Depravity

“ They have affected not only the taste, but I fear also the principles, of the young, the heedless, and the imaginative, by the exhibition of interesting and beautiful monsters. They render depravity attractive, sometimes by the polish of its manners, and sometimes by its very extravagance; and study to show off crime under all the advantages of cleverness and dexterity. ”

“ Our country, like every other, has doubtless produced too many examples of human depravity; but I scarcely recollect any, where a ferocious disposition was not accompanied by corresponding manners—or where men, who would plunder or massacre, affected to retain at the same time habits of softness, and a conciliating physiognomy. ”

“ To pander to depravity{57} inevitably means to increase the depravity. ”

“ I know not which is most depraved thereby, the taste or the conscience. Obscene advertisements are there, meant for the licentious eye; there are loathsome details of vice, of crime, of depravity, related with the design to attract, yet so disgusting that any but a corrupt man must revolt from them, there are accounts of the appearance of culprits in the lower courts, of their crime, of their punishment; these are related with an impudent flippancy, and a desire to make sport of human wretchedness and perhaps depravity, which amaze a man of only tho average humanity. ”

“ Think of our child labour, of our police graft and our political corruption, of our food adulteration and of our slavery of the daughters of the poor. When I was a Son of the Mountain and a Son of the Bull, prostitution had no meaning. We were clean, I tell you. We did not dream such depths of depravity. Yea, so are all the lesser animals of to-day clean. It required man, with his imagination, aided by his mastery of matter, to invent the deadly sins. The lesser animals, the other animals, are incapable of sin. ”

“ When we speak of total depravity, it has reference to certain conditions. Man is not totally depraved now, and the reason is, there has been an atonement; but do away that, as many do, and total depravity would reign, and men would live and die totally degraded beings. ”

“ The advocates for the doctrine of original depravity, and who deny that man is rendered vicious chiefly by circumstances, might have been somewhat staggered in this "plain tale," so truly calculated to "put them down." ”

“ A tendency has shown itself of late, in many quarters, to attribute that increase of sensual vices imagined to mark the age, not to temporary outward causes, provisional phases of our civilization, but to a growth of depravity in character, an intrinsic lowering of moral sanctions and heightening of foul passions in the people. ”

“ But even supposing that in our present state of depravity our primitive propensities were such as they ought to be, yet if all our vices are derived from ourselves, why do we complain that we are subjected by them? ”

“ But there are drawbacks which cannot be surmounted; and he who wholly associates with the vicious, must, more than any other, be exposed to the effects of depravity. He found man more than ever treacherous and ungrateful—woman more than ever deceiving—indulgence, cloying—debauchery, enervating and his constitution and his spirits exhausted by excess. ”

“ Now, as far as the divine justice or goodness is concerned, what great difference is there between our being depraved at first, and being in such circumstances as will certainly lead to depravity the moment moral action begins? ”

“ He has therefore to measure the force by which these motives will be opposed; or, in other words, the 'strength of the temptation.' Now the more depraved a man's disposition, the weaker the temptation which will seduce him to crime. Consequently if an act shows depravity, it will require a stronger counter-motive or a more severe punishment, as the disposition indicated is more mischievous. ”

“ Others seem to think that he would deliver homilies of a severer character; would rate men roundly about total depravity, and tell of unconditional election, salvation without works, and imputed righteousness, and talk of hell till the women and children fainted, and the knees of men smote together for trembling. ”

“ The more skillfully the language of goodness is assumed, the greater the depravity. ”

“ The most flagrant depravity permeated every class of society. The beauties of a terrestrial paradise were polluted by scenes which proclaimed the shocking degradation of mankind; by crimes which cannot be conceived without dismay ”

