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SERMONS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN-BAPTIST MASSILLON, 
 
 BISHOP OF CLERMONT. 
 
 TO WHICH IS PREFIXED, 
 
 THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. 
 
 LONDON: 
 PRINTED FOR THOMAS TEGG AND SON 
 
 73, CHEAPSIDE; 
 
 R. GRIFFIN AND CO., GLASGOW; T. T. AND H. TEGG, DUBLIN; 
 
 AND J. WHETHAM, PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 MDCCCXXXV1I. 
 

 LONDON: 
 BALNE, PRINTER, GRACECHURCH STREET. 
 
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 
 
 THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 It is equally proper for a Translator, as for an Author, 
 to give some explanation (not apology, for surely a gene- 
 rous Public will require none, when the dissemination of 
 virtue is evidently the purpose) of the production which 
 he obtrudes upon the Public. 
 
 This Translation was at first undertaken merely for the 
 recreation, during illness, of the Translator. His admir- 
 ation of Massillon's abilities increasing as he went on, he 
 was induced to continue, far beyond his first intention. 
 That animation, that unction, as D'Alembert says, which 
 flowed from his pen on every subject, that gentle, yet 
 feeling address to the hearts of his hearers, and to which 
 the most indifferent could not refuse attention, struck him 
 so forcibly, that he could not reflect without surprise, 
 that no translation of his Works had as yet appeared in 
 English. Impressed with a conviction of their moral 
 tendency, he determined, in consequence of the approba- 
 tion of some respectable clergymen, his friends, to publish 
 a selection of such as, unconnected with local or temporary 
 events in France, would, in his opinion, be an acceptable 
 present to Christians of every denomination. He now 
 offers the present volume to the Public ; and so impressed 
 is he with a sense of its merit, that he is convinced, that 
 
 b 
 
VI 
 
 the weakness or the inaccuracy of the Translation can 
 alone prevent a generous Public from receiving them fa- 
 vourably. 
 
 In the Translation he has endeavoured, as much as in 
 him lay, to convey the meaning and sentiments of his 
 original : in doing of which, he may perhaps be thought 
 sometimes too literal ; but if the meaning be conveyed, 
 surely the error is on the safest side ; for many of our 
 translations may with much more propriety be called para- 
 phrases than translations ; and at least in the Translator's 
 opinion, it is much better to err in keeping rather too 
 closely to the text, than by studiously avoiding the ap- 
 pearance of laterality, to render the sense both obscure 
 and unintelligible. If the Translator be mistaken, it is an 
 error which in future may easily be corrected ; and this 
 being his first publication, he trusts that a generous Public 
 will not cashier a subaltern, because he may not as yet be 
 capable of discharging the duty of a general officer. 
 
 The Translator takes this opportunity of returning his 
 acknowledgments to his friends above-mentioned, from 
 whose advice he has reaped many advantages. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Serm. Page. 
 
 I. On Salvation ....... 1 
 
 II. On the Small Number of the Saved ... 18 
 
 III. The Disgusts accompanying Virtue . . . 34 
 IV. The Uncertainty of Righteousness in a State of 
 
 Lukewarmness . 48 
 
 V. The Certainty of the Loss of Righteousness in a 
 
 State of Lukewarmness . . . 62 
 
 VI. On Evil-speaking 79 
 
 VII. On the Employment of Time .... 97 
 
 VIII. The Certainty of a Future State . . . 112 
 
 IX. On Death 128 
 
 X. The Death of a Sinner, and that of a Righteous 
 
 Character 144 
 
 XL On Charity 163 
 
 XIL On Afflictions 183 
 
 XIII. On Prayer 198 
 
 XIV. Forgiveness of Injuries . . . . . 214 
 
 XV. The Woman who was a Sinner . . . . 231 
 
 XVI. The Word of God 247 
 
 XVIL On the Delay of Conversion .... 264 
 
 XVIII. On False Trust 281 
 
 b2 
 
Vlll 
 
 Serm. 
 
 XIX.- 
 
 XX.- 
 
 XXI.- 
 
 XXII.- 
 
 XXIII.- 
 
 XXIV.- 
 
 XXV.- 
 
 XXVI.- 
 
 XXVII.- 
 
 XXVIII.- 
 
 XXIX.- 
 
 XXX.- 
 
 XXXI.- 
 
 XXXII.- 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 296 
 
 -On the Vices and Virtues of the Great . 
 
 -On the Injustice of the World toward the Godly 312 
 
 Respect in the Temples of God. 
 
 -The Truth of Religion . 
 
 -Doubts upon Religion . 
 
 -Evidence of the Law of God . 
 
 -Immutability of the Law of God 
 
 -For Christmas-Day 
 
 -For the Day of the Epiphany 
 
 -The Divinity of Jesus Christ 
 
 -On the Resurrection of Lazarus 
 
 -On the Day of Judgment 
 
 -The Happiness of the Just 
 
 -On the Dispositions for the Communion 
 
 332 
 348 
 366 
 384 
 401 
 415 
 429 
 451 
 476 
 494 
 513 
 529 
 
LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 BY D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 John-Baptist Massillon was born in 1663, atHieres,in Pro- 
 vence. His father was a poor citizen of that small city. The ob- 
 scurity of his birth, which gives such a relief to the splendour of 
 his personal merit, should be the first topic of his praise ; and it 
 may be said of him, as of that illustrious Roman who owed nothing 
 to his ancestors, " Videtur ex se natus, He was the son of himself 
 alone." But his humble origin not only reflects high honour upon 
 his own person; it is still more honourable to that enlightened go- 
 vernment, which, having taken him from the midst of the people 
 to place him at the head of one of the most extensive diocesses of 
 the kingdom, confronted the prejudice too common even in our 
 days, that Providence has not destined great places to the genius 
 which it has produced in the lower ranks of society: if the disposers 
 of ecclesiastical dignities had not possessed the wisdom, courage, or 
 good fortune, sometimes to forget this maxim of human vanity, the 
 French clergy would have been deprived of the glory of reckoning 
 the eloquent Massillon among their bishops. 
 
 After finishing his grammatical studies, at the age of seventeen, 
 he entered into the Oratory. Resolved to consecrate his labours to 
 the church, he preferred (to indissoluble bonds which he might 
 have assumed in some one of our very numerous religious orders) 
 the free engagements contracted in a congregation on which the 
 great Bossuet has bestowed this rare eulogy, " That every one 
 obeys, yet no one commands. " Massillon preserved to the close 
 of his life the most tender and pleasing recollection of the lessons 
 he had received and the principles he had imbibed in this truly re- 
 spectable society; which, without intrigue and ambition, cherishing 
 and cultivating literature through the sole wish of being useful, has 
 acquired a distinguished name in the annals of art and science ; and 
 which, sometimes persecuted, and almost always little favoured, 
 even by those from whom it might expect support, has done all 
 
X LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 the good it was permitted to do, without injuring a single person, 
 even an enemy ; which, in fine, has at all times obtained the regard 
 of the wise by practising religion without littleness, and preaching 
 it without fanaticism. 
 
 Massillon's superiors soon formed a presage, from his first 
 essays, of the honour he would confer on the congregation. They 
 destined him to the pulpit ; but it was only from obedience that he 
 consented to fulfil their intentions : he alone did not foresee the ce- 
 lebrity with which they flattered him, and which was to be the re- 
 compense of his modesty and submission. There are some confi- 
 dent minds which recognize, as it were by instinct, the object 
 marked out for them by nature, and seize it with vigour ; while 
 others, humble and timid, require to be apprized of their powers, 
 and by this honest ignorance of themselves are rendered only the 
 more interesting, and the more worthy of being snatched from ob- 
 scurity, and presented to the renown which awaits them. 
 
 The young Massillon, at first, did what he could to withdraw him- 
 self from this glory. He had already, from pure obedience, while 
 yet in the province, pronounced funeral orations on M. de Villeroy, 
 archbishop of Lyons, and M. de Villars, archbishop of Vienne ; and 
 these two discourses, which were indeed first attempts, but attempts 
 of a young man who already announced what he afterwards became, 
 had the most brilliant success. The humble orator, affrighted at 
 his rising reputation, and fearing, as he said, "the demon of pride," 
 resolved to escape from him for ever, by devoting himself to the 
 profoundest and even most austere retirement. He went and 
 buried himself in the abbey of Sept-fons, where the same rule is 
 followed as at La Trappe, and there took the habit. During his 
 noviciate, the Cardinal de Noailles sent to the abbot of Sept-fons, 
 whose virtue he respected, a Charge which he had just published. 
 The abbot, more religious than eloquent, but still retaining a degree 
 of self-love, at least on account of his community, wished to make 
 the prelate a reply worthy of his Charge. He committed the task 
 to his exoratorian novice, and Massillon executed it with as much 
 success as promptness. The Cardinal, astonished at receiving from 
 this Thebais a work so well written, was not afraid of wounding the 
 vanity of the pious abbot by asking him who was the author. The 
 abbot named Massillon ; and the prelate told him that it was not 
 fit such a genius should, in the Scripture-phrase, remain u hidden 
 under a bushel." He required the novice to quit his habit, and 
 resume that of the Oratory ; and he placed him in the seminary of 
 St. Magloire, at Paris, with an exhortation to cultivate pulpit elo- 
 quence. At the same time he took upon himself, as he said, the 
 young orator's fortune ; which Massillon limited to that of the 
 apostles, that is, to the merest necessaries, and the most exemplary 
 simplicity. 
 
 His first sermons produced the effect that his superiors and the 
 Cardinal de Noailles had foreseen. Scarcely did he begin to show 
 himself in the pulpits of Paris, than he eclipsed almost all those 
 who at that period shone in the same career. He had declared 
 
LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. XI 
 
 " that he would not preach like them," not through a presumptuous 
 confidence in his superiority, but through an equally just and 
 mature idea, that if the minister fail, with such a theme, he must 
 be destitute of Christian eloquence. He was persuaded that if the 
 preacher of God's word, on the one hand, degrades himself by ut- 
 tering common truths in trivial language; on the other, he misses 
 his purpose by thinking to captivate his audience with a long chain 
 of reasoning which they are incapable of following: he knew that if 
 all hearers are not blessed with an informed mind, all have a heart, 
 whence the preacher ought to seek his arms ; that, in the pulpit, 
 man ought to be shown to himself, not so much to disgust him by a 
 shocking [portrait, as to afflict him by the resemblance; and, in fine, 
 that if it is sometimes useful to alarm and disquiet him, it is still 
 more so to draw from him those tears of sensibility which are much 
 more efficacious than the tears of despair. 
 
 Such was the plan Massillon proposed to himself, and he ex- 
 ecuted it like one who had conceived it: that is, like a master. He 
 excels in that part of oratory which may stand instead of all the 
 rest, that eloquence which goes right to the soul, but which agi- 
 tates without confounding, appals without crushing, penetrates 
 without lacerating it: he goes to the bottom of the heart in search 
 of those hidden folds in which the passions are enwrapped, those 
 secret sophisms which they so artfully employ to blind and seduce 
 us. To combat and destroy these sophisms it merely suffices him 
 to develope them; but he does it in a language so affectionate and 
 tender, that he subdues less than he attracts; and, even in display- 
 ing before us the picture of our vices, he knows how to attach and 
 please us. His diction, always easy, elegant, and pure, never de- 
 viates from that noble simplicity without which there is no good 
 taste, nor genuine eloquence. This simplicity, being joined in 
 Massillon to the softest and most seducing harmony, borrows from 
 it still new graces; and, what completes the charm of this enchant- 
 ing style is, that so many beauties are felt to flow freely from the 
 spring, without expense to their author. Sometimes, even, there 
 escape from him, either in the expressions, the turns, or the sweet 
 melody of his periods, negligencies which may be called happy, 
 since they perfectly efface not only the stamp, but even the suspi- 
 cion, of labour. It was by this inattention to self that Massillon 
 made as many friends as auditors : he knew that the more an ora- 
 tor seems occupied in catching admiration, the less his hearers are 
 disposed to grant it; and that this ambition is the rock fatal to so 
 many preachers, who, intrusted, if I may so express myself, with 
 the interests of God himself, choose to mix with it the little inter- 
 ests of their vanity. Massillon, on the contrary, thought it a very 
 empty pleasure "to have to do," as Montaigne expresses it, "with 
 people who always admire and make way for us ; " especially at 
 those seasons when it is so delightful to forget one's self, in order 
 to be solely occupied with those unfortunate beings whom duty en- 
 joins to console and instruct. He compared the studied eloquence 
 of profane preachers to those flowers which stifle the products of 
 
Xll LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 harvest; and, though very agreeable to the sight, are equally hurt- 
 ful to the crop. 
 
 It seemed wonderful that a man, devoted by station to retire- 
 ment, should know the world so well as to draw such exact pictures 
 of the passions, especially of self-love. " I have learned to draw 
 them," he candidly said, "by studying myself/' He proved it in 
 a manner equally energetic and ingenuous, by his confession to one 
 of his brethren, who congratulated him on the success of his ser- 
 mons: "The devil," he replied, "has already told it me more elo- 
 quently than you." 
 
 Massillon derived another advantage from that eloquence of the 
 soul which he so well understood: as in speaking to the heart of 
 man, he spoke the language of all conditions. All went to hear his 
 sermons; even unbelievers attended upon him, and often met with 
 instruction where they only sought amusement. The reason was, 
 that Massillon knew how to descend on their account to the only 
 language they would hear, that of a philosophy, purely human in 
 appearance, but which, finding every access to their hearts open, 
 prepared the way for the Christian orator to approach them with- 
 out effort and unresisted, and to obtain a conquest even without a 
 combat. 
 
 His action was perfectly suited to his species of eloquence. On 
 entering the pulpit, he appeared thoroughly penetrated with the 
 great truths he was about to utter: with eyes declined, a modest 
 and collected air, without violent motions, and almost without 
 gestures, but animating the whole with a voice of sensibility, he 
 diffused over his audience the religious emotion which his own ex- 
 terior proclaimed, and caused himself to be listened to with that 
 profound silence by which eloquence is better praised than by the 
 loudest applauses. The reputation of his manner alone induced 
 the celebrated Baron to attend on one of his discourses : on leaving 
 the church, he said to a friend who accompanied him, "This man 
 is an orator, and we are only players." 
 
 The court soon wished to hear him, or rather to judge him. 
 Without pride, as without fear, he appeared on this great and 
 formidable theatre. He opened with distinguished lustre; and 
 the exordium of his first discourse is one of the master-strokes 
 of modern eloquence. Louis XIV. was then at the summit of 
 power and glory, admired by all Europe, adored by his subjects, 
 intoxicated with adulation, and satiated with homage. Massillon 
 took for his text a passage of Scripture apparently least applicable 
 to such a prince, "Blessed are they that mourn;" and from this, 
 he had the art to draw a eulogy the more noble and flattering, as 
 it seemed dictated by the Gospel itself, and such as an apostle 
 might have made: " Sire," said he, "if the world were here speaking 
 to your majesty, it would not address you with ' Blessed are they 
 that mourn;' ' Blessed,' would it say, f the prince who never fought 
 but to conquer; who has filled the universe with his name; who, 
 in the course of a long and flourishing reign, has enjoyed with 
 splendour all that men admire, the greatness of his conquests. 
 
LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. Xlll 
 
 the love of his people, the esteem of his enemies, the wisdom of 
 his laws :' but, Sire, the Gospel speaks not as the world speaks." 
 The audience of Versailles, accustomed as they were to the 
 Bossuets and Bourdaloues, were unacquainted with an eloquence 
 at the same time so delicate and so noble ; in consequence, it excited 
 in the assembly, notwithstanding the gravity of the place, an invo- 
 luntary expression of admiration. There only wanted, to render this 
 passage still more impressive, that it should have been pronuonced 
 in the midst of the misfortunes which succeeded our triumphs, and 
 at a time when the monarch, who, during fifty years, had expe- 
 rienced nothing but prosperity, lived only to sorrow. If ever 
 Louis XIV. heard a more eloquent exordium, it was perhaps that 
 of a religious missionary, who, on* his first appearance before the 
 king, thus began his discourse : " Sire, I mean not to pay a com- 
 pliment to your majesty, I have found none in the Gospel." 
 
 Truth, even when it speaks in the name of God, ought to con- 
 tent itself with knocking at the door of kings, and should never 
 break it open. Massillon, convinced of this maxim, did not imitate 
 some of his predecessors, who had displayed their zeal by preach- 
 ing Christian morality in the mansions of vice with an austerity 
 capable of rendering it odious, and of exposing religion to the 
 resentment of haughty and offended power. Our orator was always 
 firm, but always respectful, while he announced to his sovereign 
 the will of the Judge of kings. He filled the measure of his minis- 
 try, but he never surpassed it ; and the monarch, who might have 
 left his chapel discontented with the liberty of some other preachers, 
 never left it after a sermon of Massillon, but u discontented with 
 himself." These were the very words of the prince to this orator; 
 words which contained the highest eulogy he could give ; yet one, 
 which so many preachers before and since Massillon have not even 
 wished to obtain, while they were more solicitous to please the cri- 
 tics than to convert sinners. 
 
 Successes so brilliant and repeated did not fail of their usual ef- 
 fect ; they created Massillon implacable enemies, especially among 
 those who considered themselves as his rivals. Their aim was, if 
 possible, to shut the mouth of so formidable a competitor ; but 
 this was only to be done by an accusation against his doctrine, and 
 on this delicate point the preacher gave not the least scope to their 
 charitable intentions. He was, indeed, member of a congregation, 
 the opinions of which were then much the object of suspicion ; and 
 through this pious consideration several of his brethren had been 
 dexterously excluded from the pulpit of Versailles. But Massillon's 
 sentiments, daily exposed to court criticism, were so irreproachably 
 orthodox that they baffled the keenest scrutiny of hatred. The 
 church and the nation already destined him to the episcopacy; and 
 envy, usually blind to its own interests, might, with subtler policy, 
 have regarded this dignity as a decent mode of burying his talents, 
 by banishing him to a distance from Paris and the court. It did 
 not carry so far its dangerous penetration; but, considering a 
 bishopric only in the light of a splendid recompense, it resolved to 
 
XIV LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 make a last effort to deprive the orator of what he had so well me- 
 rited. The means employed were to calumniate his morals ; and, 
 according to custom, ears were found ready to hear, and hearts to 
 believe, the charge. The sovereign himself, so artful is falsehood 
 in insinuating itself to the presence of monarchs, was shaken, if not 
 convinced : and the same prince, who had told Massillon, " that 
 he meant to hear him every two years," seemed to fear giving to 
 another church the orator he had reserved to himself. 
 
 Louis XIV. died; and the Regent, who honoured the talents of 
 Massillon, and despised his enemies, nominated him to the bishop- 
 ric of Clermont. He wished also that the court should hear him 
 once more ; and engaged him to preach a Lent course before the 
 King, then nine years of age. 
 
 These sermons, composed in less than three months, are known 
 by the name of Petit Careme, (Little Lent) . They are, perhaps, if 
 not the master-piece, at least the true model of pulpit eloquence. 
 The great sermons of this orator may have more animation and ve- 
 hemence ; the eloquence of the Petit Careme is more pathetic and 
 insinuating ; and the charm resulting from it is augmented by the 
 interesting nature of the subject, and by the inestimable value of 
 those simple and affecting lessons which, intended to penetrate 
 with equal force and softness the heart of a monarch yet a child, 
 seem to prepare the happiness of millions of men, by showing what 
 they have a right to expect from the prince who is to govern them. 
 Here the preacher places before the eyes of sovereigns the dangers 
 and the evils of supreme power ; truth flying the throne, and con- 
 cealing herself even from the princes who seek her ; the unmea- 
 sured confidence with which even the justest praises may inspire 
 them ; the almost equal danger of the weakness which has no opi- 
 nion of its own, and that pride which never listens to another's ; 
 the fatal influence of their vices in corrupting and debasing a whole 
 nation ; the detestable glory of conquering kings cruelly purchased 
 by blood and tears ; in fine, the Supreme Being himself, placed 
 between oppressor kings and oppressed people, to intimidate the 
 one and avenge the other : such is the object of the Petit Careme, 
 worthy of being learned by all children destined to the throne, and 
 meditated by all men intrusted with governing the world. Some 
 severe censurers, however, have charged these excellent Discourses 
 with being too uniform and monotonous : they contain, according 
 to them, but a single idea constantly recurring that of the kind- 
 ness and beneficence due from the great and powerful of the earth 
 to the little and feeble, whom nature has created their fellows, hu- 
 manity has made their brethren, and fortune has doomed to wretch- 
 edness. But, without inquiring into the justice of this censure, we 
 may say that the truth here mentioned is so consolatory to all who 
 groan under affliction, so precious in the education of a prince, and 
 especially so necessary to be impressed on the callous hearts of cour- 
 tiers, that humanity may bless the orator who has inculcated it with 
 so much force and perseverance. 
 
 The year in which Massillon pronounced these Discourses, was 
 
LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. XV 
 
 that in which he entered the French Academy. The date of his 
 admission was February 23d, 17 19. The Abbe Fleury, who re- 
 ceived him in his capacity of director, among other praises, gave 
 him that of having accommodated his instruction to the tender age 
 of the king. " You seem," said he, " to have imitated the pro- 
 phet, who, in order to resuscitate the son of the Shunamite, con- 
 tracted as it were his dimensions, by placing his mouth upon the 
 mouth, his eyes upon the eyes, his hands upon the hands of the 
 child ; and, having thus recalled the vital heat, restored him alive 
 and vigorous to his mother." 
 
 The director's discourse contains another passage equally edify- 
 ing and remarkable. Massillon had just been consecrated a 
 bishop ; and no place at court, no business, no pretext could be 
 urged to keep him from his diocess. The Abbe Fleury, an inflex- 
 ible observer of the canons, while he admitted the new member, 
 had his eyes fixed upon the rigorous duties which the episcopacy 
 imposed upon him, in comparison with which those of academician 
 entirely disappeared. Far, then, from inviting him to frequent at- 
 tendance on the academy, he exhorted him to a perpetual absence; 
 and he rendered his counsel more cogent by the obliging manner 
 in which he expressed his regret for its necessity. ie We foresee 
 with grief," said he, " that we are about to lose you for ever, and 
 that the Indispensable law of residence will sequester you without 
 return from our assemblies : we cannot hope to see you again, but 
 when some vexatious business shall, in spite of yourself, tear you 
 from your church." 
 
 This counsel had the more weight, as he to whom it was ad- 
 dressed had already given it himself. He departed for Clermont, 
 and only returned on indispensable, consequently rare, occasions. 
 He gave all his cares to the happy flock intrusted to him by Pro- 
 vidence. He did not conceive that his episcopal function, which 
 he had acquired in consequence of his success in the pulpit, gave 
 him a dispensation from again ascending it, and that he ought to 
 cease being useful because he had been rewarded. He consecrated 
 to the instruction of the poor, those talents which had so often 
 been applauded by the great ; and preferred, to the noisy praises 
 of courtiers, the simple and serious attention of a less brilliant but 
 more docile audience. Perhaps the most eloquent of his discourses 
 are his conferences with his clergy. He preaches to them the virtues 
 of which he gave the example ; disinterestedness, simplicity, for- 
 getfulness of self, the active and prudent ardour of enlightened zeal, 
 widely different from that fanaticism which is only a blind, and of- 
 ten a very suspicious zeal: moderation was, indeed, his ruling cha- 
 racter. He loved to assemble at his country seat, Oratorians and 
 Jesuits, whom he accustomed to endure, and almost to love each 
 other. He set them to play together at chess, and exhorted them 
 never to engage in more serious warfare. Th, conciliatory spirit 
 which shone in his conduct, and his well-known sentiments on the 
 scandal of theological quarrel, caused the government to wish that 
 he should try to bring to an agreement the Cardinal de Noailles, 
 
XVI LIFE OP THE AUTHOR. 
 
 and those who attacked the doctrine of this pious archbishop ; but 
 this impartiality in this negotiation produced its usual effect, of 
 dissatisfying both parties. His sage remonstrances in favour of 
 peace and union were fruitless ; and he learned, by his own expe- 
 rience, that it is often easier to persuade unbelievers, than to re- 
 concile those who have so much interest in uniting to confound 
 them. 
 
 Deeply penetrated with the real obligations of his station, Mas- 
 sillon was especially attentive to fulfil that first and most respecta- 
 ble of episcopal duties, the duty, or rather the pleasure, of benefi- 
 cence. He reduced his rights as bishop to very moderate sums, 
 and would entirely have abolished them, had he not thought him- 
 self obliged to respect the patrimony of his successors, that is, to 
 leave them wherewith to perform good actions. Within two years 
 he sent twenty thousand livres to the hospital of Clermont. All his 
 revenue belonged to the poor. His diocess preserves the remem- 
 brance of his deeds after thirty years : and his memory is daily 
 honoured with the most eloquent of funeral orations that of the 
 tears of one hundred thousand distressed objects. During his life 
 time he had anticipated this testimony. When he appeared in the 
 streets of Clermont, the people prostrated themselves before him, 
 crying, " Long live our father !" Hence it was a frequent obser- 
 vation of this virtuous prelate, that his episcopal brethren did not 
 sufficiently feel the degree of consideration and authority they might 
 derive from their station ; not, indeed, by pomp, or by a punctili- 
 ous devotion, still less by the grimaces and intrigues of hypocrisy, 
 but by those virtues which are recognised by the hearts of the peo- 
 ple, and which, in a minister of true religion, represent to all eyes 
 that just and beneficent Being of which he is the image. 
 
 Among the countless alms he gave, there were some which he 
 concealed with the greatest care, not only to favour the delicacy of 
 unfortunate individuals, but sometimes to spare whole communities 
 the sensation of inquietude and fear, however groundless, which 
 these donations might occasion them. A numerous convent of 
 nuns, had, for several days, been without bread. The sisterhood 
 had resolved to perish rather than make known their shocking 
 distress, through the apprehension that it might cause the sup- 
 pression of their house, to which they were more attached than to 
 life. The Bishop of Clermont learned at the same time their ex- 
 treme necessity and the motive of their silence. Eager to give 
 them relief, he was fearful of alarming them by seeming informed 
 of their situation ; he therefore secretly sent them a very consid- 
 erable sum, which rendered their subsistence secure, till he had 
 found means to provide them with other resources ; and it was not 
 till after his death that they became acquainted with the benefactor 
 to whom they were so greatly indebted. 
 
 He not only lavished his fortune upon the indigent; he farther 
 assisted them, with equal zeal and success, by his pen. Being a 
 witness, in his diocesan visits, of the wretchedness under which the 
 inhabitants of the country groaned, and finding his revenue insuf- 
 
LIFE OF UHE AUTHOR. XV11 
 
 ficient to supply with bread so many miserable creatures who asked 
 it, he wrote to the court in their favour ; and, by the strong and af- 
 fecting picture he drew of their necessities, he obtained for them 
 either donations, or a considerable diminution of their taxes. His 
 letters on this interesting subject are said to be master-pieces of 
 pathetic eloquence, superior to the most touching of his sermons. 
 
 The more sincerely he respected religion, the more he despised 
 the superstitions which degrade it, and the more zealous he was to 
 destroy them. He abolished, though not without difficulty, some 
 very ancient and very indecent processions which the barbarism of 
 the dark ages had established in his diocess, and which travestied 
 the divine worship into a scandalous masquerade. The inhabitants 
 of Clermont were used to run to these exhibitions in crowds, 
 some through a stupid devotion, others to turn this religious farce 
 into ridicule. The clergy of the city, through fear of the people, 
 who were attached to these shows in proportion to their absurdity, 
 dared not publish the mandate for their suppression. Massillon 
 ascended the pulpit, published his own mandate, and caused him- 
 self to be heard by a tumultuous audience who would have insulted 
 any other preacher : such was the fruit of his virtue and be- 
 neficence ! 
 
 He died, as Fenelon died, and as every bishop ought to die, 
 without money and without debts. It was on the 28th of Septem- 
 ber, 1742, that the church, eloquence, and humanity, sustained 
 this irreparable loss. 
 
 A recent incident, well calculated to affect feeling hearts, affords 
 a proof how dear the memory of Massillon is, not only to the 
 indigent, whose tears he dried, but to all who have known him. 
 Some years since, a traveller who happened to be at Clermont, 
 wished to see the country-seat where the prelate was accustomed 
 to pass great part of the year. He applied to an ancient grand- 
 vicar, who, since the bishop's death, had not had resolution to 
 return to this country mansion, now deprived of its inhabitants. 
 He consented, however, to satisfy the traveller's desire, notwith- 
 standing the pain he expected from revisiting a spot so sadly dear 
 to his remembrance. They went together, and the grand-vicar 
 showed every thing to the stranger. " Here," said he, with tears 
 in his eyes, "is the alley where this worthy prelate took his walks 
 with us : here is the arbour under which he used to repose while 
 he read: this is the garden which he cultivated with his own 
 hands." They then entered the house, and when they came to the 
 chamber in which Massillon had breathed his last, " This," said the 
 grand-vicar, * is the place where we lost him ;" and as he spoke 
 these words, he fainted away. The shade of Titus or Marcus 
 Aurelius might have envied such a homage ! 
 
 Massillon has been compared with Bourdaloue, as often as 
 Cicero with Demosthenes, and Racine with Corneille. Parallels 
 of this kind, fertile topics for antithesis, prove nothing more than 
 the degree of ingenuity in him who makes them. We shall resign 
 this common-place matter without regret, and confine ourselves to 
 
XV111 LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 a single reflection. When Bourdaloue appeared, the pulpit was 
 yet barbarous ; rivalling, as Massillon himself observed, the theatre 
 in buffoonery, or the schools in dryness. That Jesuit orator, was 
 the first who gave to Religion a language worthy of her : it was 
 solid, serious, and above all, strictly and closely logical. If he who 
 enters an untrodden path has many thorns to obstruct him, he also 
 enjoys great advantages, for his advance is more marked and his 
 immediate celebrity greater, than those of his successors. The 
 public, long accustomed to the reign of Bourdaloue, who had been 
 the first object of their veneration, were long persuaded that he 
 could have no rival, especially while Massillon was living, and 
 Bourdaloue from his tomb no longer heard the cry of the multitude 
 in his favour. At length, Death, which brings justice in its train, 
 has assigned to each orator his proper place : and Envy, which had 
 excluded Massillon from that which was his due, may now seat 
 him in it without the fear of his enjoying it. We shall, however, 
 refrain from giving him a pre-eminence which grave authorities 
 would disallow: it is Bourdaloue's greatest glory, that the su- 
 periority of Massillon is still disputed ; but if it were to be decided 
 by the number of readers, the advantage would be on the side of 
 Massillon. Bourdaloue is little read but by preachers and de- 
 votees ; his rival is in the hands of all who read ; and we must 
 be permitted to say, as completing his Eulogy, that the most 
 celebrated writer of our age and nation is particularly assiduous 
 in the perusal of this great orator's sermons ; that Massillon is his 
 model for prose, as Racine is for verse ; and that the Petit Carime 
 is always laid on his table by the side of Athaliah, 
 
 If, however, a kind of parallel were to be drawn between these 
 two illustrious orators, we might say, with an intelligent judge, 
 that Bourdaloue argues the best, and Massillon is the most 
 pathetic ; and that a sermon excellent in all respects would be one, 
 of which Bourdaloue should write the first head, and Massillon 
 the second. Perhaps a still more perfect discourse would be one 
 in which they should not appear apart; but their talents, melted 
 together, should, as it were, mutually penetrate each other, and the 
 logician should at the same time write with pathos and sensibility. 
 
 We ought not to conceal, that all the sermons of our eloquent 
 academician, as well as his Petit Careme, are accused of the fault 
 of frequently presenting in the same page only a single idea, varied, 
 indeed, with all the richness of expression, but by its fundamental 
 uniformity, somewhat dragging in its enunciation. The same 
 criticism has been made upon Seneca, but with more justice : that 
 writer, solely ambitious of astonishing his reader by the profusion 
 of wit with which he overwhelms him, becomes the more wearisome, 
 as he seems to weary himself by a pompous display of riches, 
 which he collects on all sides with manifest effort. Massillon, hav- 
 ing his heart solely filled with the interest of his hearer, appears 
 to present before him, in many forms, the truth he wishes to 
 impress upon him, only through fear lest he should not engrave it 
 deeply enough on his soul. Not only, therefore do we pardon him 
 
LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. XlX 
 
 these tender repetitions, but we feel obliged to him for the motive 
 which has multiplied them: we are convinced that they proceed 
 from one who delights in the love of his fellow-creatures, and whose 
 overflowing sensibility requires room for expansion. 
 
 It is surprising that the French clergy, who possessed so eminent 
 an orator, should not once have nominated him to preach in their 
 assemblies. He never desired this honour, but left to moderate 
 capacities and ambitious tempers a petty glory of which he had no 
 need. He was even rarely chosen a member of the Assembly ; and 
 readily consented, as he said, that prelates less attached than him- 
 self to residence should have recourse to this decent excuse for in- 
 termitting it. The marked indifference which his episcopal brethren 
 seemed to display toward him was neither intentional, on their parts, 
 nor even voluntary : it was the obscure work of some men in place, 
 who, from motives worthy of them, secretly kept Massillon out of 
 the view of the court, not as an intriguer, for they knew him too 
 well to believe him one, but as an illustrious and a respected 
 prelate, whose superiority, viewed too near, might have shone with a 
 lustre which powerful men of inferior capacity can never bear. But 
 what a loss to such an auditory was a preacher such as Massillon ! 
 What could be a more interesting topic than to address the assem- 
 bled princes of the church on the august duties imposed on them 
 by their dignity ; on the great examples expected from them by a 
 whole people ; on the right they may acquire, from the sanctity of 
 their character and of their lives, to speak the truth to kings, and 
 to lay at the foot of the throne the complaint of the innocent and 
 the oppressed ? Could it be thought that Massillon was unworthy 
 to treat so grand a subject, or was it rather feared that he would 
 treat it with too much eloquence ? 
 
 This great orator, either before or after becoming a bishop, pro- 
 nounced some funeral orations, the merit of which was eclipsed by 
 that of his sermons. If he had not that flexibility which proclaims 
 the truth with harshness, he had that candour which does not per- 
 mit to disguise it. Even through the praises which in these dis- 
 courses he grants to decorum, or perhaps to truth, the secret 
 judgment of his own heart concerning the persons whom it was 
 his office to celebrate, escapes from his natural frankness, and 
 swims on the surface, as it were, in hair of himself ; and it is ap- 
 parent, on reading them, that there are some of his heroes whose 
 history he would rather have composed than their eulogy. 
 
 Once alone, a failure of memory happened to him on preaching. 
 Deceived by the mortification this slight accident caused him, he 
 thought it would be much better to read than to repeat his ser- 
 mons. We venture to differ from him in this point. Reading 
 forces an orator either to renounce that free action which is the 
 soul of the pulpit, or to render it ridiculous by an air of prepara- 
 tion and exaggeration which destroys its nature and truth. Massillon 
 seems himself to have been sensible that the greatest merit in an 
 oratorical discourse, with regard to effect, is, that it should appear 
 produced on the spot, without any trace of premeditation ; for, 
 
XX LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 when he was asked, which of his sermons he thought the best, he 
 replied, " that which I recollect the best." 
 
 Though by taste and duty devoted to Christian eloquence, he 
 sometimes, by way of relaxation, exercised his faculties upon other 
 objects. It is asserted that he left in manuscript a life of Coreggio. 
 He could not have selected for his subject a painter whose talents 
 were more analogous to his own; for he himself was, if the expres- 
 sion may be allowed, the Coreggio of orators. It may be added, 
 that as Coreggio had formed himself by opening a new track after 
 Raphael and Titian, so Massillon, who had also found out a new 
 walk of pulpit eloquence, might have said, on comparing himself to 
 other orators, what Coreggio did on viewing the pictures of other 
 artists, i( I, too, am a painter." 
 
SERMONS, 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 ON SALVATION. 
 
 " My time is not yet come; but your time is always ready." John vii. 6. 
 
 The reproach which is here directed by Jesus Christ, against his 
 relations according to the flesh, who pressed him to show himself 
 to the world, and to go up to Jerusalem, in order to acquire those 
 honours which were due to his great talents, may with propriety be 
 directed against the greatest part of this audience. The time which 
 they give to their fortune, to their advancement, to their pleasures, 
 is always ready; it is always time to labour toward the acquire- 
 ment of wealth and glory, and to satisfy their passions : that is the 
 time of man ; but the time of Jesus Christ, that is to say, the time 
 of working out their salvation, is never ready; they delay, they put 
 it off; they always expect its arrival, and it never arrives. 
 
 The slightest worldly interests agitate them, and make them 
 undertake every thing; for what is the world itself, whose de- 
 ceitful ways they follow, but an eternal agitation, where the pas- 
 sions set every thing in motion; where tranquillity is the only 
 pleasure unknown; where cares are honourable; where those 
 who are at rest think themselves unhappy; where all is toil and 
 affliction of spirit; in a word, where all are in motion, and all are 
 deceived? Surely, my brethren, when we see men so occupied, so 
 interested, so patient in their pursuits, we would suppose them 
 labouring for everlasting ages, and for riches which ought to se- 
 cure their happiness: how can we comprehend, that so much 
 toil and agitation has nothing in view but a fortune, whose dura- 
 tion scarcely equals that of the labours which have gained it; 
 and that a life so rapid is spent with so much fatigue, in the 
 search of wealth which must perish along with it? 
 
 Nevertheless, a mistake, which the slightest investigation is suffi- 
 cient to expose, is become the error of by far the majority. In vain 
 does religion call us to more necessary and more important cares; 
 in vain it announces to us, that to labour for what must pass away, 
 is only amassing, at a great expense, heaps of sand, which tumble 
 upon our heads, as fast as we raise them up; that the highest pitch of 
 elevation to which we can attain here below, is always that which 
 verges upon our death, and is the gate of eternity; and that nothing 
 is worthy of man, but what will endure as long as man. The cares 
 of the passions are always weighty and important: the steps alone 
 which we take for heaven, are weak and languid: salvation alone we 
 
2 on salvation. Ser. 1. 
 
 fcorisider ,as, an /amusement: we toil for frivolous riches, as if we la- 
 boured for eternal possessions; we labour for eternal possessions, 
 as if we toiled for frivolous riches. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, our cares for this world are always animated ; 
 obstacles, fatigues, disappointments, nothing can repulse us: our 
 cares for this world are always prudent; dangers, snares, perplexities, 
 competitions, nothing can make us mistake our aim: whereas, our 
 cares for salvation bear a very different character ; nothing can be 
 more languid, or less interesting to us, although obstacles and 
 disgusts there, are so much to be dreaded; nothing can be more 
 inconsiderate, although the multiplicity of ways and the number 
 of rocks for us to split upon, render mistakes in it so familiar and 
 common. 
 
 We must labour, therefore, toward its accomplishment, with 
 fervour and prudence: with fervour, in order not to be repulsed; 
 with prudence in order not to be mistaken. 
 
 Part I. Undoubtedly nothing in this life ought to interest us 
 more than the care of our eternal salvation. Besides that this is the 
 grand affair upon which our all depends, we even have not, properly 
 speaking, any other upon the earth; and the infinite and divers oc- 
 cupations attached to our places, to our rank, to our situations in 
 life, ought to be only different modes of labouring toward our 
 salvation. 
 
 Nevertheless, this care so glorious, to which every thing we do, 
 and whatever we are, relate, is of all others the most despised; 
 this chief care, which should be at the head of all our other pur- 
 suits, give place to them all in the detail of our actions; this care 
 so amiable, and to which the promises of faith, and the consolations 
 of grace, attach so many comforts, is of all others become for us 
 the most disgusting, and the most melancholy. And, behold, my 
 brethren, from whence springs this want of fervour in the business 
 of our eternal salvation; we pursue it without esteem, without 
 preference, and without inclination. Let us investigate and illus- 
 trate these ideas. 
 
 It is a very deplorable error, that mankind has attached the 
 most pompous names to all the enterprises of the passions; and 
 that the cares of our salvation have not, in the opinions of men, 
 been capable of meriting the same honour and the same esteem. 
 Military toils are regarded by us as the path of reputation and 
 glory; the intrigues and the commotions which contribute to 
 our advancement in the world, are looked upon as the secrets of 
 a profound wisdom; schemes and negociations which arm man- 
 kind against each other, and which frequently make the ambi- 
 tion of an individual the source of public calamities, pass for 
 extent of genius and superiority of talents; the art of raising, 
 from an obscure patrimony, a monstrous and overgrown fortune, 
 at the expense often of justice and probity, is the science of busi- 
 ness and individual good management. In a word, the world 
 has found out a secret of setting off, by honourable titles, all the 
 
Ser. 1. ON SALVATION. 3 
 
 different cares which are connected with the things of this earth. 
 The actions of faith alone, which shall endure eternally, which 
 shall form the history of the age to come, and shall be engraven 
 during all eternity upon the immortal columns of the heavenly 
 Jerusalem, are accounted idle and obscure occupations, the lot 
 of weak and limited souls, and have nothing which exalt them in 
 the eyes of men. Such, my brethren, is the first cause of our indif- 
 ference toward the business of our salvation: we do not sufficiently 
 esteem that holy undertaking, to labour at it with fervour. 
 
 Now I do not think it necessary to stop here, and combat an 
 illusion, which so flagrantly violates right reason. For what is it 
 that can render a work glorious to the person who undertakes it ? 
 Is it the duration and the immortality which it promises in the 
 memory of man? Alas! all the monuments of pride will perish 
 with the world which has reared them up ; whatever we do for 
 the earth, will experience the same destiny which it will one day 
 undergo: victories and conquests, the most splendid enterprises, 
 and all the history of the sinners whose names adorn the pre- 
 sent age, will be effaced from the remembrance of men; the 
 works of the just alone will be immortal, and, written for ever in 
 the book of life, will survive the entire ruin of the universe. Is 
 it the recompense which is held out to us for it? But whoever 
 is unable to render us happy, is consequently unable to recom- 
 pense us; and there is no other who has that power but God 
 himself. Is it the dignity of the occupations to which they en- 
 gage you? But the most honourable cares of the world are 
 merely games, on which our error and absurdity have bestowed 
 serious and pompous names. Here, on the contrary, every thing 
 is great: we love the Author of our existence alone; we adore 
 the Sovereign of the universe; we serve an Almighty Master; 
 we covet only eternal riches; we form projects for heaven alone; 
 we labour for an immortal crown. 
 
 What is there upon the earth, then, more glorious or more 
 worthy of man than the cares of eternity? Prosperities are 
 honourable anxieties; splendid enjoyments an illustrious servitude; 
 reputation is frequently a public error; titles and dignities are 
 rarely the fruit of virtue, and, at the most, serve only to adorn our 
 tombs and embellish our ashes; great talents, if faith does not 
 regulate their use, are only great temptations: deep knowledge, a 
 wind which inflates and corrupts, if faith does not correct its venom; 
 all these are only grand, by the use which may be made of them 
 toward salvation: virtue alone is estimable for itself. 
 
 Nevertheless, if our competitors are more successful and 
 more elevated than we in the world, we view their situation with 
 envious eyes; and their aggrandisement, in humbling our pride, 
 reanimates the fervour of our designs, and gives new life to our 
 expectations; but it happens sometimes, that the accomplices of 
 our pleasures, changed suddenly into new men, nobly break all 
 the shameful bonds of the passions, and, borne upon the wings of 
 grace, enter, in our sight, into the path of salvation, whilst thev 
 
 b 2 
 
4 on salvation. Ser. 1. 
 
 leave us behind them, to wander still unfortunately at the plea- 
 sure of our illicit desires. We view with a tranquil eye the pro- 
 digy of their change; and their lot, far from exciting our envy, 
 and awaking in us any weak desires of salvation, only induces us, 
 perhaps, to think on replacing the void which their retreat has 
 made in the world: of elevating ourselves to those dangerous offices 
 from which they have just descended through motives of religion 
 and faith: what shall I say? we become, perhaps, the censu- 
 rers of their virtues: we seek elsewhere than in the infinite trea- 
 sures of grace, the secret motives of their change; to the work 
 of God we give views entirely worldly; and our deplorable cen- 
 sures become the most dangerous trials of their repentance. It is 
 thus, O, my God! that Thou sheddest avenging darkness over ini- 
 quitous passions ! Whence comes this ? We want esteem for 
 the holy undertaking of salvation: this is the first cause of our 
 indifference. 
 
 In the second place, we labour in it with indolence, because we 
 do not make a principal object of its attainment, and because we 
 never give a preference to it over our other pursuits. In effect, 
 my brethren, we all wish to be saved ; the most deplorable sinners 
 do not renounce this hope; we even wish, that amongst our ac- 
 tions there may always be found some which relate to our salva- 
 tion; for none deceive themselves so far as to believe, that they 
 shall be entitled to the glory of the holy, without having ever made 
 a single exertion toward rendering themselves worthy of it; but 
 the point in which we commonly deceive ourselves is, the rank 
 which we give to those works, amidst the other occupations which 
 divide our life. 
 
 The trifles, the attentions which we lavish so profusely in our 
 intercourse with society, the functions of a charge, domestic ar- 
 rangements, passions, and pleasures, their times and their mo- 
 ments marked in our days; where do we place the work of sal- 
 vation? What rank do we give to this special care, above our 
 other cares ? Do we even make a business of it ? And, to enter 
 into the particulars of your conduct, what do you perform for eter- 
 nity, which you do not for the world an hundred-fold? You some- 
 times employ a small portion of your wealth in religious charities; 
 but what are these when compared to the sums which you sacrifice 
 every day to your pleasures, to your passions, and to your caprices ? 
 In the morning, you, perhaps, raise up your mind to the Lord in 
 prayer ; but does not the world, in a moment, resume its place in 
 your heart, and is not the remainder of the day devoted to it ? You 
 regularly attend, perhaps, in order to fulfil the external duties of 
 religion ; but, without entering into the motives which frequently 
 carry you there, this individual exercise of religion, is it not com- 
 pensated by devoting the remainder of the day to indolent and 
 worldly pursuits ? You sometimes correct your inclinations ; you 
 perhaps bear with an injury ; you undertake the discharge of some 
 pious obligation ; but these are individual and insulated exertions, 
 out of the common track, and which are never followed by any re- 
 
Ser. 1. ON SALVATION. 5 
 
 gular consequences; you will be unable to produce, before the 
 Lord, a single instance of these in your favour, without the enemy 
 having it at the same time in his power to reckon a thousand 
 against you : salvation occupies your intervals alone ; the world 
 has, as I may say, the foundation and the principal : the moments 
 are for God, our entire life is for ourselves. 
 
 I know, my brethren, that, with regard to this, you feel sen- 
 sibly the injustice and the danger of your own conduct. You con- 
 fess, that the agitations of the world, of business, and of pleasures, 
 almost entirely occupy you, and that a very little time, indeed, 
 remains for you to reflect upon salvation : but, in order to tran- 
 quillize yourselves, you say, that some future day, when you shall 
 be more at ease ; when affairs of a certain nature shall be termi- 
 nated ; when particular embarrassments shall be at an end ; and, 
 in a word, when certain circumstances shall no longer exist, you 
 will then think seriously upon your salvation, and the business of 
 eternity shall then become your principal occupation. But, alas ! 
 your deception is this, that you regard salvation as incompatible 
 with the occupations attached to the station in which Providence 
 has placed you. For cannot you employ that station as the 
 means of your sanctification ? Can you not exercise in it all the 
 Christian virtues ? Penitence, should these occupations be painful 
 and distressing; clemency, pity, justice, if they establish you 
 in authority over your fellow-creatures ? Submission to the will 
 of Heaven, if the success does not correspond sometimes with your 
 expectations ? A generous forgiveness of injuries, if you suffer 
 oppression or calumny in that station ? Confidence in God alone, 
 if in it you experience the injustice or the inconstancy of your 
 masters ? Do not many individuals of your rank and station, in 
 the same predicament as you find yourselves, lead a pure and 
 Christian life? You know well, that God is to be found every 
 where; for, in those happy moments when you have sometimes 
 been touched with grace, is it not true, that every thing recalled 
 you to God ? That even the dangers of your station became the 
 vehicles of instruction, and means of cure for you ; that the world 
 disgusted you even with the world ; that you found, continually 
 and every where, the secret of offering up a thousand invisible sa- 
 crifices to the Almighty, and of making your most hurried and 
 tumultuous occupations the sources of holy reflections, or of 
 praiseworthy and salutary examples ? Why do you not -cultivate 
 these impressions of grace and salvation ? It is not your situation 
 in life, it is your infidelity and weakness, which have extinguished 
 them in your heart. 
 
 Joseph was charged with the management of a great kingdom ; 
 he alone supported the whole weight of the government ; never- 
 theless, did he forget the Lord, who had broken asunder his chains 
 and justified his innocence ? Or, in order to serve the God of his 
 fathers, did he delay till a successor should come and restore that 
 tranquillity to him which his new dignities had necessarily deprived 
 him of? On the contrary, he knew how to render serviceable, 
 
6 ON SALVATION.. Set*. 1. 
 
 toward the consolation of his brethren, and the happiness of the 
 people of God, a prosperity which he acknowledged to be held 
 only from his Almighty hand. That officer of the Queen of 
 Ethiopia, who is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, had the 
 sole government of her immense riches : every particular with re- 
 gard to tribute and subsidies, and the administration of all the 
 public revenues, were intrusted to his fidelity. Now, this abyss of 
 cares and embarrassments did not deprive him of leisure to seek, 
 in the prophecies of Isaiah, the salvation he expected, and the 
 words of eternal life. Place yourselves in the most agitated sta- 
 tions, you will find examples of upright souls, who in them have 
 wrought their sanctification. The court may become the asylum 
 of virtue, as well as the cloister ; places and employments may be 
 the aids, as well as the rocks of piety; and when, in order to 
 return to God, we delay till a change of station shall take place, it 
 is a convincing proof that we do not as yet wish to change our 
 heart. Besides, when we say that salvation ought to be your sole 
 employment, we do not pretend that you should renounce all other 
 pursuits ; for you would then depart from the order of God : we 
 only wish you to connect them with your salvation ; that piety 
 may sanctify your occupations ; that faith may regulate them ; 
 that religion may animate them ; that the fear of the Lord may 
 moderate them : in a word, that salvation may be as the centre to 
 which they all tend. For, to wait till you shall be in a more 
 tranquil situation, and less involved in worldly perplexities, is not 
 only an illusion which Satan employs to delay your repentance, 
 but it is also an outrage upon the religion of Jesus Christ. You 
 thereby justify the reproaches formerly made against it by the 
 enemies of the Christians ; it would seem that you look upon it 
 as incompatible with the duties of prince, courtier, public charac- 
 ter, and father of a family : like them, you seem to believe, that 
 the gospel proposes only maxims unfortunate and inimical to so- 
 ciety ; and that, were it believed and strictly observed, it would 
 be necessary to quit all ; to exclude ourselves from the world ; to 
 renounce all public concerns ; to break all the ties of duty, of hu- 
 manity, of authority, which unite us to the rest of mankind ; and 
 to live as if we were alone upon the earth : in place of which, it is 
 the gospel alone which makes us fulfil all these duties as they 
 ought to be fulfilled : it is the religion of Jesus Christ which can 
 alone form pious princes, incorruptible magistrates, mild and gen- 
 tle masters, and faithful subjects, and maintain, in a just harmony, 
 that variety of stations and conditions, upon which depend the 
 peace and tranquillity of the people, and the safety of empires. 
 
 But, in order to impress more sensibly upon you the illusion of 
 this pretext, when you shall be free from embarrassment, and 
 disengaged from those external cares which at present detach your 
 thoughts from salvation, will your heart be free from passions? 
 Will those iniquitous and invisible bonds which now stop you, 
 be broken asunder ? Will you be restored to yourselves ? Will 
 you be more humble, more patient, more moderate, more vir- 
 
Ser. 1. ON SALVATION. 7 
 
 tuous, more penitent ? Alas ! it is not external agitations which 
 check you; it is the disorder within; it is the tumultuous ar- 
 dour of the passions. It is not from the cares of fortune, and 
 the embarrassments of events and business, says a holy father, 
 that confusion and trouble proceed; it is from the irregular 
 desires of the soul : a heart in which God reigns, is tranquil 
 every where. Your cares for the world are only incompatible 
 with salvation because the affections which attach you to it are 
 criminal. It is not your stations, but your inclinations, which 
 become rocks of destruction to you. Now, from these inclina- 
 tions you will never be able to free yourselves with the same 
 facility as from your cares and embarrassments ; they will after- 
 wards be even more lively, more unconquerable than ever: be- 
 sides this fund of weakness which they draw from your cor- 
 ruption, they will have that force and strength acquired by 
 habit through time and years. You think, that, in attaining rest, 
 every thing will be accomplished; and you will feel, that your 
 passions, more lively in proportion as they no longer find ex- 
 ternal resources to employ them, will turn all their violence 
 against yourselves; and you will then be surprised to find, in 
 your own hearts, the same obstacles which at present you be- 
 lieve to be only in what surrounds you. This leprosy, if I may 
 venture to speak in this manner, is not attached to your clothes, 
 to your places, to the walls of your palaces, so that, by quit- 
 ting them, you may rid yourselves of it; it has gained root 
 in your flesh. It is not by renouncing your cares, therefore, that 
 you must labour toward curing yourselves ; it is by purifying 
 yourselves that you must sanctify your cares. Every thing is pure 
 to those who are pure, otherwise your wound will follow you, even 
 into the leisure of your solitude; like that king of Judea mentioned 
 in the book of Kings, who in vain abdicated his throne, delivered 
 up all the insignia, as well as the cares of royalty, into the hands 
 of his son, and withdrew himself into the heart of his palace : he 
 carried with him the leprosy with which the Lord had struck him, 
 and beheld that shameful disease pursue him even into his retreat. 
 External cares find neither their innocency nor their malignity, but 
 in our own hearts ; and it is ourselves alone who render the occu- 
 pations of the world dangerous, as it is ourselves alone who render 
 those of heaven insipid and disgusting. 
 
 And behold, my brethren, the last reason why we show so little 
 fervour and animation in the affair of our eternal salvation, is 
 because we fulfil the duties necessary to accomplish it without plea- 
 sure, and, as it were, against our will. The slightest obligations 
 of piety appear hard to us; whatever we do for heaven tires us, ex- 
 hausts us, displeases us: prayer confines our mind too much; re- 
 tirement wearies us; holy reading, from the first, fatigues the at- 
 tention; the intercourse of the upright is languid, and has nothing 
 sprightly or amusing in it; in a word, we find something, I know 
 not what, of melancholy in virtue, which occasions us to fulfil its 
 
8 ON SALVATION. Ser. 1. 
 
 obligations only as hateful debts, which we always discharge with 
 a bad grace, and never till we see ourselves forced to it. 
 
 But, in the first place, my brethren, you are unjust in attri- 
 buting to virtue what springs from your own corruption; it is not 
 piety which is disagreeable, it is your heart which is disordered; 
 it is not the cup of the Lord which is to be accused of bitterness, 
 says a holy father, it is your own taste which is vitiated. 
 Every thing is bitter to a diseased palate: correct your disposi- 
 tions, and the yoke will appear light to you; restore to your 
 heart that taste of which sin has deprived it, and you will expe- 
 rience how pleasing the Lord is : hate the world, and you will com- 
 prehend how much virtue is amiable. In a word, Jesus Christ 
 once become the object of your love, you will then feel the truth 
 of every thing I say. 
 
 Do the upright experience those disgusts for pious works which 
 you feel? Interrogate them : demand if they consider your con- 
 dition as the happiest. They will answer, that, in their opinion, 
 you appear worthy of compassion ; that they are feelingly touched 
 for your errors; to see you suffering every thing for a world which 
 either despises you, wearies you, or cannot render you happy; to 
 see you frequently running after pleasures more insipid to you than 
 even the virtue from which you fly: they will tell you, that they 
 would not change their pretended melancholy for all the felicities 
 of the earth. Prayer consoles them ; retirement supports them ; 
 holy reading animates them; works of piety shed a holy unction 
 through their soul; and their happiest days are those which they 
 pass with the Lord. It is the heart which decides our pleasures. 
 While you continue to love the world, you will find virtue insup- 
 portable. 
 
 In the second place, if you wish to know why the yoke of Jesus 
 Christ is so hard, and so burdensome to you, it is because you 
 carry it too seldom: you give only a few rapid moments to the care 
 of your salvation; certain days which you consecrate to piety; 
 certain religious works of which you sometimes acquit yourselves; 
 and, in accomplishing their immediate discharge, you experience 
 only the disgusts attending the first efforts; you do not leave to 
 grace the time necessary to lighten the weight ; and you anticipate 
 the comforts and the consolations which it never fails to shed 
 upon the sequel. Those mysterious animals which the Philistines 
 made choice of to carry the ark of the Lord beyond their frontiers, 
 emblematic of unbelieving souls little accustomed to bear the yoke 
 of Jesus Christ, bellowed, says the Scripture, and seemed to groan 
 under the grandeur of that sacred weight: in place of which, the 
 children of Levi, a natural image of the upright, accustomed to 
 that holy ministry, made the air resound with songs of mirth and 
 thanksgivings, while carrying it with majesty, even over the burn- 
 ing sands of the desert. The law is not a burden to the upright 
 soul, accustomed to observe it. It is the worldly soul alone, little 
 familiarized to the holy rules, who groans under a weight so pleas- 
 
Ser. 1. ON SALVATION. 9 
 
 ing. When Jesus Christ declares that his yoke is light and easy, 
 he commands us, at the same time, to bear it every day. The 
 unction is attached to the habit and usage of it: the arms of Saul 
 were heavy to David, only because he was not accustomed to them. 
 We must familiarize ourselves with virtue, in order to be ac- 
 quainted with its holy attractions. The pleasures of sinners are 
 only superficially agreeable ; the first moments alone are pleasant; 
 descend deeper, and you no longer find but gall and bitterness; 
 and the deeper you go, the more will you find the void, the weari- 
 ness, and the satiety that are inseparable from sin. Virtue, on 
 the contrary, is a hidden manna: in order to taste all its sweetness, 
 it is necessary to dig for it; but the more you advance, the more 
 do its consolations abound; in proportion as the passions are 
 calmed, the path becomes easy; and the more will you applaud 
 yourselves for having broken asunder chains which weighed you 
 down, and which you no longer bore but with reluctance and 
 secret sorrow. 
 
 Thus, while you confine yourselves to simple essays in virtue, you 
 will taste only the repugnances and the bitterness of it ; and, as 
 you will not possess the fidelity of the upright, you can have no 
 right, consequently, to expect their consolations. 
 
 In a word, you perform the duties of piety without inclination, 
 not only because you do them too seldom, but because you only, 
 as I may say, half perform them. You pray, but it is without 
 recollection; you abstain, perhaps, from injuring your enemy, but 
 it is without loving him as your brother; you approach the holy 
 mysteries, but without bringing there that fervour which alone can 
 enable you to find in them those ineffable comforts which they 
 communicate to the religious soul; you sometimes separate your- 
 selves from the world, but you carry not with you into retirement 
 the silence of the senses and of the passions, without which it is 
 only a melancholy fatigue. In a word, you only half carry the 
 yoke. Now, Jesus Christ, is not divided. That Simon of Cyrene, 
 who bore only a part of the cross, was overcome by it, and the 
 soldiers were under the necessity of using violence to force him to 
 continue this melancholy office to the Saviour of the world. The 
 fulness alone of the law is consolatory; in proportion as you re- 
 trench from it, it becomes heavy and irksome; the more you wish 
 to soften it, the more it weighs you down. On the contrary, by 
 sometimes adding extraneous rigours, you feel the load diminished, 
 as if you had applied additional softness. Whence comes this? 
 It is that the imperfect observance of the law takes its source from 
 a heart which the passions still share. Now, according to the 
 word of Jesus Christ, a heart divided, and which nourishes two 
 loves, must be a kingdom and a theatre full of trouble and 
 desolation. 
 
 Would you wish a natural image of it, drawn from the holy 
 Scriptures ? Rebecca, on the point of her delivery of Jacob and 
 Esau, suffered the most cruel anguish: the two children struggled 
 within her; and, as if worn out by her tortures, she intreated of 
 
10 on salvation. Ser. 1. 
 
 the Lord either death or deliverance. Be not surprised, said a 
 voice from heaven to her, if your sufferings are extreme, and that 
 it costs you so much to become a mother ; the reason is, you carry 
 two nations in your womb. Such is your history, my dear hearers ; 
 you are surprised that it costs you so much to accomplish a pious 
 work; to bring forth Jesus Christ, the new man in your heart. 
 Alas! the reason is, that you still preserve there two loves which 
 are irreconcileable, Jacob and Esau, the love of the world and the 
 love of Jesus Christ; it is because you carry within you two 
 nations, as I may say, who make continual war against each other. 
 If the love of Jesus Christ alone possessed your heart, all there 
 would be calm and peaceable; but you still nourish iniquitous 
 passions in it; you still love the world, the pleasures and dis- 
 tinctions of fortune; you cannot endure those who eclipse you; 
 your heart is full of jealousies, of animosities, of frivolous desires, 
 of criminal attachments; and from thence it comes that your 
 sacrifices, like those of Cain, being always imperfect, like his, are 
 always gloomy and disagreeable. 
 
 Serve, then, the Lord with all your heart, and you will serve 
 him with joy. Give yourself up to him without reserve, without 
 retaining the smallest right over your passions. Observe the 
 righteousnesses of the law, in all their fulness, and they will shed 
 holy pleasures through your heart: for, thus saith the prophet, 
 "The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart." Think 
 not that the tears of penitence are always bitter and gloomy. The 
 mourning is only external; when sincere, they have a thousand 
 secret recompenses. The upright soul resembles the sacred bush ; 
 nothing strikes our view but prickles and thorns, but you see not 
 the glory of the Lord which dwells within it; you see only fastings 
 and bodily sufferings, but you perceive not the holy unction which 
 soothes and softens them; you see silence, retirement, flight from 
 the world and its pleasures, but you behold not the invisible 
 Comforter, who replaces, with so much usury, the society of men, 
 now become insupportable, since they have begun to taste that of 
 God ; you see a life apparently gloomy and tiresome, but you are 
 incapable of seeing the peace and the joy of that innocence which 
 reigns within. It is there that the Father of mercies, and the God 
 of all consolation, so liberally sheds his favours; and that the soul, 
 unable sometimes to support their fulness and excess, is obliged 
 to intreat the Lord to suspend the torrent of his kindness, and to 
 measure the abundance of his gifts by the weakness of his creature. 
 
 Come yourself, rny dear hearer, and make a happy experience 
 of it; come, and put the fidelity of your God to the trial; it is 
 here he wishes to be tried ; come, and prove whether or not we 
 render false testimonies to his mercies; if we attract the sinner by 
 false hopes, and if his gifts are not still more abundant than our 
 promises. You have long tried the world; you have found it 
 destitute of fidelity ; it flattered you with hopes of accomplishing 
 every thing; pleasures, honours, imaginary happiness; it has 
 deceived you; you are unhappy in it; you have never been able 
 
Ser. 1. ON SALVATION. 11 
 
 to attain a situation answerable to your wishes or expectations; 
 come, and see if your God will be more faithful to you; if 
 only bitterness and disgusts are to be found in his service; if 
 he promises more than he bestows ; if he is an ungrateful, change- 
 able, or capricious master ; if his yoke is a cruel servitude, or a 
 sweet liberty; if the duties which he exacts from us are the 
 punishment of his slaves, or the consolation of his children ; and 
 if he deceives those who serve him. My God! how little wouldst 
 thou be worthy of our hearts, wert thou not more amiable, more 
 faithful, and more worthy of being served, than this miserable 
 world! 
 
 But, in order to serve him as he wishes to be served, we must 
 esteem the glory and the happiness of his service; we must prefer 
 this happiness to all others, and labour in it with sincerity, 
 without reserve, and with a ripe and watchful circumspection: for 
 if it is a common fault to want fervour in the business of our 
 eternal salvation, and to become disgusted with it, it is likewise a 
 much more general one to fail of prudence, and to mistake our 
 path toward it. 
 
 Part II. An enterprise, where the dangers are daily, and mis- 
 takes common; where, amongst so many different routes which 
 appear safe, there is, however, only one true and unerring, and the 
 success of which must, nevertheless, decide our eternal destiny; 
 an enterprise of this nature surely requires uncommon exertions ; 
 and never had we occasion, in the conduct of any other, for so 
 much circumspection and prudence. Now, that such is the enter- 
 prise of salvation, it would be needless to waste time in proving 
 here, and equally so for you to doubt. The only object of im- 
 portance, then, to establish, is, the rules and the marks of this 
 prudence which is to guide us in so dangerous and so essential an 
 affair. 
 
 The first rule is, not to determine ourselves by chance amongst 
 that multiplicity of ways which mankind pursue ; carefully to ex- 
 amine all, independent of usages and customs which may authorise 
 them; in the affair of our salvation, to give nothing to opinion or 
 example. The second is, when we have finally determined to leave 
 nothing to the uncertainty of events, and always to prefer safety 
 to danger. 
 
 Such are the common rules of prudence adopted by the children 
 of the age, in the pursuit of their pretensions and their temporal 
 expectations. Eternal salvation is the only affair in which they are 
 neglected. In the first place, no person examines if his ways are 
 sure : nor does he ever require any other pledge of his safety than 
 the crowd which he sees marching before him. Secondly, in the 
 doubts which spring up during our proceedings, the party the 
 most dangerous to salvation, having always self-love in its favour, 
 is always preferred: two important and common errors in the 
 affair of eternal salvation, which it is necessary to combat here. 
 The first rule is, not to determine by chance, and in the affair of 
 
12 ON SALVATION. Ser. 1. 
 
 eternity to give nothing to opinion or example. Indeed, the 
 upright is every where represented to us in the holy writings, as a 
 judicious and prudent man, who calculates, who compares, who 
 examines, who discriminates, who tries whatever may be the most 
 proper, who does not lightly believe every fancy, who carries 
 before him the torch of the law, that his steps may be enlightened, 
 and that he may not be in danger of mistaking his way. The 
 sinner, on the contrary, is there held out as a foolish man, who 
 marches by chance, and who, in the most dangerous passes, 
 advances forward with confidence, as if he was travelling in the 
 straightest and most certain path. 
 
 Now, my brethren, such is the situation of almost all men in 
 the affair of salvation. In every other matter, prudent, atten- 
 tive, diffident, active to discover any errors concealed under the 
 common prejudices, it is in salvation alone that nothing can 
 equal our credulity and imprudence. Yes, my brethren, we tell 
 you every day, that the life of the world, which is to say, that life 
 of amusement, of inutility, of vanity, of show, of effeminacy, ex- 
 empt even from great crimes, that this life, I say, is not a Chris- 
 tian one, and consequently is a life of reprobation and infidelity : 
 it is the doctrine of that religion in which you were born; and since 
 your infancy you have been nourished in these holy truths. The 
 world, on the contrary, affirms this to be the only life which per- 
 sons of a certain rank can lead; that not to conform themselves to 
 it, would betray a barbarity of manners, in which there would be 
 more singularity and meanness than reason or virtue. 
 
 I even consent that it may still be considered as dubious, whe- 
 ther the world or we have reason on our side, and that this grand 
 dispute may not yet be decided ; nevertheless, as a horrible alter- 
 native depends upon it, and that any mistake here is the worst of 
 all evils, it appears that prudence requires us to clear it up at least, 
 before we take the final step. It is surely natural to hesitate 
 between two contending parties, particularly where our salvation is 
 the subject of dispute. Now, I ask you, entering into the world, 
 and adopting its manners, its maxims, and its customs, as you have 
 adopted them, have you begun by examining whether it had reason 
 on its side, and if we were wrong and false deceivers? The world 
 wishes you to aspire to the favours of fortune, and to neglect neither 
 cares, exertions, meannesses, nor artifices, to procure them : you 
 follow these plans ; but have you examined if the gospel does not 
 contradict and forbid them ? The world boasts of luxury, of mag- 
 nificence, of the delicacies of the table; and, in matters of expense, 
 it deems nothing excessive but what may tend to derange the cir- 
 cumstances. Have you informed yourselves, whether the law of 
 God does not prescribe a more holy use of the riches which we 
 hold only from him? The world authorizes continual pleasures, 
 gaming, theatres, and treats with ridicule whoever dares venture 
 even to doubt their innocence. Have you found this decision in 
 the sorrowful and crucifying maxims of Jesus Christ ? 
 
 The world approves of certain suspicious and odious ways of 
 
Ser. 1. ON salvation. 13 
 
 increasing the patrimony of our fathers, and places no other bounds 
 to our desires than those of the laws, which punish violence and 
 manifest injustice. Can you assure us, that the rules of the con- 
 science do not observe more narrowly, and, with regard to these 
 matters, do not enter into discussions which the world is totally 
 unacquainted with ? The world has declared, that a gentle, effemi- 
 nate, and idle life, is an innocent life; and that virtue is not so rigid 
 and austere as we wish to make it. Before giving credit to this, 
 merely upon its assertion, have you consulted whether the doctrine 
 brought us by Jesus Christ from heaven, subscribed to the novelty 
 and to the danger of these maxims ? 
 
 What, my brethren! in the affair of your eternity, without 
 examination or attention, you adopt common prejudices, merely 
 because they are established ? You blindly follow those who march 
 before you, without examining where the path leads to which they 
 keep ? You even deign not to inquire at yourselves whether or 
 not you are deceived? You are satisfied in knowing that you are 
 not the only persons mistaken? What! in the business which 
 must decide your eternal destiny, you do not even make use of 
 your reason? You demand no other pledge of your safety than 
 the general error ? You have no doubt or suspicion? You think 
 it unnecessary to inform yourselves ? You have no mistrust? All 
 is good, and, in your opinion, as it ought to be? You who are so 
 nice, so difficult, so mistrustful, so full of precaution when your 
 worldly interests are in question, in this grand affair alone you 
 conduct yourselves by instinct, by fancy, by foreign impressions ? 
 You decide upon nothing, but indolently allow yourselves to be 
 dragged away by the multitude, and the torrent of example ? You 
 who, in every other matter, would blush to think like the crowd ; 
 you who pique yourselves upon superiority of genius, and upon 
 leaving to the common people, and to weak minds, all vulgar pre- 
 judices; you who carry to a ridiculous extreme, perhaps, your 
 mode of thinking on every other point, upon salvation alone you 
 think with the crowd, and it appears that reason is denied 
 to you on this grand interest alone. What, my brethren! 
 when you are asked, in the steps which you take to ensure 
 success to your worldly expectations, the reasons which have in- 
 duced you to prefer one party to another, you advance such solid 
 and prudent motives ; you justify your choice by prospects so cer- 
 tain and decisive; you appear to have so maturely considered 
 them before adopting their execution; and when we demand of 
 you whence it comes, that in the affair of your eternal salvation 
 you prefer the abuses, the customs, the maxims of the world, to 
 the examples of the saints, who certainly did not live like you, 
 and to the rules of the gospel, which condemn all those who live as 
 you do ; you have nothing to answer but that you are not singular, 
 and that you must live like the rest of the world ? Great God ! to 
 what purpose are great abilities in the conduct of projects which 
 will perish with us ! We have reasons and arguments in support 
 of vanity, and we are children with regard to the truth. We pique 
 
14 ON SALVATION. Ser. 1. 
 
 ourselves on our wisdom in the affairs of the world; and, alas ! in 
 the business of our eternal salvation, we think it no disgrace to be 
 ignorant and foolish. 
 
 You will tell us, perhaps, that you are neither wiser, nor more 
 able than all the others who live like you; that you cannot 
 enter into discussions which are beyond your reach; that, 
 were we to be believed, it would be necessary to cavil at and 
 dispute every thing ; and that piety does not consist in refining 
 to such an extreme. But I ask you, Is so much subtlety required 
 to know that the world is a deceitful guide; that its maxims 
 are rejected in the school of Jesus Christ; and that its customs 
 can never subvert the law of God? Is not this the most simple 
 and the most common rule of the gospel, and the first truth in the 
 plan of salvation ? To know our duty, it requires only to walk in 
 simplicity of heart. Subtleties are only necessary in order to dis- 
 semble with ourselves, and to connect, if possible, the passions 
 with the holy rules ; there it is that the human mind has occasion 
 for all its industry, for the task is difficult. Such is exactly your 
 case ; you who pretend, that to recall customs to the law is a 
 ridiculous refinement. To know our duty, it only requires a con- 
 ference with ourselves. While Saul continued faithful, he had no 
 occasion to consult the sorceress with regard to what he should do ; 
 the law of God sufficiently instructed him. It was only after his 
 guilt, that, in order to calm the inquietudes of a troubled con- 
 science, and to connect his criminal weaknesses with the law of 
 God, he bethought himself of seeking, in the answers of a deceit- 
 ful oracle, some authority favourable to his passions. Love the 
 truth, and you will soon acquire a knowledge of it. A clear con- 
 science is the best of all instructors. 
 
 Not that I wish to blame those sincere researches which an 
 honest and timid soul makes to enlighten and instruct itself; I 
 wish only to say, that the majority of doubts with regard to our 
 duties, in those hearts delivered up like you to the world, springs 
 from a ruling principle of cupidity, which, on the one side, would 
 wish not to interfere with its infamous passions; and, on the other, 
 have the authority of the law to protect it from the remorses 
 which attend a manifest transgression. For, besides, if you seek 
 the Lord in sincerity, and your lights are insufficient, there are 
 still prophets in Israel; consult, in proper time, those who preserve 
 the form of the law, and of the holy doctrine, and who teach the 
 way of God in truth. Do not propose your doubts with those 
 colourings and softenings which always fix the decision in your 
 favour; do not apply in order to be deceived, but to be instructed; 
 seek not favourable, but sure and enlightened guides; do not con- 
 tent yourselves even with the testimony of men; consult the Lord 
 frequently, and through different channels. The voice of Heaven 
 is uniform, because the voice of truth, of which it is the interpreter, 
 is the same. If the testimonies do not accord, prefer always what 
 places you farthest from danger; always mistrust the opinion 
 which pleases, and which already had the suffrage of your self- 
 
Ser. 1. ON SALVATION. 15 
 
 love. It rarely happens that the decisions of our inclinations are 
 found the same with those of the holy rules; nevertheless, it is 
 that which decides on all our preferences in the business of salva- 
 tion. Second step of our imprudence in the affair of our eternal 
 salvation. In effect, there is scarcely a doubt with regard to our 
 duties, which conceals from us the precise obligation of the law on 
 every step. We know the paths by which Jesus Christ and the 
 saints have passed; they are still pointed out to us every day; we 
 are invited by the success which they have had, to walk in their 
 steps. In this manner, say they to us, with the apostles, did those 
 men of God who have preceded us, overcome the world, and obtain 
 the performance of the promises. We see, that, by imitating them, 
 we may hope for all, and, in the way in which we walk, that every 
 thing is to be dreaded. Ought we to hesitate on this alternative ? 
 Nevertheless, in every thing we resist our own lights; every where 
 we prefer danger to safety; our whole life is, indeed, one con- 
 tinued danger: in all our actions we float, not between the more 
 or less perfect, but between guilt and simple errors. Every time 
 we act, the question is not to know whether we are doing the 
 greatest good, but if we are committing only a slight fault, worthy 
 of indulgence. All our duties are limited to the inquiry at our- 
 selves, if possessing such principles; if, to a certain degree, deli- 
 vering ourselves up to resentment; if employing a certain degree 
 of duplicity; \f not denying ourselves a certain gratification, be a 
 crime, or a venal fault; you always hang between these two des- 
 tinies; and your conscience can never render you the testimony, 
 that on any occasion you made choice of the part in which there 
 was no danger. 
 
 Thus, you know, that a life of pleasure, of gaming, of show, 
 of amusement, when even nothing gross or criminal is mingled 
 with it, is a part very doubtful for eternity; no saint, at least, 
 has left you such an example. You are sensible, that more guarded 
 and more Christian manners would leave you nothing similar to 
 dread: nevertheless, you love an accommodating doubt better 
 than an irksome safety ; you know that grace has moments which 
 never return; that nothing is more uncertain than the return of 
 holy impulses, once rejected; that salvation deferred, almost 
 always fails ; and that to begin to-day is prudently assuring our- 
 selves of success: you know it: yet you prefer the uncertain hope 
 of a grace to come, to the present salvation which offers itself to 
 you. Now, my brethren, I only demand of you two reflections, 
 and I shall finish. In the first place, when, even in this path 
 which you tread, the balance were equal, that is to say, when it 
 were equally suspicious whether you are to be saved or lost, did 
 the smallest portion of faith remain to you, you would be plunged 
 in the most cruel alarms; it ought to appear horrible to you that 
 your eternal salvation was become a problem, upon which you 
 knew not what to decide, and upon which, with equal appearances 
 of truth, you might determine for the happiness or the misery of 
 your everlasting lot, in the same manner as upon those indifFer- 
 
16 on salvation. Ser. 1. 
 
 ent questions which God has yielded up to the controversies of 
 men. You ought to undertake every thing, and to employ every 
 exertion, to place appearances, at least, in your favour, and to find 
 out a situation where prejudices would be on your side: and here, 
 where every thing concludes against you, where the law is un- 
 favourable, where you have nothing in your favour but some 
 fallacious appearances of reason, upon which you would not hazard 
 the smallest of your temporal interests, and with manners, which 
 to this period have saved none, and in which you only strengthen 
 and comfort yourselves by the example of those who perish with 
 you, you are tranquil in this path; you admit of and acknowledge 
 the wisdom of those who have chosen a more certain one: you say- 
 that they are praiseworthy; that they are happy who can assume 
 such a command over themselves; that it is much safer to live as 
 they do; you say this, and you think it needless to imitate or 
 follow their example! Madman! cries the apostle, what delu- 
 sion is it which blinds thee? and wherefore dost thou not obey 
 that truth which thou knowest ? Ah ! my brethren, in a choice 
 which interests our glory, our advancement, our temporal interests, 
 are ]we capable of such imprudence ? Of all the various ways 
 which present themselves to ambition, do we leave those where 
 every appearance seems favourable to our success, and make choice 
 of such as lead to nothing; where fortune is tardy and doubtful; 
 and which have hitherto been only productive of misfortune ? Of 
 salvation alone, therefore, we make a kind of speculation, if I may 
 venture to speak in this manner; that is to say, an undertaking 
 without arrangement, without precaution, which we abandon to 
 the uncertainty of events, and of which the success can alone be ex- 
 pected from chance, and not from our exertions. In a word, as my 
 last reflection, allow me to ask, Why you search for, and allege to 
 us so many specious reasons, as a justification to yourselves of the 
 manners in which you live? Either you wish to be saved, or you 
 are determined to be lost. Do you wish to be saved? Choose, 
 then, the most proper means of attaining what you aspire to. Quit 
 those doubtful paths, by which, none have hitherto been conducted 
 to it; confine yourselves to that which Jesus Christ has pointed 
 out to us, and which alone can safely lead us to it. Do not apply 
 yourselves to lessen in your own sight the danger of your situation, 
 and to view them in the most favourable light, in order to dread 
 them less; rather magnify the danger to your mind: we cannot 
 dread too much what we cannot shun too much : and salvation is 
 the only concern where precaution can never be excessive, because 
 a mistake in it is without remedy. See if those who once followed 
 the same deceitful paths in which you tread, and who employed 
 the same reasons that you make use of for their justification, have 
 confined themselves to them from the moment that grace had 
 operated in their hearts serious and sincere desires of salvation : 
 they regarded the dangers in which you live as incompatible with 
 their design: they sought more solid and certain paths ; they made 
 the holy safety of retirement succeed to the inutility and the 
 
Ser. 1. ON salvation. 17 
 
 dangers of society; the habit of prayer to the dissipation of gaming 
 and amusements: the guard of the senses to the indecency of dress, 
 and the danger of public spectacles ; Christian mortification to the 
 softness of an effeminate and sensual life; the gospel to the world: 
 they considered that it would be absurd to wish their salvation 
 through the same means by which others are lost. But, if you are 
 determined to perish, alas ! why will you still preserve measures 
 with religion ? Why will you always seek to place some specious 
 reasons on your side, to conciliate your manners with the gospel, 
 and to preserve, as I may say, appearances still with Jesus Christ? 
 Why are you only half-sinners, and still leave to your grossest 
 passions the useless check of the law? Cast off the remains of 
 that yoke which is irksome to you ; and which, in lessening your 
 pleasures, lessens not your punishment. W T hy do you accomplish 
 your perdition with so much constraint? In place of those scru- 
 ples, which permit you only doubtful gains, and deny you still 
 certain low, and manifestly wicked profits, but which place you in 
 the number of those reprobates who shall never possess the king- 
 dom of God; overleap these bounds, and no longer place any 
 limits to your guilt, but those of your cupidity: in place of those 
 loose and worldly manners, which will equally prove your ruin, 
 refuse nothing to your passions, and, like the beasts of the earth, 
 yield to the gratification of every desire. Yes, sinners, perish with 
 all the fruits of iniquity, seeing you will equally reap tears and 
 eternal punishment. 
 
 But, no, my dear hearer, we only give you these counsels of 
 despair, in order to inspire you with a just horror at them: it is 
 a tender artifice of zeal, which only assumes the appearance of ex- 
 horting you to destruction, that you may not consent yourselves. 
 Alas ! follow rather those remains of light, which still point out 
 the truth to you at a distance. It is not without reason that the 
 Lord hath hitherto preserved within you these seeds of salvation, 
 and has not permitted all, even to the principles, to be blotted out; 
 it is a claim which he still preserves to your heart: take care only, 
 that you found not upon this, the vain hope of a future conversion: 
 we are not permitted to hope till we have begun to labour. Begin, 
 then, the grand work of your eternal salvation, for which alone the 
 Almighty has placed you upon the earth; and on which you have 
 never as yet bestowed even a thought. Esteem so important a care; 
 prefer it to all others ; find your only pleasures in applying to it ; 
 examine the surest and most proper means to succeed, and fix 
 upon them, whatever they cost, from the moment you have found 
 them out. 
 
