Evil power

“ Therein lies the power of evil, that it is ever new, ever fortified by continuous conquest and achievements. It has the rare fire of aggression; is ever more upon the offence than upon the defence; has, withal, the false lure of freedom from restraint, the throbbing force of sympathy. ”

“ Shall I worship the iniquitous power that, concealed in darkness, works for the general woe? To fight, to fight against it is what I desire, now and always. You call this power the devil; I call it evil, universal suffering. ”

“ If we harbour vindictiveness, hatred, malice, and a spirit that produces evil within us, we are so far given up to the power of evil. But when I say that I am opposed to evil principles and their consequent practices, I use an expression that I think you can understand. ”

“ For it is quite within our reach, when a malignant power has begun to incite us to evil, to cast away from us the wicked suggestions, and to resist the vile inducements, and to do nothing that is at all deserving of blame. ”

“ There is such unlimited power to do evil, which the wicked use for the oppression of the feeble, to oppress the poor, the honest in heart, whom they rule by priestcraft, kingcraft, and every other wicked craft that mankind in their degeneracy can devise, so that it would seem almost impossible even for the Almighty to establish his kingdom and save his people, without withdrawing them from the wicked nations. ”

“ Those of you who are acquainted with the history of the world reflect upon the conduct of the inhabitants of the earth; and when did tyranny ever cause repentance of evil? Never. It produces crime. When men are infringed upon in their rights and tyrannized over, they are prone to rise in their might and declare, "We will do as we please, and will let you know that we will have the ruling of our own rights and dispositions." Tyrannical power may possess the ability to behead them, hang them, or sentence them to prison; but resolute men will have their will. ”

“ Therefore,—The major is plain, for wickedness can ty no man, but to resist it; that power which is contrary to law, evil and tyrannical is wickedness. 2. That power, and those acts, which neither king can exercise; nor command, nor others execute, nor any obey, must certainly be resisted: but such is the power and acts that oppress the subjects, and overturn religion and liberty; Therefore—The minor is evident from scriptures condemning oppression and violence, both in them that command, and in them that execute the same, and also them that obey such wicked commands. ”

“ Consider the trouble, afflictions, war, and bloodshed that have come in consequence of all this, the fostering of evil passions in the human heart, and giving way to every kind of iniquity, being led captive by the devil at his will, until nation has been arrayed against nation, kingdom against kingdom, power against power, and authority against authority. Witness the human beings that have been slain, and the human carcases that have been left to rot upon the battlefields ”

“ We hear much in these days of the wickedness of power, of the evil behavior of men in high places, of men in low places, and men whom the people have been perforce obliged to trust. This is no new thing, though the struggle against it, the combination of the forces of reform and blackmail, of dreamers and highwaymen, is offering some new phases. ”

“ There is no inspiration in evil and no power except for its own destruction. ”

“ To so strange an extent has this been carried, that it really requires a considerable portion of moral courage to face the question fairly and honestly, and boldly to say, that this unrestricted power, which has for years been dwelt upon as the greatest blessing which can be accorded to the people, is in truth a most fearful evil. ”

“ It is pointed out that the power is in the hands of those who are ruining themselves, in the hands of the separate individuals forming the mass; it is pointed out that the source of evil is in the state. ”

“ You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes. ”

“ They have sought to subdue his spirit and will, and to throw him into those unhallowed trances wherein men see and hear things which our Maker has thought it good to hide from us. There are ways by which one man may obtain this unrighteous power over his fellow, and this is what yon evil men have sought to do with their captive. ”

“ That this power is a power of evil, and comes from the devil himself, I may not disbelieve; for it has never been God's way of dealing with men to bind captive their wills and make them blind and helpless agents of the will of others. Could you read the words of this book, you would find many things therein as strange as any you have heard today. ”

“ He made one great and master spirit of evil, to whom he also gave assimilated and subordinate evil spirits, to execute his will. Two antagonist powers, they believe, were thus placed in the world who are continually striving for the mastery, and who have power to affect the fortunes and lives of men. ”

“ No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianize society than evil temper. For embittering life, for breaking up communities, for destroying the most sacred relationships, for devastating homes, for withering up men and women, for taking the bloom of childhood, in short,
For sheer gratuitous misery-producing power
this influence stands alone. ”

“ Great power is almost always a great evil. ”

“ For, setting aside the fact that coercion and guidance can never succeed in producing virtue, they manifestly tend to weaken power; and what are tranquil order and outward morality without true moral strength and virtue? Moreover, however great an evil immorality may be, we must not forget that it is not without its beneficial consequences. It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue. ”

“ And leaveth us not in temptation, but delivereth us from evil, — sin, disease, and death. For Thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
For God is omnipresent Good, Substance, Life, Truth, Love. ”

“ Some have little power to do good, and have likewise little strength to resist evil. ”

“ The third, and most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government, is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. ”

“ The root of all your evils is in the sinfulness of the nation. The principle of duty is weakened among you; that of moral obligation is loosened; that of religious obedience is destroyed. Look at the worldliness of all classes—the greediness of the rich, the misery of the poor, and the appalling depravity which is spreading among the lower classes through town and country; a depravity which proceeds unchecked because of the total want of discipline, and for which there is no other corrective than what may be supplied by fanaticism, which is itself an evil. ”

“ Tell me how it is that a world, God-conceived, therefore inevitably perfect, became corrupt, filled with, and governed by, evil? wherein great burdens are borne by the good; and wickedness, vice, injustice, flourish unrebuked and unpunished. ”

