Privy

“ The interception of a letter from James II to Penn shortly before William III left for Ireland (June 1690) occasioned his citation before the privy council. He appealed to the king, urging the manifest injustice of imputing disloyalty to him merely because James had chosen to write to him, and protesting his entire innocence of treasonable practices. William, who knew him well, was satisfied, and would have discharged him, but the council held him to bail. Macaulay's imputation of ‘falsehood’ on this occasion is entirely arbitrary. ”

“ At the time Abbot was holding the office of governor of the company, to which he had been elected 23 March 1623–4. Intense excitement prevailed throughout the country, and the greatest anxiety was evinced as to the steps that Abbot would take. He recognised at once the necessity of ‘pressing the matter modestly,’ in order to avoid open war with Holland; but in repeated audiences with the king and in petitions and speeches to the privy council he insisted that demand should be made of the Dutch authorities to bring the perpetrators of the outrage to justice. ”

“ Where are those who, having begun as sinners, end as penitents? Show me, in your manner of living, the smallest trace of penitence. Are your graspings at wealth and power, your anxieties to attain the favour of the great, (and by these means an increase of employments and influence,) —are these proofs of it? Would you wish to reckon even your crimes as virtues?—that the sufferings of your ambition, pride, and avarice, should discharge you from an obligation which they themselves have imposed? You are penitent to the world, but are you so to Jesus Christ? ”

“ We are not only going behind with our rent every day by omissions of duty and in duty, but are daily incurring the penalty of the law, as well as the forfeiture of our bond, by our commissions. Every day adds to the score of our guilt, and it is a miracle of mercy that we have so much encouragement given us to come every day to the throne of grace, to pray for the pardon of our sins of daily infirmity. ”

“ I was myself beginning to feel a sentiment of pleasure, and to picture to my mind the unfortunate felon, converted, by a few words of counsel, and still fewer dollars of charity, into an honest and worthy member of society, when—oh horror of horrors!—the repenting convict suddenly snatched up a brand from the fire, and discharged it, with a violence that would have felled an ox, full upon the head of his patron. ”

“ There may be many exceptions; and at the end of all things here below, it may be found that some of those poor outcasts, and some of the men who have cast them forth to perish, and now despise them, may fill, respectively, the places of the Publican and Pharisee in our Lord’s parable; the convict may leave the throne of judgment justified rather than his master; the poor repentant criminal may be pardoned, while the proud one,—the self-sufficiency of the nation, by which he was transported, and left without further care,—may be condemned. ”

“ Here is a Priesthood, the conscience-keepers and religious instructors of this fortunate class, who also have fared sumptuously and amassed wealth out of the tithes wrenched by law-sanctioned robbery from the products of this same wretched peasantry, yet never proffered them anything in return but conversion to the faith of their plunderers—certainly not a tempting proffer under the circumstances. ”

“ God has placed us in our several stations; the virtues of a private Christian are patience, obedience, submission, and the like; but those of a magistrate or a general or a king are prudence, counsel, active fortitude, coercive power, awful command, and the exercise of magnanimity as well as justice. ”

“ Sins unrepented of, mercy slighted, and the day of grace ending.—They look forward, and nothing presents itself but the righteous Judge, the dreadful tribunal, and a most solemn reckoning.———They roll around their arighted eyes on attending friends. If accomplices in debauchery, it sharpens their anguish, to consider this further aggravation of their guilt that they have not finned alone, but drawn others into the snare. ”

“ Suppose a man were in prison, committed for some great offence, and condemned to die under the displeasure of his prince or state, and his servant should come to him, saying, “Sir, be of good comfort; your wife is well at home; you have very sweet children, an excellent crop of corn; your neighbours love you dearly; your sheep and cattle thrive, and all your houses are in good repair.” ”

