Pretender

“ You prefer believing that I, whom you call your friend, am a deceiver or a pretender, to admitting the possibility of the falsehood of your hypothesis. You will not listen to my assurance, and you are angry with me because I will not lie against my own soul, and acknowledge sins which I have not committed. You appeal to the course of the world in proof of your faith, and challenge me to answer you. Well, then, I accept your challenge. The world is not what you say. ”

“ Now and then a pretender essays his awkward limbs, and reaching scarce half way even to this point, falls back clumsily amidst the hisses and laughter of the spectators; so in the world empirical pretension comes out into notoriety for a moment only to return with ridicule and scorn to its original obscurity. ”

“ Now, it is evident, that upon a peaceable admitting this person, whom they call the pretender, to receive and enjoy the crown here, all that formidable power becomes your friend, and the being so must necessarily take off from it everything that is called terrible ”

“ So the pretender cast about for the ruin of the defender, but could find no means of furthering his design; and when the affair grew longsome upon him, he said to his wife, "What deemest thou will gar us gain herein?" "What is it?" "I mean in the matter of yonder Minister, who inciteth my brother to worship with all his might and biddeth him unto devoutness, and indeed the king doteth upon his counsel and stablisheth him governor of all monies and matters." "True; but how shall we devise with him?" "I have a device, so thou wilt help me in that which I shall say to thee." ”

“ All that we may know on the subject comes to us from some reflection and some experience; and this all may be so little as to make a metaphysician smile; which, if he be a true one, he will do good-naturedly. The pretender will take occasion, from our very confession, to say that we know nothing. ”

“ To conclude, the Whigs have a natural faculty of bringing in pretenders, and will therefore probably endeavour to bring in the great one at last: How many pretenders to wit, honour, nobility, politics, have they brought in these last twenty years? In short, they have been sometimes able to procure a majority of pretenders in Parliament; and wanted nothing to render the work complete, except a Pretender at their head. ”

“ However, that your advice may not be wholly lost, particularly that part of it which relates to the pretender, they desire you would apply it to more proper persons. Look among your own leaders; examine which of them engaged in a plot to restore the late king James, and received pardons under his seal; examine which of them have been since tampering with his pretended son, and to gratify their ambition, their avarice, their malice and revenge, are now willing to restore him, at the expense of the religion and liberty of their country. ”

“ That they have entered themselves into the service of pretenders and usurpers, have not only withdrawn themselves from their obedience to their prince, but have taken up arms against him. For, [1.] They have acted according to the dictates of their own lusts, have set up their own will, the wills of the flesh, and the carnal mind, in competition with, and contradiction to the will of God: They have walked after the imagination of their own hearts; they would do as they pleased, whatever God and conscience said to the contrary. ”

“ Of these pretenders it is fit to distinguish those who endeavour to deceive from them who are deceived; those who by designed impostures promote their interest, or gratify their pride, from them who mean only to force into regard their latent excellencies and neglected virtues; who believe themselves qualified to instruct or please, and therefore invite the notice of mankind. ”

“ In consequence of some unskilful pretenders having put themselves forward to public notice as adepts in the above art, he thinks it necessary to state that he never ties in teeth, which is the most that these pretenders can ever accomplish ”

“ arguments, like men, are often pretenders. ”

“ You have built up your life upon a lie, and this is your reward. Rupert Devereux, I demand that you make a full confession, and restore to me my honour! If you have one single spark of conscience left, you cannot deny me. ”

“ When I received it, I was forgetful of my sacred promise, and acted only from the impulse of the moment. Had your friend staid an instant, the matter should then have been explained. As it is, I am positively compelled, much as my heart revolts at it, to drag a lady into my explanation. She, (I need not write her name,) bound me by a solemn and most sacred promise—to violate which would be dishonor—that I would not fight you. ”

“ Whether unmasked by others, or by myself, is it not equally true that I have been playing false, and am now punished for it? What do the world care for your having returned to truth? You have offended by deceiving them, and that is an offence which your repentance will not extenuate. ”

“ In all cases the Christian must prefer to suffer wrong rather than to do it.
IX. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. This commandment, converted from the negative—the prohibition of wilful slander—to the positive, becomes an injunction to make the law of love the motive of all our speech, with as tender a regard to others’ reputation as to our own. We may have to speak painful truth against others, to rebuke, to accuse, to punish, etc., but the motive of all speech is to be a deliberate good will. ”

“ Here is a play in which almost every character is noble, in which treachery becomes a virtue, a lie becomes more vital than truth, and only what we are accustomed to call virtue shows itself mean, petty, and even criminal. ”

“ Now which of these, looked at by the judge, is the great offender? Is the one lie he repents of the most wicked, or are those that with small temptation he flung about daily, and so made that one notable lie easy? ”

“ Whats the good of pretending? Thats all our respectability is, pretending, pretending, pretending. Thank heaven Ive had it knocked out of me once for all!
MRS KNOX. [greatly agitated] Margaret: dont talk like that. I cant bear to hear you talking wickedly. I can bear to hear the children of this world talking vainly and foolishly in the language of this world. But when I hear you justifying your wickedness in the words of grace, it's too horrible: it sounds like the devil making fun of religion. Ive tried to bring you up to learn the happiness of religion. ”

“ Pardon me if I draw his likeness as the loyal sincere man, who might say with the honest priest ‘that he could not tell a lie to gain heaven by it!’—and with so fine a sense of honour, that he would hold it a lie merely to conceal the truth. ”

“ Thus we ourselves would justify, Though we the law transgress; Like him, unable to deny, Unwilling to confess. But when by faith the sinner sees A pardon bought with blood; Then he forsakes his foolish pleas, And gladly turns to God. ”

