Hypocrite

“ Is not this giving place to satan, to harrass your mind, and keep up the distance between God, and your soul; setting you at questioning the reality of a work of grace in the heart, and begetting a fear in your soul that you are nothing but an hypocrite? The world, perhaps, joins in it and says the same: oh, you are nothing but an hypocrite. Perhaps providence seems contrary, troubles befal you, the members of the same church are permitted to suspect your religion, and condemn you only as an hypocrite. ”

“ Hypocrite, thou art not true to God nor man, nor thine own soul, because thou art a hypocrite! How should the Lord put any trust in thee? Why should the saints look for any good from thee? Should God give thee his Word, thou wilt sell it. Should men commit their souls to thee, thou wilt destroy them, by making merchandise of them, for thy own hypocritical designs. Yea, if the sun waxes hot, thou wilt throw all away, and not endure the heat, because thou art a hypocrite! ”

“ How men try to make their religion square with their practice! I was hard, cruelly hard, on that poor little girl of Andrew’s. I was sure it was for the good of her soul that she should stand up and confess in public. But now it comes to my own self, I make excuses; I hide, and cloak, and equivocate, and lie—what a hypocrite I am! ”

“ To stand among the hypocrites will avail thee nothing. The hypocrite "shall not come before him," that is, with acceptance, but shall perish. (Job 13:16) Because it concerns thee much, let me over with it again! When thou shalt see less sinners than thou art, bound up by angels in bundles, to burn them, where wilt thou appear, sinner? Thou mayest wish thyself another man, but that will not help thee, sinner. ”

“ Rise up, thou subtle, worldly, selfish, iron-hearted hypocrite, and make thy choice whether still to be subtle, worldly, selfish, iron-hearted, and hypocritical, or to tear these sins out of thy nature, tho they bring the life-blood with them! ”

“ Setting out in the ministry with sound truth, but sound truth becoming unpopular, and with a view to avoid reproach, as an Antinomian in principle, mingling grace and works, law and gospel, Calvinism and Arminianism, to keep up the name of being reputable, is Hypocrisy.
Persons coming into a profession, taking up religion for connection, trade, or for any other profit in temporal things, is an Hypocrite.
Pleading for holiness, morality, duty and consistency; yet living in secret sin, as his real element, though unknown to others, is an Hypocrite. ”

“ The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy. ”

“ There is opposed to this sin, simplicity, innocence, and godly sincerity, without which three graces thou wilt be a hypocrite. Believe that a hypocrite, with the cunning and shrouds for his hypocrisy, can go unseen no further than the grave; nor can he longer flatter himself with thoughts of life.
A hypocrite and a false professor may go a great way; they may pass through the first and second watch, to wit, may be approved by Christians and churches; but what will they do when they come at the iron gate that leadeth into the city? ”

“ I may have done things to be ashamed of; most men have. But there are forms of hypocrisy that make one sick to contemplate. I don't know that I was ever a hypocrite." He put up his eyeglass, and stared at the preacher slowly from head to foot. "Nevertheless, I own that your plan has paid best. I congratulate you on the success of your preaching." ”

“ ‘The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.’ He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves. ”

“ "It is bad to believe you in error. It would be infinitely worse to have known you a hypocrite." ”

“ But must not the nature and the disposition suffer from the depression, and will the moral vigour take no scathe? Ah! What if one were to give way to the pressure—to settle down into a hypocrite—to become an object of contempt to one's self and the rest of mankind. ”

“ But, in times of difficulty and danger, when the hypocrite falls away, and the true is distinguished from the false, his fine humanity and nobility of soul shone out in a manner which demands from posterity its highest meed of honour. ”

“ Hypocrites bear little reverence to their consciences: they make so often and so grossly bold with them, that conscience is deposed from its office at the present, and silenced by them, lest it should gall them by preaching to them those hard sayings which they cannot bear: and perhaps at last it is seared or bribed to take part with sin. But usually a hypocrite hath a secret judge within him which condemneth him. Take heed how you use your conscience, as you love your peace and happiness. ”

“ CRUEL MAN.—No matter; thou wilt have the pleasure to be interred in holy ground, and thy wife and children will have wherewithal to maintain them after thy death. Die a hypocrite; hypocrisy is a very good thing ”

“ XVII. Suspect yourselves most among the great, the wise, the learned, and the godly, or any whose favour, opinion, or applause you most esteem. It is easy for an arrant hypocrite to despise the favour or opinion of the vulgar, of the ignorant, of the profane, or any whose judgment he contemneth. It is no great honour or dishonour to be praised or dispraised by a child, or fool, or a person that for his ignorance or profaneness is become contemptible. But hypocrisy and pride do work most to procure the esteem of those, whose judgment or parts you most admire. One most admireth worldly greatness ”

“ The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy. ”

“ And as expressed in the Litany of the Church of England—“and from all hypocrisy, good Lord deliver us.” The hypocrite thus painted to the life, we cannot err in the description; many have been painted by others very differently, and many have painted themselves, and sat down to admire their likenesses ”

“ Your heart, on every occasion, belies your conduct; every where your countenance is in contradiction to your sentiments; you are the hypocrites of the world, of ambition, of favour, and of fortune; and it well becomes you, after that, to accuse the just of the same tricks, and so loudly to ring their dissimulation and pretended hypocrisy: when you shall have nothing in the same way with which to reproach yourselves, then will we listen to the temerity of your censures ”

“ Some hypocrites conceal and deny the indulgence like your secret toper; others apologize for not indulging when they are in the company of notorious but pleasing offenders, as the hypocrite feigns benevolence. ”

