Evil principle

“ And by knowing the evil leaven, and its divers evil effects in ourselves, how it had wrought, and what it had done, we came to have a sense and knowledge of the states of others: and what we could not, nay, we dare not let live and continue in ourselves, as being manifested to us to proceed from an evil principle in the time of man's degeneracy, we could not comply with in others. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The evil principle, grown solid and perennial, goads him on and takes entire possession of his mind; and then{238} perhaps the best refuge that you can have from that diabolical principle is in the natural wild passions and unbridled appetites of mankind. ”

“ How can evil itself be, strictly speaking, a principle? The essence of evil is absence of principle, principle being something positive. Evil is contradiction to positive principle."—Liddon, Passiontide Sermons, p. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This objection may be answered by applying the principle to the case of Evil in the Soul; the Evil, the Vice, will be a Negation and not anything having a separate existence; we come to the doctrine which denies Matter or, admitting it, denies its Evil; we need not seek elsewhere; we may at once place Evil in the Soul, recognizing it as the mere absence of Good. ”

“ Then he illustrates how it, the antagonism between good and evil, is produced under the figures of a rich principle and a poor principle, of which the latter is by nature without root and without place, and only supervenes upon things. ”

“ As, then, the permission of evil finds a satisfactory explanation in man’s probationary state, and in God’s love, as the final cause of the creation, so also the physical evils and sufferings to which the free being is liable are fully accounted for on that principle. ”

“ Learn therefore the lesson of a large toleration and of charity in thought and deed, towards those who, from inherited constitution or unfortunate conditions of education and outward circumstances, fall under the sway of the principle of evil, and lead bad, useless, and unlovely lives. ”

“ The best of men -- and I quote Paul as an illustration of the class -- are conscious of the co-existence of these hostile principles within them. "I find", says he, "a law that, when I would do good, evil is present with me". Yes; the principle of evil and the principle of good are the two laws which abide in the saints of God so long as they continue subject to mortality. ”

“ When it is said, for example, that a vicious or sinful action derives its evil quality from the principle or motive whence it proceeds, I apprehend that no one pretends to fix the brand of condemnation on the implanted principle, or the natural spring of action, from which it is supposed to proceed. ”

“ The desire of acting virtuously, which is a desire consequent on our sense of right and wrong, may not be of equal strength with the desire of some criminal indulgence, and so, practically, the evil may predominate over the good. And thus it is that the system of the inner man, from the weakness of that which claims to be the ascendant principle of our nature, may be thrown into a state of turbulence and disorder.”—Nat. ”

“ The principle of recognition of evil under all its guises is at the basis of the true education of man. ”

“ And yet it had the divine permission, whatever that may be imagined to have been. With every attribute roused and alert—infinity of power, infinity of wisdom, infinity of holiness—God stood by and let evil enter. Angels revolted first, somewhere among the stars. Mankind revolted. Was evil really unavoidable in a proper moral system? If so, immorality is not immoral. Evil that is really essential to good should not be considered evil. ”

“ Are we to conclude that man’s free agency is responsible for this moral monstrosity? Or, to be theologically particular, shall we say, free agency dominated by an innate disposition to evil: human depravity, original sin, the carnal mind? Allowing the fullest latitude to the free moral agency of the race; allowing the evil nature, like the foul soil producing a continuous crop of vile weeds, to produce an inexorable bent, or predisposition to sin, operating on man’s free agency—have we a full and sufficient explanation of the presence and power of Evil? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Is it possible, do you think, for it to exist, and in the virulent condition we find it, and not poison the blood of our whole community? Moral and spiritual laws are as unvarying in their action, out of natural sight though they be, as physical laws. Evil and good are as positive entities as fire, and destroy or consume as surely. ”

“ We do not realize the insidious working of evil in [Pg 302] ourselves; but when it is revealed to us objectively, when it is thrown into relief by an outbreak of evil deeds in others, our healthy instinctive impulse is to crush it. Surely back of the religious and the legal persecutions has been the desire to exterminate apparent evil; that desire is still with us but we are learning better methods of handling it than to unleash the bloodhounds of cruelty. ”

“ I cannot say that I believe in doing evil that good may come. I do not. I think that any man who honestly justifies such course deceives himself. But this I can say: to call any act evil, instantly begs the question. Many an act that man does is right or wrong according to the time and place which form, so to speak, its context; strip it of its surrounding circumstances, and you tear away its meaning. Gentlemen reformers, beware of this common practice of yours! beware of calling an act evil on Tuesday because that same act was evil on Monday! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 of course, and we shall all confess it, if these notions are as false as he supposes them, and we have no power to be anything but what we are, there neither is nor can be such a thing as moral evil; and what we call crimes will no more involve a violation of the will of God, they will no more impair his moral attributes if we suppose him to have willed them, than the same actions, whether of lust, ferocity, or cruelty, in the inferior animals. ”