 Such is the prudence of the gospel, so often recommended by 
 Jesus Christ; beyond that, all is vanity and error. You may pos- 
 sess a superior mind, capable of every exertion, and rare and 
 shining talents ; if you err with regard to your eternal salvation, 
 you are a child. Solomon, so esteemed in the East for his wisdom, 
 is a madman, whose folly we can now with difficulty comprehend. 
 All worldly reason is but a mockery, a dazzling of the senses, if it 
 
18 ON THE SMALL NUMBER Ser. 2. 
 
 mistakes the decisive points of eternity. There is nothing impor- 
 tant in life but this single object; all the rest is a dream, in which 
 any mistake is of little consequence. Trust not yourselves, there- 
 fore, to the multitude, which is the party of those who err; take 
 not as guides men who can never be your sureties; leave nothing 
 to chance, or to the uncertainty of events; it is the height of folly 
 where eternity is concerned : remember that there is an infinity of 
 paths, which appear right to men, yet, nevertheless, conduct to 
 death; that almost all who perish do it in the belief that they are 
 in the way of salvation: and that all reprobates, at the last day, 
 when they shall hear their sentence pronounced, will be surprised, 
 says the gospel, at their condemnation; because they all expected 
 the inheritance of the just. It is thus, that, after having waited 
 for it in this life, according to the rules of faith, you will for ever 
 enjoy it in heaven. Now to God, &c. 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 ON THE SMALL NUMBER OF THE SAVED. 
 
 " And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them 
 was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian." Luke iv. 27. 
 
 Every day, my brethren, you continue to demand of us, if the 
 road to heaven is really so difficult, and the number of the saved 
 is indeed so small, as we say ? To a question so often proposed, and 
 still oftener resolved, our Saviour answers you at present, that there 
 were many widows in Israel afflicted with famine ; but the widow 
 of Sarepta was alone found worthy the succour of the prophet 
 Elias: that the number of lepers was great in Israel in the time of 
 the prophet Eliseus; and that Naaman was only cured by the 
 man of God. 
 
 Were I here, my brethren, for the purpose of alarming, rather 
 than instructing you, I needed only to recapitulate what in the 
 holy writings we find dreadful with regard to this great truth; and 
 running over the history of the just, from age to age, to show you, 
 that, in all times, the number of the saved has been very small. 
 The family of Noah alone saved from the general flood; Abraham 
 chosen from amongst men to be the sole depositary of the covenant 
 with God; Joshua and Caleb the only two of six hundred thousand 
 Hebrews who saw the Land of Promise ; Job the only upright man 
 in the Land of Uz, Lot, in Sodom. To representations so alarm- 
 ing would have succeeded the sayings of the prophets. In Isaiah 
 you would see the elect as rare as the grapes which are found after 
 the vintage, and have escaped the search of the gatherer ; as rare 
 as the blades which remain by chance in the field, and have escaped 
 the scythe of the mower. The Evangelist would still have added 
 
Ser. 2. of the saved. 19 
 
 new traits to the terrors of these images. I might have spoken to 
 you of two roads, of which one is narrow, rugged, and the path 
 of a very small number; the other broad, open, and strewed with 
 flowers, and almost the general path of men : that every where, in 
 the holy writings, the multitude is always spoken of as forming 
 the party of the reprobate; while the saved, compared with the 
 rest of mankind, form only a small flock, scarcely perceptible to 
 the sight. I would have left you in fears with regard to your sal- 
 vation; always cruel to those who have not renounced faith and 
 every hope of being amongst the saved. But what would it serve 
 to limit the fruits of this instruction to the single point of proving 
 how few persons are saved ? Alas ! I would make the danger 
 known, without instructing you how to avoid it ; I would show you, 
 with the prophet, the sword of the wrath of God suspended over 
 your heads, without assisting you to escape the threatened blow; I 
 would alarm the conscience without instructing the sinner. 
 
 My intention is therefore to-day, in our morals and manner of 
 life, to search for the cause of this number being so small. As 
 every one flatters himself he will not be excluded, it is of import- 
 ance to examine if his confidence be well founded. I wish not, in 
 marking to you the causes which render salvation so rare, to make 
 you generally conclude, that few will be saved; but to bring you 
 to ask of yourselves, if, living as you live, can you hope to be so. 
 Who am I ? What is it I do for heaven; and what can be my 
 hopes in eternity? I propose no other order, in a matter of such 
 importance. What are the causes which render salvation so rare ? I 
 mean to point out three principal ones, which is the only arrange- 
 ment of this discourse. Art and far-sought reasonings would here 
 be ill-timed. O attend, therefore, be whom you may! No subject 
 can be more worthy your attention, since it goes to inform you 
 what may be the hopes of your eternal destiny. 
 
 Part I. Few are saved; because in that number we can 
 only comprehend two descriptions of persons ; either those who 
 have been so happy as to preserve their innocence pure and 
 undefiled; or those who, after having lost, have regained it by 
 penitence: first cause. There are only these two ways of salva- 
 tion; and heaven is only open to the innocent or the penitent. 
 Now, of which party are you? Are you innocent? Are you 
 penitent? 
 
 Nothing unclean shall enter the kingdom of God. We must 
 consequently carry there, either an innocence unsullied, or an in- 
 nocence regained. Now, to die innocent, is a grace to which few 
 souls can aspire ; and to live penitent, is a mercy, which the re- 
 laxed state of our morals renders equally rare. Who indeed will 
 pretend to salvation, by the claim of innocence ? Where are the 
 pure souls in whom sin has never dwelt ; and who have preserved 
 to the end the sacred treasure of grace confided to them by bap- 
 tism, and which our Saviour will re-demand at the awful day of 
 punishment? 
 
 c 2 
 
20 ON THE SMALL NUMBER Ser. 2. 
 
 In those happy days, when the whole church was still but an 
 assembly of saints, it was very uncommon to find an instance of a 
 believer, who, after having received the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and 
 acknowledged Jesus Christ in the sacrament, which regenerates us, 
 fell back to his former irregularities of life. Ananias and Sapphira 
 were the only prevaricators in the church of Jerusalem; that of 
 Corinth had only one incestuous sinner. Church-penitence was 
 then a remedy almost unknown; and scarcely was there found 
 among these true Israelites one single leper, whom they were 
 obliged to drive from the holy altar, and separate from communion 
 with his brethren. But, since that time, the number of the upright 
 diminishes, in proportion as that of believers increases. It would 
 appear, that the world, pretending now to have become almost 
 generally Christian, has brought with it into the church its corrup- 
 tions and its maxims. Alas ! we all go astray, almost from the 
 breast of our mothers ! The first use which we make of our heart 
 is a crime ; our first desires are passions ; and our reason only ex- 
 pands and increases on the wrecks of our innocence. The earth, 
 says a prophet, is infected by the corruption of those w T ho inhabit 
 it: all have violated the laws, changed the ordinances, and broken 
 the alliance which should have endured for ever : all commit sin ; 
 and scarcely is there one to be found who does the work of the 
 Lord. Injustice, calumny, lying, treachery, adultery, and the 
 blackest crimes have deluged the earth. The brother lays snares 
 for his brother; the father is divided from his children ; the hus- 
 band from his wife : there is no tie which a vile interest does not 
 dissolve. Good faith and probity are no longer virtues but among 
 the simple people ; animosities are endless ; reconciliations feints ; 
 and never is a former enemy regarded as a brother : they tear, they 
 devour each other. Assemblies are no longer but for the purpose 
 of public and general censure. The purest virtue is no longer a 
 protection from the malignity of tongues. Gaming is become either 
 a trade, a fraud, or a fury. Repasts, those innocent ties of society, 
 degenerate into excesses, of which we dare not speak. Our age 
 witnesses horrors, with which our forefathers were unacquainted. 
 Behold, then, already one path of salvation shut to the generality 
 of men. All have erred. Be whom you may, who listen to me at 
 present, the time has been, when sin reigned over you. Age may 
 perhaps have calmed your passions; but what was your youth? 
 Long and habitual infirmities may perhaps have disgusted you with 
 the world; but what use did you formerly make of the vigour of 
 health? A sudden inspiration of grace may have turned your 
 heart; but do you not most fervently entreat, that every moment 
 prior to that inspiration may be effaced from the remembrance of 
 the Lord ? 
 
 But with what am I taking up my time? We are all sinners, O 
 my God! and thou knowest our hearts. What we know of our 
 errors, is perhaps in thy sight the most pardonable; and we all 
 allow, that by innocence we have no claim to salvation. There re- 
 mains, therefore, only one resource, which is penitence. After our 
 
Ser. 2. of the saved. 21 
 
 shipwreck, say the saints, it is the happy plank which alone can 
 conduct us into port ; there is no other mean of salvation for us. 
 Be whom you may, prince or subject, great or low, penitence alone 
 can save you. Now, permit me to ask, Where are the penitent ? 
 You will find more, says a holy father, who have never fallen, than 
 who, after their fall, have raised themselves by true repentance. 
 This is a terrible saying; but do not let us carry things too far: the 
 truth is sufficiently dreadful, without adding new terrors to it by 
 vain declamation. 
 
 Let us only examine if the majority of us have a right, through 
 penitence, to salvation. What is a penitent? According to Ter- 
 tullian, a penitent is a believer, who feels every moment the unhap- 
 piness which he formerly had, to forget and lose his God: who has 
 his guilt incessantly before his eyes; who finds every where the 
 traces and remembrance of it. 
 
 A penitent is a man, intrusted by God with judgment against 
 himself; who refuses himself the most innocent pleasures, because 
 he had formerly indulged in the most criminal ; who puts up with 
 the most necessary ones with pain ; who now regards his body as 
 an enemy, whom it is necessary to conquer, as an unclean vessel 
 which must be purified, as an unfaithful debtor, of whom it is 
 proper to exact to the last farthing. A penitent regards himself as a 
 criminal condemned to death, because he no longer is worthy of 
 life. In the loss of riches or health, he sees only a privation of 
 favours that he had formerly abused; in the humiliations which 
 happen to him, but the pains of his guilt ; in the agonies with 
 which he is racked, but the commencement of those punishments 
 he has justly merited : such is a penitent. But I again ask you, 
 Where amongst us are penitents of this description? Now, 
 look around you. I do not tell you to judge your brethren, but to 
 examine what are the maimers and morals of those who surround 
 you; nor do I speak of those open and avowed sinners, who have 
 thrown off even the ajDpearance of virtue ; I speak only of those who, 
 like yourselves, live like the generality, and whose actions pre- 
 sent nothing to the public view particularly shameful or depraved. 
 They are sinners, and they admit of it : you are not innocent, and 
 you confess it yourselves. Now, are they penitent; or are you ? 
 Age, avocations, more serious employments, may perhaps have 
 checked the sallies of youth : even the bitterness which the Al- 
 mighty has made attendant on our passions : the deceits, the 
 treacheries of the world; an injured fortune, with ruined consti- 
 tution, may have cooled the ardour, and confined the irregular 
 desires of your heart: crimes may have disgusted you even with 
 crimes; for passions gradually extinguish themselves. Time, and 
 the natural inconstancy of the heart, will bring these about; yet 
 nevertheless, though detached from sin by incapability, you are no 
 nearer your God. According to the world you are become more 
 prudent, more regular, more what it calls men of probity ; more 
 exact in fulfilling your public or private duties; but you are not 
 penitent. You have ceased from your disorders, but you have not 
 
22 ON THE SMALL NUMBER Ser. 2. 
 
 expiated them: you are not converted; this great stroke, this grand 
 change of the heart, which regenerates man, has not yet been felt 
 by you. Nevertheless, this situation, so truly dangerous, does not 
 alarm you: sins, which have never been washed away by sincere 
 repentance, and consequently never obliterated from the book of 
 life, appear in your eyes as no longer existing; and you will 
 tranquilly leave this world in a state of impenitence, so much the 
 more dangerous, as you will die without being sensible of your 
 danger. What I say here, is not merely a rash expression, or 
 an emotion of zeal; nothing is more real, or more exactly true: 
 it is the situation of almost all men, even the wisest and most 
 esteemed of the world. 
 
 The morality of the younger stages in life is always lax, if not 
 licentious. Age, disgust, and establishment for life, fix the heart, 
 and withdraw it from debauchery : but where are those who are 
 converted ? Where are those who expiate their crimes by tears of 
 sorrow and true repentance ? Where are those who, having begun 
 as sinners, end as penitents ? Show me, in your manner of living, 
 the smallest trace of penitence. Are your graspings at wealth and 
 power, your anxieties to attain the favour of the great, (and by 
 these means an increase of employments and influence,) are these 
 proofs of it? Would you wish to reckon even your crimes as 
 virtues ? that the sufferings of your ambition, pride, and avarice, 
 should discharge you from an obligation which they themselves 
 have imposed ? You are penitent to the world, but are you so to 
 Jesus Christ? The infirmities with which God afflicts you; the 
 enemies he raised up against you ; the disgraces and losses with 
 which he tries you ; do you receive them all as you ought, with 
 humble submission to his will, and, far from finding in them occasions 
 of penitence, do you not turn them into the objects of new crimes? 
 It is the duty of an innocent soul to receive with submission the 
 chastisements of the Almighty; to discharge, with courage, the 
 painful duties of the station allotted to him, and to be faithful to 
 the laws of the gospel ; but do sinners owe nothing beyond this ? 
 And yet they pretend to salvation; but upon what claim ? To say 
 that you are innocent before God, your own conscience will bear 
 testimony against you. To endeavour to persuade yourselves that 
 you are penitent, you dare not; and you would condemn yourselves 
 through your own mouths. Upon what, then, dost thou depend, 
 O, man ! who thus livest so tranquil ? 
 
 And what renders it still more dreadful is, that, acting in this 
 manner, you only follow the torrent : your morals are the morals 
 of almost all men. You may, perhaps, be acquainted with some 
 still more guilty (for I suppose you to have still remaining some 
 sentiments of religion, and regard for your salvation) ; but do you 
 know any real penitents ? I am afraid we must search the deserts 
 and solitudes for them. You can scarcely particularize, among 
 persons of rank and usage of the world, a small number whose 
 morals and mode of life, more austere and more guarded than the 
 generality, attract the attention, and very likely the censure of the 
 
Ser. 2. of the saved. 23 
 
 public : all the rest walk in the same path. I see clearly that every 
 one comforts himself by the example of his neighbour : that, in 
 that point, children succeed to the false security of their fathers ; 
 that none live innocent; that none die penitent : I see it, and I 
 cry, O God I if thou have not deceived us; if all thou hast told us 
 with regard to the road to eternal life, shall be fulfilled to the point; 
 if the number of those who must perish shall not influence thee 
 to abate from the severity of thy laws, what will become of that 
 immense multitude of creatures which every hour disappears from 
 the face of the earth? Where are our friends, our relations, 
 who have gone before us, and what is their lot in the eternal re- 
 gions of death ? What shall we ourselves be one day ? When for- 
 merly a prophet complained to the Lord, that all Israel had forsaken 
 his protection, he replied, that seven thousand still remained who 
 had not bowed the knee to Baal : behold the number of pure and 
 faithful souls which a whole kingdom then contained! But couldst 
 thou still, O my God ! comfort the anguish of thy servants to-day 
 by the same assurance ? I know that thine eye discerns still some 
 upright amongst us; that the priesthood has still its Phineases; the 
 magistracy its Samuels; the sword its Joshuas; the court its 
 Daniels, its Esthers, and its Davids : for the world only exists for 
 thy chosen, and all would perish were the number accomplished. 
 But those happy remains of the children of Israel who shall inherit 
 salvation, what are they, compared to the grains of sand in the sea ; 
 I mean, to that number of sinners who combat for their own de- 
 struction ? You come after this, my brethren, to inquire if it be 
 true, that few shall be saved ? Thou hast said it, O my God ! and 
 consequently it is a truth which shall endure for ever. 
 
 But, even admitting} that the Almighty had not spoken thus, 
 I would wish, in the second place, to review, for an instant, what 
 passes among men: the laws by which they are governed; the 
 maxims by which the multitude is regulated : this is the second 
 cause of the paucity of the saved ; and, properly speaking, is only 
 a development of the first, the force of habit and customs. 
 
 Part II. Few people are saved, because the maxims most 
 universally received in all countries, and upon which depend, in 
 general, the morals of the multitude, are incompatible with salva- 
 tion. The rules laid down, approved, and authorized by the world, 
 with regard to the application of wealth, the love of glory, Christian 
 moderation, and the duties of offices and conditions, are diametri- 
 cally opposite to those of the evangelists, and consequently can lead 
 only to death. I shall not, at present, enter into a detail too ex- 
 tended for a discourse, and too little serious, perhaps, for Christians. 
 
 I need not tell you, that this is an established custom in the 
 world, to allow the liberty of proportioning expenses to rank and 
 wealth ; and, provided it is a patrimony we inherit from our ances- 
 tors, we may distinguish ourselves by the use of it, without re- 
 straint to our luxury, or without regard, in our profusion, to any 
 thing but our pride and caprice. 
 
24 ON THE SMALL NUMBER Ser. 2. 
 
 But Christian moderation has its rules. We are not the absolute 
 masters of our riches ; nor are we entitled to abuse what the Al- 
 mighty has bestowed upon us for better purposes. Above all, 
 while thousands of unfortunate wretches languish in poverty, 
 whatever we make use of beyond the wants and necessary expenses 
 of our station, is an inhumanity to, and a theft from, the poor. 
 These are refinements of devotion, say they ; and, in matters of 
 expense and profusion, nothing is excessive or blameable, according 
 to the world, but what may tend to derange the fortune. I need 
 not tell you, that it is an approved custom, to decide our lots, and 
 to regulate our choice of professions or situations in life, by the 
 order of our birth, or the interests of fortune. But, O my God ! 
 does the ministry of thy gospel derive its source from the worldly 
 considerations of a carnal birth ? We cannot establish all, says the 
 world, and it would be melancholy to see persons of rank and 
 birth in avocations unworthy of their dignity. If born to a name 
 distinguished in the world, you must get forward by dint of intrigue, 
 meanness, and expense. Make fortune your idol. That ambition, 
 however much condemned by the laws of the gospel, is only a 
 sentiment worthy your name and birth. 
 
 You are of a sex and rank which introduce you to the gaieties 
 of the world : you cannot but do as others do ; you must frequent 
 all the public places, where those of your age and rank assemble ; 
 enter into the same pleasures ; pass your days in the same frivoli- 
 ties ; and expose yourself to the same dangers : these are the 
 received maxims, and you are not made to reform them. Such is 
 the doctrine of the world. 
 
 Now, permit me to ask you here, who confirms you in these 
 ways ? By what rule are they justified to your mind ? Who au- 
 thorizes you in this dissipation, which is neither agreeable to the 
 title you have received by baptism, nor perhaps to those you hold 
 from your ancestors? Who authorizes those public pleasures, 
 which you only think innocent, because your soul, already too 
 familiarized with sin, feels no longer the dangerous impressions or 
 tendency of them ? Who authorizes you to lead an effeminate and 
 sensual life, without virtue, sufferance, or any religious exercise ? 
 to live like a stranger in the midst of your own family, disdaining 
 to inform yourself with regard to the morals of those dependent 
 upon you ? through an affected state, to be ignorant whether they 
 believe in the same God ; whether they fulfil the duties of the reli- 
 gion you profess ? Who authorizes you in maxims so little Chris- 
 tian ? Is it the gospel of Jesus Christ ? Is it the doctrine of the 
 apostles and saints ? For surely some rule is necessary to assure 
 us that we are in safety. What is yours ? Custom : that is the 
 only reply you can make. We see none around us, but what con- 
 duct themselves in the same way, and by the same rule. Entering 
 into the world, we find the manners already established : our fathers 
 lived thus, and from them we copy our customs : the wisest con- 
 form to them : an individual cannot be wiser than the whole world, 
 and must not pretend to make himself singular, by acting contrary 
 
Ser. 2. of the saved. 25 
 
 to the general voice. Such, my brethren, are your only comforters 
 against all the terrors of religion. None act up to the law. The 
 public example is the only guarantee of our morals. We never 
 reflect, that, as the Holy Spirit says, the laws of the people are 
 vain : that our Saviour has left us rules, in which neither times, 
 ages, nor customs, can ever authorize the smallest change : that 
 the heavens and the earth shall pass away; that customs and 
 manners shall change ; but that the divine laws will everlastingly 
 be the same. 
 
 We content ourselves with looking around us. We do not 
 reflect, that what, at present, we call custom, would, in former 
 times, before the morals of Christians became degenerated, have 
 been regarded as monstrous singularities ; and, if corruption has 
 gained since that period, these vices, though they have lost their 
 singularity, have not lost their guilt. We do not reflect, that we 
 shall be judged by the gospel, and not by custom ; by the exam- 
 ples of the holy, and not by men's opinions ; that the habits, 
 which are only established among believers by the relaxation of 
 faith, are abuses we are to lament, not examples we are to follow ; 
 that, in changing the manners, they have not changed our duties ; 
 that the common and general example which authorizes them, 
 only proves that virtue is rare, but not that profligacy is permitted ; 
 in a word, that piety and a real Christian life are too unpalatable 
 to our depraved nature ever to be practised by the majority of men. 
 Come now, and say, that you only do as others do. It is exactly 
 by that you condemn yourselves. What! the most terrible cer- 
 tainty of your condemnation shall become the only motive for your 
 confidence ! Which, according to the Scriptures, is the road that 
 conducts to death ? Is it not that which the majority pursues ? 
 Which is the party of the reprobate ? Is it not the multitude ? 
 You do nothing but what others do. But thus, in the time of 
 Noah, perished all who were buried under the waters of the deluge : 
 all who, in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, prostrated themselves 
 before the golden calf: all who, in the time of Elijah, bowed the 
 knee to Baal : all who, in the time of Eleazer, abandoned the law 
 of their fathers. You only do what others do ; but that is exactly 
 what the Scriptures forbid : Do not, say they, conform yourselves 
 to this corrupted age. Now, the corrupted age means not the 
 small number of the just, whom you endeavour not to imitate ; it 
 means the multitude whom you follow. You only do what others 
 do : you will consequently experience the same lot. Now, u Misery 
 to thee," (cried formerly St. Augustine,) " fatal torrent of human 
 customs ; wilt thou never suspend thy course ? To the end wilt 
 thou drag in the children of Adam to thine immense and terrible 
 abyss ?" 
 
 In place of saying to ourselves, K What are my hopes ? In the 
 church of Jesus Christ there are two roads ; one broad and open, 
 by which almost the whole world passes, and which leads to death ; 
 the other narrow, where few indeed enter, and which conducts to 
 life eternal ; in which of these am I ? Are my morals the usual 
 
26 ON THE SMALL NUMBER Sei*. 2. 
 
 ones of persons of my rank, age, and situation in life ? Am I with 
 the great number ? Then I am not in the right path. I am losing 
 myself. The great number in every station is not the party saved." 
 Far from reasoning in this manner, we say to ourselves, " I am 
 not in a worse state than others. Those of my rank and age live 
 as I do: why should I not live like them?" Why, my dear 
 hearers ? For that very reason : the general mode of living cannot 
 be that of a Christian life. In all ages, the holy have been re- 
 markable and singular men. Their manners were always different 
 from those of the world ; and they have only been saints, because 
 their lives had no similarity to those of the rest of mankind. In 
 the time of Esdras, in spite of the defence against it, the custom 
 prevailed of intermarrying with stranger women : this abuse be- 
 came general: the priests and the people no longer made any 
 scruple of it. But what did this holy restorer of the law : did he 
 follow the example of his brethren ? Did he believe, that guilt, 
 in becoming general, became more legitimate ? No : he recalled 
 the people to a sense of the abuse. He took the book of the law 
 in his hand, and explained it to the affrighted people, corrected 
 the custom by the truth. Follow, from age to age, the history of 
 the just ; and see if Lot conformed himself to the habits of Sodom, 
 or if nothing distinguished him from the other inhabitants; if 
 Abraham lived like the rest of his age ; if Job resembled the other 
 princes of his nation ; if Esther conducted herself, in the court of 
 Ahasuerus, like the other women of that prince ; if many widows 
 in Israel resembled Judith ; if, among the children of the captivity, 
 it is not said of Tobias alone that he copied not the conduct of 
 his brethren, and that he even fled from the danger of their com- 
 merce and society. See, if in those happy ages, when Christians 
 were all saints, they did not shine like stars in the midst of the 
 corrupted nations ; and if they served not as a spectacle to angels 
 and men, by the singularity of their lives and manners: if the 
 pagans did not reproach them for their retirement, and shunning 
 of all public theatres, places, and pleasures : if they did not com- 
 plain that the Christians affected to distinguish themselves in every 
 thing from their fellow-citizens ; to form a separate people in the 
 midst of the people ; to have their particular laws and customs ; 
 and if a man from their side embraced the party of the Christians, 
 they did not consider him as for ever lost to their pleasures, assem- 
 blies, and customs : in a word, see, if in all ages the saints whose 
 lives and actions have been transmitted down to us, have resem- 
 bled the rest of mankind. 
 
 You will perhaps tell us, that all these are singularities and ex- 
 ceptions, rather than rules which the world is obliged to follow. 
 They are exceptions, it is true : but the reason is, that the general 
 rule is to throw away salvation ; that a religious and pious soul in 
 the midst of the world, is always a singularity approaching to a 
 miracle. The whole world, you say, is not obliged to follow these 
 examples ; but is not piety the general duty of all ? To be saved, 
 must we not be holy ? Must heaven, with difficulty and sufferance, 
 
Ser. 2. of the saved. 27 
 
 be gained by some, while with ease by others ? Have you any 
 other gospel to follow ; other duties to fulfil ; other promises to 
 hope for, than those of the Holy Bible ? Ah ! since there was 
 another way more easy to arrive at salvation, wherefore, ye pious 
 Christians, who at this moment enjoy in heaven, that kingdom, 
 gained with toil, and at the expense of your blood, did ye leave us 
 examples so dangerous and useless ? 
 
 Wherefore have ye opened for us a road, rugged, disagreeable, 
 and calculated to repress our ardour, seeing there was another you 
 could have pointed out, more easy, and more likely to attract us, 
 by facilitating our progress ? Great God ! how little does mankind 
 consult reason in the point of eternal salvation ! 
 
 Will you console yourselves, after this, with the multitude, as if 
 the greatness of the number could render the guilt unpunished, 
 and the Almighty durst not condemn all those who live like you ? 
 But what are all creatures in the sight of God ? Did the multitude 
 of the guilty prevent him from destroying all flesh at the deluge ? 
 from making fire from heaven descend upon the five iniquitous 
 cities ? from burying, in the waters of the Red Sea, Pharaoh and 
 all his army ? from striking with death all who murmured in the 
 desert ? Ah ! the kings of the earth may have regard to the num- 
 ber of the guilty, because the punishment becomes impossible, or 
 at least dangerous, when the fault is become general. But God, 
 who wipes the impious, says Job, from off the face of the earth, as 
 one wipes the dust from off a garment ; God, in whose sight all 
 people and nations are as if they were not, numbers not the guilty : 
 he has regard only to the crimes ; and all that the weak and mise- 
 rable sinner can expect from his unhappy accomplices, is to have 
 them as companions in his misery. So few are saved, because 
 the maxims most universally adopted are maxims of sin : so few 
 are saved, because the maxims and duties most universally un- 
 known, or rejected, are those most indispensable to salvation. 
 Last reflection, which is indeed nothing more than the proof and 
 the explanation of the former ones. 
 
 What are the engagements of the holy vocation to which we 
 have all been called ? The solemn promises of baptism. What 
 have we promised at baptism ? To renounce the world, the devil, 
 and the flesh : these are our vows : this is the situation of the 
 Christian : these are the essential conditions of our covenant with 
 God, by which eternal life has been promised to us. These truths 
 appear familiar, and destined for the common people ; but it is a 
 mistake. Nothing can be more sublime ; and, alas ! nothing is 
 more generally unknown. It is at the courts of kings, and to the 
 princes of the earth, that without ceasing we ought to announce 
 them. Alas ! they are well instructed in all the affairs of the world, 
 while the first principles of Christian morality are frequently more 
 unknown to them than to humble and simple hearts. At your 
 baptism, you have then renounced the world. It is a promise you 
 have made to God, before the holy altar; the church has been the 
 guarantee and depository of it ; ai)d you have only been admitted 
 
28 ON THE SMALL NUMBER Ser. 2. 
 
 into the number of believers, and marked with the indefeasible seal 
 of salvation, upon the faith that you have sworn to the Lord, to 
 love neither the world, nor what the world loves. Had you then 
 answered, what you now repeat every day, that you find not the 
 world so black and pernicious as we say ; that, after all, it may in- 
 nocently be loved ; and that we only decry it so much, because we 
 do not know it ; and since you are to live in the world, you wish 
 to live like those who are in it : had you answered thus, the church 
 would not have received you into its bosom ; would not have con- 
 nected you with the hope of Christians, nor joined you in commu- 
 nion with those who have overcome the world. She would have 
 advised you to go and live with those infidels who know not our 
 Saviour. For this reason it was, that in former ages, those of the 
 Catechumen, who could not prevail upon themselves to renounce 
 the world and its pleasures, put off their baptism till death ; and 
 durst not approach the holy altar, to contract, by the sacrament, 
 which regenerates us, engagements of which they knew the im- 
 portance and sanctity ; and to fulfil which they felt themselves still 
 unqualified. You are therefore required, by the most sacred of all 
 vows, to hate the world ; that is to say, not to conform yourselves 
 to it. If you love it, if you follow its pleasures and customs, you 
 are not only, as St. John says, the enemy of God, but you likewise 
 renounce the faith given in baptism ; you abjure the gospel of Jesus 
 Christ ; you are an apostate from religion, and trample under foot 
 the most sacred and irrevocable vows that man can make. Now, 
 what is this world which you ought to hate ? I have only to an- 
 swer, that it is the one you love. You will never mistake it by 
 this mark. This world is a society of sinners, whose desires, fears, 
 hopes, cares, projects, joys, and chagrins, no longer turn but upon 
 the successes or misfortunes of this life. This world is an assem- 
 blage of people who look upon the earth as their country ; the 
 time to come as an exilement ; the promises of faith as a dream ; 
 and death as the greatest of all misfortunes. This world is a tem- 
 poral kingdom, where our Saviour is unknown ; where those ac- 
 quainted with his name, glorify him not as their Lord, hate his 
 maxims, despise his followers, and neglect or insult him in his sa- 
 craments and worship. In a word, to give a proper idea at once of 
 this world, it is the great number : behold the world which you 
 ought to shun, hate, and combat against by your example ! 
 
 Now, is this your situation in regard to the world? Are its 
 pleasures a fatigue to you ; do its excesses afflict you ; do you re- 
 gret the length of your pilgrimage here ? Are not its laws your 
 laws ; its maxims your maxims ? What it condemns, do you not 
 condemn? Do you not approve what it approves ? And should it 
 happen, that you alone were left upon the earth, may we not say, that 
 the corrupt world would be revived in you ; and that you would 
 leave an exact model of it to your posterity? When I say you, I 
 mean, and I address myself to almost all men. 
 
 Where are those who sincerely renounce the pleasures, habits, 
 maxims, and hopes of this world ? We find many who complain of 
 
Ser. 2. of the saved. 29 
 
 it, and accuse it of injustice, ingratitude, and caprice, who speak 
 warmly of its abuses and errors ; but in decrying, they continue 
 to love, to follow it ; they cannot bring themselves to do without 
 it ; in complaining of its injustice, they are only piqued at it, they 
 are not undeceived ; they feel its hard treatment, but they are un- 
 acquainted with its dangers ; they censure, but where are those 
 who hate it? And now my brethren, you may judge if many can 
 have a claim to salvation. 
 
 In the second place, you have renounced the flesh at your bap- 
 tism ; that is to say, you are engaged not to live according to the 
 sensual appetites; to regard even indolence and effeminacy as 
 crimes ; not to flatter the corrupt desires of the flesh ; but to chas- 
 tise, crush, and crucify it. This is not an acquired perfection ; it 
 is a vow : it is the first of all duties ; the character of a true Chris- 
 tian and inseparable from faith. In a word you have anathema- 
 tized Satan and all his works. And what are his works ? That 
 which composes almost the thread and end of your life ; pomp, 
 pleasure, luxury, and dissipation ; lying, of which he is the father ; 
 pride, of which he is the model ; jealousy and contention, of which 
 he is the artisan. But I ask you, where are those who have not 
 withdrawn the anathema they had pronounced against Satan ? Now, 
 consequently, (to mention it as we go along,) behold many of the 
 questions answered. 
 
 You continually demand of us, if theatres, and other public 
 places of amusement, be innocent recreations for Christians ? In 
 return, I have only one question to ask you : Are they the works 
 of Satan or of Jesus Christ ? for there can be no medium in reli- 
 gion. I mean not to say, but that many recreations and amuse- 
 ments may be termed indifferent. But the most indifferent plea- 
 sures which religion allows, and, which the weakness of our nature 
 renders even necessary, belong, in one sense, to Jesus Christ, by 
 the facility with which they ought to enable us to apply ourselves 
 to more holy and more serious duties. Every thing we do, every 
 thing we rejoice or weep at, ought to be of such a nature as to have 
 a connexion with Jesus Christ, and to be done for his glory. Now, 
 upon this principle, the most incontestable, and most universally 
 allowed in Christian morality, you have only to decide whether you 
 can connect the glory of Jesus Christ with the pleasures of a 
 theatre. Can our Saviour have any part in such a species of re- 
 creation ? And before you enter them, can you, with confidence, 
 declare to him, that, in so doing, you only propose his glory, and 
 to enjoy the satisfaction of pleasing him ! What ! the theatres, 
 such as they are at present, still more criminal by the public li- 
 centiousness of those unfortunate creatures who appear on them, 
 than by the impure and passionate scenes they represent, the 
 theatres are works of Jesus Christ ? Jesus Christ would animate 
 a mouth, from whence are to proceed sounds lascivious, and calcu- 
 lated to corrupt the heart ? But these blasphemies strike me with 
 horror. Jesus Christ would preside in assemblies of sin, where 
 every thing we hear weakens his doctrines ; where the poison en- 
 
30 ON THE SMALL NUMBER Ser. 2. 
 
 ters into the soul by all the senses ; where every art is employed 
 to inspire, awaken, and justify the passions he condemns ? Now, 
 says Tertullian, if they are not the works of Jesus Christ, they 
 must be the works of Satan. Every Christian, therefore, ought to 
 abstain from them. When he partakes of them, he violates the 
 vows of baptism. However innocent he may flatter himself to be, 
 in bringing from these places an untainted heart, it is sullied by 
 being there ; since by his presence alone he has participated in 
 the works of Satan, which he had renounced at baptism, and vio- 
 lated the most sacred promises he had made to Jesus Christ and to 
 his church. 
 
 These, my brethren, as I have already told you, are not merely 
 advices and pious arts ; they are the most essential of our obliga- 
 tions. But, alas ! who fulfils them ? Who even knows them ? 
 Ah ! my brethren, did you know how far the title you bear, of 
 Christian, engages you; could you comprehend the sanctity of 
 your state ; the hatred of the world, of yourself, and of every thing 
 which is not of God, that it ordains you; that life according to the 
 gospel, that continual watching, that guard over the passions ; in a 
 word, that conformity with Jesus Christ crucified, which it exacts 
 of you ; could you comprehend it, could you remember, that as you 
 ought to love God with all your heart, and all your strength, a sin- 
 gle desire that has not connection with him defiles you, you would 
 appear a monster in your own sight. How ! would you say to 
 yourself, duties so holy, and morals so profane ! A vigilance so 
 continual, and a life so careless and dissipated ! A love of God so 
 pure, so complete, so universal, and a heart the continual prey of a 
 thousand impulses, either foreign or criminal ! If thus it is, who, 
 O my God S will be entitled to salvation ? 
 
 Few indeed, I am afraid, my dear hearers ; at least it will not be 
 you, (unless a change takes place,) nor those who resemble you ; 
 it will not be the multitude. Who shall be saved ? Those who 
 work out their salvation with fear and trembling ; who live in the 
 world without indulging in its vices. Who shall be saved ? That 
 Christian woman, who, shut up in the circle of her domestic duties, 
 rears up her children in faith and in piety; divides her heart only 
 between her Saviour and her husband ; is adorned with delicacy 
 and modesty ; sits not down in the assemblies of vanity; makes not 
 a law of the ridiculous customs of the world, but regulates those 
 customs by the law of God ; and makes virtue appear more amia- 
 ble by her rank and example. Who shall be saved ? That be- 
 liever, who, in the relaxation of modern times, imitates the man- 
 ners of the first Christians ; whose hands are clean, and his heart 
 pure ; watchful, " who hath not lift up his soul to vanity j* but 
 who, in the midst of the dangers of the great world, continually 
 applies himself to purify it ; just, who swears not deceitfully against 
 his neighbour, nor is indebted to fraudulent ways for the innocent 
 aggrandisement of his fortune ; generous, who with benefits repays 
 the enemy who sought his ruin; sincere, who sacrifices not the 
 truth to a vile interest, and knows not the part of rendering him- 
 
Ser. 2. of the saved. 31 
 
 self agreeable, by betraying his conscience ; charitable, who makes 
 his house and interest the refuge of his fellow-creatures, and him- 
 self the consolation of the afflicted ; regards his wealth as the pro- 
 perty of the poor ; humble in affliction, Christian under injuries, 
 and penitent even in prosperity. Who will merit salvation ? 
 You, my dear hearer, if you will follow these examples ; for 
 such are the souls to be saved. Now these assuredly do not form 
 the greatest number. While you continue, therefore, to live like 
 the multitude, it is a striking proof that you disregard your sal- 
 vation. 
 
 These, my brethren, are truths which should make us tremble ; 
 nor are they those vague ones which are told to all men, and which 
 none apply to themselves. Perhaps there is not in this assembly 
 an individual, who may not say of himself, u I live like the great 
 number ; like those of my rank, age, and situation ; I am lost, 
 should I die in this path." Now, can any thing be more capable 
 of alarming a soul, in whom some remains of care for his salvation 
 still exist ? It is the multitude nevertheless, who tremble not. 
 There is only a small number of just, which operates apart its sal- 
 vation, with fear and trembling ; all the rest are tranquil. After 
 having lived with the multitude, they flatter themselves they shall 
 be particularized at death ; every one augurs favourably for him- 
 self, and chimerically thinks he shall be an exception. 
 
 On this account it is, my brethren, that I confine myself to you 
 who, at present, are assembled here: I include not the rest of men: 
 but consider you, alone existing on the earth. The idea which 
 occupies and frightens me, is this, I figure to myself the present, 
 as your last hour, and the end of the world ; that the heavens are 
 going to open above your heads; our Saviour in all his glory, to 
 appear in the midst of this temple ; and that you are only as- 
 sembled here to wait his coming, like trembling criminals, on 
 whom the sentence is to be pronounced, either of life eternal, or 
 of everlasting death ; for it is vain to flatter yourselves that you 
 shall die more innocent than you are at this hour. All those 
 desires of change with which you are amused, will continue to 
 amuse you till death arrives; the experience of all ages proves 
 it ; the only difference you have to expect, will most likely be only 
 a larger balance against you than what you would have to answer 
 for at present ; and from what would be your destiny, were you to 
 be judged this moment, you may almost decide upon what will 
 take place at your departure from life. Now, I ask you, (and, 
 connecting my own lot with yours, I ask it with dread,) were 
 Jesus Christ to appear in this temple, in the midst of this assembly, 
 to judge us, to make the dreadful separation between the goats 
 and sheep, do you believe that the greatest number of us would be 
 placed at his right hand? Do you believe that the number would 
 at least be equal ? Do you believe there would even be found ten 
 upright and faithful servants of the Lord, when formerly five cities 
 could not furnish so many ? I ask you. You know not ; and I 
 know it not. Thou alone, O my God ! knowest who belong to thee. 
 
32 - ON THE SMALL NUMBER Sei". 2. 
 
 But if we know not who belong to him, at least we know that 
 sinners do not. Now, who are the just and faithful assembled 
 here at present? Titles and dignities avail nothing; you are stripped 
 of all these in the presence of your Saviour. Who are they ? Many 
 sinners who wish not to be converted ; many more who wish, but 
 always put it off; many others, who are only converted in appear- 
 ance, and again fall back to their former courses: in a word, a 
 great number, who flatter themselves they have no occasion for con- 
 version. This is the party of the reprobate. Ah ! my brethren, 
 cut off from this assembly these four classes of sinners, for they 
 will be cut off at the great day. And now appear, ye just: where 
 are ye? O God! where are thy chosen? And what a portion 
 remains to thy share ! 
 
 My brethren, our ruin is almost certain ; yet we think not of 
 it. When, even in this terrible separation which will one day take 
 place, there should be only one sinner in this assembly on the side 
 of the reprobate, and that a voice from heaven should assure us 
 of it, without particularizing him, who of us would not tremble, 
 lest he should be the unfortunate and devoted wretch ? Who of us 
 would not immediately apply to his conscience, to examine if its 
 crimes merited not this punishment ? Who of us seized with dread, 
 would not demand of our Saviour, as the apostles formerly did, and 
 say, u Lord, is it I ? " And should a small respite be allowed to our 
 prayers, who of us would not use every effort, by tears, "supplica- 
 tion, and sincere repentance, to avert the misfortune ? Are we in 
 our senses, my dear hearers ? Perhaps, among all who listen to 
 me, ten just would not be found, perhaps fewer. What do I know, 
 O my God ? I dare not with a fixed eye regard the depths of thy 
 judgments and justice. More than one, perhaps, would not be 
 found amongst us all. And this danger affects you not, my dear 
 hearer ? You persuade yourself, that in this great number who 
 shall perish, you will be the happy individual; you, who have less 
 reason, perhaps, than any other to believe it ; you, upon whom 
 alone the sentence of death should fall, were only one of all who 
 hear me to suffer. Great God! how little are the terrors of thy 
 law known to the world ! In all ages, the just have shuddered with 
 dread, in reflecting on the severity and extent of thy judgments 
 upon the destinies of men. Alas! what do they prepare for the 
 children of Adam ! 
 
 But what are we to conclude from these grand truths ? That all 
 must despair of salvation ? God forbid ! The impious alone, to quiet 
 his own feelings in his debaucheries, endeavours to persuade himself 
 that all men shall perish as well as he. 
 
 This idea ought not to be the fruit of the present discourse, 
 it is meant to undeceive you with regard to the general error, 
 that any one may do whatever others do; to convince you, that, in 
 order to merit salvation, you must distinguish yourself from the 
 rest; in the midst of the world, lead a life to the glory of God, and 
 resemble not the multitude. 
 
 When the Jews were led in captivity from Judea to Babylon, a 
 
Ser. 2. of the saved. 33 
 
 little before they quitted their own country, the prophet Jeremiah, 
 whom the Lord had forbid to leave Jerusalem, spoke thus to them : 
 i Children of Israel, when you shall arrive at Babylon, you will 
 behold the inhabitants of that country, who carry upon their shoul- 
 ders gods of silver and gold. All the people will prostrate them- 
 selves, and adore them. But you, far from allowing yourselves, 
 by these examples, to be led to impiety, say to yourselves in secret, 
 It is thou, O Lord ! whom we ought to adore r 
 
 Let me now finish, by addressing to you the same words. 
 
 At your departure from this temple, you go to enter into another 
 Babylon; you go to see idols of gold and silver, before which 
 all men prostrate themselves; you go to regain the vain objects 
 of human passions, wealth, glory, and pleasure, which are the 
 gods of this world, and which almost all men adore ; you will see 
 those abuses which all the world permits, those errors which 
 custom authorizes, and those debaucheries which an infamous 
 fashion has almost constituted as laws. Then, my dear hearer, 
 if you wish to be of the small number of true Israelites, say, 
 in the secrecy of your heart, It is thou alone, O my God ! whom 
 we ought to adore. I wish not to have connection with a people 
 which know thee not; I will have no other law than thy holy 
 law ; the gods which this foolish multitude adores, are not gods : 
 they are the work of the hands of men; they will perish with 
 them: thou alone, O my God! art immortal; and thou alone 
 deservest to be adored. The customs of Babylon have no con- 
 nection with the holy laws of Jerusalem. I will continue to worship 
 thee with that small number of the children of Abraham, which 
 still, in the midst of an infidel nation, composes thy people ; with 
 them I will turn all my desires toward the holy Zion. The singu- 
 larity of my manners will be regarded as a weakness; but blessed 
 weakness, O my God ! which will give me strength to resist the 
 torrent of customs, and the seduction of example. Thou wilt be 
 my God in the midst of Babylon, as thou wilt one day be in 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 Ah! the time of the captivity will at last expire; thou wilt call 
 to thy remembrance Abraham and David; thou wilt deliver thy 
 people; thou wilt transport us to the holy city; then wilt thou 
 alone reign over Israel, and over the nations which at present 
 know thee not. All being destroyed; all the empires of the earth; 
 all the monuments of human pride annihilated, and thou alone 
 remaining eternal, we then shall know that thou art the Lord of 
 hosts, and the only God to be adored. 
 
 Behold the fruit which you ought to reap from this discourse; 
 live apart; think, without ceasing, that the great number work their 
 own destruction; regard as nothing all customs of the earth, unless 
 authorized by the law of God; and remember, that holy men have, 
 in all ages, been looked upon as singular. 
 
 It is thus, that, after distinguishing yourselves from the sinful on 
 earth, you will be gloriously separated from them in eternity. 
 
 Now, to God the Father, &c. 
 
34 the disgusts Ser. 3. 
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 THE DISGUSTS ACCOMPANYING VIRTUE. 
 " Then the Jews took up stones again, to stone him." -John x. 31. 
 
 Behold then, my brethren, the marks of gratitude which Jesus 
 Christ receives from men; behold the consolations which heaven 
 prepares for him in the painful exercise of his ministry. There he 
 is treated as a Samaritan, and as one possessed by the devil : here 
 they take up stones to stone him. It is thus that the Son of God 
 has passed all the time of his mortal life, continually exposed 
 to the most obstinate contradiction, finding only hearts insensible 
 to his kindnesses, and rebellious to the truths which he announced 
 to them : yet never did he allow the smallest sign of impatience, or 
 the least complaint to escape him. 
 
 And we, my brethren, we, his members and his disciples, alas ! 
 the smallest disgusts, the smallest contradictions we experience 
 in the practice of virtue, revolt our delicacy. From the moment 
 we cease to relish those attractions, that sensibility which softens 
 every thing to be found painful in duty, there is nothing but com- 
 plaint and murmurs : troubled, discouraged, we are tempted al- 
 most to abandon God, and to return to the world, as a more 
 agreeable and commodious master. In a word, we would wish 
 to find nothing in the service of God but pleasure and consolation. 
 
 But our divine Master, in calling us to his service, has he not 
 declared, in express terms, that the kingdom of heaven is only to 
 be gained by conquest ; and that none but those who do violence 
 upon themselves can force it ? And what do these words signify, 
 unless that, entering into the service of God, we are not to promise 
 ourselves that we shall always find in it a certain sweetness, a cer- 
 tain relish, which deprives it of all pain, and causes it to be loved ? 
 On the contrary, it is almost certain, that in it we shall experience 
 disgusts and contradictions which will exercise our patience, and put 
 our fidelity to frequent trials; that we shall often feel the weight 
 of the yoke, without feeling the unction of grace which renders 
 it light and easy, because piety essentially opposes the gratification 
 of our former tastes and original inclinations, for which we always 
 preserve some unhappy remains of tenderness, and which we can- 
 not mortify without making the heart suffer; that, besides, we 
 shall have to undergo the eternal caprices of an inconstant and 
 volatile heart, so difficult to fix, that, without reason or foundation, 
 it is disgusted in a moment with what it formerly loved most. 
 Behold, my brethren, what we ought to have expected when we 
 embraced the cause of virtue. Here, it is the time of combat and 
 
Ser. 3. ACCOMPANYING VIRTUE. 35 
 
 trials; peace and felicity are only for heaven; but, notwithstanding 
 this, I say that it is unjust to form, from the disagreeable circum- 
 stances which may accompany virtue in this life, a pretext either 
 to abandon God when we have begun to serve him, or to be afraid 
 to serve him when we have begun to know him. 
 
 Behold my reasons: in the first place, because disgusts are 
 inevitable in this life; secondly, because those of piety are not so 
 bitter as we imagine them to be; thirdly, because they are less so 
 than those of the world; fourthly, because, were they equally so, 
 they yet possess resources which those of the world have not. Let 
 us investigate those edifying truths, and implore the assistance of 
 divine grace toward their proper explanations. 
 
 Reflection I. I say, in the first place, because disgusts are 
 inevitable in this life. Alas ! we complain that the service of God 
 disgusts us ; but such is the condition of this miserable life. Man, 
 born fully to enjoy God, cannot be happy here below, where he 
 can never but imperfectly possess him. Disgusts are a necessary 
 consequence of the inquietude of a heart which is out of its place, 
 and is unable to find it on the earth; which seeks to fix itself, 
 but cannot with all the created beings which surround it ; which, 
 disgusted with every thing else, attaches itself to God; but being 
 unable to possess him as fully as it is capable of doing, feels always 
 that something is wanting to its happiness ; agitates itself, in order 
 to attain it, but can never completely reach it here ; finds in virtue 
 almost the same void and the same disgusts it had found in sin, 
 because, to whatever degree of grace it may be exalted, there still 
 remains much to accomplish before it can arrive at that fulness 
 of righteousness and love which will possess our whole heart will 
 fill all our desires extinguish all our passions occupy all our 
 thoughts and which we can never find but in heaven. 
 
 Were it possible to be happy in this world, we should undoubt- 
 edly be so in serving God, because grace calms our passions, mo- 
 derates our desires, consoles our sufferings, and gives us a foretaste 
 of that perfect happiness we expect, and which we shall not enjoy 
 but in a blessed immortality. Of all the situations in which man 
 can find himself in this life, that of righteousness undoubtedly 
 brings him nearest to felicity ; but as it always leaves him in the 
 path which conducts to it, it leaves him likewise still uneasy, and, 
 in one sense miserable. 
 
 We are therefore unjust to complain of the disgusts which ac- 
 company virtue. Did the world make its followers happy, we 
 should then have reason to be dissatisfied at not being so in the 
 service of God. We might then accuse him of using his servants 
 ill; of depriving them of a happiness which is due to them alone; 
 that, far from attracting, he rejects them; and that the world is 
 preferable to him, as a more consoling and faithful master. But 
 examine all stations ; interrogate all sinners ; consult in rotation 
 the partisans of all the different pleasures which the world pro- 
 mises and the different passions which it inspires; the envious, the 
 
 d 2 
 
36 the disgusts $er. 3. 
 
 ambitious, the voluptuous, the indolent, the revengeful, none are 
 happy, each complains, no one is in his place, every condition 
 has its inconveniences, and sorrows are attached to every station 
 in life. The world is the habitation of the discontented ; and the 
 disgusts which accompany virtue, are much more a consequence of 
 the condition of this mortal life, than any imperfection in virtue 
 itself. 
 
 Besides, the Almighty has his reasons for leaving the most up- 
 right souls below in a state in some respects, always violent and 
 disagreeable to nature: by that, he wishes to disgust us with this 
 miserable life ; to make us long for our deliverance, and for that 
 immortal country where nothing shall more be wanting to our 
 happiness. 
 
 I feel within me (says the apostle) a fatal law in opposition to 
 the law of God; the good that I would, I do not; but the evil 
 which I would not, that I do. Now, if I do that I would not, 
 it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then 
 a law, that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I 
 delight in the law of God after the inward man; but I see another 
 law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and 
 bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my mem- 
 bers. O, wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the 
 body of this death? Behold the most natural effect which the 
 disgusts attached to virtue ought to inspire in a Christian heart : 
 hatred of ourselves; contempt of our present life; a desire for 
 eternal riches; an eager anxiety to go and enjoy God, and to 
 be delivered from all the miseries inseparable from this mortal 
 life. 
 
 Besides, were virtue always to be accompanied with sensible 
 consolations; did it continually form for man a happy and tranquil 
 state in this world, it would become a temporal recompense ; in 
 devoting ourselves to God, we should no longer seek the good of 
 faith, but the consolations of self-love; we would seek ourselves, 
 while pretending to seek God; we would propose to ourselves in 
 virtue, that conscious tranquillity, in which it places the heart, by 
 delivering it from those violent and restless passions which tear it 
 continually, rather than the observance of the rules and the duties 
 which the law of God imposes on us. The Lord would then have 
 only mercenary and interested worshippers, who would come, not 
 to carry his yoke, but to repose themselves under the shadow of 
 his voice; workmen, who would offer themselves, not so much to 
 labour in his vineyard, and to support the fatigues of the day, and 
 the oppression of the heat, as in order to taste in tranquillity the 
 fruits ; servants, who, far from improving their talent for the benefit 
 of their master, would turn it to their own utility, and employ it 
 only for their own advantage. 
 
 The upright live by faith : now faith hopes, but enjoys not in 
 this world ; all is yet to come for Christians ; their country, their 
 riches, their pleasures, their inheritance, their kingdoms ; the present 
 is not for them. Here, it is the time of tribulation and affliction ; 
 
Ser. 3. ACCOMPANYING VIRTUE. 3? 
 
 here, it is a place of exile, and a foreign country, where tears and 
 sighs become the only consolation of the faithful. Surely, then, 
 it is unreasonable to expect delights in a place where every thing 
 recalls the remembrance of our miseries; where every thing presents 
 new dangers to us ; where we live surrounded by rocks ; where 
 we are a prey to a thousand enemies ; where every step en- 
 dangers our destruction ; where all our days are marked by 
 some new infidelity; where, delivered up to ourselves, and 
 without the assistance of Heaven, we do nothing but evil ; where 
 we spread the corruption of our heart over the small portion, 
 even of good, which grace enables us to accomplish; it is un- 
 reasonable, I say, to seek felicity and human consolations in a 
 residence so melancholy and disagreeable to the children of God. 
 The days of our mourning and sadness are in this world ; those 
 of peace and joy will come afterward. If, by abandoning God, 
 we could acquire real happiness, our inconstancy would seem at 
 least to have an excuse; but, as I have already said, the world has 
 its disgusts as well as virtue ; by changing our master, we only 
 change our punishment ; in diversifying our passions we only 
 diversify our sorrows. The world has more smiling aspects, I 
 confess, than virtue ; but every where the reality is only trouble 
 and vexation of spirit ; and since cares are inevitable in this life, 
 and we must encounter disgusts, either on the part of the world 
 or of virtue, can we hesitate for a moment? Is it not preferable to 
 suffer meritoriously than to suffer in vain, and be able to place our 
 sufferings only amongst the number of our crimes ? First truth : 
 Disgusts are inevitable in this life. 
 
 Reflection II. But I say, in the second place, that those of 
 piety are not so bitter as we represent them to ourselves. 
 
 For, my brethren, although we agree that the kingdom of 
 God suffers violence ; that Jesus Christ is come, in order to make 
 separations and retrenchments which cost much to our nature; 
 that the period of the present life is the time of the birth of the 
 new man, and always followed by pain and sorrows ; and that, in 
 order to reconcile us to God, we must begin by waging a cruel war 
 against ourselves ; yet it does not follow, that the lot of a soul 
 who serves the Lord, is to be pitied, and that the disgusts which 
 accompany virtue are so bitter as the world represents. Virtue 
 has only the prejudices of the senses and of the passions against 
 it ; it has nothing melancholy but the first glance ; and its bitter- 
 ness is not such as to render it a condition which we ought to flv 
 from as insupportable and wretched. 
 
 For, in the first place, we are sheltered in it from the disgusts 
 of the world and the passions ; and were virtue to possess only the 
 single advantage of placing us safe from the tempests of the pas- 
 sions ; from frenzies, jealousies, suspicions, and bitterness of heart ; 
 from the void of a worldly life; when, by turning to God, we 
 should gain only our freedom from the yoke of the world ; our 
 being placed above the reach of its hopes, of its revolutions, 
 
38 the disgusts Ser. 3. 
 
 troubles, and eternal changes ; the becoming masters of our own 
 hearts, and being dependent on none but ourselves : our having 
 none but God to account with ; our no longer fatiguing ourselves 
 in vain, by running after phantoms, which continually elude our 
 grasp ; alas ! the lot of a just soul would always be worthy of 
 envy ; whatever might be the bitter circumstances accompanying 
 virtue, they would still be a thousand times more supportable than 
 the pleasures of the world ; and to mourn with the people of God, 
 would be infinitely preferable to participating in the insipid and 
 childish pleasures of the children of the age. 
 
 Secondly. If virtue does not protect us from the afflictions and 
 disgraces inevitable upon this earth, it at least softens their 
 asperity : it makes our heart submissive to God ; it makes us kiss 
 the hand which is raised up against us ; it discovers, in the blows 
 with which the Lord afflicts us, either a cure for our passions, 
 or the just punishment of our crimes. And were virtue to have 
 only the privilege of diminishing our griefs, by diminishing our 
 attachments ; of rendering us less feeling to our losses, by gradually 
 detaching us from all the objects which we may one day lose ; 
 of preparing our souls for affliction, by keeping it continually 
 submissive to God ; were virtue to possess this consolation alone, 
 alas ! ought we to lament and complain of any bitterness which 
 attends it ? What more can be desired in this miserable life, where 
 almost all our days are distinguished, by new afflictions and adver- 
 sities ; where every thing escapes our grasp ; where our relations, 
 friends, and protectors are every moment snatched from us, and 
 continually falling around us ; where our fortune has no settlement, 
 but changes its appearance every day ; alas ! what more can be 
 desired than a situation which consoles us on these events ; sup- 
 ports us in these storms ; calms us in these agitations ; and which, 
 in the eternal changes which take place here below, leaves us at 
 least always the same ? 
 
 Thirdly. Those reluctances and disgusts which revolt us so 
 strongly against virtue, in reality consist only in repressing the 
 passions which render us unhappy, and are the source of all our 
 pains. They are remedies a little grievous to be sure, but they 
 serve to cure evils which are infinitely more so. It is a constraint 
 which fatigues us, but which, in fatiguing, delivers us from a slavery 
 which weighed us down ; it is a bitterness which mortifies the pas- 
 sions, but which, in mortifying, weakens and calms them ; it is a 
 sword which pierces the heart to the quick, but which makes the 
 corrupted and defiled matter to flow from it ; insomuch, that, in 
 the very moment of the wound's greatest agony, we experience the 
 comfort and certainty of a cure. These are maxims which revolt 
 our nature and inclinations ; but which, in revolting, recall them 
 to order and rule. Thus, the bitterness and the thorns of virtue 
 have always at least a present utility, which recompenses their 
 harshness : in disgusting, they purify us ; in probing, they cure 
 us ; in paining, they calm us. These are not like the disgusts of 
 the world, of which nothing remains to us but the bitterness of 
 
Ser. 3. ACCOMPANYING VIRTUE. 39 
 
 those fatigues, of those constraints which our passions impose on 
 us; and whose only fruit is, that of augmenting our miseries, by 
 fortifying our iniquitous passions : these are not the worldly vio- 
 lences which lead to nothing, are of no value, and frequently serve 
 only to render us hateful to those whom we would wish to please ; 
 which remove to a greater distance from us the favours we wish 
 to merit by them ; which always leave us our hatreds, our desires, 
 our uneasinesses, and our pains : these are violences which ad- 
 vance the work of our sanctification, which, by degrees, destroy 
 within us the work of sin; which perfect, which adorn us; 
 which add every day a new splendour to our soul, a new solidity 
 to our virtues, a new force to our faith, a new facility to our 
 approaches toward salvation, a new firmness to our good desires, 
 and which bear along with them the fruit that rewards and con- 
 soles us. 
 
 I do not add, that the source of our disgusts is in ourselves 
 rather than in virtue ; that it is our passions which give birth to 
 our repugnances ; that virtue has nothing in itself but what is 
 amiable ; that were our hearts not depraved through love to the 
 flesh, we would find nothing sweet and consoling but the pleasures 
 of innocence ; that we are born for virtue and righteousness ; that 
 these ought to be our first inclinations, as they are our first distinc- 
 tion ; and if we find different dispositions within us, at least we 
 have not virtue, but only ourselves to blame. I could add, that 
 perhaps it is the peculiar character of our heart, which spreads 
 for us so much bitterness through the detail of a Christian life; 
 that, being born perhaps with more lively passions, and a heart 
 more sensible to the world and to pleasure, virtue appears more 
 melancholy and insupportable to us ; that, not finding in the ser- 
 vice of God the same attraction which we have found in that of 
 the world, our heart, accustomed to lively and animated pleasures, 
 is no longer capable of reconciling itself to the expected dreariness 
 of a Christian life ; that the endless dissipation in which we have 
 lived, renders the uniformity of duties more irksome to us ; the 
 agitation of parties and pleasures, retirement more disgusting ; our 
 total submission to the passions, prayer more painful ; the frivo- 
 lous maxims with which our minds are occupied, the truths of faith 
 more insipid and more unknown ; that our mind, being filled with 
 only vain things, with fabulous reading, if nothing worse, with chi- 
 merical adventures, and theatrical phantoms, is no longer capable 
 of relishing any thing solid; that, never having accustomed ourselves 
 to any thing serious, it is rare that the seriousness of piety does not 
 disgust us, and that we find not God to our taste, if I dare speak in 
 this manner, we who have never relished any thing but the world 
 and its vain hopes. This being the case, what happiness when we 
 bring back to virtue a heart yet uncorrupted by the world ! What 
 happiness to enter into the service of God, with happy inclinations 
 and some remains of our original innocence ! when we begin early 
 to know the Lord ; when we return to him in that first season of 
 our life when the world has not yet made such profound and des- 
 
40 the disgusts Ser. 3. 
 
 perate impressions ; when the passions, still in their growth, bend 
 easily toward good, and make virtue, as it were, a natural inclina- 
 tion to us ! What happiness when we have been able to put an 
 early check upon our heart ; when we have accustomed it to bear 
 the yoke of the Lord ; and when we have arrested, almost in their 
 infancy, passions which render us miserable in our guilt, and which 
 likewise occasion all the bitterness of our virtues ! How many un- 
 easinesses, how many pangs does it prevent ! How many, consola- 
 tions does it prepare ! How many comforts spread through the 
 rest of life ! and what a difference for the ease and tranquillity of 
 our future years, between days whose primitive ones have been 
 pure, and those which, infected in their source, have felt flow from 
 thence a fatal bitterness, which has blasted all their joys, and 
 spread itself through all the remainder of their career ! It is our- 
 selves alone, says a holy father, who render virtue disagreeable ; 
 and we are wrong to complain of an evil, in which we have such a 
 share ourselves, or to attribute faults to virtue, which are our own 
 handy-work. 
 
 But granting these reflections to have even less solidity ; 
 were it even true, that we are not the first and original cause of 
 our disgusts at virtue ; it is at least incontestable, that the longer 
 we defer our return to God, the more invincible do we render 
 that distaste which separates us from him ; that the more we 
 shrink and draw back, the more do we fortify that repugnance 
 within us to virtue ; that if the Christian life offers, at present, 
 only melancholy and tedious duties, they will appear more insup- 
 portable in proportion as we grow old in the ways of the world, 
 and in the taste for its iniquitous pleasures. Could the delay of 
 our conversion sweeten the bitter and painful portion of virtue, by 
 holding out a little longer against grace ; could we obtain a more 
 favourable composition, as I may say, and, as an article of it, stipu- 
 late, that piety should afterward be presented to us with more 
 charms and graces, and with conditions more agreeable and flat- 
 tering ; alas ! whatever risks we may run by deferring it, the hopes 
 of softening our pains and sufferings might serve in some measure 
 to excuse our delays. But delay only prepares new sorrows for 
 us; the more we accustom our heart to the world, the more 
 do we render it unfit for virtue. It is no longer, says the prophet, 
 but a polluted vase, to which the passions we have allowed to 
 settle in it have communicated a taste and smell of death, which 
 generally last the remainder of life. Thus, my brethren, when, 
 after a long course of crimes and deeply-rooted passions, we must 
 return to God, what obstacles do not these frightful dispositions 
 present ! What insensibility toward good do we not find within 
 ourselves ! Those hearts which the world has always engrossed, 
 and who afterward wish to consecrate to God the remains of a life 
 entirely mundane ; what a buckler of brass, says the prophet, do 
 they not oppose to grace ! What hardness of heart to the holy 
 consolations of virtue ! They may find it just, but it is impossible, 
 they say, to find it amiable : they may return to God, but they 
 
Ser. 3. ACCOMPANYING VIRTUE. 41 
 
 enjoy him no more : they may nourish themselves with the truth, 
 but it is no more for them but the bread of tribulation and bit- 
 terness : they may seek the kingdom of God, and the treasure 
 of the gospel, but it is like unfortunate slaves, condemned to 
 search for gold in the bowels of the earth, and waste their 
 strength against the opposing rocks : they may draw for water 
 from the wells of Jacob, but they can only reap the toil ; they can 
 never partake of those comforts and consolations which bear peace 
 and refreshment to the soul : they wish to draw near to God, yet 
 every thing separates them from him ; they wish to fly from the 
 world, yet, wherever they go, there they carry it with them in their 
 heart : they seek the society of virtuous people, yet in their com- 
 pany they find a weariness, and a melancholy stiffness, which dis- 
 gust them with piety itself: they apply themselves to holy books, 
 and, alas ! it is only a tiresome and fatiguing decency which sup- 
 ports their patience. It appears, that in virtue they act a borrowed 
 character, so little does it become them, and so much does their 
 part constrain and tire them j and although, in reality, they seek 
 salvation, yet there appears a something so foreign and constrained 
 in their efforts, that we believe they only assume the semblance of 
 it ; and that, feeling themselves not born to virtue, they wish, at 
 least, to give themselves the appearance of it. 
 
 Disgusts and wearinesses should not, therefore, drive us from 
 virtue; since, in proportion as we retire from it, they become 
 every day more violent and insupportable. But candidly, my bre- 
 thren, is it for us to reproach God that we weary in his service ? 
 Ah ! did our slaves and domestics make us the same reproach ; 
 had they to lament the weariness they experience in our service, 
 they would certainly be entitled to complain of it. Our eternal 
 humours, from which they suffer so much ; our fancies and ca- 
 prices, to which they must accommodate themselves ; our hours 
 and moments, to which they must subject themselves ; our plea- 
 sures and tastes, to which they must sacrifice their rest and 
 liberty ; our indolence, which alone costs them so much, makes 
 them endure so much weariness, pass so many melancholy mo- 
 ments, without our even deigning to observe it ; they undoubtedly 
 would be entitled to complain of their cruel situation and sufferings. 
 
 Nevertheless, should they venture to say, that they weary in our 
 service ; that they reap not the smallest satisfaction from it ; that 
 they feel no inclination for us, and that every service they perform 
 is disgusting to a degree scarcely supportable ; alas ! we would 
 regard them as fools : we would find them too happy in having 
 to support our humours and caprices ; we would think them 
 sufficiently honoured, by being permitted to be near us, and fully 
 recompensed for all their fatigues. Ah, my brethren ! and God, 
 does he not sufficiently recompense those who serve him, that 
 they should support any little disgusts or wearinesses which may 
 be found in his service? Are we not still too happy, by his 
 acceptance of our services, in spite of the repugnances which 
 render them cold and languid ? Does he not sufficiently load us 
 
42 the disgusts Ser. 3. 
 
 with blessings, to be entitled to exact our sufferance of a few- 
 slight sorrows for his sake ? Does he not promise us still more, 
 sufficiently precious to sweeten the trifling disgusts attached to 
 the fulfilment of his ordinances? Must not he find it strange, 
 that vile creatures, who hold all from him, who exist only through 
 him, and who expect all from him, should complain of dislike to 
 his service ? That worms of the earth, whose only boast is the 
 honour of belonging to him, dare complain of feeling no inclination 
 for him, and that it is both melancholy and wearisome to serve or 
 to be faithful to him ? Is he, then, a master like us ; fanciful, 
 intolerant, indolent, entirely occupied with himself, and who seeks 
 only to render himself happy, at the expense of the peace and com- 
 fort of those who serve him ? Unjust that we are ! We dare offer 
 reproaches to the Almighty, which we would regard as outrages 
 upon ourselves, from the mouths of our slaves I 
 
 Second truth : The disgusts which accompany virtue are not so 
 bitter as we represent them to ourselves. 
 
 Reflection III. But even were they so, I have said, in the 
 third place, that they would still be infinitely less than those of the 
 world. And it is here, my brethren, that the testimony of the world 
 itself, and the self-experience of worldly souls, answer every pur- 
 pose of a proof. For if you continue in the ways of the world and 
 of the passions, what is your whole life but a continual weariness, 
 where, by diversifying your pleasures, you only diversify your dis- 
 gusts and uneasinesses ? What is it but an eternal void where you 
 are a burden to yourself? What is it but a pompous circulation 
 of duties, attentions, ceremonies, amusements, and trifles, which, 
 incessantly revolving, possess one single advantage, that of unplea- 
 santly filling up moments which hang heavy upon you, and 
 which you know not otherwise to employ ? What is your life but 
 a flux and reflux of desires, hatreds, chagrins, jealousies, and 
 hopes, which poison all your pleasures, and are the cause that, 
 surrounded by every thing which ought to insure your happiness, 
 you cannot succeed in being contented with yourselves ? 
 
 What comparison is there between the frenzies of the passions, 
 the chagrin of a striking neglect, the sensibility of a bad office, and 
 the slight sorrows of virtue ? What comparison between the un- 
 limited subjections to ambition; the fatigues and toils of pretensions 
 and expectancies ; the pains to insure success ; the exertions and 
 submissions necessary to please ; the cares, uneasinesses, and agita- 
 tions, in order to exalt ourselves ; and the slight violences which 
 assure to us the kingdom of heaven ? What comparison between 
 the frightful remorses of the conscience, that internal worm, which 
 incessantly gnaws us; that sadness of guilt, which undermines 
 and brings us low indeed ; that weight of iniquity, which over- 
 whelms us ; that internal sword which pierces us to the quick ; 
 which we know not how to draw forth, and carry with us 
 wherever we go ; and the amiable sorrow of that penitence which 
 secures salvation ? My God ! can we complain of thee, after 
 
Ser. 3. ACCOMPANYING VIRTUE. 43 
 
 knowing the world ? Can thy yoke appear grievous, after quitting 
 that of the passions ? And the thorns of thy cross, are they not 
 flowers, when compared to those which the ways of iniquity and 
 the world have sown ? 
 
 Thus every day we hear the worshippers of the world decry the 
 world they serve; complain with the utmost dissatisfaction of 
 their lot; utter the keenest invectives against its injustice and 
 abuses ; censure, condemn, and despise it : but find me, if you can, 
 any truly pious souls, who send forth invectives against virtue ; 
 who condemn or despise it ; and who detest their lot of being em- 
 barked in a voyage so full of chagrin and bitterness. The world 
 itself continually envies the destiny of the virtuous, and acknow- 
 ledges that none are happy but the upright ; but find me a truly 
 pious soul, who envies the destiny of the world ; who publishes 
 that none are happy but its partisans ; who admires the wisdom 
 of their choice, and regards his own condition as the most misera- 
 ble and the most foolish : what shall I say ? We have frequently 
 seen sinners, who, through despair and disgust at the world, have 
 fled to opposite extremes ; lose rest, health, reason, and life ; fall 
 into states of horror, and the blackest melancholy, and no longer 
 regard life but as the greatest torment. But where are the 
 righteous, whom the disgusts which accompany virtue have thrown 
 into such dreadful extremities ? They sometimes complain of their 
 sorrows ; but they still prefer them to the pleasures of the passions : 
 virtue, it is true, may sometimes appear melancholy and unpleasing 
 to them ; but, with all her sadness, they love her much more than 
 guilt : they would wish a few more sensible supports and consola- 
 tions from the Father of mercies, but they detest those of the 
 world: they suffer, but the same hand which proves, supports 
 them, and they are not tempted beyond their strength : they feel 
 what you call the weight of the yoke of Jesus Christ ; but, in re- 
 calling the load of iniquity, under which they had so long groaned, 
 they find their present lot happy, and the comparison calms and 
 comforts them. 
 
 In effect, my brethren, in the first place, the violences which we 
 do to ourselves, are much more agreeable than those which come 
 from without, and happen in spite of us. Now, the violences 
 of virtue are, at least, voluntary : these are crosses which we 
 choose from reason, and impose upon ourselves from duty : they 
 are often bitter, but we are consoled by the reflection of having 
 chosen them. But the disgusts of the world are forced crosses, 
 which come without our being consulted: it is a hateful yoke, 
 which is imposed on us against our will : we wish it not ; we 
 detest it ; yet, nevertheless, we must drink all the bitterness of 
 the cup. In virtue, we only suffer, because it is our inclination 
 to suffer : in the world, we suffer so much the more, in proportion 
 as we wish it less, and as our inclinations are inimical to our 
 sufferings. 
 
 Secondly. The disgusts accompanying virtue are a burden 
 only to indolence and laziness; these are repugnances, bitter 
 
44 the disgusts Ser. 3. 
 
 only to the senses : but the disgusts of the world, ah ! they 
 pierce to the quick ; they mortify all the passions ; they humble 
 pride, pull down vanity, light up envy, mortify ambition, and 
 none of our feelings escape the influence of their sadness and 
 bitterness. 
 
 Thirdly. Those of virtue are sensible only in their first opera- 
 tion : the first efforts cost us much ; the sequel softens and tran- 
 quillizes them. The passions, which are generally the occasion of 
 any disgust at virtue, have this in particular, that the more we 
 repress them, the more tractable they become ; the violences we 
 do to them, gradually calm the heart, and leave us less to suffer 
 from those to come : but the disgusts of the world are always new ; 
 as they always find in us the same passions, they always leave us 
 the same bitternesses ; those which have gone before only render 
 those that follow more insupportable. 
 
 In a word, the disgusts of the world inflame our passions, and 
 consequently increase our sufferings ; those of virtue repress them, 
 and by these means gradually establish peace and tranquillity in 
 our soul. 
 
 Fourthly. The disgusts of the world happen to those who most 
 faithfully serve it: it does not treat them better, because they 
 are more devoted to its party, and more zealous for its abuses ; on 
 the contrary, the hearts most ardent to the world, are almost 
 always those who experience the largest share of its mortifications ; 
 because they feel more sensibly its neglect and injustice ; their 
 ardour for it is the source of all their uneasinesses. But with God, 
 we have only our coldness to dread ; for the disgusts which may 
 accompany virtue, in general, have only relaxation and idleness 
 for principle; the more our ardour for the Lord increases, the 
 more do our disgusts diminish ; the more our zeal inflames, the 
 more do our repugnances weaken; the more we serve him with 
 fidelity, the more charms and consolations do we find in his ser- 
 vice. It is by relaxing, that we render our duties disagreeable ; 
 it is by lessening our fervour, that we add a new weight to our 
 yoke ; and if, in spite of our fidelity, the disgusts continue, they 
 are then trials, and not punishments : it is not that consolations 
 are refused, it is a new occasion of merit which is prepared for us : 
 it is not an irritated God, who shuts his heart to us, it is a merciful 
 God, who purifies our own ; it is not a discontented master, who 
 suspends his favours, it is a jealous Lord, who wishes to prove 
 our love: our homages are not rejected, our submissions and 
 services are only anticipated ; it is not meant to repulse, but to 
 assure to us the price of our sufferings, by rejecting every thing 
 which might still mingle the man with God, ourselves with grace, 
 human supports with the gifts of heaven, and the riches of faith 
 with the consolations of self-love. Behold, my brethren, the 
 last truth with which I shall terminate this discourse : Not only 
 the disgusts accompanying virtue, are not so bitter as those of the 
 world, but they likewise possess resources which those of the 
 world have not. 
 
Ser. 3. ACCOMPANYING VIRTUE. 45 
 
 Reflection IV. I say resources : alas t my brethren, we find 
 none but in virtue. The world wounds the heart, but it furnishes 
 no remedies ; it has its chagrins, but nothing to comfort them ; it 
 is full of disgusts and bitterness, but we find no resources in it. 
 But in virtue there is no sorrow which has not its consolation; and 
 if in it we find repugnances and disgusts, we find likewise a thou- 
 sand resources which soothe them. 
 
 In the first place, peace of mind, and the testimony of the con- 
 science. What luxury, to be at peace with ourselves ; no longer 
 to carry within us that importunate and corroding worm which 
 pursued us every where ; no longer to be racked by eternal re- 
 morses, which poisoned every comfort of life : in a word, to be de- 
 livered from iniquity ! The senses may still suffer from the sorrows 
 of virtue, but the heart at least is tranquil. 
 
 Secondly. The certainty that our sufferings are not lost ; that our 
 sorrows become a new merit for us ; that our repugnances, in pre- 
 paring for us new sacrifices, secure an additional claim to the pro- 
 mises of faith ; that were virtue to cost us less, it would likewise 
 bear an inferior price in the sight of God ; and that he only renders 
 the road so difficult, in order to render our crown more brilliant and 
 glorious. 
 
 Thirdly. Submission to the orders of God, who has his reasons 
 for refusing to us the visible consolations of virtue ; whose wisdom 
 consults our interest more than our passions ; and who has pre- 
 ferred bringing us to himself by a less agreeable road, because it is 
 a more secure one. 
 
 Fourthly. The favours with which he accompanies our sorrows ; 
 which sustain our faith at the same time that our violence lowers 
 self-love ; which fortify our heart in truth, at the same time that 
 our senses are disgusted with it ; which make our mind prompt 
 and fervent, although the flesh is weak and feeble, insomuch, that 
 he renders our virtue so much the more solid as to us it seems me- 
 lancholy and painful. 
 
 Fifthly. The external succours of piety, which are so many new 
 resources in our faintings and thirst : the holy mysteries, where 
 Jesus Christ, himself the comforter of faithful souls, comes to con- 
 sole our heart ; the truths of the divine writings, which promise 
 nothing in this world to the upright but tribulation and tears, 
 calm our fears, by informing us that our pleasures are to come ; and 
 that the sufferings which discourage us, far from making us distrust 
 our virtue, ought to render our hope more animated and certain : in 
 a word, the history of the saints, who have undergone the same 
 disgusts and trials ; consequently, we have so much the less reason 
 to complain, as characters so infinitely more pious than we, have 
 experienced the same lot ; that such has almost always been the 
 conduct of God towards his servants ; and that, if any thing in this 
 life can prove his love toward us, it is that of his leading us by the 
 same path that he did the saints, and treating us in this world in 
 the same manner that he did the upright. 
 
 Sixthly. The tranquillity of the life and the uniformity of the 
 
46 the disgusts Ser. 3. 
 
 duties which have succeeded to the frenzies of the passions and 
 the tumult of a worldly life, which have provided for us much 
 more happy and peaceful days than those we had ever passed in 
 the midst of dissipation, and which, though they still leave us 
 something to suffer, yet occasion us to enjoy a more tranquil and 
 supportable lot. 
 
 Lastly. Faith, which brings eternity nearer to us ; which disco- 
 vers to us the insignificancy of worldly affairs ; that we approach 
 the happy term ; that the present life is but a rapid instant ; and 
 consequently, that our sufferings cannot endure long, but that this 
 fleeting moment of tribulation assures to us a glorious and immor- 
 tal futurity, which will endure as long as God himself. What re- 
 sources for a faithful heart ! What disproportion between the suf- 
 ferings of virtue and those of guilt ! It is in order to make us feel 
 the difference that God often permits the world to possess us for a 
 time ; that in youth we deliver ourselves up to the sway of the 
 passions, on purpose, that, when he afterward recalls us to himself, 
 we may know by experience how much more easy is his yoke than 
 that of the world. I will permit, says he, in the Scriptures, that 
 my people serve the nations of the earth for some time ; that they 
 allow themselves to be seduced by their profane superstitions, in 
 order that they may know the difference between my service and 
 the service of the kings of the earth ; and that they may feel how 
 much more easy is my yoke than the servitude of men. 
 