“ Now that I know them all to be blotted out, and that I am an accepted person, I may the more freely confess them: the truth is, that one lie always paved the way for another, from hour to hour, from day to day, and from year to year ”

“ SIDE-LIGHTS
“You won’t condescend?” said a scornful voice.
“Since you have made up your mind, why should I?”
“It is only your word that I ask: your solemn word to me that you are innocent.”
“If you don’t believe in me, what’s the use of giving you my solemn word? I can’t prove it, and never could; the evidence was too strong.” ”

“ If I deliberately set to work to seduce you—if, by art and treachery, I wiled you away from the paths of duty—if, by false promises, I allured you from a prosperous and happy sphere,—then might you talk to me of justice. ”

“ When there has been some mysterious transaction, in which there is guilt and blame without any certainty of the person upon whom it ought to fall, you desire your subjects to be under no concern, and not to perplex themselves with conjectures, for Posterity will inquire into the matter, and disgrace those who deserve it. ”

“ S. Augustine. What is mere truth and right testimony you call accusation and ill-treatment. The satirist was quite right who wrote—
"To speak the truth to men is to accuse." [9]
And the saying of the comic poet is equally true—
"'Tis flattery makes friends and candour foes." [10]
But tell me, pray, what is the use of this irritation and anger that makes you so on edge? Was it necessary in a life so short to weave such long hopes?
"Have no long hopes! life's shortness cries to man." [11]
You read that often enough but take no count of it. ”

“ Wid. But, gentleman, have you no shame, no conscience? Will you swear false for sport?
Jolly. By this light, I'll swear, if it be but to vex you: remember you refused me. That [Aside] is contrary to covenants, though, with my brace of lovers: what will they do with their coachman's plot? But 'tis no matter, I have my ends; and, so they are cosened, I care not who does it.
Capt. And faith, madam, I have sworn many times false to no purpose; and I should take it ill, if it were mine own case, to have a friend refuse me an oath upon such an occasion.
Plea. And are you all of one mind? ”

“ Now, I come to my own experience and say—there is not an individual here but what has power, and God has given it to him, to drink whisky or let it alone, to swear or not swear to lie or not lie, deceive or not deceive, cheat and take advantage of a neighbour or not do so, slander and backbite a brother or a sister or not. ”

“ In detailing these few anecdotes, which to me at least were interesting, I have been induced by a veneration for truth alone, to give a representation which, to such as think that nothing favourable, however deserved, should be reported of those with whom we are not in amity, will not be very palatable. To an enemy, if not generous, let us at least be always just. ”

“ If there is one thing more than another of which I have the most complete and entire scorn and disbelief, it is of presentiments, and yet here I was all of a sudden filled with and possessed by a most undoubted presentiment of approaching evil. ”

“ Enough, and far too much, my lord. You doubt my faith, and disbelieve my word: these are outrages which I did not expect to receive from you, but to which I must submit. And now permit me to speak to you on the subject of my intended visit. ”

“ That is no issue here; you seek to deceive yourself by false words. I denounce you openly as a false follower, for if I read rightly the language of Holy Writ, it was He whom you so delight to term Master who gave his life freely for His friends. ”

“ At the back of the words and the postures, and independent of them, is that secret, mysterious power, addressing, not the ear, not the eye, nor, through them, the understanding, but through its matching quality in the auditor, captivating the will and enslaving it That is how persuasion is effected; the spoken words merely supply a pretext for surrender. They enable us to yield without loss of our self-esteem, in the delusion that we are conceding to reason what is really extorted by charm. ”

“ If he is dwelling with delight upon a stratagem of successful fraud, a night of licentious riot, or an intrigue of guilty pleasure, let him summon off his imagination as from an unlawful pursuit, expel those passages from his remembrance, of which, though he cannot seriously approve them, the pleasure overpowers the guilt, and refer them to a future hour, when they may be considered with greater safety. ”

“ Will you give me that long?"
"How do we know you'll bring in the right man?"
"If he's the right man, he'll make it plain enough."
"You'll make him confess," the young man said. "You'll manipulate him like a puppet." ”

“ Though your penitents may be well prepared for confession, think not, when they shall declare their sins, that your business is done. You must dive into the bottom of their conscience, and, by examination, draw out of them what themselves know not. ”

“ Although what, indeed, can be secure enough from the sting of a false accuser, who, like the adder at the voice of the charmer, stops his ear from hearing any one clearing himself, though it be ever so justly? ”

“ For there are a great many, as is found by Experience, do blab out what in Confessions is discovered to them. And there are some vile impudent Fellows that enquire of the Person confessing, those Things, that it were better if they were conceal'd; and there are some unlearned and foolish Fellows, who for the Sake of filthy Gain, lend their Ear, but apply not their Mind, who can't distinguish between a Fault and a good Deed, nor can neither teach, comfort nor advise. ”

“ The mad prophetess speaks here with all the coolness and judgment of a skilful casuist. "The essence of a lawful vow, is a lawful purpose, and the vow of which the end is wrong must not be regarded as cogent." ”

“ Would that respectable lady go any more to confess to that man if, after her confession, she could hear him lamenting the continual, shameful temptations which assail him day and night, and the damning sins which he has committed on account of what she has confessed to him? ”

“ I have written at some length against the survival of the lawyer’s and politician’s arts of Persuasion, and of the priestly arts of Exhortation and Denunciation, both sets of them intended to influence men to think, feel and act differently from how they would otherwise do, but in compliance with the persuasive person’s wishes. ”

“ You are doing it entirely for your own sake." With such fine speeches you are paving the way for some kind of trickster or fool,—some visionary babbler or charlatan,—who will entrap him or persuade him to adopt his own folly. ”