“ I feel assured, and you well know, gentlemen of the jury, that I voice the sentiments of thousands upon thousands of Christ-loving and God-fearing men and women when I say that if any fleeing bondman comes to me in need of help, protection, and means of flight, so help me [327] the living God in my hour of greatest need, he shall have them all, even to the last drop of my life’s blood! ”

“ In this a prig is more unhappy than any other: a cautious man may, in a crowd, preserve his own pockets by keeping his hands in them; but while the prig employs his hands in another's pocket, how shall he be able to defend his own? Indeed, in this light, what can be imagined more miserable than a prig? How dangerous are his acquisitions! how unsafe, how unquiet his possessions! Why then should any man wish to be a prig, or where is his greatness? ”

“ I hiccoughed, with an assumption of drunken gravity, uplifting my disengaged arm as if in priestly benediction of the impious crew. "Tempt me not to turn aside from the solemn path of duty by offerings of that foul fiend which doth so corrupt and despoil men. Know you, I am now on my way to perform the sweet offices of our most holy religion, and need greatly to permit my mind to dwell in peace upon more soulful things than that which lieth in the wine pot. ”

“ In sooth, we who should be treated as masters in the sciences, and bear rule over the mechanics who should be subject to us, are instead handed over to the government of subordinates, as though some supremely noble monarch should be trodden under foot by rustic heels. Any seamster or cobbler or tailor or artificer of any trade keeps us shut up in prison for the luxurious and wanton pleasures of the clergy. ”

“ A poor, harmless young officer—but why enter into the details of the infamous case? they are but too well known, and if ever cruelty, pride, and cowardice, and things much worse than even cruelty, cowardice, and pride were brought to light, and, at the same time, countenanced, they were in that case. ”

“ Receive thou the cause of thine unworthy servant, and send them a writ or a notice immediately—sending into their conscience, and summoning them to consider what they are doing. O, frighten them with a summons from thy court, until they come and bow in contrition at thy feet; and take from their hands every revengeful weapon, and make them deliver up every gun of scandal, and every sword of bitter words, and every spear of slanderous expressions, and surrender them all at thy cross. ”

“ I dispersed the conventicle against which you sent me, and made prisoner an old trumpeter of rebellion, who was in the act of exhorting his hearers to rise and be doing in the good cause, as well as one or two of his hearers who seemed to be particularly insolent ”

“ Know that, whoever may be 'sons of freedom,' you for your part are not and cannot be such. Not 'free' you, I think, whoever may be free. You palpably are fallen captive,—caitiff, as they once named it:—you do, silently but eloquently, demand, in the name of mercy itself, that some genuine command be taken of you. ”

“ Every gang of criminals which left the central gaols in these provinces counted among its numbers some who were noble servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, who walked in chains with heads shaven, and clad in the ignominious prison garb, for no other offence than that they sought to worship God in accordance with the dictates of their consciences. ”

“ But, as I began to say, by the example of a prince taken prisoner, were the imprisonment never so favourable, yet it would be, to my mind, no little grief in itself for a man to be penned up, though not in a narrow chamber. ”

“ And my companion said to me, This is the prison of these souls, which thou hast seen. For when they have fully received their punishment for that which each has done, others succeed them. Some are fully eaten up, others are given up to other punishments. ”

“ He says, "Now is the judgment of this world, and now shall the prince of this world be cast out." I see, even in the kingdoms of the world, where their laws are in force and prevail,—yea, even here in our city, I see men apprehended for crime. ”

“ My Lord, we that are of counsel for the crown desire to do nothing that is hard where a person's life is at stake. We yield to the prisoner any indulgence for which your Lordship can find a precedent in your reading ”

“ The sight of pious and learned clergymen driven from their homes and their flocks, of religious meetings broken up by the constables, of preachers set side by side with thieves and outcasts in the dock, of gaols crammed with honest enthusiasts whose piety was their only crime, pleaded more eloquently for toleration than all the reasoning in the world. ”

