Opulence

“ The merit of their beauty is greatly enhanced by their scarcity. With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches; which, in their eye, is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves. ”

“ Unspeakable misery will arise in the world from this baleful fountain. (Offences are all things whereby any one is turned out of, or hindered in, the ways of God.) For it must be that offences come. Such is the nature of things; such the wickedness, folly and weakness of mankind. But Wo to that man, miserable is that man, by whom the offence cometh. Wherefore if thy hand, thy foot, thine eye cause thee to offend—If the most dear enjoyment, the most beloved and useful person, turn thee out of, or hinder thee in the way, pluck it out, cut them off, and cast them from thee. ”

“ If I have rebutted all their charges, word by word, if I have refuted all their slanders, if I am beyond reproach, not only as regards their accusations but also as regards their vulgar abuse, if I have done nothing to impair the honour of philosophy, which is dearer to me than my own safety, but on the contrary have smitten my adversary hip and thigh and vanquished him at all points, if all my contentions are true, I can await your estimate of my character with the same confidence with which I await the exercise of your power ”

“ Here was the fruit of disobedience! And as it was with Jarvis, so will it be with every one who acts disobediently.
13. Whenever you feel a temptation to disobey God; to disobey his holy word; to disobey the admonitions of your own conscience; to disobey your parents, your teachers, or any in authority over you,—be sure that a punishment awaits you, if you do not resist it.
14. As you are not able to resist it in your own strength, ask God's assistance for Christ's sake, and it will not be withheld. Now, remember Jarvis, and the bed of stinging nettles! ”

“ A RULE OF LIFE
‘If you want to annoy an opponent thoroughly, and even to harm him,’ said a crafty old knave to me, ‘you reproach him with the very defect or vice you are conscious of in yourself. Be indignant ... and reproach him!
‘To begin with, it will set others thinking you have not that vice.
‘In the second place, your indignation may well be sincere.... You can turn to account the pricks of your own conscience. ”

“ It is not what we ask; yet what I ask is according to Thy will, my Lord. It is not riches, nor honours, nor beauty, nor health, nor long life, nor anything of this world. If I have been impatient, this is my punishment—that the Lord has thought, not of them, but of me. ”

“ But whence the Cause of this strange Misconduct and Omission? It springs, as I take it, from Ignorance, or Inconsiderateness, or Partiality, or Passion, or from all together; but the most frequently of any, from false Tenderness, and blind Indulgence.
Every Man has his own way of judging, and generally abides by it right or wrong. I knew a Gentleman of refined Understanding, who frequently forfeited it, by a boundless injudicious Fondness for his Children. ”

“ But it may be observed also, that a virtuous temper of mind, consciousness of innocence, and good meaning towards everybody, and a strong feeling of injustice and injury, may, itself, such is the imperfection of our virtue, lead a person to violate this obligation, if he be not upon his guard. ”

“ And if, on the other hand, there is in me the disposition of obedience, how are you so greatly alarmed lest I should gainsay you? For you maintain that evil remains evil always, and that good remains good always, in utter ignorance of the force of your words. ”

“ All of us have offended our Creator, by violating his law in thought, word and deed, ten thousand times. We have offended him under circumstances the most aggravated, against light and knowledge, amidst all the loud calls of his providence, his word, the strivings of his Spirit, and the clamors of conscience. ”

“ And to me it appears that this one thing gives an otherwise childish and arrogant title a fitting and becoming significance; so dispassionate a temper, a life so pure and unblemished, in the height of power and place, might well be called "Olympian," in accordance with our conceptions of divine beings, to whom, as the natural of all good and of nothing evil, we ascribe the rule and government of the world. ”

“ I will leave my complaint upon myself; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. 2 I will say unto God, Do not condemn me; show me wherefore thou contendest with me. 3 Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress, that thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands, and shine upon the counsel of the wicked? 4 Hast thou eyes of flesh? or seest thou as man seeth? 5
Are thy days as the days of man? are thy years as man's days, 6 That thou enquirest after mine iniquity, and searchest after my sin? 7 Thou knowest that I am not wicked; and there is none that can deliver out of thine hand. ”

