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Updated: May 13, 2025
"His commanding merit as a reformer is this, that he insisted beyond all men in pulpits, I cannot think of one rival, that the essence of Christianity is its practical morals; it is there for use, or it is nothing; and if you combine it with sharp trading, or with ordinary city ambitions to gloze over municipal corruptions, or private intemperance, or successful fraud, or immoral politics, or unjust wars, or the cheating of Indians, or the robbery of frontier nations, or leaving your principles at home to follow on the high seas or in Europe a supple complaisance to tyrants, it is hypocrisy, and the truth is not in you; and no love of religious music, or of dreams of Swedenborg, or praise of John Wesley, or of Jeremy Taylor, can save you from the Satan which you are."
It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom, to know how much of an evil ought to be tolerated; lest, by attempting a degree of purity impracticable in degenerate times and manners, instead of cutting off the subsisting ill practices, new corruptions might be produced for the concealment and security of the old.
That the chosen people of God did not dwell amid the twilight of the ages and in far-away Judea, but were reserved to a later time, and a region then undiscovered of men, and that the American republic was ordained of God to illustrate upon the theater of the New World the possibilities of free government in contrast with the failures and tyrannies and corruptions of the Old, I do truly believe.
The unexampled prosperity, so inconsistent with the original intentions of the founders of the orders, was attended by corruptions and excesses.
JOHNSON. 'In the barbarous ages, Sir, priests and people were equally deceived; but afterwards there were gross corruptions introduced by the clergy, such as indulgences to priests to have concubines, and the worship of images, not, indeed, inculcated, but knowingly permitted. He strongly censured the licensed stews at Rome.
Christians, were you awake, here would be matter of wonder to you, to see a man assaulted with all the power of hell, and yet come off a conqueror. Is it not a wonder to see a poor creature, who in himself is weaker than the moth, stand against and overcome all devils, all the world, all his lusts and corruptions?
I know that those who are not convinced of the intrinsical evil and unlawfulness of former corruptions may, upon other considerations, go along and join in this reformation; for according to Augustine’s rule, men are to let go those ecclesiastical customs which neither Scriptures nor councils bind upon us, nor yet are universally received by all churches.
He chose rather to sacrifice all the treasures of his kingdom, and all the members of his family, than part with his sins and become holy in heart and life. Such is the temper of depravity. The servants of sin are sooner persuaded to make any other sacrifice than that of their lusts and corruptions.
Some of the lords, too, told him that the excitement was so great in the country on account of the mismanagement of public affairs, and the corruptions and malpractice of the favorites, that if he refused to allow the council to be appointed, there was danger that he would lose his head. So Richard was obliged to submit, and the council was appointed.
He said, “he had been very seriously considering my whole story, as far as it related both to myself and my country; that he looked upon us as a sort of animals, to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use, than by its assistance, to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which nature had not given us; that we disarmed ourselves of the few abilities she had bestowed; had been very successful in multiplying our original wants, and seemed to spend our whole lives in vain endeavours to supply them by our own inventions; that, as to myself, it was manifest I had neither the strength nor agility of a common Yahoo; that I walked infirmly on my hinder feet; had found out a contrivance to make my claws of no use or defence, and to remove the hair from my chin, which was intended as a shelter from the sun and the weather: lastly, that I could neither run with speed, nor climb trees like my brethren,” as he called them, “the Yahoos in his country.
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