“ While the persecuted were singing in the stocks, the persecutors were full of tossings to and fro upon their beds, through anguish of mind, complaining more of the lashes of their consciences than the prisoners did of the lashes on their backs, and more in haste to give them a discharge than they were to petition for one. ”

“ Servants, your masters and mistresses are harsh and ill-tempered: Masters, your servants are disobedient and careless; what noble opportunities does this give to each of offering up a daily penance most acceptable to God? Sickness and pain attack you; here also is a large and excellent field for making up your account with God to your great advantage. And so of all the other crosses which God sends upon us in this life, which there is no avoiding, but which may easily be turned to the best account by bearing them in penance for our sins. ”

“ According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, thy comforts have given joy to my soul.
93:20. Doth the seat of iniquity stick to thee, who framest labour in commandment?
Doth the seat of iniquity stick to thee, etc.... That is, wilt thou, O God, who art always just, admit of the seat of iniquity: that is, of injustice, or unjust judges, to have any partnership with thee? Thou who framest, or makest, labour in commandment, that is, thou who obligest us to labour with all diligence to keep thy commandments.
93:21. They will hunt after the soul of the just, and will condemn innocent blood. ”

“ Shall we say that those who serve him are cowardly and faint-hearted? If two, if three, if four, do not defend themselves from the one, we might call that circumstance surprising but nevertheless conceivable. ”

“ He asked the chaplain if the prison rules would allow of it, to bring his letter and read it to me, and he has done so.
“Who would have thought,” repeated Peace, “that a bad, base man as I am should have been the means of the conversion of anybody? ”

“ Our fellow-captives are a motley collection of the victims of nature, of justice, and of tyranny—of lunatics who are insensible of their situation, of thieves who deserve it, and of political criminals whose guilt is the accident of birth, the imputation of wealth, or the profession of a clergyman. ”

“ Perhaps, indeed, the greater danger is on the prig's side; but then you must remember that the greater honour is so too. When I mention honour, I mean that which is paid them by their gang; for that weak part of the world which is vulgarly called THE WISE see both in a disadvantageous and disgraceful light; and as the prig enjoys (and merits too) the greater degree of honour from his gang, so doth he suffer the less disgrace from the world, who think his misdeeds, as they call them, sufficiently at last punished with a halter, which at once puts an end to his pain and infamy ”

“ I am not angry—but I am nothing.—There is a heretic, at least a girl accused of heresy, confined in your prisons, whom I wish you to free, and, for the love of Heaven, not by the shortest delay to add another moment of sorrow to her heap: she has suffered much. ”

“ When I sit upon the bench, a respectable magistrate, and commit some battered reprobate for trial for this lurid offence or that, or send him or her to prison for drunkenness or such-like indecorum, the doubt drifts into my mind which of us after all is indeed getting nearest to the keen edge of life. ”

“ The command, to come to the Saviour's feet with the humility of a little child, fills the proud heart of those who are wise in their own eyes, with indignation. They cannot endure doctrines, which level all vain distinctions, and require the noble, the affluent, and the learned, to assume the same station of penitence and contrition, with the lowliest peasant. ”

“ Perhaps I shall be the minister of your pleasures; who knows? Perhaps from this time forth, as you gracefully wear the tokens of disgrace by which society marks out the criminal, you may perforce learn something of the convict's sense of honour. ”

“ But when concession is made, when tears of penitence are wept, and when, in moments of returning confidence, that luckless tendency of temper is candidly confessed, and sincerely bewailed; when all the different acts committed under its influence, are acknowledged to have been wrong, how complete ought to be the reconciliation thus begun, and how zealous our endeavours for the future to avert the consequences of this sad calamity! ”

“ I go to prison gladly rather than return to you and place myself under your power, and never, never again will I return, though you were to summon all the power that you are able to command! (Walks away.) ”

“ Arrangements of convenience for the management of the pauper, or the debtor, or the criminal, or the war-captive, become the occasions of profound investigations into the rights of persons occupying those relations. ”