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He trusted others would contemn them as he did, and that many of our brethren of the South would, like himself, learn by sojourn here, to appreciate the true men of Maine, and to know how little are the political abolitionists and the abolition papers the exponents of the character and the purposes of the Democracy of this State.
The science of this hour, drawn from the printing-press in an endless web of paper, is powerless here; the indistinguishable noise echoed from the smoke-shadowed walls despises the whole. A thousand footsteps, a thousand hoofs, a thousand wheels roll over and utterly contemn them in complete annihilation.
Yet in those huge structures and pyramidal immensities, of the builders whereof so little is known, they seemed not so much to raise sepulchres or temples to death as to contemn and disdain it, astonishing heaven with their audacities, and looking forward with delight to their interment in those eternal piles.
LAMPRIAS. You, O Diadumenus, seem not much to care, if any one thinks that you philosophize against the common notions; since you confess that you contemn also the senses, from whence the most part of these notions in a manner proceed, having for their seat and foundation the belief of such things as appear to us.
They who contemn the heavenly gift the Holy Ghost the word of God the powers of the world to come if they persevere unto death in such sentiments, the day of grace is past. There have been some who, like Esau, having sold their birthright, sought repentance even with tears, but found it not they sought it not in God's appointed way.
To slight grace, to do despite to the Spirit of grace, to prefer our own works, thus derogating from grace -what is it but to contemn God? to contemn him when he is on the throne, when he is on the throne of his glory?
Most of these planters visit the Northern States periodically, as well as New Orleans; their wealth, and the necessity the merchant feels to conciliate their good-will, makes them the ready guests at tables where every luxury and refinement abounds: but they view these without evincing the least desire to imitate them, prefer generally the most ordinary liquids to the finest-flavoured wines, and, as guests, are much easier to please than to catch; for not only do they appear indifferent to these luxuries, but they seek to avoid them, contemn their use, and return to their log-houses and the cane-brake to seek in labour for enjoyment.
On the contrary, I conceive that these things happen because men are not changed, but remain always what they always were; they remain what the bulk of us ever must be, when abandoned to our vulgar propensities, without guide, leader, or control; that is, made to be full of a blind elevation in prosperity; to despise untried dangers; to be overpowered with unexpected reverses; to find no clue in a labyrinth of difficulties, to get out of a present inconvenience with any risk of future ruin; to follow and to bow to fortune; to admire successful though wicked enterprise, and to imitate what we admire; to contemn the government which announces danger from sacrilege and regicide, whilst they are only in their infancy and their struggle, but which finds nothing that can alarm in their adult state, and in the power and triumph of those destructive principles.
Bear this remonstrance of Defoe's in mind, and though it is the fashion of the day to jeer and to mock, to execrate and to contemn, the noble band of Covenanters though the bitter laugh at their old-world religious views, the curl of the lip at their merits, and the chilling silence on their bravery and their determination, are but too rife through all society be charitable to what was evil and honest to what was good about the Pentland insurgents, who fought for life and liberty, for country and religion, on the 28th of November 1666, now just two hundred years ago.
The crystal is a stone so clear and spotless, that even her greatest adversaries, in the midst of all their rage, are not able justly to charge her with the least mote or spot imaginable; wherefore when he saith, that this city in her descending is even like the jasper for light, and like the crystal for clearness; he would have us further learn, that at the day of the descending of this Jerusalem, she shall be every way so accomplished with innocency, sincerity, and clearness in all her actions, that none shall have from her, or her ways, any just occasion given unto them to slight, contemn, or oppose her.
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