“ Choose, in short, which of the two alternatives you prefer. If innocence is on your side, why do you persecute us with the sword? Or if you call us guilty, why do you, who are yourselves innocent, seek for our company? ”

“ For while they punish the offence they show great love to the offender, not only in stopping the course of his sinning, which is the stopping the increase of his misery, but it may be also working his amendment, which is the salvation of his soul.—Jermin. ”

“ And with respect to restraint and confinement: whoever will consider the restraints from fear and shame, the dissimulation, mean arts of concealment, servile compliances, one or other of which belong to almost every course of vice, will soon be convinced, that the man of virtue is by no means upon a disadvantage in this respect. ”

“ Shall I dare, in the presence of Thy glance so infinitely pure, commit deeds which I dare not even show to man? Shall I dare to sin in Thy presence, knowing that sin and the sinner is hated by Thee, and to condemn the sinner Thou hast no wish? ”

“ The harsh, stern, vindictively pure and good people—in my humble judgment—have many and grave sins to answer for as well as those whom they so mercilessly condemn. I condemn all that which appears evil to me, and I seek to avoid it, but I condemn no man, no woman. ”

“ THUS far we have dealt with that class of the general expulsion of evils which I have called direct or immediate. In this class the evils are invisible, at least to common eyes, and the mode of deliverance consists for the most part in beating the empty air and raising such a hubbub as may scare the mischievous spirits and put them to flight. It remains to illustrate the second class of expulsions, in which the evil influences are embodied in a visible form or are at least supposed to be loaded upon a material medium, which acts as a vehicle to draw them off from the people, village, or town. ”

“ Why should a stern, condemning voice declare in recesses of my soul, 'You could and should resist'? For years I have been daily yielding to temptation, and conscience as often pronounces sentence against me. ”

“ Trust me, none can drink of the cup of vice with impunity. But you will say, that there are qualities of so mean or so horrible a nature, as to place the man that is governed by 31them out of the pale of communion with the virtuous. Malice, cruelty, deceit, ingratitude—crimes such as these, should you think, draw down upon those convicted of them no feelings more mild than abhorrence, execration, and scorn. ”

“ They stalk about in our midst as living reproaches, as warnings to us—as though health, fitness, strength, pride, the sensation of power, were really vicious things in themselves, for which one would have some day to do penance, bitter penance. ”

“ Be my law, my conscience—I have been steeped so long in evil, I have lost all fitness to judge honour or dishonour aríght. To tell you all, to lay my Ufe before you as it should be laid, I must break my oath, I must belie my word, I must be false to the chief thing that has ever redeemed my past. ”

“ And though, in my former troubles, I had not shrunk from upbraiding God's providence for oppressing an innocent man, as I called myself, I could not but feel that this new misfortune was the just consequence of my own folly and extravagance. ”

“ For, in sum, the moral scale is raised exactly according to the degree and motive of obedience. To be disobedient through temptation, is human sin; but to be disobedient for the sake of disobedience, fiendish sin. ”

“ If he treats offenders with severity, it is for our sake, and for the sake of the moral order of the universe, to which sin, if encouraged by a negligent administration, or by entire or frequent impunity, would be the source of endless disorder and misery ”

“ Hence also proceeds mutability in good exercises, skipping from one to another only to satisfy my own pleasure, and by the novelty of them to take away their tediousness.
v. The fifth vice is perverseness and obstinacy in my own judgment and opinion, being unwilling to yield or submit it to the judgment of my superiors [237] or those that are more wise, whom I ought to obey and give credit to. This is the idol of discords, whence spring many sins of disobedience and rebellion against our superiors, many brawlings and contentions in disputations, and great errors and illusions of the devil ”