 Happy the souls, who, in order to be undeceived, have had no 
 occasion for this experience, and who have not so dearly bought 
 the knowledge of this world's vanity, and the melancholy lot of in- 
 iquitous passions. Alas ! since at last we must be undeceived, and 
 must abandon and despise it ; since the day will come, when we 
 shall find it frivolous, disgusting, and insupportable ; when, of all 
 its foolish joys, there shall no longer remain to us but the cruel re- 
 morse of having yielded to them ; the confusion of having followed 
 them; the obstacles to good which they will have left in our heart ; 
 why not anticipate and prevent such melancholy regrets ? Why 
 not do to-day what we ourselves allow must one day be done ? 
 Why wait till the world has made such deep wounds in our heart, 
 to run afterward to remedies, which cannot re-establish us without 
 greater pain, and costing us doubly dear ? We complain of some 
 slight disgusts which accompany virtue ; but, alas ! the first be- 
 lievers, who, to the maxims of the gospel, sacrificed their riches, 
 reputation, and life ; who ran to the scaffolds to confess Jesus 
 Christ ; who passed their days in chains, in prisons, in shame and 
 in sufferance, and to whom it cost so much to serve Jesus Christ ; 
 did they complain of the bitterness of his service ? Did they re- 
 proach him with rendering unhappy those who served him ? Ah ! 
 they glorified themselves in their tribulation ; they preferred shame 
 and disgrace with Jesus Christ, to all the vain pleasures of Egypt; 
 they reckoned as nothing, wheels, fires, and every instrument of 
 torture, in the hopes of a blessed immortality, which would amply 
 recompense their present sufferings : in the midst of torments they 
 
Ser. 3. ACCOMPANYING VIRTUE. 47 
 
 chaunted hymns; and regarded as a gain, the loss of all, for the in- 
 terest of their Master. What a life, in the eyes of the flesh, is that 
 of these unfortunate men, proscribed, persecuted, driven from their 
 country, having only dens and caverns for their habitation, regard- 
 ed every where as the horror of the universe ; become execrable to 
 their friends, their fellow-citizens, and their relations ! They es- 
 teemed themselves happy in belonging to Jesus Christ. In their 
 opinion, they could not too dearly purchase the glory of being his 
 disciples, and the consolation of pretending to his promises. And 
 we, my brethren, in the midst of too many of the conveniences of 
 life ; surrounded by too much abundance, prosperity, and worldly 
 glory ; finding, perhaps for our misfortune, in the applauses of the 
 world, which cannot prevent itself from esteeming worth, the re- 
 compense of virtue ; in the midst of our relations, our children, and 
 our friends, we complain that it costs us too much to serve Jesus 
 Christ ; we murmur against the slight bitterness we experience in 
 virtue ; we almost persuade ourselves that God requires too much 
 of his creatures. Ah ! when the comparison shall one day be made 
 between these little disgusts which we exaggerate so much, and the 
 crosses, the wheels, the fires, and all the tortures of the martyrs ; 
 the austerities of the anchorites ; the fasts, the tears, and sufferings 
 of so many holy penitents ; alas ! we shall then blush to find our- 
 selves almost single before Jesus Christ ; we, who have suffered 
 nothing for him ; to whom his kingdom has cost nothing ; and 
 who, individually bearing before his tribunal more iniquities than a 
 number of saints together, cannot, however, in assembling all our 
 works of piety, compare them united to a single instance of their 
 exertions. 
 
 Let us cease, therefore, to complain of God, since he has so 
 many reasons to complain of us. Let us serve him, as he wishes 
 to be served by us. If he softens our yoke, let us bless his good- 
 ness, which prepares these consolations for our weakness ; if he 
 makes us feel the whole extent of its weight, let us still esteem 
 ourselves happy that he deigns, at that price, to accept of our works 
 and homage. With equal gratitude, let us receive from his hand 
 consolation or affliction, since every thing which proceeds from him 
 alike conducts us to him. Let us learn to be, as the apostle, in 
 want or abundance, provided we belong to Jesus Christ : the es- 
 sential part is not to serve him with pleasure, it is to serve him 
 with fidelity. In reality, my brethren, in spite of all the disgusts 
 or repugnances which may accompany virtue, there is no real or 
 true pleasure but in serving God ; there is no solid consolation to be 
 reaped but by attaching ourselves to him. No, said the sage, it is 
 still better to feed upon the bread of wormwood and gall, with the 
 fear of the Lord, than to live in the midst of pleasure and profane 
 joys, under the lash of his wrath and indignation. Alas ! of what 
 pleasure can we be capable, when we are the enemies of God ? 
 What pleasure can we taste, when we bear in our heart only the 
 anguish and bitterness of guilt ? No, says the sage once more, the 
 fear of God can alone charm our weariness, soften our moments of 
 
48 STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS. Ser. 4. 
 
 melancholy, soothe our endless anguishes, and enable us to find 
 a certain degree of sweetness even in the evils incident to our 
 nature. It is that which renders retirement sweet, and enables 
 us to enjoy repose, far from the world and its amusements ; it is 
 that which makes days pass quickly, and occupies in peace and 
 tranquillity every moment ; and though apparently it allows us 
 more leisure than a worldly life, yet it leaves a much smaller por- 
 tion to weariness. 
 
 Great God ! what honour does not the world unintentionally pay 
 to thy service ! What an affecting eulogium on the destiny of the 
 upright is the lot of sinners ! How well, my God, thou knowest to 
 extort glory and praise from even thy enemies ! and how little ex- 
 cuse thou leavest to those souls who depart from thy paths, since, 
 in order to draw them from virtue, thou makest a resource to them 
 even of their crimes, and employest their wants to recall them to 
 thy eternal mercies. 
 
 Now to God, &c. 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 THE UNCERTAINTY OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IN A STATE OF 
 LUKEWARMNESS. 
 
 " And he arose out of the synagogue, and entered into Simon's house : and 
 Simon's wife's mother was taken with a great fever ; and they besought 
 him for her." Luke iv. 38. 
 
 Nothing more naturally represents the situation of a languid and 
 lukewarm soul, than the state of infirmity in which the gospel here 
 describes Peter's mother-in-law to have been. It may be said, 
 that coldness and indolence in the ways of God, though otherwise 
 accompanied with a life free from enormities, is a kind of secret and 
 dangerous fever, which gradually undermines the powers of the 
 soul, changes all its goo'd dispositions, weakens its faculties, insen- 
 sibly corrupts its inward parts, alters its propensities, spreads a 
 universal bitterness through all its duties, disgusts it with every 
 thing proper, with all holy and necessary nourishment ; and finishes, 
 at last, by a total extinction and an inevitable death. 
 
 This languor of the soul, in the path of salvation, is so much the 
 more dangerous as it is less observed. 
 
 Our exemption from open irregularity gives us confidence. The 
 external regularity of conduct, which attracts from men those 
 praises due only to virtue, flatters us ; and the secret comparison 
 we make of our morals with the excesses of those avowed sinners 
 whom the world and their passions govern, unites to blind us. 
 We regard our situation as a state, less perfect indeed, but always 
 certain of salvation ; seeing our conscience can only reproach us 
 with indolence and negligence in the discharge of our duties ; too 
 
Ser. 4. state of lukewarmness. 49 
 
 lenient a correction of our appetites ; self-love, and some slight in- 
 fidelities, which do not bring death to the soul. Nevertheless, 
 since the holy writings represent the adulterous and the lukewarm 
 soul as equally rejected by God ; and as they pronounce the same 
 anathema against those who despise the works of the Lord, and 
 those who perform them with negligence, this state of coldness and 
 languor in the ways of God must necessarily be very suspicious 
 with regard to salvation, both from the present dispositions which 
 it gives to the soul, and from those to which, sooner or later, it 
 never fails to lead it. 
 
 I say, in the first place, from the present dispositions it gives to 
 the soul ; namely, a fund of indolence, self-love, disgust at virtue, 
 infidelity, and deliberate disregard to every thing they believe not 
 absolutely essential in their duties ; dispositions that form a state 
 very doubtful of salvation. 
 
 Secondly. From those to which, sooner or later, lukewarmness 
 conducts us; namely, forgetfulness of God, and an open and shame- 
 ful departure from every thing sacred. 
 
 From these I wish to establish two capital truths in this matter, 
 which expose the danger of a lukewarm and infidel life ; and which, 
 from their importance, will furnish us with subject for two Dis- 
 courses. The first, that it is very doubtful, whether, in this habi- 
 tual state of coldness and languor, the lukewarm soul (as it believes) 
 preserves the righteousness and sanctifying grace upon which it 
 grounds its security. 
 
 The second, that were it even less doubtful, whether it had pre- 
 served or lost, before God, the sanctifying grace, at any rate it is 
 certain of being unable long to preserve it. 
 
 The uncertainty of righteousness in a state of lukewarmness. 
 This first truth will be the subject of the present Discourse. 
 
 The certainty of a departure from righteousness in that state, is 
 the second truth, upon which, in the following one, I shall endea- 
 vour to instruct you. 
 
 Part I. " If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, 
 and the truth is not in us," says the apostle. The purest virtue 
 below is never free, therefore, from blemish. Man, full of dark- 
 ness and passions, since the entrance of sin into the world, cannot 
 always be so attentive to regularity but that he must sometimes be 
 deceived and err ; nor so impressed with invisible good but he will 
 allow himself to be sometimes caught by worldly and ostensible 
 riches ; because their impressions on the mind are lively and quick, 
 and they always find in our hearts dispositions too favourable to 
 their dangerous seductions. 
 
 The fidelity, which the law of God exacts from just souls, excludes 
 not, therefore, a thousand imperfections, inseparable from our na- 
 ture, and from which the most guarded and watchful piety cannot 
 defend itself; but of these there are two descriptions. The first, 
 which happen through our weakness, are less infidelities than sur- 
 prises, where the weight of corruption preponderates over the 
 
50 STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS. Ser. 4. 
 
 inclination or choice ; and which the Lord, says St. Augustine, 
 permits to remain in the most faithful souls, in order to nourish 
 their humility, excite their lamentations, reanimate their desires, 
 their disgusts at their present exilement, and their longings for 
 its termination. The second class are those which please us; 
 which we justify to ourselves ; which it appears impossible for us 
 to renounce; which we look upon as necessary sweeteners of vir- 
 tue ; in which we see nothing criminal, because we perceive not the 
 guilt ; which form a part of the deliberate and general system of 
 our morals and conduct, and constitute that state of indolence and 
 coldness in the ways of God, which is the cause of condemnation 
 to so many, born otherwise, perhaps, with principles of virtue, de- 
 testation of iniquity, a fund of religion and fear of God, and happy 
 dispositions for salvation. 
 
 Now, I say, that this state of relaxation and infidelity; this tran- 
 quil and continued negligence of every thing which perhaps appears 
 not essential in our duties ; this effeminate indulgence of aU our 
 desires, so long as they offer not actual guilt to our sight ; in a 
 word, this life altogether according to our animal nature, our hu- 
 mours, temperaments, and self-love, so common with those who 
 make a public profession of piety, so safe in appearance, so glorious 
 even in the eyes of men, and to which the general error attaches 
 the names of virtue and regularity ; I say, that this is a state ex- 
 tremely doubtful to attain salvation ; that it derives its source from 
 an irregular heart, where the Holy Spirit no longer reigns ; and 
 that all the rules of faith induce us to think, that a soul of this 
 description is already, without being sensible of it, fallen from 
 righteousness and grace : in the first place, because the desire of 
 perfection essential to Christian piety is extinguished in his heart. 
 Secondly, because the rules of faith, almost always very uncertain 
 in the distinction of guilt from venial errors, with regard to other 
 sinners, are infinitely more so with respect to the unfaithful and 
 lukewarm heart. Thirdly, because, of all the external marks of a 
 living and habitual charity, there is not in it the smallest appear- 
 ance of one. Let us investigate these truths ; for they are indeed 
 worthy of our attention. 
 
 Every Christian soul is obliged to bend every effort toward the 
 perfection of his state. I say obliged, for although the degree of 
 perfection be not comprised in the precept, to endeavour at, to la- 
 bour for perfection, is nevertheless a commandment, and a duty 
 essential to every believer. Be ye perfect, says our Saviour, be- 
 cause the heavenly Father whom ye serve is perfect. I can per- 
 ceive but one essential point, said St. Paul, namely, to forget 
 whatever I have done to this period (and what, my brethren, 
 was he to forget ? His endless labours, continual sufferings, and 
 apostolic courses : so many nations converted to faith ; so many 
 illustrious churches founded; so many revelations and prodigies ?) 
 and, incessantly advancing, to direct my views to the attainment 
 of what I have yet to perform. The desire of perfection, the con- 
 tinued efforts to attain it, the holy inquietudes in consequence of 
 
Ser. 4. STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS; 51 
 
 the innumerable obstacles which check our progress, do not there- 
 fore comprise only a simple advice, and a practice reserved for the 
 cloister and the desert alone, they form the essential state of a 
 Christian, and the life according to faith on this earth. 
 
 For the life according to faith, which the just man leads, is only 
 an uninterrupted desire that the kingdom of God may be accom- 
 plished in our hearts ; a holy eagerness to form a perfect resem- 
 blance in us to Jesus Christ, and to increase even to the pleni- 
 tude of the new man ; a continual lamentation, excited by the 
 internal sensibility of our own miseries, and by the load of corruption 
 which oppresses the soul, and makes it to bear so many marks still 
 of the worldly man ; a daily struggle between the law of the spirit, 
 which continually wishes to raise us above our sensual appetites, 
 and the dominion of the flesh, which incessantly draws us back to- 
 ward ourselves : such is the state of faith, and of Christian piety. 
 Whoever you be, great or of humble rank, prince or subject, cour- 
 tier or recluse, behold the perfection to which you are called ; be- 
 hold the ground-work and the spirit of your vocation. The auste^ 
 rities of an anchorite, the silence and solitude of the desert, the po- 
 verty of the cloister, are not demanded of you ; but you are re- 
 quired to labour incessantly toward the repression of those internal 
 desires which oppose themselves to the law of God ; to mortify 
 those rebellious inclinations which so unwillingly submit to order 
 and duty ; in a word, to advance, as much as possible, your per- 
 fect conformity with Jesus Christ. Behold the degree of perfec- 
 tion to which Christian grace calls you, and the essential duty of a 
 just soul. 
 
 Now, from the moment you give way to every inclination, pro- 
 vided it extends not to the absolute infraction of the precept, from 
 the moment you confine yourselves to the essentials of the law ; 
 that you establish a kind of system of coldness and negligence; 
 that you say to yourselves, "We are unable to support a more 
 exact or more exemplary life ;" from that moment you renounce 
 the desire of perfection. You no longer propose to yourselves an 
 unceasing advancement toward that point of piety and holiness to 
 which the Almighty calls you, and toward which his grace never 
 ceases to impel you in secret ; you no longer grieve over those mi- 
 series and weaknesses so inimical to your progress ; you no longer 
 wish the kingdom of God to be established in your hearts ; you 
 abandon, therefore from that moment, the great work of righteous- 
 ness, at which you are commanded to labour ; you neglect the care 
 of your soul ; you enter not into the designs of grace ; on the con- 
 trary, you check its holy impressions : you are no longer Chris- 
 tian : that is to say, that this disposition alone, this formal inten- 
 tion of limiting yourselves to the essentials, and of regarding all 
 the rest as laudable excesses, and works of supererogation, is a 
 state of sin and death, since it is an avowed contempt of that great 
 commandment which requires us to be perfect, that is to say, to 
 labour toward becoming so. 
 
 Nevertheless, when we come to instruct you with regard to 
 
 e 2 
 
52 STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS. Ser. 4. 
 
 Christian perfection, you look upon it as to be found only in clois- 
 ters and solitudes, and scarcely will you deign to give the smallest 
 attention to our instructions. You deceive yourselves, my bre- 
 thren. The individuals who adopt retirement, certainly employ 
 austerities, fastings, and watchings, as means to succeed in that 
 mortification of the passions to which we are all equally invited. 
 They engage themselves to a perfection of means, which I confess 
 our state will not admit of ; but the perfection of the end to which 
 these means conduct, namely, the command and regulation of the 
 affections, proper contempt of the world, detachment from our- 
 selves, submission of the senses and the flesh to the Spirit, and re- 
 novation of the heart, are the perfection of all states, the engage- 
 ment of all Christians, and the covenant of our baptism. To 
 renounce this perfection, therefore, by limiting ourselves from 
 choice, or in consequence of our rank in the world, to an effeminate, 
 sensual, and worldly life, exempt only from striking enormities, is 
 to renounce the Christian calling, and change the grace of faith, 
 which has made us members of Jesus Christ, into a shameful and 
 unworthy indolence : first reason. 
 
 But were this state even not so dubious for salvation, with re- 
 spect to the desire of that perfection essential to a Christian life, 
 and which is extinguished in a lukewarm and unfaithful soul, it 
 would become so by the imbecility which it occasions, and in 
 which it places itself, of distinguishing in its conduct the infideli- 
 ties which may extend to guilt, from those which may be termed 
 simple errors. For though it is true that all sins are not sins 
 which bring death, as St. John observes, and that Christian 
 morality acknowledges errors, which only grieve the Holy Spirit 
 within us, and others which extinguish it altogether in the soul ; 
 nevertheless, the rules which it furnishes to distinguish these, can 
 neither be always certain nor general at the moment they are 
 applied; some circumstances relative to ourselves continually 
 change their nature. I speak not here of those manifest and 
 absolute transgressions of the precepts marked in the law, which 
 leave no hesitation respecting the enormity of the offence. I speak 
 of a thousand doubtful and daily transgressions; of hatred, jea- 
 lousy, evil speaking, sensuality, vanity, idleness, duplicity, negli- 
 gence in the practice of our duties, and ambition ; in all which it 
 is extremely difficult to define how far the precept may be violated : 
 now, I say, that it is by the disposition alone of the heart that the 
 measure and guilt of these faults can be decided ; that the rules 
 there, are always uncertain and changeable ; and that frequently 
 what is only weakness or surprise in the just, is guilt and corrup- 
 tion not only in the sinner, but likewise in the lukewarm and un- 
 faithful soul. This is proved by the following examples taken from 
 the holy writings. 
 
 Saul, in disobedience to the order of the Lord, spared the king 
 of the Amalekites and the most precious spoils of that infidel prince. 
 The crime does not appear considerable ; but, as it proceeded from 
 a fund of pride, of relaxation in the ways of God, and a vain com- 
 
Ser. 4. state of lukewarmxess. 53 
 
 plaisance in his victory, this action is the commencement of his 
 reprobation, and the Spirit of God withdraws itself from him. 
 Joshua, on the contrary, too credulous, spares the Gibeonites, whom 
 the Lord had commanded him to exterminate ; he went not before 
 the ark to consult him, previous to his alliance with these impos- 
 tors. But this infidelity being an act of precipitancy and surprise, 
 rather than a disobedience, and proceeding from a heart still faith- 
 ful, religious, and submissive to God, it appears slight in his eyes, 
 and the pardon almost immediately follows the crime. Now, if this 
 principle be incontrovertible, upon what do you depend when you 
 regard your daily and habitual infidelities as slight? Are you 
 acquainted with all the corruption of your heart, from which they 
 proceed ? God knows it, who is the searcher and judge ; and his 
 eyes are very different from those of men. But if it be permitted 
 to judge before the time, say, if this fund of indolence and infi- 
 delity which is in you ; of voluntary perseverance in a state dis- 
 pleasing to God ; of deliberate contempt for all the duties which 
 you consider as not essential ; of attention and care, as I may 
 say, to labour only for the Lord when he opens before you the 
 gates of punishment and destruction ; say, if all these can con- 
 stitute in his sight a state worthy of a Christian heart; and if 
 faults, which proceed from so corrupted a principle, can in reality 
 be slight, or worthy of indulgences. 
 
 Paul, my brethren, that miraculous man, to whom the secrets 
 of heaven had been revealed ; Paul, who no longer lived for him- 
 self, but in whom Jesus Christ alone lived ; Paul, who earnestly 
 longed every moment for the dissolution of his earthly body 
 that he might be clothed with immortality ; this apostle, always 
 ready to sacrifice his life for his Master, and a willing victim to 
 faith; this elected instrument of our Lord and Saviour, whose 
 conscience could reproach him with nothing, knew not, however, 
 whether he merited the love or hatred of his Lord ; whether he 
 still possessed in his heart, or had forfeited, the invisible treasure 
 of charity ; and in these melancholy doubts, the testimony of his 
 conscience was insufficient to calm his dread and uncertainty. 
 David, that king so penitent, whose delights were centred in the 
 constant meditation of the law of God, and whom the Holy 
 Spirit calls a king after God's own heart; David trembles, 
 however, lest the iniquity of his crimes be not sufficiently 
 known to him; lest the corruption of his heart conceals not 
 from him their enormity. He figures to himself unknown gulfs 
 in his conscience, which cause him to shed torrents of tears ; to 
 prostrate himself before t^ie majesty and holiness of his God, 
 and supplicate his assistance toward his purification from secret 
 infidelities, by making him sensible of them. And you, who 
 watch not, nor search your hearts ; you who, devoted to lukewarm 
 and sensual habits, with deliberate coolness allow yourselves every 
 day a thousand infidelities, upon the iniquity of which you are 
 utterly ignorant what judgment the Almighty may form: you, 
 who every moment experience these suspicious ebullitions of pas- 
 
54 STATE OF LUKEWARMNBSS. Ser. 4, 
 
 sion, where, in spite of all your self-indulgence, you find it so 
 difficult to prove that the will has not accompanied the gratifica- 
 tion, and that you have not overstepped that critical and dangerous 
 line which distinguishes actual guilt from involuntary error : you, 
 in whom almost every action is suspicious ; who every moment 
 may be demanding at your own heart, a Have I not gone too far }" 
 who, in your own conscience, feel movements and regrets which 
 you will never quiet : you, who, in spite of so many just subjects 
 of dread, believe the state of your conscience to be perfectly 
 known to you ; that the decisions of your own self-love, with re- 
 gard to your infidelities, are the decisions of the Almighty ; and 
 that the Lord, whom you serve with so much coldness and negli- 
 gence, does not yield you up to your own blindness, and punish 
 your crimes, by making you mistake them: you can possibly 
 believe that you still preserve your righteousness, and the grace 
 of sanctification, and can quiet yourselves upon your visible and 
 habitual guilt, by a pretended invisible exercise of righteousness, 
 of which you can produce neither mark nor proof? 
 
 O man ! how little art thou acquainted with the illusions of the 
 human heart, and the terrible judgments of God upon those souls 
 which resemble thee ! Thou sayest to thyself, I am rich, I am 
 loaded with the good things of this world ; (with this our Saviour 
 formerly reproached a cold and unbelieving soul ;) and thou per- 
 ceivest not, continued he, (for blindness and presumption are the 
 distinguishing character of coldness,) that in my sight, thou art 
 poor, miserable, blind, and lost to every thing. It is the destiny, 
 therefore, of a lukewarm and unfaithful soul, to live in error and 
 illusion ; to believe himself just and acceptable to God, while, alas ! 
 before him, he is lost, without knowing it, to both grace and righte- 
 ousness. 
 
 And one reflection, which I beg you to make here, is, that the 
 confidence of such souls is so much the more illusive and ill-founded, 
 as there exists not a soul less capable of judging of his own heart 
 than the lukewarm and unfaithful one. For the avowed sinner 
 cannot conceal his crimes from himself; and he is sensible that he 
 must assuredly be dead to the Lord. The just man, although ig- 
 norant whether he merits the love or hatred of his Master, enjoys, 
 nevertheless, a conscience free from reproach. But the cold and 
 unfaithful soul is involved in a state of continual and inexplicable 
 mystery to itself; for this lukewarmness in the ways of God, en- 
 feebling in us the lights of faith, and strengthening our passions, 
 increases our darkness. Every infidelity is like an additional cloud, 
 overspreading the mind and heart, which darkens to our sight the 
 truths of salvation. In this manner the heart is gradually enve- 
 loped, the conscience becomes embarrassed, the lights of the mind 
 are weakened ; you are no longer that spiritual Christian, capable 
 of a proper judgment. Insensibly you adopt maxims in secret, 
 which, as you think, diminish your guilt ; the blindness increases 
 in the same proportion as the lukewarmness. 
 
 The more you admit of this relaxation, in a more altered light do 
 
Ser, 4. STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS. 55 
 
 your duties and rules appear. What formerly appeared essential, 
 no longer appears but a vain scruple. The omissions, which, in 
 the period of fervour for duty and religion, would have excited in 
 you the warmest compunctions, are now no longer regarded even 
 as faults. The principles, the judgment, the light of the mind, 
 are all changed. 
 
 Now, in this situation, who has told you, that, in the judgment 
 which you form on the nature of your infidelities and your daily 
 departure from virtue, you do not deceive yourselves ? Who has 
 told you, that the errors which you think so slight are in reality 
 so ; and that the distant boundaries which you prescribe to guilt, 
 and within which every thing to you appears venial, are really the 
 limits of the law ? Alas ! the most enlightened guides know not 
 how to distinguish clearly in a cold and unbelieving conscience. 
 These are what I may call the evils of that langour in which we 
 know nothing ; where the wisest of us can say nothing with cer- 
 tainty ; and of which the secret cause is always an enigma. You 
 are sensible yourselves, that, in this state of relaxation, you expe- 
 rience in your hearts certain doubts and embarrassments which 
 you can never sufficiently clear up ; that in your consciences there 
 always remains something secret and inexplicable, which you never 
 wish to search into, or above half expose. These are not exagge- 
 rations, it is the real state and bottom of your soul, which you 
 feel a reserve to lay open. You are sensible, that, even when 
 prostrating yourselves before the Almighty, the confession of your 
 guilt never entirely corresponds with the most intimate dispositions 
 of your heart ; that it never paints your internal situation such as 
 in reality it is ; and, in a word, that there always exists in your 
 heart something more criminal than what in any statement of it 
 you can bring yourselves to avow. And, indeed, how can you be 
 certain, that in those continual self-gratifications; in that effe- 
 minacy of manners which composes your life ; in that attention to 
 every thing which may flatter the senses, or remove disquiet from 
 you ; to sacrifice to indolence and laziness, all which appears not 
 essential in your duties ; how can you be certain, I say, that your 
 self-love is not arrived at that fatal point which serves to give it 
 dominion over your heart, and for ever banish from it Christian 
 charity ? Who is able to inform you, in those frequent and volun- 
 tary infidelities, where, comforted by their pretended insignificancy, 
 you oppose the internal grace which endeavours to turn you from 
 them ; you continually act contrary to your own reason and judg- 
 ment : whether this internal contempt of the voice of God, this 
 formal and daily abuse of your own lights and grace from God, be 
 not an outrage upon the Divine goodness ; a criminal contempt of 
 his gifts ; a wickedness in your deviations from virtue which leaves 
 no excuse ; and a deliberate preference to your passions and your- 
 selves over Jesus Christ, which can alone proceed from a heart 
 where the love of all order and righteousness is extinguished ? Who 
 can tell you, if, in these recollections where your listless mind has 
 a thousand times dwelt upon objects or events dangerous to mo- 
 
56 STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS. Ser. 4. 
 
 desty, your indolence in combating them has not been criminal ; 
 and if the efforts which you afterward made, were not an artifice 
 of self-love, in order to disguise their criminality, and quiet you on 
 the indulgence you had already yielded to your crimes? Who 
 would dare to determine, if, in these secret antipathies and animo- 
 sities, which you give yourselves but little trouble to restrain, (and 
 that always more for the sake of appearances than through piety,) 
 you have never exceeded that slippery line beyond which dwell 
 hatred and death to the soul ? If, in that excess of sensibility, 
 which in general accompanies all your afflictions, infirmities, losses, 
 and disgraces, those which you call feelings attached and inevitable 
 to nature, are not irregularities of the heart, and a revolt against 
 the decrees of Providence ? If, in all those attentions and eager- 
 nesses with which we see you occupied, to manage either the inte- 
 rests of your worldly affairs, or the preservation of a vain beauty, 
 there is not either as much forwardness as may amount to the 
 crime of illegal ambition, or complaisance for yourself, and desire 
 of pleasing, as may sully your heart with the guilt of sensuality ? 
 Great God ! thou hast well discerned, as thy servant Job formerly 
 remarked, the fatal limits which separate life from death, and light 
 from darkness, in the heart. These are the gulfs and abysses over 
 which mankind, little instructed in them, must tremble ; and of 
 which Thou reservest the manifestation till the terrible day of thy 
 vengeance shall arrive. Second reason, drawn from the uncertainty 
 of the rules, which leaves the state of a lukewarm soul very suspi- 
 cious, and even renders it incapable of knowing itself. 
 
 But a final reason, which to me appears still more decisive, and 
 more dreadful to the lukewarm soul, is, there not being an appear- 
 ance from which we can presume that it still preserves the sancti- 
 fying grace ; on the contrary, every thing induces us to suppose it 
 forfeited ; that is to say, that, of all the symptoms of a habitual and 
 living charity, there is not a vestige of one in it. 
 
 For, my brethren, the first character of charity is to fill us with 
 that spirit of adoption in children, which leads us to love God as 
 our heavenly Father, to love his law, and the justice of his com- 
 mandments, and to dread the forfeiture of his love more than all 
 the evils with which he threatens us. 
 
 Now, the attention alone with which a lukewarm soul examines 
 whether an offence be venial, or extends farther; of disputing 
 with God every article he may refuse him, without actual guilt ; of 
 studying the law, only for the purpose of knowing to what degree 
 it may be violated ; of unceasingly preferring the interests of his 
 own cupidity to those of grace ; and always justifying those things 
 which flatter the passions, in opposition to the rules which check or 
 forbid them ; this attention, I say, can only proceed from a heart 
 destitute of faith and charity ; from a heart in which the Spirit of 
 God, that spirit of love and kindness, apparently no longer reigns. 
 For no children but the prodigal are capable of quibbling in this 
 manner with their father and protector ; of exercising to the utmost 
 length of severity any claims they may have, and of seizing all they 
 may think themselves entitled to. 
 
Ser. 4. statu of lukewarmness. 57 
 
 Now, in order to give this reflection all its weight, that dis- 
 position, which deliberately allows itself every infidelity which 
 will not, it believes, be followed by eternal punishment, is the 
 disposition of a slave and hireling ; that is to say, that, could they 
 promise themselves the same impunity and indulgence from the 
 Almighty, for the transgression of the essential points of the law, 
 they would violate them with the same indifference as they violate 
 the least; for were cruel and avowed revenge, calumny of the 
 blackest nature, and criminal attachments, to be attended in futu- 
 rity with no worse consequences than slight and momentary 
 resentments, accidental and careless evil-speaking, or too much 
 self-love, they would feel no more horror in the commission of the 
 former than the last-mentioned crimes; that is to say, that when 
 faithful to the commandments, it is not from a love of righteous- 
 ness, but the dread of that punishment which would attend their 
 infraction ; it is not to order and to the law that they submit them- 
 selves, it is to their chastisement; it is not the Lord they have in 
 view, it is themselves ; for, while his glory alone is interested, and 
 no serious consequences may be expected to follow our infidelities, 
 from their apparent slightness, we are not afraid of displeasing 
 him; we even justify to ourselves in secret these kinds of trans- 
 gressions, by saying, that notwithstanding they offend, and are 
 displeasing to the Lord, yet they bring not death nor eternal pu- 
 nishment to the soul. We are not affected by what regards only 
 him, his glory goes for nothing in the distinction we make between 
 actions allowed or forbidden; our interest alone regulates our 
 fidelity, and nothing can warm our coldness but the dread of ever- 
 lasting punishment. We are even delighted at the impunity of 
 those trivial transgressions ; of being able to gratify our inclina- 
 tions, without any greater misfortune attending, than the displea- 
 sure of the Almighty. We love this wretched liberty, which seems 
 to leave us the right of being unpunished, though unfaithful. 
 We are the apologists of it; we carry it even farther than in 
 reality it goes; we wish all to be venial; gaming, dress, sensual 
 pleasures, passion, animosities, public spectacles; what shall I 
 say ? We would wish this freedom to be universal; that nothing 
 which gratifies our appetites should be punished; that the 
 Almighty were neither just, nor the avenger of iniquity; and that 
 we might yeild ourselves up to the gratification of every passion, 
 and violate the sanctity of his law, without any dread of the 
 severity of his justice. Provided a lukewarm soul will descend to 
 an examination of itself, it will feel, that this is truly the principle 
 of its heart, and its real disposition. 
 
 Now, I ask you, is this the situation of a soul in which 
 the sanctifying charity and grace are still preserved; that is to 
 say, a soul which loves its Maker more than the world, more 
 than all created beings, more than all pleasures or riches, more 
 than itself; of a soul which can feel no joy bat in his posses- 
 sion; which dreads only his loss, and knows no misfortune but 
 that of his displeasure? Does the charity you flatter yourselves 
 
58 STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS. Ser. 4. 
 
 still to preserve, seek, in this manner, its proper interest ? Does 
 it regard as nothing, the displeasure of him it loves, provided its 
 infidelities remain unpunished ? Does it think of disputing, like 
 you every day, to what degree it may safely offend him, in order 
 to take its measures accordingly, and then allow itself every trans- 
 gression to which impunity is attached? Does it see nothing 
 amiable in its God, or capable of attaching the heart, but his chas- 
 tisements ? Were he not even an Almighty and an avenging God, 
 would it be less affected by his infinite mercies, his truth, holiness, 
 wisdom, fatherly tenderness, and protection ? Ah ! lukewarm and 
 infidel soul! thou lovest him no longer: thou lovest, thou livest 
 only for thyself. The small remains of fidelity, which still keep 
 thee from sin, are nothing but a fund of sloth, timidity, and self- 
 love. Thou wishest to live in peace with thyself: thou dreadest 
 the embarrassments of a passion, and the remorse of a sullied con- 
 science; iniquity has become a fatigue, and that alone displeases 
 thee with it. Thou lovest thine own ease; and that is thy sole 
 religion. Indolence is the only barrier which stops thee, and 
 all thy virtue is limited to thyself. Assuredly thou wouldst 
 wish to know whether this infidelity be a venial transgression, or 
 if it extends farther. Thou acknowledgest, that it displeases 
 God, (for that point admits of no doubt,) yet is that not sufficient 
 to turn thee from it? Thou wouldst wish to know, whether it so 
 far displeases him as to provoke his everlasting wrath ? Ah ! 
 thou seest very well, that this investigation tends to nothing by 
 thyself; that thy disposition leads thee to think guilt nothing, as 
 an offence and a displeasure to God, a powerful reason, however, 
 why it should be detestable to thee; that thou no longer servest 
 the Lord in truth and in charity; that thy pretended virtue is only 
 a natural timidity, which dares not expose itself to the terrible 
 threatenings of the law; that thou art nothing but a vile and wretch- 
 ed slave, to restrain whom, it is necessary to keep scourges con- 
 tinually in thy sight; that thou resemblest that unfaithful servant, 
 who secreted his talent, because he knew that his master was 
 severe, and, but for that reason, would have wasted it in dissipa- 
 tion; and that, in the preparation of the hezfrt, to which alone the 
 Almighty looketh, thou hatest his law: thou lovest every thing it 
 forbids; thou art no longer in charity; thou art a child of death 
 and perdition. 
 
 The second character of charity is to be timorous, and to magni- 
 fy to ourselves our smallest deviations; not that charity deceives 
 or conceals from us the truth, but, disengaging the soul from the 
 senses, it purifies our view of faith, and renders it more quick-sighted 
 in spiritual affairs; and besides, whatever is, in the smallest de- 
 gree, displeasing to the only object of our love, appears serious and 
 considerable to the soul which loves. Thus charity is always hum- 
 ble, timid, and distrustful of itself; unceasingly agitated by its pious 
 perplexities, which leave it in suspense respecting its real state; 
 always alarmed by those delicacies of grace, which make it tremble 
 at every action; which make a kind of martyrdom of love, from the 
 
Ser. 4. state of lukewarmness. 59 
 
 uncertainty in which they leave it; and by which, however, it is 
 purified. These are not the vain and puerile scruples which we 
 blame in weak minds. They are those pious fears of charity and 
 of grace inseparable from every faithful and religious soul. It 
 works its salvation with fear and trembling; and even frequently 
 regards as crimes actions which are often virtues in the sight of 
 God; and which, at most, can only be regarded as simple Weak- 
 nesses. 
 
 These are the holy perplexities of charity, which derive their 
 source even from the lights of faith. This path has, in all ages, 
 been the path of the just. 
 
 Yet, nevertheless, it is that pretended charity, of which, in the 
 midst of a vicious life, and of all your infidelities, you believe 
 yourselves still possessed, that makes them appear slight to you: 
 it is that charity itself, which you suppose not to have lost, that 
 comforts and encourages you; that dimimishes your faults in your 
 own sight, and fixes you in a state of peace and security : in a 
 word, that not only banishes from your heart all those pious alarms 
 inseparable from real piety, but makes you regard them as weak- 
 nesses, and even the excesses of piety. Now tell me, I beg of you, 
 is not that an inconsistency? Does charity contradict itself in 
 that manner ? Or can you place much dependence on a love which 
 so nearly resembles hatred ? 
 
 The last character of charity is to be active and diligent in the 
 ways of God. We find how much the apostle dwells on its activity 
 and fecundity in the heart of a Christian. It operates wherever it 
 is; it cannot, say the saints, be idle: it is a celestial fire, which 
 no power can hinder from showing itself, and from acting: it may 
 sometimes indeed be overwhelmed, and greatly weakened, by the 
 multitude of our weaknesses, but, while not entirely extinguished, 
 there always proceed from it, as I may say, some sparks of sighs, 
 wishes, lamentations, efforts, and deeds. The Holy Sacrament 
 reanimates it; prayer arouses it; pious reading, affliction, dis- 
 grace, bodily infirmity, all rekindle it, when not utterly extin- 
 guished. It is mentioned in the second book of the Maccabees, 
 that the sacred fire, which the Jews had concealed during their 
 captivity, was found at their return apparently extinct. But as 
 the surface alone was obscured, and the sacred fire still internally 
 preserved all its virtue, scarcely was it exposed to the rays of the 
 sun, when they saw it instantaneously rekindle, and present to 
 their sight a brightness altogether new, and an activity altogether 
 astonishing. 
 
 Behold, my brethren, a faithful representation of the coldness 
 of a truly just soul; and which likewise, would be your case, had 
 the multitude of your infidelities done no more than cover and 
 relax, as I may say, without extinguishing, the sacred fire of 
 charity within you: behold, I say, what ought to be your situa- 
 tion, when you approach the Holy Sacrament, or listen to the 
 word of God. When Jesus Christ, the sun of righteousness, darts 
 upon you some rays of his grace and light, and inspires you with 
 
60 STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS. Ser. 4. 
 
 holy desires, your heart ought then to be seen rekindled, and your 
 fervour renewed: you ought then to appear all fire and animation 
 in the practice of your duty, and astonish even the most confident 
 witnesses of your former life by the renovation of your morals 
 and zeal. 
 
 Alas ! nothing, however, reanimates you* Even the Holy Sa- 
 crament leaves you all your coldness. The words of the gospel, 
 which you listen to, fall upon your heart like corn upon a sterile 
 land, where it immediately dies. The sentiments of salvation which 
 grace operates within you, are never followed with any effect in 
 the melioration of your morals. You continually drag on in the 
 same indolence and languor. You depart from the holy altar equally 
 cold, equally insensible, as you approached it. We see not in you 
 those renewals of zeal, piety, and fervour, so common in just souls, 
 and of which the motives are to be found in their deviations from 
 duty. What you were yesterday, you are to-day; the same infi- 
 delities, the same weaknesses, you advance not a single step in 
 the road to salvation; all the fire of heaven could scarcely rekindle 
 in the bottom of your heart this pretended charity upon which 
 you depend so much. Ah ! my dear hearer, how much I dread 
 that it is extinct, and that you are dead in the sight of the Lord ! 
 I wish not to anticipate the secret judgments of God upon the 
 consciences ; but I must tell you, that your state is very far from 
 being safe; I even tell you, that, if we are to judge by the rules of 
 faith, you are in disgrace with, and hated of the Lord ; I tell you 
 likewise, that a coldness so durable and constant cannot subsist 
 with a principle of heavenly and eternal life, which always, from 
 time to time at least, betrays external movements and signs, raises, 
 animates itself, and takes wing, as if to disengage itself from the 
 shackles which weigh it down; and that a charity so mute, so in- 
 dolent, and so constantly insensible, exists no more. 
 
 But the great danger of this state, my brethren, is, that a 
 lukewarm soul is so without scruple; it feels that it might carry 
 its fervour and fidelity to a much greater length, but it looks upon 
 that zeal, and that exactitude, as a perfection and a grace reserved 
 only for certain souls, and not as a general duty. In this manner 
 they fix themselves in that degree of coldness into which they are 
 fallen. They have not made, nor scarcely attempted, the smallest 
 progress in virtue, since the first ardours of conversion. It would 
 appear, that having exhausted all their fervour against the criminal 
 passions with which they had at first to combat, they imagine that 
 nothing now remains but to enjoy in peace the fruits of their vic- 
 tory. A thousand damages which still remain from their first 
 shipwreck, they think no more of repairing. So far from endea- 
 vouring to repress a thousand weaknesses and corrupted inclina- 
 tions left them by their first irregularities, they love and cherish 
 them. The Holy Sacrament no longer reanimates or invigorates 
 their faith ; it only amuses it. Conversion is no longer the end 
 they propose, they believe it already done : and, alas ! their con- 
 fessions, even to the Almighty, are more for the purpose of 
 
Ser. 4. state of lukewarmness. 61 
 
 amusing and lulling their consciences, than the effects of piety and 
 real contrition. 
 
 We impose greatly upon ourselves, my brethren, with regard 
 to our consciences reproaching us with nothing criminal ; for we 
 see not, that it is even that tranquillity which constitutes the 
 danger, and perhaps the guilt likewise of it. We believe ourselves 
 in security in our state, because it perhaps offers to our sight more 
 innocence and regularity than that of disorderly souls; and indeed, 
 we wish not to conceive how a life purely natural should not be a 
 life of grace and of faith ; or that a state of habitual idleness and 
 sensual gratification, should be a state of sin and death in a Chris- 
 tian life. 
 
 Thus, my dear hearer, you whom this discourse regards, re- 
 animate yourself without ceasing in the spirit of your vocation; 
 according to the advice of the apostle, raise yourself every day 
 by prayer, by mortification of the senses, by vigilance over your 
 passions, and by a continual retrospection to, and investigation 
 of, your own heart, that first grace, which operates to draw you 
 from the errors and wanderings of the world, and fits you to enter 
 into the paths of God. Depend upon it, that piety has nothing 
 sure or consoling but fidelity; that, in relaxing from it, you only 
 augment your troubles, because you multiply your bonds; that, in 
 retrenching from your duty, zeal, fervour, and exactitude, you like- 
 wise retrench all its sweets and pleasures; that, in depriving your 
 state of fidelity, you deprive it of security; and that, in limiting 
 yourself simply to shun iniquity, you lose the most precious fruits 
 of virtue. 
 
 And after all, since you have already sacrificed the essential, 
 why will you still attach yourselves to the frivolous parts ? After 
 having accomplished the most laborious and painful exertions 
 toward salvation, must you perish for not finishing the slight- 
 est and most easy? When Naaman, little convinced, because 
 the prophet, for the cure of his leprosy, had only ordered him to 
 bathe in the waters of Jordan, retired full of contempt for the man 
 of God, and believing it impossible that his recovery could be ac- 
 complished by so simple a remedy, the people who accompanied 
 him made him sensible of his error, by saying to him, " But, 
 master, had the prophet bid thee do some great thing, wouldst 
 thou not have done it? How much rather, then, when he saith 
 to thee, Wash, and be clean ? " 
 
 And now, my brethren, attend to what I have to say, while I 
 finish this Discourse. You have abandoned the world, and the 
 idols which you formerly worshipped in it; you are come from afar 
 into the paths of God; you have had so many passions to overcome, 
 and obstacles to surmount, so many things to sacrifice, and difficult 
 exertions to make, there remains only one step more to accomplish, 
 which is a faithful and constant vigilance over yourselves. If a 
 sacrifice of the criminal passions were not already made, and you 
 were required to do it, you would not, I believe hesitate a moment; 
 cost what it might, you would make it: and, in the mean while, 
 
62 STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS. Ser. 5. 
 
 when simple purifications are only demanded of you ; nay, when 
 you are required, as I may say, almost the same things which you 
 do, but only to be practised with more fervour, fidelity, faith, and 
 vigilance, are you excusable in declining them ? Why will you ren- 
 der useless all your former efforts, by the refusal of a thing so easy? 
 Why should you have renounced the world, and all its criminal 
 pleasures, only to find in piety the same rock, which by flying from 
 sin you thought to have escaped ? And would it not be lamentable, 
 if, after having sacrificed to God the principal parts, you should lose 
 yourselves, by wishing still to dispute with him a thousand little 
 sacrifices, much less painful to the heart and to nature ? 
 
 Finish, then, in us, O my God ! that which thy grace has already 
 begun: triumph over our languors and our weaknesses, since thou 
 hast already triumphed over our crimes : give us a heart fervent and 
 faithful, since thou hast already deprived us of a criminal and cor- 
 rupted one: inspire us with that willing submission which the just 
 possess,^since thou hast extinguished in us that pride and obstinacy 
 which occasion so many sinners. Leave not, O my God ! thy 
 work unfinished; and, since thou hast already made us enter into 
 the holy career of salvation, render us worthy of the holy crown 
 promised to those who shall have legally fought for it. 
 
 Now to God, &c. Amen. 
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 THE CERTAINTY OF THE LOSS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IN A 
 STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS. 
 
 " And he rose out of the syangogue, and entered into Simon's house : and Simon's'wife's 
 mother was taken with a great fever ; and they besought him for her." Luke iv. 38. 
 
 Since Simon thought the presence of our Saviour necessary for 
 the cure of his mother-in-law, it would appear, my brethren, that 
 the evil was pressing, and threatened an approaching death. The 
 usual remedies must have been found ineffectual, and nothing 
 but a miracle could operate her cure, and draw her from the gates 
 of death: nevertheless, the Scriptures mention her being attacked 
 by only a common fever. On every other occasion, we never find 
 that they had recourse to our Saviour, but to raise people from the 
 grave, to cure paralytics, restore sight to the blind, and hearing to 
 the deaf, from their birth : in a word, to cure diseases incurable by 
 any other than the sovereign Master of life and death. In this 
 instance he is called upon to restore health to a person attacked by 
 a simple fever. 
 
 Whence comes it that the Almighty power is employed on so 
 slight an occasion? It is, that this fever, being a natural image of 
 lukewarmness in the ways of God, the Holy Spirit has wished to 
 
Ser. 5. state of lukewarmness. 63 
 
 make us understand by it, that this disease, apparently so slight, 
 and of which they dread not the danger, this lukewarmness, so 
 common in piety, is a disease which inevitably destroys the soul, 
 and that a miracle is necessary to rescue it from death. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, of all the maxims of Christian morality, there 
 is none upon which experience allows us less to deceive ourselves, 
 than the one which assures us, that contempt for the smallest 
 points of our duty insensibly leads us to a transgression of the most 
 essential ; and that negligence in the ways of God, is never far from 
 a total loss of righteousness. He who despises the smaller objects 
 of religion, says the Holy Spirit, will gradually fall : he who des- 
 pises them, that is to say, who deliberately violates them ; who 
 lays down, as it were, a plan of this conduct : for if, through weak- 
 ness or surprise, you fail in them sometimes, it is the common des- 
 tiny of the just, and this discourse would no longer regard you ; 
 but to despise them in the sense already mentioned, which can hap- 
 pen only with lukewarm and unfaithful souls, is a path which must 
 terminate in the loss of righteousness ; in the first place, because 
 the special grace necessary toward perseverance in virtue is no 
 longer granted ; secondly, because the passions are strengthened 
 which lead us on to vice ; thirdly, because all the external suc- 
 cours of piety become useless. 
 
 Let us investigate these three reflections. They contain im- 
 portant instructions in the detail of a Christian life : useful, not 
 only to those who make a public profession of piety, but like- 
 wise to those who make all virtue to consist in that regularity of 
 conduct and propriety of behaviour which even the world requires. 
 
 Part I. It is a truth of salvation, says a holy father, that the 
 innocence of even the most upright has occasion for the continual 
 assistance of grace. Man, delivered up to sin by the wickedness 
 of his nature, no longer finds in himself but principles of error 
 and sources of corruption : righteousness and truth, originally born 
 with us, are now become as strangers; all our inclinations, re- 
 volted against God and his law in spite of ourselves, drag us on 
 toward illicit objects ; insomuch, that, to return to the law, and 
 submit our heart to order, it is necessary to resist, without ceasing, 
 the impressions of the senses ; to break our warmest inclinations, 
 and to harden ourselves continually against ourselves. There is no 
 duty but what now costs us something ; no precept in the law but 
 combats some of our passions ; no step in the paths of God against 
 which our heart does not revolt. 
 
 To this load of corruption, which renders duty so difficult and 
 irksome, and iniquity so natural, add the snares which surround us, 
 the examples which entice us, the objects which effeminate us, the 
 occasions which surprise us, the compliances which weaken us, the 
 afflictions which discourage us, the properties which corrupt us, the 
 situations which blind us, and the contradictions which we expe- 
 rience ; every thing around us is indeed only one continued temp- 
 tation. I speak not of the miseries which are natural to us, or the 
 
64 STATE OF LUKEWARMNE8S. Ser. 5. 
 
 particular opposition to order and righteousness, which our past 
 morals, and our first passions, have left in our hearts ; that love for 
 the world and its pleasures ; that dislike to virtue and its maxims ; 
 that empire of the senses, fortified by a voluptuous life ; that invin- 
 cible indolence, to which every thing is a burden, and to which 
 whatever is a burden becomes almost impossible; that pride, which 
 knows neither how to bend nor break : that inconstancy of heart, 
 incapable of end or uniformity, which presently tires of itself; 
 which cannot submit to rule, because that is always the same ; 
 which wishes, and wishes not ; passes in a moment from the lowest 
 state of dejection to a vain and childish joy, and leaves scarcely the 
 interval of a moment between the sincerest resolution and the infi- 
 delity which violates it. 
 
 Now, in a situation so miserable, what, O my God, can the most 
 just accomplish, delivered up to his own weakness and all the 
 snares which surround him ; bearing in his heart the source of all 
 his errors, and in his mind the principles of every illusion ? The 
 grace of Jesus Christ, therefore, can alone deliver him from so 
 many miseries ; enlighten him in the midst of so much darkness ; 
 support him under so many difficulties ; restrain him from follow- 
 ing the dictates of so many rapid desires, and strengthen him 
 against so many attacks. If left a moment to himself, he inevitably 
 stumbles, and is lost. If an Almighty hand ceases an instant to 
 retain him, he is carried down by the stream. Our consistency in 
 virtue is, therefore, a continual grace and miracle. All our steps in 
 the ways of God are new motions of the Holy Spirit ; that is to 
 say, of that invisible guide which impels and leads us on. All our 
 pious actions are gifts of Divine mercy ; since every proper use of 
 our liberty comes from him, and he crowns his gifts in recompens- 
 ing our merits. All the moments of our Christian life are like a 
 new creation, therefore, in faith, and in piety : that is to say, (this 
 spiritual creation does not suppose a non-existence in the just, but 
 a principle of grace, and a liberty which co-operates with it,) that 
 as, in the order of nature, we should again return to our nonentity, 
 if the Creator ceased for an instant to preserve the being he has given 
 us ; in the life of grace, we should again fall into sin and death, did 
 the Redeemer cease a single moment to continue, by new succours, 
 the gift of righteousness and holiness, with which he had embel- 
 lished our soul. Such is the weakness of man, and such is his con- 
 tinual dependence on the grace of Jesus Christ. The fidelity of 
 the just soul is therefore the fruit of continual aids of grace ; but it 
 is likewise the principle. It is grace alone which can accomplish 
 the fidelity of the just ; and it is the fidelity alone of the just which 
 merits the preservation and increase of grace in the heart. 
 
 For, my brethren, the ways of God toward us being full of 
 equity and wisdom, there must necessarily be some order in the 
 distribution of his gifts and grace. The Lord must communicate 
 himself more abundantly to the soul which faithfully prepares its 
 heart for his ways ; he must bestow more continual marks of his 
 protection and mercy on the upright heart which gives him con- 
 
Ser. 5. state of lukewarmness. 65 
 
 stant proof of love and fidelity; and the servant who improves his 
 talent, must necessarily be recompensed in proportion to the profit 
 he has known how to reap from it. It is just, on the contrary, 
 that a lukewarm and unfaithful heart, who serves his God with 
 negligence and disgust, should find the Almighty cold and disgust- 
 ed toward him. The misery inseparable from coldness is therefore 
 the privation of the grace of protection. If you become cold, the 
 Almighty becomes so toward you; if you limit yourself with 
 regard to him, to those essential duties which you cannot refuse 
 him without guilt, he confines himself with regard to you, to those 
 general succours which will not support you far. He retires from 
 you in proportion as you retire from him; and the measure of 
 fidelity with which you serve him, is the measure of protection you 
 may expect to receive. 
 
 Nothing can be more equitable than this conduct; for you enter 
 into judgment with your God. You neglect every opportunity 
 where you might give him proofs of your fidelity: you dispute 
 every thing with him, of which you think you could avoid the pay- 
 ment ; you carefully watch lest you do any thing for him beyond 
 what duty requires. It appears you say to him, what he formerly 
 said to the unfaithful servant, Take that thine is, and go thy way. 
 You reckon with God, as I may say. All your attention is engaged 
 in prescribing limits to the right he has over your heart; and all 
 his attention likewise, if I may be permitted to speak in this man- 
 ner, is to put bounds to his mercies to your soul, and to pay your 
 indifference with the same. Love is the price of love alone; and 
 if you do not sufficiently feel all the terror and extent of this truth, 
 allow me to explain to you its consequences. 
 
 The first is, that this state of lukewarmness and infidelity re- 
 moving the soul from the grace of protection, leaves him, as I may 
 say, empty of God, and in the hands, as it were, of his own weak- 
 ness. He may, undoubtedly, with the common succours left him, 
 still preserve the fidelity he owes to God. He has always enough 
 to support him in well-doing; but his lukewarmness deprives him 
 of the ability to apply them to any purpose ; that is to say, that 
 he is still aided by those succours which may enable him to go on, 
 but no longer by those with which he may infallibly persevere; 
 there is no peril, therefore, in this situation, but makes a dangerous 
 impression upon him, and leads him to the brink of ruin. 
 
 I grant, that a happy natural disposition, some remains of mo- 
 desty, and fear of God, a conscience still afraid of guilt, and a 
 reputation to preserve, may for some time defend him against him- 
 self; but as these resources, drawn mostly from nature, cannot 
 extend far; as the sensual objects, in the midst of which he lives, 
 make every day new wounds in his heart, and grace, less abundant, 
 repairs not the loss, alas ! his strength exhausts every moment, 
 faith relaxes, and truth is obscured; the more he advances, the 
 worse he becomes. Such souls feel perfectly, that they no 
 longer retire from the world and its dangers, equally innocent as 
 formerly; that they carry their weaknesses and compliance much 
 
66 STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS. Ser. 5. 
 
 farther: that they encroach upon limits which they formerly 
 respected: that loose conversations find them more indulgent, evil- 
 speaking more favourable, pleasure less guarded, and the world 
 more anxious for it; that they bring into it a heart already half- 
 gained; that they are sensible of their losses, but feel nothing to 
 repair them : in a word, that God is almost withdrawn from them, 
 and there is no longer any barrier but their own weakness, between 
 guilt and them. Behold the situation in which you are, and from 
 that judge of the one in which you will soon be. 
 
 I know that this state of relaxation and infidelity troubles and 
 disturbs you; that you say every day, that nothing can bestow 
 greater happiness than a detachment from every thing worldly; 
 and that you envy the destiny of those Christians who give them- 
 selves up to God without reserve, and no longer keep any terms 
 with the world. But you are deceived: it is not the faith or the 
 fervour of these faithful Christians you envy; you only covet their 
 lot, that happiness and peace which they enjoy in the service of 
 their Master, and which you are incapable of partaking; you only 
 envy them that insensibility and happy indifference to which they 
 have attained for the world and every thing it esteems, your love 
 for which occasions all your troubles, remorses, and secret anguish : 
 but you envy them not the sacrifices they were under the necessity 
 of making, to arrive at their present state of tranquillity; you envy 
 them not the trials they have undergone, in order to merit the pre- 
 cious gift of a lively and fervent faith ; you envy the happiness of 
 their state, but you would not wish it to cost you the illusion and 
 sensuality of your own. 
 
 The second consequence I draw from the refusal of the grace 
 of protection to the lukewarm Christian, is, that the yoke of our 
 Saviour, to him, becomes burdensome, hard, and insupportable. 
 For, my brethren, by the irregularity of our nature, having lost 
 all taste for righteousness and truth, which, in a state of inno- 
 cence, formed the happiness of man, we no longer have any feel- 
 ing or desire but for objects which gratify the senses and passions. 
 The duties of the law of God, which recall us from the senses to 
 the spirit, and make us sacrifice the present impressions of plea- 
 sure to the hope of future promises : these duties, I say, presently 
 fatigue our weakness, because they are continual efforts we make 
 against ourselves. It requires the unction of grace, therefore, to 
 soften the yoke ; it is necessary that grace spread secret consola- 
 tions over its bitterness, and change the sadness of duty into a 
 holy and sensible joy. Now, the lukewarm soul, deprived of this 
 unction, feels only the weight of the yoke, without the consolations 
 which soften it. In this manner, all the duties of piety and reli- 
 gion become insipid to you ; works of salvation become wearisome ; 
 your conscience, restless and embarrassed by your relaxations and 
 infidelities, of which you cannot justify the innocence, no longer 
 allows you to enjoy either peace or happiness in the service of God. 
 You feel all the weight of the duties to which some remains of 
 faith, and love of ease, hinder you from being unfaithful; but 
 
Ser. 5. state of lukewarmness. 67 
 
 you feel not the secret testimony of a clear conscience, which 
 soothes and supports the fervent Christian. You shun, perhaps, 
 certain occasions of pleasure, where innocence is sure of being 
 shipwrecked ; but you only experience, in the retreat which divides 
 you from them, a wearisomeness, and a more lively desire for 
 the same pleasures from which you have forced yourself to re- 
 frain. You pray, but prayer is no longer but a fatigue ; you fre- 
 quent the society of virtuous persons, but their company becomes 
 so irksome as almost to disgust you with virtue itself. The 
 slightest violence you do upon your inclinations for the sake of 
 heaven, costs you such efforts, that the pleasures and amusements 
 of the world must be applied to, to refresh and invigorate you 
 after this fatigue ; the smallest mortification exhausts your body, 
 casts uneasiness and chagrin through your temper, and only con- 
 soles you by an immediate determination to abandon its practice. 
 You live unhappy, and without consolation, because you deprive 
 yourself of a world you love, and substitute in its place duties 
 which you love not. Your whole life is but a melancholy fatigue, 
 and a perpetual disgust with yourself. You resemble the Israelites 
 in the desert, disgusted, on the one part, with the manna upon 
 which the Lord had ordered them to subsist ; and, on the other, 
 not daring to return to the food of the Egyptians, which they still 
 loved, and which the dread alone of the Almighty's anger induced 
 them to deny themselves. Now, this state of violence cannot 
 endure; we soon tire of any remains of virtue which do not 
 quiet the heart, comfort the reason, and even flatter our self- 
 love; we soon throw off the remains of a yoke which weighs 
 us down, and which we no longer carry through love, but for 
 decency's sake. It is so melancholy to be nothing at all, as I 
 may say, neither just nor worldly, attached neither to the world 
 nor to Jesus Christ, enjoying neither the pleasures of the senses, 
 nor those of grace, that it is impossible this wearisome situation 
 of indifference and neutrality can be durable. The heart, and 
 particularly those of a certain description, requires an avowed 
 object to occupy and interest it : if not God, it will soon be the 
 world. A heart, lively, eager, always in extremes, and such as 
 the generality of men possess, cannot be fixed but by the feelings ; 
 and to be continually disgusted with virtue, shows a heart already 
 prepared to yield to the attractions of vice. 
 
 I know, in the first place, that there are lazy and indolent souls, 
 who seem to keep themselves in this state of equilibration and in- 
 sensibility; who offer nothing decided, either for the world or 
 virtue; who appear equally distant, by their dispositions, either 
 from the ardours of a faithful piety, or the excesses of profane 
 guilt ; who in the midst of the pleasures of the world, preserve a 
 fund of retention and regularity which proves the existence of some 
 remains of virtue, and, in the midst of their religious duties, a fund 
 of carelessness and laxity which still breathes the air and maxims 
 of the world. These are indolent and tranquil hearts, animated in 
 nothing, in whom indolence almost supplies the place of virtue, 
 
 f 2 
 
68 STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS. Sei". 5. 
 
 and who, notwithstanding they never arrive at that degree of piety 
 which the faithful accomplish, never proceed to those lengths in 
 iniquity which criminal and abandoned souls do. 
 
 I know it, my brethren, but I likewise know, that this indo- 
 lence of heart defends us only from crimes which would cost us 
 trouble ; makes us avoid only those pleasures which we would be 
 obliged to purchase at the expense of our tranquillity, and which 
 the love of ease alone prevents us from enjoying. It leaves us 
 virtuous only in the eyes of men, who confound the indolence 
 which dreads embarrassment with the piety which flies from vice ; 
 but it does not defend us against ourselves, against a thousand 
 illicit desires, a thousand criminal compliances, a thousand pas- 
 sions, more secret and less painful because shut up in the heart ; 
 from jealousies, which devour us; ambition, which domineers 
 over us; pride, which corrupts us; a desire of pleasure, which 
 engrosses us ; an excess of self-love, which is the principle of all 
 our conduct, and infects all our actions : that is to say, that this 
 indolence delivers up our heart to all its weaknesses, at the same 
 time that it serves as a check against the most striking and tu- 
 multuous passions, and that what appears only indolence in the 
 eyes of men, is always before God a secret ignominy and cor- 
 ruption. 
 
 I know, in the second place, that this love of piety, and this 
 unction which softens the practice of religious duties, is a gift fre- 
 quently refused even to holy and faithful Christians. But there 
 are three essential differences between the faithful soul, to whom 
 the Lord denies the sensible consolations of piety, and the luke- 
 warm and worldly one, whom the weight of the yoke oppresses, 
 and who is capable of enjoying the things of God. 
 
 The first is, that a faithful Christian, in spite of his repug- 
 nances, preserving a firm and solid faith, finds his state, and the 
 exemption from guilt in which he lives, since touched by God, a 
 thousand times more happy than that in which he lived when de- 
 livered up to his passions ; and, penetrated with horror at his for- 
 mer excesses, he would not change his lot, or re-engage himself in 
 his former vices, for all the pleasures of the earth. In place of 
 which, the lukewarm and unfaithful heart, disgusted with virtue, 
 enviously regards the pleasures and vain happiness of the world ; 
 and his disgusts being only the consequence and sufferings of his 
 weakness and the lukewarmness of his faith, to plunge into sin 
 begins to appear as the only resource left him from the weariness 
 and gloominess of piety. 
 
 The second difference is, that the faithful Christian, in the 
 midst of his disgusts and hardships, at least bears a conscience 
 which reproaches him not with guilt. He at least is supported by 
 the testimony of his own heart, and by a certain degree of internal 
 peace, which, though neither warm nor very sensible, fails not, 
 however, to establish within us a calm which we never experienced 
 in the paths of error. On the contrary, the lukewarm and unfaith- 
 ful soul, allowing himself, against the testimony of his own con- 
 
Scr. 5. STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS. 69 
 
 science, a thousand daily transgressions, of which he knows not 
 the wickedness, bears always an uneasy and suspicious conscience ; 
 and being no longer sustained by love for his duties, nor the peace 
 and testimony of his conscience, this state of agitation and weari- 
 ness soon terminates in the miserable peace of sin. 
 
 The last reason is, that the disgusts of the faithful Christian 
 being only trials, to which, for his purification, God exposes him, 
 he supplies, in a thousand ways, the sensible consolations of virtue 
 which he refuses him ; he replaces them by a more powerful pro- 
 tection, by a merciful attention to remove every danger which 
 might seduce him, and by more abundant succours of grace ; for 
 the Almighty wishes neither to lose nor discourage him ; he wishes 
 only to prove him, and make him expiate, by the afflictions and 
 hardships of virtue, the unjust pleasures of sin. But the disgusts 
 of an infidel soul are not trials, they are punishments : it is not a 
 merciful God who suspends the consolations of grace, without sus- 
 pending grace itself; it is not a tender father, who supplies, by the 
 solidity of his tenderness, and by effectual assistances, the apparent 
 rigours he is under the necessity of using: it is a severe judge, 
 who only begins to deprive the criminal of a thousand indul- 
 gences, because the sentence of death is prepared for him. The 
 hardships of virtue find a thousand resources in virtue itself: those 
 of lukewarmness can find them only in the deceitful pleasures 
 of vice. 
 
 Such, my brethren, is the inevitable lot of lukewarmness in the 
 ways of God, the misery of losing righteousness. Will you tell us, 
 after this, that you wish to practise only a degree of virtue which 
 may continue ; that these great exertions of zeal cannot be sup- 
 ported ; that it is much better not to begin so high, and by these 
 means to accomplish the end ; and that they never go far who ex- 
 haust themselves at the beginning of their journey ? 
 
 I know that every excess, even in piety, comes not from the 
 Spirit of God, which is a spirit of wisdom and discretion ; that the 
 zeal which overturns the order of our state and duties, is not the 
 piety which comes from above, but an illusion born in ourselves ; 
 that indiscretion is a source of false virtues ; and that we often give 
 to vanity what we think is given to truth. 
 
 But I tell you from God, that, to persevere in his ways, we must 
 give ourselves up to him without reserve ; that, in order to sup- 
 port the fidelity due to the essential parts of our duty, we must 
 unceasingly endeavour to weaken the passions which oppose it ; 
 and that keeping terms with these passions, under the pretext of 
 not going too far, is to dig for ourselves a grave. I tell you, that 
 it is only the faithful and fervent Christians, who, not contented 
 with shunning sin, shun also every thing which can lead to it; 
 that it is these alone who persevere, who sustain themselves, who 
 honour piety by a supported, equal, and uniform conduct; and, 
 on the contrary, it is lukewarm and relaxed souls, who have begun 
 their penitence by limiting their piety, and accommodating it to 
 the pleasures and maxims of the world ; it is these souls who draw 
 
70 STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS. Ser. 5. 
 
 back, who belie themselves, and who dishonour piety, by their 
 inconstancy and inequality of conduct, by a life sometimes blended 
 with virtue and retirement, and at others devoted to the world 
 and weaknesses. And I appeal to yourselves, my brethren, if, 
 when you see in the world a person relax from his first fervour ; 
 gradually mingle himself in the pleasures and societies he had 
 lately so scrupulously and severely denied himself; insensibly 
 abate his love of retirement, his modesty, circumspection, prayers, 
 and exactitude to fulfil his religious duties, you say not to your- 
 selves, that he is not far from returning to what he formerly was ? 
 Are not these relaxations regarded by you as a prelude to his ruin ; 
 and that virtue is nearly extinct, when once you see it weakened ? 
 Do you even require so much to arouse your censures and mali- 
 cious presages against piety ? Unjust that you are, you condemn 
 a cold and unfaithful virtue, while you condemn us for requiring 
 of you a virtue faithful and fervent! You pretend, that, in 
 order to continue, you must begin with moderation, while you 
 prophesy that a total departure from virtue is not far distant, 
 when once it begins to be followed with coolness and negligence ! 
 
 From a relaxation alone, therefore, we are to dread a return to 
 our former courses, and a departure from virtue. It is not by giving 
 ourselves up without reserve to God, that we become disgusted 
 with piety and are forsaken by him. The way to come gloriously 
 off in battle, is not by sparing, but overcoming the enemy. There 
 is no dread, therefore, of doing too much, lest we should be unable 
 to support it ; on the contrary, to merit the grace necessary to our 
 support, we ought, from the first, to leave nothing undone. What 
 illusion, my brethren ! We dread zeal, as dangerous to perseve- 
 rance ; and it is zeal alone which can obtain it. We fix ourselves 
 in a lukewarm and commodious life, as the only one which can 
 subsist; and it is the only one which proves false. We shun fide- 
 lity, as the rock of piety ; and piety without fidelity is never far 
 from shipwreck. 
 
 It is thus that lukewarmness removes from the infidel soul the 
 grace of protection : of which the absence depriving our faith of 
 all its strength, and the yoke of Jesus Christ of all its consolations, 
 leaves us in a state of imbecility, that, to be lost, innocence re- 
 quires only to be attacked. But if the loss of righteousness is in- 
 evitable on the part of grace which is withdrawn, it is still more 
 so on account of the passions which are fortified within us. 
 
 Part II. What renders vigilance so necessary to Christian 
 piety, is, that all the passions which oppose themselves in us to 
 the law of God, only die, as I may say, with us. We undoubtedly 
 are able to weaken them, by the assistance of grace, and a fervent 
 and lively faith ; but the roots always continue in the heart ; we 
 always carry within us the principles of the same errors our tears 
 have effaced. Guilt may be extinguished in our hearts ; but sin, 
 as the apostle says, that is to say, the corrupted inclinations which 
 have formed our guilt, inhabits and lives there still. And that fund 
 
Ser. 5. state of lukewarmness. 71 
 
 of corruption which removed us so far from God, is still left us in 
 our penitence, to serve as a continual exercise to virtue; to render 
 us, by the continual occasions of combat it raises up for us, more 
 worthy of an eternal crown ; to humble our pride ; to keep us in 
 remembrance, that the duration of our present life is a time of war 
 and danger ; and, by a destiny inevitable to our nature, that there 
 is only one step between relaxation and guilt. 
 
 It is true that the grace of Jesus Christ is given us to repress 
 these corrupted inclinations which survive our conversion ; but in 
 a state of lukewarmness, as I have already said, grace offering us 
 only common succours, and the grace of protection, of which 
 we are become unworthy, being either more rare, or entirely 
 suspended, it is evident that the passions must acquire new 
 strength. But I say, that not only the passions are strengthen- 
 ed in a lukewarm and infidel life, because the grace of protection 
 which checked them is more rare, but likewise by the state itself 
 of relaxation and coldness : for that life being only a continued 
 indulgence of all the passions ; a simple easiness in granting, to a 
 certain degree, every thing which flatters the appetites ; a watch- 
 fulness, even of self-love, to remove whatever might repress or 
 restrain them ; and a perpetual usage of all things capable of in- 
 flaming them ; it is evident, that by these means they must daily 
 acquire new force. 
 
 In a word, my brethren, we are not to imagine, that, in pushing 
 our indulgence for our passions only to certain lengths permitted, 
 we appease them, as I may say ; that we allow sufficient to satisfy 
 them, and not enough to stain our soul, or carry trouble and re- 
 morse through our conscience ; or fancy that we can ever attain a 
 certain degree of equilibration between virtue and sin, where, on 
 the one side, our passions are satisfied by the indulgence allowed 
 them ; and, on the other, our conscience is tranquil, by the ab- 
 sence of guilt which we shun. For such is the plan adopted by 
 the lukewarm soul : favourable to his indolence, because he equally 
 banishes every thing, either in virtue or in sin, which can disturb 
 him. To the passions he refuses whatever might trouble his con- 
 science ; and to virtue, whatever might be disagreeable to or mor- 
 tify his self-love ; but this state of equilibrium is a perfect chi- 
 mera. The passions know no limits or bounds in guilt ; how, 
 therefore, could they possibly be restrained to those of the luke- 
 warm soul ? Even the utmost excess cannot restrain or fix them ; 
 how, then, could simple indulgences do it ? The more you grant, 
 the more you deprive yourself of the power to refuse them any 
 thing. The true secret of appeasing, is not by favouring them to a 
 certain degree ; it is by opposing them in every thing ; every in- 
 dulgence only renders them more fierce and unmanageable ; it is a 
 little water thrown upon a great fire, which, far from extinguishing, 
 increases its fury. Every thing which flatters the passions, ren- 
 ders them more keen, and diminishes the probability of being able 
 to conquer them. 
 
 Now, such is the state of a lukewarm and unfaithful soul. It 
 
72 STATE OF LUKEWARM NESS. Ser. 5. 
 
 allows itself every animosity which extends not to avowed revenge; 
 it justifies every pleasure in which guilt is not palpable ; it delivers 
 itself up without reserve to every worldly desire and gratification, 
 by which no individual, it supposes, is injured ; every omission, 
 which seems to turn on the arbitrary duties, or but slightly interest 
 the essential ones, it makes no scruple of; every action of self- 
 love, which leads not directly to guilt, it regards as nothing ; all 
 that nicety with regard to rank and personal fame, which is 
 compatible with that moderation even the world requires, it re- 
 gards as a merit. Now, what happens in consequence of this ? 
 Listen, and you shall know ; and I beg you will attend to the fol- 
 lowing reflections. 
 
 In the first place : all the inclinations within us, which oppose 
 themselves to order and duty, being continually strengthened, order 
 and duty at last find in us insurmountable difficulties: insomuch, 
 that, to accomplish them on any essential occasion, or when re- 
 quired by the law of God, is like remounting against the stream of 
 a rapid flood, where the current drags us down in spite of every 
 effort to the contrary ; or like a furious and unmanageable horse 
 which it is necessary to stop short on the brink of a precipice. 
 Thus your insensibility and pride are nourished to such a degree 
 of strength, that you abandon your heart to all their impressions. 
 Thus your care and anxiety have so fortified in your heart the de- 
 sire of worldly praise, that, on any important occasion, where it 
 would be necessary to sacrifice the vanity of its suffrages to duty, 
 and expose yourself, for the good of your soul, to its censure and 
 derision, you will always prefer the interests of vanity to those of 
 truth, and the opinions of men will be much more powerful than 
 the fear of God. Thus those anxieties with regard to fortune and 
 advancement have rendered ambition so completely sovereign of 
 your heart, that, in any delicate conjuncture, where the destruction 
 of a rival would be necessary toward your own elevation, you will 
 never hesitate, but will sacrifice your conscience to your fortune, 
 and be unjust toward your brother, lest you fail toward yourself. 
 Thus in a word, to avoid a long detail, those suspicious attach- 
 ments, loose conversations, ridiculous compliances, and desires of 
 pleasing, too much attended, have filled you with dispositions so 
 nearly allied to guilt and debauchery, that you are no longer capa- 
 ble of resistance against any of their attacks ; the corruption pre- 
 pared by the whole train of your past actions, will be lighted 
 up in an instant ; your weakness will overcome your reflection ; 
 your heart will go against glory, duty, and yourself. We cannot 
 long continue faithful, when we find in ourselves so many disposi- 
 tions to be otherwise. 
 
 Thus you will yourself be surprised at your own weakness : you 
 will ask at yourself, what are become of all those dispositions of 
 modesty and virtue, which formerly inspired you with such horror 
 at sin ? You no longer will know yourself: but this state of guilt 
 will gradually appear less frightful to you. The heart soon justi- 
 fies to itself whatever pleases it : whatever is agreeable to us, does 
 
Ser. 5. state of lukewarmness. 73 
 
 not long alarm us ; and to the misery of a departure from virtue, 
 you will add the misery of ignorance and security. 
 
 Such is the inevitable lot of a lukewarm and unfaithful life : pas- 
 sions which we have too much indulged. " Young lions/' says a 
 prophet, which " have been nourished without precaution, at 
 length grow up, and devour the careless hand which has even as- 
 sisted to strengthen and render them formidable." The passions, 
 arrived to a certain point, gain a complete ascendancy : in vain you 
 then try to regain yourself. The time is past ; you have fostered 
 the profane fire in your heart, it must at last break out ; you have 
 nourished the venom within you, it must now spread and gain 
 upon you, and the time is past for any application to medicine ; 
 you should have taken it in time. At the commencement the dis- 
 ease was not irremediable ; you have allowed it to strengthen, you 
 have irritated it by every thing which could inflame and render it 
 incurable ; it must now be conqueror, and you the victim of your 
 own indiscretion and indulgence. 
 
 Do you not likewise say, my brethren, that you have the best 
 intentions in the world ; that you wish you could act much better 
 than you do ; and though you have the sincerest desires for salva- 
 tion, yet a thousand conjunctures happen in life, where we forget all 
 our good intentions, and must be saints to resist their impressions? 
 This is exactly what we tell you ; that in spite of all your pretend- 
 ed good intentions, if you do not fly, struggle, watch, pray, and 
 continually take the command over yourself, a thousand occasions 
 will occur where you will no longer be master of your own weak- 
 ness. This is what we tell you, that nothing but a mortified and 
 watchful life can place us beyond the reach of temptation and dan- 
 ger ; that it is ridiculous to suppose we shall continue faithful in 
 those moments when violently attacked, when we bear a heart 
 weakened, wavering, and already on the verge of falling; that none 
 but the house built upon a rock can resist the winds and the tem- 
 pest ; and, in a word, that we must be holy, and firmly established 
 in virtue, to live free from guilt. 
 
 And when I say that we must be holy, alas ! my brethren, the 
 most faithful and fervent Christians, with every inclination morti- 
 fied as far as the frailty of our nature will permit ; imaginations 
 purified by prayer, and minds nourished in virtue and meditation 
 on the law of God, frequently find themselves in such terrible 
 situations that their hearts sink within them ; their imaginations 
 become troubled and deranged; they see themselves in those melan- 
 choly agitations where they float for a long time between victory 
 and death ; and like a vessel struggling against the waves, in the 
 midst of an enraged ocean, they can only look for safety from the 
 Almighty commander of winds and tempests. And you, with a 
 heart already half seduced, with inclinations at least bordering upon 
 guilt, would wish your weakness to be proof against all attacks, 
 and the most powerful temptations to find you always tranquil and 
 inaccessible ? You would wish, with your lukewarm, sensual, and 
 worldly morals, that on these occasions your soul should be gifted 
 
74 STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS. Ser. 5. 
 
 with that strength and faith which even the most tender and watch- 
 ful piety sometimes cannot give ? You would wish passions flat- 
 tered, nourished, and strengthened, to remain tractable, quiet, and 
 cold, in the presence of objects most capable of lighting them up ? 
 Those which, after years of austerities, and a life devoted to prayer 
 and watching, awake sometimes in a moment, far even from dan- 
 ger, and, by melancholy examples, make the most upright feel that 
 we never should be off our guard, and that the highest point of 
 virtue is sometimes the instant which precedes a departure from 
 and total loss of it. Such is our lot, my brethren, to be quick- 
 sighted only toward the dangers which regard our fortune or our 
 life, and not even to know those which threaten our salvation. But 
 let us undeceive ourselves. To shun guilt, something more is re- 
 quired than the lukewarmness and indolence of virtue ; and vigi- 
 lance is the only mean left us by our Saviour to preserve our inno- 
 cence. First reflection. 
 
 A second reflection to be made on this truth is, that the passions, 
 daily strengthening in a lukewarm and infidel life, not only duty 
 finds in us insurmountable repugnances, but guilt likewise, as I may 
 say, polishes itself; and at last we feel no more repugnance to it 
 than to the simplest fault. Indeed, by these daily infidelities inse- 
 parable from lukewarmness, the heart, as if by insensible steps, at 
 last arrives at those dangerous limits, which, by a single line, sepa- 
 rate life from death, guilt from innocence, and makes the final step 
 almost without perceiving it ; only a little way remaining for him 
 to go, and having no occasion for any new exertion to accomplish 
 it, he does not believe he has exceeded his former bounds. He 
 had replenished himself with dispositions so nearly bordering on 
 guilt, that he has brought forth iniquity without pain, repugnance, 
 visible movement, or even perceiving it himself. Similar to a 
 dying person, whom the languors of a long and painful malady 
 have so attenuated, and so nearly approached to his end, that the 
 departing sigh resembles those which have preceded it, costs him 
 no greater effort than the others, and even leaves the spectators 
 uncertain whether his last moment is come, or if % he still breathes. 
 And this is what renders the state of a lukewarm and infidel 
 soul still more dangerous, that they are commonly dead to grace, 
 without knowing it themselves; they become enemies to God, 
 while they still live with him as with a friend ; they are still in the 
 commerce of holy things, when they have lost the grace which en- 
 titles us to approach them. 
 
 Thus, let those souls whom this Discourse regards, no longer 
 deceive themselves, because they believe to have hitherto avoided 
 a gross departure from virtue : their state before God is undoubt- 
 edly only more dangerous. Perhaps the most formidable danger of 
 lukewarmness is, that already dead in the sight of God, they live, 
 in their opinion, without any visible or marked guilt ; that they 
 compose themselves tranquilly in death, depending on an appear- 
 ance of life which comforts them ; that to the danger of their situa- 
 tion they add a false peace, which confirms them in this path of 
 
Ser. 5. state of lukewarmness. 75 
 
 illusion and darkness : it is, in a word, that the Lord, by terrible 
 and secret judgments, strikes them with blindness, and punishes 
 the corruption of their heart by permitting them to be ignorant of 
 it. A gross fall from virtue, if I may venture to say so, would to 
 them be a mark of the goodness and mercy of God. They would 
 then at least open their eyes ; naked and manifest guilt would then 
 carry trouble, vexation, and uneasiness through their conscience ; 
 the disease at last discovered, would perhaps induce them to have 
 recourse to the remedy ; in place of which, this life, apparently re- 
 gular, composes and calms them, renders useless the example of 
 fervent Christians, persuades them that this great fervour is unne- 
 cessary ; that it is much more the effect of temperament than of 
 grace; that it is an emotion of zeal, rather than of duty; and makes 
 them listen to, as vain exaggerations, all that we say with regard to 
 a lukewarm and infidel life. Second reflection. 
 
