"I wish there were more true conversion, and then there would not be so much backsliding, and, for fear of suffering, living at ease, when there are so few to contend for Christ and His cause"
About this Quote
Cargill’s line is a velvet-gloved indictment: he’s not lamenting persecution so much as the comfortable Christianity that persecution exposes. “True conversion” is doing heavy work here. He’s drawing a hard boundary between inward transformation and mere affiliation, between a faith that costs something and a faith that functions like social belonging. The wish is pastoral on the surface, but the subtext is prosecutorial: if people were genuinely remade, “backsliding” wouldn’t be the default setting the moment pressure arrives.
The phrasing “for fear of suffering, living at ease” is almost a sneer at respectability. It assumes that ease is not neutral; it’s a seductive moral environment that trains believers to confuse safety with blessing. That’s a pointed claim in 17th-century Scotland, where the Covenanters were being fined, hunted, and killed for resisting state control over the church. Cargill himself would be executed; he’s speaking from inside the logic of consequence, not abstract piety.
What makes the sentence bite is the pivot from personal failure (“backsliding”) to collective scarcity: “so few to contend for Christ and His cause.” “Contend” frames faith as public struggle, not private sentiment. He’s trying to manufacture a minority with backbone, a remnant willing to be socially and physically endangered. In that light, the line isn’t just devotional; it’s recruiting rhetoric, sharpening identity through pressure, warning that a church optimized for comfort will always fold when history demands courage.
The phrasing “for fear of suffering, living at ease” is almost a sneer at respectability. It assumes that ease is not neutral; it’s a seductive moral environment that trains believers to confuse safety with blessing. That’s a pointed claim in 17th-century Scotland, where the Covenanters were being fined, hunted, and killed for resisting state control over the church. Cargill himself would be executed; he’s speaking from inside the logic of consequence, not abstract piety.
What makes the sentence bite is the pivot from personal failure (“backsliding”) to collective scarcity: “so few to contend for Christ and His cause.” “Contend” frames faith as public struggle, not private sentiment. He’s trying to manufacture a minority with backbone, a remnant willing to be socially and physically endangered. In that light, the line isn’t just devotional; it’s recruiting rhetoric, sharpening identity through pressure, warning that a church optimized for comfort will always fold when history demands courage.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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