“ Far be it from us to make light of the demerit of sin, and to remonstrate with the Supreme Judge against a severe chastisement, of whatever moral nature we may regard the infliction to be. But still, what is man? He comes into the world with a nature fatally corrupt, and powerfully tending to [pg 298] actual evil. He comes among a crowd of temptations adapted to his innate evil propensities. ”

“ How simple also the solution of the problem of evil! “If I want to do evil, I cannot,” said the objector; “for God the perfect one includes me with the rest, and so cannot in his perfection be hurt by me. Let me do what I will, my act can only seem bad, and cannot be bad. All evil is illusion, hence there is no moral difference in action possible.” ”

“ It gains, at the same time, clearer and surer notions of moral order. It discerns evil where it did not at first suspect its existence; and no sooner does it perceive the evil than it seeks the means to suppress it. ”

“ Now of this evil impulse I do not say, looking at it objectively: “It is somehow a part of the universal good;” but, in the moment of moral action I make it, even in the very moment of its sinfulness, a part of my good consciousness, in overcoming it. The moral insight condemns the evil that it experiences; and in condemning and conquering this evil it forms and is, together with the evil, the organic total that constitutes the good will. Only through this inner victory over the evil that is experienced as a conquered tendency does the good will have its being. ”

“ And again, page 57: “The great truth is now insisted on, that evil is evil, no matter at whose door it lies; and that men acting from conscience and religion may do nefarious deeds, needs to be better understood.” ”

“ And so, to consider that an evil which I consider an evil, although my adversary may consider it good, is no answer. There can be but two answers: either we have to find a true and indisputable criterion of what an evil is, or we must not resist evil with violence. ”

“ 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 instance, we say that goods are contrary to evils, as justice to injustice, wisdom to folly, and the like. Again, evils are contrary to evils, prodigality is contrary to niggardliness, and to be unjustly tortured is the contrary of being justly tortured, and so with similar evils. Again, heavy is the contrary of light, quick of slow, black of white, and these pairs are contraries, while they are neither good nor evil. 105. Thus, of contraries, some are opposed as goods to evils, others as evils to evils, and others, as things which are neither good nor evil, are opposed to one another. ”

“ It is for our own acts of will that we are responsible, and it is by willing evil that we become evil. We create evil, consciously, by every wrong act of will that we perform, and then we talk of the origin of evil as a mystery, so thoroughly do we sophisticate ourselves! Why should there be evil? Why, indeed? There is no reason, no rational answer can be given, because evil is irrational—it is the will to reject the common reason [229] or common sense or faith of mankind, in this detail or that. ”

“ If the good which men have and feel, penetrates into their speech, and leaves its deposit there, so does also the evil. Thus we may trace a constant tendency—in too many cases it has been a successful one—to empty words employed in the condemnation of evil, of the depth and earnestness of the moral reprobation which they once conveyed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This justice always defeats the possibility of satisfaction for sin by way of a mediator.
That physical evils may and have been propagated by natural generation, none can dispute, for that the facts themselves are obvious. But that moral evil can be thus propagated, is altogether chimerical, for we are not born criminals. ”

“ But to maintain that matter, dwelling among mortal things, is the cause of evils, is in our opinion not true. For it is the mind of each individual which is the cause of the evil which arises in him, and this is evil in the abstract; [748] while the actions which proceed from it are wicked, and there is, to speak with accuracy, nothing else in our view that is evil. ”

“ And, without presuming to scan too deeply the intentions of Providence, or the great system by which evil is brought out of good, and an irresistible power says to the madness of the people, as to the storms of the ocean, "Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be staid," we may probably discover, humanly speaking, the means by which the evil has been arrested. ”

“ Even the innocent playfulness of the human heart seems to have been viewed by these stern moralists as an evil thing, or at least a thing leaning to the side of vice. On the injurious tendency of any system which equally makes a crime out of some peculiarity of opinion, or indifferent action, and of an actual infraction of the rights of our fellow-creatures, it were needless to insist. ”

“ Man will then be restored to his moral perfections; and into what head can it enter, that, by this change, the universal system would be shaken, or the condition of any order of beings altered for the worse?
He comes, in the fifth letter, to political, and, in the sixth, to religious evils. Of political evil, if we suppose the origin of moral evil discovered, the account is by no means difficult; polity being only the conduct of immoral men in publick affairs. ”