 In a word, the last reflection to be made on this great truth, is, 
 that such is the nature of our heart, always to remain much below 
 what it at first proposed. A thousand times we have formed pious 
 resolutions ; we have projected to carry to a certain point the de- 
 tail of our duties and conduct, but the execution has always much 
 diminished from the ardour of our projects, and has rested at a 
 degree much below the one to which we wished to raise ourselves. 
 Thus, the lukewarm Christian, proposing to himself no higher 
 point of virtue than to shun guilt, looking precisely to precept, that 
 is to say, to that rigorous and precise point of the law, immediate- 
 ly below which is prevarication and death, he infallibly rests below, 
 and never reaches that essential point which he had proposed to 
 himself. It is, therefore, an incontestable maxim, that we must 
 undertake much to execute little, and look very high to attain at 
 least the middle. Now, this maxim, so sure with regard even to 
 the most just, is much more so with respect to the lukewarm 
 and infidel soul ; for coldness more strongly binding all his ties, 
 and augmenting the weight of his corruption and misery, it is prin- 
 cipally him who ought to take his grand flight, in order to attain 
 at least the lowest degree ; and, in his counsels with himself, pro- 
 pose perfection, if he wishes to rest even at the observance of pre- 
 cept. Above all, it is to him we may truly say, that by settling in 
 his mind only to shun guilt, loaded as he is with the weight of his 
 coldness and infidelities, he will always alight at a place very dis- 
 tant from the one he expected to reach ; and the line of guilt being 
 immediately below this commodious and sensual virtue, the very 
 same efforts he made, as he thought, to shun it, will only serve 
 to conduct him to it. These are reasons, drawn entirely from the 
 weakness the strengthened passions leave to the lukewarm and in- 
 fidel soul, and which inevitably lead it to ruin. 
 
 The only reason, however, you allege to us for persevering in 
 this dangerous state, is, that you are weak, and totally unable to 
 support a more retired, limited, mortified, and perfect manner of 
 life. But surely, it is because you are weak, that is to say, full of 
 disgust for virtue, of love for the world, and of subjection to your 
 
76 STATE OP LUKEWARMXESS. Sei\ 5. 
 
 appetites, that a retired and mortified life becomes indispensable. 
 It is because you are weak, that with more caution you ought to 
 shun every danger; take a greater command over yourself; pray, 
 watch, refuse yourself every improper gratification, and attain even 
 to holy excesses of zeal and fervour, in order to accomplish a bar- 
 rier against your weakness. You are weak ? And, because you 
 are weak, you think you are entitled to expose yourself more than 
 another; to dread danger less; with more tranquillity and indif- 
 ference to neglect the necessary remedies ; to allow more to your 
 appetites; to preserve a stronger attachment to the world, and 
 every thing which can corrupt the heart? What illusion ! You 
 make your weakness, then, the title of your security ? In the ne- 
 cessities you have to watch and pray, you find, then, the privilege 
 of dispensing with them ! And since, whence is it that the sick are 
 authorized to allow themselves greater excesses, and make use of 
 less precaution, than those who enjoy a perfect health ? Privation 
 has always been the way of the weak and the infirm ; and to allege 
 your weakness as a right of dispensation from a more fervent and 
 Christian life, is like enumerating your complaints, in order to 
 persuade us that you have no occasion for medicine. Second rea- 
 son, drawn from the passions, which are strengthened in a state of 
 lukewarmness, and which proves that this state always ends in a 
 departure from virtue and the loss of righteousness. 
 
 To all these reasons I should add a third, drawn from the exter- 
 nal succours of religion necessary to the support of piety; and 
 which become useless to the lukewarm and infidel soul. 
 
 The holy sacrament not only becomes of no utility, but even 
 dangerous to him; either by the coldness with which he approaches 
 it, or by the vain confidence with which it inspires him : it is no 
 longer a resource for him ; it has lost its effect : like medicines too 
 frequently made use of, it amuses his languor, but cannot cure him : 
 it is like the food of the strong and healthy, which, so far from re- 
 establishing, completes the ruin of the weak stomach : it is the 
 breath of the Holy Spirit, which, unable to re-illuminate the still 
 smoking spark, entirely extinguishes it ; that is to say, that the 
 grace of the holy sacrament, received in a lukewarm and infidel 
 heart, no longer operating there an increase of life and strength, never 
 fails, sooner or later, to operate the death and condemnation 
 attached to the abuse of these divine remedies. 
 
 Prayer, that channel of grace; that nourishment to a faithful 
 heart; that sweetener of piety; that refuge against all attacks of 
 the enemy; that cry of an affected soul, which renders the Lord 
 so attentive to his necessities: prayer, without which the Almighty 
 no longer makes himself felt within us; without which we no 
 longer know our Father; we no longer render thanks to our bene- 
 factor, nor appease our judge ; we expose no longer our wounds 
 to our physician; we live without God in the world: prayer, in 
 a word, so necessary to the most established virtue, to the luke- 
 warm soul is no longer but the wearisome occupation of a distracted 
 mind; of a heart dry and shared between a thousand foreign af- 
 
Ser. 5. state of lukewarmness. 77 
 
 fections. He no longer experiences that love, those consolations, 
 which are the fruit of a fervent and faithful life : he no longer, as 
 if with a new light, sees the holy truths, which confirm the soul 
 in its contempt for the world and love for the things of heaven ; 
 and which, after its departure hence, make it regard, with new dis- 
 gust, every thing which foolish man admires : he leaves it, no 
 longer filled with that lively faith which reckons as nothing all 
 the obstacles and disgusts of virtue, and with a holy zeal devours 
 all its sorrows: he no longer feels, after it, more love for his 
 duty and horror at the world; more determination to fly from 
 its dangers ; more light to know its nothingness and misery, and 
 strength to hate and struggle with himself; more terror for the 
 judgments of God, and compunction for his own weaknesses : he 
 leaves it only more fatigued than before with virtue ; more filled 
 with the phantoms of the world, which, in the moment when at 
 the feet of the Almighty, have, it appears, agitated more briskly 
 his imagination, blasted and stained by all those images; more hap- 
 py, by being quit of a burdensome duty, where he has experienced 
 nothing so agreeable as the pleasure of finding it over; more eager, 
 by amusements and infidelities, to supply this moment of weari- 
 ness and pain; in a word, more distant from God, whom he has 
 irritated by the infidelity and irreverence of his prayer. Such, my 
 brethren, is the fruit which he reaps from it. In a word, all the 
 external duties of religion, which support and rouse piety, are no 
 longer to the lukewarm Christian but dead and inanimate customs 
 where his heart is not; where there is more of habit than of love 
 or spirit of piety; and where the only disposition he brings is the 
 weariness and languor of always doing the same thing. 
 
 Thus, my brethren, the grace of this soul, being continually 
 attacked and weakened, either by the practices of the world, which 
 it allows itself, or by those of piety, which it abuses; either by sen- 
 sual objects, which nourish its corruption, or by those of religion, 
 which increase its disgusts; either by the pleasures which enervate 
 it, or by the duties which fatigue it ; all uniting to make it bend 
 toward ruin, and nothing supporting it; alas! what fate can it 
 promise itself ? Can the lamp without oil long continue to give light ? 
 The tree which no longer draws nourishment from the earth, can it 
 fail to wither and be devoted to the fire ? Now, such is the situation 
 of the lukewarm Christian : entirely delivered up to himself, nothing 
 supports him ; surrounded by weariness and disgusts, nothing re- 
 animates him; full of weakness and languor, nothing protects him: 
 every consolation of the just soul is to him an increase of languor; 
 every thing which gives support to a faithful Christian, disgusts 
 and overpowers his; whatever renders the yoke more easy to 
 others, makes him more burdensome ; and the succours of piety are 
 no longer but his fatigues or his crimes. Now, in this state, O my 
 God ! almost abandoned by thy grace, tired of thy yoke, disgusted 
 with himself, as well as with virtue, weakened by diseases and their 
 remedies, staggering at every step, a breath overturns him ; he him- 
 self leans toward his fall, without any additional or foreign impres- 
 
78 STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS. Ser. 5. 
 
 sion; and, to see him fall, there is no necessity for his being attacked. 
 These are the reasons which prove the certainty of the loss of 
 righteousness in a lukewarm and infidel life. But are so many 
 proofs necessary, my dear hearer, when your own misfortunes have 
 so sadly instructed you ? Remember, from whence you are fallen, 
 as the Holy Spirit of God formerly said to a lukewarm and infidel 
 soul. Remount to the source of the disorders under which you 
 still bend. You will find it in the negligence and infidelity of which 
 we speak. A birth of passion too feebly rejected, an occasion of 
 danger too much frequented, practices of piety too frequently 
 omitted or despised, convenience too sensually sought after, desires 
 of pleasing too much listened to, dangerous writings too little avoid- 
 ed; the source is almost" imperceptible. The torrent of iniquity 
 proceeding from it has completely inundated the capacity of your 
 soul. It was only a spark which has lighted up this great con- 
 flagration ; it was a morsel of leaven, which, in the end, has fer- 
 mented and corrupted the whole mass. You never believed it 
 possible that you could be what at present you are. Whatever 
 was said to you on this subject, you heard as exaggerations of zeal 
 and spirituality. You would then have come forward of your own 
 accord, in order to clear yourself of certain steps, for which you 
 now feel not the smallest remorse. Remember from whence you 
 are fallen; consider the depth of the abyss into which you are 
 plunged : it is relaxation and slight infidelities which by degrees 
 have conducted you to it. Once more, remember it, and see if 
 that can be denominated a sure or durable state, which has brought 
 you to the precipice. 
 
 Such is the usual artifice of Satan. He never at first proposes 
 guilt; that would frighten away his prey, and remove it beyond the 
 reach of his surprises. Too well he knows the road for entering the 
 heart; he knows that he must gradually confirm the timid con- 
 science against the horror of guilt, and propose nothing at first 
 but honest purposes and certain limits in pleasure. It is not boldly, 
 like the lion, he at first attacks; it is warily like the serpent: he 
 does not lead you straight to the gulf; he conducts you there by 
 winding paths. No, my brethren, crimes are never the first essays 
 of the heart. David was imprudent and slothful, before he be- 
 came an adulterer; Solomon had allowed himself to be seduced 
 and enervated by the delights and magnificence of royalty, before 
 he publicly appeared in the midst of lewd women; Judas had 
 given up his heart to money, before he put a price upon his Mas- 
 ter ; Peter was presumptuous, before he renounced the truth. Vice 
 has its progress as well as virtue. As the day, says the prophet, 
 instructs the day, thus the night gives melancholy lessons to the 
 night ; and there is not much difference between a state which 
 suspends all the grace of protection, fortifies all the passions, ren- 
 ders useless all the succours of piety, and a state where it is entire- 
 ly extinct. 
 
 What, then, my dear hearer, can confirm or comfort you in this 
 life of negligence and infidelity ? Is it that exemption from guilt 
 
Ser. 6. state of lukewarmness. 79 
 
 you have hitherto preserved? But I have shown you that it is 
 either guilt itself, or that it will not fail soon to lead you to it. Is 
 it the love of ease ? But in that you enjoy neither the pleasures of 
 the world nor the consolations of virtue. Is it the assurance that 
 the Almighty requires no more of you ? But how can the lukewarm 
 and unfaithful soul satisfy or please him, when from his mouth he 
 rejects him ? Is it the irregularity in which the generality of men 
 live, and who carry it to an excess which you avoid? But their 
 fate is perhaps less to be mourned, and less desperate than your 
 own : they at least know their malady, while you regard your own 
 as a state of perfect health. Is it the dread of being unable to 
 support a more mortified, watchful, and Christian life ? But since 
 you have hitherto been able to support some remains of virtue and 
 innocence, without the comfort and consolations of grace, and in 
 spite of the wearinesses and disgusts which your lukewarmness 
 has spread through all your duties, what will it be when the Spirit 
 of God shall soften your yoke, and when a more fervent and faith- 
 ful life shall have restored to you all the grace and consolation of 
 which your lukewarmness has deprived you ? Piety is never sad 
 or insupportable but when it is cold and unfaithful. 
 
 Rise, then, says a prophet, wicked and slothful soul; break the 
 fatal charm which lulls and chains thee to thine indolence. The 
 Lord, whom thou believest to serve, because thou dost not openly 
 affront him, is not the God of the wicked, but of the faithful; he 
 is not the rewarder of idleness and sloth, but of tears, watchings, 
 and combats: he establisheth not in his abode, and in his ever- 
 lasting city, the useless, but the vigilant and laborious servant ; 
 and his kingdom, says the apostle, is not of flesh and blood, that 
 is to say, of an unworthy effeminacy and a life devoted to the 
 appetites, but the strength and virtue of God; namely, a con- 
 tinued vigilance, a generous sacrifice of all our inclinations, a 
 constant contempt of all things which pass away, and a tender 
 and ardent desire for those invisible blessings which fade not nor 
 ever pass away : which may God, in his infinite mercy, grant to 
 all assembled here. Amen. 
 
 SERMON VI 
 
 ON EVIL-SPEAKING. 
 
 " But Jesus did not commit himself unto them ; because he knew all men." 
 John ii. 24. 
 
 These were the same Pharisees, who a little before had been 
 decrying to the people the actions of Jesus Christ, and endea- 
 vouring to poison the purity and sanctity of his words, now make 
 a show of believing in him, and classing themselves among his 
 disciples. And such is the character of the evil-speaker ; under 
 
80 on evil-speaking. Ser. 6, 
 
 the mask of esteem, and the flattering expressions of friendship, to 
 conceal the keen invectives of slander. 
 
 Now, although this be, perhaps, the only vice which no circum- 
 stance can palliate, it is the one we are most ingenious in conceal- 
 ing from ourselves, and to which piety and the world at present 
 show the greatest indulgence. Not that the character of a slan- 
 derer is not equally odious to men, as, according to the expression 
 of the Holy Spirit, it is abominable in the sight of God ; but in 
 that number they comprise only particular defamers, of blacker and 
 more avowed malignity, who deal their blows indiscriminately, and 
 without art ; and who, with sufficient malice to censure, are desti- 
 tute of the wit necessary to please. Now, the defamers of that 
 description are more rare ; and had we only them to address our- 
 selves to, it would be sufficient at present to point out, how much 
 unworthy of reason and religion this vice is, to inspire with a just 
 detestation of it those who feel themselves guilty. 
 
 But there is another description of slanderers who condemn the 
 vice, yet allow themselves the practice of it ; who, without regard, 
 defame their brethren, yet applaud themselves for circumspection 
 and moderation ; who carry the sting to the heart, but, because it 
 is more brilliant and piercing, perceive not the wound it has made. 
 Now, defamers of this character are every where to be found : the 
 world is filled with them ; even the holy asylums are not free : this 
 vice is the bond of union to the assemblies of sinners ; it often finds 
 its way even into the society of the just; and we may safely say, 
 that all are tainted with it ; and there is not one who has preserved 
 his tongue pure, and his lips undefiled. 
 
 It is proper, then, my brethren, to expose at present the illusion 
 of the pretexts made use of every day in the world, in justification 
 of this vice, and to attack it in the circumstances where you believe 
 it most innocent ; for, were T to describe it to you, in general, with 
 all its meanness, cruelty, and irreparability, you would no longer 
 apply it to yourselves ; and, far from inspiring you with horror at 
 it, I should be accessary toward your persuasion that you are free 
 from its guilt. 
 
 Now, what are the pretexts, which, in your eyes, soften or jus- 
 tify the vice of evil-speaking ? In the first place, it is the light- 
 ness of the faults you censure : we persuade ourselves, that as it is 
 not a matter of culpability, there cannot likewise be much harm in 
 censuring it. Secondly, it is the public notoriety, by which, those 
 to whom we speak being already informed of what is reprehensible 
 in our brother, no loss of reputation can be the consequence of our 
 discourses. Lastly, zeal for truth and the glory of God, which 
 does not permit us to be silent on those disorders which dishonour 
 him. Now, to these three pretexts, let us oppose three incontro- 
 vertible truths. To the pretext of the lightness of the faults ; that 
 the more the faults which you censure are light, the more is the 
 slander unjust : first truth. To the pretext of the public noto- 
 riety ; that the more the faults of our brethren are known, the more 
 cruel is the slander which censures them : second truth. To the 
 
Ser. 6. on evil speaking. 81 
 
 pretext of zeal ; that the same charity, which, in piety, makes us 
 hate sinners, makes us likewise cover the multitude of their faults : 
 last truth. 
 
 Part I. The tongue, says the apostle James, is a devouring 
 fire, a world of iniquity, an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. 
 And, behold, what I would have applied to the tongue of the evil- 
 speaker, had I undertaken to give you a just and natural idea of 
 all the enormity of this vice, I would have said, that the tongue of 
 the slanderer is a devouring fire, which tarnishes whatever it 
 touches ; which exercises its fury on the good grain, equally as on 
 the chaff; on the profane, as on the sacred ; which wherever it 
 passes, leaves only desolation and ruin ; digs even into the bowels 
 of the earth, and fixes itself on things the most hidden ; turns into 
 vile ashes, what, only a moment before, had appeared to us so pre- 
 cious and brilliant ; acts with more violence and danger than ever, 
 in the time when it was apparently smothered up and almost ex- 
 tinct; which blackens what it cannot consume, and sometimes 
 sparkles and delights before it destroys. I would have told you, 
 that evil-speaking is an assemblage of iniquity; a secret pride, 
 which discovers to us the mote in our brother's eye, but hides the 
 beam which is in our own ; a mean envy, which, hurt at the talents 
 or prosperity of others, makes them the subject of its censures, 
 and studies to dim the splendour of whatever outshines itself; a 
 disguised hatred, which sheds, in its speeches, the hidden venom 
 of the heart ; an unworthy duplicity, which praises to the face, and 
 tears to pieces behind the back ; a shameful levity, which has no 
 command over itself or words, and often sacrifices both fortune 
 and comfort to the imprudence of an amusing conversation; a 
 delicate barbarity, which goes to pierce your absent brother; 
 a scandal, where you become a subject of shame and sin to those 
 who listen to you; an injustice, where you ravish from your 
 brother what is dearest to him. I would have said, that slander 
 is a restless evil, which disturbs society, spreads dissension through 
 cities and countries, disunites the strictest friendships, is the 
 source of hatred and revenge, fills, wherever it enters, with dis- 
 turbances and confusion, and every where is an enemy to peace, 
 comfort, and Christian good-breeding. Lastly, I would have added, 
 that it is an evil full of deadly poison ; whatever flows from it is 
 infected, and poisons whatever it approaches ; that even its praises 
 are empoisoned, its applauses malicious, its silence criminal, its 
 gestures, motions, and looks, have all their venom, and spread it 
 each in their way. 
 
 Behold, what in this Discourse it would have been my duty, 
 more at large, to have exposed to your view, had I not proposed 
 only to paint to you the vileness of the vice, which I am now 
 going to combat; but, as I have already said, these are only gene- 
 ral invectives, which none apply to themselves. The more odious 
 the vice is represented, the less do you perceive yourselves con- 
 cerned in it; and though you acknowledge the principle, you 
 
82 on evil speaking. Ser. G. 
 
 make no use of it in the regulation of your manners ; because, in 
 these general paintings, we always find features which resemble us 
 not. I wish, therefore, to confine myself, at present, to the single 
 object of making you feel all the injustice of that description of 
 slander which you think the most innocent ; and, lest you should 
 not feel yourselves connected with what I shall say, I shall at- 
 tack it only in the pretexts which you continually employ in its 
 justification. 
 
 Now, the first pretext which authorizes in the world almost all 
 the defamations, and is the cause that our conversations are now 
 continual censures upon our brethren, is the pretended insig- 
 nificancy of the vices we expose to view. We would not wish to 
 tarnish a man of character, or ruin his fortune, by dishonouring 
 him ill the world ; to stain the principles of a woman's conduct, 
 by entering into the essential points of it: that would be too 
 infamous and mean. But upon a thousand faults, which lead our 
 judgment to believe them capable of all the rest ; to inspire the 
 minds of those who listen to us with a thousand suspicions which 
 point out what we dare not say ; to make satirical remarks, which 
 discover a mystery, where no person before had perceived the 
 least intention of concealment ; by poisonous interpretations, to 
 give an air of ridicule to manners which had hitherto escaped 
 observation ; to let every thing, on certain points, be clearly under- 
 stood, while protesting that they are incapable themselves of 
 cunning or deceit, is what the world makes little scruple of; and 
 though the motives, the circumstances, and the effects of these 
 discourses be highly criminal, yet gaiety and liveliness excuse their 
 malignity, to those who listen to us, and conceal from ourselves 
 their atrocity. 
 
 I say, in the first place, the motives. I know that it is, above 
 all, by the innocency of the intention that they pretend to justify 
 themselves ; that you continually say, that your design is not to 
 tarnish the reputation of your brother, but innocently to divert 
 yourselves with faults which do not dishonour him in the eyes of 
 the world. You, my dear hearer, to divert yourself with his faults ! 
 But what is that cruel pleasure, which carries sorrow and bitter- 
 ness to the heart of your brother ? Where is the innocency of an 
 amusement, whose source springs from vices which ought to in- 
 spire you with compassion and grief? If Jesus Christ forbid us in 
 the gospel to invigorate the languors of conversation by idle words, 
 shall it be more permitted to you to enliven it by derisions and 
 censures ? If the law curse him who uncovers the nakedness of 
 his relations, shall you, who add raillery and insult to the disco- 
 very, be more protected from that malediction ? If whoever call 
 his brother fool, be worthy, according to Jesus Christ, of eternal 
 fire, shall he who renders him the contempt and laughing-stock 
 of a profane assembly, escape the same punishment? You, to 
 amuse yourself with his faults ? But does charity delight in evil ? 
 Is that rejoicing in the Lord, as commanded by the apostle ? If 
 you love your brother as yourself, can you delight in what afflicts 
 
Ser. 6. on evil speaking. 83 
 
 him ? Ah ! the church formerly held in horror the exhibitions of 
 gladiators, and denied that believers, brought up in the tenderness 
 and benignity of Jesus Christ, could innocently feast their eyes 
 with the blood and death of these unfortunate slaves, or form a 
 harmless recreation of so inhuman a pleasure. But you renew 
 more detestable shows, to enliven your languor : you bring upon 
 the stage, not infamous wretches devoted to death, but members 
 of Jesus Christ, your brethren ; and there you entertain the spec- 
 tators with wounds which you inflict on persons rendered sacred 
 by baptism. 
 
 Is it then necessary that your brother should suffer, to amuse 
 you ? Can you find no delight in your conversation, unless his 
 blood, as I may say, is furnished toward your iniquitous pleasures ? 
 Edify each other, says St. Paul, by words of peace and charity ; 
 relate the wonders of God toward the just, the history of his 
 mercies to sinners ; recall the virtues of those who, with the sign 
 of faith, have preceded us; make an agreeable relaxation to 
 yourselves, in reciting the pious examples of your brethren 
 with whom you live; with a religious joy, speak of the vic- 
 tories of faith, of the aggrandisement of the kingdom of Jesus 
 Christ, of the establishment of truth, and the extinction of error, 
 of the favours which Jesus Christ bestows on his church, by 
 raising up in it faithful pastors, enlightened members, and re- 
 ligious princes; animate yourselves to virtue, by contemplating 
 the little solidity of the world, the emptiness of pleasures, and 
 the unhappiness of sinners, who yield themselves up to their 
 unruly passions. Are these grand objects not worthy the delight 
 of Christians? It was thus, however, that the first believers 
 rejoiced in the Lord, and, from the sweets of their conversations, 
 formed one of the most holy consolations to their temporal calami- 
 ties. It is the heart, my brethren, which decides upon our plea- 
 sures : a corrupted heart feels no delight but in what recalls to 
 him the image of his vices : innocent delights are only suitable 
 to virtue. 
 
 In effect, you excuse the malignity of your censures by the in- 
 nocency of your intentions. But fathom the secret of your heart: 
 whence comes it that your sarcasms are always pointed to such an 
 individual, and that you never amuse yourself with more wit, or 
 more agreeably, than in recalling his faults? May it not proceed 
 from a secret jealousy ? Do not his talents, fortune, credit, station, 
 or character, hurt you more than his faults? Would you find 
 him so fit a subject for censure, had he fewer of those qualities 
 which exalt him above you ? Would you experience such pleasure 
 in exposing his foibles, did not the world find qualities in him both 
 valuable and praiseworthy ? Would Saul have so often repeated 
 with such pleasure that David was only the son of Jesse, had he not 
 considered him as a rival, more deserving than himself of the em- 
 pire ? Whence comes it, that the faults of all others find you more 
 indulgent ? That elsewhere you excuse every thing, but here every 
 circumstance comes empoisoned from your mouth ? Go to the 
 
 g2 
 
84 on evil, speaking. Ser. 6. 
 
 source, and examine if it is not some secret root of bitterness in 
 your heart ? And can you pretend to justify, by the innocency of 
 the intention, discourses which flow from so corrupted a principle ? 
 You maintain that it is neither from hatred nor jealousy against your 
 brother : I wish to believe it ; but in your sarcasms, may there not 
 be motives, perhaps, still more shameful and mean? Is it 
 not your wish to render yourself agreeable, by turning your brother 
 into an object of contempt and ridicule ? Do you not sacrifice his 
 character to your fortune ? Courts are always so filled with these 
 adulatory and sordidly interested satires on each other ! The great 
 are to be pitied whenever they yield themselves up to unwarranta- 
 ble aversions. Vices are soon found out, even in that virtue itself 
 which displeases them. 
 
 But, after all, you do not feel yourselves guilty, you say, of all 
 these vile motives ; and that it is merely through indiscretion, and 
 levity of speech, if it sometimes happen that you defame your bre- 
 thren. But is it by that you can suppose yourself more innocent ? 
 Levity and indiscretion ! that vice, so unworthy of the gravity of a 
 Christian, so distant from the seriousness and solidity of faith, and 
 so often condemned in the gospel, can it justify another vice? 
 \ What matters it to the brother whom you stab, whether it be done 
 -^ y through indiscretion or malice ? Does an arrow, unwittingly drawn, 
 / make a less dangerous or slighter wound than if sent on purpose ? 
 Is the deadly blow which you give to your brother, more slight, 
 because it was lanced through imprudence and levity ? And what 
 signifies the innocency of the intention, when the action is a crime ? 
 But, besides, is there no criminality in indiscretion, with regard to 
 thereputation of your brethren ? In any case whatever, can more 
 circumspection and prudence be required ? Are not all the duties 
 of Christianity comprised in that of charity ? Does not all religion, 
 as I may say, consist in that ? And to be incapable of attention and 
 care, in a point so highly essential, is it not considering, as it were, 
 all the rest as a sport ? Ah ! it is here he ought to put a guard of 
 circumspection on his tongue, weigh every word, put them together 
 in his heart, says the sage Ecclesiasticus, and let them ripen in his 
 mouth. Do any of these inconsiderate speeches ever escape you, 
 against yourself ? Do you ever fail in attention to what interests 
 your honour or glory ? What indefatigable cares ! what exertions 
 and industry, to make them prosper! To what lengths we see you 
 go, to increase your interest or improve your fortune ! If it ever 
 happen that you take blame to yourself, it is always under circum- 
 stances which tend to your praise : you censure in yourself only 
 faults which do you honour ; and, in confessing your vices, you wish 
 only to recapitulate your virtues : self-love connects every thing with 
 yourself. Love your brother as you love yourself, and every thing 
 will recall you to him; you will be incapable of indiscretion, where 
 his interest is concerned, and will no longer need our instructions, 
 in respect to what you owe to his character and glory. 
 
 But if these slanders, which you call trivial, be criminal in their 
 motives, they are not less so in their circumstances. 
 
Ser. G. on evil speaking. 85 
 
 In the first place, I should make you observe, that the world, fa- 
 miliarized with guilt, and accustomed to see the most heinous vices 
 now become the vices of the multitude, is no longer shocked at 
 them ; denominates light, defamations which turn upon the most 
 criminal and shameful weaknesses : suspicions of infidelity, in the 
 sacred bond of marriage, are no longer a marked discredit or an es- 
 sential stain, they are sources of derision and pleasantry : to accuse 
 a courtier of insincerity and double-dealing, is no attack upon his 
 honour ; it is only casting a ridicule on the protestations of sincerity 
 with which he amuses us : to spread the suspicion of hypocrisy, in 
 the sincerest piety, is not an insult to God through his saints ; it is 
 a language of derision, which custom has rendered common: in a 
 word, excepting those crimes punishable by the public authority, 
 and which are attended with the loss of credit and property, all others 
 seem trivial, and become the ordinary subject of conversation and 
 of the public censure. 
 
 But let us not pursue this reflection farther. I wish to allow 
 that your brother's faults are light : the more they are light, the 
 more are you unjust in heightening them : the more he merits in- 
 dulgence on your part, the more are we to presume in you a ma- 
 lignity of observation, from which nothing can escape ; a natural 
 hardness of heart, which can excuse nothing. Were the faults of 
 your brother important you would spare him, you say ; you would 
 find him entitled to your indulgence ; politeness and religion would 
 make your silence a duty. What ! because his weaknesses are only 
 trivial, you find him less worthy of your regard ? The very cir- 
 cumstance which ought to make him respectable, authorizes you in 
 making him the butt of your sarcasms ? Are you not, says the 
 apostle, become a judge of iniquitous thoughts ? And your eye, is 
 it then wicked, only because your brother is good ? Besides, the 
 faults which you censure are light ; but would they appear so to you, 
 were you to be reproached with them ? When certain discourses, 
 held in your absence, have reached your ears, and which, in fact, 
 attacked essentially neither your honour nor probity, but only ac- 
 quainted the public with some of your weaknesses, what have been 
 your sensations ? My God ! Then it was that you magnified every 
 thing ; that every circumstance appeared important to you ; that, 
 not satisfied with exaggerating the malice of the words, you raked 
 up the secret of the intention, and hoped to find motives still more 
 odious than the discourses. In vain you are told, that these are 
 not reproaches which essentially interest you, and, at the worst, 
 cannot disgrace you : you think yourselves insulted ; you mention 
 them with bitter complaints ; you blaze out, and are no longer mas- 
 ters of your resentment ; and whilst all the world blames the excess 
 of your sensibility, you alone obstinately persist in the belief of its 
 being a serious affair, and that your honour is interested in it. 
 Make use, then, of this rule in the faults which you publish of your 
 brother : apply the offence to yourselves : every thing is light which 
 is against him ; but with regard to what touches you, the smallest 
 circumstance appears important to your pride, and worthy of all your 
 resentment. 
 
86 on evil speaking. Ser. 6. 
 
 Lastly. The vices which you censure are light ; but do you add 
 nothing of your own to them ? Do you faithfully exhibit them as 
 they are ? In their relation, do you never mingle the malignity of 
 your own conjectures ? Do you not place them in a point of view 
 different from their natural state ? Do you not embellish your 
 tale ? And, in order to make the hero of your ridicule agreeable, do 
 you not fashion him to the wish of the company, and not such as 
 in reality he is ? Do you never accompany your speeches with cer- 
 tain gestures, which allow all to be understood ; with certain ex- 
 pressions which open the minds of your hearers to a thousand sus- 
 picions equally rash as dishonourable ? Even with a certain silence, 
 which permits more to be imagined than any thing you could have 
 possibly said ? For, how difficult is it to confine ourselves to the 
 bounds of truth when we are no longer within those of charity ! 
 The more what we censure is light, the more is calumny to be dread- 
 ed ; we must embellish, to attract attention ; and we become ca- 
 lumniators, where we did not suppose ourselves even censurers. 
 
 Behold the circumstances which regard you ; but if, on their ac- 
 count, the slanders which you think light, be highly criminal, 
 will they be less so with respect to the individuals whom they 
 attack ? 
 
 In the first place, it is a person, perhaps of a sex, to whom, es- 
 pecially on certain points, the slightest stains are important ; to 
 whom it is a dishonour to be publicly spoken of ; to whom raillery 
 becomes an insult, and every suspicion an accusation; in a word, a 
 person, whom not to praise, becomes an outrage and a disgrace 
 to their station. Thus St. Paul would have every woman to be 
 adorned with bashfulness and modesty ; that is to say, he would 
 wish those virtues to be as conspicuous in them as the ornaments 
 with which they are covered ; and the highest eulogy which the 
 Holy Spirit makes on Judith, after speaking of her beauty, youth, 
 and great wealth, is, that in all Israel not a person was to be found 
 who had aspersed her conduct, and that her reputation corresponded 
 with her virtue. 
 
 Secondly. Your censures are perhaps pointed toward your supe- 
 riors ; or against those whom Providence has established above you, 
 and to whom the law of God commands you to render that respect 
 and submission to which they are entitled. For the pride which 
 hates inferiority, always recompenses itself by finding out weak- 
 nesses and foibles in those to whom it is under the necessity of 
 yielding obedience ; the more they are exalted, the more they are 
 exposed to our censures. Malignity is even more quick-sighted in 
 regard to their errors ; nothing in their actions is pardoned ; the 
 very persons most loaded with their kindnesses, or most honoured 
 by their familiarity, are frequently those who most openly publish 
 their imperfections and vices ; and besides violating the sacred duty 
 of respect, they likewise render themselves guilty of the mean and 
 shameful crime of ingratitude. 
 
 Thirdly. It is a person, perhaps consecrated to God, and esta- 
 blished in the church, whom you censure ; who, engaged by the 
 
Ser. 6. on evil speaking. 87 
 
 sanctity of his vocation, to more exemplary, pure, and irreproacha- 
 ble manners, finds himself stained and dishonoured by censures 
 which would not affect the reputation of persons of the world. 
 Thus the Lord, in the Scriptures curseth those who shall even med- 
 dle with his anointed. Nevertheless, the traits of slander are 
 never more animated, more brilliant, or more applauded in the 
 world, than when directed against the ministers of his word. The 
 world, so indulgent to itself, seems to have preserved its severity 
 only on their account ; and for them it has eyes more censorious, 
 and a tongue more empoisoned, than for the rest of men. It is 
 true, O my God ! that our conversation amongst the people is not 
 always holy, and free from reproach ; that we frequently adopt the 
 manners, luxury, indolence, idleness, and pleasures of the world, 
 against which we ought to struggle ; that we hold out to believers 
 more examples of pride and negligence than of virtue ; that we are 
 more jealous of pre-eminence than of the duties of our calling; and 
 that it is difficult for the world to honour a character which we our- 
 selves disgrace. But, as I have often said, my brethren, our infide- 
 lities ought rather to be the subject of your tears than of your plea- 
 santry and censures. God generally punishes the disorders of the 
 people by the corruptionof the priests ; and the most dreadful scourge 
 with which he strikes kingdoms and empires, is that of not raising 
 up in them venerable pastors, and zealous ministers, who may stem 
 the torrent of dissipation ; it is that'of permitting faith and religion 
 to become weakened, even among those who are its defenders and 
 depositaries; that the light, which was meant to instruct you, 
 should be changed into darkness ; that the co-operators in your 
 salvation should assist, by their example, toward your destruction ; 
 that even from the sanctuary, from whence ought to proceed only 
 the good savour of Jesus Christ, there should issue a smell of death 
 and scandal ; and, in a word, that abominations should find their 
 way even into the holy place. But what alteration does the re- 
 laxation of our manners make in the sanctity of the vocation which 
 consecrates us ? Are the sacred vases which serve on the altar, 
 though composed of a mean metal, less worthy of your respect ? 
 And even granting the minister may merit your contempt, would 
 you be less sacrilegious in not respecting his ministry? 
 
 What shall I say ? Your detractions and censures are perhaps 
 directed against persons who make a public profession of piety, and 
 whose virtue your hearers formerly respected. You then persuade 
 them that they had been too credulous ; you authorize them to 
 believe, that few worthy and intrinsically good characters are to be 
 found on the earth ; that all those held out as such, when narrowly 
 examined, are like the rest of men: you confirm the prejudices of 
 the world against virtue, and give fresh credit to those discourses, 
 so usual, and so injurious to religion, with regard to the piety of 
 the servants of Jesus Christ. Now, do all these appear so very 
 light to you ? Ah, my brethren ! the just on this earth are like 
 the holy ark, in the midst of which the Lord dwells, and any con- 
 tempt or insult to which, he most rigorously avenges. They may 
 
88 on evil speaking. Ser. 6. 
 
 stagger in their road, like the ark of Israel, while conducting in 
 triumph to Jerusalem, for the purest and most shining virtue has 
 its spots and eclipses, and even the most solid cannot always equally 
 support itself ; but the Lord is incensed, when rash and impure 
 hands, like those of Uzziah, shall venture to put them right ; and 
 scarcely have they touched them, when they are smote by his 
 wrath. He takes to himself the slightest insults with which they 
 dishonour his servants, and he cannot endure that virtue, which has 
 found admirers, even amongst tyrants and the most barbarous 
 nations, should frequently, among believers, find only censures and 
 derisions. Thus the little children of Israel were devoured on the 
 spot, for having mocked the small number of hairs of the man of 
 God; nevertheless, these were only the puerile indiscretions so 
 pardonable at their age. Fire from heaven fell upon the officer of 
 the impious Ahaziah, and in a moment consumed him for having in 
 derision called Elijah the man of God ; nevertheless, it was a cour- 
 tier, from whom little regard might be expected for the austerity 
 and simplicity of a prophet, or for the virtue of a man, rustic in his 
 appearance, and hateful to his master. Michal was struck with 
 barrenness, for having too harshly censured the holy excesses of 
 joy and piety of David before the altar; nevertheless, it proceeded 
 merely from female delicacy. But to meddle with those who serve 
 the Lord, is, according to the Scripture, to meddle with the apple 
 of your eye. He invisibly curses those rash censures on piety ; 
 and though he may not strike them, as formerly, with instant death, 
 yet he marks on their forehead, from this life forward, the stamp 
 of reprobation, and denies to themselves that precious gift of sanc- 
 tity and grace which they had despised in others. Nevertheless, it 
 is the upright who are now become the general butt of the malig- 
 nity of public discourses ; and we may safely say, that virtue gives 
 birth to more censurers in the world than vice. 
 
 I do not add, that if these slanders, which you term light, be 
 highly criminal in their motives and circumstances, they are still 
 more so in their consequences ; I say their consequences, my bre- 
 thren, which are always irreparable. You may expiate the crime of 
 voluptuousness by mortification and penitence ; the crime of hatred 
 by love for your enemy ; the crime of ambition by a renunciation 
 of the honours and grandeurs of the age ; the crime of injustice by a 
 restoration of what you had unjustly ravished from your brother; 
 even the crime of impiety and free-thinking, by a religious and 
 public respect for the worship of your fathers ; but what remedy, 
 what virtue, can repair the crime of detraction ? You revealed to 
 only one person the vices of your brother : it may be so ; but that 
 unlucky confidant will soon, in his turn, have communicated it to 
 others, who, on their part, no longer regarding as a secret what 
 they have just heard, will relate it to the first comers ; in the relation 
 of it, every one will add new circumstances ; each, in his way, will 
 empoison it with some new trait ; in proportion as they publish, 
 they will increase, they will magnify it : similar to a spark of fire, 
 says St. James, which, wafted by an impetuous wind to different 
 
Ser. 6. ox evil speaking. 89 
 
 places, sets in flames the forests and countries it reaches : such is the 
 destiny of detraction. 
 
 What you had mentioned in secret was nothing at first, and 
 seemed stifled and buried under its own ashes ; but this fire lies 
 hid for a while only in order to burst forth with redoubled fury : 
 that nothing soon acquires reality, by passing through a diversity 
 of mouths ; every one will add to it whatever his passion, interest, 
 disposition of mind, or his own malignity, may hold out to him as 
 probable. The source is hardly perceptible ; but, assisted in its 
 course by a thousand foreign streams, the united torrent will over- 
 whelm the court, city, and country ; and that, which at its birth 
 was only a private and imprudent pleasantry, but a simple idea, 
 but a malicious conjecture, will become a serious affair, a public 
 and formal dishonour, the subject of every conversation, and an 
 eternal stain upon the character of your brother. Repair now, if 
 you can, the injustice and scandal ; restore to your brother the 
 good name of which you have deprived him. Will you pretend to 
 oppose the public inveteracy, and singly hold forth his praise ? But 
 they will regard you as a new comer, who is ignorant of what has 
 taken place in the world ; and your praises, come far too late, will 
 serve only to draw upon him fresh satires. Now, what a multitude 
 of crimes proceeding from only one ! The sins of a whole people 
 become your's; you defame through the mouths of all your fellow- 
 citizens; you are likewise answerable for the guilt of all who listen 
 to you. What penitence can expiate evils to which it can no 
 longer afford relief? And will your tears be able to blot out what 
 shall never be effaced from the memory of man ? Again, were the 
 scandal to end with you, your death, by terminating it, might be 
 its expiation before God. But it is a scandal which will survive 
 you. The shameful histories of courts never die with their he- 
 roes. Lascivious writers have transmitted to us the anecdotes and 
 irregularities of the courts which have preceded us; and licen- 
 tious authors will be found amongst us, to acquaint the ages to 
 come with the public rumours, the scandalous circumstances, and 
 the vices of our own. 
 
 O my God ! these are of that description of sins of which we 
 know not either the enormity or extent; but we know, that to be- 
 come a stumbling-block to our brethren is to overturn for them 
 the work of thy Son's mission, and to destroy the fruit of his la- 
 bours, of his death, and of all his ministry. Such is the illusion of 
 the pretext which you draw from the lightness of your slanders ; 
 the motives are never innocent, the circumstances always criminal, 
 the consequences irreparable. Let us examine if the pretext of the 
 public notoriety be better founded. This is what yet remains for 
 me to investigate. 
 
 Part II. Whence comes it that the majority of precepts are 
 violated by those very persons who profess themselves their ob- 
 servers, and that we find more difficulty in bringing the world 
 to acknowledge than to correct its transgressions ? The reason is, 
 
90 ON EVIL SPEAKING. Ser. 6. 
 
 that our ideas of duty are never taken from the ground- work of re- 
 ligion ; that we never enter into the spirit to decide upon the let- 
 ter ; and that few people ascend to the principle to clear up the 
 doubts which corruption forms on the detail of the consequences. 
 
 Now, to apply this maxim to my subject : what are the rules in 
 the gospel which constitute slander a crime to the disciples of Jesus 
 Christ ? In the first place, it is the precept of Christian humility, 
 which, as it ought to establish in us a profound contempt of our- 
 selves, and to open our eyes on the endless multitude of our own 
 wants, should at the same time shut our eyes on those of our bre- 
 thren. In the second place, it is the duty of charity ; that charity 
 so recommended in the gospel ; the grand precept of the law, which 
 covers the faults it cannot correct, excuses those it cannot cover, 
 delights not in evil, and with difficulty believes, because it never 
 wishes it to happen. Lastly, it is the inviolable rule of justice, 
 which, never permitting us to do to others what we would not have 
 done to ourselves, condemns whatever goes beyond these equitable 
 bounds. Now, the scandalous discourses which turn upon those 
 faults which you term public, essentially wound these three rules : 
 judge, then, of their innocency. 
 
 First. They wound the precept of Christian humility. Indeed, 
 my dear hearer, were you feelingly touched with your own wants, 
 says a holy father ; were your own sin incessantly before your 
 eyes, like the penitent David, you would find neither sufficient 
 leisure nor attention to remark the faults of your brethren. The 
 more they were public, the more would you in secret thank the 
 Lord for averting from you that scandal ; the more would you feel 
 your gratitude awakened, when you considered, that, though fallen 
 perhaps into the same errors, he hath not permitted them to be pro- 
 claimed from the house-tops, like those of your brother ; that he 
 hath left in obscurity your deeds of darkness ; that he hath co- 
 vered them, as I may say, with his wings ; and that, in the eyes of 
 men, he hath preserved for you an honour and an innocence 
 which you have so often forfeited before him : you would tremble, 
 while saying to yourself, that perhaps he hath spared your confu- 
 sion in this world, only to render it more bitter and more durable 
 in the next. 
 
 Such is the disposition of Christian humility toward the public 
 disgraces of our brethren. We should often speak of them to our- 
 selves, but almost never to others. Thus, when the Scribes and 
 Pharisees presented to our Saviour the woman caught in adultery, 
 and eagerly pressed him to give his judgment, though the guilt of 
 the sinner was public, Jesus Christ kept a profound silence ; and 
 to their insidious and pressing entreaties to explain himself, he sim- 
 ply answered, " He that is without sin amongst you, let him first 
 cast a stone at her ;" as if he thereby meant to make them under- 
 stand that sinners like them were little entitled to condemn, with so 
 high a hand, the crime of that woman; and that to acquire the right of 
 casting a single stone at her, it was necessary the individual should 
 himself be free from reproach. And behold my brethren, what I 
 
Ser. 6. on evil speaking. 91 
 
 wish to say to you at present : the evil conduct of such a person is 
 become notorious. Very well ; whoever of you is without sin, let 
 him cast the first stone ! If, before God, you have nothing, per- 
 haps more criminal, with which to reproach yourself speak with 
 freedom; condemn, in the severest manner, his fault, and open 
 upon him the whole flood of your derisions and censures : it is 
 permitted to you. Ah ! you, who so hardly speak of it, you are 
 more fortunate ; but are you more innocent than he ? You are 
 thought to possess more virtue, and more regard for your duty ; 
 but God, who knoweth you, will he judge like men ? Were the 
 darkness which conceals your shame to be dissipated, would not 
 every stone you throw recoil upon yourselves ? Were an unex- 
 pected circumstance to betray your secret, would not the audacity 
 and malicious joy with which you censure, add additional ridicule 
 to your confusion and disgrace ? Ah ! it is only to artifices and 
 arrangements, which the justice of God may disconcert and lay 
 open in an instant, that you are indebted for this phantom of repu- 
 tation on which you pride yourselves so much. You perhaps bor- 
 der on the moment which shall reveal your shame ; and, far from 
 blushing in secret and in silence, when faults like your own are 
 made known, you speak of and relate them with pleasure, and you 
 furnish the public with traits which one day it will employ against 
 yourself. It is the threat and prediction of our Saviour: " All they 
 that take the sword shall perish with the sword." You pierce your 
 brother with the sword of the tongue ; with the same weapon shall 
 you be pierced in your turn ; and though you were even exempted 
 from the vices you so boldly censure in others, the just God will 
 deliver you up to it. 
 
 Disgrace is the common punishment of pride. Peter, on the 
 evening of the Lord's supper, never ceased to exaggerate the guilt 
 of the disciple by whom his Master was to be betrayed. He was 
 the most anxious of them all to know his name, and the most for- 
 ward to express his detestation of his perfidy ; and, immediately 
 after, he falls himself into the infidelity which he had so lately 
 blamed with such pride and confidence. Nothing draws down 
 upon us the wrath and curse of God so much as the malicious 
 pleasure with which we magnify the faults of our brethren ; and 
 his mercy is incensed, that these afflicting examples, which he per- 
 mits for the sole purpose of recalling us to our own weaknesses 
 and awakening our vigilance, should flatter our pride, and excite 
 only our derisions and censures. 
 
 You depart, then, from the rules of Christian humility, when 
 you permit yourselves to censure the faults, however public, of 
 your brother; but you likewise essentially wound those of cjiarity; 
 for charity never faileth says the apostle. Now, if the vices of your 
 brother be known to those who listen to you, to what purpose, 
 then, do you repeat them afresh ? What, indeed, can be your in- 
 tention ? To blame his conduct ? But, is his shame not already 
 sufficient ? Would you wish to overwhelm an unfortunate wretch, 
 and give the last stab to a man already pierced with a thousand 
 
92 on evil speaking. Ser. 6. 
 
 mortal blows ? His guilt has already been exaggerated by so many 
 dark and malicious hearts, who have spread it in colours sufficient 
 to blacken it for ever. Is he not sufficiently punished ? He is 
 now worthy of your pity rather than of your censures. What 
 then could be your intentions ? To condole with him for his mis- 
 fortune ? But to open afresh his wounds, is a strange way of con- 
 doling with an unfortunate brother. Is true compassion thus 
 cruel ? What is it then ? To justify your prophecies and former 
 suspicions on his conduct ? To tell us, that you had always be- 
 lieved that, sooner or later, it would come to that? But you 
 come, then, to triumph over his misfortune ? To applaud your- 
 self for his disgrace ? To claim an honour to yourself for the ma- 
 lignity of your judgment ? Alas ! what glory can it be to a Chris- 
 tian to have suspected his. brother; to have believed him guilty 
 before he was known as such ; to have rashly foreseen his disgraces 
 yet to come; we, who ought not to see them, even when they have 
 taken place. Ah ! you can prophesy so justly on the destiny of 
 others : be a prophet in your own country, and anticipate the mis- 
 fortunes which threaten you. Why do you not prophesy thus for 
 yourself, that unless you fly from such an opportunity, and such 
 a danger, you will perish in it ? that unless you dissolve such a 
 connexion, the public which already murmurs, will at last break 
 out, and then you will find it too late to repair the scandal ; that 
 unless you quit these excesses, into which the passions of youth 
 and a bad education have thrown you, your affairs and fortune will 
 be ruined beyond resource ? It is on these points that you ought 
 to exercise your art of conjecture. What madness, while sur- 
 rounded oneVself with precipices, to be occupied in contemplating 
 from afar those that threaten our brethren ! 
 
 Besides, the more your brother's disgraces are public, the more 
 affected ought you to be with the scandal which they necessarily 
 occasion to the church ; with the advantage which the wicked 
 and the freethinkers will draw from them, to blaspheme the 
 name of the Lord, to harden themselves in impiety and to 
 persuade themselves that these are weaknesses common to all men, 
 and that they are most virtuous who best know how to conceal 
 them; the more ought you to be afflicted at the occasion which 
 these public examples of irregularity give to weak souls to fall into 
 the same disorders ; the more does charity oblige you to grieve 
 over them; the more ought you to wish, that the remembrance of 
 these faults should perish ; that the day and the places of their re- 
 vealment should be effaced from the memory of men ; and, lastly, 
 the more ought you, by your silence, to endeavour to suppress 
 them. But the whole world speaks of them, you say : your silence 
 will not prevent the public conversations ; consequently, you make 
 remarks in your turn. The inference is barbarous. Because you 
 are unable to repair the disgrace, are you permitted to augment it? 
 Because you cannot save your brother from shame, shall you assist 
 to overwhelm him with confusion and infamy? Because almost 
 every one casts a stone at him, shall it be less cruel in you to 
 
Ser. 6. on evil speaking. 93 
 
 throw one in your turn, and to unite with those who bruise and beat 
 him in pieces ? Setting religion aside, how beautiful it is to declare 
 for the unfortunate ! How much real dignity and greatness of soul 
 in sheltering under our protection those abandoned by the world ! 
 And, even admitting the rules of charity were not to make it a duty 
 to us, the feelings alone of glory and humanity should in this case 
 be sufficient. 
 
 Thirdly. You not only violate the holy rules of charity, but 
 you are also a breaker of those of justice ; for the faults of your 
 brother are public ; let it be so; but place yourself in the same 
 situation, would you exact from him less deference, or less human- 
 ity, were your disgrace to be no longer a mystery ? Would you 
 agree, that the public example gave to your brother a right against 
 you, which you arrogate to yourself against him? Would you 
 accept on his part, in justification of his malignity, an excuse 
 which would render him still more odious, mean, and cruel ? Be- 
 sides, how do you know whether the author of all these reports be 
 not an impostor? So many false reports are circulated in the 
 world ; and the malice of men renders them so credulous on the 
 faukV.of others ! How do you know but these calumnies have 
 been circulated by an enemy, a rival, or some envious person, in 
 order to ruin him, who has thwarted his passions or his fortune ? 
 Are such instances rare ? Whether it be not some heedless person 
 who has given occasion to all these discourses, by an indiscreet 
 expression, uttered without thought, and laid hold of through 
 malice. Are such mistakes impossible ? Whether it be not a mere 
 conjecture, originally circulated as such, and afterwards given as a 
 truth ? Are such alterations uncommon in public rumours ? What 
 could have a greater appearance of feasibility, to the children of 
 the captivity, than the alleged misconduct of Susanna. The 
 judges of the people of God, venerable through their age and dig- 
 nity, deposed against her; the people exclaimed against her as an 
 adulteress; they looked upon her as the disgrace of Israel; never- 
 theless, it was her modesty alone which drew upon her these in- 
 sults; and had not a Daniel been found in her time, who had the 
 courage to doubt a general report, the blood of that innocent wo- 
 man must have stained the whole people. And, without depart- 
 ing from our gospel, were not the sacrilegious reports, which held 
 out Jesus as an impostor and Samaritan, become the public dis- 
 courses of all Judea ? The Priests and Pharisees, to whom the 
 the dignity of their station, and the regularity of their manners, 
 attracted the respect and confidence of the people, strengthened 
 them by their authority. Nevertheless, would you excuse such 
 amongst the Jews as, on reports so common, spoke of the Saviour 
 of the world as a seducer, who imposed on the credulity of the 
 people ? You expose yourself, then, to the guilt of having calumni- 
 ated your brother; however circulated the rumours against him 
 may be, his crime, of which you have not been a witness, is always 
 dubious to you, and you do him an injustice, when you propagate 
 as true, what you have only heard from public reports, often false, 
 and alwavs rash. 
 
94 on evil speaking. Ser. 6. 
 
 But I go farther : when your brothers disgrace should even be 
 certain, and the malignity of reports should have added nothing to 
 its criminality; how can you know that the very shame of seeing 
 it so public may not have recalled him to himself; and that a sin- 
 cere repentance, and tears of compunction, may not have already 
 effaced and expiated it before God ? Years are not always required 
 for grace to triumph over a rebellious heart; there are victories 
 which it leaves not to time ; and a public disgrace often turns out 
 the moment of mercy, which decides upon the conversion of a sin- 
 ner. Now, if your brother is in a state of repentance, are you not 
 unjust and cruel to revive faults which his penitence has effaced, 
 and which the Lord hath ceased to remember ? Do you recollect 
 the sinful woman in the gospel? Her irregularities were notorious, 
 seeing she had been known through the whole city as a prostitute; 
 nevertheless, when the Pharisees reproached her with her sins, her 
 tears and love had effaced them at the feet of our Saviour; the 
 goodness of God had remitted her errors, yet the malignity of men 
 was unable to obliterate them. 
 
 Lastly. Your brothers disgrace was public ; that is to say, it 
 was confusedly known that his conduct was not free from reproach, 
 and you come to particularize the circumstances, to proclaim his 
 deeds, to explain the motives, and to lay open the whole mystery ; 
 to confirm what they but imperfectly knew; to tell them of: what 
 they knew not at all; and to applaud yourself for appearing better 
 instructed in your brother's misfortune than those who listen to 
 you. Some degree of character, though wavering, yet remained 
 to him ; he still preserved, at least, some remains of honour, a 
 spark of life, and you completely extinguish it. I do not add, 
 that these public reports, perhaps originated from people of no 
 character, persons of neither reputation nor consequence to con- 
 vince. Hitherto none durst yield credit to rumours so poorly sup- 
 ported ; but you, who, by your rank, birth, and dignities, have ac- 
 quired an influence over the minds, remove every shadow of doubt 
 or uncertainty. Your name alone will now serve as a proof against 
 the innocency of your brother ; and in future it will be cited in 
 justification of the general reports. Now, can any thing be harder 
 or more unjust, both on account of the injury you do to him, and 
 of the service you fail to perform? Your silence on his fault 
 might alone perhaps have stopped the public defamation, and you 
 would have been cited to clear his innocence, as you now are to 
 blacken it. And what more respectable use could you have made 
 of your rank and influence? The more [you are exalted in the 
 world, the more ought you to be religious and circumspect on the 
 reputation of your brethren; the more ought a noble decency to 
 render you reserved on their errors. The discourses of the vulgar 
 are soon forgot, they expire in coming into the world; but the 
 words of the great never fall in vain, and the public is always a 
 faithful echo, either to the praises they bestow, or to the censures 
 they allow themselves to utter. My God ! thou teachest us, by 
 concealing thyself the sins of men, to conceal them on our part ; 
 to reveal our faults, thou waitest with a merciful patience the day 
 
Ser. 6. on evil speaking. 95 
 
 when the secrets of our hearts shall be manifested; and we, by a 
 rash malignity, anticipate the time of thy vengance; we, who are 
 so interested, that the secrecies of our hearts, and the mystery of 
 the consciences, should not as yet be laid open to thee. 
 
 Thus, you particularly, my brethren, whom rank and birth exalt 
 above others, be not satisfied with putting a check upon your 
 tongue; according to the advice of the Holy Spirit, present a 
 melancholy and severe countenance, a silence of disapprobation 
 and indignation to every defamatory discourse; for the crime is 
 exactly equal between the malignity of the speaker and the satis- 
 faction of those who listen to him. Let us surround our ears 
 with thorns, that they may not be accesible to poisonous insinua- 
 tions; that is to say, let us not only shut them against these words 
 of blood and gall, but let us return them on their author in a 
 manner equally bitter and mortifying. Were slander to find fewer 
 approvers, the kingdom of Jesus Christ would soon be purged of 
 that scandal. Slander is pleasing ; and a vice which pleases, soon 
 becomes a desirable talent. We animate slander by our applauses; 
 and as there is no person but wishes to be applauded, there are 
 few, likewise, who do not study it, and endeavour to make a merit 
 of slandering with skill. 
 
 But what is surprising is, that piety itself frequently serves as a 
 pretext to that vice, which saps the very foundations of piety, and 
 which sincere piety detests. This ought to be the last part of 
 this Discourse; but I shall say only a single word upon it. Yes, 
 my brethren, slander frequently finds, in piety itself, wherewithal 
 to colour itself. It decks itself out in the appearance of zeal. 
 Hatred to vice seems to authroize the censure of sinners. Those 
 who make a profession of virtue often believe that they are hon- 
 ouring God, and rendering glory to him, when they dishonour and 
 exclaim against those who offend him; as though the privilege 
 of piety, whose soul is charity, were to dispense us even from chari- 
 ty. It is not that I wish here to justify the discourses of the 
 world, and to furnish it with new traits against the zeal of the up- 
 right ; but, at the same time, I ought not to dissemble, that the 
 liberty which they assume, of censuring the conduct of their bre- 
 thren, is one of the most common abuses of piety. 
 
 Now, my dear hearer, you whom this Discourse regards, listen 
 to, and never forget, the rules which the gospel prescribes to true 
 zeal. 
 
 First. Remember, that the zeal which makes us lament over the 
 scandals that dishonour the church, is contented with lamenting 
 them before God; with praying him not to forget his former mer- 
 cies; to cast his propitious regards upon the people; to establish 
 his reign in all hearts, and to recall sinners from their erroneous 
 ways. Behold the holy manner of lamenting over the disgraces of 
 your brethren ; mention them frequently to the Lord, but forget 
 them in the presence of men. 
 
 Secondly. Remember, that piety gives you no right of empire 
 or authority over your brethren; that if you be not established 
 
96 on evil speaking. Ser. 6. 
 
 over them, and responsible for their conduct, whether they fall or 
 remain steadfast, is the concern of the Lord, and not yours; conse- 
 quently, that your continual and public lamentations over their 
 irregularities proceed from a principle of pride, malignity, levity, 
 and intolerance; that the church has its pastors to superintend the 
 flock ; that the ark has its ministers to sustain it, without needing 
 the interference of any foreign or imprudent succours ; and, lastly, 
 that by these means, far from correcting your brethren, you dis- 
 honour piety^ you justify the discourses of the wicked against the 
 just, and you* authorize them in saying, as formerly in the Book of 
 Wisdom why professeth the righteous to have a right to fill the 
 streets, and the public places, with their clamours and upbraidings 
 against our conduct, and holdeth it out as a point of virtue to 
 defame us in the minds of our brethren ? 
 
 Thirdly. Remember, that the zeal regulated by wisdom seeks 
 the salvation, and not the defamation, of the brother it wishes 
 to edify ; that it loves not to injure ; that, in order to render it- 
 self useful, it studies to render itself amiable; that it is more affect- 
 ed with the misfortune and loss of its brother, than irritated against, 
 or scandalized by, his errors; that, far from going to publish 
 them to others, it would wish to be enabled to conceal them from 
 itself; and that the zeal which censures them, far from lessening 
 the evil, serves only to augment the scandal. 
 
 Fourthly. Remember, that the censorious zeal which you display 
 is useless to your brother, seeing he witnesses it not ; that, far from 
 being of service, it is even hurtful to his conversion, to which you 
 raise up obstacles, by irritating him against your censures, should 
 he happen to be informed of them; that it is injurious to his repu- 
 tation, which you wound; and, lastly, to those that listen to you, 
 who, respecting your pretended virtue, never entertain a doubt that 
 they can err, while following your steps, and no longer place slander 
 among the number of vices. Zeal is humble, and has eyes for 
 nothing but its own wants ; it is simple, and much more disposed 
 to be credulous with regard to good than evil; it is merciful, and 
 is always indulgent to the faults of others, in the same proportion 
 as it is severe to its own weaknesses; it is gentle and timorous, and 
 prefers to have failed in sufficiently blaming vice, to rashly expos- 
 ing itself to go too far in censuring the sinner. 
 
 Thus, my brethren, you who, returned from the errors of the 
 world, now serve the Lord, allow me to conclude, with addressing 
 to you the same words formerly spoken by a holy father to the 
 servants of Jesus Christ, who, through an indiscreet zeal, made no 
 scruple of tearing in pieces the characters of their brethren : 
 
 "A tongue which has confessed Jesus Christ, which has re- 
 nounced the errors and splendours of the world, which every day 
 blesses the God of peace at the foot of the altar, and is often con- 
 secrated, by participation of the holy mysteries, should no longer 
 be intolerant, dangerous, and full of gall and bitterness against its 
 brethren. It is disgracing religion, after having offered up pure 
 prayers and thanksgivings to the Lord in the assembly of believers, 
 
Ser. 7- ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. 97 
 
 to go and spit out the venomous traits of the serpent, against those 
 whom the unity of faith, charity, the sacrament, and even their 
 very errors, should render more endeared and more respectable to 
 you." 
 
 By the wisdom and moderation of our discourses, let us deprive 
 the enemies of virtue of every occasion to blaspheme against it ; 
 let us correct our brethren by the sanctity of our example rather 
 than by the keenness of our censures ; let us recall them, by living 
 better than they, and not by speaking against them ; let us render 
 virtue respectable by its sweetness rather than by its severity ; let 
 us draw sinners toward us by compassionating rather than censur- 
 ing their faults, in order that our virtue may be conspicuous to 
 them only through our charity and indulgence, and that our tender 
 care to cover and excuse their faults, may induce them to accuse 
 and condemn themselves with more severity, when they per- 
 ceive the difference of our conduct. By these means we shall 
 regain our brethren; we shall honour piety; we shall overthrow 
 impiety and freethinking; we shall deprive the world of all oc- 
 casion for those discourses, so common and so injurious to real 
 virtue; and, after having used mercy toward our brethren, we 
 shall with more confidence go to present ourselves before the 
 Father of mercies, and the God of all consolation, to ask mercy 
 for ourselves. 
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. 
 
 " Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto him that sent me." 
 John vii. 33. 
 
 An improper use of time is the source of all the disorders which 
 reign amongst men. Some pass their whole life in idleness and 
 sloth, equally useless to the world, their country, and themselves: 
 others, in the tumult of business and worldly affairs. Some ap- 
 pear to exist only for the purpose of indulging an unworthy indo- 
 lence, and escaping, by adversity of pleasures, from the weariness 
 which every where pursues them, in proportion as they fly from it: 
 others, in a continual search, amidst the cares of the world, for 
 occupations which may deliver them from themselves. It appears 
 that time is a common enemy, against which all men have agreed 
 to conspire. Their whole life is one continued and deplorable 
 anxiety to rid themselves of it. The happiest are those who best 
 succeed in not feeling the weight of its duration: and the principal 
 satisfaction they reap, -either from frivolous pleasures or serious 
 occupations, is the abridgment of days and moments, and deli- 
 verance from them, almost without a perception of their being 
 passed. 
 
 Time, that precious deposit confided to us by the Lord, is there- 
 fore become a burden which fatigues and oppresses us. We dread. 
 
98 ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. Ser. J. 
 
 as the greatest of evils, its deprivation for ever ; and we almost 
 equally dread the obligation to support its weariness and duration. 
 It is a treasure which we would wish to retain for ever, yet which 
 we cannot suffer to remain in our possession. 
 
 This time, however, of which we make so little estimation, is the 
 only mean of our eternal salvation. We lose it without regret, 
 which is a crime ; we employ it only for worldly purposes, which 
 is a madness. Let us employ the time which God allows us, 
 because it is short. Let us employ it only in labouring for our 
 salvation, because it is only given us that we may be saved ; that 
 is to say, let us be sensible of the value of time, and let us lose it 
 not : let us know the use of it, and employ it only for the purpose 
 it was given. By these means, we shall avoid both the dangers 
 of a slothful and the inconveniences of a hurried life. This is the 
 subject of the present Discourse. 
 
 Part I. Three circumstances, in general, decide upon the value 
 of things among men: the great advantages which may accrue to 
 us from them; the short space we have to enjoy them; and, lastly, 
 every hope destroyed of ever regaining them, "if once lost. Now, 
 behold, my brethren, the principal motives which ought to render 
 time precious and estimable to every wise man : in the first place, 
 it is the price of eternity : in the second place, it is short, and we 
 cannot make too much haste to reap the benefit of it : and, lastly, 
 it is irreparable ; for, once lost, it can never be regained. It is 
 the price of eternity. Yes, my brethren, man, condemned to death 
 by the sin of his birth, ought to receive life only to lose it, even 
 from the moment he has received it. The blood alone of Jesus 
 Christ has effaced this sentence of death and punishment pro- 
 nounced against all mankind in the person of the first sinner. We 
 live, though the offspring of a father condemned to death, and in- 
 heritors ourselves of his punishment, because the Redeemer died 
 for us. The death of Jesus Christ is, therefore, the source, and 
 the only claim of right we have to life ; our days, our moments, are 
 the first blessings which have flowed to us from his cross ; and the 
 time which we so vainly lose, is the price, however, of his blood, 
 the fruit of his death, and the merit of his sacrifice. 
 
 Not only as children of Adam, we deserve no longer to live ; but 
 even all the crimes we have added to those of our birth are become 
 new sentences of death against us. So many times as we have 
 violated the law of the Author of life, so many times, from that 
 moment, ought we to have lost it. 
 
 Every sinner is, therefore, a child of death and anger ; and every 
 time the mercy of God has suspended, after each of our crimes, 
 the sentence of condemnation and death, it is a new life, as it were, 
 his goodness has granted, in order to allow us time to repair the 
 criminal use we had hitherto made of our own. 
 
 I even speak not of the diseases, accidents, and numberless dan- 
 gers which so often have menaced our life ; which so often we have 
 seen to terminate that of our friends and nearest connexions; and 
 
Ser. 7- ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. 99 
 
 from which his goodness has always delivered us. The life which 
 we enjoy is like a perpetual miracle, therefore, of his divine mercy. 
 The time which is left to us, is the consequence of an infinity of 
 tender mercies and grace, which compose the thread and the train, 
 as it were, of our life. Every moment we breathe is like a new 
 gift we receive from God ; and to waste that time, and these mo- 
 ments, in a deplorable inutility, is to insult that Infinite Goodness 
 which has granted them to us, to dissipate an inestimable grace 
 which is not our due, and to deliver up to chance the price of our 
 eternity. Behold, my brethren, the first guilt attached to the loss 
 of time. It is a precious treasure left to us, though we no longer 
 have a right to it, which is given to us for the purpose alone of 
 purchasing the kingdom of heaven, and which we dissipate as a 
 thing the most vile and contemptible, and of which we know not 
 any use to make. 
 
 In the world, we would regard that man as a fool, who, heir to 
 a great fortune, should allow it to be wasted through want of care 
 and attention, and should make no use of it, either to raise himself 
 to places and dignities, which might draw him from obscurity, or in 
 order to confirm to himself a solid establishment, which might place 
 him in future beyond the reach of any reverse. 
 
 But, my brethren, time is that precious treasure which we have 
 inherited from our birth, and which the Almighty leaves to us 
 through pure compassion. It is in our possession, and it depends 
 upon ourselves to make a proper use of it. It is not in order to 
 exalt ourselves to frivolous dignities here below, or to worldly 
 grandeurs : alas ! whatever passes away is too vile to be the price 
 of time, which is itself the price of eternity : it is in order to be 
 placed in the heavens above, at the side of Jesus Christ ; it is in 
 order to separate us from the crowd of the children of Adam, above 
 all the Ceesars and kings of the earth, in that immortal society of 
 the happy, who shall all be kings, and whose reign shall have no 
 bounds but those of eternity. 
 
 What madness, then, to make no use of a treasure so inestimable; 
 in frivolous amusements to waste that time which may be the price 
 of eternal salvation, and to allow the hopes of our immortality to 
 be dissipated in smoke ! Yes, my brethren, there is not a day, an 
 hour, a moment, but which, properly employed, may merit us 
 heaven. A single day lost ought therefore to leave us remorses a 
 thousand times more lively and poignant than the failure of the 
 greatest worldly prospects ; yet, nevertheless, this time is a burden 
 to us. Our whole life is only one continued science to lose it ; 
 and, in spite of all our anxieties to waste it, there always, 
 however, remains more than we know how to employ ; and yet, 
 the thing upon the earth we have the smallest value for, is our 
 time. Our acts of kindness we reserve for our friends ; our boun- 
 ties for our dependents ; our riches for our children and relations ; 
 our praises for those who appear worthy of them : our time we 
 give all to the world : we expose it, as I may say, a prey to all 
 mankind ; they even do us a pleasure in delivering us from it : it 
 
 h 2 
 
100 ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. Ser. J, 
 
 is a weight, as it were, which we support in the midst of the world, 
 while incessantly in search of some one who may ease us of its 
 burden. In this manner, time, that gift of God, that most precious 
 blessing of his clemency, and which ought to be the price of our 
 eternity, occasions all our embarrassments, all our weariness, and 
 becomes the most oppressive burden of our life. 
 
 But a second reason which makes us feel still more sensibly our 
 absurdity in setting so little value upon the time the Almighty 
 leaves to us, is, that not only it is the price of our eternity, but 
 likewise it is short, and we cannot hasten too much to employ it 
 to advantage. For, my brethren, had we even a long series of 
 ages to exist upon the earth, that space would, in truth, be still too 
 short to be employed in meriting everlasting happiness ; yet its 
 duration would at least enable us to retrieve those accidental losses. 
 The days and moments lost would at least form only a point, 
 scarcely perceptible, in that long series of ages we should have to 
 pass here below. But, alas ! our whole life is but an imperceptible 
 point. The longest endures so little ; our days and our years are 
 shut up in such narrow limits, that we see not what we can have 
 still to lose, in a space so short and rapid. We are only, as I may 
 say, a moment tipon the earth : like those fiery exhalations, which, 
 in the obscurity of night, are seen wandering in the air, we only 
 appear to vanish in a moment, and be replunged for ever into our 
 original and everlasting darkness. The exhibition we make to the 
 world is but a flash, which is extinguished almost in the same mo- 
 ment it exists : we say it ourselves every day. Alas ! how can we 
 take days and hours of rest from a life which is itself but a moment ? 
 And besides, if you retrench from that moment all you are under 
 the necessity of allowing to the indispensable necessities of the 
 body, to the duties of your station, to unexpected events, and the 
 inevitable complaisances due to society, what remains for yourself, 
 for God, and for eternity ? And are we not worthy of pity ; we, who 
 know not how to employ the little which remains to us, and who 
 fly to the assistance of a thousand artifices to abridge its duration ? 
 
 To the little time, my brethren, we have to live upon the earth, 
 add the number of past crimes which we have to expiate in this 
 short interval. How many iniquities are collected upon our heads 
 since our first years ! Alas ! ten lives, like ours, would scarcely 
 suffice to expiate a part of them ; the time would still be too short ; 
 and it would be necessary to call upon the goodness of God to 
 prolong the duration of our penance. Great God ! what portion 
 can remain to me for pleasures and indolence, in a life so short and 
 criminal as mine ? What place, then, can frivolous sports and 
 amusements find in an interval so rapid, and which altogether 
 would not suffice to expiate a single one of my crimes ? 
 
 Ah ! my brethren, do we even think upon it ? A criminal con- 
 demned to death, and to whom a single day is only allowed to 
 endeavour toward obtaining his pardon, would he find hours and 
 moments still to trifle away ? Would he complain of the length 
 of the time which the humanity and goodness of his judge had 
 
Ser. T". ON THE EMPLOYMENT OFTrME. 101 
 
 awarded him? Would he be embarrassed how to use it?- Would 
 he search for frivolous amusements to assist him to pafcs "those- pt&- 
 cious moments which were left him to merit his pardon and de- 
 liverance ? Would he not endeavour to profit by an interval so 
 decisive with regard to his destiny ? Would he not replace, by 
 the anxiety, vivacity, and continuance of his exertions, what might 
 be wanting from the brevity of the time allowed to him ? Fools 
 that we are ! Our sentence is pronounced ; our guilt renders our 
 condemnation certain : we are left a single day to shun the evil, 
 and to change the rigour of our eternal decree ; and this only day, 
 this rapid day, we indolently pass in occupations vain, slothful, and 
 puerile. 
 
 This precious day is a burden to us, wearies us ; we seek to 
 abridge it; scarcely can we find amusements sufficient to fill the void; 
 the evening arrives without our having made any other use of the 
 day left to us than that of rendering ourselves still more worthy of 
 the condemnation we had already merited. And, besides, my 
 brethren, how do we know that the abuse of the day, left to us by 
 the Almighty's goodness, will not oblige his justice to abridge and 
 to cut off a portion of it ? How many unexpected accidents may 
 arrest us in a course so limited, and crop, in their fairest blossoms, 
 the hopes of a longer life ! How many sudden and astonishing 
 deaths do we see ; and generally the just punishment of the un- 
 worthy use they had made of life ! What age has ever witnessed 
 more of these melancholy examples ? Formerly these accidents 
 were rare and singular ; at present they are events which happen 
 every day. Whether it be, that our crimes have drawn down upon 
 us this punishment; whether it be, that excesses unknown to 
 our forefathers lead us to them ; but at present they are the deaths 
 most common and frequent. Number, if you can, those of your 
 relations, friends, and connexions, whom a sudden death has sur- 
 prised without preparation, repentance, or a moment allowed them 
 to reflect upon themselves, upon that God whom they have offended, 
 and upon those crimes which, far from detesting, they never had 
 leisure sufficiently to be acquainted with. 
 
 Will you tell us, after this, that there are many spare moments 
 in the day ; that we must contrive to amuse ourselves some way 
 or another ? 
 
 There are many spare moments in the day ! But your guilt con- 
 sists in leaving them in that frightful void. The days of the up- 
 right are always full. Spare moments in the day ! But are your 
 duties always fulfilled ? Are your houses regulated, your children 
 instructed, the afflicted relieved, the poor visited, the works of piety 
 accomplished ? Time is short ; your obligations so infinite ; and 
 you can still find so many spare moments in the day ? My God ! 
 how many holy characters have in solitude complained that their 
 days passed too rapidly away ; have borrowed from the night what 
 the brevity of the day had taken from their labours and zeal ; have 
 lamented, even in the calm and leisure of their solitude, that suffi- 
 cient time remained not for them to publish thy praises and eternal 
 
102 , ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. Ser. J. 
 
 mercies & and we, charged with a multiplicity of cares; we, in the 
 midst of the solicitudes and the engagements of the age, which ab- 
 sorb almost all our days and our moments ; we, responsible to our 
 relations, to our children, to our friends, to our inferiors, to our 
 superiors, to our stations, to our country, for such an infinity of 
 duties, we still find a void in our life ; and the little which re- 
 mains to us, we think too long to be employed in serving and 
 blessing thy holy name ! 
 
 But we are happy, you say, when we know how to amuse our- 
 selves, and innocently to pass away the time. But how do you 
 know that your course is not already run, and that you do not per- 
 haps touch the fatal moment which commences your eternity? 
 Does your time belong to you, to be disposed of as you please ? 
 Time itself passes away so soon ; and are so many amusements 
 necessary to assist it in passing still more rapidly ? 
 
 But is time given to you for nothing serious, great, and eternal ; 
 nothing worthy of the elevation and destiny of man ? And the 
 Christian and inheritor of heaven, is he upon the earth only to 
 amuse himself? 
 
 But are there not, you say, many innocent recreations in life ? I 
 grant there are many: bat recreations suppose pains and cares, 
 which have preceded them ; while your whole life is one continued 
 recreation. Recreations are permitted to those who, after fulfilling 
 their duties, are under the necessity of affording some moments of 
 relaxation to the weakness of human nature : but you, if you have 
 occasion for relaxation, it is from the continuance of your pleasures, 
 and even what you call your recreations : it is from the rage of in- 
 ordinate gaming, of which the duration and earnest attention 
 necessary, besides the loss of time, render you incapable, on quit- 
 ting it, of application to any other duty of your station. What 
 recreation can you find m a lawless and boundless passion, which 
 occupies almost your whoie life, ruins your health, deranges your 
 fortune, and renders you the continual sport of a miserable chance? 
 And is it not with such characters that we find neither order, rule, 
 nor discipline ? All serious duties forgotten ; disorderly servants ; 
 children miserably educated ; affairs declining ; and public scorn 
 and contempt attached to their names and their unfortunate pos- 
 terity ? The passion of gaming is almost never unaccompanied ; 
 and to those of one sex especially, is always the source or the oc- 
 casion of all the others. These are the recreations you believe 
 innocent, and necessary to fill up the empty moments of the day. 
 
 Ah ! my brethren, how many of the reprobate, in the midst of 
 their anguish and punishments, entreat from the mercy of God 
 only one of those moments which we know not how to employ ! 
 and, could their request be granted, what use would they not make 
 of that precious moment ! How many tears of compunction and 
 penitence ! How many prayers and supplications, to soften the 
 Father of mercies, and to induce his paternal feelings to restore to 
 them his affection ? This only moment is nevertheless refused. 
 Time, they are told, exists no more for them : and you find your- 
 
Ser. 7- ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. 103 
 
 selves embarrassed with the little you are left ? God will judge 
 you, my brethren ; and on the bed of death, and in that terrible 
 hour which shall surprise you, in vain shall you demand a little 
 more time ; in vain shall you promise to God a more Christian use 
 of what you will endeavour to obtain : his justice, without pity, 
 will cut the thread of your days ; and that time, which now op- 
 presses and embarrasses you, shall then be denied. 
 
 But in what our blindness here is still more conspicuous, is, that 
 not only the time which we lose with so much indifference and in- 
 sensibility, is short and precious, but likewise irreparable ; for, once 
 lost, it is for ever gone, without resource. 
 
 I say irreparable : for, in the first place, riches, honours, reputa- 
 tion, and favour, though once lost, may again be retrieved. We 
 may even replace each of these losses by other acquirements, which 
 will repay us with usury ; but the moments lost in inutility are so 
 many means of salvation which we never again can possess, but 
 which are for ever cut off from the number which God, in his 
 compassion, had allotted to us. Indeed, in a space so short as 
 we have to live, there cannot be a doubt but that the Almighty had 
 his particular designs with jregard to each of our days and mo- 
 ments ; that he hath marked the use we ought to have made of 
 them ; the connexion they were to have with our eternal salvation; 
 and that, to each of them, he hath attached assistances of grace, in 
 order to consummate the work of our sanctification. Now, these 
 days and moments being lost, the grace attached to them must be 
 equally so ; the moments of God are finished, and return no 
 more : the course of his mercies is regulated : we believed they 
 were only useless moments we had lost ; and with them we have 
 lost inestimable succours of grace, which we find deducted from 
 those the goodness of God had destined for us. 
 
 In the second place, irreparable, because every day, every mo- 
 ment, ought to advance us a step nearer heaven. Now, the days 
 and moments lost leaving us in arrear, and the duration of our 
 course being also determined, the end arrives when we are yet at a 
 distance ; when there is no longer time to supply the remainder of 
 the career ; or, at least, to regain the lost moments, and reach the 
 goal, we must double our speed ; in one day fill up the course of 
 many years ; make the most heroic exertions ; and hasten in a 
 degree even beyond our strength ; proceed to excesses of holiness, 
 which are miracles of grace, and of which the generality of men 
 are incapable ; and consummate, in a small interval, what ought to 
 be the labour of a whole life. 
 
 In the last place, irreparable, with respect to the works of pen- 
 ance and reparation, of which, in a certain period of life, we are 
 capable, but are no longer so, when we wait the infirmities of a 
 more advanced age. For, after all, it is in vain to say then, that 
 God expects not impossibilities ; that there is a penance for every 
 age ; and that religion does not wish us to hasten our days, under 
 the pretext of expiating our crimes. It is you who have placed 
 yourselves in this state of impossibility : your sins diminish not 
 
104 ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. Ser. J. 
 
 your obligations : guilt must be punished, in order to be effaced. 
 The Almighty had allowed you both time and strength to satisfy 
 this immutable and eternal law : this time you have wasted in ac- 
 cumulating new debts : this strength you have exhausted, either by 
 new excesses, or at least without making any use of it, to further 
 the designs of God respecting you : the Almighty must therefore 
 do, what you have never done yourselves, and punish, after your 
 death, the crimes you have never been inclined to expiate during 
 your life. 
 
 This is to say, in order to concentrate all these reflections, that 
 with every moment of our life it is as with our death. We die only 
 once, and from thence we conclude, that we must die in a proper 
 state, because there is no longer a possibility of returning, to re- 
 pair, by a second death, the evil of the first. In like manner, we 
 only once exist, such and such moments : we cannot return upon 
 our steps, and, by commencing a new road, repair the errors and 
 faults of our first path j in like manner, every moment of our life 
 which we sacrifice becomes a point fixed for our eternity ; that 
 moment lost, shall change no more : it shall eternally be Jthe same ; 
 it will be recalled to us, such as we had passed it, and will be 
 marked with that ineffaceable stamp. How miserable, then, is our 
 blindness, my brethren ; we, whose life is only one continued atten- 
 tion to lose the time which returns no more, and, with so rapid a 
 course, flies to precipitate itself into the abyss of eternity ! 
 
