Since we approached that world from without, and never felt the pulse of its heart's blood, we had nothing but doubt after doubt when we contemplated the evil that seemed to be in it. Our efforts to explain evil seemed hollow and worthless. ”

“ Mount to the source of your disgusts toward God, and every thing connected with him, and see if they shall not be found in the iniquitous attachments of your heart; see if you are not still a slave to yourself, to the vain cares of dress, to frivolous friendships, to dangerous animosities, to secret envies, to desires of rank, to every thing around you. These are the source of the evil: apply the remedy to it; take something every day upon yourself; labour seriously toward purifying your heart; you will then taste the comforts and the consolations of prayer ”

“ Terror, doubt, misery, had all rushed straightway to attack her heart, while the evils of which she had never dreamed stung mind and soul into dismay and horror, when, by hastily shutting the lid of the coffer, she tried to undo the evil she had done. ”

“ Evil, and mischief, and misery, and confusion, and vanity, and vexation of spirit, and death, and disease, and assassination, and war, and poverty, and pestilence, and famine, and avarice, and selfishness, and rancour, and jealousy, and spleen, and malevolence, and the disappointments of philanthropy, and the faithlessness of friendship, and the crosses of love—all prove the accuracy of your views, and the truth of your system ”

“ I hold them for my prayer."
"The thick, tough husk of evil grows about
Each soul that lives," I mused, "but doth it kill?
When the tree rots, the imprisoned wedge falls out,
Rusted, but iron still. ”

“ On the contrary, if a feeling of pain be combined with any of the evil states of mind which we have been considering, the difference which its presence makes to the value of the whole, as a whole, seems to be rather for the better than the worse: in any case, the only additional evil which it introduces, is that which it, by itself, intrinsically constitutes. ”

“ Evil thought, worry, directs to the person, or to that part of the body considered, an injurious and baneful influence that produces pain, inharmony, unhappiness. It is as if one were to divert a stream of corroding acid upon a sensitive wound, and do it because we wished to heal the wound. ”

“ Our original corruptions are the sickness and disease of the soul, an habitual indisposition; our actual transgressions are the wounds of the soul, which put conscience to pain, if it be not seared and senseless. ”

“ To reason, justify, to apotheosize evil, to establish its ritual, to show the excellence of it—is this not worse than to commit it? To adore the demon, or love evil, the abstract or the concrete term of one and the same fact. ”

“ Pain, therefore, which is the greatest of evils, will always be dreaded even if it is not present. For it will always be possible that it may be present. But how can any fear of the greatest possible evil exist in a happy life? ”

“ Beware, therefore, beloved of exposing yourself to eternal torments; call to mind the great risk and danger you are to encounter in the future world: address to your soul serious admonitions, before you come to be ashamed and fall into captivity and chastisement: ask your soul, saying, "O rebellious soul, how much misery thou dost undergo for the sake of gaining the world! ”

“ Therefore these two kinds, the exulting pleasure and the lust, have their rise from an opinion of good, as the other two, fear and grief, have from an opinion of evil. For fear is an opinion of some great evil impending over us, and grief is an opinion of some great evil present ”

“ This sort of anatomy of mind, when we detect evil in the involuntary impulses of the soul, resembles the scruples felt by an over-pious person, who regards the satisfying hunger and receiving pleasure in eating a dry crust as sin. ”

“ When I look strictly into my deceitful and wicked heart, I find it so full of this abominable vice, that I regard myself with horror and amazement; and yet perhaps the next moment, indulge in airy schemes and self-complacency. Sure there is not in the whole universe, so vain and sinful a wretch as I am! ”

“ Has he caused the evil that has come to them? Too many of us are inclined to think, or lean toward the feeble thought, that the illness that comes to us, the afflictions that we suffer, the accidents that we meet with in life, and the troubles that beset us on our way in the journey of life, are attributable either to the mercy or the displeasure of God. ”

“ When first we throw ourselves forth, and meet burs and briars on every side, which stick in our very hearts;—and fair tempting fruits which turn to bitter ashes in the taste, then we exclaim with impatience, all things are evil. But at length comes the calm [Pg 16] hour, when they who look beyond the superficies of things begin to discern their true bearings; when the perception of evil, or sorrow, or sin, brings also the perception of some opposite good, which awakens our indulgence, or the knowledge of the cause which excites our pity. ”

“ And then the soul is led into the paradise of endless light. But the soul of the wicked one is met by a hideous old woman, “uglier than the ugliest thing,” who is his own conscience. She says to him: “I am thy bad actions, O youth of evil thoughts, of evil words, of evil deeds, of evil religion. ”

“ If such habits became fixed, through one's own frailty, or the wiles of the devil, or the many impulses that shake the heart like winds, then the soul ought to ascend the seat of its conscience, and reason with itself, and let nothing pass without punishment and chastisement, hatred and distaste for itself. ”

“ What greater madness can be conceived than to deprive our minds of all true content here, and to separate our souls from eternal bliss hereafter; to gall our consciences now with sore remorse, and to engage ourselves for ever in remediless miseries? ”

“ But are the man's evils removed? Are those habits of sin, confirmed by long indulgence, so easily broken? Are those evil passions, which have been so long his masters, to be subdued and brought under by a repentant sigh and tear? ”

“ Pride, lust, anger, impatience, malice, envy, gluttony, drunkenness, concupiscence, robbery, lying, perjury, idle talking, scurrility, ignorance, negligence, and other pests have overthrown me, and all the vices like ravening beasts have devoured my soul. ”

“ The sufferings of the wicked in hell will be indescribably great. Think what is represented by torment, by burning flame, by insupportable thirst, by that state when a single drop of water would afford relief. Remember that all this is but a representation of the pains of the damned, and that this will have no relief, day nor night, but will continue from year to year, and age to age, and without any end, and you have a faint view of the sufferings of those who are in hell. ”