“ And the trial of man’s obedience is imaged in the other tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. From the childlike innocence in which man originally was, he was to pass forward into the condition of moral manhood, which consists not in mere innocence, but in innocence maintained in presence of temptation.... ”

“ For the opulent, and those in power, to suppose they have done their part, in helping to relieve their spiritual wants only, is a mistake; so long as the soul and body act in unison, provision must be made for their temporal necessities also. ”

“ When, therefore, such wretched worms of the earth as we are presume to offend and insult this God of infinite dignity, by transgressing His commands, and preferring ourselves or any creature to Him, the malice of such conduct is in a manner infinite, for we find among ourselves that the grievousness of any injury always increases in proportion to the dignity of the person offended above the one who injures him. ”

“ If sinners, like ourselves, they will cast up to us our common pleasures and our example, which, perhaps, have been the first rock upon which their innocence split: if just, as they had believed us to be children of light, ah! they will reproach to us their good opinion abused and their friendship seduced. ”

“ The Occasional Expulsion of Evils WE can therefore understand why those general clearances of evil, to which from time to time the savage resorts, should commonly take the form of a forcible expulsion of devils. In these evil spirits primitive man sees the cause of many if not of most of his troubles, and he fancies that if he can only deliver himself from them, things will go better with him. ”

“ If a servant be thus provoked, perhaps he will curse thee, will accuse thee and bring thee into trouble, or give thee an ill word and blemish thy reputation, or appeal to God against thee, and imprecate his wrath upon thee, who is the patron and protector of oppressed innocency."
II. An account, upon occasion of this caution, of some wicked generations of men, that are justly abominable to all that are virtuous and good. 1. Such as are abusive to their parents, give them bad language and wish them ill, call them bad names and actually injure them. ”

“ Whatever they may be, it would now be madness and folly to oppose them. If they are opposed, you shall find me among the sternest enforcers of obedience. Those who still hold out can be influenced by nothing but a mean spirit of revenge. ”

“ He must listen, discuss, and examine with all zeal, that the truth may be reached at the end. Like a just judge let him so bear himself in passing sentence of corporal punishment that his face may show compassion, while his inward purpose remains unshaken, and thus will he avoid the appearance of indignation and wrath leading to the charge of cruelty. ”

“ You have read that obedience is better than sacrifice; and yet, though suspended from the exercise of the priestly functions, you have presumed of your own will to absolve a sinner, who, setting at nought the voice of the church, has lived in sin—a scandal to his neighbours, and a dreadful example of hardness of heart. ”

“ Whereas it is said all malice, all guile, learn, That one sin, not laid aside, will hinder our spiritual profit and everlasting welfare. (4.) Malice, envy, hatred, hypocrisy, and evil-speaking, generally go together. Evil-speaking is a sign that malice and guile lie in the heart ”

“ If, moreover, that man be guilty in the aforesaid matter; and, the Devil persuading, shall have dared to tempt Thy power, and shall walk over them; do Thou, who art just and a Judge, make a manifest burn to appear on his feet, to Thy honour and praise and glory ”

“ For those, who cannot attain the privilege of adoption, fear keeps from growing insolent. For punishments and threats are for this end, that fearing the penalty we may abstain from sinning. I might relate to you punishments for ostentation, and punishments for vainglory, not only for licentiousness; and adduce the censures pronounced on those whose hearts are bad through wealth, [685] in which censures the Word through fear restrains from evil acts. But sparing prolixity in my treatise, I shall bring forward the following precepts of the Instructor, that you may guard against His threatenings. ”

“ Pray note it, my dear friend, for you will find, in the absence of all voluntary or even conscious cruelty on the part of the master, the best possible comment on a state of things which, without the slightest desire to injure and oppress, produces such intolerable results of injury and oppression. ”

“ If we have done foolishly, we must not stand to it before men, but by silence own our guilt, which will be the best way of appeasing those we have offended. 2. We must keep the evil thought we have conceived in our minds from breaking out in any evil speeches. Do not give the evil thought an imprimatur—a license ”