 Great God ! Thou who art the sovereign dispenser of times and 
 moments ; thou, in whose hands are our days and our years, with 
 what eyes must thou behold us losing and dissipating the moments 
 of which thou alone knowest the duration ; of which, in irrevoca- 
 ble characters, thou hast marked the course and the measure; 
 moments, which thou drawest from the treasure of thine eternal 
 mercies, to allow us time for penitence ; moments which, every 
 day, thy justice presses thee to abridge, as a punishment for their 
 abuse; moments which, every day before our eyes, thou refusest 
 to so many sinners, less culpable than we, whom a terrible death 
 surprises and drags into the gulf of thine eternal vengeance ; mo- 
 ments, in a word, which we shall not perhaps long enjoy, and of 
 which thou soon intendest to terminate the melancholy career ! 
 Great God ! Behold the greatest and best part of my life already 
 past and wholly lost. In all my days, there has not hitherto been 
 a single serious one, a single day for thee, for my salvation, and for 
 eternity : my whole life is but a vapour, which leaves nothing real 
 or solid in the hand of him who recalls it. Shall I, to the end, 
 drag on my days in this melancholy inutility ; in this weariness 
 which pursues me, in the midst of my pleasures, and the efforts 
 which unavailingly I make to avoid it ? Shall the last hour sur- 
 prise me, loaded with the void of my whole years ? And, in all 
 my course, shall there be nothing serious or important but the last 
 moment, which will terminate it for ever, and decide my everlasting 
 destiny ? Great God ! what a life for a soul destined to serve thee, 
 called to the immortal society of thy Son and thy saints, enriched 
 
Ser. ?. ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. 105 
 
 with thy gifts, and, in consequence of them, capable of works worthy 
 of eternity ! What a life is that life which, in reality, is nothing, 
 has nothing in view, and fills up a time which is decisive of its 
 eternal destiny, in doing nothing, and reckoning as well passed 
 those days and hours which imperceptibly slip away ! 
 
 But if inutility be opposite to the price of time, irregularity and 
 multiplicity of occupations are not less so to the proper order of 
 time, and to the Christian use we ought to make of it. You have 
 just seen the dangers of a slothful, and I will now lay before you 
 the inconveniences of a hurried life. 
 
 Part II. To every thing we have hitherto said, my brethren, 
 the majority of those who listen to me have, no doubt, secretly 
 opposed, that their life is any thing but slothful and useless ; that 
 scarcely can they suffice for the duties, good offices, and endless 
 engagements of their stations ; that they live in an eternal vicissi- 
 tude of occupations and business which absorbs their whole life ;. 
 and that they think themselves happy when they can accomplish 
 a moment for themselves, and enjoy, at leisure, the situation which 
 their fortune denies to them. 
 
 Now this, my brethren is a new way of abusing time, still more 
 dangerous than even inutility and indolence. In effect, the Chris- 
 tian use of time is not merely the filling up of all its moments; it 
 is that of filling them up in order, and according to the will of the 
 Lord, who gives them to us. The life of faith is a life of regulari- 
 ty and wisdom : fancy, passion, pride, and cupidity, are false prin- 
 ples of conduct, since they themselves are only a derangement of 
 the mind and heart; and that order and reason ought to be our 
 only guides. 
 
 Nevertheless, the life of the majority of men is a life always 
 occupied and always useless; always laborious, and always void: 
 their passions give birth to all their motions : these are the great 
 springs which agitate men; make them run here and there like 
 madmen; and leave them not a single moment's tranquillity; and, 
 in filling up all their moments, they seek not to fulfil their duties, 
 but to deliver themselves up to their restlessness, and to satisfy 
 their iniquitous desires. 
 
 But in what does this order consist, which ought to regulate the 
 measure of our occupations and to sanctify the use of our time ? 
 It consists, in the first place, in limiting ourselves to the occupa- 
 tions attached to our stations; in not seeking places and situations 
 which may multiply them; and in not reckoning, among our duties, 
 the cares and embarrassments which anxiety, or our passions, alone 
 generate within us. Secondly, however agitated may be our situa- 
 tions, amidst all our occupations, to regard as the most essential, 
 and the most privileged, those we owe to our salvation. 
 
 I say, in the first place, not to reckon, amongst the occupations 
 which sanctify the use of our time, those which restlessness or the 
 passions alone generate. 
 
 Restlessness ! Yes, my brethren, we all wish to avoid ourselves. 
 
106 ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. Ser. J, 
 
 To the generality of men nothing is more melancholy and dis- 
 agreeable than to find themselves alone, and obliged to review 
 their own hearts. As vain passions carry us away, as many cri- 
 minal attachments stain us, and as many thousand illicit desires 
 occupy every moment of our heart, in entering into ourselves, we 
 find only an answer of death, a frightful void, cruel remorses, dark 
 thoughts, and melancholy reflections. We search, therefore, in 
 the variety of occupations and continual distractions, an oblivion 
 of ourselves: we dread leisure as the signal of weariness; and 
 we expect to find, in the confusion and multiplicity of external 
 cares, that happy intoxication which enables us to go on with- 
 out perceiving it, and makes us no longer to feel the weight of 
 ourselves. 
 
 But, alas ! we deceive ourselves : weariness is never found but 
 in irregularity, and in a life of confusion, where every thing is out 
 of its place: it is in living by hazard that we are a burden to our- 
 selves; that we continually search after new occupations, and that 
 disgust soon obliges us to repent that we ever sought for them ; 
 that we incessantly change our situation, in order to fly from our- 
 selves ; and, that wherever we go, we carry ourselves : in a word, 
 that our whole life is but a diversified art to shun weariness, and 
 a miserable talent to find it. Wherever order is not, weariness 
 must necessarily be found; and, far from a life of irregularity and 
 confusion being a remedy, on the contrary, it is the most fruitful 
 source and universal cause of it. 
 
 The just souls who live in regularity ; they who yield nothing 
 to caprice and temper, whose every occupation is exactly where 
 it ought to be, whose moments are filled up, according to their 
 destination, and to the will of the Lord who directs them, find, in 
 order, a perfect remedy against, and protection from, weariness. 
 That wise uniformity in the practice of duties which appear so 
 gloomy in the eyes of the world, is the source of their joy, and of 
 that happy equality of temper, which nothing can derange : never 
 embarrassed with the present time which stated duties occupy; 
 never in pain with regard to the future, 'lor which new duties are 
 arranged; never delivered up to themselves by the change of occu- 
 pations which succeed each other; their days appear as moments, 
 because every moment is in its place; time hangs not upon them, 
 because it always has its distinction and use; and, in the arrange- 
 ment of an uniform and occupied life, they find that peace and that 
 joy which the rest of men in vain search for in* the confusion of a 
 continual agitation. 
 
 Restlessness, by multiplying our occupations, leaves us therefore 
 a prey to weariness and disgust; nor yet does it sanctify the use 
 of our time : for if the moments, not regulated by the order of God, 
 are moments lost, however occupied they may otherwise be; if the 
 life of man ought to be a life of wisdom and regularity, where 
 every occupation has its allotted place; what can be more opposite 
 to such a life than this inconsistency, these eternal fluctuations in 
 which restlessness makes us pass our time? But the passions 
 
Ser. 7- 0N THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. 107 
 
 which keep us in perpetual motion do not form for us more legiti- 
 mate employments. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, I know that it is only at a certain age of life 
 that we appear occupied with frivolity and pleasures. More serious 
 cares and more solid avocations succeed to the indolence and to 
 the vain amusements of our younger years: and, after wasting 
 our youth in sloth and in pleasures, we appropriate our maturity 
 to our country, to fortune, and to ourselves; but still, with respect 
 to heaven we continue the same. I confess, that we owe our ser- 
 vices to our country, to our sovereign, and to the national cares; 
 that amongst the number of duties prescribed to us by religion, it 
 places that of zeal for our sovereign and for the interest and glory 
 of our country ; and that religion alone can form faithful subjects, 
 and citizens ever ready to sacrifice their all for the general good. 
 But religion wishes not that pride and ambition should rashly 
 plunge us in public affairs, and that we should anxiously endea- 
 vour, by all possible means, by intrigue and solicitations, to attain 
 places, where, owing every thing to others, not a moment is left 
 for ourselves : religion wishes us to dread these tumultuous situa- 
 tions; to give ourselves up to them with regret and trembling, 
 when the order of God and the authority of our masters call us to 
 them ; and, were the choice left to us, always to prefer the safety 
 and leisure of a private station to the dangers and eclat of dignities 
 and places. Alas ! we have a short time to exist upon the earth, 
 and the salvation or eternal condemnation which awaits us is so 
 near, that every other care ought to be melancholy and burden- 
 some to us; and every thing which diverts our attention from that 
 grand object, for which we are allowed only a small portion of 
 days, ought to appear as the heaviest misfortune. This is not a 
 maxim of pure spirituality ; it is the first maxim and the founda- 
 tion of Christianity. 
 
 Nevertheless, ambition, pride, and all our passions, unite to ren- 
 der a private life insupportable to us. What in life we dread most, 
 is a lot and a station which leave us to ourselves, and do not es- 
 tablish us upon others. We consult neither the order of God, nor 
 the views of religion, nor the dangers of a too agitated situation, nor 
 the happiness which faith points out in a private and tranquil sta- 
 tion, where we have nothing but ourselves to answer for, and fre- 
 quently not even our talents; we consult only our passions, and 
 that insatiable desire of raising ourselves above our brethren; we 
 wish to figure upon the stage of life, and become great personages, 
 and upon a stage, alas ! which to-morrow shall disappear, and leave 
 us nothing real but the puerile trouble and pain of having acted 
 upon it. Even the more these stations appear surrounded with 
 tumult and embarrassment, the more do they appear worthy of our 
 pursuit: we wish to be in every thing: that leisure so dear to a 
 religious soul, to us appears shameful and mean : every thing which 
 divides us between the public and ourselves; every thing which 
 gives to others an absolute right over our time ; every thing which 
 plunges us into that abyss of cares and agitations, which credit, 
 
108 ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. Ser. Jf. 
 
 favour, and consideration drag after them, affects, attracts, and 
 transports us. Thus, the majority of men inconsiderately create 
 to themselves a tumultuous and agitated life, which the Almighty 
 never required of them, and eagerly seek for cares where they 
 cannot be in safety, unless the order of God had prepared them 
 for us. 
 
 Indeed, we sometimes hear them complaining of the endless 
 agitations inseparable from their places; sighing for rest, and en- 
 vying the lot of a tranquil and private station; repeating, that it 
 should indeed be time to live for themselves, after having so long 
 lived for others. But these are merely words of course; they 
 seem to groan under the weight of affairs; but with much more 
 uneasiness and grief would they support the weight of leisure and 
 of a private condition : they employ one part of their life in strug- 
 gling against each other for the tumult of places and employments, 
 and the other they employ in lamenting the misfortune of having 
 obtained them. It is a language of vanity: they would wish to 
 appear superior to their fortune; and they are not so to the small- 
 est reverse, or the slightest symptom of coldness which threatens 
 them. Behold how our passions create occupations and embar- 
 rassments, which God required not, and deprive us of a time whose 
 value we shall be ignorant of till we reach that moment when time 
 finishes and eternity begins. 
 
 Yet still, my brethren, in the midst of the endless occupations 
 attached to your stations, were you to regard as the most privi- 
 leged those connected with your salvation, you would, in some 
 measure at least, repair the dissipation of that portion of your life, 
 which the world and the cares of this earth entirely occupy. But 
 it is still on this point that our blindness is deplorable ; we cannot 
 find time for our eternal salvation. That which we bestow on 
 fortune, the duties of a charge, the good offices expected from our 
 station, the care of the body, and attention to dress ; that which 
 we give to friendship, society, recreation, and custom, all appear 
 essential and indispensable: we even dare not encroach upon or 
 limit these; we carry them beyond the bounds even of reason and 
 necessity; and as life is too short, and our days too rapid to suffice 
 for all, whatever we retrench is from the cares of our salvation : 
 in the multiplicity of our occupations we are sure to sacrifice those 
 which we ought to bestow on eternity. Yes, my brethren, in place 
 of retrenching from our amusements, from the duties which ambi- 
 tion multiplies, from the ceremonies which idleness alone has 
 established, from the cares and attentions we bestow on a vain 
 dress which custom and effeminacy have rendered endless ; in place 
 of retrenching from these, at least some little time every day, 
 scarcely do they leave us some accidental remains which by chance 
 have escaped from the world and pleasure ; some rapid moments 
 the world wishes not, with which we are perhaps embarrassed, 
 and which we know not how to dispose of otherwise. So long as 
 the world chooses to engage us; so long as it continues to offer 
 pleasures, duties, trifles, and complaisances, we yield ourselves up 
 
Ser. 7 ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. 109 
 
 to it with delight. When all is over, and we no longer know how 
 to fill up our vacant hours, we then consecrate to some languid 
 practices of religion those outcast moments which weariness or a 
 deficiency of pleasures leaves us : properly speaking, they are mo- 
 ments of recreation which we bestow upon ourselves rather than 
 upon God; an interval we place between the world and us, in 
 order to return to it with more relish, and breathe a little from the 
 fatigue, the disgust, and the satiety which are the necessary con- 
 sequences of a life devoted to the world and pleasures, which, pro- 
 longed beyond a certain measure, are immediately followed by 
 weariness and lassitude. 
 
 Such is the use which even persons who deck themselves out 
 with a reputation for virtue make of their time. Their whole life 
 is one continued and criminal preference given to the world, for- 
 tune, ceremony, and pleasures, above the business of their salvation; 
 all is filled up by what they give to their masters, friends, places, and 
 appetites, and nothing remains for God and for eternity. It would 
 appear that time is given to us, in the first place, for the world, 
 ambition, and earthly cares ; and should any portion of it happen 
 afterward to remain, that we are entitled to praise when we bestow 
 it on our salvation. 
 
 Great God ! for what purpose dost thou leave us on the earth 
 but to render ourselves worthy of thine eternal possession ? Every 
 thing we do for the world shall perish with it ; whatsoever we do 
 for thee shall be immortal. All our cares and attentions here are 
 in general for masters, ungrateful, unjust, difficult to please, weak, 
 and incapable of rendering us happy. The duties we render to 
 thee are given to a Lord and Master, faithful, just, compassionate, 
 almighty, and who alone can recompense those who serve him. 
 The cares of the earth, however brilliant, are foreign to us ; they 
 are unworthy of us; it is not for them we are created; we ought 
 only to devote ourselves to them as they pass, in order to satisfy 
 the transitory ties they exact from us, and which connect us with 
 mankind: the cares of eternity alone are worthy of the nobility of 
 our hopes, and fill all the grandeur and dignity of our destiny. 
 Without the cares of salvation, those of this earth are profane and 
 sullied ; they are no longer but vain, fruitless, and almost always 
 criminal agitations. The cares of salvation alone consecrate and 
 sanctify them, give to them reality, elevation, the price and the 
 merit which they wanted. All other cares wound, trouble, harden, 
 and render us miserable, but the duties we render to thee leave us 
 a real and heartfelt joy : they strengthen, calm, and console us, and 
 even soften the anguish and bitterness of the others. In a word, 
 we owe ourselves to thee, O my God ! before masters, superiors, 
 friends, or connexions. Thou alone hast the first right over our 
 hearts and reason, which are the gifts of thy liberal hand ; it is for 
 thee, therefore, that in the first place we ought to make use of them ; 
 and we are Christians before we are princes, subjects, public cha- 
 racters, or any thing else on the earth. 
 
 You will perhaps tell us, my brethren, that, in fulfilling the pain- 
 
110 ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. Sei\ 7- 
 
 ful and endless duties attached to your station, you believe that you 
 serve God, accomplish your measure of righteousness, and labour 
 toward your salvation. I grant it ; but we must fulfil these duties 
 according to the views of the Lord, from motives of faith, and in 
 the true spirit of religion and piety. God reckons only what we 
 do for him ; of all our pains, fatigues, submissions, and sacrifices, 
 he accepts only those which are offered to his glory, and not to our 
 own ; and our days are only full in his sight when they are full for 
 eternity. All actions, which have nothing for their object but the 
 world ; a fame limited to this earth ; a perishable fortune ; some 
 praises they may attract to us from men, or some degree of gran- 
 deur and reputation to which they may raise us here below, are 
 nothing in his presence, or, at least, are only puerile amusements, 
 unworthy of the majesty of his regards. 
 
 Thus, my brethren, how different are the judgments of God from 
 those of the world ! In the world we call beautiful that splendid 
 life in which great actions are numbered, victories gained, difficult 
 negotiations concluded, undertakings successfully conducted, illus- 
 trious employments supported with reputation, eminent dignities 
 acquired by important services, and exercised with glory ; a life 
 which passes into history, fills the public monuments, and of which 
 the remembrance shall be preserved to the latest posterity. Such, 
 according to the world, is a beautiful life. But if, in all this, they 
 have sought more their own than the glory of God ; if they have 
 had nothing more in view than to erect to themselves a perishable 
 edifice of grandeur on the earth ; in vain shall they have furnished 
 a splendid career to the eyes of men ; in the sight of God, it is a 
 life lost : in vain shall history record us ; we shall be effaced from 
 the book of life, and from the eternal histories : in vain shall our 
 actions be the admiration of ages to come ; they shall not be written 
 on the immortal columns of the heavenly temple : in vain shall we 
 have acted a dignified part upon the stage of all earthly ages ; in the 
 eternal ages we shall be as those who never were : in vain shall our 
 titles and dignities be preserved upon the marble and brass ; as the 
 fingers of men have written them, they shall perish with them, and 
 what the finger of God shall have written will alone endure as long 
 as himself: in vain shall our life be proposed as a model to the am- 
 bition of our descendants ; its reality, existing only in the passions 
 of men, from the moment they shall cease to have passions and the 
 objects which inflame them, shall be annihilated ; this life shall be 
 nothing, and shall be replunged into nonentity, with the world which 
 admire it. 
 
 For, candidly, my brethren, can you really wish that in that aw- 
 ful and terrible day, when righteousness itself shall be judged, the 
 Almighty should give you credit for all the pains, cares, and dis- 
 gusts you have experiened and devoured, in order to raise yourselves 
 in the world ? That he should regard, as well employed, the time 
 you have sacrificed to the world, fortune, glory, and the elevation of 
 your name and race, as if you were upon the earth only for your- 
 selves ? That he should place, among the number of your works of 
 
Ser. 7- ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. Ill 
 
 salvation, those which have only had for principle, ambition, pride, 
 envy, and self-interest; and that he should reckon your vices 
 amongst your virtues. 
 
 And what will you be able to say to him on the bed of death, 
 when he shall enter into judgment with you, and demand an ac- 
 count of the time which he had only granted you to be employed in 
 glorifying and serving him ? Will you say to him, Lord, I have 
 gained many victories ; I have usefully and gloriously served my 
 prince and country ; I have established to myself a great name 
 amongst men ? Alas ! you have never been able to gain a victory 
 over yourself; you have usefully served the kings of the earth, and 
 you have neglected, with contempt, the service of the King of kings. 
 You have established to yourself a great name amongst men, and 
 your name is not known amongst the chosen of God : time lost 
 for eternity. Will you say to him, I have conducted the most dif- 
 ficult negotiations; I have concluded the most important treaties ; 
 I have managed the interests and fortunes of princes ; I have been 
 in the secrets and councils of kings ? Alas ! you have concluded 
 treaties and alliances with men, and you have a thousand times vio- 
 lated the holy covenant you have entered into with God ; you have 
 managed the interests of princes, and you have never known how 
 to manage the interests of your salvation ; you have entered into 
 the secrets of kings, and you have ever been ignorant of the secrets 
 of the kingdom of heaven : time lost for eternity. Will you say 
 to him, my whole life has been only an incessant toil and a painful 
 and continued occupation ? Alas ! you have always toiled, and you 
 have never been able to do any thing to save your soul : time lost 
 for eternity. Will you say to him, I have established my children 
 in the world ; I have exalted my relations ; I have been useful to 
 my friends ; I have augmented the patrimony of my ancestors ? 
 Alas ! you have bequeathed great establishments to your children, 
 and you have not left them the fear of the Lord, by bringing them 
 up and establishing them in faith and piety : you have augmented 
 the patrimony of your ancestors, and you have dissipated the gifts 
 of grace and the patrimony of Jesus Christ ; time lost for eternity. 
 Will you say to him, I have made the most profound studies ; I 
 have enriched the public with useful and curious works ; I have 
 perfected the sciences by new discoveries ; I improved my great 
 talents, and rendered them useful to mankind ? Alas ! the great 
 talent confided to you was that of faith and grace, of which you 
 have made no use : you have rendered yourself learned in the sci- 
 ences of men, and you have always been ignorant in the science of the 
 holy : time lost for eternity. In a word, will you tell him, I have 
 passed my life in fulfilling the duties and good offices of my sta- 
 tion ; I have gained friends ; I have rendered myself useful and 
 agreeable to my masters ? Alas ! you have had friends to boast of on 
 the earth, and you have acquired none to yourself in heaven ; you 
 have made every exertion to please men, and you have done nothing 
 to please the Almighty : time lost for eternity. 
 
 No, my brethren, what a frightful void the greatest part of men, 
 
112 THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE STATE. Sei*. *] . 
 
 who had governed states and empires, who appeared to regulate the 
 whole universe, and had filled in it the most distinguished places ; 
 who were the subjects of every conversation, and of the desires and 
 hopes of men ; who engrossed, almost alone, the whole attentions 
 of the earth ; what a frightful void will they, on the bed of death, 
 find their whole life to be ! Whilst the days of the pious and re- 
 tired soul, regarded by them as obscure and indolent, shall appear 
 full, complete, occupied, marked each by some victory of faith, and 
 worthy of being celebrated by the eternal songs. 
 
 Meditate, my brethren, on these holy truths. Time is short ; it is 
 irreparable ; it is the price of your eternal felicity ; it is given to 
 you only in order to render you worthy of that felicity. Calculate, 
 therefore, what portion of it you should bestow on the world, plea- 
 sures, fortune, and on your salvation. My brethren, says the apos- 
 tle, time is short ; let us therefore use the world, as not abusing it ; 
 let us possess our riches, places, dignities, and titles, as though we 
 possessed them not; let us enjoy the favour of our superiors, and 
 the esteem of men, as though we enjoyed them not ; they are only 
 shadows which vanish and leave us for ever ; and let us only reckon 
 upon as real, in our whole life, the moments which we have employ- 
 ed for heaven. 
 
 SERMON VIII. 
 
 THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE STATE. 
 
 " And these shall go away into everlasting punishment ; but the righteous into life 
 eternal." Matt. xxv. 46. 
 
 Behold, to what at last shall be brought the desires, hopes, 
 counsels, and enterprises of men. Behold, upon what at last, shall 
 split the vain reflections of sages and freethinkers, the doubts and 
 eternal uncertainties of unbelievers, the vast projects of conquerors, 
 the monuments of human glory, the cares of ambition, the distinc- 
 tion of talents, the disquietudes of fortune, the prosperity of em- 
 pires, and all the insignificant revolutions of the earth. Such shall 
 be the awful conclusion which will unravel the mysteries of Provi- 
 dence on the divers lots of the children of Adam, and justify its 
 conduct in the government of the universe. This fife is, therefore, 
 but a rapid instant, and the commencement of an eternal futurity. 
 Torments without end, or the delights of an immortal felicity, shall 
 be our lot as well as that of all men. 
 
 Nevertheless, the view of this grand object, which formerly had 
 been able to startle the ferocity of tyrants, to shake the fortitude 
 of philosophers, to disturb the effeminacy and voluptuousness of 
 Caesars, to soften the most barbarous nations, to form so many 
 martyrs, to people the deserts, and to bring the whole universe 
 submissive to the yoke of the cross ; this image, so terrifying, is 
 
Ser. 8. a future state. 113 
 
 now almost destined to alarm the timidity of merely the common 
 people ; these grand objects are become like vulgar paintings, 
 which we dare no longer expose to the false delicacy of the great 
 and connoisseurs of the world : and the only fruit we generally reap 
 from this sort of discourses, is, to make it be inquired, perhaps, 
 after quitting them, whether every thing shall take place as we 
 have said. 
 
 For, my brethren, we live in times in which the faith of many has 
 been wrecked ; in which a wretched philosophy, like a mortal venom, 
 spreads in secret, and undertakes to justify abominations and vices, 
 against the belief of future punishment and rewards. This evil has 
 passed from the palaces of the great even to the people, and every 
 where the piety of the just is insulted by the discourses of irreligion 
 and the maxims of freethinking. 
 
 And, certainly, I am not surprised that dissolute men should 
 doubt of a future state, and endeavour to combat or weaken a 
 truth so capable of disturbing their criminal sensualities. It is 
 horrible to look forward to everlasting misery. The world has no 
 pleasure which can endure a thought so shocking ; consequently, it 
 has always endeavoured to efface it from the heart and mind of 
 man. It well knows, that the belief of a future state is a trouble- 
 some check on the human passions, and that it will never succeed 
 in making tranquil and resolute libertines, without having first made 
 unbelievers. 
 
 Let us deprive, then, the corruption of the human heart of so 
 wretched and weak a support : let us prove to dissolute souls that 
 they shall survive their debaucheries ; that all dies not with the 
 body; that this life shall finish their crimes, but not their misery ; 
 and, more completely to* confound impiety, let us attack it in the 
 vain pretexts on which it depends. 
 
 First. Who knows, say the impious, that all dies not with us ? Is 
 that other life, of which we are told, quite certain ? Who has ever 
 returned to inform us of it? 
 
 Secondly. Is it worthy of the majesty of God, say they again, to 
 demean himself by any attention to what passes among men? 
 What matters it to him, that worms of the earth, like us, murder, 
 deceive, and tear each other, live in luxury or in temperance ? Is 
 it not presumptuous in any man to suppose that an Almighty God 
 is occupied with him ? 
 
 Lastly. What likelihood, add they, that God, having made man 
 such as he is, will punish, as crimes, inherent inclinations to plea- 
 sure which nature has given us. Behold the philosophy of the vo- 
 luptuary; the uncertainty of a future state; the majesty of God, 
 which a vile creature cannot offend ; and the weakness of man, 
 which, being born with him, he would be unjust of it to constitute 
 a crime. 
 
 Let us then prove, in the first place, against the uncertainty of 
 the impious, that the truth of a future state is justified by the purest 
 lights of reason. Secondly, against the unworthy idea, grounded 
 upon the greatness of God, that this truth is justified by his wis- 
 
114 THE CERTAINTY OF Ser. 8. 
 
 dom and glory. Lastly, against the pretext, drawn from the weak- 
 ness of man, that it is justified even by the testimony of his own 
 conscience. The certainty of a future state ; the necessity of a future 
 state ; the inward acknowledgment of a future state. Behold the 
 subject and arrangement of my discourse. 
 
 O God ! attend not to the insults which the blasphemies of im- 
 piety offer to thy glory : regard only, and see, of what reason is ca- 
 pable when thy light is withdrawn. In the wickedness of the human 
 mind, behold all the severity of thy justice, when it abandons it, 
 that the more I expose the foolish blasphemies of the impious soul, 
 the more may he become, in thy sight, an object worthy of thy pity, 
 and of the treasures of thine infinite mercy. 
 
 Part I. It surely is melancholy to have to justify, before be- 
 lievers, the most consolatory truth of faith; to come to prove to 
 men, to whom Jesus Christ has been declared, that their being is 
 not a wild assemblage, and the wretched offspring of chance ; that 
 a wise and an almighty Artificer has presided at our formation and 
 birth ; that a spark of immortality animates our clay ; that a portion 
 of us shall survive ourselves ; and that, on quitting this earthly man- 
 sion, our soul shall return to the bosom of God, from whence it 
 came, and go to inhabit the eternal region of the living, where to 
 each one shall be rendered according to his works. 
 
 It was with this truth that Paul began to announce faith before 
 the Athenian judges. We are the immortal race of God, said he 
 to that assembly of sages ; and he has appointed a day to judge the 
 universe. By that the Apostles spread the first principles of the 
 doctrine of salvation through infidel and corrupted nations. But 
 we who come after the revolution of ages, when the plenitude of 
 nations has entered into the church, when the whole universe has 
 professed to believe, when all the mysteries have been cleared up, 
 all the prophecies accomplished, Jesus Christ glorified, the path of 
 heaven laid open ; we, who appear in these latter times, when the 
 day of the Lord is so much nearer than when our fathers believed, 
 alas ! what ought our ministry to be, unless to dispose believers 
 for that grand hope, and to instruct them to hold themselves 
 in readiness to appear before Jesus Christ, who will quickly come ; 
 far from having still to combat these shocking and foolish maxims 
 which the first preaching of the gospel had effaced from the 
 universe. 
 
 The pretended uncertainty of a future state is, then, the grand 
 foundation of the security of unbelievers. We know nothing, say 
 they, of that other world of which you tell us so much. None of 
 the dead have ever returned to inform us; perhaps there is nothing 
 beyond the grave: let us enjoy, therefore, the present, and leave to 
 chance a futurity which either exists not, or is meant to be con- 
 cealed from our knowledge. 
 
 Now, I say, that this uncertainty is suspicious in the' principle 
 which produces it, foolish in the proofs on which it depends, and 
 frightful in its consequences. Refuse me not here your attention. 
 
Ser. 8. a future state. 115 
 
 Suspicious in the principle which produces it. For, how has 
 this uncertainty of a future state been formed in the mind of the 
 unbeliever? It requires only to trace the origin of an opinion, to 
 know whether the interests of truth, or the passions, have estab- 
 lished it on the earth. 
 
 At his birth, the impious man bore the principles of natural reli- 
 gion common to all men: he found written on his heart a law 
 which forbade violence, injustice, treachery, and every action to 
 another, which he would not have done to himself. Education 
 fortified these sentiments of nature : he was taught to know a 
 God, [to love and fear him: virtue was shown to him in the rules; 
 it was rendered amiable to him in the examples; and though, 
 within himself, he felt inclinations in opposition to duty, yet, when 
 he yielded to their seductions, his heart secretly espoused the cause 
 of virtue against his own weakness. 
 
 Thus did the impious man at first live on the earth. With the 
 rest of mankind, he adored a Supreme Being, respected his laws, 
 dreaded his chastisements, and expected his promises. Whence 
 comes it, then, that he no longer acknowledges a God; that crimes 
 appear to him as human policies ; hell a vulgar prejudice ; a future 
 state a chimera ; and the soul a spark which is extinguished with 
 the body? By what exertion has he attained to the knowledge of 
 things so new and so surprising? By what means has he suc- 
 ceeded to rid himself of these ancient prejudices, so rooted among 
 men, so consistent with the feelings of his heart and the lights of 
 reason? Has he searched into, and maturely examined, them? 
 Has he adopted every solid precaution, which an affair, the most 
 important in life, requires ? Has he withdrawn himself from the 
 commerce of men, in solitude, to allow leisure for reflection and 
 study ? Has he purified his heart, lest the passions may have mis- 
 led him ? What anxious attentions and solicitude to investigate 
 the truth are required, to reject the first feelings which the soul 
 has imbibed ! 
 
 Listen, my brethren, and adore the justice of God on these cor- 
 rupted hearts whom he delivers up to the vanity of their own 
 judgment. In proportion as his manners become dissolute, the 
 rules have appeared suspicious; in proportion as he became de- 
 based, he has endeavoured to persuade himself that man is like 
 the beast. He is become impious only by shutting up every ave- 
 nue which might lead him to the truth; by no longer regarding 
 religion as an important concern; by searching into it only for the 
 purpose of dishonouring it by blasphemies and sacrilegious witti- 
 cisms. He is become impious only by seeking to steel himself 
 against the cries of his own conscience, and delivering himself up 
 to the most infamous gratifications. It is by that path that he has 
 attained to the wonderful and sublime science of unbelief; it is to 
 these grand efforts that he owes the discovery of a truth, of which 
 the rest of men before him had either been ignorant, or had de- 
 tested. 
 
 Behold the source of unbelief, the corruption of the heart. Yes, 
 
 i 2 
 
116 THE CERTAINTY OF Ser. 8. 
 
 my brethren, find me, if you can, men wise, temperate, pure, regu- 
 lar, and lovers of truth, who believe not a God, who look forward 
 to no future state, who look upon adulteries, abominations, and 
 incests, as the inclinations and innocent pastimes of nature. If 
 the world has seen impious characters, who bore the semblance of 
 wisdom and temperance, it was either that they better concealed 
 their irregularities, in order to give more credit to their impiety, 
 or the satiety of pleasures which had brought them to that feigned 
 temperance, debauchery had been the original source of their irre- 
 ligion; their hearts were corrupted before their faith was wrecked; 
 they had an interest to believe that all dies with the body, before 
 they succeeded in persuading themselves of it ; and a long indul- 
 gence of luxury had fully disgusted them with guilt, but had not 
 rendered virtue more amiable to them. 
 
 What consolation for us who believe, that we must first renounce 
 probity, modesty, manners, and all the feelings of humanity, be- 
 fore we can renounce faith; and, to be no longer Christian, must 
 first cease to be man ! 
 
 Behold, then, the uncertainty of the impious, already suspicious 
 in its principle; but, secondly, it is foolish in the proofs on which 
 it depends. 
 
 For, surely, very decisive and convincing proofs must be re- 
 quired to make us espouse the cause of unbelief, and to render us 
 tranquil on what we are told of an eternal state to come. It is 
 not natural that man would hazard an interest so serious as that 
 of eternity on light and frivolous proofs; still less so, that he 
 would thereon abandon the general opinion, the belief of his fa- 
 thers, the religion of all ages, the agreement of all nations, and the 
 prejudices of his education, had he not, as it were, been forced to 
 it by the evidence of the truth. Unless absolutely convinced that 
 all dies with the body, nothing can bear a comparison with the 
 madness and folly of the unbeliever. Now is he completely con- 
 vinced? What are the grand reasons which have determined him 
 to adopt this vile cause? We know not, says he, what happens in 
 that other world of which you tell us : the good die equally as the 
 . wicked: man as the beast ; and no one returns to say which was in 
 the error. Press him a little farther, and you will be shocked to see 
 the weakness of unbelief : vague discourses, hackneyed suspicions, 
 everlasting uncertainties, and chimerical suppositions, on which 
 nobody in their senses would wish to risk the happiness or disquiet 
 of a single day, and upon which he, however, hazards an eternity. 
 
 Behold the insurmountable proofs which the freethinker opposes 
 to the belief of the universe ; behold that evidence, which, in his 
 mind, prevails over all that is most clear and most established on 
 the earth. We know nothing of what passes in that other world 
 of which you tell us. O man ! open here thine eyes. A single 
 doubt is sufficient to render thee impious, and all the proofs of re- 
 ligion are too weak to make thee a believer. Thy mind hesitates 
 to believe in a future state, and, in the mean time, thou livest as 
 though there were none. The only foundation thou hast for thine 
 
Ser. 8. A FUTURE STATE. 117 
 
 opinion, is thine uncertainty, and thou reproachest to us, that faith 
 is a vulgar credulity. 
 
 But I ask, on what side here is credulity ? Is it on that of the 
 freethinker or the believer ? The latter believes in a future state, 
 on the authority of the divine writings, that is to say, the book, 
 without contradiction, which most deserves belief; on the deposi- 
 tion of holy men, that is to say, just, pure, and miraculous charac- 
 ters, who have shed their blood to render glory to the truth, and to 
 that doctrine of which the conversion of the universe has rendered 
 a testimony that to the end of ages shall rise up against the im- 
 pious ; on the accomplishment of the prophecies, that is to say, 
 the only character of truth which the impostor cannot imitate ; 
 on the tradition of all ages, that is to say, on facts which, since 
 the creation of the world, have appeared certain to all the greatest 
 characters, the most acknowledged just men, the wisest, and most ci- 
 vilized nations the universe could ever boast of : in a word, on proofs 
 at least probable. The freethinker denies a futurity on a simple 
 doubt, a mere suspicion. Who knows it? says he; who has re- 
 turned from it ? He has no argument, either solid or decisive, to 
 overturn the truth of a future state. For let him avow it, and then 
 will we submit. He only mistrusts that there be any thing after 
 this life, and upon that he believes that all dies with him. 
 
 Now I demand, which here is the credulous ? Is it he, who, in 
 support of his belief, has whatever is probable among men, and 
 most calculated to make impression on reason ; or he who is re- 
 solved to deny a future state on the weakness of a simple doubt ? 
 Nevertheless, the freethinker imagines that he exerts his reason 
 more than the believer : he looks down upon us as weak and cre- 
 dulous men ; and he considers himself as a superior genius, exalted 
 above all vulgar prejudices, and whom reason' alone, and not the 
 public opinion, determines. O God ! how terrible art thou when 
 thou deliverest up a sinner to his own infatuation ! and how well 
 thou knowest to draw glory to thyself even from the efforts which 
 thine enemies make to oppose it. 
 
 But I go still farther : when, even in the doubt, formed by the 
 unbeliever, of a future state, the arguments should be equal, and 
 the trifling uncertainties, which render him incredulous, should ba- 
 lance the solid and evident truths which promise immortality to 
 us ; I say, that even in an equality of proofs, he at least ought to 
 wish that the opinion of faith, with regard to the nature of our 
 soul, were true ; an opinion which is so honourable to man ; which 
 tells him that his origin is celestial and his hopes eternal ; he ought 
 to wish that the doctrine of impiety were false ; a doctrine so me- 
 lancholy, so humiliating to man ; which confounds him with the 
 beast ; which makes him live only for the body ; gives him neither 
 purpose, destination, nor hope ; and limits his lot to a small num- 
 ber of rapid, restless, and sorrowful days, which he passes on the 
 earth. All things equal, a reason born with any degree of eleva- 
 tion would prefer being deceived by what is honourable to itself 
 rather than adopt a side so disgraceful to its being. What a soul, 
 
118 THE CERTAINTY OF Ser. 8. 
 
 then, must the unbeliever have received from nature, to prefer, in 
 so great an inequality of proofs, the belief that he is created only 
 for this earth, and favourably to regard himself as a vile assem- 
 blage of dirt and the companion of the ox and bull ! What do I 
 say? What a monster in the universe must be the unbeliever, 
 who mistrusts the general belief only because it is too glorious for 
 his nature ; and believes that the vanity of men has alone introduced 
 it on the earth, and has persuaded them that they are immortal. 
 
 But no, my brethren ! These men of flesh and blood, with rea- 
 son reject the honour which religion does to their nature, and per- 
 suade themselves that their soul is merely of earth, and that all 
 dies with the body. Sensual, dissolute, and effeminate men, who 
 have no other check than a brutal instinct ; no other rule than the 
 vehemence of their desires ; no other occupation than to awaken, 
 by new artifices, the cupidity already satiated ; men of that cha- 
 racter can have little difficulty to believe that no principle of spiri- 
 tual life exists within them ; that the body is the only being ; and, 
 as they imitate the manners of beasts, they are pardonable in at- 
 tributing to themselves the same nature. But let them not judge 
 of all men by themselves : there are still on earth chaste, pure, and 
 temperate souls : let them not ascribe to nature the shameful ten- 
 dencies of their own mind; let them not degrade humanity in 
 general, because they have unworthily debased themselves. Let 
 them seek out among men such as themselves ; and, finding that 
 they are almost singular in the universe, they shall then see that 
 they are rather monsters than the ordinary productions of nature. 
 
 Besides, not only is the freethinker foolish, because that, even 
 in an equality of proofs, his heart and glory should decide him in 
 favour of faith, but likewise his own interest : for, as I have already 
 said, what does he risk by believing ? What disagreeable conse- 
 quences will follow his mistake ? He will live with honour, probity, 
 and innocence 5 he will be mild, affable, just, sincere, religious, a 
 generous friend, a faithful husband, and an equitable master : he 
 will moderate his passions, which would otherwise have occasioned 
 all the misfortunes of his life: he will abstain from pleasures and 
 excesses which would have prepared for him a painful and prema- 
 ture old age, or a deranged fortune : he will enjoy the character of 
 a virtuous man, and the esteem of mankind. Behold what he 
 risks. When all should even finish with this life, that surely is still 
 the way to pass it with happiness and tranquillity: such is the only 
 inconveniency I can find. If no eternal recompense shall follow, 
 what will he have lost by expecting it? He has lost some sensual 
 and momentary gratifications, which would soon have either fatigued 
 him by the disgust which always follows their enjoyment, or tyran- 
 nized over him by the new desires they light up. He has lost the 
 wretched satisfaction of being, for the instant he appeared on earth, 
 cruel, unnatural, voluptuous, without faith, morals, or constancy ; 
 perhaps despised and disgraced in the midst of his own people. I 
 can see no other misfortune : he sinks back to his original non-ex- 
 istence, and his error has no other consequence. 
 
Ser. 8. a future state. 119 
 
 But if there be a future state, and he should deceive himself in 
 rejecting faith, what does he not risk ? The loss of eternal riches ; 
 the possession of thy glory, O my God ! which would for ever have 
 rendered him happy. But even that is only the commencement of 
 his misery : he goes to experience punishment without end or 
 measure, an eternity of horror and wrath. Now, compare these 
 two destinies : what party here will the freethinker adopt ? Will 
 he risk the short duration of his days, or a whole eternity? Will 
 he hold by the present, which must finish to-morrow, and in which 
 he even cannot be happy ? Will he tremble at a futurity which 
 has no other limits than eternity, and can never finish but with 
 God himself ? Where is the prudent man, who in an uncertainty 
 even equal, durst here balance? And what name shall we give to 
 the unbeliever, who, with nothing in his favour but frivolous 
 doubts, while on the side of truth, beholding the authority, example, 
 prescription, proof, and voice of all ages, the entire world, singly 
 adopts the wretched cause of unbelief ; dies tranquil as though he 
 were no longer to have existence ; leaves his eternal destiny in the 
 hands of chance, and carelessly prepares to encounter so awful a 
 scene. O God ! is this a man conducted by cool reason ; or, is it a 
 man, who looks forward to no resource but despair ? The uncer- 
 tainty of the freethinker is therefore foolish in the proofs on which 
 it depends. 
 
 But, lastly, it is still more dreadful in its consequences. And 
 here, my brethren, allow me to lay aside the deep reasonings of 
 erudition and doctrine ; I wish to speak only to the conscience of 
 the unbeliever, and to confine myself to the proofs which his own 
 feelings acknowledge. 
 
 Now, if all shall finish with us, if man have nothing to expect 
 after this life, and that here is our country, our origin, and the only 
 happiness we can promise ourselves, why are we not happy ? If 
 only created for the pleasures of the senses, why are they unable 
 to satisfy us ? and why do they always leave a fund of weariness 
 and sorrow in the heart ? If man have nothing superior to the 
 beast, why, like it, do not his days flow on without care, uneasi- 
 ness, disgust, or sorrow, in sensual and carnal enjoyments? If 
 man have no other felicity to expect than merely a temporal happi- 
 ness, why is he unable to find it on the earth ? Whence comes it 
 that riches serve only to render him uneasy ; that honours fatigue 
 him ; that pleasures exhaust him ; that the sciences, far from satis- 
 fying, confound and irritate his curiosity; that reputation con- 
 strains and embarrasses him ; that all these united cannot fill the 
 immensity of his heart, and still leave him something to wish for ? 
 All other beings, contented with their lot, appear happy in their 
 way in the situation the Author of nature has placed them ; the 
 stars, tranquil in the firmament, quit not their station to illuminate 
 another world ; the earth, regular in its movements, shoots not up- 
 wards to occupy their place; the animals crawl in the fields, 
 without envying the lot of man, who inhabits cities and sumptuous 
 palaces. The birds carol in the air without troubling themselves 
 
120 THE CERTAINTY OF Ser. 8. 
 
 whether there be happier creatures in the earth than themselves ; 
 all are happy, as I may say; every thing in nature is in its 
 place. Man alone is uneasy and discontented ; man alone is a prey 
 to his desires, allows himself to be torn by fears, finds his punish- 
 ment in his hopes, and becomes gloomy and unhappy in the midst 
 even of his pleasures : man alone can meet with nothing here to 
 fix his heart. 
 
 Whence comes this, O man ? Must it not be that here thou art 
 not in thy place ; that thou art made for heaven ; that thy heart is 
 greater than the world ; that the earth is not thy country ; and that 
 whatever is not God is nothing to thee ? Answer, if thou canst, or 
 rather question thy heart, and thou wilt believe. 
 
 Secondly. If all die with the body, who has been able to persuade 
 all men, of every age, and of every country, that their soul was 
 immortal? From whence has this strange idea of immortality 
 descended to the human race ? How could an opinion, so dis- 
 tant from the nature of man, were he born only for the functions of 
 the senses, have pervaded the earth ? For if man, like the beast, be 
 created only for the present, nothing ought to be more incompre- 
 hensible to him than even the idea of immortality. Could machines 
 of clay, whose only object should be a sensual happiness, have 
 ever been able to form, or to find in themselves, an opinion so ex- 
 alted, an idea so sublime ? Nevertheless, this opinion, so extraor- 
 dinary, is become that of all men ; this opinion, so opposite even 
 to the senses, since man, like the beast, dies wholly, in our sight is 
 established on the earth ; this opinion, which ought not to have 
 even found an inventor in the universe, has been received with a 
 universal docility of belief amongst all nations, the most savage 
 as the most cultivated, the most polished as the most brutal, the 
 most incredulous as the most submissive to faith. 
 
 For, go back to the beginning of ages, examine all nations, read 
 the history of kingdoms and empires, listen to those who return 
 from the most distant isles ; the immortality of the soul has always 
 been, and still is, the belief of every people on the face of the earth. 
 The knowledge of one God may have been obliterated ; his glory, 
 power, and immensity, may have been effaced, as I may say, from 
 the hearts and minds of men ; obstinate and savage nations may 
 still live without worship, religion, or God, in this world ; but they 
 all look forward to a future state : nothing has ever been able to 
 eradicate the opinion of the immortality of the soul ; they all figure 
 to themselves a region which our souls shall inhabit after death ; 
 and, in forgetting God, they have never discarded the idea of that 
 provision for themselves. 
 
 Now, whence comes it that men so different in their dispositions, 
 worship, country, opinions, interests, and even figure, that scarcely 
 do they seem of the same species with each other, unanimously 
 agree, however, on this point, and expect immortality r There is 
 no collusion here ; for how is it possible to assemble together men 
 of all countries and ages ? It is not a prejudice of education ; for 
 manners, habits, and worship, which are generally the consequences 
 
Ser. 8. a future state. 121 
 
 of prejudices, are not the same among all nations : the opinion of 
 immortality is common to all. It is not a sect : for, besides, that 
 it is the universal religion of the world, that tenet has had neither 
 head nor protector. Men have adopted it themselves, or rather 
 nature has taught them to know it without the assistance of 
 teachers ; and, since the beginning of things, it alone has passed 
 from father to son, and has been always received as an indispu- 
 table truth. O thou, who believest thy self to be only a mass of clay, 
 quit the world, where thou findest thyself single in belief; go, 
 and in other regions search for men of another species, and similar 
 to the beast; or rather be struck with horror to find thyself single, 
 as it were, in the universe, in revolt against nature, and disavow- 
 ing thine own heart, and acknowledge, in an opinion common to 
 all men, the general impression of the Author who has formed 
 them all ! 
 
 Lastly. And with this proof I conclude. The universal fellow- 
 ship of men, the laws which unite one to the other, the most sacred 
 and inviolable duties of civil life, are all founded only on the cer- 
 tainty of a future state. Thus, if all die with the body, the universe 
 must adopt other laws, manners, and habits, and a total change 
 must take place in every thing. If all die with the body, the maxims 
 of equity, friendship, honour, good faith, and gratitude, are only 
 popular errors ; since we owe nothing to men who are nothing to 
 us, to whom no general bond of worship and hope unites us, who 
 will to-morrow sink back to their original nonentity, and who are 
 already no more. If all die with us, the tender names of child, 
 parent, father, friend, and husband, are merely theatrical appella- 
 tions and a mockery; since friendship, even that springing from 
 virtue, is no longer a lasting tie ; since our fathers, who preceded 
 us, are no more ; since our children shall not succeed us, for the 
 nonentity in which we must one day be has no consequence ; since 
 the sacred society of marriage is only a brutal union, from which, 
 by a strange and fortuitous concurrence, proceed beings who 
 resemble us, but who have nothing in common with us but their 
 nonentity. 
 
 What more shall I add ? If all dies with us, domestic annals 
 and the train of our ancestors are only a collection of chimeras ; 
 since we have no forefathers, and shall have no descendants, 
 anxieties for a name and posterity are therefore ridiculous ; the 
 honours we render to the memory of illustrious men, a childish 
 error, since it is absurd to honour what has no existence ; the sa- 
 cred respect we pay to the habitations of the dead, a vulgar illusion; 
 the ashes of our fathers and friends, a vile dust which we should 
 cast to the winds as belonging to no person ; the last wishes of 
 the dying, so sacred amongst even the most barbarous nations, the 
 last sound of a machine which crumbles in pieces ; and, to com- 
 prise all in a word, if all die with us, the laws are then a foolish 
 subjection ; kings and rulers phantoms, whom the imbecility of 
 the people has exalted ; justice a usurpation on the liberties of 
 men ; the law of marriage a vain scruple ; modesty a prejudice ; 
 
122 THE CERTAINTY OF Sei\ 8. 
 
 honour and probity chimeras ; incests, parricides, and the blackest 
 villanies, pastimes of nature, and names which the policy of legis- 
 lators has invented. 
 
 Behold, to what the sublime philosophy of the freethinker 
 amounts ! Behold that force of argument, that reason, and that wis- 
 dom, which they are continually vaunting to us ! Agree to their 
 maxims, and the entire universe sinks back to a frightful chaos ; all 
 is overturned on the earth ; all ideas of virtue and vice are re- 
 versed, and the most inviolable laws of society vanish ; the insti- 
 tution of morals perishes : the government of states and empires is 
 without direction; all harmony in the body politic falls. The 
 human species is only an assemblage of fools, barbarians, voluptua- 
 ries, madmen, and villains, who own no law but force ; no other 
 check than their passions and the terror of authority ; no other bond 
 than impiety and independence ; and no other God than themselves. 
 Behold the world of the freethinker ! and if this hideous plan of a 
 republic pleases you, constitute, if you can, a society of these mon- 
 sters. The only thing that remains for us to say, is, that you are 
 fully qualified to occupy a place in it. 
 
 How worthy, then, of man to look forward to an eternal destiny, 
 to regulate his manners by the law, and to live as having one day 
 to render account of his actions before Him who shall weigh us all 
 in the balance. 
 
 The uncertainty of the believer is then suspicious in its principle, 
 foolish in its proofs, and horrible in its consequences. But, after 
 having shown you that nothing can be more repugnant to sound 
 reason than the doubt which he entertains of a future state, let 
 us completely confound his pretexts, and prove that nothing is 
 more opposite to the idea of a wise God and to the opinion of his 
 own conscience. 
 
 Part II. It is no doubt astonishing that the freethinker should 
 seek, even in the greatness of God, a shelter to his crimes ; and 
 that, finding nothing within himself to justify the horrors of his 
 soul, he can expect to find in the awful Majesty of the Supreme 
 Being an indulgence which he cannot find even in the corruption 
 of his own heart. 
 
 Indeed, says the unbeliever, is it worthy the greatness of God 
 to pay attention to what passes among men, to calculate their 
 virtues or vices, to study even their thoughts, and their trifling 
 and endless desires ? Men, worms of the earth, who sink into 
 nothing before the majesty of his looks, are they worthy his atten- 
 tive inspection ? And is it not degrading a God, whom we are 
 taught to believe so great, to give him an employment by which 
 even man would be dishonoured ? 
 
 But, before I make you sensible of the whole absurdity of this 
 blasphemy, I beg you will observe, that it is the freethinker himself 
 who thus degrades the majesty of God, and brings him to a level 
 with man : for, has the Almighty occasion narrowly to observe 
 men, in order to know every thought and deed ? Are cares and 
 
Ser. 8. A future state. 123 
 
 attentions necessary for him, to see what passes on the earth ? Is 
 it not in him that we are, that we live, that we act ? And can we 
 shun his looks, or can he even avert them from our crimes ? What 
 folly, then, in the freethinker, to suppose that it requires care 
 and observation from the Divinity, if he wishes to remark what 
 passes on the earth ! His only employment is to know and enjoy 
 himself. 
 
 This reflection admitted, I answer, in the first place, if it be- 
 come the greatness of God to leave good and evil without punish- 
 ment or reward, it is then equally indifferent, whether we be just, 
 sincere, friendly, and charitable, or cruel, deceitful, perfidious, and 
 unnatural : God, consequently, does not love virtue, modesty, rec- 
 titude, religion, more than debauchery, perjury, impiety, and vil- 
 lany ; since the just and the impious, the pure and the impure, 
 shall experience the same lot, and an eternal annihilation equally 
 awaits them all in the grave. 
 
 What do I say ? God even seems to declare in favour of the 
 impious here against the just. He exalts him like the cedar of 
 Lebanon, loads him with riches and honours, gratifies his desires, 
 and assists his projects ; for the impious are in general the pros- 
 perous on the earth. On the contrary, he seems to neglect the 
 upright man ; he humbles, afflicts, and delivers him up to the fal- 
 sity and power of his enemies ; for disgrace and affliction are the 
 common portion of the good below. What a monster of a Supreme 
 Being, if all must finish with man, and if neither miseries nor re- 
 wards, except those of this life, be to be expected ! 
 
 Is he, then, the protector of adulteries, profanations, and the 
 most shocking crimes ; the persecutor of innocence, modesty, piety, 
 and all the purest virtues ? Are his favours the price of guilt, 
 and his punishments the recompense of virtue ? What a God of 
 darkness, imbecility, confusion, and iniquity does the freethinker 
 form to himself ! 
 
 What, my brethren ! It would become his greatness to leave 
 the world he has created, in a general confusion; to see the 
 wicked almost always prevail over the upright; the innocent 
 crushed by the usurper ; the father the victim of an ambitious and 
 unnatural son ? From the height of his greatness, God would 
 amuse himself with these horrible transactions, without any interest 
 in their commission ? Because he is great, he should be either 
 weak, unjust, or cruel ? Because men are insignificant, they should 
 have the privilege of being dissolute without guilt, or virtuous 
 without merit. 
 
 O God ! if such be the character of thy Supreme Being, if 
 it be thee whom we adore under such shocking ideas, I know thee 
 no more then as my heavenly Father, my protector, the con- 
 soler of my sufferings, the support of my weakness, and the re- 
 warder of my fidelity ! Thou art then only an indolent and capri- 
 cious tyrant, who sacrificest all men to thy vain pride, and hast 
 drawn them from nothing only to serve as the sport of thy leisure 
 or caprice ! 
 
124 THE CERTAINTY OF Sei*. 8. 
 
 For, lastly, if there be no future state, what design, worthy of 
 his wisdom, could God have proposed in creating man ? What, 
 in forming them, had he no other view than in forming the beast ? 
 Man, that being so noble, who is capable of such sublime thoughts, 
 such vast desires, and such grand sentiments, susceptible of love, 
 truth, and justice ; man, of all creatures, alone worthy of a great 
 destination, that of knowing and loving the Author of his being ; 
 that man should be made only for the earth, to pass a small por- 
 tion of days, like the beast, in trifling employments, or sensual gra- 
 tifications : he should fulfil his purpose, by acting so risible and so 
 pitiable a part ; and afterward should sink back to nonentity, 
 without any other use having been made of that vast mind and 
 elevated heart which the Author of his being had given him ? O 
 God ! where would here be thy wisdom, to have made so grand a 
 work for the duration only of a moment ; to have exhibited men 
 upon the earth only as a playful essay of thy power ; or to amuse 
 thy leisure by a variety of shows ! The deity of the freethinker is 
 not grand, therefore, but because he is more unjust, capricious, and 
 despicable than men ! Pursue these reflections, and support, if 
 you can, all the extravagance of their folly. 
 
 How worthy, then, of God, my brethren, to watch over the uni- 
 verse; to conduct man, whom he has created, by the laws of jus- 
 tice, truth, charity, and innocence; to make virtue and reason the 
 bond of union and the foundation of human society! How worthy 
 of God to love in his creatures those virtues which render himself 
 amiable; to hate the vices which disfigure in them his image; not 
 to confound for ever the just with the impious ; to render happy 
 with himself those souls who have lived only for him; and to de- 
 liver up to their own misery those who believed they had found a 
 happiness independent of him ! 
 
 Behold the God of the Christians ; behold that wise, just, and 
 holy Deity whom we adore; and the advantage we have over the 
 freethinker is, that ours is the God of an innocent and pure heart ; 
 the God whom all creatures manifest to us; whom all ages have 
 invoked; whom the sages, even of Paganism, have acknowledged; 
 and of whom nature has deeply engraven the idea on the very 
 foundation of our being! 
 
 But, since God is so just, ought he to punish, as crimes, inclina- 
 tions for pleasure born with us; nay, which he alone has given 
 us ? Last blasphemy of impiety, and last part of this Discourse. 
 I shall abridge it, and conclude. 
 
 But, in the first place, be whom you may, who hold this ab- 
 surd language, if you pretend to justify all your actions by the in- 
 clinations which induce you to them ; if whatever we wish become 
 legitimate ; if our desires ought to be the only regulation of our 
 duties ; on that principle, you have only to regard with an envious 
 eye the fortune of your brother, to acquire a right to despoil him 
 of it: his wife, with a corrupted heart, to be authorized to violate 
 the sanctity of the nuptial bed, in opposition to the most sacred 
 rights of society and nature. You have only to suspect, or dislike 
 
Ser. 8. a future state. 125 
 
 an opponent, to become entitled to destroy him; to bear, with im- 
 patience, the authority of a father, or the severity of a master, to 
 embrue your hands in their blood : in a word, you have only to 
 bear within you the impressions of every vice, to be permitted the 
 gratification of all; and, as each finds the fatal seeds in himself, 
 none would be exempted from this horrible privilege. It is ne- 
 cessary, therefore, that man conduct himself by other laws than 
 his inclinations, and another rule than his desires. 
 
 Even the Pagan ages acknowledged the necessity of a philoso- 
 phy, that is to say, of a light superior to the senses, which regula- 
 ted their practice, and made reason a check to the human passions. 
 
 Nature alone led them to this truth, and taught them that blind 
 instinct ought not to be the sole guide of the actions of men: this 
 instinct therefore, either is not the original institution of nature, or 
 it must be a corruption of it, since all the laws ever framed on earth 
 have avowedly been made to restrain it, that all those who, in 
 every age, have borne the character of wise and virtuous, have re- 
 jected its impressions, that, amongst all nations, those infamous 
 individuals who yielded themselves up without reserve or shame 
 to brutal sensuality, have been always considered as monsters, and 
 the disgrace of humanity, and, the maxim once established, that 
 our inclinations and desires cannot be considered as crimes, society 
 can no longer exist; men must separate to be in safety, must bury 
 themselves in the forests, and live solitary like the beasts. 
 
 Besides, let us render justice to men, or rather to the Author 
 who has formed us. If we find within us inclinations to vice and 
 voluptuousness, do we not also find sentiments of virtue, modesty, 
 and innocence ? If the law of the, members drag us toward the 
 pleasures of the senses, do we not also bear, written in our hearts, 
 another law, which recalls us to chastity and temperance ? Now, 
 between these two tendencies, why does the freethinker decide that 
 the inclination which impels us toward the senses is most con- 
 formable to the nature of man? Is it from being the most violent ? 
 But its violence alone is a proof of its disorder; and whatever 
 proceeds from nature ought to be made moderate. Is it from being 
 the strongest? But there are just and believing souls in whom it 
 it is always subject to reason. Is it from being more agreeable? But 
 a sure proof that this pleasure is not made to render man happy, is, 
 that disgust immediately follows it; and likewise that, to the good, 
 virtue has a thousand times more charms than vice. Lastly, is it 
 from being more worthy of man ? You dare not say so, since it is 
 through it that he confounds himself with the beast. Why, then, 
 do you decide in favour of the senses, against reason, and insist, 
 that it is more conformable to man to live like the beast than to be 
 a reasonable being ? 
 
 Lastly, were all men corrupted, and, like the animals, not gifted 
 with reason ; did they blindly yield themselves up to their brutal 
 instinct, and to the empire of the senses and passions, you, then, 
 perhaps, might have reason to say that these are inclinations inse- 
 parable from nature, and in example find a sort of excuse for your 
 
126 THE CERTAINTY OF Sei*. 8. 
 
 excesses. But, look around you: do you no longer find any up- 
 right characters on the earth ? There is no question here of those 
 vain discourses you so frequently hold against piety, and of which 
 you feel yourselves the injustice. Speak candidly, and render glory 
 to the truth : are there no longer chaste, faithful, and righteous 
 souls, who live in the fear of the Lord, and in the observance of 
 his holy law ? 
 
 Whence comes it, then, that you have not the same empire over 
 your passions as enjoyed by these just men ? Have they not inhe- 
 rited from nature the same inclinations ? Do the objects of the 
 passions not awaken in their hearts the same sensations as in 
 yours ? Do not they bear within them the sources of the same 
 troubles ? What have the just superior to you, but that com- 
 mand over themselves, and fidelity, of which you are destitute ? 
 
 O man ! thou imputest to God a weakness which is the work of 
 thine own disorders ! Thou accusest the Author of nature of the 
 irregularities of thy own will. It is not enough to offend him; 
 thou wishest to make him responsible for thy deeds, and pretendest 
 that the fruit of thy crimes becomes the title of thine innocence ! 
 With what chimeras is a corrupted heart not capable of feeding 
 its delusions, in order to justify to itself the shame and infamy of 
 its vices ! 
 
 God is then just, my brethren, when he punisheth the trans- 
 gressions of his law. And let not the freethinker here say to 
 himself that the recompense of the just shall then be resurrection 
 to eternal life, and the punishment of the sinner the everlast- 
 ing annihilation of his soul ; for behold the last resource of im- 
 piety. 
 
 But what punishment would it be to the freethinker to exist no 
 more ? He wishes that annihilation ; he looks forward to it as his 
 sweetest hope : amidst his pleasures he lives tranquil only in that 
 expectation. What ! the just God would punish a sinner by af- 
 fording him a destiny according to the summit of his wishes? Ah ! 
 it is not thus that God punisheth. For what would the freethinker 
 find so shocking in a return to nonentity? Would it be the depri- 
 vation of his God? But he loves him not; he knows him not; he 
 desires no communication with him; for his only God is himself. 
 Would it be to exist no more? But what could be more desirable 
 to a monster, who knows that, beyond the term of his crimes, he 
 cannot live but in sufferance, and in the expiation of the horrors 
 of an infamous life ? Would it be by having for ever lost the 
 worldly pleasures he enjoyed, and the different objects of his pas- 
 sions ? But, when he exists no more, the love of these must equal- 
 ly be extinguished. A more desirable fate cannot therefore be 
 pointed out to a freethinker. It indeed would be the happy con- 
 clusion of all his excesses, horrors, and blasphemies. 
 
 No, my brethren ! The hopes of the freethinker, but not his 
 crimes, shall perish : his torments shall be as eternal as his de- 
 baucheries would have been, had he been master of his own desti- 
 ny. He would willingly have eternized himself on the earth, in the 
 
Ser. 8. A FUTURE state. 127 
 
 practice of every sensual vice. Death has bounded his crimes, but 
 has not limited his criminal desires. The just and upright Judge* 
 who fathoms the heart, will therefore proportion the punishment 
 to the guilt. 
 
 What are we to conclude from this Discourse ? That the free- 
 thinker is to be pitied for grounding the only consolation of his 
 future destiny on the uncertainty of the truths of the gospel : that 
 he is to be pitied because his only tranquillity must be in living 
 without faith, worship, confidence, or God ; because the only hope 
 he' can indulge, is, that the gospel is a fable; the belief of all 
 ages a childish credulity ; the universal opinion of men a popular 
 error ; the first principles of nature and reason prejudices of edu- 
 cation ; the blood of so many martyrs, whom the hopes of a future 
 state supported under all their suffering and tortures, a mere tale 
 concerted to deceive mankind; the conversion of the world a hu- 
 man enterprise ; and the accomplishment of the promises a mere 
 stroke of chance : in a word, that every thing, the best established, 
 and the most consistent with truth and reason in the world, must 
 all be false, to accomplish the only happiness he can promise him- 
 self, and to save him from eternal misery. 
 
 O man ! I will point out to thee a much surer way to render 
 thyself tranquil, and to enjoy the sweets of internal peace. Dread 
 that futurity thou forcest thyself to disbelieve. Question us no 
 more what they do in that other world of which we tell thee; but 
 ask thyself, without ceasing, what thou art doing in this ? Quiet 
 thy conscience by the innocency of thy life, and not by the im- 
 piety of thy unbelief; give repose to thy heart by calling upon 
 God, and not by doubting that he pays attention to thee. The 
 peace of the unbeliever is despair. Seek, then, thy happiness, not 
 by freeing thyself from the yoke of faith, but by tasting how sweet 
 and agreeable it is. Follow the maxims it prescribes to thee, and 
 thy reason will no longer refuse submission to the mysteries it com- 
 mands thee to believe. A future state will cease to appear incre- 
 dible to thee from the moment thou ceasest to five like those who 
 centre all their happiness in the fleeting moments of this life. Then, 
 far from dreading a futurity, thy wishes will anticipate it. Thou 
 wilt sigh for the arrival of that happy day, when the Son of man, 
 the Father of all future ages, shall come to punish the unbelieving, 
 and to conduct thee to his kingdom, along with those who have 
 lived on the earth in the expectation and hope of a blessed immor- 
 tality. 
 
 That you, my brethren, may be partakers of this eternal felicity, 
 is my fervent prayer. Amen. 
 
128 on death. Ser. 9. 
 
 SERMON IX. 
 
 ON DEATH. 
 
 " Now, when he came nigh to tne gate of the city, behold there was a dead man' carried 
 out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow." Luke vii. 12. 
 
 Was death ever accompanied with more affecting circumstances ? 
 It is an only son, sole successor to the name, titles, and fortune of 
 his ancestors, whom death snatches from an afflicted mother and 
 widow ; he is ravished from her in the flower of age, and almost at 
 his entry into life ; at a period when, happily past the dangers of 
 infancy, and attained to that first degree of strength and reason, 
 which commences man, he seemed least exposed to the shafts of 
 death, and at last allowed maternal tenderness to breathe from the 
 fears which accompany the uncertain progress of education. The 
 citizens run in crowds, to mingle their tears with those of the discon- 
 solate mother ; they assiduously seek to lessen her grief, by the con- 
 solation of those vague and common-place discourses to which pro- 
 found sorrow little attends ; with her they surround the mournful 
 bier, and they deck the obsequies with their mourning and pre- 
 sence ; the train of this funeral pomp to them is a show ; but is it 
 an instruction ? They are struck and affected, but are they from it 
 less attached to life ? And will hot the remembrance of this death 
 perish in their minds, with the noise and decorations of the funeral ? 
 
 To similar examples we every day bring the same dispositions. 
 The feelings which an unexpected death awakens in our hearts are 
 the feelings of a day, as though death itself ought to be the concern 
 of a day. We exhaust ourselves in vain reflections on the inconstancy 
 of human things ; but, the object which struck us once out of sight, 
 the heart, become tranquil, finds itself the same. Our projects, our 
 cares, our attachments to the world, are not less lively than if we were 
 labouring for eternal ages ; and, at our departure from a melancholy 
 spectacle, where we have sometimes seen birth, youth, titles, and 
 fame, wither in a moment, and for ever buried in the grave, we re- 
 turn to the world more occupied with, and more eager than ever after 
 all those vain objects of which we so lately had seen with our eyes, 
 and almost felt with our hands, the insignificancy and meanness. 
 
 Let us at present examine the reasons of so deplorable a mistake. 
 Whence comes it that men reflect so little upon death, and that 
 the thoughts of it make such transitory impressions ? It is this : 
 the uncertainty of death amuses us, and removes from our mind 
 its remembrance ; the certainty of death appals, and forces us to 
 turn our eyes from the gloomy picture : the uncertainty of it lulls 
 and encourages us ; whatever is awful and certain, with regard to it, 
 makes us dread the thoughts of it. Now, I wish at present to 
 combat the dangerous security of the first, and the improper dread 
 of the other. Death is uncertain ; you are therefore imprudent 
 
Ser. 9. on death. 129 
 
 not to be occupied with the thoughts of it, but to allow it to sur- 
 prise you. Death is certain ; you then are foolish to dread the 
 thoughts of it, and it ought never to be out of your sight. Think 
 upon death, because you know not the hour it will arrive : think 
 upon death, because it must arrive. This is the subject of the 
 present Discourse. 
 
 Part I. The first step which man makes in life, is likewise the 
 first toward the grave : from the moment his eyes open to the light, 
 the sentence of death is pronounced against him ; and, as though 
 it were a crime to live, it is sufficient that he lives to make him 
 deserving of death. That was not our first destiny. The Author 
 of our being had at first animated our clay with a breath of immor- 
 tality : he had placed in us a seed of life, which the revolution of 
 neither years nor time could have weakened or extinguished : his 
 work was so perfect, that it might have defied the duration of ages, 
 while nothing external could have dissolved or even injured its 
 harmony. Sin alone withered this divine seed, overturned this 
 blessed order, and armed all created beings against man : and Adam 
 became mortal from the moment he became a sinner : " By sin," , 
 said the apostle, " did death enter into the world." 
 
 From our birth, therefore, we all bear it within us. It appears, 
 that, in our mother's womb, we have sucked in a slow poison, with 
 which we come into the world ; which makes us languish on the 
 earth, some a longer, others a more limited period, but which 
 always terminates in death. We die every day; every moment 
 deprives us of a portion of life, and advances us a step toward the 
 grave : the body pines, health decays, and every thing which sur- 
 rounds assists to destroy us ; food corrupts, medicines weaken us ; 
 the spiritual fire, which internally animates, consumes us ; and our 
 whole fife is only a long and painful sickness. Now, in this situa- 
 tion, what image ought to be so familiar to man as death? A 
 criminal condemned to die, whichever way he casts his eyes, what 
 can he see but this melancholy object? And does the longer or 
 shorter period we have to live, make a sufficient difference to entitle 
 us to think ourselves immortal on this earth ? 
 
 It is true, that the measure of our lots is not alike : some in 
 peace, see their days grow upon them to the most advanced age, 
 and, inheritors of the blessings of their primeval age, expire full of 
 years in the midst of a numerous posterity : others, arrested in the 
 middle of their course, see, like king Hezekiah, the gates of the 
 grave open for them while yet in their prime ; and, like him, " seek 
 in vain for the residue of their years :" there are some who only 
 show themselves as it were on the earth, who finish their course 
 with the day, and who, like the flowers of the field, leave scarcely 
 an interval between the instant which views them in their bloom 
 and that which sees them withered and cut off. The fatal moment 
 marked for each is a secret written in the book of life, which the 
 Lamb of God alone has a right to open. We all live, then, uncer- 
 tain of the duration of our life ; and this uncertainty, of itself so fit 
 
 K 
 
130 on death. Ser. 9. 
 
 to render us watchful of our last hour, even lulls our vigilance. 
 We never think on death, because we know not exactly in what age 
 of life to place it : we even regard not old age as the term, at least 
 sure and inevitable : the doubt of ever reaching that period, which 
 surely ought to fix and limit our hopes to this side of decrepitude, 
 serves only to stretch them beyond it. Unable to settle itself on 
 any thing certain, our dread becomes a vague and confused feeling, 
 which fixes on nothing ; insomuch that the uncertainty, which 
 ought only to dwell on the length or brevity of it, renders us tran- 
 quil on our existence itself. 
 
 Now I say, in the first place, that of all dispositions, this is the 
 rashest and most imprudent ; I appeal to yourselves for this truth. 
 Is an evil which may take place every day, to be more disregarded 
 than another which threatens you only at the expiration of a num- 
 ber of years ? What ! because your soul may every moment be 
 recalled, you would tranquilly live as though you were never to lose 
 it ? Because the danger is always present, circumspection becomes 
 less necessary ? But in what other situation or circumstance of 
 life, except that of our eternal salvation, does uncertainty become 
 an excuse for security and neglect ? Does the conduct of that ser- 
 vant in the gospel, who, under pretence that his master delayed to 
 return, and that he knew not the hour when he should arrive, ap- 
 plied his property to his own purposes, as if he never were to ren- 
 der account of it, appear to you a prudent discharge of his duty? 
 What other motives has Jesus Christ made use of to exhort us to 
 incessant watching ? and what in religion is more proper to awake 
 our vigilance than the uncertainty of this last day ? 
 
 Ah ! my brethren, were the hour unalterably marked for each of 
 us ; were the kingdom of God, like the stars, to come at a known 
 and fixed revolution ; at our birth, were our portions written on 
 our foreheads, the number of our years, and the fatal day which 
 shall terminate them ; that fixed and certain object, however dis- 
 tant, would incessantly employ our thoughts, would agitate and de- 
 prive us of every tranquil moment ; we would always regard the 
 interval before us as too short ; that object, in spite of us, always 
 present to our mind, would disgust us with every thing; would 
 render every pleasure insipid, fortune indifferent, and the whole 
 world tiresome and a burden : that terrible moment, which we 
 would no more lose sight of, would repress our passions, extinguish 
 our animosities, disarm revenge, calm the revolts of the flesh, and 
 mingle itself in all our schemes ; and our life, thus limited to a cer- 
 tain number of days, fixed and known, would be only a preparation 
 for that last moment. Are we in our senses, my brethren ? Death 
 seen at a distance, at a sure and fixed point, would fill us with 
 dread, detach us from the world and ourselves, call us to God, and 
 incessantly occupy our thoughts; and this same death, uncertain, 
 which may happen every day, every instant, this same death, 
 which must surprise us when we least expect it, which is perhaps 
 at the gate, engages not our attention, and leaves us tranquil, 
 what do I say ? leaves us all our passions, our criminal attach- 
 
Ser. 9. on death. 131 
 
 ments, our ardour for the world, pleasures, and fortune : and, be- 
 cause it is not certain that we shall die to-day, we live as if we were 
 to live for ever. 
 
 Observe, my brethren, that this uncertainty is in effect accom- 
 panied with all the circumstances most capable of alarming, or at 
 least engaging the attention of a prudent man, who makes any use 
 of his reason. In the first place, the surprise of that last day you 
 have to dread, is not one of those rare and singular accidents which 
 befal only some unfortunate wretches, and which it is more pru- 
 dent to disregard than to foresee. In order to be surprised by 
 death, the question at present is not that the thunder should fall 
 upon your heads, that you should be buried under the ruins of your 
 palaces, that you should be swallowed up by the waves, nor many 
 other accidents, whose singularity renders them more terrible, 
 though less dreaded; it is a common evil ; not a day passes, with- 
 out furnishing some examples ; almost all men are surprised by 
 death ; all see it approach, while they believe it yet at a distance ; 
 all say to themselves, like the foolish man in the gospel, " Why 
 should I be afraid ? I have many years yet to come/' In this 
 manner have you seen depart, your relations, friends, and almost 
 all those whose death you have witnessed; every instance sur- 
 prised you ; you expected it not so soon ; and you endeavoured 
 to account for it by human reasons, such as the imprudence of the 
 patient, or the want of proper advice and medicines ; but the only 
 and true reason is, that the hour of the Lord always takes us by 
 surprise. 
 
 The earth is like a vast field of battle, where we are every day 
 engaged with the enemy. You have happily escaped to-day ; but 
 you have witnessed the fall of many, who, like you, expected to 
 survive : to-morrow you again must enter the lists ; and who has 
 told you that fortune, so capricious with regard to others, to you 
 alone will continue favourable ? And since you at last must perish 
 there, are you prudent in building a fixed and permanent habita- 
 tion on the very spot, perhaps, intended for your tomb ? Place 
 yourselves in any possible situation, there is not a moment but 
 may be your last, and has actually been so to some of your bre- 
 thren ; no brilliant action, but may terminate in the eternal shades 
 of the graves ; and Herod is struck in the midst of the servile and 
 foolish applauses of his people : no day set apart for the solemn 
 display of worldly magnificence, but may conclude with your fu- 
 neral pomp; and Jezebel was precipitated, the very day she 
 had chosen to show herself in her greatest pride and ostenta- 
 tion, from the windows of her palace : no festival but may be the 
 feast of death ; and Belshazzar expired in the midst of a sump- 
 tuous banquet : no repose but may conduct you to an everlasting 
 sleep : and Holofernes, in the heart of his army, and conqueror of 
 so many kingdoms and provinces, fell under the stroke of a simple 
 Jewish woman : no disease, but may be the fatal term of your 
 course ; and every day you see the slightest complaints deceive the 
 opinions of the most skilful and the expectations of the patient, and 
 
132 on death. Ser. 9. 
 
 almost in an instant take the turn of death : in a word, figure 
 yourselves in any possible stage or station of life, and with difficulty 
 can you number those who have been surprised in a similar situa- 
 tion ; and what right have you to expect, that you alone shall be 
 exempted from a lot common to all ? You allow, you confess this ; 
 but these confessions are merely words of course, and are never 
 followed by a single precaution to secure you from the danger. 
 
 Secondly. Did this uncertainty turn only on the hour, the place, 
 or the manner of your death, it would appear less shocking ; for, 
 after all, says a holy father, what matters it to a Christian, whether 
 he shall expire in the midst of his connexions or in the country of 
 strangers ; in the bed of sorrow or the abyss of the waves ; provided 
 he dies in piety and righteousness ? But what renders this terrible, 
 is, the uncertainty whether you shall die in the Lord or in sin ; that 
 you shall know not what will be your lot in that other region where 
 conditions change no more; into whose hands, at its departure from 
 the body, your soul, trembling, a stranger and alone, shall fall ; 
 whether it shall be surrounded with light, and carried to the foot of 
 the throne on the wings of blessed and happy spirits, or enveloped 
 in darkness, and cast headlong into the gulf : you hang between 
 these two eternities ; you know not to which you shall be attached : 
 death alone will disclose the secret ; and in this uncertainty you 
 remain tranquil, and indolently wait its approach, as though it 
 were a matter of no importance to you, nor to determine your 
 eternal happiness or misery ? Ah ! my brethren, were it even true 
 that all ends with us, the impious man would still be foolish in say- 
 ing, " Let us think not on death ; let us eat and drink, for to-mor- 
 row we die." The more he found life agreeable, the more reason 
 would he have to be afraid of death, which to him would, however, 
 be only a cessation of existence. But we, to whom faith opens 
 prospects of punishment or eternal rewards beyond the grave ; we, 
 who must reach the gates of death, still uncertain of this dreadful 
 alternative, is there not a folly, what do I say ? a madness, (not, 
 to be sure, in professing the sentiments of the impious, " Let us 
 eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,)" in living as though we 
 thought like him ! Is it possible we can remain a single instant 
 unoccupied with that decisive moment, and without allaying, by 
 the precautions of faith, that trouble and dread into which this un- 
 certainty must cast a soul who has not yet renounced his eternal 
 hopes ? 
 
 Thirdly. In all other uncertainties, the number of those who 
 share the same danger may inspire us with confidence; or re- 
 sources, with which we flatter ourselves, may leave us more tran- 
 quil ; or, even at the worst, the disappointment becomes a lesson, 
 which teaches us, to our cost, to be more guarded in future. But, 
 in the dreadful uncertainty in question, the number of those who 
 run the same risk can diminish nothing from our danger ; all the 
 resources with which we may flatter ourselves on the bed of death, 
 are, in general, merely illusive ; and religion itself, which furnishes 
 them, dare ground but small hopes on them : in a word, the mis- 
 
Ser. 9. on death. 133 
 
 take is irremediable ; we die only once, and our past folly can no 
 more serve as a lesson to guard us from future error. Our misfor- 
 tunes indeed open our eyes ; but these new lights, which dissipate 
 our blindness, become useless, by the immutability of our state, 
 and are rather a cruel knowledge of our misery, which prepares to 
 tear us with eternal remorse, and to occasion the most grievous 
 portion of our punishment, than wise reflections which may lead 
 us to repentance. 
 
 Upon what, then, can you justify this profound and incomprehen- 
 sible neglect of your last day, in which you live ? On youth, which 
 may seem to promise you many years yet to come ? 
 
 Youth ! But the son of the widow of Nain was young. Does 
 death respect ages or rank ? Youth ! But that is exactly what 
 makes me tremble for you : licentious manners, pleasures to excess, 
 extravagant passions, ambitious desires, the dangers of war, thirst 
 for renown, and the sallies of revenge ; is it not during the pursuit 
 or gratification of some one of these passions, that the majority of 
 men finish their career ? Adonias, but for his debaucheries, might 
 have lived to a good old age ; Absalom, but for his ambition ; the 
 king of Sachem's son, but for his love of Dinah ; Jonathan, had 
 glory not dug a grave for him in the mountains of Gilboa. Youth ! 
 Alas! it is the season of dangers, and the rock upon which life 
 generally splits. 
 