“ Nearly twenty times in the New Testament our Saviour accused the Pharisees of hypocrisy, because they were really hypocrites, and nothing else. The word, according to the learned, comes from the Greek, hypocrisis, it is counterfeiting religion and virtue—an affectation of the name and hatred to the thing—the having the form of godliness but denying the power. Thus, he is an hypocrite who pretends to be what he is not—who puts on a false person like the actor in tragedy or comedy—as a beggar may act a king, or a coward an hero. ”

“ The characteristic of your true hypocrite is the assumption of a virtue which not only he has not, but which he is incapable of possessing, and in which he does not believe. The hypocrite may have, most likely has, (for he is a man of brains,) a conscious rule of life, but it is never that of the person to whom his hypocrisy is directed. ”

“ While at home I am under the absolute necessity of acting the hypocrite, indeed I am becoming quite an adept. Circumstances oblige me to act contrary to my wishes, consequently my situation in that respect is not very enviable. ”

“ IX. Be much more busy about yourselves than about others; and more censorious of yourselves than of other men; and more strict in the reforming of yourselves than of any others. For this is the character of the sincere: when the hypocrite is little at home and much abroad; and is a sharp reprehender of others, and perniciously tender and indulgent to himself. ”

“ I determined, by the Lord’s assistance, in as clear and scriptural a manner as I possibly could, to point out the sincere believer, with all his feelings, frames, corruptions, infirmities, and temptations, his falls, recoveries and conflicts, in direct opposition to an hypocrite, in his attainment, confidence, hardness, deceit and pride, that my reader may be able in looking on these pictures to decide to which of these he belongs—that the poor in spirit may be comforted, and the hypocrite may, by divine light, discover himself and be made sincere, is my humble aim. ”

“ Such men of the world, who play the hypocrite to retain their respectability, do the same thing. But the great danger to society first comes in when free-thinkers with no qualms of conscience commit, and authors without moral indignation describe, the sin. ”

“ They like the sanction it gives to their own hypocrisy. They like a man to come to them who will say to them, ‘We are all hypocrites together,’ and who will put his finger to his nose and comfort them. ”

“ You have just learned that you have been a hypocrite, and that those whom you formerly hailed as brethren and friends are a set of hypocrites." Such individuals will be branded wherever they go, and they will not be trusted either for good or evil; and if they go to hell they will be despised by the damned. ”

“ The scribes and Pharisees were hypocrites; that is it in which all the rest of their bad characters are summed up; it was the leaven which gave the relish to all they said and did. A hypocrite is a stage-player in religion (that is the primary signification of the word) ; he personates or acts the part of one that he neither is nor may be, or perhaps the he neither is nor would be. 2. That hypocrites are in a woeful state and condition. Woe to hypocrites; so he said whose saying that their case is miserable makes it so: while they live, their religion is vain ”

“ Hypocrisy it self does great Honour, or rather Justice, to Religion, and tacitly acknowledges it to be an Ornament to human Nature. The Hypocrite would not be at so much Pains to put on the Appearance of Virtue, if he did not know it was the most proper and effectual means to gain the Love and Esteem of Mankind. ”

“ God is wise, and careful of the public welfare, and therefore provides that the hypocrite reign not, lest the people be ensnared, v. 30. See here, (1.) The pride of hypocrites. They aim to reign; the praise of men, and power in the world, are their reward, what they aim at. (2.) The policy of tyrants. When they aim to set up themselves they sometimes make use of religion as a cloak and cover for their ambition and by their hypocrisy come to the throne. (3.) The danger the people are in when hypocrites reign. They are likely to be ensnared in sin, or trouble, or both. ”

“ The sixth bough of pride is hypocrisy, which is a sin that makes one show the good without that is not within. 21 Those, then, are hypocrites who pretend to be good men and are not, who pretend to have more strength than name of good man, than truth and holiness. ”

“ Learn, then, what a hypocrite is; namely, one who lays claim to the worship of God and to charity, and yet, at the same time, destroys the worship of God and slaughters his brother. ”

“ And, if we accept the hospitality of such a man knowing it to be a deception, we too practise hypocrisy, and thus become a partaker of his evil deeds. Such a man is guilty of two heinous sins, he is first a covetous and self-seeking sinner and then he is a gross hypocrite. ”

“ An hypocrite is wavering in respect of occurrences, halting and divided in respect of objects; in subjection to inordinate passions, powerlesse in the performance of holy duties, wise to hide and cover sinne, glorious in empty shewes of Religion, apt for advantage to swallow lesser sinnes without straining, slippery in earthly dealings, aiming at wrong ends in the profession of the truth, indulgent to his beloved and darling sinnes, desirous to seeme religious, though he much neglect the power of godlinesse. ”

“ XXV. Remember that hypocrisy lieth much in doubling, and in a dividing heart and life: see therefore that you serve God in singleness of heart, or simplicity and integrity, as being his alone. Think not of serving God and mammon: a deep reserve at the heart for the world, while they seem to give up themselves in covenant to God, is the grand character of a hypocrite. Live as those that have one Lord and one Master, that all power stoopeth to; and one end or scope, to which all other are but means ”

“ See the nature of hypocrisy: it lies in the heart, which is for the world and the flesh when the outside seems to be for God and religion. Many that are saints in show and saints in word are hypocrites in heart. That spring is corrupt, and there is an evil treasure there. See the mischievousness of hypocrisy: hypocrites heap up wrath. They are doing that every day which is provoking to God, and will be reckoned with for it all together in the great day. They treasure up wrath against the day of wrath, Rom. ii. 5. Their sins are laid up in store with God among his treasures, Deut. ”

“ There is not one sound, healthy sentiment in the whole of our religious state of being. You frequently hear it said: "Everyone can't be a hypocrite." True enough. But begin, in the middle classes, to deduct hypocrisy, and gross affectation and cowardly dread of Hell, and see what is left! ”