“ VICE, (1) (Through Fr. from Lat. vitium) , a fault, blemish, more specifically a moral fault, hence depravity, sin, or a particular form of depravity. In the medieval morality plays a special character who acted as an attendant on the devil was styled “the Vice,” but sometimes took the name of specific vices such as Envy, Fraud, Iniquity and the like. He was usually dressed in the garb that is identified with that of the domestic fool or jester, and was armed with a wooden sword or dagger. ”

“ Depravity in such a place, depravity of the last aspirations, depravity of sodden and rotten corpses—and not even sparing the last moments of consciousness! ”

“ The frequency of a crime detracts not from its deformity, and sin is sin though an angel should commit it. And the general application of these ugly features of human depravity demonstrates the chilling truth, that he who has fallen can never hope to rise. ”

“ It is said that he had arrived at that last stage of human depravity, when cruelty becomes pleasing for its own sake, when the sight of pain as pain, where no advantage is to be gained, no offence punished, no danger averted, is an agreeable excitement. ”

“ The old doctrine of total depravity is the only thing that can explain the falsehoods, the dishonesties, the licentiousness, and the murders which are so rife in the world. Education, refinement, and even a high order of talent, cannot overcome the inclination to evil which exists in the heart, and has taken possession of the very fibres of our nature.” See Edwards, Original Sin, in Works, 2:309-510; Julius Müller, Doct. ”

“ He had not the moral courage to contend. Sometimes, in the conduct of men, there may be a single act that gives stronger proof of deep, condemning depravity, than a whole life otherwise spent in wanton, wilful wickedness and sensual sin. ”

“ To the doctrine of the total depravity of man, she thus applies the reductio ad absurdum method of proof: “If man be not utterly depraved, he must be in one of these two states—either perfectly good, without any mixture of sin ”

“ "Is there such depravity in man, as that he should injure another, without benefit to himself? ”

“ As a female of an advanced age, I may be allowed to make a few observations upon such a state of things, and I frankly own that, although I have travelled much and seen a great deal, I never witnessed such shameful scenes of public depravity. ”

“ It may be said that the instances of depravity above quoted, are only to be found among savages, whose minds, unenlightened by knowledge, are governed wholly by their brutal appetites and passions; and that a true picture of human nature is only to be taken from the more civilized states. ”

“ Whence it follows that if the soul of the man be depraved, it depraves the woman to whom it is united, by exercising over her a continued action, even at a distance. 188 So also does the depravity of the woman united to the man deprave him without his knowing it by an occult and permanent action. ”

“ According to a more modern exposition, it teaches, that we came from the hands of our Maker with such a constitution, and are placed under such influences and circumstances, as to render certain and infallible the total depravity of every human being, from the first moment of his moral agency ”

“ Acquaint yourself with all depravity, debauchery, foul indecency ever known throughout the universe since the most ancient, forgotten times, multiply it even to Nth powers, limitless, and then you have not approximated their expressions! ”

“ So true is it, that the increase of depravity is the progression of degrees, all according to that law of nature whereby God wills to act by the regular process of cause and effect, each change helping another, till matters come to a burst, when the often-split powers take new directions, to begin in new courses, and go on increasing as before. ”

“ Fortunately for society, all special depravity is more or less certainly the result, in the first instance, of special temptation. The ordinary mass of us, thank God, pass through life without being exposed to other than ordinary temptations. ”

“ Some of the little folks we watch grow up to be young women, and occasionally one of them gets nervous, what we call hysterical, and then that girl will begin to play all sorts of pranks,--to lie and cheat, perhaps, in the most unaccountable way, so that she might seem to a minister a good example of total depravity. ”

“ In truth, none seem to have any title to assert human nature to be necessarily and universally evil, but those whose own minds afford them one instance of this natural depravity; ”

“ From the birth of the Church, out of the womb of Fear and the fatherhood of Ignorance, it has taught the inferiority of woman. In one form or another through the various mythical legends of the various mythical creeds, runs the undercurrent of the behef in the fall of man through the persuasion of woman, her subjective condition as punishment, her natural vileness, total depravity, etc.; and from the days of Adam until now the Christian Church, with which we live specially to deal, has made Woman the excuse, the scapegoat for the evil deeds of man. ”