“ Wherever they have done so, the Kingdom of heaven has dropped to the level of the brutal empires. His attack is by the truth; whoever is won by that, is conquered for good. Force merely changes the form of evil. When we “overcome evil with good,” we eliminate it. ”

“ That part of the moral constitution, which exists in some degree in us all, which leads us to feel pain at the sight of injustice, and to desire retribution for cruelty and crime, seemed in him to have become an absorbing sentiment, as if he had been chosen by some higher power as the instrument of doom. ”

“ Or if these are evils, must we not give the name of good things to bodily strength, sight, hearing, persuasive speech, fertility, native land, liberty, life, all which you hold to exist in that kingdom of evil, and yet venture to call it the perfection of evil? ”

“ But will it always be safe to let evils work their own cure by becoming unendurable? Every one of them leaves its taint in the constitution of the body-politic, each in itself, perhaps, trifling, yet all together powerful for evil. ”

“ What villanies of every kind are committed day by day; yea, too often with impunity, by those who sin with a high hand, and glory in their shame? Who can reckon up the oaths, curses, profaneness, blasphemies, the lying, slandering, evil-speaking, the sabbath-breaking, gluttony, drunkenness, revenge, the whoredoms, adulteries, and various uncleanness, the frauds, injustice, oppression, extortion, which overspread our land as a flood? ”

“ When he realized the character and specious nature of evil, and realized, too, that “by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned,” he knew that the stirring up of evil by good, and the shaking of the ancient foundations of carnal belief within his mentality, might mean fiery trials, still awaiting him. And yet, the crown was for him who should overcome. Overcome what? The false opinions of mankind, the ignorant beliefs in matter and evil. For what, after all, is responsible for all the evil in this world of ours? ”

“ The innate sense of justice and injustice, of good and evil is beclouded in the popular mind. Some, besotted with terror, undergo unheard-of ills with abject and degrading resignation; others, a prey to headlong vertigo, mix actions of greatest nobility with deeds that are most reprehensible. Your vengeance fatedly begets incalculable misfortunes. No doubt there is now many a seigneur, who, merciless until recently, does now conduct himself with less cruelty towards his slaves, as a consequence of the terror with which you inspire him. ”

“ How to Confound Gods, and the Governments Friends and Enemies, so as to make the Common People take One for T'other. Now This can be no way done, but by setting-up the Counterfeit of Religion, Law, and Conscience, against the Genuine, and Authentique Original; and by making Evil, to be Good, and Good, to be Evil. ”

“ And had our ancestors been so unwise in those laws we now deem so savage, by which the world was rid of scourges more awful and more potent than the felon with his candid dagger? Fell instigators of the evil in men's secret hearts, shaping into action the vague, half-formed desire, and guiding with agencies impalpable, unseen, their spell-bound instruments of calamity and death. ”

“ When, forsooth, has the manifest existence of evil in any form, of intellectual or moral error, of political anarchy, of religious heresy, or even of natural violence, not shaken man's conceits about what is and what is right? The very conceits—and this the more as they are definite and assertive—help to make the manifest evil, very much as a definite law has its part in making a particular crime, and the evil so arising, as it is distinctly manifested, cannot fail to assail and unsettle the conceits. ”

“ From the highest to the lowest, there is no health or moral soundness. From the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, there is nothing but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores. The laws, and their violation, and the punishments everywhere invented for the suppression of vice, prove the universality of the evil. ”

“ If evil is supreme here, shall it not be so in that undiscovered country,—that life to come? The dreams that may come give him pause, and he either shuffles on, doubting, hesitating, and incapable of decision, or he hurls himself wildly against his fate. ”

“ You can not but know that we live in a period of chastisement and ruin; the enemy of mankind has caused the breath of corruption to fly over all regions; we behold nothing but unpunished wickedness. The laws of men or the laws of religion have no longer sufficient power to check depravity of manners and the triumph of the wicked. ”

“ Yes, you yourselves cause the evils of which you complain; yourselves encourage the tyrants, by a base adulation of their power, by an imprudent admiration of their false beneficence, by servility in obedience, by licentiousness in liberty, and by a credulous reception of every imposition. On whom shall you wreak vengeance for the faults committed by your own ignorance and cupidity? ”

“ In what way are we to decide men’s disputes, when some men consider evil what others consider good, and vice versa? And to reply that that is evil which I think evil, in spite of the fact that my opponent thinks it good, is not a solution of the difficulty. There can only be two solutions: either to find a real unquestionable criterion of what is evil or not to resist evil by force. ”

“ And to do this from the earliest time men have devised definitions of evil and tried to make them binding on everyone. And such definitions of evil sometimes took the form of laws, supposed to have been received by supernatural means, sometimes of the commands of rulers or assemblies to whom infallibility was attributed. Men resorted to violence against others, and convinced themselves and others that they were directing their violence against evil recognized as such by all. ”

“ But when any of our fellow-creatures are to be oppressed, the case is different. Then we represent those motives which we know to be so feeble for good as omnipotent for evil. Then we lay to the charge of our victims all the vices and follies to which their doctrines, however remotely, seem to tend. ”

“ For some, when they see the injustice which they themselves suffer at the hands of evil-doers, are inflamed with detestation of the offenders, and, in the endeavour to be unlike those whom they hate, return to the ways of virtue. ”