Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Thou may perceive a company of self-deceiving speculatists, who make broad the phylacteries of their garments, and boast of some high attainments in religion; yea, would have others look upon them as arrived at the very porch of heaven, and advanced to a high pitch of proficiency in the ways of God, because they can discourse a little of the mysteries of salvation, and without ever diving farther into the depth and true nature of religion, dream themselves into a consideration of being saints, and conclude themselves candidates for glory.
These, with many of smaller importance, and more personal, might be mentioned, to show that many things happen to us, some to our pleasing, and some to the pleasing of our enemies; which, if either we or they should count the returns of our prayer, or the fruits of our desires, and so draw conclusions of our estate to be for the future happy, because in such things we seemed to be answered of God, we might greatly swerve in our judgments, and become the greatest at self-deceiving.
The feat was a miracle of stubborn self-deceiving, splendidly blind devotion, and incorrigible pride. When Sophia entered the room, the paralytic followed her with his nervous gaze until she had sat down on the end of the sofa at the foot of the bed. He seemed to study her for a long time, and then he murmured in his slow, enfeebled, irregular voice: "Is that Sophia?"
The mere sight of Fowle prowling in unwholesome quest stirred upwrath in Carshaw's mind; and the heart, always subtle and self-deceiving, whispered elatedly: "Here you have an excuse for renewing an acquaintance which you wished to make yourself believe you did not care to renew." He walked straight to the door of the brown-stone house and rang. Then he rapped. There was no answer.
This was "The Mystery of Self-Deceiving," published in 1615 by a semi-nonconformist Puritan divine, Daniel Dyke, minister of Coggeshall in Essex, and translated obscurely into French by a certain Vernulius. Of the original work Fuller wrote, "It is a book which will be owned for a truth while men have any badness in them, and will be owned as a treasure whilst they have any goodness in them."
Yet how merely speculative was the religion of even the most serious among them! How superficial, or inconsistent, or mistaken, or hollow, or hypocritical, or self-deceiving was that of all the others! Had either of them been asked from what source she drew her religion, she would indignantly have answered, from the Bible.
A new personality; a plausible personality, deceptive because self-deceiving yet not so thoroughly self-deceived that it was in danger of hindering its own ambition. David Hull just the kind of respectable, popular figurehead and cloak the desperate Kelly-House conspiracy needed. How far had the "army of education" prepared the people for seeing through this clever new fraud upon them?
Do not stifle the wholesome alarm and cheat yourself with the notion of a little delay! II. And now I wish next to pass very swiftly in review before you some of the reasons why we fall into this habit of self-deceiving, indecision, and delay 'Go thy way' would be too sharp and unmistakable if it were left alone, so it is fined off.
This contrivance would have beaten Hercules and made him seem idle to any one not in the secret. In short this little blockhead bade fair to become one of Mr. Carlyle's great men. He combined the earnest sneak with the earnest butcher. Barbarous times are not wholly expunged as book-makers affect to fear. Such a black ray of the narrow, self-deceiving, stupid, bloody past was earnest Hawes.
I trust that I was not insincere, though presumptuous and self-deceiving I was to an extent which I can only remember with horror. If it approached to sacrilege, may the wilful blindness be forgiven! At least, I knew it not; and with all my heart I meant to fulfil the vows I had taken on me.
Word Of The Day