Dissent (religion)

“ But all these false conceptions of conscience will be no excuse before God for not having known better. The idea that there is no law or rule over our thoughts, desires, words and actions, and that, without sin or error, we may think, desire, say, and do what we please, especially in matters of religion is a downright absurdity. ”

“ Would to God our modern deists, who live in the midst of gospel light, would seriously consider this, and cautiously, diligently, and impartially examine what it is that hinders their receiving the gospel, while they profess themselves fully persuaded of all the principles and duties of natural religion! ”

“ Neither they, nor their pious followers, needed to have been martyrs, had they been guided by a spirit that taught religion and conscience to stoop to worldly interest and luxury.
You say, I have heard some of you say, that you are forced to swear. How were you forced? Can conscience be forced? You may as well say, that men may be forced to like a religion which they hate. ”

“ Not all the pleasures of the most prosperous sinners, could counterbalance the hundredth part of those sensations described in his penitential psalms—and which must be the portion of every man, who has fallen from a religious state into such crimes, when once he recovers a sense of religion and virtue, and is brought to a real hatred of sin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You are also painfully alive to the doubts which your conduct excites in the mind of your more worldly associates as to the reality of a vital and transforming efficacy in religion. You feel that you are not only disobeying God yourself, but that you are providing others with excuses for disobeying him, and with examples of disobedience. You mourn over these considerations in bitterness of heart; you even pray for strength to resist this, your besetting sin, and then—you leave your room, and fall into the same sin on the very first opportunity. ”

“ Another great sin of the tongue is, the profane deriding of serious godliness, and the mocking, and jesting, and scorning at godly persons as such; or scorning at some of their real or supposed imperfections, for their piety sake, to make them odious, that piety through them might be made odious. When men so speak, that the drift and tendency of their speech is to draw men to a dislike of truth or holiness; and their mocks or scorns at some particular opinion, or practice, or mode, doth tend to the contempt of religion in the serious practice of it. ”

“ Yet still, habits of religious restraint, even more, perhaps, than religion itself, checked the dangerous impulse; and that ardent sentiment which resisted the force of his reason and the influence of his faith, submitted to the dictates of what might be deemed rather his prejudice than his principle. ”

“ I mean here, religion negatively taken,—so that the person be not compelled to do or utter, in relation of the soul to God, what would be, in that person, a lie;—such as to force a man to go to church, or to swear that he believes what he does not believe. ”

“ They come, thirdly, with an appearance of religion. All they do, is for conscience sake! They assure you, it is out of mere zeal for God, that they are making God a liar. It is out of pure concern for religion, that they would destroy it, root and branch. All they speak, is only from a love of truth, and a fear lest it should suffer. ”

“ His usual thoughtlessness and torpidity upon the subject of religion leaves him, and he becomes a serious and deeply-interested creature. Would that the multitudes who listen so languidly to the statements of the pulpit, upon these themes of sin and guilt, might be closeted with the Everlasting Judge, in silence and in solemn reflection. You who have for years been told of sin, but are, perhaps, still as indifferent regarding it as if there were no stain, upon the conscience,—would that you might enter into an examination of yourself, alone with your Maker. ”

“ Dissension is unknown where every look and thought are love; nor can the shadow of Distrust fall in the realm of eternal light, for the servants of Christ shall see Him as He is, and dwell with Him in bliss everlasting. ”

“ There is even a special department in theological teaching known as Apologetics, or the defense of faith; as though religion had to be always on the defensive, and as if the easiest attitude of mind, even of the least philosophical, were the attitude of denial. But did you ever consider the alternative position and the difficulties which present themselves when one undertakes absolutely and continuously to deny himself the relations of the religious life? ”

“ The mouths of those also that speak lies against him, that pervert the right ways of the Lord and speak ill of his holy religion, will be stopped in that day when the Lord shall come to reckon for all the hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. ”

“ When you meditate on any sin, remember that it is the defacing or privation of God's image, and the rebel that riseth up against him in all his attributes, to depose him from the government of the soul and of the world ”

“ One false step, one self-confident rejection of a thing which is merely too high for you to grasp, and you are darkening the Sun, casting God out of the world. And that was just what the Christians deliberately did. In many of the early Christian writings denial is a much greater element than assertion. ”

“ This will no ways follow, unless all men’s consciences in the world did err fundamentally and obstinately after just conviction, against the very principles of Christian religion, or unless they held forth other errors ... ”

“ Dissenters again differ from us very much on matters of doctrine. The tendency of Dissent is to teach the non-importance of doctrine, as though it had a most important influence on right living. Of course they have and believe in doctrines. ”

“ How shall the distrust that sin creates, the hardness that sin forms, the despair and helplessness that sin induces, the dreadful indifference which is its expression,—how shall they be removed? How shall the unfaith which the mystery, the suffering, the evil of the world induce be overcome? Being a sinner I do not dare, and being ignorant I do not believe, to come. ”

“ And how much sin, if their conscience is throughly awake, may they find cleaving to their actions also? Nay, are there not many of these, which though they are such as the world would not condemn, yet cannot be commended, no nor excused, if we judge by the word of God? Are there not many of their actions, which they themselves know, are not to the glory of God? ”

“ If, indeed, we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Alas for the dulness of our heart, that we do not examine our ways, to try if our heart even do not reprehend us; but after having seared our conseiences, we dissemble our sins, as a nation that had done justice, and care so little for progress in the way of the Lord !
Christ. If you would judge yourselves, you certainly should not be judged. But because you excuse yourselves from self-examination, do you not receive the greater judgment? ”