 Once more, then, upon what do you found your hopes ? On 
 the strength of your constitution ? But what is the best estab- 
 lished health ? A spark which a breath shall extinguish ; a single 
 day's sickness is sufficient to lay low the most robust. I examine 
 not after this, whether you do not even flatter yourselves on this 
 point ; if a body, exhausted by the irregularities of youth, do not 
 announce to your own minds the sentence of death ; if habitual in- 
 firmities do not lay open before you the gates of the grave ; if dis- 
 agreeable indications do not menace you with some sudden acci- 
 dent. I wish you to lengthen out your days even beyond your 
 hopes. Alas ! my brethren, can any period appear long which 
 must at last come to an end ? Look back, and see where now are 
 your youtflful years ? What trace of solid joy do they leave in 
 your remembrance ? Not more than a vision of the night ; you 
 dream that you have lived, and behold all that is left to you of it ; 
 all that interval, elapsed from your birth to the present day, is like 
 a rapid flash, whose passage the eye, far from dwelling on, can with 
 difficulty see. Had you begun to live even with the world itself, 
 the past would now appear to you neither longer nor more real : all 
 the ages elapsed down to the present day you would look upon as 
 fugitive instants ; all the nations which have appeared and disap- 
 peared on the earth ; all the revolutions of empires and kingdoms ; 
 all those grand events which embellish our histories, to you would 
 be only the different scenes of a show which you had seen conclud- 
 ed in a day. Recollect the victories, the captured cities, the glo- 
 rious treaties, the magnificence, the splendid events of the first 
 years of this reign ; most of you have not only witnessed, but have 
 
134 on death. Ser. 9. 
 
 shared in their danger and glory ; our annals will convey them 
 down to our latest posterity ; but to you they are already but a 
 dream, but a momentary flash, which is extinguished, and which 
 every day effaces more and more from your remembrance. What, 
 then, is this small portion you have still to accomplish ? Can you 
 believe that the days to come have more reality than those already 
 past? Years appear long while yet at a distance; arrived, they 
 vanish, they slip from us in an instant ; and scarcely shall we have 
 looked around us, when, as if by enchantment, we shall find our- 
 selves at the fatal term, which still appeared so distant that we 
 rashly concluded it would never arrive. View the world, such as 
 you have seen it in your youthful days, and such as you now see 
 it: new personages have mounted the stage; the grand parts are 
 filled by new actors; there are new events, new intrigues, new pas- 
 sions, new heroes in virtue as well as in vice, which engage the 
 praises, derisions, and censures of the public ; a new world, without 
 your having perceived it, has insensibly risen on the wrecks of the 
 first; every thing passes -with and like you ; a velocity, which no- 
 thing can stop, drags all into the gulf of eternity : yesterday our 
 ancestors cleared the way for us ; and to-morrow we shall do the 
 same for those who are to follow. Ages succeed each other; the 
 appearance of the world incessantly changes ; the dead and living 
 continually replace and succeed each other. Nothing stands still ; 
 all changes, all wastes away, all has an end. God alone remaineth 
 always the same : the torrent of ages, which sweeps away all men, 
 flows before his eyes ; and, with indignation, he sees weak mortals, 
 carried down by that rapid course, insult him while passing ; wish, 
 of that transitory instant, to constitute all their happiness ; and, at 
 their departure from it, fall into the hands of his vengeance and 
 wrath. Where, says the apostle, amongst us, are now the wise ? 
 And a man, were he even capable of governing the world, can he 
 merit that name from the moment that he forgets what he is and 
 what he must be ? 
 
 Nevertheless, my brethren, what impression on us does the in- 
 stability of every thing worldly make ? The death of our relations, 
 friends, competitors, and masters ? We never think that we are 
 immediately to follow them ! we think only of decking ourselves 
 out in their spoils ; we think not on the little time they had en- 
 joyed them, but only on the pleasure they must have had in their 
 possession : we hasten to profit ourselves from the wreck of each 
 other : we are like those foolish soldiers, who, in the heat of battle, 
 when their companions are every moment falling around them, 
 eagerly load themselves with their clothes ; and scarcely are they 
 put on, when a mortal blow at once deprives them of their absurd 
 decorations and life. In this manner the son decks himself with 
 the spoils of the father ; closes his eyes ; succeeds to his rank, for- 
 tune, and dignities ; conducts the pomp of his funeral, and leaves 
 it more occupied with, more affected by, the new titles with which 
 he is now invested, than instructed by the last advices of a dying 
 parent ; than afflicted for his loss, or even undeceived with regard 
 
Ser. 9. on death. 135 
 
 to the things of the earth, by a sight which places before his eyes 
 their insignificancy, and announces to him the same destiny soon. 
 The death of our companions is not a more useful lesson to us : 
 such a person leaves vacant an office which we hasten to obtain ; 
 another promotes us a step in the service ; claims expire with this 
 one, which might have greatly embarrassed us ; that one now leaves 
 us the undisputed favourite of our sovereign ; another brings us a 
 step nearer to a certain dignity, and opens the road to a rank which 
 his death alone could render attainable 5 and, on these occasions, our 
 spirits are invigorated ; we adopt new measures, and form new pro- 
 jects ; and, far from our eyes being opened, by the examples of 
 those whom we see disappear, there issue, even from their ashes, 
 fatal sparks, which inflame all our desires and attachments to the 
 world ; and death, that gloomy picture of our misery, reanimates 
 more passions among men than even all the illusions of life. What, 
 then, can detach us from this wretched world, since death itself 
 seems only to knit more strongly the bonds, and strengthen us in 
 the errors which bind us to it. 
 
 Here, my brethren, I require nothing from you but reason. What 
 are the natural consequences which good sense alone ought to draw 
 from the uncertainty of death ? 
 
 First. The hour of death is uncertain : every year, every day, 
 every moment, may be the last of our life. It is absurd, then, by 
 attaching ourselves to what must pass away in an instant, to sacri- 
 fice the only riches which are eternal ; every thing you do for the 
 earth ought therefore to appear as lost, since you have no interest 
 there; you can depend on nothing there, and can carry nothing 
 from it, but what you shall have done for heaven. The kingdoms 
 of the earth, and all their glory, ought not then for a moment to 
 balance the interests of your eternal welfare, since the greatest for- 
 tune cannot assure you of a day more than the most humble ; and, 
 since the only consequence which can accrue from it is a more deep 
 and bitter sorrow on the bed of death, when you shall be obliged 
 for ever to part from them, every care, every movement, every 
 desire, ought therefore to centre in establishing for yourselves a 
 permanent and unchangeable fortune, an eternal happiness, which 
 fadeth not away. 
 
 Secondly. The hour of your death is uncertain : you ought, then, 
 to expect it every day; never to permit yourselves an action, in 
 which you would wish not to be surprised; to consider all your 
 proceedings as those of a dying man, who every moment expects 
 his soul to be recalled ; to act, in every thing, as though you were 
 that instant to render account of your conduct ; and, since you can- 
 not answer for the time which is to come, in such a manner to re- 
 gulate the present that you may have no occasion for the future to 
 repair its errors. 
 
 Lastly. The hour of your death is uncertain : delay not then, 
 your repentance. Time presses ; hasten, then, your conversion to 
 the Lord ; you cannot assure yourselves of a day, and you defer it 
 to a distant and uncertain period to come. Were you unfortunately 
 
136 on death. Ser. 9. 
 
 to swallow a mortal poison, would you put off to another day 
 the trial of the only antidote which might save your life ? Would 
 the agent of death, which you carried in your bowels, allow of de- 
 lays and neglect ? Such is your state. If you be wise, have in- 
 stant recourse to your precautions. You carry death in your soul, 
 since in it you carry sin ; hasten to apply the remedy, since every 
 moment is precious to him who cannot depend on one. The poi- 
 sonous beverage which infects your soul cannot long be trifled 
 with ; the goodness of God still holds out to you a cure ; hasten, 
 once more I say, to secure it, while it is not yet too late. Should 
 entreaties be necessary to determine your compliance, ought not 
 the prospect of relief to be sufficient ? Is it necessary to exhort an 
 unfortunate wretch, just sinking in the waves, to exert his endea- 
 vours to save himself ? Ought you, in this matter, to have occa- 
 sion for our ministry ? Your last hour approaches ; you soon shall 
 have to appear before the tribunal of God. You may usefully em- 
 ploy the moment which yet remains to you; almost all those, 
 whose departure from this world you are daily witnessing, allow it 
 to slip from them, and die without having reaped any advantage 
 from it. You imitate their neglect; the same surprise awaits 
 you, and, like them, you will be cut off before the work of re- 
 formation has commenced. They had been warned of it, and 
 in the same manner we warn you ; their misery touches you not ; 
 and the unfortunate lot which awaits you, will not more sensibly 
 affect those to whom we shall one day announce it ; it is a succes- 
 sion of blindness, which passes from father to son, and is perpetu- 
 ated on the earth : we all wish to live better, and we all die before 
 we have begun to reform. 
 
 Such, my brethren, are the prudent and natural reflections 
 which the uncertainty of our last hour should lead us to make. 
 But if, on account of its uncertainty, you are imprudent in paying 
 no more attention to it, than as if it were never to arrive, the fearful 
 portion attending its certainty still less excuses your folly, in striving 
 to remove that melancholy image from your mind, under the pretence 
 of its only tending to empoison every comfort, and to destroy the 
 tranquillity of life. This is what I have still to lay before you. 
 
 Part II. Man loves not to dwell upon his nothingness and 
 meanness ; whatever recalls to him his origin puts him in mind 
 also of his end, wounds his pride, interests his self-love, attacks the 
 foundation of all his passions, and gives birth to gloomy and disa- 
 greeable ideas. To die, to disappear from the earth, to enter the dark 
 abyss of eternity, to become a carcass, the food of worms, the hor- 
 ror of men, the hideous inmate of a tomb ; that sight alone revolts 
 every sense, distracts reason, blackens imagination, and empoisons 
 every comfort in life ; we dare not fix our looks on so hideous an 
 image ; we reject that thought, as the most gloomy and bitter of 
 all. We dread, we fly from every thing which may force its re- 
 membrance on our mind, as though it would hasten the approach 
 of the fatal hour. Under a pretence of tenderness, we love not to 
 
Ser. 9. on death. 137 
 
 hear mention of our departed friends ; care is taken to remove our 
 attention from the places in which they have dwelt, and from every- 
 thing which, along with their idea, at the same time awakens that 
 of death which has deprived us of them. We dread all melancholy 
 recitals ; in that respect we carry our terrors even to the most 
 childish superstition ; in every trifle our fancy sees fatal prognosti- 
 cations of death ; in the wanderings of a dream, in the nightly 
 sounds of a bird, in the casual number of a company, and in many 
 other circumstances still more ridiculous ; every where we imagine 
 it before us ; and, for that very reason, we endeavour to expel it 
 from our thoughts. 
 
 Now, my brethren, these excessive terrors were pardonable in 
 Pagans, to whom death was the greatest misfortune, seeing they 
 had no expectation beyond the grave ; and that, living without 
 hope, they died without consolation. But, that death should be 
 so terrible to Christians is a matter of astonishment; and that the 
 dread of that image should even serve as a pretext to remove its 
 idea from their minds, is still more so. 
 
 For, in the first place, I grant that you have reason to dread that 
 last hour ; but, as it is certain, I cannot conceive why the terrors 
 of it should prevent your mind from dwelling upon, and endeavour- 
 ing to anticipate its evils ; on the contrary, it seems to me, that in 
 proportion as the danger is great, to which you are exposed, you 
 ought more constantly to keep it in view, and to use every precau- 
 tion that it may not take you unawares. What ! the more the danger 
 alarms you, the more it should render you indolent and careless ! 
 The excessive and improper terrors of your imagination should 
 cure you, even of that prudent dread which operates your salva- 
 tion ; and, because you dread too much, you should abandon every 
 thought of it ! But, where is the man whom a too lively sense of 
 danger renders calm and intrepid ? Were it necessary to march 
 through a narrow and steep defile, surrounded on all sides by pre- 
 cipices, would you order your eyes to be bound, that you might 
 not see your danger, and lest the depth of the gulf below should 
 turn your head ? Ah, my dear hearer, you see the grave open be- 
 fore you, and that spectacle alarms you ; but, in place of taking all 
 the precautions offered to you by religion, to prevent you fall- 
 ing headlong into the gulf, you cover your eyes that you may not 
 see it ; you fly to dissipation, to chase its idea from your mind ; 
 and, like those unfortunate victims of Paganism, you run to the 
 stake, your eyes covered, crowned with flowers, and surrounded 
 by dancing and songs of joy, that you may not have leisure to re- 
 flect on the fatal term to which this pomp conducts, and lest you 
 should see the altar, that is to say, the bed of death, where you are 
 immediately to be sacrificed. 
 
 Besides, by repelling that thought, could you likewise repel 
 death, your terrors would then at least have an excuse. But think, 
 or think not on it, death always advances ; every effort you make 
 to exclude its remembrance brings you nearer to it ; and at the ap- 
 pointed hour it will come. What, then, do you gain by turning 
 
138 on death. Ser. 9. 
 
 your mind from that thought ? Do you lessen the danger ? On 
 the contrary you augment it, and render a surprisal inevitable. By 
 averting your eyes, do you soften the horror of that spectacle ? 
 Alas ! you only multiply its terrors. Were you to familiarize your- 
 selves more with the thoughts of death, your mind, weak and timid, 
 would insensibly accustom itself to it. You would gradually ac- 
 quire courage to view it without anguish, or at least with resig- 
 nation on the bed of death ; it would no longer be an unusual and 
 strange sight. A long anticipated danger astonishes not : death is 
 only formidable the first time that the imagination dwells upon it ; 
 and it is only when not expected, and no provision made against 
 it, that it is to be dreaded. 
 
 But, when that thought should even disquiet, and fill you with 
 impressions of dread and sorrow, where would be the disappoint- 
 ment? Are you, upon the earth, to live only in an indolent ease, 
 and solely engrossed by agreeable and smiling objects ? We should 
 lose our reason, say you, were we to devote our attention to this 
 dismal spectacle, without the relaxation of pleasures. We should 
 lose our reason ! But so many faithful souls, who, in all their ac- 
 tions, mingle that thought ; who make the remembrance of that 
 last hour the check to curb their passions, and the most powerful 
 inducement to fidelity ; so many illustrious penitents, who have 
 buried themselves alive in their tombs, that they might never lose 
 sight of that object ; the holy who every day suffered death, like 
 the apostle, that they might live for ever, have they in consequence 
 of it, lost their reason ? You should lose your reason ! that is to 
 say, you would regard the world as an exilement, pleasures as an 
 intoxication, sin as the greatest of evils ; places, honours, favour, 
 and fortune, as dreams; and salvation as the grand and only object 
 worthy of attention. Is that to lose your reason ? Blessed folly ! 
 And would that you, from this moment, were amongst the number 
 of these foolish sages. You would lose your reason ! Yes, that 
 false, worldly, proud, carnal, and mistaken reason, which seduces 
 you ; that corrupted reason, which obscures faith, authorizes the 
 passions, makes us prefer the present moment to eternity, takes the 
 shadow for the substance, and leads all men astray. Yes, that de- 
 plorable reason, that vain philosophy, which looks upon as a 
 weakness the dread of a future state, and, because it dreads it too 
 much, seems, in appearance, or endeavours to force itself, not to 
 believe it at all. But that prudent, enlightened, moderate, and 
 Christian reason, that wisdom of the serpent, so recommended in 
 the gospel, it is in that remembrance that you would find it : that 
 wisdom, says the Holy Spirit, preferable to all the treasures and 
 honours of the earth ; that wisdom so honourable to man, and 
 which exalts him so much above himself; that wisdom which has 
 formed so many Christian heroes ; it is the image always present 
 of your last hour, which will embellish your soul with it. But that 
 thought, you add, should we take it into our head to enter deeply 
 into, and to dwell continually upon it, would be fit to make us re- 
 nounce all, and to form the most violent and overstrained resolu- 
 
Ser. 9. on death. 139 
 
 tions ; that is to say, would detach you from the world, your vices, 
 passions, the infamy of your excesses, and make you lead a chaste, 
 regular and Christian life, alone worthy of reason. These are what 
 the world calls violent and overstrained resolutions. But likewise, 
 under pretence of shunning pretended excesses, would you refuse 
 to adopt the most necessary resolutions ? Make a beginning at 
 any rate ; the first transports soon begin to abate ; and it is much 
 more easy to moderate the excesses of piety than to animate its 
 coldness and indolence. Dread nothing from the excessive fervour 
 and transports of your zeal ; you can never, in that respect, go too 
 far. An indolent and sensual heart, such as yours, nursed in plea- 
 sures and effeminacy, and void of all taste for whatever pertains to 
 the service of God, does not promise any very great indiscretions 
 in the steps of a Christian life. You know not yourselves ; you 
 have never experienced what obstacles all your inclinations will 
 cast in the way of your simplest exertions in piety. Take mea- 
 sures only against coldness and discouragement, which are the only 
 rocks you have to dread. What blindness ! In the fear of doing 
 too much for God, we do nothing at all ; the dread of bestowing 
 too much attention on our salvation, prevents us from labouring to- 
 ward it ; and we lose ourselves for ever, lest we should too surely 
 attain salvation : we dread chimerical excesses of piety, and we are 
 not afraid of a departure from, and an actual contempt of piety it- 
 self. Does the fear of doing too much for fortune and rank check 
 your exertions or cool the ardour of your ambition ? Is it not that 
 very hope which supports and animates them ? Nothing is too 
 much for the world, but all is excess for God : we fear, and we re- 
 proach ourselves, lest we never do enough for an earthly establish- 
 ment ; and we check ourselves, in the dread of doing too much for 
 an eternal fortune. 
 
 But I go farther, and say, that it is a criminal ingratitude toward 
 God to reject the thought of death, merely because it disquiets 
 and alarms you; for that impression of dread and terror is a special 
 grace with which you are favoured by God. Alas ! how many 
 impious characters exist, who despise it, who claim a miserable 
 merit, in beholding with firmness its approach, and who regard it 
 as the annihilation of their being ! How many sages and philoso- 
 phers in Christianity, who, without renouncing faith, limit all their 
 reflections, all the superiority of their talents, to the tranquil view 
 of its arrival ; and who, during life, exert the powers of their reason 
 only in preparing for that last moment; a constancy and serenity 
 of mind equally absurd as the most vulgar terrors ; a purpose the 
 most imprudent to which reason can be applied. It is, therefore, a 
 special grace bestowed on you by God, when he permits that 
 thought to have such an energy and ascendancy in your soul; in 
 all probability it is the way by which he wishes to recall you to 
 himself; should you ever quit your erroneous and iniquitous courses, 
 it will be through its influence : your salvation seems to depend on 
 that remedy. 
 
 Tremble, my dear hearer, lest your heart should fortify itself 
 
140 on death. Ser. 9. 
 
 against these salutary terrors ; lest God should withdraw from you 
 this mean of salvation, and harden you against all the terrors of 
 religion. A favour, not only despised but even regarded as a pun- 
 ishment, is soon followed with the indignation, or at least the in- 
 difference, of the benefactor. Should that unfortunately be ever 
 the case, then will the image of death leave you all your tranquilli- 
 ty : you will fly to an entertainment the moment you have quitted 
 the solemnity of a funeral ; with the same eyes will you behold a 
 hideous carcass, or the criminal object of your passion ; then will 
 you be even pleased with yourself for having soared above all 
 these vulgar fears, and even applaud yourself for a change so terri- 
 ble toward your salvation. Profit, then, toward the regulation of 
 your manners, by that sensibility, while it is yet left to you by 
 God. Let your mind dwell on all the objects proper to recall that 
 image, while yet it has influence to disturb the false peace of your 
 passions. Visit the tomb of your ancestors, in the presence of 
 their ashes, to meditate on the vanity of all earthly things. Go 
 and ask, what now, in these dark habitations of death, remains to 
 them of all their pleasures, dignities, and splendour? Open your- 
 self these gloomy dwellings, and, reflecting on what they had for- 
 merly been in the eyes of men, see what they now are ; spectres, 
 whose presence you with difficulty can support ; loathsome masses 
 of worms and putrefaction : such are they in the eyes of men ; but 
 what are they in the sight of God ? Descend, in idea, into these 
 dwellings of horror and infection, and choose beforehand your 
 own place; figure yourself, in that last hour, extended on the bed 
 of anguish, struggling with death, your limbs benumbed and 
 already seized with a mortal coldness, your tongue already 
 bound in the chains of death; your eyes fixed, covered with a 
 cloud of confusion, and before which all things begin to disappear: 
 your relations and friends around you, offering up ineffectual 
 wishes for your recovery, and augmenting your fears and regrets, 
 by the tenderness of their sighs and the abundance of their tears: 
 reflect upon that sight, so instructive, so interesting ; you then, in 
 the dismal struggles of that last combat, proving that you are still 
 in life only by the convulsions which announce your death; the 
 whole life annihilated to you; despoiled for ever of all your digni- 
 ties and titles ; accompanied solely by your works, and ready to 
 appear in the presence of God. This is not a prediction; it is the 
 history of all those who die every day to your knowledge, and it is 
 the anticipation of your own. Think upon that terrible moment; 
 the day, perhaps, is not far removed, yet, however distant it may 
 be, you will at last reach it, and the interval will seem to you orily 
 an instant ; and the only consolation you then can have, shall be, 
 to have made the study of, and preparation for death, the employ- 
 ment of your life. 
 
 Lastly. As my final argument: trace to their source these ex- 
 cessive terrors, which render the image and thoughts of death so 
 terrible, and you will undoubtedly find them originating from the 
 disorders of a criminal conscience: it is not death which you 
 
Ser. 9. on death. 141 
 
 dread, it is the justice of God which awaits you beyond it, to 
 punish the infidelities and crimes of your life : it is, that, covered 
 as you are with the most shameful wounds, which disfigure in you 
 his image, you are not in a state to present yourselves before him : 
 and that to die in your present situation, must be to perish for ever. 
 Purify, then, your conscience, put an end to, and expiate your 
 criminal passions; recall God to your heart; no longer offer to his 
 sight any thing worthy of his anger or punishment; place your- 
 selves in a state to hope something, after death, from his infinite 
 mercy: then shall you see that last moment approach with less 
 dread and trembling; and the sacrifice which you shall have al- 
 ready made to God, of the world and your passions, will not only 
 render easy, but even sweet and consoling, the sacrifice you will 
 then make to him of your life. 
 
 For say, What has death so fearful to a faithful soul? From 
 what does it separate him ? From a world which shall perish, and 
 which is the country of the reprobate; from his riches, which 
 torment him, of which the use is surrounded with dangers, and 
 which he is forbid to use in the gratification of the senses; from 
 his relations and friends, whom he precedes only by a moment, 
 and who shall soon follow him; from his body, which hitherto 
 had been either a rock to his innocence or a perpetual obstacle to 
 his holy desires; from his offices and dignities, which, in multi- 
 plying his duties, augmented his dangers; lastly, from life, which 
 to him was only an exilement, and an anxious desire to be deli- 
 vered from it. What does death bestow on him, to compensate 
 for what it takes away? It bestows unfading riches, of which 
 none can ever deprive him; eternal joys, which he shall enjoy 
 without fear or remorse; the peaceable and certain possession of 
 God himself, from which he can never be degraded; deliverance 
 from all his passions, which had ever been a constant source of 
 disquiet and distress; an unalterable peace, which he never could 
 find on the earth ; and, lastly, the society of the just and happy, 
 in place of that of sinners, from whom it separates him. What 
 then, O my God ! has the world so delightful, to attach a faithful 
 soul ? To him it is a vale of tears, where dangers are infinite, 
 combats daily, victories rare, and defeats certain; where every 
 gratification must be denied to the senses; where all tempts, and 
 all is forbidden to us; where we must fly from and dread most, 
 what most pleases us; in a word, where, if you suffer not, if you 
 weep not, if you resist not to the utmost extremity, if you combat 
 not without ceasing, if you hate not yourself, you are lost. What, 
 then, do you find so amiable, so alluring, so capable of attaching 
 a Christian soul? And to die, is it not a gain and a triumph 
 for him ? 
 
 Besides, death is the only object he looks forward to; it is 
 the only consolation which supports the fidelity of the just. Do 
 they bend under afflictions? They know that their end is near; 
 that the short and fleeting tribulations of this life shall soon be 
 followed by a load of eternal glory ; and in that thought they find 
 
142 on death. Ser. 9. 
 
 an inexhaustible source of patience, fortitude, and joy. Do they 
 feel the law of the members warring against the law of the spirit, 
 and exciting commotions which bring innocence to the very brink 
 of the precipice ? They are not ignorant, that after the dissolution 
 of the earthly frame, it shall be restored to them pure and celes- 
 tial; and that, delivered from these bonds of misery, they shall 
 then resemble the heavenly spirits ; and that remembrance soothes 
 and strengthens them. Do they groan under the weight of the 
 yoke of Jesus Christ; and their faith, more weak, is it on the point 
 of relaxing and sinking under the rigid duties of the gospel? Ah ! 
 the day of the Lord is nigh; they almost touch the blessed recom- 
 pense ; and the end of their course, which they already see, ani- 
 mates, and gives them fresh vigour. Hear in what manner the 
 apostle consoled the first Christians: My brethren, said he to 
 them, time is short, the day approaches, the Lord is at the gate, 
 and he will not delay : rejoice then ; I again say to you, rejoice. 
 Such was the only consolation of men, persecuted, insulted, pro- 
 scribed, trampled upon, regarded as the scum of the earth, the 
 disgrace of the Jews, and the scoff of the Gentiles. They knew 
 that death would soon dry up their tears ; that for them there 
 would then be neither mourning, sorrow, nor sufferance; that all 
 would be changed : and that thought softened every pain. Ah ! 
 whosoever had told these generous justifiers of faith, that the Lord 
 would never make them know death, but would leave them to 
 dwell for ever on the earth, would have shaken their faith, tempted 
 their constancy, and, by robbing them of that hope, would have 
 deprived them of every consolation. 
 
 You, my brethren, are, no doubt, little surprised at this, because 
 death must appear a refuge to men afflicted and unhappy as they 
 were. You are mistaken ; it was neither their persecutions nor suf- 
 ferings which occasioned their distress and sorrow; these were 
 their joy, consolation, and pride ; we glory, said they, in tribula- 
 tions ; it was the state of separation in which they still lived from 
 Jesus Christ, that alone was the source of their tears, and what 
 rendered death so desirable. 
 
 While we are in the body, said the apostle, we are separated from 
 the Lord; and that separation was a state of anguish and sorrow to 
 these faithful Christians. Piety consists in wishing for a re-union 
 with Jesus Christ, our Head ; in sighing for the happy moment 
 which shall incorporate us with the chosen of God, in that mystical 
 body, which, from the beginning of the world is forming, of every 
 tongue, every tribe, and every nation ; which is the completion of 
 the designs of God, and which will glorify him, with Jesus Christ, 
 to all eternity. Here we are like branches torn from their stem ; 
 like strangers wandering in a foreign land ; like fettered captives in 
 a prison, waiting their deliverance ; like children, banished for a 
 time from their paternal inheritance and mansion : in a word, like 
 members separated from their body. Since Jesus Christ, our Head, 
 ascended to heaven, the earth is no longer the place of our estab- 
 lishment : we look forward, in blessed expectation, to the coming of 
 
Ser. 9. on death. 143 
 
 the Lord. That desire constitutes all our piety and consolation ; 
 and a Christian, not to long for that happy moment, but to dread, 
 and even look upon it as a misfortune, 'is to fly in the face of Jesus 
 Christ : to renounce all communication with him; to reject the pro- 
 mises of faith and the glorious title of a citizen of heaven ; it is to 
 centre our happiness on the things of the earth, to doubt of a fu- 
 ture state, to regard religion as a dream, and to believe that all dies 
 with us. 
 
 No, my brethren, death has nothing to a just soul but what is 
 pleasing and desirable. Arrived at that happy moment, he, with- 
 out regret, sees a world perish, which he had never loved, and 
 which to him had never appeared otherwise than a confusion of 
 vanities : his eyes close with pleasure on all those vain shows which 
 the earth offers, which he had always regarded as the splendour 
 of a moment, and whose dangerous illusions he had never ceased 
 to dread : he feels, without uneasiness, what do I say ? with 
 satisfaction, that mortal body, which had been the subject of all 
 his temptations, and the fatal source of all his weaknesses, become 
 clothed with immortality : he regrets nothing on the earth, where 
 he leaves nothing, and from whence his heart flies along with his 
 soul ? he even complains, not that he is carried off in the middle 
 of his career, and that his days are concluded in the flower of his 
 age ; on the contrary, he thanks his deliverer for having abridged 
 his sufferings with his years, for having exacted only a portion of 
 his debt as the price of his eternity, and for having speedily con- 
 summated his sacrifice, lest a longer residence in a corrupted world 
 should have perverted his heart. His trials, his mortifications, 
 which had cost so much to the weakness of the flesh, are then his 
 sweetest reflections : he sees that all now vanishes, except what he 
 has done for God ; that all now abandon him, his riches, relations, 
 friends, and dignities, his works alone remaining ; and he is trans- 
 ported with joy, to think that he had never placed his trust in 
 the favour of princes, in the children of men, in the vain hopes of 
 fortune, in things which must soon perish, but in the Lord alone, who 
 remaineth eternally, and in whose bosom he goes to experience that 
 peace and tranquillity which mortals cannot bestow. Thus tran- 
 quil on the past, despising the present, transported to touch at last 
 that futurity, the sole object of his desires, already seeing the 
 bosom of Abraham open to receive him, and the Son of Man, 
 seated at the right hand of his Father, holding out for him the 
 crown of immortality, he sleeps in the Lord : he is wafted by blessed 
 spirits to the habitation of the holy, and returns to the place from 
 whence he originally came. 
 
 May you, my brethren, in this manner see your course ter- 
 minated. 
 
144 . THE DEATH OF A SINNER, AND Sei*. 10. 
 
 SERMON X. 
 
 ON THE DEATH OF A SINNER, AND THAT OF A RIGHTEOUS 
 
 CHARACTER. 
 
 "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord." Rev. xir. 13. 
 
 There is something peculiarly striking and incomprehensible in 
 the human passions. 
 
 All men wish to live : they Jook upon death as the most dread- 
 ful of all evils : all their passions attach them to life : yet, never- 
 theless, those very passions incessantly urge them toward that death 
 for which they feel such horror ; nay, it should even seem, that 
 their only purpose in life is to accelerate the moment of death. 
 
 All men natter themselves that they shall die the death of the 
 righteous ; they wish it, they expect it. Knowing the impossibility 
 of remaining for ever on this earth, they trust that, before the ar- 
 rival of their last moment, the passions which at present pollute 
 and hold them in captivity, shall be completely overcome. They 
 figure to themselves, as horrible, the lot of a sinner who expires in 
 his iniquity and under the wrath of God ; yet, nevertheless, they 
 tranquilly prepare for themselves the same destiny. This dread- 
 ful period of human life, which is death in sin, strikes and appals 
 them : yet, like fools, they blindly and merrily pursue the road 
 which leads to it. In vain do we announce to them, that, in general, 
 men die as they have lived. They wish to live the life of a sinner, 
 yet, nevertheless, to die the death of the righteous. 
 
 My intention, at present, is not to undeceive you with regard to 
 an illusion so common and so ridiculous, (let us reserve this sub- 
 ject for another occasion) ; but since the death of the righteous 
 appears so earnestly to be wished for, and that of the sinner so 
 dreadful to you, I mean, by a representation of them both, to ex- 
 cite your desires for the one, and to awaken your just terrors for 
 the other. As you must finally quit this world in one of these two 
 situations, it is proper to familiarize yourselves with a view of 
 them both, that, by placing before your eyes the melancholy 
 spectacle of the one, and the soothing consolations of the other, 
 you may be enabled to judge which of the lots awaits you ; and, 
 consequently, to adopt the necessary means to secure the decision 
 in your favour. 
 
 In the picture of the expiring sinner, you will see in what the 
 world, with all its glory and pleasures, terminates ; from the re- 
 cital of the last moments of the righteous man, you will learn to 
 what virtue conducts, in spite of all its momentary checks and 
 troubles. In the one, you will see the world from the eyes of a 
 sinner in the moment of death ; and how vain, frivolous, and dif- 
 ferent from what it seems at present, will it then appear to you ! 
 In the other, you will see virtue from the eyes of the expiring 
 
Ser. 10. THAT OF A RIGHTEOUS CHARACTER. 145 
 
 righteous man : how grand and inestimable will your heart then 
 acknowledge it to be ! 
 
 In the one, you will comprehend all the misery of a soul which 
 has lived forgetful of its God ; in the other, the happiness of him 
 who has lived only to please and to serve him ; in a word, the pic- 
 ture of the death of the sinner will make you wish to live the life of 
 the righteous ; and the image of the death of the just will inspire 
 you with a holy horror at the life of the sinner. 
 
 Part I. In vain do we repel the image of death : every day 
 brings it nearer. Youth glides away ; years hurry on ; and, like 
 water, says the scripture, spilt upon the ground, which cannot be 
 gathered up again, we rapidly course toward the abyss of eternity, 
 where, for ever swallowed up, we can never return upon our steps 
 to appear once more upon the earth. 
 
 I know that the brevity and uncertainty of life are continual 
 subjects of conversation to us. The deaths of our relations, our 
 friends, our companions, frequently sudden, and always unex- 
 pected, furnish us with a thousand reflections on the frailty of every 
 thing terrestrial. 
 
 We are incessantly repeating that the world is nothing, that life 
 is but a dream, and that it is a striking folly our interesting our- 
 selves so deeply for what must pass so quickly away. But these 
 are merely words : they are not the sentiments of the heart : they 
 are discourses offered up at the shrine of custom ; and that very 
 custom occasions their being immediately and for ever forgot. 
 
 Now, my brethren, form to yourselves a destiny on this earth 
 agreeable to your own wishes : lengthen out, in your own minds, 
 your days to a term beyond your most sanguine hopes. I even 
 wish you to indulge in the enjoyment of so pleasing an illusion : 
 but, at last, you must follow the track which your forefathers have 
 trod ; you will at last see that day arrive, to which no other shall 
 succeed ; and that day will be the day of your eternity. Happy if 
 you die in the Lord : miserable if you depart in sin. One of these 
 lots awaits you. In the final decision upon all men there will be 
 only two sides the right and the left : two divisions the goats 
 and the sheep. Allow me, then, to recall you to the bed of death, 
 and to expose to your view the double spectacle of this last hour, 
 so terrible to the sinner, and so consolatory to the righteous man. 
 
 I say, terrible to the sinner, who, lulled by vain hopes of a con- 
 version, at last reaches this fatal moment, full of desires, empty of 
 good works, having ever lived a stranger to the Lord, and unable 
 now to make any offering to him but of his crimes, and the anguish 
 of seeing a period put to those days which he vainly believed would 
 have endured for ever. Now, nothing can be more dreadful than 
 the situation of this unfortunate wretch in the last moments of his 
 life ? Whichever way his mind is employed, whether in recalling 
 the past, or considering what is acting around him : in a word, 
 whether he penetrates into that awful futurity upon the brink of 
 which he hangs, or limits his reflections to the present moment, 
 
 L 
 
14G THE DEATH OF A SIGNER, AND Ser. 10. 
 
 these objects, the only ones which can occupy his thoughts, or pre- 
 sent themselves to his fancy, only open to him the blackest pros- 
 pects, which overwhelm him with despair. 
 
 For what can the past offer to a sinner, who, extended upon the 
 bed of death, begins now to yield up dependence upon life, and 
 reads, in the countenances of those around him, the dreadful in- 
 telligence that all is over with him ? What now does he see in 
 that long course of days which he has run through upon the earth ? 
 Alas ! he sees only vain cares and anxieties; pleasures which passed 
 away before they could be enjoyed, and iniquities which must en- 
 dure for ever. 
 
 Vain cares. His whole life, which now appears to have occupied 
 but a moment, presents itself to him, and in it he views nothing but 
 one continued restraint and a useless agitation. He recalls to his 
 mind all he has suffered for a world which now flies from him ; 
 for a fortune which now vanishes ; for a vain reputation, which 
 accompanies him not into the presence of God; for friends, whom 
 he loses ; for masters, who will soon forget him ; for a name, 
 which will be written only on the ashes of his tomb. What 
 regret must agitate the mind of this unfortunate wretch, when he 
 sees that his whole life has been one continued toil, yet that nothing 
 to the purpose has been accomplished for himself ! What regret, 
 to have so often done violence to his inclinations, without gaining 
 the advance of a single step toward heaven ! to have always be- 
 lieved himself too feeble for the service of God, and yet to have had 
 the strength and the constancy to fall a martyr to vanity and to a 
 world which is on the eve of perishing ! 
 
 Alas ! it is then that the sinner, overwhelmed, terrified at his own 
 blindness and mistake, no longer finding but an empty space in a 
 life which the world had alone engrossed ; perceiving, that, after 
 a long succession of years upon the earth, he has not yet begun 
 to live ; leaving history, perhaps, full of his actions, the public 
 monuments loaded with the transactions of his life, the world filled 
 with his name, and nothing, alas ! which deserves to be written in 
 the book of eternity, or which may follow him into the presence of 
 God. Then it is, though too late, that he begins to hold a lan- 
 guage to himself, which we have frequent opportunities of hearing. 
 iC I have lived, then, only for vanity ? Why have I not served 
 my God as I have served my masters ? Alas ! were so many 
 anxieties, and so much trouble, necessary to accomplish my own 
 destruction ? Why, at least, did I not receive my consolation in 
 this world ? I should have enjoyed the present, that fleeting moment 
 which passes away from me ; and I should not then have lost all. 
 But my life has been always filled with anxieties, subjections, 
 fatigues, and restraints, and all these in order to prepare for me 
 everlasting misery. What madness, to have suffered more toward 
 my own ruin, than was required to have accomplished my salva- 
 tion ; and to have regarded the life of the upright, as a melancholy 
 and an insupportable one ; seeing they have done nothing so diffi- 
 cult for God, that I have not performed an hundred-fold for the 
 
Ser. 10. THAT OF A RIGHTEOUS CHARACTER. 147 
 
 worlds which is nothing, and from which I have consequently nothing 
 to expect." 
 
 Yes, my brethren, it is in that last moment that your whole life 
 will present itself to your view ; but in very different colours from 
 those in which it appears to you to-day. At present you count 
 upon services performed for the state ; places which you have filled ; 
 actions in which you have distinguished yourselves ; wounds, which 
 still bear testimony to your valour; the number of your campaigns ; 
 the splendour of your orders ; all these appear objects of importance 
 and reality to you. The public applauses which accompany them ; 
 the rewards with which they are followed ; the fame which publishes 
 them ; the distinctions attached to them ; all these only recall your 
 past days to you, as days full, occupied, marked each by some me- 
 morable action, and by events worthy of being for ever preserved to 
 posterity. You even distinguished yourselves, in your own minds, 
 from those indolent characters of your own rank, who have led an 
 obscure, idle, and useless life, and dishonoured their names by that 
 slothful effeminacy which has kept them always groveling in the 
 dust. But, on the bed of death, in that last moment when the 
 world flies off and eternity approaches, your eyes will be opened ; 
 the scene will be changed ; the illusion, which at present magnifies 
 these objects, will be dissipated. You will see things as they really 
 are ; and that which formerly appeared so grand, so illustrious, as 
 it was done only for the sake of the world, of glory, of fortune, will 
 no longer appear of the least importance to you. 
 
 You will no longer find any thing real in your life but what you 
 shall have done for God ; nothing praiseworthy but works of faith 
 and of piety ; nothing great but what will merit eternity ; and a 
 single drop of cold water in the name of Jesus Christ, a single 
 tear shed in his presence, and the slightest mortification suffered 
 for his sake, will all appear more precious, more estimable to you, 
 than all the wonders which the world admires, and which shall 
 perish with it. 
 
 Not that the dying sinner finds only cares and anxieties thrown 
 away in his past life, he finds the remembrance likewise of his 
 pleasures ; but this very remembrance depresses and overwhelms 
 him : pleasures, which have existed only for a moment : he now 
 perceives that he has sacrificed his soul, and his eternal welfare, to 
 a fugitive moment of passion and voluptuousness. Alas ! life had 
 appeared too long to him to be entirely consecrated to God. He 
 was afraid to adopt too early the side of virtue, lest he should be 
 unable to support its duration, its weariness, and its consequences. 
 He looked forward to the years he had still to run as to an im- 
 mense space, through which he must travel under the weight of 
 the cross, and separated from the world in the practice of Christian 
 works. This idea alone had always suspended his good intentions ; 
 and, in order to return to God, he waited the last stage of life as 
 the one in which perseverance is most certain. What a surprise 
 in this last hour, to find that what had to him appeared so long has 
 in reality been butan instant; that his infancy and old age so nearly 
 
 L 2 
 
148 THE DEATH OF A SINNER, AND Sei*. 10. 
 
 touch each other, that they only form, as I may say, one day : and 
 that, from his mother's breast, he has made but one step towards 
 the grave. Nor is this the bitterest pang which he experiences in 
 the remembrance of his pleasures ; they have vanished like a dream; 
 but he, who formerly claimed an honour to himself from their gra- 
 tification, is now covered with confusion and shame at their recol- 
 lection : so many shameful excesses ; such weakness and debau- 
 chery. He, who piqued himself upon reason, elevation of mind, 
 and haughtiness toward man ; O my God ! he then finds himself 
 the weakest, the most despicable of sinners ! Apparently, perhaps, 
 a life of prudence, yet sunk in all the infamy of the senses and the 
 puerility of the passions ! A life of glory in the eyes of men ; but, 
 in the sight of God, the most shameful, the most deserving of 
 contempt and disgrace ! A life which success, perhaps, had con- 
 tinually accompanied ; yet, nevertheless, in private, the most absurd, 
 the most trifling, the most destitute of reflection and wisdom ! 
 
 Pleasures, in a word, which have been the source of all his cha- 
 grins; which have empoisoned every enjoyment of life; which have 
 changed his happiest days into days of madness and lamentation. 
 
 Pleasures for which he has ever paid dear, and of which he has 
 never experienced but the anxieties and the bitterness : such are 
 the foundations of this frivolous happiness. His passions alone 
 have rendered life miserable to him ; and the only moments of tran- 
 quillity he has enjoyed in the whole course of his life, are those in 
 which his heart has been sheltered from their influence. "The days 
 of my pleasures are fled," says the sinner then to himself, but in a 
 disposition of mind very different from that of Job : " Those days 
 which have occasioned all the sorrows of my life, by which my rest 
 has been broken, and the calm stillness of the night changed into the 
 blackest thoughts and uneasinesses : yet, nevertheless, great God ! 
 thou wilt still punish the sorrows and distresses of my unfortunate 
 life ! All the bitterness of my passions is marked against me in 
 the book of thy wrath ; and thou preparest for me, in addition to 
 gratifications which have always been the source of all my miseries, 
 a misery without an end, and boundless." 
 
 Behold what the expiring sinner experiences in the remembrance 
 of the past: crimes which shall endure for ever; the weaknesses of 
 childhood ; the dissipations of youth ; the passions and the dis- 
 orders of a more advanced period : what do I know, perhaps even 
 the shameful excesses of a licentious old age. Ah ! my brethren, 
 whilst in health, we perceive only the surface of our conscience ; we 
 recall only a vague and confused remembrance of our life ; we see 
 only the passions which actually enchain us ; a complete life, spent 
 in the habits of iniquity, appears to us only a single crime : but, on 
 the bed of death, the darkness spread over the conscience of the 
 sinner is dissipated. The more he searches into his heart, the 
 more does he discover new stains; the deeper he enters into that 
 abyss, the more do new monsters of horror present themselves to 
 his sight. He is lost in the chaos, and knows not how to proceed. 
 To enlighten it, an entire new life would be necessary : alas ! and 
 
Ser. 10. THAT OP A RIGHTEOUS CHARACTER. 149 
 
 time flies : scarcely do a few moments now remain to him, and he 
 must precipitate a confession for which the greatest leisure would 
 hardly suffice, and which can precede but an instant the awful judg- 
 ment of the justice of God. Alas ! we often complain, during life, 
 of a treacherous memory, that we forget every thing, that the 
 minister of God is under the necessity of remedying our inattention, 
 and of assisting us to know and to judge of ourselves: but in that 
 last moment the expiring sinner shall require no assistance to recall 
 the remembrance of his crimes : the justice of God, which had de- 
 livered him up during health to all the profundity of his darkness, 
 will then enlighten him in his wrath. 
 
 Every thing around his bed of death awakens the remembrance 
 of some new crime : servants, whom he has scandalized by his ex- 
 ample ; children, whom he has neglected ; a wife, whom he has ren- 
 dered miserable by unlawful attachments ; ministers of the church, 
 whom he has despised ; riches, which he has abused ; the luxury 
 which surrounds him, for which the poor and his creditors have 
 suffered ; the pride and magnificence of his edifices, which have 
 been reared up upon the inheritance of the widow and the orphan, 
 or perhaps by the public calamity : every thing, in a word, the 
 heavens and the earth, says Job, shall reveal his iniquity, and rise 
 up against him ; shall recall to him the frightful history of his pas- 
 sions and of his crimes. 
 
 Thus, the recollection of the past forms one of the most dreadful 
 situations of the expiring sinner ; because in it he finds nothing but 
 labours lost ; pleasures which have been dissipated the moment 
 almost of their existence ; and crimes which shall endure for ever. 
 
 But the scenes around him are not less gloomy to this unfortunate 
 soul : his surprises, his separations, his changes. 
 
 His surprises. He had always flattered himself that the hour of 
 the Lord would not surprise him. Whatever had been said to him 
 on the subject from the pulpit had not prevented him from assuring 
 himself that his conscience should be properly arranged before the 
 arrival of this dreaded moment. He has reached it, however, still 
 loaded with all his crimes, without preparation, without the per- 
 formance of a single exertion toward appeasing the wrath of the 
 Almighty : he has reached it while he least thought of it, and he is 
 now to be judged. 
 
 His surprises. God strikes him in the zenith of his passions, 
 in the time when the thoughts of death were more distant from his 
 mind, when he had attained to places he had long ardently strug- 
 gled for, and when, like the foolish man in the gospel, he had ex- 
 horted his soul to repose itself, and to enjoy in peace the fruit of 
 its labours : it is in this moment that the justice of God surprises 
 him, and he sees life, with every imaginary hope of happiness, 
 blasted for ever. 
 
 His surprises. He is on the brink of the gulf, and the Almighty 
 willeth that no one shall dare to inform him of his situation. His 
 relations flatter him ; his friends leave him undeceived ; they already 
 lament him in secret as dead, yet they continue to speak of his re- 
 
150 THE DEATH OF A SINNER, AND Ser. 10. 
 
 covery : they deceive him, in order that he may deceive himself. 
 The Scriptures must be fulfilled : the sinner must be taken by sur- 
 prise in this last moment. Thou hast said it, O my God ! and thy 
 words are the words of truth. 
 
 His surprises. Abandoned by all the succours of art, delivered 
 up alone to anguish and disease, he still cannot persuade himself 
 that death is near. He flatters himself ; he still hopes : the justice 
 of God, it would seem, leaves him a remnant of reason, for the sole 
 purpose of seducing himself. From his terrors, his astonishment, 
 his inquietudes, we see clearly that he still comprehends not the 
 necessity of death. He torments, he agitates himself, as if by 
 these means he could escape death : but his agitations are only 
 occasioned by regret for the loss of life, and are not the effects of 
 grief for having wickedly spent it. The blinded sinner must be so 
 to the end ; and his death must be similar to his life. 
 
 In a word, his surprises. He sees now that the world has all 
 along deceived him ; that it has continually led him from illusion 
 to illusion, and from hope to hope ; that things have never taken 
 place exactly as he had promised himself; and that he has always 
 been the dupe of his own errors. He cannot comprehend how his 
 blindness could possibly be so constant ; that for such a series of 
 years he could obstinately continue to make such sacrifices for a 
 world, for masters, whose only payment has been vain promises ; 
 and that his entire life has been one continued indifference on the 
 part of the world to him, and an intoxication on his to the world. 
 But what overpowers him is, the impossibility of remedying the 
 mistake; that he can die only once; and that, after having badly 
 run his race, he can no more recall the past, or, by retracing his steps, 
 undertake a new trial. Thou art just, O my God ! and thou wiliest 
 that the sinner should in advance pronounce against himself, in 
 order that he may afterward be judged from his own mouth. 
 
 The surprises of the dying sinner are, therefore, overwhelming ; 
 but the separations which take place in that last moment are not 
 less so for him. The more he was attached to the world, to life, 
 to all its works, the more does he suffer when a separation becomes 
 inevitable. Every tie which must now be broken asunder, becomes 
 a wound which rankles in his heart; every separation becomes a 
 new death to his mind. 
 
 Separation from the riches which, with such constant and labo- 
 rious attention he had accumulated, by means, perhaps, repugnant 
 to salvation ; in the possession of which he obstinately persisted, 
 in spite of all the reproaches of his conscience, and which he had 
 cruelly refused to the necessities of his brethren. They now, how- 
 ever, escape from him ; the mass of earth is dissipated before his 
 eyes ; his love, his regret for their loss, and the guilt of having ac- 
 quired them, are the only remaining proofs that they were once in 
 his possession. 
 
 Separation from the magnificence which surrounds him ; from 
 his proud edifices, in whose stately walls he once fondly believed 
 he had erected an asylum against death; from the vanity and 
 
Ser. 10. THAT OF A RIGHTEOUS CHARACTER. 151 
 
 luxury of his furniture, of all which no portion shall now remain to 
 him but the mournful cloth which is to encircle him in the tomb; 
 from that air of opulence in the midst of which he had always lived. 
 All escape from him ; all abandon him ; and he begins to look upon 
 himself as a stranger in the midst of his palaces ; where, indeed, he 
 ought always to have considered himself as such ; as an unknown, 
 who no longer possesses any thing there ; as an unfortunate wretch, 
 whom they are on the point of stripping before his eyes, and whom 
 they only allow to gratify his sight with the spoils for a little while, 
 in order to augment his regret and his punishment. 
 
 Separation from his honours and offices, which he leaves, per- 
 haps to a rival ; to which he had at last attained, by wading through 
 so many dangers, so many anxieties, so many meannesses, and 
 which he had enjoyed with so much insolence and pride. He is 
 already on the bed of death, stripped of all the marks of his dig- 
 nities, and of all his titles, preserving that of a sinner alone, which 
 he in vain, and now too late, bestows upon himself. Alas ! in this 
 last moment, he would gladly embrace the most servile condition ; 
 he would accept, as a favour, the most obscure, and the most gro- 
 velling station, could but his days be prolonged on these condi- 
 tions ; he envies the lot of his slaves, whom he leaves behind him ; 
 he rapidly advances toward death, and turns back his eyes with re- 
 gret, to take a lingering look of life. 
 
 Separation from his body, for whose gratification he had always 
 lived, and with which, by favouring all its passions, he had con- 
 tracted such lively and intimate ties. He feels that the house of 
 mud is crumbling into dust ; he feels the approaches of death in 
 each of his senses ; he no longer holds to life, but by a carcass 
 which moulders away; by the cruel agonies which his diseases 
 make him feel ; by the excess of his love for it, and which becomes 
 more lively in proportion as he advances toward the moment of 
 separation : from his relations, from his friends, whom he sees 
 surrounding his bed, and whose tears and lamentations wring his 
 heart, and make him cruelly feel the anguish of losing them for ever. 
 
 Separation from the world, where he had enjoyed so many dis- 
 tinguished offices ; where he had established, aggrandized, and ar- 
 ranged himself, as if it had been intended for the place of his eter- 
 nal residence ; from the world, in whose smiles he only lived ; on 
 whose stage he had ever been one of the principal actors ; in whose 
 transactions he had always taken such an active part, and where he 
 had figured with so much splendour, and so many talents, to ren- 
 der himself conspicuous in it. His body now quits it ; but his 
 heart and all his affections are centred in it still : the world dies 
 to him, but he himself, in expiring, dies not to the world. 
 
 Then it is that the Almighty is great in the eyes of the expiring 
 sinner. It is in that terrible moment, that the whole world, 
 crumbling, disappearing from his sight, he sees only God who re- 
 maineth, who filleth all, who alone changeth not, and passeth not 
 away. Formerly he used to complain, with an impious and ironical 
 air, that it is very difficult to feel any fervent emotions for a God 
 
152 THE DEATH OF A SINNER, AND Ser. 10. 
 
 whom we see not, and not to love beings whom we perceive, and 
 who interest all our senses. Ah ! in this last moment, he shall see 
 only God ; the hitherto invisible will now be visible to him ; his 
 senses, already extinguished, will reject all sensual objects ; all shall 
 vanish around him ; and God will take place of those delusions 
 which had misled and deceived him through life. 
 
 Thus every thing changes to this unfortunate wretch ; and these 
 changes, with his separations and surprises, occasion the last bitter- 
 ness of the spectacle of death. 
 
 Change in his credit and in his authority. From the moment 
 that nothing farther is to be expected from his life, the world 
 ceases to reckon upon him ; his pretended friends withdraw ; his 
 dependants already seek, elsewhere, other protectors, and other 
 masters ; even his slaves are employed in securing to themselves, 
 after his death, an establishment which may suit them ; scarcely, 
 does a sufficient number remain around him to catch his last sighs. 
 All abandon him ; all withdraw themselves ; he no longer sees 
 around him that eager crowd of worshippers; it is a successor, per- 
 haps, upon whom they already lavish the same attentions ; whilst 
 he, says Job, alone in the bed of his anguish, is no longer sur- 
 rounded but by the horrors of death ; already enters into that fright- 
 ful solitude which the grave prepares for him, and makes bitter 
 reflections on the inconstancy of the world and the little dependence 
 to be placed on men. 
 
 Change in the public esteem, with which he had been so flat- 
 tered, so intoxicated. Alas ! that world, by which he had been 
 so celebrated, has already forgotten him. The change which his 
 death shall necessarily occasion in the scene, may, perhaps engage 
 for a few days the public attention ; but this short interval over, 
 and he shall be plunged in oblivion ; scarcely will it be remem- 
 bered that he has existed ; every tongue will now be employed in 
 celebrating the abilities of a successor, and exalting his character 
 upon the wrecks of his memory and reputation. He already per- 
 ceives this neglect; that he has only to die, and the blank will 
 speedily be filled up ; that no vestige of him shall even remain in 
 the world ; and that the upright alone, who had seen him sur- 
 rounded with all his pomp, will say to themselves, Where is he 
 now ? Where now are those flatterers, which his greatness at- 
 tracted ? Behold to what the world conducts, and what is to be 
 the portion of those who serve it ! 
 
 Change in his body. That flesh, which he had flattered, idolized 
 so much; that vain beauty, which had attracted so many glances, 
 and corrupted so many hearts, is already but a spectacle of horror, 
 whose sight is hardly supportable ; it is no longer but a carcass, 
 which is approached with dread. That unfortunate creature, who 
 had lighted up so many unjust passions : alas ! his friends, his re- 
 lations, even his slaves avoid him, conceal themselves, dare not 
 approach him but with precaution, and no longer bestow upon 
 him but the common offices of decency, and even these with reluc- 
 tance. He himself shrinks with horror, and shudders at himself. 
 
Ser. 10. THAT OF A RIGHTEOUS CHARACTER. 153 
 
 " If says he to himself, who formerly attracted every look, " I 
 call my servants, and they give me no answer ; my breath is corrupt ; 
 my days are extinct; the grave is ready for me." Job xix. 17. 
 
 Lastly, change in every thing which surrounds him. His eyes 
 seek some resting-place, some object of comfort, and no where do 
 they find but the dreary representations of death. Yet even still, 
 the remembrance of the past, and the view of the present, would 
 be little to the expiring sinner ; could he confine himself to these, 
 he would not be so completely miserable ; but the thoughts of a 
 futurity convulse him with horror and despair. That futurity, that 
 incomprehensible region of darkness, which he now approaches, 
 conscience his only companion ; that futurity, that unknown land 
 from which no traveller has ever returned, where he knows not 
 whom he shall find, nor what awaits him ; that futurity, that fa- 
 thomless abyss, in which his mind is lost and bewildered, and into 
 which he must now plunge, ignorant of his destiny ; that futurity, 
 that tomb, that residence of horror, where he must now occupy his 
 place amongst the ashes and the carcasses of his ancestors ; that fu- 
 turity, that incomprehensible eternity, even the aspect of which he 
 cannot support ; that futurity, in a word, that dreadful judgment 
 to which, before the wrath of God, he must now appear, and ren- 
 der account of a life of which every moment almost has been occu- 
 pied by crimes . Alas ! while he only looked forward to this terri- 
 ble futurity, at a distance, he made an infamous boast of not dreading 
 it ; he continually demanded, with a tone of blasphemy and derision, 
 who is returned from it ? He ridiculed the vulgar apprehensions, 
 and piqued himself upon his undaunted courage. But from the 
 moment that the hand of God is upon him ; from the moment that 
 death approaches near, that the gates of eternity open to receive 
 him, and that he touches upon that terrible futurity, against which 
 he seemed so fortified ; ah ! he then becomes either weak, tremb- 
 ling, dissolved in tears, raising up suppliant hands to heaven, or 
 gloomy, silent, agitated, revolving within himself the most dreadful 
 thoughts, and no longer expecting more consolation or mercy, from 
 his weak tears and lamentations, than from his frenzies and despair. 
 
 Yes, my brethren,- this unfortunate wretch, who had always lulled 
 himself in his excesses ; always flattered himself, that one good 
 moment alone was necessary, one sentiment of compunction before 
 death, to appease the anger of God, despairs then of his clemency. 
 In vain he is told of his eternal mercies : he feels to what a degree 
 he is unworthy of them : in vain the minister of the church endea- 
 vours to soothe his terrors, by opening to him the bosom of his 
 divine mercy; these promises touch him little, because he knows 
 well that the charity of the church, which never despairs of salva- 
 tion for its children, cannot, however, alter the awful justice of the 
 judgments of God. In vain is he promised forgiveness of his 
 crimes ; a secret and terrible voice resounds from the bottom of his 
 heart, and tells him that there is no salvation for the impious, and 
 that he can have no dependence upon promises which are given to 
 his miseries rather than to the truth. In vain is he exhorted to 
 apply to those last remedies which the church offers to the dying : 
 
154 THE DEATH OF A SINNER, AND Sei*. 10. 
 
 he regards them as desperate reliefs, which are hazarded when hope 
 is over, and which are bestowed more for the consolation of the 
 living than from any prospect of utility to those who are departing. 
 Servants of Jesus Christ are called in to support him in this last 
 moment ; whilst all he is enabled to do, is, secretly to envy their 
 lot, and to detest the misery of his own. His friends and relations 
 are assembled round his bed, to receive his last sighs, and he turns 
 away from them his eyes, because he finds still amidst them the 
 remembrance of his crimes. Death, however, approaches ; the mi- 
 nister endeavours to support, by prayer, the spark of life which 
 still remains : u Depart, Christian soul \" says he. He says not to 
 him, Prince, grandee of the world, depart. During his life, the 
 public monuments were hardly sufficient for the number and pride 
 of his titles : in this last moment they give him that title alone 
 which he had received in baptism ; the only one to which he had 
 paid no attention, and the only one which can remain to him for 
 ever. Depart, Christian soul. Alas ! he had lived as if the body 
 had formed his only being and treasure : he had even tried to per- 
 suade himself that his soul was nothing, that man is only a compo- 
 sition of flesh and blood, and that every thing perishes with us : he 
 is now informed that it is his body, which is nothing but a morsel 
 of clay now on the point of crumbling into pieces, and his only 
 immortal being is that soul, that image of Divinity, that intelli- 
 gence, alone capable of knowing and loving its Creator, which now 
 prepares to quit its earthly mansion and appear before his awful 
 tribunal. Depart, Christian soul. You had looked upon the earth 
 as your country ; and it was only a place of pilgrimage from which 
 you must depart. The church thought to have announced glad 
 tidings to you, the expiration of your exilement, in announcing the 
 dissolution of your earthly frame ; alas ! and it only brings you me- 
 lancholy and frightful news, and opens the commencement of your 
 miseries and anguish ! 
 
 Depart, then, Christian soul. Soul, marked with the seal of sal- 
 vation, which you have effaced, redeemed by the blood of Jesus 
 Christ which you have trampled under foot, purified by the grace 
 of regeneration, which you have a thousand times stained, enlight- 
 ened by the lights of the faith, which you have always rejected, 
 loaded with all the tender mercies of heaven, which you have al- 
 ways unworthily profaned depart, Christian soul. Go, and carry 
 before Jesus Christ that august title, which should have been the 
 illustrious mark of thy salvation, but which now becomes the 
 greatest of thy crimes. 
 
 Then, the expiring sinner, no longer finding in the remembrance 
 of the past but regrets which overwhelm him, in all which takes 
 place around him but images which afflict him, in the thoughts of 
 futurity but horrors which appal him, no longer knowing to whom 
 to have recourse, neither to created beings, who now leave him, 
 nor to the world, which vanishes, nor to men, who cannot save 
 him from death, nor to the just God, whom he looks upon as a 
 declared enemy, and from whom he has no indulgence to expect 
 a thousand horrors occupy his thoughts ; he torments, he agitates 
 
Ser. 10. THAT OF A RIGHTEOUS CHARACTER. 155 
 
 himself, in order to fly from death, which grasps him, or at least to 
 fly from himself: from his expiring eyes issue something, I know 
 not what, of dark and gloomy, which expresses the fury of his soul. 
 In his anguish he utters words, interrupted by sobs, which are un- 
 intelligible, and to which they know not whether repentance or de- 
 spair gives birth. He is seized with convulsions which they are 
 ignorant whether to ascribe to the actual dissolution of his body, 
 or to the soul which feels the approach of its Judge. He deeply 
 sighs, and they know not whether the remembrance of his past 
 crimes, or the despair of quitting life, forces from him such groans 
 of anguish. At last, in the midst of these melancholy exertions, 
 his eyes fix, his features change, his countenance becomes dis- 
 figured, his livid lips convulsively separate, his whole frame quivers, 
 and, by this last effort, his unfortunate soul tears itself reluctantly 
 from that body of clay, falls into the hands of its God, and finds 
 itself alone at the foot of the awful tribunal. 
 
 My brethren, in this manner do those expire who forget their 
 Creator during life. Thus shall you yourselves die, if your crimes 
 accompany you to that last moment. 
 
 Every thing will change in your eyes, and you shall not change 
 yourselves : you shall die, and you shall die in sin as you have 
 lived ; and your death will be similar to your life. Prevent this 
 misery, O my brethren ! live the fife of the righteous, and your 
 death, similar to theirs, will be accompanied with joy, peace, and 
 consolation. This is what I mean to explain in the second part of 
 this Discourse. 
 
 Part II. I know, that even to the most upright souls there is 
 always something terrible in death. The judgments of God, whose 
 profound secrecy they dread, the darkness of their own con- 
 science, in which they continually figure to themselves hidden 
 sfains, known to the Almighty alone, the loveliness of their faith, 
 and of their love, which in their own sight magnifies their smallest 
 faults ; in a word, the dissolution itself of their earthly frame, and 
 the natural horror we feel for the grave, all these occasion death 
 to be attended by a natural sensation of dread and repugnance, in- 
 somuch that as St. Paul says, the most upright themselves, who 
 anxiously long to be clothed with that immortality promised to 
 them, would yet willingly attain it without being divested of the 
 mortality which encompasses them. 
 
 It is not less true, however, that in them grace rises superior to 
 that horror of death which springs from nature ; and in that mo- 
 ment, whether they recall the past, consider the present, or look 
 forward to the future, they find in the remembrance of the past the 
 end of their troubles, in the consideration of the present a novelty 
 which moves them with a holy joy, in their views toward the fu- 
 ture the certainty of an eternity which fills them with rapture, in- 
 somuch, that the same situations which are the occasion of despair 
 to the dying sinner, become then an abundant source of consolation 
 to the faithful soul. 
 
156 THE DEATH OF A SINNER, AND Ser. 10. 
 
 I say, whether they recall the past ; and here, my brethren, 
 figure to yourselves a righteous character on the bed of death, 
 who has long, by the practice of Christian works, prepared himself 
 for this last moment, has amassed a treasure of righteousness, 
 that he may not appear empty-handed in the presence of his Judge, 
 and has lived in faith, that he may die in peace, and in all the 
 consolations of hope; figure to yourselves this soul, reaching at 
 last that final hour of which he had never lost sight, and with 
 which he had always connected all the troubles, all the wants, all 
 the self-denials, all the events of his mortal life: I say that nothing is 
 more soothing to him than the remembrance of the past, of his 
 sufferings, of his mortifications, of all the trials which he has un- 
 dergone. Yes, my brethren, it appears frightful to you at present 
 to suffer for God; the smallest exertions upon yourselves, required 
 by religion, seem to overpower you; you consider as unhappy 
 those who bear the yoke of Jesus Christ, and who, to please him, 
 renounce the world and all its charms; but, on the bed of death, 
 the most soothing reflection to a faithful soul is the remembrance 
 of what he has suffered for his God. He then comprehends all 
 the merit of penitence, and how absurd men are to dispute with 
 God a moment of constraint, which will be entitled to the recom- 
 pense of a felicity without end and without measure ; for then 
 his consolation is, that he has sacrificed only the gratifications of a 
 moment, of which there would only remain to him now the con- 
 fusion and the shame, that whatever he might have suffered for 
 the world, would in this moment be lost to him ; on the contrary, 
 that the smallest suffering for God, a tear, a mortification, a vain 
 pleasure sacrificed, an improper desire repressed will never be for- 
 gotten, but shall last as long as God himself. What consoles him 
 is, that of all the human luxuries and enjoyments, alas ! on the bed 
 of death, there remain no more to the sinner who has always indulged 
 in them, than to the righteous man who has always abstained from 
 them; that they are equally past to them both; but that the one 
 shall bear eternally the guilt of having delivered himself up to 
 them, and the other the glory of having known how to vanquish them. 
 
 This is what the past offers to a faithful soul on the bed of 
 death: sufferings, afflictions, which have endured but a little while, 
 and are now to be eternally rewarded, the time of dangers and 
 temptations past, the attacks made by the world upon his faith 
 at last terminated, the trials in which his innocence had run so 
 many risks, at last disappeared, the occasions in which his virtue 
 had so nearly been shipwrecked, at last, for ever removed, the 
 continual combats which he had to sustain against his passions, at 
 last ended, and every obstacle which flesh and blood had always 
 placed in the way of his piety, for ever annihilated. How sweet it 
 is, when safely arrived in port, to recall the remembrance of past 
 dangers and tempests ! When victorious in the race, how pleasing 
 to retrace, in imagination, our exertions, and to review those parts 
 of the course most distinguished by the toils, the obstacles, and 
 the difficulties which have rendered them celebrated. 
 
Ser. 10. THAT OF a righteous" character. 157 
 
 The righteous man, then, appears to me, like another Moses, 
 expiring on the holy mountain, where the Lord had marked out to 
 him his grave ; " Get thee up into the mountain Abarim, and die," 
 &c., Deut. xxxii. 49; who, before he expired, looking down from 
 that sacred place, and casting his eyes over that extent of country, 
 the nations and kingdoms he had traversed, and now leaves behind 
 him, reviews, in imagination, the numberless dangers he had 
 escaped, his battles with so many conquered nations, the fatigues 
 of the desert, the snares of Midian, the murmurs and calamities 
 of his brethren, the rocks split in pieces, the dangers of Egypt 
 avoided, the waters of the Red Sea got over, hunger, thirst, and 
 weariness struggled against, and touching at last the happy term 
 of so many labours, and viewing from afar that country promised 
 to his father, he sings a song of thanksgiving aud praise to God, 
 dies transported with joy, both at the remembrance of so many 
 dangers avoided, and at the prospect of that place of rest which 
 the Lord shows him from afar, and looks upon the holy mountain, 
 where he is to expire, as the reward of his toils, and the happy 
 term of his course. 
 
 Not that the remembrance of the past, in recalling to the dying 
 righteous soul the trials and dangers of his past life, does not also 
 remind him of his infidelities and wanderings ; but these are errors 
 expiated by the sighs of repentance, wanderings which have fortu- 
 nately been followed by a renewal of fervour and fidelity, wander- 
 ings, which recall to him the mercies of God to his soul, who hath 
 made his crimes the means of his repentance, his passions of his 
 conversion, and his errors of his salvation. The grief for his faults, 
 in his last moment, becomes only a sorrow of consolation and ten- 
 derness ; the tears which this remembrance draws from him still 
 are no longer but the tears of joy and gratitude. 
 
 The former mercies of God to his soul fill him with confidence, 
 and inspire him with a just hope of more ; the past conduct of God, 
 with regard to him, comforts his heart, and seems to answer for 
 what he shall experience in future. He no longer, as in the days 
 of his penitence and mourning, figures to himself the Almighty 
 under the idea of a terrible and severe Judge, whom he had in- 
 sulted, and whom it was necessary to appease ; but as the Father 
 of Mercies, and a God of all consolation, who prepares to receive 
 him into his bosom, and there shelter him from all his afflictions. 
 
 " Awake, righteous soul," says then to him, in secret, his Lord and 
 his God ; " Thou, who hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trem- 
 bling, thou shalt no more drink it again ; the days of thy tribula- 
 tion are past. Shake thyself from the dust, arise, and sit down ; 
 loose thyself from the bands of thy neck. O, captive daughter 
 of Zion ! put on thy strength, put on thy beautiful garments : 
 enter into the everlasting joy of thy Lord, where thou shalt obtain 
 gladness and peace, and sorrow, and mourning, shall flee away f 
 Isaiah li. 17, &c. 
 
 First consolation of the upright soul in the bed of death ; the 
 remembrance of the past. But all which takes place around him ; 
 
158 THE DEATH OF A SINNER, AND Ser. 10. 
 
 the world which flies from him 5 all created beings which disappear; 
 all that phantom of vanity which vanishes ; this change, this 
 novelty, is the source still of a thousand consolations to him. 
 
 We have just seen, that the despair of the dying sinner, in view- 
 ing what passes around him, is occasioned by his surprises, his 
 separations, his changes ; these are precisely the sources of conso- 
 lation to the faithful soul in this last moment. Nothing surprises 
 him ; he is separated from nothing ; in his eyes nothing is changed. 
 
 Nothing surprises him. The hour of the Lord surprises him 
 not : he expected, he longed for it. The thought of this last mo- 
 ment accompanied all his actions, entered into all his projects, 
 regulated all his desires, and animated his whole conduct through 
 life. Every hour, every moment, seemed to him the one which the 
 upright Judge had appointed for that dreadful reckoning, where 
 righteousness itself shall be judged. Thus had he lived, inces- 
 santly preparing his soul for that last hour. Thus he expires, 
 tranquil, consoled, without surprise or dread, in the peace of his 
 Lord ; death never approaching nearer to him than he had always 
 beheld it ; and experiencing no difference between the day of his 
 death and the ordinary ones of his life. 
 
 Besides, what occasions the surprise and the despair of the sin- 
 ner on the bed of death, is to see that the world, in which he had 
 ever placed all his confidence, is nothing, is but a dream, which 
 vanishes and is annihilated. 
 
 But the faithful soul, in this last moment, ah ! he sees the world 
 in the same light he had always viewed it ; as a shadow which 
 flitteth away ; as a vapour which deceives at a distance, but, when 
 approached, has neither reality nor substance. He feels, then, the 
 holy joy of having estimated the world according to its merit; of 
 having judged with propriety ; of never being attached to what 
 must one day slip from him in a moment ; and of having placed 
 his confidence in God alone, who remaineth for ever, eternally to 
 reward those who trust in him. 
 
 How sweet, then, to a faithful soul, to say to himself, I have 
 made the happiest choice ; how fortunate for me that I attached 
 myself only to God, since he alone will endure to me for ever ! My 
 choice was regarded as a folly ; the world laughed it to scorn, and 
 found me whimsical and singular in not conforming myself to its 
 ways ; but now this last moment verifies all. It is death that de- 
 cides on which side are the wise or the foolish, and which of the 
 two has judged aright, the worldly or the faithful. 
 
 Thus does the upright soul, on the bed of death, view the world 
 and all its glory. When the ministers of the church come to con- 
 verse with him of God and the nothingness of all human things, 
 these holy truths, so new to the sinner in that last moment, are 
 subjects familiar to him, objects of which he had never lost sight. 
 These consolatory truths are then his sweetest occupation; he 
 meditates upon, he enjoys them, he draws them from the bottom of 
 his heart, where they had always been cherished, to place them full 
 in his view, and he contemplates them with joy. The minister of 
 
Ser. 10. THAT OP A RIGHTEOUS CHARACTER. 159 
 
 Jesus Christ speaks no new or foreign language to him ; it is the 
 language of his heart : they are the sentiments of his whole life. 
 Nothing soothes him so much, then, as to hear that God spoken 
 of whom he had always loved ; those eternal riches, which he had 
 always coveted ; that happiness of another life, for which he had 
 always sighed ; and the nothingness of that world which he had 
 always despised. All other subjects of conversation become in- 
 sipid to him ; he can listen only to the mercies of the God of his 
 fathers, and he regrets the moments as lost, which must necessarily 
 be devoted to the regulation of an earthly mansion and the succes- 
 sion of his ancestors. Great God ! what knowledge ! what peace ! 
 what delicious transports ! what holy emotions of love, of joy, of 
 confidence, of thanksgiving, then fill the soul of this righteous cha- 
 racter ! His faith is renewed ; his love is invigorated ; his fervour 
 is excited ; his compunction is awakened. The nearer the disso- 
 lution of the earthly man approaches, the more is the new man 
 completed and perfected ! The more his mansion of clay crumbles, 
 the more is his soul purified and exalted ! In proportion as the 
 body falls into ruin, the spirit is disengaged and renewed ; like a 
 pure and brilliant flame, which ascends and shines forth with ad- 
 ditional splendour, in proportion as it disengages itself from the 
 remains of matter which held it down, and as the substance to 
 which it was attached is consumed and dissipated. 
 
 Alas ! all discourses upon God fatigue the sinner on the bed of 
 death : they irritate his evils ; his head suffers by them, and his 
 rest is disturbed. It becomes necessary to manage his weakness, 
 by venturing only a few words at proper periods ; to do it with 
 precaution, lest their length should incommode him ; to choose the 
 moments for speaking to him of the God who is ready to judge 
 him, and whom he has never known. Holy artifices of charity are 
 required, nay deception is even necessary sometimes, to make him 
 bestow a thought upon his salvation. Even the ministers of the 
 church but rarely approach him, because they well know that their 
 presence is only an intrusion. They are excluded as disagreeable 
 and melancholy prophets ; his friends around him carefully turn 
 the conversation from salvation, as conveying the news of death, 
 and as a dismal subject which wearies him ; they endeavour to en- 
 liven his spirits by relating the affairs and vanities of the age, which 
 had engrossed him during life. Great God ! and thou permittest 
 that this unfortunate wretch should bear, even to death, his dislike 
 to truth ; that worldly images shall still occupy him in this last 
 moment ; and that they shall dread to speak to him of his God 
 whom he has always dreaded to serve and to know! 
 
 But let us not lose sight of the faithful soul. Not only he sees 
 nothing on the bed of death which surprises him, but he is like- 
 wise separated from nothing which he laments or regrets. For 
 what can death separate him from to occasion either regret or 
 tears ? From the world ? Alas ! from a world in which he had 
 always lived as an exile ; in which he had found only shameful ex- 
 cesses which grieved his faith; rocks, at which his innocence 
 
160 THE DEATH OF A SINNER, AND Ser. 10. 
 
 trembled ; attentions, which were troublesome to him ; subjections, 
 which, in spite of himself, still divided him between heaven and 
 the earth : we feel little regret for the loss of what we have never 
 loved. From his riches and wealth ? Alas ! his treasure was in 
 heaven : his riches had been the riches of the poor : he loses them 
 not ; he only goes to regain them for ever in the bosom of God. 
 From his titles and his dignities ? Alas ! it is a yoke from which 
 he is delivered. The only title dear to him was the one he had 
 received in baptism, which he now bears to the presence of 
 God, and which constitutes his claim to the eternal promises. 
 From his relations and friends ? Alas ! he knows he only pre- 
 cedes them by a moment; that death cannot separate those 
 whom charity hath joined upon the earth ; and that, soon united 
 together in the bosom of God, they shall again form the church 
 and the same people, and shall enjoy the delights of an immortal 
 society. From his children ? He leaves to them the Lord as a 
 father; his example and his instructions as an inheritance; his 
 good wishes and his blessing as a final consolation. And, like 
 David, he expires in intreating for his son Solomon, not temporal 
 prosperities, but a perfect heart, love of the law, and the fear of 
 the God of his fathers. From his body ? Alas ! from that body 
 which he had always chastised, crucified ; which he considered as 
 his enemy ; which kept him still dependent upon the senses and 
 the flesh; which overwhelmed him under the weight of so many 
 humiliating wants ; from that house of clay which confined him 
 prisoner; which prolonged the days of his banishment and his 
 slavery, and retarded his union with Jesus Christ. Ah ! like St. 
 Paul, he earnestly wishes its dissolution : it is an irksome clothing 
 from which he is delivered ; it is a wall of separation from his God, 
 which is destroyed, and which now leaves him free and qualified to 
 take his flight toward the eternal mountains. Thus death sepa- 
 rates him from nothing, because faith had already separated him 
 from all. 
 
 I do not add, that the changes which take place on the bed of 
 death, so full of despair to the sinner, change nothing in the faith- 
 ful soul. His reason, it is true, decays ; but, for a long time past, 
 he had subjected it to the yoke of faith, and extinguished its vain 
 lights before the light of God and the profundity of his mysteries. 
 His expiring eyes become darkened, and are closed upon all visible 
 objects ; but long ago they had been fixed on the Invisible alone. 
 His tongue is immoveable ; but he had long before planted the 
 guard of circumspection on it, and meditated in silence the mercies 
 of the God of his fathers. All his senses are blunted and lose their 
 natural use ; but for a long time past, he had himself interdicted 
 their influence. He had eyes and saw not; ears, and heard not; 
 taste, and relished only the things of heaven. Nothing is changed, 
 therefore, to this soul on the bed of death. His body falls in 
 pieces; all created beings vanish from his eyes; light retires; all 
 nature returns to nothing; and, in the midst of all these changes, 
 he alone changeth not ; he alone is always the same. 
 
Ser. 10. THAT OF A RIGHTEOUS CHARACTER. 161 
 
 How grand, my brethren, does faith render the righteous on the 
 bed of death ; how worthy of God, of angels, and of men, is the 
 sight of the upright soul in that last moment ! It is then that the 
 faithful heart appears master of the world, and of all the created ; 
 it is then that, participating already in the greatness and the immu- 
 tability of the God to whom he is on the eve of being united, he is 
 elevated above all ; in the world, without any connexion with it ; 
 in a mortal body, without being chained to it ; in the midst of his 
 relations and friends, without seeing or knowing them ; in the 
 midst of the embarrassments and changes which his death opens 
 to his sight, without the smallest interruption to his tranquillity. 
 He is already fixed in the bosom of God, in the midst of the de- 
 struction of all things. Once more my brethren, how grand is it 
 to have lived in the observance of the law of the Lord, and to die 
 in his fear ! With what dignity does not faith then display itself 
 in the righteous soul ! It is the moment of his glory and triumph ; 
 it is the centre at which the whole lustre of his life and of his virtues 
 unite. 
 
 How beautiful to see the righteous man, then, moving with a 
 tranquil and majestic pace toward eternity ! And with reason did 
 the false prophet cry out, when he saw the triumphal march of the 
 Israelites into the Land of Promise, " Let me die the death of the 
 righteous, and let my end be like his." Numb, xxiii. 10. 
 
 And behold, my brethren, what completely fills with joy and 
 consolation the faithful soul on the bed of death : it is the thought 
 of futurity. The sinner, during health, looks forward to a future 
 state with a tranquil eye : but in this last moment, beholding its 
 approach, his tranquillity is changed into shudderings and terror. 
 The upright man, on the contrary, during the days of his mortal 
 life, durst never regard, with a fixed eye, the depth and the extent 
 of God's judgments : he wrought out his salvation with fear and 
 trembling ; he shuddered at the very thought of that dreadful futu- 
 rity, where even the just, if judged without mercy, shall hardly be 
 saved : but, on the bed of death, ah ! the God of peace, who dis- 
 plays himself to him, calms his agitations ; his fears immediately 
 cease, and are changed into a sweet hope. He already pierces, with 
 expiring eyes, through that cloud of mortality which still surrounds 
 him, and sees the throne of glory, and the Son of Man at his Fa- 
 ther's right hand, ready to receive him ; that immortal country, for 
 which he had longed so much, and upon which his mind had always 
 dwelt ; that holy Zion, which the God of his fathers filleth with his 
 glory and his presence ; where he overfloweth the elect with a tor- 
 rent of delights, and maketh them for ever to enjoy the incompre- 
 hensible riches which he hath prepared for those who love him ; 
 that city of the people of God, the residence of the saints, the ha- 
 bitation of the just, and of the prophets, where he shall again find his 
 brethren, with whom charity had united him on the earth, and with 
 whom he will bless eternally the tender mercies of the Lord, and 
 join with them in hallelujahs to his praise. 
 
