"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." ~2 Corinthians 10:5
"The casuists of the Romish Church, who gain by confession great opportunities of knowing human nature, have generally determined what it is a crime to do. It is a crime to think. Since by revolving with pleasure the facility, safety or advantage of a wicked deed, a man soon begins to find his constancy relax and his detestation soften, the happiness of success glistening before him, withdraws his attention from the atrociousness of the guilt, and acts are at last confidently perpetrated, of which the first conception only crept in the mind, disguised in pleasing complications, and permitted rather than invited.
No man has ever been drawn to crimes, by love or jealousy, envy or hatred, but he can tell how easily he might at first have repelled the temptation; how readily his mind would have obeyed a call to any other object; and how weak his passion has been after some casual avocation till he has recalled it again to his heart and revived the viper by too warm a fondness.
Such, therefore, is the importance of keeping reason a constant guard over imagination that we have otherwise no security for our own virtue, but may corrupt our hearts in the most recluse solitude with more pernicious and tyrannical appetities and wishes than the commerce of the world will generally produce; for we are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude; but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favour, and reason by degrees submits to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness." ~Samuel Johnson
"The casuists of the Romish Church, who gain by confession great opportunities of knowing human nature, have generally determined what it is a crime to do. It is a crime to think. Since by revolving with pleasure the facility, safety or advantage of a wicked deed, a man soon begins to find his constancy relax and his detestation soften, the happiness of success glistening before him, withdraws his attention from the atrociousness of the guilt, and acts are at last confidently perpetrated, of which the first conception only crept in the mind, disguised in pleasing complications, and permitted rather than invited.
No man has ever been drawn to crimes, by love or jealousy, envy or hatred, but he can tell how easily he might at first have repelled the temptation; how readily his mind would have obeyed a call to any other object; and how weak his passion has been after some casual avocation till he has recalled it again to his heart and revived the viper by too warm a fondness.
Such, therefore, is the importance of keeping reason a constant guard over imagination that we have otherwise no security for our own virtue, but may corrupt our hearts in the most recluse solitude with more pernicious and tyrannical appetities and wishes than the commerce of the world will generally produce; for we are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude; but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favour, and reason by degrees submits to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness." ~Samuel Johnson