“ Why not select the Devil at once, if beings the most cruel and blood-thirsty were best calculated for "carrying out his divine ends of mercy to the race"? Here is more proof of the evil effects of preaching, or adhering to, a religion which is so full of errors, absurdities, and immoral elements, that it blinds the moral vision, and weakens the reasoning faculties to give it a place in the mind, and leads to a system of false reasoning, and often corrupts the natural judgment. We have more orthodox testimony to show the defective morals of the Lord's chosen people. ”

“ The wicked will persecute the good; this, false Christians have done to the true, for non-compliance with their superstitions; the strange carnal measures false Christians have taken of Christianity; the danger of that self-seduction.—8. The sense of that has obliged me to make this discourse for a dissuasive against the world's lusts, and an invitation to take up the daily cross of Christ as the way left us by him to blessedness.—9. Of the self-condemnation of the wicked; that religion and worship are comprised in doing the will of God. ”

“ Man is not struck by the inquiry, “How shall I, unclean as I am, approach the holy God, and stand before him, when he judges me according to the holy law which he has himself engraven on my conscience? What shall I do to become free from the guilt which oppresses me, and again to attain to communion with him?” To make inquiries such as these, this spirit of deism considers as fanaticism; and it casts away from itself all notions of God’s anger, judgments, or punishments, as representations arising only from the limited nature of the human understanding. ”

“ I speak of that religion by whose unnatural requisitions sin and hypocrisy really came into the world, in that by the condemnation of the flesh the most innocent sensuous pleasures became sins, and because the impossibility of a man's becoming altogether spiritual naturally created hypocrisy. ”

“ Why will the sinner seek to conceal what he committed in the presence of God? Why will he blush to confess those sins with which he did not blush to stain his own soul? Therefore, let him defray by confession what he has contracted by sinning; let him by satisfaction wash away the stains which defile his soul ”

“ Give me light to see what sins I have committed during the past day, and grant me grace to be truly sorry for them.
(Here examine your conscience.)
Offences against God ; against your neighbor; against yourself; Where have you been? With whom have you been?
Commandments of God; poverty, chastity, obedience; the Holy Rule; the predominant passion; resolutions; prayers, works, and sufferings. Does your conscience reproach you with regard to any of these points?
O MY God, forgive me my offences; I am truly sorry for having sinned, because Thou art infinitely good, and sin displeases Thee. ”

“ I have said sin, because sin, only, is offense in the eyes of the gods. But sin and error are one in the unpardoning eye of nature. Thus, if thou dost err, though in all innocence, though the gods absolve thee, thou wilt reap the bitter harvest of thy misguided sowing, one day—thou or thy children after thee. The doom is spoken, and however tardy, must fall—and the offense is never expiated. There is nothing more relentless than consequence. ”

“ But craft and deceit in sacred things breed a vicious habit of defending by false reasoning what an uncorrupted conscience would reject; and the holy name of religion, instead of being a sacrament of good, becomes a sacrament of evil, which is used to cover and consecrate loathsome immoralities. ”

“ I have done so from a conviction that in judging others we not only see but often suspect little of the latent causes of the sins which seem to us, and which in truth are, so flagrant and so disastrous. ”

“ When God convinces men of sin, and humbles them for it, their contempt of God's ministers, and the word of the Lord in their mouths, will certainly come into the account, and lie heavily upon their consciences. ”

“ God’s people as well as others will be found obstinate in fundamental errors, in which sufferings and persecution doth harden.
Yea, God’s people themselves, being deluded and captivated, are strongly confident even against some fundamentals, especially of worship: and yet not against the light, but according to the light or eye of a deceived conscience. ”

“ If, therefore, that Spirit's teachings be disregarded or disobeyed, or His inward movings be hindered, in just such measure will prayer become formal or be altogether abandoned. Sin, consciously indulged, or duty, knowingly neglected, makes supplication an offence to God. ”

“ Thus the confession of sins is at first rather a bodily than a moral purgation, resembling the ceremonies of washing, fumigation, and so on, which are observed by many primitive peoples for the removal of sin. ”

“ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Read these two texts, all ye that take liberty to sin, because the grace of God hath abounded.— How will ye be able to look God and conscience in the face: certainly you will never be able to do it, unless you repent; for if men will sin willingly, notwithstanding all these checks of conscience, their consciences will condemn them before the Lord. ”

“ Can those, who expect to please God by cruelty to themselves or to their fellow-creatures—by horrid punishments of their own bodies for the sin of their souls—or, by more horrid persecution of others for difference of opinion, be called true believers? ”

“ To deny the Word, or to adulterate the real goods and falsify the real truths of the Word, is sin and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit; and to interpret the natural sense of the Word, which is the sense of the letter, according to appearances is a word against the Son of Man. The reason why to deny the Word is a sin which cannot be remitted, in this age nor in that which is to come, or to eternity, and why he who does it is liable to eternal judgment, is that they who deny the Word deny God, deny the Lord, deny heaven and hell, and deny the church and all things that belong to it ”

“ Is not faith more convincing than words? Man's words may deceive you, but not the word of God. If you were to hear from me, what you have so often heard from others, "I absolve you from your sins," what assurance would you have, that you were really absolved? What am I, but a sinner, like yourself? Do you apply for health to a sick man, or for wealth to a poor one? ”