“ A seed of evil-doers, children that are corrupters.
Transmitted depravity is—I. A doctrine of Scripture. II. A fact in human life. [1] Application—1. God will not fail to make allowance for it in dealing with us. 2. We should make allowance for it in judging our fellow-men. Our censures should be mingled with compassion. 3. By self-restraint and a life of virtue we should endeavour as far as it is possible to cut off from our children this and entail. A bias towards good may be transmitted as a bias towards evil. ”

“ Our senses, our appetites, and our passions, are our lawful and faithful guides, in most things that relate solely to this life; and, therefore, by the hourly necessity of consulting them, we gradually sink into an implicit submission, and habitual confidence. Every act of compliance with their motions facilitates a second compliance, every new step towards depravity is made with less reluctance than the former, and thus the descent to life merely sensual is perpetually accelerated. ”

“ Behold, I will deliver you into the hand of them whom you hate, into the hand of them from whom your soul is alienated; 23:29 and they shall deal with you in hatred, and shall take away all your labor, and shall leave you naked and bare; and the nakedness of your prostitution shall be uncovered, both your lewdness and your prostitution. 23:30 These things shall be done to you, because you have played the prostitute after the nations, and because you are polluted with their idols. ”

“ Then the strange and mysterious subject of sexual vice comes in. It has often seemed to me one of the most dark arrangements of this singular world that a female child of the poor should be permitted to start on its immortal career with almost every influence about it degrading, its inherited tendencies overwhelming toward indulgence of passion, its examples all of crime or lust, its lower nature awake long before its higher, and then that it should be allowed to soil and degrade its soul before the maturity of reason, and beyond all human possibility of cleansing! ”

“ If the Laws and Government, the Administration of Justice, and the Care of the Magistrates were the same, and the Circumstances of the People were likewise the same, I should be glad to hear a Reason, why there should be more or less Incontinence in England, if we were Heathens, than there is, now we are Christians. The real Cause of Fornication, and Adultery, the Root of the Evil, is Lust. This is the Passion, which is so difficult to conquer, whilst it affects us. ”

“ MOLL.
That’s not I yet!
PYE. And with most impudent prostitution show your naked bodies to the view of all beholders.
WIDDOW.
Our naked bodies? fie, for shame!
PYE.
Attend me: and your younger daughter be strocken dumb.
MOLL. Dumb? out, alas: tis the worst pain of all for a Woman. I’d rather be mad, or run naked, or any thing: dumb? ”

“ Women that follow such practices, by their looks offer themselves for prostitution. "For the light of the body is the eye," says the Scripture, by which the interior illuminated by the shining light appears. Fornication in a woman is in the raising of the eyes. [99]
"Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, and concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: for which things' sake cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience," [100] cries the apostle. ”

“ And, indeed, if modesty, and decency, and chastity, and, in one word, temperance, is only upheld by the fear of punishment or infamy, and not out of regard to their own sanctity, then what lengths will adultery and debauchery and lust shrink from proceeding to, if there is a hope either of escaping detection, or of obtaining impunity or licence? ”

“ One is drunkenness; the other fornication. The viciousness of these vices is so little disguised, even from those who habitually practise them, that there will be a protest against merely describing one of them by the right Biblical name. Why not say prostitution? For this reason: prostitution is a word applied to only one half of the vice, and that the most pitiable. Fornication hits both sinners alike. Prostitution applies only to the woman. ”

“ Perversion and prostitution have so degraded the legitimate powers of perception, that the pleasures of instinct have become a source of misery from nauseating excess in over-indulgence. Indeed, from sheer disgust, we have been inclined to discontinue auramentation altogether; for your pretentious civilization, and enlightened progression, is in fact nothing more than savagery refined with art inventions for the morbid gratification of instinctive sensuality ”