 Ah ! when also the ministers of the church come to announce to 
 
 M 
 
162 THE DEATH OF A SINNER, &C. Sei\ 10. 
 
 this soul that the hour is come, and that eternity approaches ; when 
 they come to tell him in the name of the church, which sends them, 
 " Depart, Christian soul ; quit at last that earth where you have so 
 long been a stranger and a captive : the time of trial and tribulation 
 is over : behold at last the upright Judge, who comes to strike off 
 the chains of your mortality : return to the bosom of God from 
 whence you came : quit now a world which was unworthy of you : 
 the Almighty hath at last been touched with your tears ; he at last 
 openeth to you the gate of eternity, the gate of the upright : de- 
 part faithful soul ; go and unite thyself to the heavenly church 
 which expects thee : only remember your brethren whom you leave 
 upon the earth still exposed to temptations and to storms: be 
 touched with the melancholy state of the church here below, which 
 has given you birth in Jesus Christ, and which envies your depar- 
 ture : intreat the end of her captivity, and her re-union with her 
 spouse, from whom she is still separated. Those who sleep in the 
 Lord perish not for ever : we only quit you on the earth in order 
 to regain you in a little time with Jesus Christ in the kingdom of 
 the holy : the body, which you are on the point of leaving a prey 
 to worms and to putrefaction, shall soon follow you, immortal and 
 glorious. Not a hair of your head shall perish. There shall re- 
 main in your ashes a seed of immortality, even to the day of reve- 
 lation, when your parched bones shall be vivified, and again appear 
 more resplendent than light : what happiness for you to be at last 
 quit of all the miseries which still afflict us ; to be no longer exposed, 
 like your brethren, to lose that God whom you go to enjoy; to shut 
 your eyes at last on all the scandals which grieve us ; on that va- 
 nity which seduces us ; on those examples which lead us astray ; 
 on those attachments which engross us; and on those troubles 
 which consume us ! What happiness to quit at last a place where 
 every thing tires and every thing sullies us ; where we are a burden 
 to ourselves, and where we only exist in order to be unhappy ; and 
 to go to a residence of peace, of joy, of quiet, where our only occu- 
 pation will be to enjoy the God whom we love !" 
 
 What blessed tidings, then, of joy and immortality to this righte- 
 ous soul ! What blessed arrangement ! With what peace, what 
 confidence, what thanksgivings, does he not accept it ! He raises, 
 like old Simeon, his dying eyes to heaven ; and viewing the Lord 
 who cometh inwardly, says to him, " Break, O my God ! when thou 
 pleasest, these remains of mortality ; these feeble ties which still 
 keep me here : I wait, in peace and in hope, the effects of thine 
 eternal promises." Thus, purified by the expiation of a holy and 
 Christian life, fortified by the last remedies of the church, washed 
 in the blood of the Lamb, supported by the hope of the promises, 
 and ripe for eternity, he shuts his eyes with a holy joy on all sub- 
 lunary creatures : he tranquilly goes to sleep in the Lord, and returns 
 to the bosom of that God from whence he came. 
 
 My brethren, any observation here would be useless. Such is 
 the end of those who have lived in the fear of the Lord : their death 
 is precious before God, like their life. Such is the deplorable end 
 
Ser. 11. on charity. 163 
 
 of those who have neglected him to that last hour : the death of 
 sinners is abominable in the eyes of the Lord equally as their life. If 
 you live in sin, you will die in all the horrors and in all the useless 
 regrets of the sinner, and your death shall be an eternal death. If 
 you live in righteousness, you will die in peace, and in the confi- 
 dence of the just, and your death will be only a passage to a blessed 
 immortality. 
 
 Now, to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, 
 be all honour and glory, now, henceforth, and for evermore. Amen. 
 
 SERMON XL 
 
 ON CHARITY. 
 
 " And Jesus took the loaves, and, when he had given thanks, he distributed to the 
 disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down." John vi. 11. 
 
 It is not without design that our Saviour associates the disciples, 
 in the prodigy of multiplying the loaves, and that he makes use of 
 their ministry in distributing the miraculous food among a people 
 pressed with hunger and want. He might again, no doubt, have 
 made manna to rain upon the desert, and saved his disciples the 
 trouble of so tedious a distribution. 
 
 But might he not, after raising up Lazarus from the dead, have 
 dispensed with their assistance in unloosing him ? Could his al- 
 mighty voice, which had just broken asunder the chains of death, 
 have found any resistance from the feeble bands which the hand 
 of man had formed ? It is because he wished to point out to them, 
 beforehand, the sacred exercise of their ministry ; the part they 
 were afterward to have in the spiritual resurrection of sinners ; and 
 that whatever they should unloose upon the earth should be un- 
 loosed in heaven. 
 
 Again, when there was question of paying tribute to Csesar, he 
 needed not to have recourse to the expedient of Peter's casting his 
 hook into the sea for the purpose of producing a piece of money 
 out of the bowels of a fish : he who, even from stones, was able to 
 raise up children to Abraham, might surely with greater ease have 
 converted them into a precious metal, and thereby furnished the 
 amount of the tribute due to Ceesar. But, in the character of the Head 
 of the Church, he meant to teach his ministers to respect those in 
 authority ; and, by rendering honour and tribute to the powers es- 
 tablished by God, to set an example of submission to other believers. 
 
 Thus, in making use, upon this occasion, of the intervention of 
 the apostles to distribute the loaves to the multitude, his design is, 
 to accustom all his disciples to compassion and liberality toward 
 the unfortunate : he establishes you the ministers of his providence, 
 and multiplies the riches of the earth in your hands, for the sole 
 purpose of being distributed from thence among that multitude of 
 unfortunate fellow-creatures which surrounds you. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 on charity. Ser. 11. 
 
 He, no doubt, might nourish them himself, as he formerly nou- 
 rished Paul and Elijah in the desert ; without your interference he 
 might comfort those creatures which bear his image ; he, whose in- 
 visible hand prepares food even for the young ravens which invoke 
 him in their want; but he wishes to associate you in the merit of 
 his liberality ; he wishes you to be placed between himself and the 
 poor, like refreshing clouds, always ready to shower upon them 
 those fructifying streams which you have only received for their ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 Such is the order of his providence ; it was necessary that means 
 of salvation should be provided for all men : riches would corrupt 
 the heart, if charity were not to expiate their abuse ; indigence 
 would fatigue and weary out virtue, if the succours of compassion 
 were not to soften its bitterness ; the poor facilitate to the rich the 
 pardon of their pleasures ; the rich animate the poor not to lose the 
 merit of their sufferings. 
 
 Apply yourself, then, be whom you may, to all the consequence 
 of this gospel. If you groan under the yoke of poverty, the ten- 
 derness and the care of Jesus Christ toward all the wants of a wan- 
 dering and unprovided people will console you ; if born to opulence, 
 the example of the disciples will now instruct you. You will there 
 see, first, the pretexts which they oppose to the duty of charity 
 confuted: secondly, you will learn what ought to be its rules. That 
 is to say, that in the first part of this Discourse we shall establish 
 this duty against all the vain excuses of avarice ; in the second, we 
 shall instruct you in the manner of fulfilling it against even the de- 
 fects of charity; it is the most natural instruction with which the 
 history of the gospel presents us. 
 
 Part I. It is scarcely a matter of controversy now in the world, 
 whether the law of God makes a precept to us of charity. The gospel 
 is so pointed on this duty; the spirit and the groundwork of reli- 
 gion lead us so naturally to it ; the idea alone which we have of 
 Providence, in the dispensation of temporal things, leaves so little 
 room on that point to opinion or doubt, that, though many are ig- 
 norant of the extent of this obligation, yet there are almost none 
 who do not admit of the foundation and principle. 
 
 Who, indeed, is ignorant that the Lord, whose providence hath 
 regulated all things with an order so admirable and beautiful, and 
 prepared food even for the beasts of the field, would never have 
 left men, created after his own image, a prey to hunger and indi- 
 gence, whilst he would liberally shower upon a small number of 
 happy individuals the blessings of heaven and the fat of the earth, 
 if he had not intended that the abundance of the one should sup- 
 ply the necessities of the other. 
 
 Who is ignorant, that originally every thing belonged in common 
 to all men : that simple nature knew neither property nor portions ; 
 and that at first, she left each of us in possession of the universe : 
 but that, in order to put bounds to avarice, and to avoid trouble 
 and dissensions, the common consent of the people established that 
 
Ser. 11. on charity. 165 
 
 the wisest, the most humane, and the most upright, should likewise 
 be the most opulent ; that, besides the portion of wealth destined 
 to them by nature, they should also be charged with that of the 
 weakest, to be its depositaries, and to defend it against usurpation 
 and violence : consequently, that they were established by nature 
 itself as the guardians of the unfortunate, and that whatever sur- 
 plus they had was only the patrimony of their brethren confided to 
 their care and to their equity? 
 
 Who, lastly, is ignorant that the ties of religion have still more 
 firmly cemented the first bonds of union which nature had formed 
 among men ; that the grace of Jesus Christ, which brought forth 
 the first believers, made of them not only one heart and one soul, 
 but also one family, where the idea of individual property was ex- 
 ploded ; and that the gospel, making it a law to us to love our bre- 
 thren as ourselves, no longer permits us to be ignorant of their 
 wants, or to be insensible to their sorrows? 
 
 But it is with the duty of charity as with all the other duties of 
 the law: in general the obligation is not, even in idea, denied; but 
 does the circumstance of its fulfilment take place ? A pretext is 
 never wanting, either to dispense with it entirely, or at least to be 
 quit for a moiety of the duty. Now, it would appear that the 
 Spirit of God hath meant to point out to us all these pretexts, in 
 the answers which the disciples made to Jesus Christ in order to 
 excuse themselves from assisting the famished multitude which had 
 followed him to the desert. 
 
 In the first place, they remind him that they had scarcely where- 
 withal to supply their own wants ; and that only five loaves of bar- 
 ley and two fishes remained : behold the first pretext, made use of 
 by covetousness, in opposition to the duty of compassion. Scarcely 
 have they sufficient for themselves ; they have a name and a rank 
 to support in the world ; children to establish ; creditors to satisfy ; 
 public charges to support ; a thousand expenses of pure benevo- 
 lence, to which attention must be paid ; now, what is any income, 
 not entirely unlimited, to such endless demands ? In this manner 
 the world continually speaks ; and a world the most brilliant, and 
 the most sumptuous. 
 
 Now, I well know, that the limits of what is called a sufficiency 
 are not the same for all stations ; that they extend in proportion to 
 rank and birth ; that one star, says the apostle, must differ in lus- 
 tre from another ; that, even from the apostolic ages, men were 
 seen in the assemblies of believers, clothed in robes of distinction, 
 with rings of gold, while others, of a more obscure station, were 
 forced to content themselves with the apparel necessary to cover 
 their nakedness ; that, consequently, religion does not confound 
 stations ; and that, if it forbid those who dwell in the palaces of 
 kings to be effeminate in their manners, and indecently luxurious 
 in their dress, it doth not at the same time prescribe to them the 
 poverty and the simplicity of those who dwell in cottages, or of those 
 who form the lower ranks of the people : I know it. 
 
 But, my brethren, it is an incontestable truth, that, whatever 
 
166 on charity. Ser. 11. 
 
 surplus you may have, belongs not to you; that it is the portion of the 
 poor ; and that you are entitled to consider as your own, only that 
 proportion of your revenues which is necessary to support that 
 station in which Providence hath placed you. I ask, then, is it the 
 gospel or covetousness, which must regulate that sufficiency? 
 Would you dare to pretend, that all those vanities of which custom 
 has now made a law, are to be held, in the sight of God, as expenses 
 inseparable from your condition ? That every thing which flatters, 
 and is agreeable to you, which nourishes your pride, gratifies your 
 caprices, and corrupts your heart, is for that reason necessary to 
 you ? That all which you sacrifice to the fortune of a child, in order 
 to raise him above his ancestors ; all which you risk in gaming ; 
 that luxury, which either suits not your birth, or is an abuse of it : 
 would you dare to pretend, that all these have incontestable claims 
 on your revenues which are to be preferred to those of charity ? 
 Lastly, would you dare to pretend, that, because your father, per- 
 haps obscure, and of the lowest rank, may have left to you all his 
 wealth, and perhaps his crimes, you are entitled to forget your fa- 
 mily and the house of your father, in order to mingle with the 
 highest ranks, and to support the same eclat, because you are 
 enabled to support the same expense ? 
 
 If this be the case, my brethren, if you consider as a surplus 
 only, that which may escape from your pleasures, from your extra- 
 vagancies, and from your caprices, you have only to be voluptuous, 
 capricious, dissolute, and prodigal, in order to be wholly dispensed 
 from the duty of charity. The more passions you shall have to sa- 
 tisfy, the more will your obligation to charity diminish ! and your 
 excesses, which the Lord hath commanded you to expiate by acts 
 of compassion, will themselves become a privilege to dispense your- 
 selves from them. There must necessarily, therefore, be some 
 rule here to observe, and some limits to appoint ourselves, different 
 from those of avarice ; and behold it, my brethren, the rule of 
 faith. Whatever tends to nourish only the life of the senses, to 
 flatter the passions, to countenance the vain pomp and abuses of 
 the world, is superfluous to a Christian : these are what you ought 
 to retrench, and to set apart; these are the funds and the heritage 
 of the poor ; you are only their depositaries, and you cannot en- 
 croach upon them without usurpation and injustice. The gospel 
 reduces to very little the sufficiency of a Christian however exalted 
 in the world ; religion retrenches much from the expenses ; and, 
 did we live all according to the rules of faith, our wants, which 
 would no longer be multiplied by our passions, would still be 
 fewer; the greatest part of our wealth would be found entirely use- 
 less; and, as in the first age of faith, indigence would no longer 
 grieve the church, nor be seen among believers. Our expenses 
 continually increase, because our passions are everyday multiplied; 
 the opulence of our fathers is no longer to us but an uncomfortable 
 poverty ; and our great riches can no longer suffice, because nothing 
 can satisfy those who refuse themselves nothing. 
 
 And, in order to give this truth all the extent which the subject 
 
Ser. 11. ON CHARITY. 167 
 
 in question demands, I ask you, secondly, do the elevation and 
 abundance in which you are born dispense you from simplicity, 
 frugality, modesty, and holy restraint ? By being born great, you 
 are not the less Christians. In vain, like those Israelites in the 
 desert, have you amassed more manna than your brethren ; you 
 cannot preserve for your use more than the measure prescribed by 
 the law* Were it not so, our Saviour would have forbidden pomp, 
 luxury, and worldly pleasures but to the poor and unfortunate, 
 those to whom the misery of their condition renders needless that 
 defence. 
 
 Now, this grand truth admitted, if, according to the rule of faith, 
 it be not permitted to you to employ your riches in the gratifica- 
 tion of your appetites; if the rich be obliged to bear the cross, con- 
 tinually to renounce themselves, and to look for no consolation in 
 this world, equally as the poor ; what can the design of Providence 
 have been in pouring upon you all the riches of the earth, and 
 w r hat advantage could even accrue to you from them ? Could it be 
 in order to administer to your irregular desires ? But you are no 
 longer bound to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. Could it 
 be in order to support the pride of rank and birth? But whatever 
 you give to vanity, you cut off from charity. Could it be for the 
 purpose of hoarding up for your posterity? But your treasure 
 should be only in heaven. Could it be in order that you might 
 pass your life more agreeably ? But if you weep not, if you suffer 
 not, if you combat not, you are lost. Could it be in order to at- 
 tach you more strongly to the world? But the Christian is not of 
 this world ; he is citizen of the age to come. Could it be for the 
 purpose of aggrandizing your possessions and your inheritances ? 
 But you would never aggrandize but the place of your exile ; and 
 the gain of the whole world would be vain, if you thereby lost your 
 soul. Could it be that your table might be loaded with the most 
 exquisite dishes ? But you well know, that the gospel forbids a 
 life of sensuality and voluptuousness, equally to the rich as to the 
 indigent. Review all the advantages, which, according to the 
 world, you can reap from your prosperity, and you will find almost 
 the whole of them forbidden by the law of God. 
 
 It has not, therefore, been his design, that they should be merely 
 for your own purposes, when he multiplied in your hands the 
 riches of the earth. It is not for yourself that you are born to 
 grandeur; it is not for yourself, as Mordecai formerly said to the 
 pious Esther, that the Lord hath exalted you to this point of pros- 
 perity and grandeur; it is for the sake of his afflicted people; it is 
 to be the protector of the unfortunate. If you fulfil not the inten- 
 tions of God, with regard to you, continued that wise Israelite, he 
 will employ some other, who shall more faithfully serve him ; he 
 will transfer to them that crown which was intended for you ; he 
 will elsewhere provide the enlargement and deliverance of his af- 
 flicted people ; for he will not permit them to perish; but you, and 
 your father's house shall perish. In the designs of the Almighty, 
 you therefore are but the ministers of his providence toward those 
 
168 on charity. Ser. 1 1 . 
 
 who suffer ; your great riches are only sacred deposits, which his 
 goodness hath entrusted to your care, for security against usurpa- 
 tion and violence, and in order to be more safely preserved for the 
 widow and the orphan; your abundance, in the order of his wis- 
 dom, is destined only to supply their necessities; your authority, 
 only to protect them ; your dignities only to avenge their inter- 
 ests ; your rank only to console them by your good offices : what- 
 soever you be, you are it only for them ; your elevation would no 
 longer be the work of God, and he would have cursed you, in be- 
 stowing on you all the riches of the earth, had he given them to you 
 for any other use. 
 
 Ah ! allege,, then, no more to us, as an excuse for your hard- 
 heartedness toward your brethren, wants which are condemned 
 by the law of God ; rather justify his providence toward all who 
 suffer; by entering into his order, let them know, that there is a 
 God for them as well as for you ; and make them bless the adorable 
 designs of his wisdom, in the dispensation of earthly things, which 
 hath supplied them, through your abundance, with such resources 
 of consolation. 
 
 But, besides, what can the small contributions required from you 
 retrench from those wants, the urgency of which you tell us so 
 much ? The Lord exacteth not from you any part of your posses- 
 sions and heritages, though they belong wholly to him, and he hath 
 a right to despoil you of them. He leaveth you tranquil posses- 
 sors of those lands, of those palaces, which distinguish you and 
 your people, and with which the piety of your ancestors formerly 
 enriched our temples. He doth not command you, like the young 
 man in the gospel, to renounce all, to distribute your whole wealth 
 among the poor, and to follow him : he maketh it not a law to you, 
 as formerly to the first believers, to bring all your riches to the 
 feet of your pastors: he doth not strike you with anathema, as 
 formerly Annanias and Sapphira, for daring to retain only a por- 
 tion of that wealth which they received from their ancestors; 
 you, who only owe the aggrandizement of your fortunes perhaps to 
 public calamities, or other shameful means of acquirement, he con- 
 senteth that, as the prophet saith, you shall call the land by your 
 name, and that you transmit to your posterity those possessions 
 which you have inherited from your ancestors; he wisheth that 
 you lay apart only a portion for the unfortunate, whom he leaveth 
 in indigence : he wisheth that, while in the luxury and splendour 
 of your apparel you bear the nourishment of a whole people of un- 
 fortunate fellow-creatures, you spare wherewith to cover the na- 
 kedness of his servants who languish in poverty, and know not 
 where to repose their head; he wisheth that, from those tables of 
 voluptuousness, where your great riches are scarcely sufficient to 
 supply your sensuality and the profusions of an extravagant delicacy, 
 you drop at least a portion for the relief of the Lazaruses pressed 
 with hunger and want: he wisheth that, while paintings of the 
 most absurd and the most boundless price are seen to cover the 
 walls of your palaces, your revenues may suffice to honour the liv- 
 
Ser. 11. on charity. 169 
 
 ing images of your God : he wisheth, in a word, that while nothing 
 is spared toward the gratification of an inordinate passion for 
 gaming, and every thing is on the verge of being for ever swallowed 
 up in that gulf, you come not to calculate your expenses, to mea- 
 sure your ability, to allege to us the mediocrity of your fortune and 
 the embarrassment of your affairs, when there is question of con- 
 soling an afflicted Christian. He wisheth it; and with reason doth 
 he wish it. What ! shall you be rich for evil, and poor for good ! 
 your revenues be amply sufficient to effect your destruction, and 
 not suffice to save your soul, and to purchase heaven ! and, because 
 you carry self-love to the extreme, that every barbarity of heart 
 should be permitted you toward your unfortunate brethren ? 
 
 But whence comes it that, in this single circumstance, you wish 
 to lower the opinion that the world has of your riches ? On every 
 other occasion you wish to be thought powerful ; you give your- 
 selves out as such ; you even frequently conceal, under appearances 
 of the greatest splendour, affairs already ruined, merely to support 
 the vain reputation of wealth. This vanity, then, does not aban- 
 don you but when you are put in remembrance of the duty of 
 compassion. Not satisfied then with confessing the mediocrity of 
 your fortune, you exaggerate it, and sordidness triumphs in your 
 heart, not only over truth, but even over vanity. Ah ! the Lord 
 formerly reproached the angel of the church of Laodicea, " Be- 
 cause thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods, and have 
 need of nothing, and knowest not that in my sight thou art wretch- 
 ed, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." But at pre- 
 sent he ought, with regard to you, to change that reproach and to 
 say, " O ! you complain that you are poor and destitute of every 
 thing, and you will not see that you are rich and loaded with 
 wealth ; and that in times when almost all around you suffer, you 
 alone want for nothing in my sight." 
 
 This is the second pretext made use of in opposition to the duty 
 of charity the general poverty. Thus the disciples reply, in the 
 second place, to our Saviour, as an excuse for not assisting the fa- 
 mishing multitude that the place is desert and barren, that it is 
 now late, and that he ought to send away the people that they 
 might go to the country round about, and into the villages, and 
 buy themselves bread, for they had nothing to eat. A fresh pre- 
 text they make use of to dispense themselves from compassion 
 the misery of the times, the sterility and irregularity of the seasons. 
 
 But first, might not our Saviour have answered to the disciples, 
 as a holy father says, It is because the place is barren and desert, 
 and that this people knows not where to find food to allay their 
 hunger, that they should not be sent away fasting, lest their 
 strength fail them by the way. And, behold, my brethren, what I 
 might also reply to you the times are bad, the seasons are un- 
 favourable. Ah! for that very reason you ought to enter with 
 a more feeling concern, with a more lively and tender anxiety, into 
 the wants of your fellow-creatures. If the place be desert and 
 barren even for you, what must it be for so many unfortunate 
 
170 on charity. Ser. 11. 
 
 people ! If you, with all your resources, feel so much the misery 
 of the times, what must they not suffer, those who are destitute of 
 every comfort ! If the plagues of Egypt obtrude even into the 
 palaces of the great, and of Pharaoh, what must be the desolation 
 in the hut of the poor and of the labourer ! If the princes of 
 Israel, afflicted in Samaria, no longer find consolation in their 
 palaces, to what dreadful extremities must the common people 
 not be reduced ! Reduced, alas ! perhaps like that unfortunate 
 mother, not to nourish herself with the blood of her child, but to 
 make her innocence and her soul the melancholy price of her 
 necessity. 
 
 But, besides, these evils with which we are afflicted, and of which 
 you so loudly complain, are the punishment of your hardness to- 
 ward the poor : God avengeth upon your possessions the iniqui- 
 tous use to which you apply them : it is the cries and the groan- 
 ings of the unfortunate, whom you abandon, which draw down the 
 vengeance of Heaven upon your lands and territories. It is in these 
 times, then, of public calamity, that you ought to hasten to appease 
 the anger of God by the abundance of your charities : it is then 
 that, more than ever, you should interest the poor in your behalf. 
 Alas ! you bethink yourselves of addressing your general supplica- 
 tions to the Almighty, through these to obtain more favourable sea- 
 sons, the cessation of public calamities, and the return of peace 
 and abundance ; but it is not there alone that your vows and your 
 prayers ought to be carried. You can never expect that the Al- 
 mighty will attend to your distresses while you remain callous to 
 those of your fellow-creatures. You have here on the earth the 
 masters of the winds and of the seasons : address yourselves to 
 the poor and the afflicted ; it is they who have, as I may say, the 
 keys of heaven ; it is their prayers which regulate the times and 
 the seasons, which bring back to us days of peace or of misery, 
 which arrest or attract the blessings of heaven : for abundance is 
 given to the earth only for their consolation, and it is only on their 
 account that the Almighty punisheth or is bountiful to you. 
 
 But, completely to confute you, my brethren, you who so strongly 
 allege to us the evil of the times, does the pretended rigour of these 
 times retrench any thing from your pleasures ? What do your pas- 
 sions suffer from the public calamities ? If the misfortune of the 
 times oblige you to retrench from your expenses, begin with those 
 of which religion condemns the use ; regulate your tables, your 
 apparel, your amusements, your followers, and your edifices, ac- 
 cording to the gospel ; let your retrenchings in charity at least only 
 follow the others. Lessen your crimes before you begin to diminish 
 from your duties. When the Almighty strikes with sterility 
 the kingdoms of the earth, it is his intention to deprive the great 
 and the powerful of all occasions of debauchery and excess : enter, 
 then, into the order of his justice and his wisdom : consider your- 
 selves as public criminals, whom the Lord chastiseth by public 
 punishments. Say to him, like David, when he beheld the hand 
 of the Lord weighing down his people, " Lo, I have sinned, and 
 
Ser. 11. ON CHARITY. 171 
 
 have done wickedly ; but these sheep, what have they done ? Let 
 thine hand, I pray thee, be against me and against my father's house/' 
 
 Behold your model. By terminating your disorders, terminate 
 the cause of the public evils ; in the persons of the poor, offer up 
 to God the retrenchment of your pleasures and of your profusions, 
 as the only righteous and acceptable sacrifice which is capable of 
 disarming his anger ; and seeing these scourges fall upon the earth 
 only in punishment of the abuses which you have made of your 
 abundance, bear you likewise, in lessening these abuses, their 
 anguish and bitterness. But that the public misfortunes should be 
 perceivable neither in the splendour and pride of your equipages, 
 nor in the sensuality of your repasts, nor in the magnificence of 
 your palaces, nor in your rage for gaming and every criminal plea- 
 sure, but solely in your inhumanity toward the poor ; that every 
 thing abroad, the theatres, the profane assemblies of every descrip- 
 tion, the public festivals, should continue with the same vigour and 
 animation, while charity alone shall be chilled ; that luxury should 
 every day increase, while compassion alone shall diminish; that 
 the world and Satan should lose nothing through the misery of 
 the times, while Jesus Christ alone shall suffer in his afflicted 
 members; that the rich, sheltered in their opulence, should see 
 only from afar the anger of Heaven, while the poor and the inno- 
 cent shall become its melancholy victims : great God ! thou wouldst 
 then overwhelm only the unfortunate in sending these scourges 
 upon the earth ! Thy sole intention then should be to complete 
 the destruction of those miserable wretches, upon whom thy hand 
 was already so heavy in bringing them forth to penury and want ! 
 The powerful of Egypt should alone be exempted by the extermi- 
 nating angel, while thy whole wrath would fall upon the afflicted 
 Israelite, upon his poor and unprovided roof, and even marked 
 with the blood of the Lamb ! Yes, my brethren, the public ca- 
 lamities are destined to punish only the rich and powerful, and 
 the rich and the powerful are those who alone suffer not : on 
 the contrary, the public evils, in multiplying the unfortunate, fur- 
 nish an additional pretext toward dispensing themselves from the 
 duty of compassion. 
 
 Last excuse of the disciples, founded on the great number of 
 the people who had followed our Saviour into the desert : These 
 people are so numerous, said they, that two hundred pennyworth 
 of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one may take a little. 
 Last pretext which they oppose to the duty of charity the multi- 
 tude of the poor. Yes, my brethren, that which ought to excite 
 and to animate charity, extinguishes it : the multitude of the un- 
 fortunate hardens you to their wants : the more the duty increases, 
 the more do you think yourselves dispensed from its practice, and 
 you become cruel by having too many occasions of being charitable. 
 
 But, in the first place, whence comes, I pray you, this multitude 
 of poor, of which you so loudly complain ? I know that the mis- 
 fortune of the times may increase their number : but wars, pesti- 
 lences, and irregularity of seasons, all of which we at present ex- 
 
172 ox charity. Ser. 11. 
 
 perience, have happened in all ages ; the calamities we behold are 
 not unexampled ; our forefathers have witnessed them, and even 
 much more melancholy and dreadful : civil dissensions, the father 
 armed against the child, the brother against brother, countries 
 ravaged and laid waste by their own inhabitants, the kingdom a 
 prey to foreign enemies, no person in safety under his own roof: 
 we see not these miseries ; but have they seen what we witness so 
 many public and concealed miseries, so many families worn out, so 
 many citizens, formerly distinguished, now low in the dust, and 
 confounded with the meanest of the people ? Arts become almost 
 useless ? The image of hunger and death spread over the cities 
 and over the fields ? What shall I say ? so many hidden iniqui- 
 ties brought every day to light, the dreadful consequences of des- 
 pair and horrible necessity ? Whence comes this, my brethren ? 
 Is it not from a luxury unknown to our fathers, and which engluts 
 every thing? From your expenses which know no bounds and 
 which necessarily drag along with them the extinction of charity ? 
 
 Ah ! was the primitive church not persecuted, desolated, and 
 afflicted ? Do the calamities of our age bear any comparison with 
 the horrors of those times ? Proscription of property, exilement 
 and imprisonment were then daily ; the most burdensome charges 
 of the state fell upon those who were suspected of Christianity: in 
 a word, so many calamities were never beheld ; and, nevertheless, 
 there was no poor among them, says St. Luke, nor any that lacked. 
 Ah ! it is, because riches of simplicity sprung up, even from their 
 poverty itself, according to the expression of the apostle ; it is, 
 because they gave according to their means, and even beyond them; 
 it is, because the most distant provinces, through the care of the 
 apostolic ministers, flowed streams of charity, for the consolation 
 of their afflicted brethren in Jerusalem, more exposed than the rest 
 to the rage and hatred of the synagogue. 
 
 But more than all that ; it is, because the most powerful of the 
 primitive believers were adorned with modesty ; and that our great 
 riches are now scarcely sufficient to support that monstrous luxury, 
 of which custom has made a law to us ; it is, that their festivals 
 were repasts of sobriety and charity ; and that the holy abstinence 
 itself, which we celebrated, cannot moderate among us the profu- 
 sions and the excesses of the table, and of feasts ; it is, that, having 
 no fixed city here below, they did not exhaust themselves in form- 
 ing brilliant establishments, in order to render their names illus- 
 trious, to exalt their posterity, and to ennoble their own obscurity 
 and meanness ; they thought only of securing to themselves a better 
 establishment in the celestial country ; and that at present no one 
 is contented with his station ; every one wishes to mount higher 
 than his ancestors : and that their patrimony is only employed in 
 buying titles and dignities, which may obliterate their name and 
 the meanness of their origin : in a word, it is because the frugality 
 of these first believers constituted the whole wealth of their afflicted 
 brethren, and that at present our profusions occasion all their 
 poverty and want. It is our excesses, then, my brethren, and our 
 
Ser. 11. ON CHARITY. 173 
 
 hardness of heart toward them, which multiply the number of the 
 unfortunate : excuse no more then, on that head, the failing of your 
 charities ; that would be making your guilt itself your excuse. Ah ! 
 you complain that the poor overburden you ; but they would have 
 reason in retorting the charge one day against you : do not then 
 accuse them for your insensibility : and reproach them not with 
 that, which they undoubtedly shall one day reproach to you before 
 the tribunal of Jesus Christ. 
 
 If each of you were, according to the advice of the apostle, to 
 appropriate a certain portion of your wealth toward the subsistence 
 of the poor ; if, in the computation of your expenses and of your 
 revenues, this article were to be always regarded as the most sa- 
 cred and the most inviolable one, then should we quickly see the 
 number of the afflicted to diminish : we should soon see renewed 
 in the church that peace, that happiness, and that cheerful equality 
 which reigned among the first Christians : we should no longer 
 behold with sorrow that monstrous disproportion, which, elevating 
 the one, places him on the pinnacle of prosperity and opulence, 
 while the other crawls on the ground, and groans in the gulf of 
 poverty and affliction: no longer should there be any unhappy ex- 
 cept the impious among us; no secret miseries except those which 
 sin operates in the soul ; no tears except those of penitence ; no 
 sighs but for heaven ; no poor, but those blessed disciples of the 
 gospel, who renounce all to follow their master. Our cities would 
 be the abode of innocence and compassion ; religion, a commerce 
 of charity ; the earth the image of heaven, where, in different de- 
 grees of glory, each is equally happy ; and the enemies of faith 
 would again, as formerly, be forced to render glory to God, and to 
 confess that there is something of divine in a religion which is ca- 
 pable of uniting men together in a manner so new. 
 
 But, in what the error here consists, is, that, in the practice, no- 
 body considers charity as one of the most essential obligations of 
 Christianity ; consequently, they have no regulation on that point ; 
 if some bounty be bestowed, it is always arbitrary ; and, however 
 small it may be, they are equally satisfied with themselves, as if 
 they had even gone beyond their duty. 
 
 Besides, when you pretend to excuse the scantiness of your cha- 
 rities, by saying that the number of the poor is endless ; what do 
 you believe to say ? You say that your obligations, with respect 
 to them, are become only more indispensable ; that your compas- 
 sion ought to increase in proportion as their wants increase ; and 
 that you contract new debts whenever any increase of the unfortu- 
 nate takes place on the earth. It is then, my brethren, it is during 
 these public calamities that you ought to retrench even from 
 expenses which at any other period might be permitted, and 
 which might even be proper ; it is then that you ought to consider 
 yourselves but as the principal poor, and to take as a charity what- 
 ever you take for yourselves ; it is then that you are no longer 
 either grandee, man in office, distinguished citizen, or woman of 
 illustrious birth ; you are simply believer, member of Jesus Christ, 
 brother of every afflicted Christian. 
 
174 ON CHARITY. Sei*. 11. 
 
 And surely say, while that cities and provinces are struck with 
 every calamity ; that men, created after the image of God, and re- 
 deemed with his whole blood, browse like the animal, and through 
 their necessity go to search in the fields a food which nature has 
 not intended for man, and which to them becomes a food of death ; 
 would you have the resolution to be the only one exempted from 
 the general evil ? While the face of the whole kingdom is changed, 
 and that cries and lamentations alone are heard around your su- 
 perb dwelling ; would you preserve, within, the same appearance 
 of happiness, pomp, tranquillity, and opulence? And where, then, 
 would be humanity, reason, religion ? In a pagan republic,* you 
 would be held as a bad citizen ; in a society of sages and worldly, 
 as a soul, vile, sordid, without nobility, without generosity, and 
 without elevation ; and in the church of Jesus Christ, in what light, 
 think you, can you be held ? Oh ! as a monster, unworthy of the 
 name of Christian which you bear, of that faith in which you 
 glorify yourself, of the sacrament which you approach, and even of 
 entry into our temples where you come, seeing all these are the 
 sacred symbols of that union which ought to exist among believers. 
 
 Nevertheless, the hand of the Lord is extended over our people 
 in the cities and in the provinces ; you know it, and you lament it : 
 Heaven is deaf to the cries of this afflicted kingdom ; wretched- 
 ness, poverty, desolation, and death, walk every where before us. 
 Now, do any of those excesses of charity, become at present a law 
 of prudence and justice, escape you ? Do you take upon yourselves 
 any part of the calamities of your brethren ? What shall I say ? 
 Do you not perhaps take advantage of the public misery ? Do 
 you not perhaps turn the general poverty into a barbarous profit ? 
 Do you not perhaps complete the stripping of the unfortunate in 
 affecting to hold out to them an assisting hand ? And are you 
 acquainted with the inhuman art of deriving individual profit even 
 from the tears and the necessities of your brethren ? Bowels of 
 iron ! when you shall be filled, you shall burst asunder ; your 
 felicity itself will constitute your punishment, and the Lord will 
 shower down upon you his war and his wrath. 
 
 My brethren, how dreadful shall be the presence of the poor 
 before the tribunal of Jesus Christ to the greatest part of the rich 
 in this world ! How powerful shall be these accusers ! And how 
 little shall remain for you to say, when they shall reproach to you 
 the scantiness of the succour which was required to soften and to 
 relieve their wants ; that a single day cut off from your profusions, 
 would have sufficed to remedy the indigence of one of their years ; 
 that it was their own property which you withheld, since whatever 
 you had beyond a sufficiency belonged to them ; that consequently 
 you have not only been cruel, but also unjust in refusing it to 
 them ; but that, after all, your hard-heartedness has served only to 
 exercise their patience and to render them more worthy of immor- 
 tality, while you, for ever deprived of those riches which you were 
 unwilling to lodge in safety in the bosom of the poor, shall receive 
 
 * " This Discourse was pronounced in 1709, when France was almost desolated hy 
 war, pestilence, and famine." 
 
Ser. 11. ON CHARITY. 1/5 
 
 for your portion only the curse prepared for those who shall have 
 seen Jesus Christ suffering hunger, thirsty and nakedness in his 
 members, and shall not have relieved him. Such is the illusion 
 of the pretexts employed to dispense themselves from the duty of 
 charity : let us now determine the rules to be observed in fulfilling 
 it ; and, after having defended this obligation against all the vain 
 excuses of avarice, let us endeavour to save it from even the defects 
 of charity. 
 
 Part II. Not to sound the trumpet in order to attract the 
 public attention in the compassionate offices which we render to 
 our brethren ; to observe an order even of justice in charity, and 
 not to prefer the wants of strangers to those with whom we are con- 
 nected ; to appear feeling for the unfortunate, and to know how to 
 soothe the afflicted by our tenderness and affability, as well as by our 
 bounty ; in a word, to find out, by our vigilance and attention, the 
 secret of their shame ; behold the rules which the present example 
 of our Saviour prescribes to us in the practice of compassion. 
 
 First. He went up into a desert and hidden place, says the gos- 
 pel ; he ascended a mountain, where he seated himself with his 
 disciples. His design according to the holy interpreters, was to 
 conceal from the eyes of the neighbouring villages the miracle of 
 multiplying the loaves, and to have no witnesses of his compassion 
 except those who were to reap the fruits of it. First instruction, 
 and first rule ; the secrecy of charity. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, how many fruits of compassion are every day 
 blasted in the sight of God, by the scorching wind of pride and of 
 vain ostentation ! How many charities lost for eternity ! How 
 many treasures, which were believed to have been safely lodged in 
 the bosom of the poor, and which shall one day appear corrupted 
 with vermin, and consumed with rust ! 
 
 In truth, those gross and bare faced hypocrites are rare which 
 openly vaunt to the world the merit of their pious exertions : 
 pride is more cunning, and it never altogether unmasks itself : but, 
 how diminutive is the number of those who, moved with the true 
 zeal of charity, like our Saviour, seek out solitary and private 
 places to bestow, and, at the same time, to conceal their holy gifts ! 
 We now see only that ostentatious zeal, which nothing but neces- 
 sities of eclat can interest, and which piously wishes to make the 
 public acquainted with every gift : they will sometimes it is true, 
 adopt measures to conceal them, but they are not sorry when an 
 indiscretion betrays them; they will not perhaps court public 
 attention, but they are delighted when the public attention sur- 
 prises them, and they almost consider as lost any liberality which 
 remains concealed. 
 
 Alas ! our temples and our altars, are they not every where 
 marked with the gifts and with the names of their benefactors ; 
 that is to say, are they not the public monuments of our fore- 
 fathers and of our own vanity? If the invisible eye of the 
 heavenly Father alone was meant to have witnessed them, to what 
 
176 on charity. Ser. 11. 
 
 purpose all that vain ostentation ? Are you afraid that the Lord 
 forgets your offerings ? If you wish only to please him, why ex- 
 pose your gifts to any other eye ? Why these titles and these in- 
 scriptions which immortalize, on sacred walls, your gifts and your 
 pride ? Was it not sufficient that they were written, even by the 
 hand of God, in the book of life ? Why engrave on a perishable 
 marble the merit of a deed which charity would have rendered 
 immortal ? 
 
 Solomon, after having completed the most superb and the most 
 magnificent temple of which the earth could ever boast, engraved 
 the awful name of the Lord alone upon it, without presuming to 
 mingle any memorial of the grandeur of his race with those of the 
 eternal majesty of the King of kings. We give an appellation of 
 piety to this custom ; it is thought that these public monu- 
 ments excite the liberality of believers. But the Lord, hath he 
 charged your vanity with the care of attracting gifts to his altars ? 
 And hath he permitted you to depart from modesty, in order to 
 make your brethren more charitable ? Alas ! the most powerful 
 among the primitive believers, carried humbly as the most obscure 
 their patrimony to the feet of the apostles : they beheld with a 
 holy joy their names and their wealth confounded among those of 
 their brethren who had less than they to offer : they were not dis- 
 tinguished in the assembly of the faithful in proportion to their 
 gifts : honours and precedency were not yet the price of gifts and 
 offerings, and they knew better than to exchange the eternal recom- 
 pense which they awaited from the Lord for any frivolous glory 
 they could receive from men ; and now the church has not privi- 
 leges enough to satisfy the vanity of her benefactors : their places 
 are marked out in the sanctuary ; their tombs appear even under 
 the altar, where only the ashes of martyrs should repose. Custom, 
 it is true, authorizes this abuse ; but custom does not always justify 
 what it authorizes. 
 
 Charity, my brethren, is that sweet smelling savour of Jesus 
 Christ, which vanishes and is extinguished from the moment that 
 it is exposed. I mean not that public acts of compassion are to 
 be refrained from : we owe the edification and example of them to 
 our brethren : it is proper that they see our works ; but we ought 
 not ourselves to see them, and our left hand should be ignorant of 
 what our right bestows : even those actions which duty renders the 
 most shining, ought always to be hidden in the preparation of the 
 heart : we ought to entertain a kind of jealousy of the public view 
 on their account, and to believe their purity in safety only when 
 they are exposed to the eyes of God alone. Yes, my brethren, 
 those liberalities which have flowed mostly in secret, reach the 
 bosom of God much more pure than others, which, even contrary 
 to our wishes, having been exposed to the eyes of men, become 
 troubled and defiled, as I may say, in their course by their inevi- 
 table flatteries of self-love, and by the applauses of the beholders: 
 like those rivers which have flowed mostly under ground, and 
 which pour their streams into the ocean pure and undefiled ; while, 
 
Ser. 11. ON CHARITY* ' 177 
 
 on the contrary, those which have traversed plains and countries, 
 exposed to the day, carry there, in general, only muddy waters, 
 and drag along with them the wrecks, carcasses, and slime which 
 they have amassed in their course. Behold, then, the first rule of 
 charity which our Saviour here lays down to shun show and 
 ostentation in all works of compassion to be unwilling to have 
 your name mentioned in them, either on account of the rank which 
 you may here hold, or from the glory of having been the first pro- 
 moter, or from the noise which they may make in the world, and 
 not to lose upon the earth that which charity had amassed only 
 for heaven. 
 
 The second circumstance which I remark in our gospel, is, that 
 no one, of all the multitude who present themselves to Jesus Christ, 
 is rejected : all are indiscriminately relieved ; and we do not read 
 that with regard to them our Saviour hath used any distinction or 
 preference. Second rule: charity is universal; it banishes those 
 capricious liberalities which seem to open the heart to certain wants, 
 only in order to shut it against all others. You find persons in the 
 world, who, under the pretext of having stated charities and places 
 destined to receive them, are callous to all other wants. In vain 
 would you inform them that a family is on the brink of ruin, and 
 that a very small assistance would extricate it ; that a young person 
 hangs over a precipice, and must necessarily perish, if some friendly 
 and assisting hand be not held out ; that a certain meritorious and 
 useful establishment must fall, if not supported by a renewal of 
 charity ; these are not necessities after their taste ; and, in placing 
 elsewhere some trifling bounties, they imagine to have purchased 
 the right of viewing with a dry eye and an indifferent heart every 
 other description of misery. 
 
 I know that charity hath its order and its measure ; that in its 
 practice it ought to use a proper distinction; that justice requires a 
 preference to certain wants : but I would not have that methodical 
 charity (if I may thus speak) which to a point knows where to stop, 
 which has its days, its places, its persons, and its limits, which, 
 beyond these, is cruel, and can settle with itself to be affected only 
 in certain times and by certain wants. Ah ! are we thus masters 
 of our hearts when we truly love our brethren ? Can we at our 
 will mark out to ourselves the moments of warmth and indifference ? 
 Charity, that holy love, is it so regular when it truly inflames the 
 heart ? Has it not, if I may so say, its transports and its excesses ? 
 And do not occasions sometimes occur so truly affecting, that, did 
 but a single spark of charity exist in your heart, it would show it- 
 self, and in the instant would open your bowels of compassion and 
 your riches to your brethren. 
 
 I would not have that rigidly circumspect charity which is never 
 done with its scrutiny, and which always mistrusts the truth of the 
 necessities laid open to it. See if, in that multitude which our 
 Saviour filleth, he apply himself to separate those whom idleness 
 or the sole hope of corporeal nourishment had perhaps attracted to 
 the desert, and who might still have sufficient strength left to go 
 
 N 
 
178 ON CHARITY. Sd*. 11. 
 
 and search for food in the neighbouring villages ; no one is ex- 
 cepted from his divine bounty. Is the being reduced to feign 
 wretchedness not a sufficient misery of itself ? Is it not preferable 
 to assist fictitious wants, rather than to run the risk of refusing aid 
 to real and melancholy objects of compassion ? When an impostor 
 should even deceive your charity, where is the loss ? Is it not 
 always Jesus Christ who receives it from your hand ? And is your 
 recompense attached to the abuse which may be made of your 
 bounty, or to the intention itself which bestows it ? 
 
 From this rule there springs a third, laid down in the history of 
 our gospel, at the same time with the other two : it is, that not 
 only ought charity to be universal, but likewise mild, affable, and 
 compassionate. Jesus Christ, beholding these people wandering 
 and unprovided at the foot of the mountain, is touched with com- 
 passion ; he is affected at the sight, and the wants of the multi- 
 tude awaken his tenderness and pity. Third rule : the gentleness 
 of charity. 
 
 We often accompany pity with so much asperity toward the un- 
 fortunate, while stretching out to them a helping hand, we look 
 upon them with so sour and so severe a countenance, that a simple 
 denial had been less galling to them than a charity so harshly and 
 so unfeelingly bestowed ; for the pity which appears affected by 
 our misfortunes, consoles them almost as much as the bounty 
 which relieves them. We reproach to them their strength, their 
 idleness, their wandering and vagabond manners ; we accuse their 
 own conduct for their indigence and wretchedness : and, in suc- 
 couring, we purchase the right of insulting them. But, were the 
 unhappy creature whom you outrage permitted to reply, if the 
 abjectness of his situation had not put the check of shame and 
 respect upon his tongue, what do you reproach to me ? would he 
 say. An idle life, and useless, and vagabond manners. But what 
 are the cares which in your opulence engross you ? The cares of 
 ambition, the anxieties of fortune, the impulses of the passions, 
 the refinements of voluptuousness. I may be an unprofitable ser- 
 vant ; but are you not yourself an unfaithful one ? Ah ! if the 
 most culpable were always to be the poorest and the most unfor- 
 tunate in this world, would your lot be superior to mine ? You 
 reproach me with a strength which I apply to no purpose ; but to 
 what use do you apply your own ? Because I work not, I ought 
 not to have food ; but are you dispensed yourself from that law ? 
 Are you rich merely that you may pass your life in a shameful ef- 
 feminacy and sloth ? Ah ! the Lord will judge between you and 
 me, and, before his awful tribunal, it shall be seen whether your 
 voluptuousness and profusion were more allowable in you than 
 the innocent artifice which I employ to attract assistance to my 
 sufferings. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, let us at least offer to the unfortunate, hearts 
 feeling for their wants. If the mediocrity of our fortune permit 
 us not altogether to relieve our indigent fellow-creatures, let us, by 
 our humanity, at least soften the yoke of poverty. Alas ! we give 
 
Ser. 11. ON CHARITY. 179 
 
 tears to the chimerical adventures of a theatrical personage, we 
 honour fictitious misfortunes with real sensibility, we depart from 
 a representation with hearts still moved for the disasters of a fabulous 
 hero, and a member of Jesus Christ, an inheritor of heaven, and 
 your brother, whom you encounter in your way from thence, per- 
 haps sinking under disease and penury, and who wishes to inform 
 you of the excess of his sufferings, finds you callous ; and you turn 
 your eyes with disgust from that spectacle, and deign not to listen 
 to him ? and you quit him even with a rudeness and brutality which 
 tend to wring his heart with sorrow ! Inhuman soul ! have you, 
 then, left all your sensibility on an infamous theatre ? Doth the 
 spectacle of Jesus Christ suffering in one of his members offer no- 
 thing worthy of your pity ? And, that your heart may be touched, 
 must the ambition, the revenge, the voluptuousness, and all the other 
 horrors of the pagan ages be revived. 
 
 But, it is not enough that we offer hearts feeling for the distresses 
 which present themselves to our view : charity goes farther : it 
 does not indolently await those occasions which chance may throw 
 in its way ; it knows how to search them out, and even to antici- 
 pate them itself. Last rule : the vigilance of charity. Jesus Christ 
 waits not till those poor people address themselves to him and lay 
 open their wants : he is the first to discover them : scarcely has he 
 found them out, when, with Philip, he searches the means of re- 
 lieving them. That charity which is not vigilant, anxious after the 
 calamities of which it is yet ignorant, ingenious in discovering 
 those which endeavour to remain concealed, which require to be 
 solicited, pressed, and even importuned, resembles not the charity 
 of Jesus Christ. We must watch, and penetrate the obscurity 
 which shame opposes to our bounties. This is not a simple advice : 
 it is the consequence of the precept of charity. The pastors, who, 
 according to faith, are the fathers of the people, are obliged to 
 watch over their spiritual concerns ; and that is one of the most 
 essential functions of their ministry. The rich and the powerful 
 are established by God the fathers and the pastors of the poor ac- 
 cording to the body : they are bound, then, to watch continually 
 over their necessities. If, through want of vigilance, they escape 
 their attention, they are guilty before God, of all the consequences, 
 which a small succour in time would have prevented. 
 
 It is not, that you are required to find out all the secret necessi- 
 ties of a city ; but care and attention are exacted of you : it is re- 
 quired, that you, who, through your wealth or birth, hold the first 
 rank in a department, shall not be surrounded, unknown to you, 
 with thousands of unfortunate fellow-creatures, who pine in secret, 
 and whose eyes are continually wounded with the pomp of your 
 train, and who, besides their wretchedness, suffer again, as I may 
 say, in your prosperity : it is required, that you, who, amid all the 
 pleasures of the court, or of the city, see flowing into your hands 
 the fruits of the sweat and of the labour of so many unfortunate 
 people, who inhabit your lands and your fields; it is required that 
 you be acquainted with those whom the toils of industry and of age 
 
 n 2 
 
ISO ox charity. Ser. 11. 
 
 have exhausted, and who, in their humble dwellings, drag on the 
 wretched remains of dotage and poverty ; those whom a languish- 
 ing health renders incapable of labour, their only resource against 
 indigence and want ; those whom sex and age expose to seduction, 
 and whose innocence you might have been enabled to preserve. 
 Behold what is required, and what, with every right to justice, is 
 exacted from you; behold the poor with whom the Lord hath 
 charged you, and for whom you shall answer to him ; the poor, 
 whom he leaveth on the earth only for your sake, and to whom his 
 providence hath assigned no other resource than your wealth and 
 your bounty. 
 
 Now, are they even known to you? Do you charge their pastors 
 to make them known to you ? Are these the cares which occupy you, 
 when you show yourself in the midst of your lands and possessions? 
 Ah ! it is with cruelty to screw your claims from the hands of these 
 unfortunate people ; it is to tear from their bowels the innocent 
 price of their toil, without regard to their want, to the misery of the 
 times which you allege to us, to their tears, and often to their des- 
 pair: what shall I say? It is perhaps to crush down their weak- 
 ness, to be their tyrant, and not their lord and their father. O 
 God ! cursest thou not these cruel generations, and these riches of 
 iniquity ? Dost thou not stamp upon them the marks of misfor- 
 tune and desolation, and which shall soon blast the source of their 
 families ; which wither the root of a proud posterity ; which produce 
 domestic discord, public disgraces, the fall, and total extinction of 
 houses ? Alas ! we are sometimes astonished to see fortunes ap- 
 parently the best established, go to wreck in an instant ; those an- 
 cient, and formerly so illustrious names fallen into obscurity, no 
 longer to offer to our view but the melancholy wrecks of their an- 
 cient splendour; and their estates become the property of their 
 rivals, or perhaps of their own servants. Ah ! could we investigate 
 the source of their misfortunes ; if their ashes, and the pompous 
 wrecks, which in the pride of their monuments remain to us of 
 their glory, could speak, Do you see, they would say to us, these 
 sad marks of our grandeur ? It is the tears of the poor, whom we 
 neglected, whom we oppressed, which have gradually sapped, and 
 at last have totally overthrown them : their cries have drawn down 
 the thunder of Heaven upon our palaces. The Lord hath blown 
 upon our superb edifices, and upon our fortune, and hath dissipated 
 them like dust. Let the name of the poor be honourable in your 
 sight, if you wish that your names may never perish in the me- 
 mory of men. Let compassion sustain your houses, if you wish 
 that your posterity be not buried under their ruins. Become wise 
 at our cost ; and let our misfortunes, in teaching you our faults, 
 teach you also to shun them. 
 
 And behold, my brethren, (that I may say something respecting 
 it before I conclude,) the first advantage of Christian charity ; bless- 
 ings even in this world. The bread, blessed by our Saviour, mul- 
 tiplies in the hands of the apostles who distribute it ; five thousand 
 are satisfied ; and twelve baskets can hardly contain the remnants 
 
Ser. 11. ON CHARITY. 181 
 
 gathered up : that is to say, that the gifts of charity are riches of 
 benediction, which multiply in proportion as they are distributed, 
 and which bear along with them into our houses a source of happi- 
 ness and abundance. Yes, my brethren, charity is a gain; it is a 
 holy usury ; it is a principle which returns, even here below, an 
 hundred fold. You sometimes complain of a fatality in your affairs : 
 nothing succeeds with you ; men deceive you ; rivals supplant you ; 
 masters neglect you ; the elements conspire against you ; the best 
 concerted schemes are blasted : associate with you the poor 5 divide 
 with them the increase of your fortune; in proportion as your pros- 
 perity augments, do you augment your benefactions ; flourish for 
 them as well as for yourself; and God himself shall then be inter- 
 ested in your success; you shall have found out the secret of engag- 
 ing him in your fortune, and he will preserve, what do I say ? he 
 will bless, he will multiply riches, in which he sees blended the por- 
 tion of his afflicted member. 
 
 This is a truth, confirmed by the experience of all ages : charita- 
 ble families are continually seen to prosper ; a watchful Providence 
 presides over all their affairs ; where others are ruined, they become 
 rich: they are seen to flourish, but the secret canal is not perceived 
 which pours in upon them their property : they are the fleeces 
 of Gideon, covered with the dew of heaven, while all around is 
 barren and dry. 
 
 Such is the first advantage of compassion, I say nothing even of 
 the pleasure, which we ought to feel in the delightful task of sooth- 
 ing those who suffer, in making a fellow-creature happy, in reign- 
 ing over hearts, and in attracting upon ourselves the innocent tribute 
 of their acclamations and their thanks. O ! were we to reap but the 
 pleasure of bestowing, would it not be an ample recompense to a 
 worthy heart ? What has even the majesty of the throne more de- 
 licious than the power of dispensing favours ? Would princes be 
 much attached to their grandeur, and to their power, were they 
 confined to a solitary enjoyment of them ? No, my brethren, make 
 your riches as subservient as you will, to your pleasures, to your 
 profusions, and to your caprices ; but never will you employ them 
 in a way which shall leave a joy so pure, and so worthy of the heart, 
 as in that of comforting the unfortunate. 
 
 What, indeed, can be more grateful to the heart, than the confi- 
 dence that there is not a moment in the day in which some afflicted 
 souls are not raising up their hands to heaven for us, and blessing 
 the day which gave us birth ? Hear that multitude whom Jesus 
 Christ hath filled; the air resounds with their blessings and thanks : 
 they say to themselves, This is a prophet ; they wish to establish 
 him their king. Ah ! were men to choose their masters, it would 
 neither be the most noble, nor the most valiant ; it would be the 
 most compassionate, the most humane, the most charitable, the 
 most feeling : masters who, at the same time, would be their fathers. 
 
 Lastly, I need not add that Christian charity assists in expiating 
 the crimes of abundance ; and that it is almost the only mean of 
 salvation which Providence hath provided for you, who are born to 
 
182 on charity. Ser. 11. 
 
 prosperity. Were charity insufficient to redeem our offences, we 
 might certainly think ourselves entitled to complain, says a holy 
 father; we might take it ill, that God had deprived men of so easy 
 a mean of salvation ; at least might we say that, could we but open 
 the gates of heaven through the means of riches, and purchase with 
 our whole wealth the glory of the holy, we then should be happy. 
 Well, my brethren, continues the holy father, profit by this privi- 
 lege, seeing it is granted to you ; hasten, before your riches moul- 
 der away, to deposit them in the bosom of the poor, as the price of 
 the kingdom of heaven. The malice of men might perhaps have 
 deprived you of them ; your passions might have perhaps swallow- 
 ed them up ; the turns of fortune might have transferred them to 
 other hands ; death, at last, would sooner or later have separat- 
 ed you from them : ah ! charity alone deposits them beyond the 
 reach of all these accidents ; it renders you their everlasting posses- 
 sor ; it lodges them in safety in the eternal tabernacles, and gives you 
 the right of for ever enjoying them in the bosom of God himself. 
 
 Are you not happy in being able to assure to yourself admittance 
 into heaven by means so easy; in being able, by clothing the 
 naked, to efface from the book of divine justice the obscenities, the 
 luxury, and the irregularities of your younger years; in being 
 able, by filling the hungry, to repair all the sensualities of your 
 life ; lastly, in being able, by sheltering innocence in the asylums 
 of compassion, to blot out from the remembrance of God the ruin 
 of so many souls, to whom you have been a stumbling-block ? 
 Great God ! what goodness to man, to consider as meritorious a 
 virtue which costs so little to the heart ; to number in our favour 
 feelings of humanity of which we could never divest ourselves, 
 without being, at the same time divested of our nature; to be will- 
 ing to accept, as the price of an eternal kingdom, frail riches, 
 which we even enjoy only through thy bounty, which we could 
 never continue to possess, and from which, after a momentary and 
 fleeting enjoyment, we must at last be separated ! Nevertheless, 
 mercy is promised to him who shall have shown it ; a sinner, still 
 feeling to the calamities of his brethren, will not continue long in- 
 sensible to the inspirations of heaven ; grace still reserves claims 
 upon a heart in which charity has not altogether lost its influence ; 
 a good heart cannot long continue a hardened one ; that principle 
 of humanity alone, which operates in rendering the heart feeling for 
 the wants of others, is a preparation, as it were, for penitence and 
 salvation ; and while charity still acts in the heart, a happy con- 
 version is never to be despaired of. Love, then, the poor as your 
 brethren ; cherish them as your offspring ; respect them as Jesus 
 Christ himself, in order that he say to you on the great day, "Come, 
 ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from 
 the foundation of the world. For I was an hungered, and ye gave 
 me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink ; I was a stranger, 
 and ye took me in ; I was naked, and ye clothed me ; I was sick, 
 and ye visited me : for, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the 
 least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 
 
Ser. 12. on afflictions. 183 
 
 SERMON XII. 
 
 ON AFFLICTIONS. 
 
 " And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me." Matthew xi. 6. 
 
 It is a blessing, and a rare blessing, then, not to be offended in 
 Jesus Christ. But what was there, or what could there be in him, 
 who is the wisdom itself, and the glory of the Father, the substan- 
 tial image of all perfection, which could give subject of scandal to 
 men ? His cross, my dearest brethren, which was formerly the 
 shame of the Jews, and is, and shall be, to the end of ages, the 
 shame of the greatest part of Christians. But, when I say that 
 the cross of the Saviour is the shame of the most of Christians, 
 I mean not only the cross that he bore, I mean more especially 
 that which we are obliged, from his example, to bear ; without 
 which, he rejects us as his disciples, and denies us any participation 
 of that glory into which he has entered, through the cross alone. 
 
 Behold what displeases us, and what we find to complain of in 
 our divine Saviour. We would wish, that, since he was to suffer, 
 his sufferings had been a title, as it were, of exemption, which had 
 merited to us the privilege of not suffering with him. Let us dis- 
 pel this error, my dearest brethren : the only thing which depends 
 on us, is that of rendering our sufferings meritorious ; but to suf- 
 fer, or not to suffer, is not left to our choice. Providence has so 
 wisely dispensed the good and evil of this life, that each in his sta- 
 tion, however happy his lot may appear, finds crosses and afflic- 
 tions, which always counterbalance the pleasures of it. There is 
 no perfect happiness on the earth ; for it is not here the time of 
 consolations, but the time of sufferance. Grandeur hath its sub- 
 jections and its disquiets ; obscurity, its humiliations and its scorns ; 
 the world, its cares and its caprices ; retirement, its sadness and 
 weariness ; marriage, its antipathies and its frenzies ; friendship, 
 its losses or its perfidies ; piety itself, its repugnances and its dis- 
 gusts. In a word, by a destiny inevitable to the children of Adam, 
 each one finds his own path strewed with brambles and thorns. 
 The apparently happiest condition hath its secret sorrows, which 
 empoison all its felicity. The throne is the seat of chagrins equally 
 as the lowest place ; superb palaces conceal the most cruel discon- 
 tents, equally as the hut of the poor and of the humble labourer ; 
 and, lest our place of exile should become endeared to us, we al- 
 ways feel, in a thousand different ways, that something is yet want- 
 ing to our happiness. 
 
 Nevertheless, destined to suffer, we cannot love the sufferances ; 
 continually stricken with some affliction, we are unable to make a 
 merit of our pains ; never happy, our crosses, become necessary, 
 cannot at least become useful to us. We are ingenious in depriv- 
 ing ourselves of the merit of all our sufferances. One while we 
 
 
1S4 on afflictions. Ser. 12. 
 
 seek, in the weakness of our own heart, the excuse of our peevish- 
 ness and of our murmurings ; another, in the excess or in the na- 
 ture of our afflictions ; and again, in the obstacles which they seem 
 to us to cast in the way of our salvation ; that is to say, one while 
 we complain of being too weak to bear our sufferings with patience ; 
 another, that they are too excessive ; and lastly, that it is impossi- 
 ble in that situation to pay attention to salvation. 
 
 Such are the three pretexts continually opposed in the world to 
 the Christian use of affliction : the pretext of self-weakness ; the 
 pretext of the excess or the nature of our afflictions ; the pretext 
 of the obstacles which they seem to place in the way of our sal- 
 vation. These are the pretexts we have now to overthrow, by op- 
 posing to them the rules of faith. Attend, then, be whom ye 
 may, and learn that the cause of condemnation to most men is not 
 pleasures alone ; alas ! they are so rare on the earth, and so nar- 
 rowly followed by disgust ; it is likewise the unchristian use they 
 make of afflictions. 
 
 Part. I. The language most common to the souls afflicted by 
 the Lord, is that of alleging their own weakness in order to justify 
 the unchristian use they make of their afflictions. They complain 
 that they are not endowed with a force of mind sufficient to pre- 
 serve under them a submissive and a patient heart; that nothing 
 is more conducive to happiness than the want of feeling; that 
 this character, saves us endless vexations and chagrins inevitable 
 in life; but that we cannot fashion to ourselves a heart according 
 to our own wishes; that religion doth not render unfeeling and 
 stoical those who are born with the tender feelings of humanity, 
 and that the Lord is too just to make a crime to us even of our 
 misfortunes. 
 
 But, to overthrow an illusion so common and so unworthy of 
 piety, remark, in the first place, that when Jesus Christ hath com- 
 manded to all believers to bear with submission and with love the 
 crosses proposed for us by his goodness, he hath not added that 
 an order so just, so consoling, so conformable to his examples, 
 should concern only the unfeeling and impatient souls. He hath 
 not distinguished among his disciples those whom nature, pride, or 
 reflection had rendered firmer and more constant, from those whom 
 tenderness and humanity had endowed with more feeling, in order 
 to make a duty to the first of a patience and an insensibility which 
 cost them almost nothing, and to excuse the others to whom they 
 become more difficult. 
 
 On the contrary, his divine precepts are cures; and the more we 
 are inimical to them, through the character of our heart, the more 
 are they proper for, and become necessary to us. It is because you 
 are weak, and that the least contradictions always excite you so 
 much against sufferances, that the Lord must purify you by tribu- 
 lations and sorrows : for it is not the strong who have occasion to 
 be tried, it is the weak. 
 
 In effect, what is it to be weak and repining? It is an excessive 
 
Ser. 12. on afflictions. 185 
 
 self-love ; it is to give all to nature, and nothing to faith ; it is to 
 give way to every impulse of inclination, and to live solely for ease 
 and self-enjoyment, as constituting the chief happiness of man. 
 
 Now, in this situation, and with this excessive fund of love for 
 the world and for yourself, if the Lord were not to provide afflic- 
 tions for your weakness ; if he did not strike your body with an 
 habitual languor which renders the world insipid to you; if he did 
 not send losses and vexations, which force you, through decency, 
 to regularity and retirement; if he did not overthrow certain pro- 
 jects, which, leaving your fortune more obscure, remove you from 
 the great dangers; if he did not place you in certain situations 
 where irksome and inevitable duties employ your best days ; in a 
 word, if he did not place between your weakness and you a barrier 
 which checks and stops you, alas ! your innocence would soon be 
 wrecked; you would soon make an improper and fatal use of peace 
 and prosperity? you who find no security even amid afflictions 
 and troubles. And seeing that, afflicted and separated from the 
 world and from pleasures, you cannot return to God, what would 
 it be did a more happy situation leave you no other check to your 
 desires than yourself ? The same weakness and the same load of 
 self-love which render us so feeling to sorrow and affliction, would 
 render us still more so to the dangerous impressions of pleasures 
 and of human prosperities. 
 
 Thus, it is no excuse for our despondency and murmurs, to con- 
 fess that we are weak and little calculated to support the strokes 
 with which we are afflicted by God. The weakness of our heart 
 proceeds only from the weakness of our faith; a Christian soul 
 ought to be a valiant soul, superior, says the apostle, to persecu- 
 tion, disgrace, infirmities, and even death. He may be oppressed, 
 continues the apostle, but he cannot be vanquished; he may be 
 despoiled of his wealth, reputation, ease, and even life, but he can- 
 not be robbed of that treasure of faith and of grace which he has 
 locked up in his heart, and which amply consoles him for all these 
 fleeting and frivolous losses. He may be brought to shed tears of 
 sensibility and of sorrow, for religion does not extinguish the feel- 
 ings of nature ; but his heart immediately disavows its weakness, 
 and turns its carnal tears into tears of penitence and of piety. 
 
 What do I say ? A Christian soul even delights in tribulations ; 
 he considers them as proofs of the tender watchfulness of God 
 over him, as the precious pledges of the promises to come, as the 
 blessed features of resemblance to Jesus Christ, and which give 
 him an assured right to share after this life in his immortal glory. 
 To be weak and rebellious against the order of God under suffer- 
 ance, is to have lost faith, and to be no longer Christian. 
 
 I confess that there are hearts more tender and more feeling to 
 sorrow than others; but that sensibility is left to them only to in- 
 crease the merit of their sufferings, and not to excuse their impa- 
 tience and murmurings. It is not the feeling, it is the immoderate 
 use, of sorrow which the gospel condemns. In proportion as we 
 are born feeling for our afflictions, so ought we to be so to the con- 
 
186 on afflictions. Ser. 1 2. 
 
 solations of faith. The same sensibility which renders our heart 
 susceptible of chagrin, should open it to grace which soothes and 
 supports it. A good heart has many more resources against afflic- 
 tions, in consequence of grace finding easier access to it. Im- 
 moderate grief is rather the consequence of passion than of the 
 goodness of the heart; and to be unable to submit to God, or to 
 taste consolation in our troubles, is to be, not tender and feeling, 
 but intractable and desperate. 
 
 Moreover, all the precepts of the gospel require strength, and if 
 you have not enough to support with submission the crosses with 
 which the Lord pleaseth to afflict you, you must equally want 
 sufficient for the observance of the other duties prescribed to you 
 by the doctrine of Jesus Christ. It requires strength of mind to 
 forgive an injury; to speak well of those who traduce us ; to con- 
 ceal the faults of those who wish to dishonour even our virtues. 
 It requires fortitude to be enabled to fly from a world which is 
 agreeable to us ; to tear ourselves from pleasures toward which we 
 are impelled by all our inclinations; to resist examples authorized 
 by the multitude, and of which custom has now almost established 
 a law. Strength of mind is required to make a Christian use of 
 prosperity; to be humble in exaltation, mortified in abundance, 
 poor of heart, amidst perishable riches, detached from all when 
 possessed of all, and filled with desires for heaven amidst all the 
 pleasures and felicities of the earth. It is required to be able to 
 conquer ourselves; to repress a rising desire; to stifle an agree- 
 able feeling; to recall to order a heart which is incessantly straying 
 from it. Lastly, among all the precepts of the gospel, there is not 
 one which does not suppose a firm and noble soul; every where 
 self-denial is required ; every where the kingdom of God is a field 
 to be brought into cultivation, a vineyard where toil and the heat 
 of the day must be endured, a career in which continual and valiant 
 combating is required; in a word, the disciples of Jesus Christ can 
 never be weak without being overcome ; and every thing, even to 
 the smallest obligations of faith, requires exertion, and bears the 
 mark of the cross, which is its ruling spirit; and if you fail but for 
 an instant in fortitude, you are lost. To say then that we are weak, 
 is to say that the entire gospel is not made for us, and that we are 
 incapable of being not only submissive and patient, but likewise of 
 being chaste, humble, disinterested, mortified, gentle, and charitable. 
 
 But however weak we may be, we ought to have this confi- 
 dence in the goodness of God, that we are never tried, afflicted, 
 or tempted beyond our strength; that the Lord always propor- 
 tioned the afflictions to our weakness ; that he dealeth out his 
 chastisements like his favours, by weight and measure; that in 
 striking he meaneth not to destroy, but to purify and to save us ; 
 that he himself aideth us to bear the crosses which he imposeth; 
 that he chastiseth us as a father, and not as a judge ; that the 
 same hand which strikes, sustains us; that the same rod which 
 makes the wound, bears the oil and the honey to soften its pain. 
 He knoweth the nature of our hearts, and how far our weakness 
 
Ser. 12, on afflictions. 187 
 
 goes; and as his intention in afflicting us is to sanctify and not to 
 destroy us, he knoweth what degree of weight to give to his hand 
 in order to diminish nothing from our merit, if too light, and, on 
 the other side, not to lose it altogether, if beyond our strength. 
 
 Ah ! what other intention could he have in shedding sorrows 
 through our life ? Is he a cruel God, who delighteth only in the 
 misery of his creatures ? Is he a barbarous tyrant, who finds his 
 greatness and security only in the blood and in the tears of the 
 subjects who worship him ? Is he an envious and morose master, 
 who can taste of no happiness while sharing it with his slaves? Is 
 it necessary that we should suffer, groan, and perish, in order to 
 render him happy ? It is on our own account alone, therefore, that 
 he punisheth and chastiseth us : his tenderness suffers, as I may 
 say, for our evils ; but as his love is a just and enlightened love, 
 he prefereth to leave us to suffer, because he foresees that, in ter- 
 minating our pains, he would augment our wretchedness. He is, 
 says a holy father, like a tender physician, who pities, it is true, 
 the cries and the sufferings of his patient, but who, in spite of his 
 cries, cuts, even to the quick, the corrupted part of his wound. He 
 is never more gentle and more compassionate than when he appears 
 most severe ; and afflictions must indeed be useful and necessary 
 to us, since a God so merciful and so good can prevail upon him- 
 self to afflict us. 
 
 It is written, that Joseph, exalted to the first office in Egypt, 
 could hardly retain his tears, and felt his bowels yearn toward his 
 brethren in the very time that he affected to speak most harshly to 
 them, and that he feigned not to know them. It is in this manner 
 that Jesus Christ chastiseth us. He affects, if it be permitted to 
 speak in this manner, not to acknowledge in us his co-heirs 
 and his brethren ; he strikes, and treats us harshly, as strangers ; 
 but his love suffers for this constraint. He is unable long to 
 maintain this character of severity, which is so foreign to him. His 
 favours soon come to soften his blows : he soon shows himself such 
 as he is ; and his love never fails to betray these appearances of 
 rigour and anger. Judge, then, if the blows which come from so 
 kind and so friendly a hand can be otherwise than proportioned to 
 your weakness. 
 
 Let us accuse then only the corruption and not the weakness of 
 our heart, for our impatience and murmurs. Have not weak young 
 women formerly defied all the barbarity of tyrants ? Have not 
 children, before they had learned to support even the ordinary toils 
 of life, run with joy to brave all the rigours of the most frightful 
 death ? Have not old men, already sinking under the weight of 
 their own body, felt, like the eagle, their youth renewed amidst the 
 torments of a long martyrdom ? You are weak; but it is that very 
 weakness which is glorious to faith and to the religion of Jesus 
 Christ : it is even on that account that the Lord hath chosen you 
 to display in your instance how much more powerful grace is than 
 nature. If you were born with more fortitude and strength, you 
 would do less honour to the power of grace : to man would be at- 
 
188 on afflictions. Ser. 12. 
 
 tributed a patience which should be a gift of God. Thus, the 
 weaker you are, the fitter instrument you become for the designs 
 and for the glory of God. When his hand hath been heavy, he 
 hath chosen only the weak, that man might attribute nothing to 
 himself, and to overthrow, by the example of their constancy, the 
 vain fortitude of sages and of philosophers. His disciples were 
 only weak lambs, when he dispersed them through the universe, 
 and exposed them amidst the wolves. They rendered glory in their 
 weakness to the power of grace, and to the truth of his doctrine. 
 They are those earthen vessels which the Lord taketh delight in 
 breaking, like those of Gideon, to make the light and the power of 
 faith shine forth in them with greater magnificence ; and if you 
 entered into the designs of his wisdom and of his mercy, your 
 weakness, which in your opinion justifies your murmurs, would 
 constitute the sweetest consolation of your sufferings. 
 
 Lord, would you say to him, I ask not that proud reason which 
 seeks in the glory of suffering with constancy the whole consola- 
 tion of its pains : I ask not from thee that insensibility of heart, 
 which either feels not, or contemns its misfortunes. Leave me> 
 
 Lord, that weak and timid reason, that tender and feeling 
 heart, which seems so little fitted to sustain its tribulations and 
 sufferings : only increase thy consolations and favours. The more 
 
 1 shall appear weak in the sight of men, the greater wilt thou ap- 
 pear in my weakness : the more shall the children of the age ad- 
 mire the power of faith, which alone can exalt the weakest and 
 most timid souls to that point of constancy and firmness, to which 
 all philosophy hath never been able to attain. First pretext, taken 
 in the weakness of man, confuted, we have now to expose the illu- 
 sion of the second, which is founded on the excess or the nature of 
 the afflictions themselves. 
 
 Part II. Nothing is more usual with persons afflicted by God, 
 than to justify their complaints and their murmurs by the excess 
 or the nature of their afflictions. We always wish our crosses to 
 have no resemblance to those of others ; and, lest the example of 
 their fortitude and of their faith condemn us, we seek out differences 
 in our grievances, in order to justify that of our dispositions and of 
 our conduct. We persuade ourselves that we could bear with re- 
 signation crosses of any other description ; but that those with 
 which we are overwhelmed by the Lord, are of such a nature as to 
 preclude consolation : that the more we examine the lot of others, 
 the more we do find our own misfortunes singular, and our situa- 
 tion unexampled: and that it is impossible to preserve patience 
 and serenity in a state where chance seems to have collected, solely 
 for us, a thousand afflicting circumstances which never before had 
 happened to others. 
 
 But, to take from self-love a defence so weak and so unworthy 
 of faith, I would only have forthwith to answer you, that the more 
 extraordinary our afflictions appear, the less ought we to believe 
 them the effects of chance ; the more evidently ought we to see in 
 
Ser. 12. ON AFFLICTIONS. 189 
 
 them the secret and inscrutable arrangements of a God singularly 
 watchful over our destiny ; the more should we presume that, under 
 events so new, he doubtless concealeth new views, and singular 
 designs of mercy upon our soul ; the more should we say to our- 
 selves, that he consequently meaneth us not to perish with the 
 multitude, which is the party of the reprobate, seeing that he 
 leadeth us by ways so uncommon and so little trodden. This sin- 
 gularity of misfortunes ought, in the eyes of our faith, to be a 
 soothing distinction. He hath always conducted his chosen, in 
 matters of affliction as well as in other things, by new and extraor- 
 dinary ways. What melancholy and surprising adventures in the 
 life of a Noah, a Lot, a Joseph, a Moses, and a Job ! Trace, from 
 age to age, the history of the just, and you will always find in their 
 various vicissitudes, something, I know not what, of singular and 
 incredible, which has staggered even the belief of subsequent ages. 
 Thus, the less your afflictions resemble those of others, the more 
 should you consider them as the afflictions of God's chosen : they 
 are stamped with the mark of the just : they enter into that tra- 
 dition of singular calamities which, from the beginning of ages, 
 forms their history. Battles lost, when victory seemed certain ; 
 cities, looked upon as impregnable, fallen at the sole approach of 
 the enemy; a kingdom once the most flourishing in Europe, 
 stricken with every evil which the Lord in his wrath can pour upon 
 the people ; the court filled with mourning, and all the royal race 
 almost extinct. Such, sire, is what the Lord in his mercy reserved 
 for your piety ; and such are the unprecedented misfortunes which 
 he prepared for you, to purify the prosperities of a reign the most 
 brilliant in our annals. The singularity of the unfortunate events 
 with which God afflicteth you, is intended for the sole purpose of 
 rendering you equally pious as a Christian, as you have been great 
 as a King. It would seem, that every thing was to be singular in 
 your reign, the prosperities as the misfortunes, in order that, after 
 your glory before men, nothing should be wanting to your piety 
 before God. It is a striking example, prepared by his goodness 
 for our age. 
 
 And, behold, my dear hearer, a striking instance, both to instruct 
 and confute you, when you complain of the excess of your misfor- 
 tunes and of your sufferings. The more God afflicteth, the greater 
 is his love and his watchfulness over you. More common misfor- 
 ^^tunes might have appeared to you as the consequences merely of 
 natural causes ; and though all events are conducted by the secret 
 springs of his providence, you might perhaps have had room to 
 suppose that the Lord had no particular design upon you, in pro- 
 viding for you only certain afflictions which happen every day to 
 the rest of men. But, in the grievous and singular situation in 
 which he placeth you, you can no longer hide from yourself that 
 his regards are fixed on you alone, and that you are the special 
 object of his merciful designs. 
 
 Now, what more consoling in our sufferings ! God seeth me ; 
 he numbereth my sighs ; he weigheth mine afflictions ; he beholdeth 
 
190 on afflictions. Ser. 12. 
 
 my tears to flow; he maketh them subservient to my eternal 
 sanctification. Since his hand hath weighed so heavily, and in so 
 singular a way upon me, and since no earthly resource seems to be 
 left me, I consider myself as having at last become an object more 
 worthy of his cares and of his regards. Ah ! if I still enjoyed a 
 serene and happy situation, his looks would no longer be upon me; 
 he would neglect me, and I should be blended before him with so 
 many others who are the prosperous of the earth. Beloved suffer- 
 ings, which, in depriving me of all human aids, restore me to God, 
 and render him mine only resource in all my sorrows ! Precious 
 afflictions, which in turning me aside from all creatures, are the 
 cause that I now become the continual object of the remembrance 
 and of the mercies of my Lord ! 
 
 I might reply to you, in the second place, that common and 
 momentary afflictions would have aroused our faith but for an in- 
 stant. We would soon have found, in every thing around us, a 
 thousand resources to obliterate the remembrance of that slight 
 misfortune. Pleasures, human consolations, the new events which 
 the world is continually offering to our sight, would soon have 
 beguiled our sorrow, and restored our relish for the world, and for 
 its vain amusements ; and our heart, always in concert with all the 
 objects which flatter it, would soon have been tired of its sighs 
 and of its sorrows. But the Lord, in sending afflictions in which 
 religion alone can become our resource, hath meant to preclude all 
 return toward the world, and to place between our weakness and 
 us a barrier which can never be shaken by either time or accidents : 
 he hath anticipated our inconstancy, in rendering precautions ne- 
 cessary to us, which might not perhaps have always appeared 
 equally useful. He read, in the character of our heart, that our 
 fidelity in flying the dangers of, and separating ourselves from the 
 world, would not extend beyond our sorrow ; that the same mo- 
 ment which beheld us consoled would witness our change ; that, 
 in forgetting our chagrins, we would soon have forgotten our pious 
 resolutions ; and that short-lived afflictions would have made us 
 only short-lived righteous. He hath therefore established the con- 
 tinuance of our piety upon that of our sufferings ; he hath lodged 
 fixed and constant afflictions as sureties for the constancy of our 
 faith : and lest, in leaving our soul in our own power, we should 
 again restore it to the world, he hath resolved to render it safe, 
 by attaching it for ever to the foot of the cross. We are thoroughly 
 sensible ourselves that a great blow was required to rouse us from 
 our lethargy ; that we had been little benefited by the slight afflic- 
 tions with which the Lord hath hitherto been pleased to visit us ; 
 and that scarcely had he stricken us, when we had forgotten the 
 hand that had inflicted so salutary a wound. Of what, then, O 
 my God, should I complain ? That excess which I find in my 
 troubles, is an excess of thy mercies. I do not consider that the 
 less thou sparest the patient, the more thou hastenest his cure, 
 and that all the utility and all the security of our sufferings con- 
 sist in the rigour of thy blows. My sweetest consolation in the 
 
Ser. 12. on afflictions. 191 
 
 afflicting state in which thy providence, O Lord, hath been pleased 
 to place me, shall then be, in future, to reflect, that at least thou 
 sparest me not ; that thou measurest thy rigours and thy remedies 
 upon my wants, and not upon my desires ; and that thou hast 
 more regard to the security of my salvation than to the injustice 
 of my complaints. 
 
 I might still reply to you : Enter into judgment with the Lord, 
 you who complain of the excess of your sufferings ; place in a 
 balance, on the one side your crimes, and on the other your afflic- 
 tions ; measure the rigour of his chastisements upon the enormity 
 of your offences ; compare that which you suffer with that which 
 you ought to suffer ; see if your afflictions go the same length as 
 your senseless pleasures have done ; if the keenness and the conti- 
 nuance of your sorrows correspond with those of your profane de- 
 baucheries ; if the state of restraint in which you live equals the 
 licentiousness and the depravity of your former manners; and should 
 your afflictions be found to overbalance your iniquities, then boldly 
 reproach the Lord for his injustice. You judge of your sufferings 
 by your inclinations, but judge of them by your crimes. What ! 
 not a single moment of your worldly life but what has perhaps 
 made you deserving of an eternal misery, and you murmur against 
 the goodness of a God who commuteth these everlasting torments, 
 so often merited, into a few rapid and momentary afflictions, 
 and even against which the consolations of faith hold out so many 
 resources ! 
 
 What injustice ! what ingratitude ! Ah ! have a care, unfaithful 
 soul, lest the Lord listen to thee in his wrath ; have a care lest he 
 punish thy passions, by providing for thee, here below, whatever is 
 favourable to them ; lest thou be not found worthy in his sight of 
 these temporal afflictions; lest he reserve thee for the time of his 
 justice and his vengeance, and that he treat thee like those unfor- 
 tunate victims who are ornamented with flowers, who are nursed 
 and fattened with so much care, only because they are destined for 
 the sacrifice, and that the knife which is to stab, and the pile which 
 is to consume them, are in readiness upon the altar. He is terri- 
 ble in his gifts as in his wrath ; and seeing that guilt must be pu- 
 nished either with fleeting punishments here below, or with eternal 
 pains after this life, nothing ought to appear more fearful in the eyes 
 of faith, than to be a sinner and yet prosperous on the earth. 
 
 Great God ! let it be here then for me the time of thy vengeance ; 
 and since my crimes cannot go unpunished, hasten, O Lord, to 
 satisfy thy justice. The more I am spared here, the more shalt 
 thou appear to me as a terrible God, who refuseth to let me go for 
 some fleeting afflictions, and whose wrath can be appeased by no- 
 thing but mine eternal misery. Lend not thine ear to the cries of 
 my grief, nor to the lamentations of a corrupted heart, which knows 
 not its true interests. I disown, Lord, these too human sighs 
 which the sadness of my state still continually forces from me ; 
 these carnal tears which affliction so often maketh me to shed in 
 thy presence. Listen not to the intre^ties which I have hitherto 
 
192 on afflictions. Ser. 12. 
 
 made to attain an end to my sufferings ; complete rather thy ven- 
 geance upon me here below 5 reserve nothing for that dreadful eter- 
 nity, where thy chastisement shall be without end and without 
 measure. I ask thee only to sustain my weakness ; and, in shedding 
 sorrows through my life, shed likewise upon it thy grace, which 
 consoles and recompenses with such usury an afflicted heart. 
 
 To all these truths, so consoling for an afflicted soul, I might still 
 add, that our sufferings appear excessive only through the excess 
 of the corruption of our heart ; that the keenness of our afflictions 
 springs solely from that of our passions ! that it is the impropriety 
 of our attachments to the objects lost, which renders their loss so 
 grievous ; that we are keenly afflicted only when we had been 
 keenly attached ; and that the excess of our afflictions is always the 
 punishment of the excess of our iniquitous loves. I might add, 
 that we always magnify whatever regards ourselves ; that the very 
 idea of singularity in our misfortunes flatters our vanity, at the 
 same time that it authorizes our murmurs ; that we never wish 
 to resemble others ; that we feel a secret pleasure in persuading 
 ourselves that we are single of our kind ; we wish all the world to 
 be occupied with our misfortunes alone, as if we were the only un- 
 fortunate of the earth. Yes, my brethren, the evils of others are 
 nothing in our eyes : we see not that all around us are, perhaps, 
 more unhappy than we ; that we have a thousand resources in our 
 afflictions, which are denied to others ; that we derive a thousand 
 consolations in our infirmities, from wealth, and the number of 
 persons watchful over our smallest wants ; that, in the loss of a 
 person dear to us, a thousand means of softening its bitterness still 
 remain from the situation in which Providence hath placed us : 
 that, in domestic divisions, we find comforts in the tenderness and 
 in the confidence of our friends, which we had been unable to 
 procure among our relatives ; lastly, that we find a thousand human 
 indemnifications to our misfortunes, and that, were we to place in 
 a balance, on the one side our consolations, and on the other our 
 sufferings, we should find, that there are still remaining in our state 
 more comforts capable of corrupting us, than crosses calculated to 
 sanctify us. 
 
 Thus, it is almost solely the great and the prosperous of the 
 w T orld who complain of the excess of their misfortunes and sufferings. 
 The unfortunate majority of the earth, who are born to, and live in, 
 penury and distress, pass in silence, and almost in the neglect of 
 their sufferings, their wretched days. The smallest gleam of com- 
 fort and ease restores serenity and cheerfulness to their heart : the 
 slightest consolations obliterate their troubles : a moment of plea- 
 sure makes up for a whole year of sufferance ; while those for- 
 tunate and sensual souls, amidst all their abundance, are seen to 
 reckon, as an unheard of misfortune, the disappointment of a single 
 desire. We view them turning into a martyrdom for themselves, 
 the weariness and even the satiety of pleasures; drawing from 
 imaginary evils the source of a thousand real vexations ; feeling 
 ten-fold more anguish for the failure of a single acquisition, than 
 
Ser. 12. OX AFFLICTIONS. 193 
 
 pleasure in the possession of all they enjoy : in a word, consider- 
 ing as the greatest misfortune the least interruption, however tri- 
 fling, to their sensual happiness. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, it is the great and powerful alone who com- 
 plain ; who continually imagine themselves the only unhappy ; 
 who never have enough of comforters ; who, on the slightest re- 
 verse, see assembled around them, not only those worldly friends 
 whom their rank and fortune procure, but likewise all the pious 
 and enlightened ministers of the gospel, distinguished by the public 
 esteem, and whose holy instructions would, in general, be much 
 better bestowed on so many other unfortunate individuals who are 
 destitute of every worldly resource and religious assistance, and to 
 whom they would likewise be so much more beneficial. But, be- 
 fore the tribunal of Jesus Christ, your afflictions shall be weighed 
 with those of so many of your unfortunate fellow-creatures, and 
 whose misfortunes are so much the more dreadful as they are more 
 hidden and more neglected. It will then be demanded of you, if 
 it belonged to you to complain and to murmur. It will be de- 
 manded, if you were entitled to lay such stress upon calamities 
 which would have been consolations to so many others : if it was 
 your business to murmur so highly against a God who treated you 
 with such indulgence, while his hand was so heavy on such an in- 
 finity of unhappy fellow-creatures : if they had less right to the 
 riches and to the pleasure of the earth than you : if their soul was 
 less noble, and less precious before God, than yours i in a word, if 
 they were either more criminal, or of another nature than you ? 
 
 Alas ! it is not only our own self-love, but it is likewise our 
 hardness toward our brethren, which magnifies to us our own mis- 
 fortunes. Let us enter those poor, unprovided dwellings, where 
 shame conceals such bitter and affecting poverty; let us view those 
 asylums of public compassion where every calamity seems to reign : 
 it is there that we shall learn to appreciate our own afflictions : it 
 is there that, touched to the heart with the excess of so many evils, 
 we shall blush to give even a name to the slightness of ours : it is 
 there that our murmurs against Heaven shall be changed into 
 thanksgivings, and that, less taken up with the slight crosses sent 
 us by the Lord, than with so many others from which he spareth 
 us, we shall begin to dread his indulgence, far from complaining of 
 his severity. My God ! how awful shall be the judgment of the 
 great and the mighty, since, besides the inevitable abuse of their 
 prosperity, the afflictions, which ought to have sanctified its use and 
 expiated its abuses, shall become themselves their greatest crimes ! 
 
 But how employ afflictions in sanctifying the dangers of their 
 station, or in working out salvation, since they seem to cast such 
 invincible obstacles in their way ? This is the last pretext drawn 
 from the incompatibility which afflictions seem to have with our 
 salvation. 
 
 Part III. It is very surprising, that the corruption of the hu- 
 man heart finds, even in sufferances, obstacles to salvation, and 
 
 o 
 
19-4 on afflictions. Ser. 12. 
 
 that Christians continually justify their murmurs against the wis- 
 dom and the goodness of God, by accusing him of sending crosses 
 incompatibJe with their eternal salvation. Nothing is more com- 
 mon, however, in the world, than this iniquitous language; and 
 when we exhort the souls afflicted by God to convert these fleet- 
 ing afflictions into the price of heaven and of eternity, they reply, 
 that, in this state of distress, they are incapable of every thing; 
 that the obstacles and vexations which they are continually encoun- 
 tering, far from recalling them to order and to duty, serve only to 
 irritate the mind, and to harden the heart; and that tranquillity 
 must be restored before they can turn their thoughts toward God. 
 
 Now, I say, that, of all the pretexts employed in justification of 
 the unchristian use made of afflictions, this is the most absurd 
 and the most culpable. The most culpable, for it is blasphem- 
 ing Providence to pretend, that it places you in situations incom- 
 patible with your salvation. Whatever it doth or permitteth here 
 below, it only doth or permitteth in order to facilitate to men the 
 ways of eternal life : every event, prosperous or unprosperous, in 
 the measure of our lot, is meant by it as a mean of salvation, 
 and of sanctification; all its designs upon us tend to that sole pur- 
 pose ; whatever we are, even in the order of nature, our birth, our 
 fortune, our talents, our age, our dignities, our protectors, our 
 subjects, our masters! all this, in its views of mercy upon us, 
 enters into the impenetrable designs of our eternal sanctification. 
 All this visible world itself is made only for the age to come; 
 whatever passeth, hath its secret connexions with that eternal age, 
 where things shall pass no more ; whatever we see, is only the image 
 and trust of the invisible things. The world is worthy of the 
 cares of a wise and merciful God, only inasmuch as, by secret and 
 adorable relations, its diverse revolutions are to form that heavenly 
 church, that immortal assembly of chosen, where he shall ever be 
 glorified. To pretend, then, that he placeth us in situations, which 
 not only have no relation to, but are even incompatible with our 
 eternal interests, is to make a temporal God of him, and to blas- 
 pheme his adorable wisdom. 
 
 But, not only nothing is more culpable than this pretext, I 
 say, likewise, that nothing is more foolish: for, it is only by de- 
 taching itself from this miserable world, that a soul returns to God ; 
 and nothing, says St. Augustine, so effectually detaches from this 
 miserable world, as when the Lord sheddeth salutary sorrows over 
 its dangerous pleasures. "Lord," said a holy king of Judah, (i I had 
 neglected thee in prosperity and in abundance ; the pleasures of 
 royalty, and the splendour of a long and glorious reign, had cor- 
 rupted my heart: the flatteries and the deceitful words of the 
 wicked had lulled me into a profound and a fatal sleep; but thine 
 hand hath been upon me, in pouring out upon my people all the 
 scourges of thy wrath, in raising up against me mine own children 
 and subjects, whom I loaded with favours; and I awoke. Thou 
 hast humbled me, and I have had recourse to thee; thou hast 
 afflicted me, and I have sought thee, and I have found out that I 
 
Ser. 12. on afflictions. 195 
 
 ought not to have my trust in men; that prosperity is a dream; 
 glory a mistake; the talents which men admire, vices concealed 
 under the brilliant outsides of human virtues ; the whole world a 
 deception, which feeds us with only vain phantoms, and leaves 
 nothing solid in the heart; and that thou alone art worthy to be 
 served, for thou alone forsakest not those who serve thee." 
 
 Behold the most natural effect of afflictions ; they facilitate all 
 the duties of religion; hatred of the world, in rendering it more dis- 
 agreeable to us; indifference toward all creatures, by giving us 
 experience, either of their perfidy by infidelities, or of their frailty 
 by unexpected losses ; privation of pleasures, by placing obstacles 
 in their way ; the desire of eternal riches, and consoling returns 
 toward God, by leaving us almost no consolation among men; 
 lastly, all the obligations of faith become more easy to the afflicted 
 soul; his good desires find fewer obstacles, his weakness fewer 
 rocks, his faith more aids, his lukewarmness more resources, his 
 passions more checks, and even his virtues more meritorious 
 opportunities. 
 
 Thus the church was never more fervent and purer than when 
 she was afflicted; the ages of her sufferings and persecutions 
 were the ages of her splendour and of her zeal. Tranquillity after- 
 ward corrupted her manners ; her days became less pure and less 
 innocent as soon as they became more fortunate and powerful ; 
 her glory ended almost with her misfortunes ; and her peace, as the 
 prophet said, was more bitter, through the licentiousness of her 
 children, than even her troubles had ever been through the barba- 
 rity of her enemies. 
 
 Even you who complain that the crosses with which the Lord 
 afflicteth you discourage you, and check any desire of labouring 
 toward your salvation; you well know that happier days have not 
 been for you more holy and more faithful; you well know that 
 then, intoxicated with the world and its pleasures, you lived in a 
 total neglect of your God, and that the comforts of your situation 
 were only the spurs of your corruption, and the instruments of 
 your iniquitous desires. 
 
 But such is the perpetual illusion of our self-love. When fortu- 
 nate, when every thing answers to our wishes, and the world smiles 
 upon us, then we allege the dangers of our state to justify the 
 errors of our worldly manners : we say that it is very difficult, at a 
 certain age and in a certain situation, when a rank is to be sup- 
 ported, and appearances to be kept up with the world, to condemn 
 ourselves to solitude, to prayer, to flight from pleasures, and to all 
 the duties of a gloomy and a Christian life. But on the other side, 
 when under affliction ; when the body is struck with lassitude, and 
 fortune forsakes us ; when our friends deceive, and our masters 
 neglect us; when our enemies overpower, and our relations become 
 our persecutors; we complain that every thing estranges us from 
 God in this state of bitterness and sorrow; that the mind is not 
 sufficiently tranquil to devote any thoughts to salvation; that the 
 heart is too exasperated to feel any thing but its own misfortunes ; 
 that amusements and pleasures, now become necessary, must be 
 
 o 2 
 
196 on afflictions. Ser. 12. 
 
 sought to lull its grief, and to prevent the total loss of reason, in 
 giving way to all the horrors of a profound melancholy. It is thus, 
 O my God ! that by our eternal contradictions we justify the 
 adorable ways of thy wisdom upon the lots of men, and that we 
 provide for thy justice powerful reasons to overthrow one day the 
 illusion, and the falsity of our pretexts. 
 
 For, besides, be our sufferings what they may, the history of 
 religion holds out righteous characters to our example, who, in the 
 same situation as we are, have held their soul in patience, and 
 turned their afflictions into a resource of salvation. Do you weep 
 the loss of a person dear to your heart ? Judith in a similar afflic- 
 tion found the increase of her piety and faith, and changed the 
 tears of her widowhood into those of retirement and penitence. If 
 a pining health render life more gloomy and bitter than even death 
 itself, Job found in the wrecks of an ulcerated body, motives of 
 compunction, longings for eternity, and the hopes of an immortal 
 resurrection. If your character in the world be stained by calum- 
 nies, Susanna held out an unshaken soul under the blackest asper- 
 sions ; and knowing that she had the Lord in testimony of her in- 
 nocence, she left to him the care of avenging her upon the injustice 
 of. men. If your fortune be the victim of treachery, David, de- 
 throned, considered the humiliation of his new state as the just 
 punishment of the abuse he had made of his past prosperity. If 
 an unfortunate union become your daily cross, Esther found, in 
 the caprices and frenzies of a faithless husband, the proof of her 
 virtue, and the merit of her meekness and patience. In a word, 
 place yourself in the most dismal situations, and you will find 
 righteous men, who have wrought out their salvation, in the same ; 
 and, without applying to former ages for examples, look around, 
 (the hand of the Lord is not yet shortened,) and you will see souls, 
 who, loaded with the same crosses as you, make a very different 
 use of them, and find means of salvation in the very same events 
 where you find only a rock to your innocence or a pretext for your 
 murmurs. What do I say? you will see souls whom the mercy 
 of God hath recalled from their errors, by pouring out salutary 
 sorrows upon their life; by overturning an established fortune; by 
 chilling an envied favour; by sapping a health apparently unaltera- 
 ble; by terminating a profane connexion through a glaring incon- 
 stancy. You yourself, then, a witness of their change and of their 
 conversion, have lessened the merit of it, from the facilities provi- 
 ded by chagrin and afflictions; you have placed little confidence in 
 a virtue which misfortunes had rendered as if necessary; you have 
 said that it required little exertion to forsake a world which has 
 become tired of us; that at the first gleam of good fortune, pleasures 
 would soon be seen to succeed to all this great show of devotion, 
 and that they had devoted themselves to God only because they 
 had nothing better to do. Unjust that you are! and at present, 
 when there is question of returning to him in your affliction, you 
 say that it is not possible; that a heart pressed and bowed down 
 with sorrow is incapable of paying attention to any thing but its 
 grief, and that we are more hardened than touched in this state of 
 
Ser. 12. on afflictions. 197 
 
 distress and misfortune; and after having censured and cast a stain 
 upon the piety of afflicted souls, as a measure too easy, and to 
 which little merit is attached, as it required almost no exertion, you 
 excuse yourself from adopting it in your affliction, and from mak- 
 ing a Christian use of it, because you pretend that it is not possible 
 in it to pay attention to any thing but to your sorrow. Answer, or 
 rather tremble, lest you find the rock of your salvation in a situa- 
 tion which ought to be its surest resource. After having abused 
 prosperity, tremble lest you now make your misfortunes the fatal in- 
 struments of your destruction, and lest you shut upon yourself all 
 the ways of goodness which God might open to you in order to 
 recall you to him. 
 
 When, O my God ! will the time come that my soul, exalting 
 itself through faith above all creatures, shall no longer worship 
 but thee in them ; shall no longer attribute events to them of 
 which thou alone art the author ; shall recognise, in the diverse 
 situations in which thou placest it, the adorable arrangements of thy 
 providence ; and, even amid all its crosses, shall taste that unalter- 
 able peace which the world, with all its pleasures, can never bestow? 
 How melancholy, in effect, my brethren, when visited and af- 
 flicted of God, to seek for consolation in rising up against the 
 hand which strikes us ; in murmuring against his justice; in cast- 
 ing ourselves off from him, as it were in a frenzy of rage, despair, 
 and revenge, and to seek consolation in our madness ! What a 
 horrible situation is that of a foolish soul whom God afflicteth, and 
 who for consolation flies in the face of his God ; seeks to ease his 
 troubles in multiplying his trespasses ; yields himself up to de- 
 bauchery, in order to drown his sorrows ; and makes the over- 
 whelming sadness of guilt a horrible resource against the sadness of 
 his afflictions ! 
 
 No, my brethren, religion alone can truly console us in our mis- 
 fortunes. Philosophy checked complaints, but it did not soften 
 the anguish. The world lulls cares, but it does not cure them : 
 and, amidst all its senseless pleasures, the secret sting of sadness 
 always remains buried in the heart. God alone can comfort our 
 afflictions ; and is another necessary to a faithful soul ? Weak 
 creatures ! You may easily, by vain speeches, and by that custo- 
 mary language of compassion and tenderness, make yourselves to 
 be understood by the ears of the body; but there is none but the 
 God of all consolation who can speak to the heart : in the excess 
 of my pains, I have vainly sought consolation among ye : I have 
 sharpened my sufferings, while thinking to soften them, and thy 
 vain consolations have been to me only fresh sorrows. 
 
 Great God ! it is at thy feet, that I mean henceforth to pour out 
 all the bitterness of mine heart. It is with thee alone, that I mean 
 to forget all my grievances, all my sufferings, all creatures. Hitherto 
 I have given way to chagrins and to sadness altogether human ; a 
 thousand times have I wished that thy wisdom were regulated by 
 the mad projects of my heart: my thoughts have wandered; my 
 mind hath formed a thousand delusive dreams ; my heart hath 
 
198 on prayer. Ser. 13. 
 
 pursued these vain phantoms. I have longed for a higher birth, 
 more fortune, talents, fame, and health. I have lulled myself in 
 these ideas of an imaginary happiness. Fool that I am I as if I 
 were capable of altering at my pleasure the immutable order of thy 
 Providence ! As if I had been wiser or more enlightened than 
 thee, O my God, upon my true interests ! I have never entered 
 into thine eternal designs upon me. I have never considered the 
 sorrows of my situation as entering into the order of my eternal 
 destination ; and, even to this day, my joys and my sorrows have 
 depended upon the created alone; consequently my joys have 
 never been tranquil, and my sorrows have always been without re- 
 source. But henceforth, O my God ! thou shalt be my only com- 
 forter, and I will seek, in the meditation of thy holy law, and in 
 my submission to thine eternal decrees, those solid consolations 
 which I have never found in the world, and which, in softening our 
 afflictions here below, secure to us, at the same time, their immor- 
 tal reward hereafter. 
 
 SERMON XIII. 
 
 ON PRAYER. 
 
 " Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David." Matt. xv. 22. 
 
 Such is the lamentation of a soul touched with its wretchedness, 
 and which addresses itself to the sovereign Physician, in whose 
 compassion alone it hopes to find relief. This was formerly the 
 prayer of a woman of Canaan, who wished to obtain from the Son 
 of David the recovery of her daughter. Persuaded of his power, 
 and expecting every thing from his usual goodness to the unfortu- 
 nate, she knew no surer way of rendering him propitious, than the 
 cry of her affliction, and the simple tale of her misfortune. And 
 this is the model which the church now proposes to us, in order to 
 animate and to instruct us how to pray ; that is to say, in order to 
 render more pleasing, and more familiar to us, this most essential 
 duty of Christian piety. 
 
 For, my brethren, to pray is the condition of man ; it is the first 
 duty of man ; it is the sole resource of man; it is the whole conso- 
 lation of man ; and, to speak in the language of the Holy Spirit, it 
 is the whole man. 
 
 Yes, if the entire world, in the midst of which we live, be but 
 one continued temptation ; if all the situations in which we may 
 be, and all the objects which environ us, seem united with our cor- 
 ruption, for the purpose of either weakening or seducing us ; if 
 riches corrupt, and poverty exasperate ; if prosperity exalt, and 
 affliction depress ; if business prey upon, and ease render effemi- 
 nate ; if the sciences inflate, and ignorance lead us into error ; if mu- 
 tual intercourse trivially engage us too much, and solitude leave us 
 
Ser. 13. on prayer. 199 
 
 too much to ourselves ; if pleasure seduce, and pious works excite 
 our pride; if health arouse the passions, and sickness nourish 
 either lukewar nines s or murmurings : in a word, if, since the fall of 
 nature, every thing in, or around us, be a fresh danger to be dreaded; 
 in a situation so deplorable, what hope of salvation, O, my God ! 
 could there be still remaining to man, if, from the bottom of his 
 wretchedness, he had it not in his power to make his lamentations 
 to be continually mounting toward the throne of thy mercy, in 
 order to prevail that thou thyself may come to his aid ; that thou 
 may interfere to put a check upon his passions, to clear up his er- 
 rors, to sustain his weakness, to lessen his temptations, to abridge 
 his hours of trials, and to save him from his backslidings ? 
 
 The Christian is therefore a man of prayer ; his origin, his situa- 
 tion, his nature, his wants, his place of abode, all inform him that 
 prayer is necessary. The church herself, in which he is incorpo- 
 rated through the grace of regeneration, a stranger here below, is 
 always plaintive and full of lamentation ; she recognizes her chil- 
 dren only through their sighs, which they direct toward their coun- 
 try; and the Christian who does not pray, cuts himself off from 
 the assembly of the holy, and is worse than an unbeliever. 
 
 How comes it then, my brethren, that a duty not only so essen- 
 tial, but even so consoling for man, is at present so much neglected ? 
 How comes it that it is considered either as a gloomy and tiresome 
 duty, or as appropriated solely for retired souls ; insomuch, that 
 our instructions upon prayer scarcely interest those who listen to 
 us, who seem as if persuaded that they are more adapted to the 
 cloister than to the court? 
 
 Whence comes this abuse, and this universal neglect in the 
 world of prayer ? From two pretexts, which I now mean to over- 
 throw. First, they do not pray, because they know not, say they, 
 how to pray ; and, consequently, that it is lost time. Secondly, 
 they do not pray, because they complain that they find nothing in 
 prayer but wanderings of the mind, which render it both insipid 
 and disagreeable. First pretext, drawn from their ignorance of the 
 manner in which they ought to pray. Second pretext, founded on 
 the disgusts and difficulties of prayer. You must be taught, there- 
 fore, how to pray, since you know it not. And, secondly, the habit 
 of prayer must be rendered easy to you, since you find it so trou- 
 blesome and difficult. 
 
 Part I. " The commandments which I command you," said 
 formerly the Lord to his people, " are neither above your strength 
 nor the reach of your mind ; they are not hidden from you, nor far 
 off, that you should say, who shall go up for us to heaven and bring 
 them unto us, that we may hear them and do them ? Nor are they 
 beyond the sea, that you should say, who shall go over the sea for 
 us and bring them unto us, that we may hear them and do them ? 
 But the word is very nigh unto you, in your mouth, and in your 
 heart, that you may do it." 
 
 Now, what the Lord said in general of all the precepts of the 
 
200 ox prayer. Ser. 13. 
 
 law, that we have no occasion to seek beyond ourselves for the 
 knowledge of them, but that they may be all accomplished in our 
 heart and in our mouth, may more particularly be said of the pre- 
 cept of prayer, which is, as if the first and the most essential of all. 
 
 Nevertheless, what they commonly oppose in the world against 
 this duty is, that, when they come to prayer, they know not what 
 to say to God, and that praying is a secret of which they have 
 never as yet been able to comprehend any thing. I say, then, that 
 the source of this pretext springs from three iniquitous dispositions : 
 the first is, that they are mistaken in the idea which they form of 
 prayer ; the second is, that they are not sufficiently sensible of 
 their own wretchedness and wants ; and the third is, that they do 
 not love their God. 
 
 First. I say that they are mistaken in the idea which they form 
 of prayer. In effect, prayer is not an exertion of the mind, an ar- 
 rangement of ideas, a profound knowledge of the mysteries and 
 counsels of God ; it is a simple emotion of the heart ; it is a lamen- 
 tation of the soul, deeply affected at the sight of its own wretched- 
 ness ; it is a keen and inward feeling of our wants and of our weak- 
 ness, and a humble confidence which it lays before its Lord, in 
 order to obtain relief and deliverance from them. Prayer supposes, 
 in the soul which prays, neither great lights, uncommon know- 
 ledge, nor a mind more cultivated and exalted than that of the rest 
 of men ; it supposes only more faith, more contrition, and a warmer 
 desire of deliverance from its temptations and from its wretched- 
 ness. Prayer is neither a secret nor a science which we learn from 
 men ; nor is it an art, or private method, upon which it is necessary 
 to consult skilful teachers, in order to be master of its rules and 
 precepts. The methods and the maxims thereupon, pretended to 
 be laid down to us in our days, are either singular ways which are 
 not to be followed, or the vain speculations of an idle mind, or a 
 fanaticism which may stop at nothing, and which, far from edify- 
 ing the church, hath merited her censures, and hath furnished to 
 the impious matter of derision against her, and to the world fresh 
 pretexts of contempt for, and disgusts at, prayer. Prayer is a duty 
 upon which we are all born instructed : the rules of this divine 
 science are written solely in our hearts ; and the Spirit of God is 
 the sole master to teach it. 
 
 A holy and innocent soul, who is penetrated with the greatness 
 of God, struck with the terror of his judgments, touched with his 
 infinite mercies, who only knows to humble himself before him, to 
 acknowledge, in the simplicity of his heart, his goodness and won- 
 ders, to adore the orders of his providence upon him, to accept be- 
 fore him of the crosses and afflictions imposed upon him by the 
 wisdom of his councils ; who knows no prayer more sublime than 
 to be sensible before God of all the corruption of his heart ; to 
 groan over his own hardness of heart, and opposition to all good ; 
 to intreat of him, with fervent faith, to change him, to destroy in 
 him the man of sin, which, in spite of his firmest resolves, conti- 
 nually forces him to make so many false steps in the ways of God : 
 
Ser. 13. on piiayer. 201 
 
 a soul of this description is a thousand times more instructed in 
 the knowledge of prayer than all the teachers themselves, and may- 
 say, with the prophet, " I have more understanding than all my 
 teachers." He speaks to his God as a friend to a friend ; he is 
 sorry for having offended him ; he upbraids himself for not having, 
 as yet, sufficient force to renounce all to please him ; he takes no 
 pride in the sublimity of his thoughts ; he leaves his heart to speak, 
 and gives way to all its tenderness before the only object of his 
 love. Even when his mind wanders, his heart watches and speaks 
 for him : his very disgusts become a prayer, through the feelings 
 which are then excited in his heart : he is tenderly affected, he 
 sighs, he is displeased with, and a burden to, himself : he feels the 
 weight of his bonds, he exerts himself as if to break and throw 
 them off ; he a thousand times renews his protestations of fidelity ; 
 he blushes and is ashamed at always promising, and yet being con- 
 tinually faithless : such is the whole secret and the whole science 
 of prayer. And what is there in all this beyond the reach of every 
 believing soul ? 
 
 Who had instructed the poor woman of Canaan in prayer ? A 
 stranger, and a daughter of Tyre and Sidon, who was unacquainted 
 with the wonders of the law and the oracles of the prophets ; who 
 had not yet heard from the mouth of the Saviour the words of eter- 
 nal life ; who was still under the shadows of ignorance and of death : 
 she prays, however; her love, her confidence, the desire of being 
 granted, teach her to pray; her heart being touched, constitutes 
 the whole merit and the whole sublimity of her prayer. 
 
 And surely, if, in order to pray, it were requisite to rise to those 
 sublime states of prayer to which God exalteth some holy souls ; 
 if it were necessary to be wrapped in ecstasy, and transported even 
 up to heaven, like Paul, there to hear those ineffable secrets which 
 God exposeth not to man, and which it is not permitted, even to 
 man himself, to reveal ; or, like Moses upon the holy mountain, to 
 be placed upon a cloud of glory, and, face to face, to see God ; 
 that is to say, if it were necessary to have attained to that degree 
 of intimate union with the Lord, in which the soul, as if already 
 freed from its body, springs up even into the bosom of its God ; 
 contemplates at leisure his infinite perfections ; forgets, as I may 
 say, its members which are still upon the earth ; is no longer dis- 
 turbed, nor even diverted by the phantoms of the senses ; is fixed, 
 and as if absorbed in the contemplation of the wonders and the 
 grandeur of God ; and already participating in his eternity, could 
 count a whole age passed in that blessed state, as only a short 
 and rapid moment ; if, I say, it were necessary, in order to pray, 
 to be favoured with these rare and excellent gifts of the Holy 
 Spirit, you might tell us, like those new believers, of whom St. 
 Paul makes mention, that you have not yet received them, and 
 that you know not what is even that Spirit which communicates 
 them. 
 
 But prayer is not a special gift set apart for privileged souls 
 alone ; it is a common duty imposed upon every believer ; it is not 
 
202 on prayer. Ser. 13. 
 
 solely a virtue of perfection, and reserved for certain purer and 
 more holy souls ; it is, like charity, an indispensable virtue, requi- 
 site to the perfect as to the imperfect, within the capacity of the 
 illiterate equally as of the learned, commanded to the simple as to 
 the most enlightened: it is the virtue of all men; it is the science 
 of every believer ; it is the perfection of every creature. Whoever 
 has a heart, and is capable of loving the Author of his being, 
 whoever has a reason capable of knowing the nothingness of the 
 creature, and the greatness of God, must know how to adore, to re- 
 turn him thanks, and to have recourse to him, to appease him when 
 offended, to call upon him when turned away, to thank him when 
 favourable, to humble himself when he strikes, to lay his wants 
 before him, or to entreat his countenance and protection. 
 
 Thus, when the disciples ask of Jesus Christ to teach them to 
 pray, he doth not unfold to them the height, the sublimity, the 
 depth of the mysteries of God ; he solely informs them, that, in 
 order to pray, it is necessary to consider God as a tender, bounti- 
 ful, and careful father ; to address themselves to him with a re- 
 spectful familiarity, and with a confidence blended with fear and 
 love ; to speak to him the language of our weakness and of our 
 wretchedness ; to borrow no expressions but from our heart ; to 
 make no attempt of rising to him, but rather to draw him nearer to 
 us : to lay our wants before him, and to implore his aid ; to wish 
 that all men bless and worship him ; that his reign be established 
 in all hearts ; that his will be done, as in heaven, so on earth; that 
 sinners return to the paths of righteousness ; that believers attain 
 to the knowledge of the truth ; that he forgive us our sins ; that he 
 preserve us from temptation ; that he assist our weakness; that he 
 deliver us from our miseries. All is simple, but all is grand in this 
 divine prayer ; it recalls man to himself, and, in order to adopt it as 
 a model, nothing more is required than to feel our wants, and to 
 wish deliverance from them. 
 
 And behold, why I have said that the second iniquitous disposi- 
 tion, from whence the pretext, founded upon not knowing how to 
 pray proceeded, is, that they do not sufficiently feel the infinite 
 wants of their soul : for, I ask you, my brethren, is it necessary to 
 teach a sick person to entreat relief? Is a man pressed with hun- 
 ger difficulted how to solicit food? Is an unfortunate person, 
 beaten with the tempest, and on the point of perishing, at a loss 
 how to implore assistance ? Alas ! doth the urgent necessity alone 
 not amply furnish expressions ? In the sole sense of our evils, do 
 we not find that animated eloquence, those persuasive emotions, 
 those pressing remonstrances which solicit their cure ? Has a suf- 
 fering heart occasion for any master to teach it to complain ? In it 
 every thing speaks, every thing expresses its affliction, every thing 
 announces its sufferings, and every thing solicits relief: even its 
 silence is eloquent. 
 
 You yourself, who complain that you know not what method to 
 take in praying, in your temporal afflictions, from the instant that 
 a dangerous malady threatens your life, that an unlooked-for event 
 
Ser. 13. on prayer. 203 
 
 endangers your property and fortune, that an approaching death is 
 on the point of snatching from you a person either dear or neces- 
 sary, then you raise your hands to heaven ; then you send up your 
 lamentations and prayers ; you address yourself to the God who 
 strikes and who relieves; you then know how to pray; you have no 
 need of going beyond your own heart for lessons and rules to lay 
 your afflictions before him, nor do you consult able teachers in 
 order to know what is necessary to say to him ; you have occasion 
 for nothing but your grief, your evils alone have found out the method 
 of instructing you. 
 
 Ah ! my brethren, if we felt the wants of our soul as we feel 
 those of our body, if our eternal salvation interested us as much 
 as a fortune of dirt, or a weak and perishable health, we would 
 soon be skilful in the divine art of prayer ; we would not complain 
 that we had nothing to say in the presence of a God of whom we 
 have so much to ask; the mind would be little difficulted in finding 
 wherewith to entertain him ; our evils alone would speak ; in spite 
 of ourselves, our heart would burst forth in holy effusions, like that 
 of Samuel's mother before the ark of the Lord ; we would no longer 
 be master of our sorrows and tears ; and the most certain mark of 
 our want of faith, and that we know ourselves not, is, that of not 
 knowing what to say to the Lord in the space of a short prayer. 
 
 And after all, is it possible that, in the miserable condition of 
 this human life, surrounded as we are with so many dangers ; made 
 up ourselves of so many weaknesses ; on the point, every moment, 
 of being led astray by the objects of vanity, corrupted by the illu- 
 sions of the senses, and dragged away by the force of example ; a 
 continual prey to the tyranny of our inclinations, to the dominion 
 of our flesh, to the inconstancy of our heart, to the inequalities of 
 our reason, to the caprices of our imagination, to the eternal varia- 
 tions of our temper ; depressed by loss of favour, elated by pros- 
 perity, enervated by abundance, soured by poverty, led away by 
 custom, shaken by accidents, flattered with praise, irritated by con- 
 tempt; continually wavering between our passions and our duties, 
 between ourselves and the law of God; is it possible, I say, that, 
 in a situation so deplorable, we can be difficulted what to ask of 
 the Lord, or what to say to him, when we appear in his presence? 
 O my God ! why then is man not less miserable ? Or why is he 
 not better acquainted with his wants? 
 
 Ah ! if you told us, my dear hearer, that you know not where to 
 begin in prayer; that your wants are so infinite, your miseries and 
 your passions so multiplied, that, were you to pretend to expose 
 them all to the Lord, you would never have done : if you said to 
 us, that the more you search into your heart, the more your wounds 
 unfold, the more corruption and disorders do you discover in your- 
 self, and that, despairing of being able to relate to the Lord the 
 endless detail of your weaknesses, you present your heart wholly 
 to him, you leave your evils to speak for you, you ground your 
 whole art of prayer on your confusion, your humiliation, and your 
 silence ; and that, in consequence of having too much to say to him, 
 
204 on prayer. Ser. 13. 
 
 you say nothing ; if you spoke in this manner, you would speak 
 the language of faith, and that of a penitent king, who, contemplat- 
 ing his repeated relapses, and no longer daring to speak to his God 
 in prayer, said, " Lord, I am troubled, I am bowed down greatly ; 
 I go mourning all the day long ; for mine iniquities are gone over 
 my head ; as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me. My 
 heart panteth, my strength faileth me ; for I will declare mine ini- 
 quity, I will be sorry for my sin. Forsake me not, O Lord : O my 
 God ! be not far from me. Make haste to help me, O Lord, my 
 salvation." Such is the silence of compunction which forms before 
 God the true prayer. 
 
 But to complain that you have no longer any thing to say, when 
 you wish to pray : alas ! my dear hearer, when you present your- 
 self before God, do your past crimes hold out nothing for you to 
 dread from his judgments, or to ask from his mercy ? What ! 
 your whole life has perhaps been only a sink of debaucheries ; 
 you have perverted every thing, grace, your talents, your reason, 
 your wealth, your dignities, all creatures ; you have passed the best 
 part of your days in the neglect of your God, and in all the delu- 
 sions of the world and of the passions; you have vilified your 
 heart by iniquitous attachments, defiled your body, disordered your 
 imagination, weakened your lights, and even extinguished every 
 happy disposition which nature had placed in your soul ; and the 
 recollection of all this furnishes you with nothing in the presence 
 of God ? And it inspires you with no idea of the method you 
 ought to adopt, in having recourse to him, in order to obtain his 
 forgiveness of such accumulated crimes ? and you have nothing to 
 say to a God whom you have so long offended ? O man ! thy 
 salvation, then, must either be without resource, or thou must have 
 other means of accomplishing it than those of the divine clemency 
 and mercy. 
 
 But, my dear hearer, I go farther. If you lead a Christian life ; 
 if, returned from the world and from pleasures, you are at last en- 
 tered into the ways of salvation, you are still more unjust in com- 
 plaining that you find nothing to say to the Lord in your prayers. 
 What ! the singular grace of having opened your eyes, of unde- 
 ceiving you with regard to the world, and withdrawing you from 
 the bottom of the abyss ; this blessing, so rare, and denied to so 
 many sinners, doth it give rise to no grateful feeling in your heart, 
 when at his feet ? Can this recollection leave you cold and in- 
 sensible ? Is nothing tender awakened by the presence of your 
 benefactor, you who pride yourself upon having never forgotten a 
 a benefit, and who so pompously display the feeling and the excess 
 of your gratitude toward the creatures ? 
 
 Besides, if you feel those endless tendencies, which, in spite of 
 your change of life, still rise up within you against the law of God ; 
 that difficulty which you still have in doing well ; that unfortunate 
 inclination which you still find within you toward evil ; those de- 
 sires of a more perfect virtue, which always turn out vain ; those 
 resolutions to which you are always faithless ; those opportunities 
 
Ser. 13. on prayer. 205 
 
 in which you always find yourself the same ; those duties which 
 always meet the same repugnance in your heart ; in a word, if you 
 feel that inexhaustible fund of weakness and of corruption which 
 remains with you after your conversion, and which alarms so much 
 your virtue, you will not only have ample matter to address the 
 Lord in prayer, but your whole life will be one continual prayer. 
 All the dangers which shall threaten your weakness, all the acci- 
 dents which shall shake your faith, all the objects which shall open 
 afresh the former wounds of your heart, all the inward emotions 
 which shall prove that the man of sin lives always within you, will 
 lead you to look upwards to Him from whom alone you expect 
 deliverance from them. As the apostle said, every place will be 
 to you a place of prayer; every thing will direct your attention to 
 God, because every thing will furnish you with Christian reflections 
 upon yourself. 
 
 Besides, my dear hearer, even granting that your own necessities 
 should not be sufficient to fill the void of your prayer, employ a 
 portion of it with the evils of the church ; with the dissensions of 
 the pastors; with that spirit of schism and revolt which seems to 
 be forming in the sanctuary ; with the relaxation of believers ; with 
 the depravity of manners ; with the sad progress of unbelief, and 
 the diminution of faith among men. Lament over the scandals of 
 which you are a continual witness ; complain to the Lord, with the 
 prophet, that all have forsaken him ; that every one seeks his own 
 interest ; that even the salt of the earth hath become tasteless, and 
 that piety is become a traffic. Entreat of the Lord the consum- 
 mation of his elect, and the fulfilment of his designs upon the 
 church ; religious princes, faithful pastors, humble and enlightened 
 teachers, knowing and disinterested guides ; peace to the churches ; 
 the extinction of error, and the return of all who have gone astray. 
 
 What more shall I add ? Entreat the conversion of your rela- 
 tions, friends, enemies, protectors, and masters ; the conversion of 
 those souls to whom you have been a stumbling-block; of those 
 whom you have formerly estranged from piety through your deri- 
 sions and censures ; of those who perhaps owe their irreligion and 
 free-thinking solely to the impiety of your past discourses ; of those 
 of whom your examples or solicitations have formerly either per- 
 verted the virtue or seduced the weakness. Is it possible that 
 these great objects, at once so sad and so interesting, cannot fur- 
 nish a moment's attention to your mind, or some feeling to your 
 heart ? Every thing which surrounds you teaches you to pray ; 
 every object, every accident which you see around you, provides 
 you with fresh opportunities of raising yourself to God ; the world, 
 retirement, the court, the righteous, the sinful, the public and do- 
 mestic occurrences, the misfortunes of some, and the prosperity of 
 others; every thing, in a word, which meets your eyes, supplies 
 you with the subject of lamentation, of prayer, of thanksgiving. 
 Every thing instructs your faith ; every thing excites your zeal ; 
 all grieves your piety, and calls forth your gratitude ; and amid so 
 many subjects of prayer, you cannot supply a single instant of 
 
206 ox prayer. Ser. 13. 
 
 prayer ! Surrounded with so many opportunities of raising yourself 
 to God, you have nothing to say to him when you come to appear 
 in his presence ? Ah ! my brethren, how far removed must God be 
 from a heart which finds it such a punishment to hold converse 
 with him, and how little must that master and friend be loved, to 
 whom they never wish to speak ! 
 
 And behold the last and the principal cause of our incapacity 
 in prayer. They know not how to pray and to speak to their 
 God, because they do not love him. When the heart loves, it soon 
 finds out how to communicate its feelings, and to affect the object 
 of its love ; it soon knows what it ought to say : alas ! it cannot ex- 
 press all that it feels. Let us establish regularity once more in our 
 hearts, my brethren ; let us substitute God in place of the world ; 
 then shall our heart be no longer a stranger before God. It is the 
 irregularity of our affections which is the soul cause of our inca- 
 pacity in prayer ; eternal riches can never be fervently asked when 
 they are not loved; truths can never be well meditated upon when 
 they are not relished ; and little can be said to a God who is hardly 
 known : favours which are not desired, and freedom from passions 
 which are not hated, can never be very urgently solicited ; in a 
 word, prayer is the language of love ; and we know not how ,to 
 pray, because we know not how to love. 
 
 But, as you shall say, doth an inclination for prayer depend upon 
 us ? And how is it possible to pray, with disgusts and wanderings 
 of the mind, which are not to be conquered, and which render it 
 insupportable ? Second pretext, drawn from the disgusts and the 
 difficulties of prayer. 
 
 Part II. One of the greatest excesses of sin is undoubtedly 
 that backwardness, and, I may say, that natural dislike which we 
 have to prayer. Man, innocent, would have founded his whole 
 delight in holding converse with God. All creatures would have 
 been as an open book, where he would have incessantly meditated 
 upon his works and his wonders ; the impressions of the senses, 
 under the command of reason, would never have been able to turn 
 him aside, in spite of himself, from the delight and the familiarity of 
 his presence ; his whole life would have been one continued contem- 
 plation of the truth, and his whole happiness in his innocence 
 would have been founded on his continual communications with 
 the Lord, and the certainty that he would never forsake him. 
 
 Man must therefore be highly corrupted, and sin must have made 
 strange alterations in us, to turn into a punishment what ought to 
 be our happiness. It is, however, only too true, that we almost 
 all bear in our nature this backwardness and this dislike to prayer : 
 and upon these is founded the most universal pretext which is op- 
 posed to the discharge of this duty, so essential to Christian piety. 
 Even persons, to whom the habit of prayer ought to be rendered 
 more pleasing and more familiar, by the practice of virtue, con- 
 tinually complain of the disgusts and of the constant wanderings 
 which they experience in this holy exercise ; insomuch, that, look- 
 
Ser. 13. on prayer. 207 
 
 ing upon it either as a wearisome duty, or as a lost trouble, they 
 abridge its length, and think themselves happily quit of a yoke and 
 of a slavery, when this moment of weariness and restraint is over. 
 
 Now, I say, that nothing is more unrighteous than to estrange 
 ourselves from prayer, on account of the disgusts and wanderings 
 of the mind, which render it painful and disagreeable to us ; for 
 these disgusts and wanderings originate, first, from our lukewarm- 
 ness, and our infidelities, or, secondly, in our being little accus- 
 tomed to prayer, or, thirdly, in the wisdom even of God, who 
 tries us, and who wishes to purify our heart, by withholding for a 
 time the sensible consolations of prayer. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, the first and the most common source of the 
 disgusts and the dryness of our prayers, is the lukewarmness and 
 the infidelity of our life. It is, in effect, an injustice to pretend 
 that we can bring to prayer a serene and tranquil mind ; a cool 
 imagination, free from all the vain phantoms by which it is agitated ; 
 a heart affected with, and disposed to relish the presence of its 
 God, while our whole life, though otherwise virtuous in the eyes 
 of man, shall be one continual dissipation ; while we shall continue 
 to live among objects the most calculated to move the imagination, 
 and to make those lively impressions on us which are never done 
 away ; in a word, while we shall preserve a thousand iniquitous 
 attachments in our heart, which, though not absolutely criminal in 
 our eyes, yet trouble, divide, and occupy us, and which weaken in 
 us, or even totally deprive us of any relish for God and the things 
 of heaven. 
 
 Alas ! my brethren, if the most retired and the most holy souls; 
 if the most recluse penitents, purified by long retreat, and by a life 
 altogether devoted to Heaven, still found, in the sole remembrance 
 of their past manners, disagreeable images, which force their way 
 even into their solitude, to disturb the comfort and the tranquillity 
 of their prayers ; do we expect that in a life, regular I confess, but 
 full of agitation, of occasions by which we are led away, of objects 
 which unsettle us, of temptations which disquiet, of pleasures which 
 enervate, of fears and hopes which agitate us, we shall find ourselves 
 in prayer, all of a sudden new men, purified from all those images 
 which sully our mind, freed from all those attachments which come 
 to divide and perhaps corrupt our heart, in tranquillity from all 
 those agitations which continually make such violent and such 
 dangerous impressions upon our soul ; and that, forgetting for a 
 moment the entire world, and all those vain objects which we have 
 so lately quitted, and which we still bear in our remembrance and 
 in our heart, we shall, all of a sudden, find ourselves raised, before 
 God, to the meditation of heavenly things, penetrated with love for 
 eternal riches, filled with compunction for innumerable infidelities 
 which we still love, and with a tranquillity of mind and of heart, 
 which the profoundest retirement, and the most rigorous seclusion 
 from the world frequently do not bestow ? Ah ! my brethren, how 
 unjust we are, and into what terrible reproaches against ourselves 
 shall the continual complaints made by us against the duties of 
 piety one day be turned ! 
 
208 on prayer. Ser. 1.3. 
 
 And, to go farther into this truth, and to enter into a detail 
 which renders it more evident to you, you complain, in the first 
 place, that your mind, incapable of a moment's attention in prayer, 
 wanders from it, and flies off in spite of yourself. But how can it 
 be otherwise ; or how can you find it attentive and collected, if 
 every thing you do takes off its attention and unsettles it ; if, in 
 the detail of conduct, you never recollect yourself; if you never ac- 
 custom yourself to that mental reflection, to that life of faith, which, 
 even amid the dissipations of the world, find ample sources of holy 
 reflection ? To have a collected mind in prayer, you must bring it 
 along with you ; it is necessary that even your intercourse with 
 sinners, when obliged to live among them, the sight of their pas- 
 sions, of their anxieties, fears, hopes, joys, chagrins, and wretched- 
 ness, supply your faith with reflections, and turn your views to- 
 ward God who alone bestows collectedness of mind and the tran- 
 quillity of prayer. Then, even on quitting the world and those 
 worldly conversations, where duty alone shall have engaged your 
 presence, you will find no difficulty in going to recollect yourself 
 before God, and in forgetting at his feet those vain agitations which 
 you have so lately witnessed. On the contrary, the designs of 
 faith which you shall there have preserved j the blindness of the 
 worldly, which you shall there have inwardly deplored, will cause 
 you to find new comforts at the feet of Jesus Christ ; you will there, 
 with consolation, recreate yourself from the weariness of dissipation 
 and of worldly nothings ; you will lament, with increased satisfac- 
 tion, over the folly of men who so madly pursue after a vapour, a 
 a chimerical happiness, which eludes their grasp, and which it is 
 impossible ever to attain, for the world in which they seek it cannot 
 bestow it ; you will there more warmly thank the Lord for having, 
 with so much goodness, and notwithstanding your crimes, enlight- 
 ened and separated you from that multitude which must perish ; 
 you will there see, as in a new light, the happiness of those souls 
 who serve him, and whose eyes, being opened upon vanity, no 
 longer live but for the truth. 
 
 Secondly. You complain that your heart, insensible in prayer, 
 feels nothing fervent for its God, but, on the contrary, a disgust 
 which renders it insupportable. But how is it possible that your 
 heart, wholly engrossed with the things of the earth, filled with ini- 
 quitous attachments, inclination for the world, love of yourself, 
 schemes for exalting your station, and desires perhaps of pleasing ; 
 how is it possible, I say, that your heart, compounded with so 
 many earthly affections, should still have any feeling for the things 
 of heaven ? It is wholly filled with the creatures ; where then 
 should God find his place in it ? We cannot love both God and 
 the world. Thus, when the Israelites had passed the Jordan, and 
 had eaten of the fruits of the earth, " the manna ceased on the 
 morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land, neither 
 had the children of Israel manna any more ;" as if to show, that 
 they could not enjoy at the same time both the heavenly nourish- 
 ment and that of the earth. 
 
 Love of the world, said St. Augustine, like a dangerous fever, 
 
Ser. 13. on prayer. 209 
 
 sheds a universal bitterness through the heart, which renders the 
 invisible and eternal riches insipid and disgusting to us. Thus, 
 you never come to prayer but with an insurmountable disgust. Ah ! 
 it is a proof that your heart is diseased ; that a secret fever, and 
 perhaps unknown to yourself, causes it to languish, saps and dis- 
 gusts it ; that it is engrossed by a foreign love. Mount to the 
 source of your disgusts toward God, and every thing connected with 
 him, and see if they shall not be found in the iniquitous attach- 
 ments of your heart ; see if you are not still a slave to yourself, to 
 the vain cares of dress, to frivolous friendships, to dangerous ani- 
 mosities, to secret envies, to desires of rank, to every thing around 
 you. These are the source of the evil : apply the remedy to it ; 
 take something every day upon yourself; labour seriously toward 
 purifying your heart; you will then taste the comforts and the 
 consolations of prayer ; then the world no longer engrossing your 
 affections, you will find your God more worthy of being loved : we 
 soon ardently love the only object of our love. 
 
 And, after all, render glory here to the truth. Is it not true, 
 that the days in which you have been more guarded upon yourself, 
 the days in which you have made some sacrifices, to the Lord, 
 of your inclinations, of your indolence, of your temper, of your 
 aversions ; is it not true, that, in these days, you have addressed 
 your prayers to the Lord with more peace, more consolation, and 
 more delight ? We encounter, with double pleasure, the eyes of a 
 master to whom we have lately given some striking proof of fidelity; 
 on the contrary, we are in pain before him when we feel that he 
 has cause of a thousand just reproaches against us : we are then 
 anxious and under restraint ; we endeavour to hide ourselves from 
 his view, like the first sinner : we no longer address him with that 
 overflowing heart, and that confidence, which a conscience pure and 
 void of offence inspires ; and the moments when we are under the 
 necessity of supporting his divine presence are anxiously counted. 
 
 Thus, when Jesus Christ commands us to pray, he begins with 
 ordering us to watch. He thereby means us to understand that 
 vigilance is the only preparation to prayer ; that to love to pray, it 
 is necessary to watch ; and that fondness for, and consolation in 
 prayer, are granted only to the recollection and to the sacrifices of 
 vigilance. I know, that, if you do not pray, you can never watch 
 over yourself and live holily ; but I likewise know, that, if you exert 
 not that vigilance which causes to live holily, you can never pray 
 with comfort and with consolation. Prayer, it is true, obtains for 
 us the grace of vigilance ; but it is yet more true, that vigilance 
 alone can draw down upon us the gift and the usage of the prayer. 
 
 And, from thence, it is easy to conclude, that a life of the world, 
 even granting it to be the most innocent, that is to say, a life of 
 pleasure, continual gaming, dissipation, and theatrical amusement, 
 which you call so innocent, when attended with no other harm than 
 that of disqualifying you for prayer ; when this worldly life, which 
 you so strongly justify, should contain nothing more criminal than 
 that of disgusting you at prayer, of drying up your heart, of un- 
 
 p 
 
210 on prayer. Ser. 13. 
 
 settling your imagination, of weakening your faith, and of filling 
 your mind with anxiety and trouble ; when we should judge of 
 the security of this state merely from what you continually tell us, 
 that you are incapable of arranging yourself for prayer, and that, on 
 your part, it is always attended with an insupportable disgust and 
 weariness ; I say, that, for these reasons alone, the most innocent 
 worldly life is a life of sin and reprobation ; a life for which there 
 is no salvation : for salvation is promised solely to prayer ; sal- 
 vation is not attainable but through the aid of prayer; salva- 
 tion is granted only to perseverance in prayer; consequently, every 
 life which places an invincible obstacle in the way of prayer, can 
 have no pretensions to salvation. Now, you are fully sensible 
 yourselves, my brethren, that a life of dissipation, of gaming, of 
 pleasure, and of public places, puts an essential obstacle in the way 
 of prayer ; that it places in your heart, in your imagination, in your 
 senses, an invincible disgust at prayer, an unsettledness incompati- 
 ble with the spirit of prayer: you continually complain of this; 
 you even make use of it as a pretext not to pray ; and from thence 
 be assured that there is no salvation for the worldly life, even the 
 most innocent ; for, wherever prayer is impossible, salvation must 
 likewise be so. First reason of the disgusts and of the wanderings 
 of our prayers the lukewarmness and the infidelity of our life. 
 
 The second is our little usage of prayer. We pray with disgust, 
 because we seldom pray. For, first, it is the practice alone of 
 prayer which will gradually calm your mind, which will insensibly 
 banish from it the images of the world and of vanity, which will 
 disperse all those clouds which produce all the disgusts and 
 the wanderings of your prayers. Secondly, you must ask for a long 
 time before you can obtain ; you must press, solicit, and even im- 
 portune ; the sweets and the consolations of prayer are the fruit and 
 the reward of prayer itself. Thirdly, there must be familiarity in 
 order to find pleasure in it. If you seldom pray, the Lord will be 
 a strange and unknown God to you, as I may say, before whom 
 you will feel yourself embarrassed, and under a kind of restraint ; 
 with whom you will never experience those overflowings of heart, 
 that sweet confidence, that holy freedom, which familiarity alone 
 bestows, and which constitute the whole pleasure of the divine in- 
 tercourse. God requires to be known, in order to be loved. The 
 world loses by being examined ; the surface, and the first glance of 
 it are alone smiling. Search deeper, and it is no longer but empti- 
 ness, vanity, anxious care, agitation, and misery. But the Lord 
 must be tasted, says the prophet, in order to feel how good he is. 
 The more you know, the more you love him : the more you unite 
 yourself to him, the more do you feel that there is no true happi- 
 ness on the earth but that of knowing and of loving him. 
 
 It is the use, therefore, of prayer, which alone can render prayer 
 pleasing. Thus we see that the generality of persons who com- 
 plain of the disgusts and of the wanderings of their prayers, seldom 
 pray ; think this important duty fulfilled when they have bestowed 
 upon the Lord a few hasty moments of thoughtlessness and re- 
 
Ser. 13. on prayer. 211 
 
 straint ; forsake it on the first symptom of disgust ; make no ex- 
 ertion to reduce and familiarize their mind to it ; and far from con- 
 sidering prayer as being rendered only more necessary to them, by 
 their invincible repugnance to it, they regard that very repugnance 
 as a legal excuse, which dispenses them altogether from it. 
 
 But how find time in the world, you will say, to make so long 
 and so frequent a use of prayer ? You, my dear hearer, not find 
 time to pray ? But wherefore is time given to you, but to entreat 
 of God to forget your crimes, to look upon you with eyes of com- 
 passion, and to place you one day among the number of his holy ? 
 You have not time to pray ? But you have not time, then, to be a 
 Christian ; for, a man who prays not, is a man who has no God, 
 no worship, and no hope. You have not time to pray ? But 
 prayer is the beginning of all good; and if you do not pray, you have 
 not yet performed a single work for eternal life. Ah ! my brethren, 
 is time for ever wanting to solicit the favours of the earth, to im- 
 portune the master, to besiege those who are in place, to bestow 
 upon pleasures, or upon idleness ? What useless moments ! What 
 languid and tiresome days, through the mere gloom which ever ac- 
 companies idleness ! What time lost in vain ceremonials, in idle 
 conversations, in boundless gaming, in fruitless subjections, in 
 grasping at chimeras which move farther and farther from us ! 
 Great God ! and time is wanted to ask heaven of thee, to appease 
 thy wrath, and to supplicate thine eternal mercies ! How humbly, 
 O my God, must salvation be estimated, when time is wanted to 
 entreat of thy mercy to save us ! And how much are we to be de- 
 plored, to find so many moments for the world, and to be unable to 
 find a single one for eternity ! Second cause of the disgusts and of 
 the wanderings of your prayers the little use of prayer itself. 
 
 It is true, my brethren, that this reason is not so general but 
 that souls, the most faithful to prayer, are often seen to experience 
 all those disgusts and those wanderings of which I speak ! but, I 
 say, that these disgusts proceed from the wisdom of God, who 
 means to purify them, and who leads them by that path, only in 
 order to fulfil his eternal designs of mercy upon them. Last rea- 
 son that consequently, far from being repulsed by what they find 
 gloomy and disagreeable in prayer, they ought to persevere in it 
 with even more fidelity than if the Lord had shed upon them the 
 most abundant and the most sensible consolations. 
 
 First. Because you ought to consider these disgusts as the just 
 punishment of your past infidelities. Is it not reasonable that God 
 make you expiate the criminal voluptuousness of your worldly life 
 by the disgusts and the sorrows of piety ? Weakness of tempera- 
 ment does not perhaps permit you to punish, by corporeal suffer- 
 ings, the licentiousness of your past manners : is it not just that 
 God supply that, by the punishment, and the inward afflictions of 
 the mind? Would you pretend to pass in an instant from the plea- 
 sures of the world to those of grace ; from the viands of Egypt to 
 the milk and honey of the land of promise, without the Lord hav- 
 ing first made you to undergo the barrenness and the fatigues of 
 
 p 2 
 
212 ox prayer. Ser. 13. 
 
 the desert ; and, in a word, that he should not chastise the delights, 
 if I may venture to say so, of guilt, but by those of virtue ? 
 
 Secondly. You have so long refused yourself to God, in spite of 
 the most lively inspirations of his grace, which recalled you to the 
 truth and to the light ; you have so long suffered him to knock at the 
 gate of your heart before you have opened it to him ; you have dis- 
 puted, struggled against, wavered, deferred so much, before you 
 gave yourself to him; is it not just that he leave you to solicit for 
 some time before he give himself to you with all the consolations 
 of his grace? The delays and the tarryings of the Lord are the 
 just punishment of your own. 
 
 But, even admitting these reasons to be less weighty, how do 
 you know if the Lord thereby mean not to render this exilement 
 and this separation in which we live from him, more hateful to you, 
 and to increase the fervency of your longings for that immortal 
 country where truth, seen in open day, will always appear lovely, 
 because we shall see it as it is? How do you know if he thereby 
 mean not to inspire you with new compunction for your past 
 crimes, by making you sensible, at every moment, of the contra- 
 riety and disgust which they have left in your heart to the truth 
 and to righteousness? Lastly, how do you know, if the Lord mean 
 not, by these disgusts, to perfect the purification of what may as 
 yet be too human in your piety; if he mean not to establish your 
 virtue upon that truth which is always the same, and not upon in- 
 clination and fancy, which incessantly change; upon rules which 
 are eternal, and not upon consolations which are transitory; upon 
 faith which never fails to sacrifice the visible for the invisible riches, 
 and not upon feeling, which leaves to the world almost the same 
 empire that grace hath over your heart ? A piety wholly of fancy 
 goes a short way, if not sustained and confirmed by the truth. It 
 is dangerous to let our fidelity depend upon the feeling dispositions 
 of a heart which is never an instant the same, and upon which 
 every object makes new impressions. The duties which only please 
 when they console, do not please long ; and that virtue which is 
 solely founded on fancy can never sustain itself, because it rests 
 only upon ourselves. 
 
 For, after all, if you seek only the Lord in your prayers, provi- 
 ded that the way by which he leads you conduct to him, it ought 
 to matter little to you whether it be by that of disgusts or of con- 
 solations, for, being the surest, it ought always to appear prefera- 
 ble to all others. If you pray only to attract more aids from 
 heaven in relief of your wants, or in support of your weakness, 
 faith teaching you that prayer, even when accompanied with those 
 disgusts and those drynesses, obtains the same favours, produces 
 the same effects, and is equally acceptable to God as that in which 
 sensible consolations are found. What do I say? that it may 
 become even more agreeable to the Lord, through your acceptance 
 of the difficulties which you there encounter ; faith teaching you 
 this, you ought to be equally faithful to prayer as if it held out the 
 most sensible attractions, otherwise it would not be God whom 
 
Ser. 13. on prayer. 213 
 
 you sought, but yourselves; it would not be eternal riches, but 
 vain and fleeting consolations ; it would not be the remedies of 
 faith, but the supports of your self-love. 
 
 Thus, be whom you may who now listen to me, imitate the wo- 
 man of Canaan ; be faithful to prayer, and, in the fulfilment of this 
 duty, you will find all the rest sustained and rendered easy. If a 
 sinner, pray : it was through prayer alone that the publican and 
 the sinful woman of the gospel obtained feelings of compunction 
 and the grace of a thorough penitence; and prayer is the only 
 source and the only path of righteousness. If righteous, still pray: 
 perseverance in faith and in piety is promised only to prayer; and 
 by that it was that Job, that David, that Tobias, persevered to the 
 end. If you live amid sinners, and your duty does not permit you 
 to withdraw yourself from the sight of their irregularities and ex- 
 amples, pray : the greater the dangers, the more necessary does 
 prayer become ; and the three children in the flames, and Jonah in 
 the belly of a monster, found safety only through prayer. If the 
 engagements of your birth, or of your station, attach you to the 
 court of kings, pray: Esther, in the court of Ahasuerus, Daniel in 
 that of Darius, the prophets in the palaces of the kings of Israel, 
 were solely indebted to prayer for their life and salvation. If you 
 live in retirement, pray: solitude itself becomes a rock, if a con- 
 tinual intercourse with God does not defend us against ourselves; 
 and Judith, in the secrecy of her house, and the widow Anna in the 
 temple, and the Anthonies in the desert, found the fruit and the 
 security of their retreat in prayer alone. If established in the church 
 for the instruction of the people, pray : all the power and all the 
 success of your ministry must depend upon your prayers; and the 
 apostles converted the universe solely because they had appropria- 
 ted nothing to themselves but prayer and the preaching of the gos- 
 pel. Lastly, be whom you may, I again repeat it, in prosperity or 
 in indigence, in joy or in affliction, in trouble or in peace, in fer- 
 vency or in despondency, in lust or in the ways of righteousness, 
 advanced in virtue, or still in the first steps of penitence, pray. 
 Prayer is the safety of all stations, the consolation of all sorrows, 
 the duty of all conditions, the soul of piety, the support of faith, 
 the grand foundation of religion, and all religion itself. O my God ! 
 shed, then, upon us that spirit of grace and of prayer which was 
 to be the distinguishing mark of thy church, and the portion of 
 a new people; and purify our hearts and our lips, that we may 
 be enabled to offer up to thee pure homages, fervent sighs, and 
 prayers worthy of the eternal riches which thou hast so often pro- 
 mised to those who shall have well entreated them. 
 
214 FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES. Sej. 14. 
 
 SERMON XIV. 
 
 FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES. 
 
 " Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine 
 enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies." Matt. v. 43. 
 
 It is commonly believed that a degree of indulgence and caution 
 had been used by the legislator of the Jews, in publishing the law 
 on forgiveness of injuries, that obliged to accommodate it, in some 
 respect to the weakness of a carnal people, and otherwise persua- 
 ded that of all virtues, that of loving an enemy was the most 
 difficult to the heart of man, he was satisfied with regulating and 
 prescribing bounds for revenge. It was only in order to prevent 
 great excesses, says St. Augustine, that he meant to give authority 
 to smaller ones. That law, like all the others, had its sanctity, its 
 goodness, its justice ; but it was rather an establishment of polity 
 than a rule of piety. It was calculated to maintain the internal 
 tranquillity of the state ; but it neither touched the heart nor struck 
 at the root of hatreds and revenge. The only effect proposed, was 
 either to restrain the aggressor, by threatening him with the same 
 punishment with which he had grieved his brother, or to put a check 
 upon the irritation of the offended, by letting him see, that, if he 
 exceeded in the satisfaction required, he exposed himself to undergo 
 all the surplus of his revenge. 
 
 Philosophers, in their morality, had also placed the forgiveness 
 of injuries among the number of virtues ; but that was a pretext of 
 vanity rather than a rule of discipline. It is because revenge seemed 
 to them to carry along with it something, I know not what, of mean 
 and passionate, which would have disfigured the portrait and the 
 tranquillity of their ideal sage, that it appeared disgraceful to them 
 to be unable to rise superior to an injury. The forgiveness of their 
 enemies was solely founded, therefore, upon the contempt in which 
 they held them. They avenged themselves by disdaining revenge ; 
 and pride readily gave up the pleasure of hurting those who have 
 injured us, for the pleasure which was found in despising them. 
 
 But the law of the gospel, upon loving our enemies, neither 
 flatters pride, nor spares self-love. In the forgiveness of injuries, 
 nothing ought to indemnify the Christian but the consolation of 
 imitating Jesus Christ, and of obeying him ; but the claims which, 
 in an enemy, prove to him a brother ; but the hope of meeting, 
 before the eternal Judge, with the same indulgence which he 
 shall have used toward men. Nothing ought to limit him in his 
 charity, but charity itself, which hath no bounds, which excepts 
 neither places, times, nor persons, which ought never to be ex- 
 tinguished. And, should the religion of Christians have no other 
 proof against unbelief than the sublime elevation of this maxim, 
 it would always have this pre-eminence in sanctity, and conse- 
 
Ser. 14. FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES. 215 
 
 quently in apparent truth, over all the sects which have ever ap- 
 peared upon the earth. 
 
 Let us unfold, therefore, the motives and the rules of this essen- 
 tial point of the law : the motives, by establishing the equity of the 
 precept through the very pretexts which seem to oppose it ; the 
 rules, by laying open the illusions under which every one justifies to 
 himself their infractions; that is to say, the injustice of our hatreds, 
 and the falsity of our reconciliations. 
 
 Part I. The three principles which usually bind men to each 
 other, and by which are formed all human unions and friendships, 
 are fancy, cupidity, and vanity. Fancy We follow a certain pro- 
 pensity of nature, which, being the cause of our finding, in some 
 persons, a greater similarity to our own inclinations, perhaps also 
 greater allowances for our faults, binds us to them, and occasions 
 us to find, in their society, a comfort which becomes weariness in 
 that of the rest of men. Cupidity We seek out useful friends ; 
 from the moment that they are necessary to our pleasure or to our 
 fortune, they become worthy of our friendship. Interest is a grand 
 charm to the majority of hearts ; the titles which render us power- 
 ful, are quickly transmuted into qualities which render us appa- 
 rently amiable, and friends are never wanting when we can pay the 
 friendship of those who love us. Lastly, Vanity Friends who do 
 us honour are always dear to us. It would seem that, in loving 
 them, we enter, as it were, into partnership with them in that dis- 
 tinction which they enjoy in the world ; we seek to deck ourselves, 
 as I may say, with their reputation ; and, being unable to reach their 
 merit, we pride ourselves in their society, in order to have it sup- 
 posed that, at least, there is not much between us, and that like 
 loves like. 
 
 These are the three great ties of human society. Religion and 
 charity unite almost nobody ; and from thence it is, that, from the 
 moment men offend our fancy, that they are unfavourable to our 
 interests, or that they wound our reputation and our vanity, the 
 human and brittle ties which united us to them are broken asunder ; 
 our heart withdraws from them, and no longer finds in itself, with 
 respect to them, but animosity and bitterness. And behold the 
 three most general sources of those hatreds which men nourish 
 against each other; which change all the sweets of society into end- 
 less inveteracies ; which impoison all the delight of conversations, 
 and all the innocency of mutual intercourse ; and which, attacking 
 religion in the heart, nevertheless present themselves to us under 
 appearances of equity which justify them in our eyes and strengthen 
 us in them. 
 
 I say, from the moment that men offend our fancy; and this is 
 the first pretext, and the first source of our withdrawing from, and 
 of our hatreds against, our brethren. You say, that you cannot 
 accord with such a person ; that every thing in him offends and 
 displeases you ; that it is an antipathy which you cannot conquer ; 
 that all his manners seem fashioned to irritate you ; that to see him 
 
216 FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES. Ser. 14. 
 
 would answer the sole purpose of augmenting the natural aver- 
 sion which you have to him ; and that nature hath placed within us 
 hatreds and likings, conformities and aversions, for which she alone 
 is to be answerable. 
 
 To this I might at once answer, by establishing the foundations 
 of the Christian doctrine upon loving our brethren. Is that man, 
 in consequence of displeasing, and being disagreeable to your fancy, 
 less your brother, child of God, citizen of heaven, member of Jesus 
 Christ, and inheritor of the eternal promises ? Doth his humour, 
 his character, whatever it may be, efface any one of those august 
 traits which he hath received upon the sacred font, which unite him 
 to you by divine and immortal ties, and which ought to render him 
 dear and respectable to you? When Jesus Christ commands us to 
 love our brethren as ourselves, doth he mean to make a precept 
 which costs nothing to the heart, and in the fulfilment of which we 
 found neither difficulty nor hardship ? Ah ! what occasion hath he 
 to command us to love our brethren, if, in virtue of that command- 
 ment, we were obliged to love only those for whom we feel a na- 
 tural fancy and inclination. The heart hath no occasion, on this 
 point, for precept ; it is its own law. The precept then supposes a 
 difficulty on our part : Jesus Christ hath, therefore, foreseen that it 
 would be hard upon us to love our brethren ; that we should find 
 within us antipathies and dislikes which would withdraw us from 
 them ; and behold why he hath attached so much merit to the ob- 
 servance of this single point, and hath so often declared to us, that, 
 to observe it, was to observe the whole law. Aversion to our bre- 
 thren, far, then, from justifying our estrangement from them, ren- 
 ders to us, on the contrary, the obligation of loving them more 
 precise, and places us personally in the case of the precept. 
 
 But besides, ought a Christian to be regulated by fancy and hu- 
 mour, or by the principles of reason, of faith, of religion, and of 
 grace ? And since when is the natural fancy, which we are com- 
 manded by the gospel to oppose, become a privilege which dis- 
 penses us from its rules ? If the repugnance felt for duties were 
 a title of exemption, where is the believer who would not be quit 
 of the whole law, and who would not find his justification and his 
 innocency, in proportion as he felt a greater degree of corruption 
 in his heart ? Are our fancies our law? Is religion only the sup- 
 port, and not the remedy of nature ? Is it not a weakness, even in 
 the eyes of the world, to regulate our steps and our sentiments, our 
 hatreds and our love toward men, merely upon the caprices of a 
 fancy for which we can give no reason ourselves ? Do men of this 
 description do great credit, I do not say to religion, but to huma- 
 nity ? And are they not, even to the world itself, a spectacle of 
 contempt, of derision, and of censure ? What a chaos would so- 
 ciety be, if fancy alone were to decide upon our duties, and upon 
 reciprocal attentions, and if men were to be united by no other law! 
 Now, if the rules, even of society, exact, that fancy alone be not 
 the sole principle of our conduct toward the rest of men, should 
 the gospel be more indulgent on that point ? the gospel, which 
 
Sd'. 14. FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES. 21 7 
 
 preaches only self-denial ; which every where commands us to do 
 violence upon ourselves, and to strive against our fancies and our 
 affections ; which commands that we act through views superior to 
 flesh and blood, and that we hesitate not to sacrifice to the sanctity 
 of faith, and to the sublimity of its rules, not only our caprices, but 
 our most legal inclinations ? 
 
 It is therefore absurd to allege to us an aversion to your brother, 
 which is itself your guilt. I might farther say; you complain 
 that your brother is displeasing to you, and that it is not possible 
 for you to bear, or to be in agreement with him : but, do you sup- 
 pose that you yourself are displeasing to none ? Can you guarantee 
 to us, that you are universally liked, and that every one applauds 
 and approves you ? Now, if you exact, that every thing offensive 
 in your manners be excused, upon the goodness of your heart, and 
 on account of those essential qualities upon which you pride your- 
 self : if to you it appear unreasonable to be offended at nothings, 
 and by certain sallies which we cannot always command ; if you 
 insist upon being judged by the consequence, by the ground- 
 work, by the rectitude of your sentiments and conduct, and not in 
 consequence of those humours which sometimes involuntarily escape 
 you, and upon which it is very difficult to be always guarded against 
 one's self; having the same equity for your brother; apply the 
 same rule to yourself ? bear with him as you have occasion to be 
 borne with yourself; and do not justify, by your estrangement 
 from him, the unjust aversions which may be had to yourself. 
 And this rule is so much the more equitable as that you have only 
 to cast your eyes upon what is continually passing in the world, 
 to be convinced that those who are loudest in trumpeting forth the 
 faults of their brethren, are the very persons with whom nobody 
 can agree, who are the pest of societies, and a grievance to the rest 
 of men. 
 
 And I might here demand of you, my dear hearer, if this prin- 
 ciple of contrariety, which renders your brother so insupportable to 
 you, be not more in yourself : that is to say, in your pride, in the 
 capriciousness of your temper, in the contrariety of your character, 
 than in his ; demand of you, if all the world see in him what you 
 believe to see yourself ; if his friends, his relations, his intimates, 
 look upon him with the same eyes that you do? What do I 
 know, I might demand of you, if that which displeases you in 
 him be not perhaps his good qualities : if his talents, his reputa- 
 tion, his credit, and his fortune, have not perhaps a greater share 
 in your aversion than his faults ; and, if it be not his merit or his 
 rank which have hitherto in your sight constituted his whole 
 crime? We are so easily deceived in this point ! Envy is a pas- 
 sion so masked, and so artful in disguising itself ! As there is some- 
 thing mean and odious in it, and as it is a secret confession made 
 to ourselves of our own mediocrity, it always shows itself to us 
 under foreign outsides, which completely conceal itself from us ; 
 but fathom your heart, and you will see that all those, who either 
 surpass, or who shine with too much lustre near you, have the mis- 
 
218 FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES* Sei\ 14. 
 
 fortune to displease you : that you find amiable only those who 
 have nothing to contest with you ; that all who rise above, or are 
 even equal to you, constrain and hurt you; and that, to have a 
 claim to your friendship, it is necessary to have none either to your 
 pretensions or expectancies. 
 
 But I go still farther, and I entreat you to listen to me. I admit 
 your brother to have more faults than even you accuse him of 
 having. Alas ! you are so gentle and so friendly toward those from 
 whom you expect your fortune and your establishment, and whose 
 temper, haughtiness, and manners shock you. You bear with all 
 their pride, their repulses, their scorns ; you swallow all their ine- 
 qualities and caprices ; you are never disheartened ; your patience 
 is always greater than your antipathy and your repugnance, and 
 you neglect nothing to please. Ah ! if you regarded your brother, 
 as he upon whom depends your eternal salvation, as he to whom 
 you are to be indebted, not for a fortune of dross, and an uncertain 
 establishment, but for the fortune even of your eternity, would you 
 follow, with regard to him, the caprice of your fancy ? Would you 
 not conquer the unjust antipathy which estranges you from him ? 
 Would you suffer so much in putting your inclinations in unison 
 with your eternal interests, and in doing upon yourself so use- 
 ful and so necessary a violence ? You bear with every thing 
 for the world and for vanity ; and you cry out, how hard ! from 
 the moment that a single painful proceeding is exacted of you for 
 eternity. 
 
 And say not that there are caprices of nature, of which no 
 account can be given, and that we are not the masters of our 
 fancies and likings. I grant this to a certain point; but there 
 is a love of reason and of religion, which ought always to gain 
 ascendancy over that of nature. The gospel exacts not that you 
 have a fancy for your brother, it exacts that you love him ; that is 
 to say, that you bear with him, that you excuse him, that you con- 
 ceal his faults, that you serve him ; in a word, that you do for him 
 whatever you would wish to have done for yourself. Charity is 
 not a blind and capricious fancy, a natural liking, a sympathy of 
 temper and disposition ; it is a just, enlightened, and reasonable 
 duty ; a love which takes its rise in the impulses of grace, and in 
 the views of faith. It is not rightly loving our brethren, to love 
 them only through fancy ; it is loving one^s self. Charity alone 
 enables us to love them as we ought, and it alone can form real 
 and steadfast friends. For fancy is continually changing, and charity 
 never dieth ; fancy seeks only itself, and charity seeketh not its own 
 interest, but the interest of whom it loves ; fancy is not a proof 
 against every thing, a loss, a proceeding, a disgrace, and charity 
 riseth superior to death: fancy loves only its own conveniency; 
 and charity findeth nothing amiss, and suffereth every thing for 
 whom it loveth : fancy is blind, and often renders even the 
 vices of our brethren amiable to us ; and charity never giveth 
 praise to iniquity, and in others loveth only the truth. The friends 
 of grace are therefore much more to be relied on than those of na- 
 
Ser. 14. FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES. 219 
 
 ture. The same fancy which unites the manners, is often, a mo- 
 ment after, the cause of separating them ; but the ties formed by 
 charity eternally endure. 
 
 Such is the first source of our likings and of our hatreds, the 
 injustices and the capriciousness of our fancy. Interest is the se- 
 cond ; for nothing is more common than to hear you justifying 
 your animosities, by telling us that such a man hath neglected 
 nothing to ruin you ; that he has been the mean of blasting your 
 fortune ; that he continually excites vexatious matters against you ; 
 that you find him an insuperable impediment in your way, and that 
 it is difficult to love an enemy so bent on injuring you. 
 
 But, granting that you speak the truth, I answer to you ; to all 
 the other ills which your brother hath caused to you, why should 
 you add that of , hating him, which is the greatest of all, since all 
 the others have tended to ravish from you only fleeting and frivo- 
 lous riches, while this is the cause of ruin to your soul, and de- 
 prives you for ever of your claim to an immortal kingdom ? In 
 hating him, you injure yourself much more than all his malignity 
 with respect to you could ever do. He hath usurped the patrimony 
 of your fathers : it may be so ; and, in order to avenge yourself, 
 you renounce the inheritance of your heavenly Father, and the 
 eternal patrimony of Jesus Christ. You take your revenge then 
 upon yourself ; and, in order to console yourself for the ills done to 
 you by your brother, you provide for yourself one without end and 
 without measure. 
 
 And, moreover, does your hatred toward your brother restore 
 any of those advantages which he hath snatched from you ? Does 
 it ameliorate your condition ? What do you reap from your ani- 
 mosity and your rancour ? In hating him, you say that you con- 
 sole yourself ; and this is the only consolation left to you. What 
 a consolation, great God ! is that of hatred ; that is to say, of a 
 gloomy and furious passion, which gnaws the heart, sheds anguish 
 and sorrow through ourselves, and begins by punishing and render- 
 ing us miserable ? What a cruel pleasure is that of hating, that is 
 to say, of bearing on the heart a load of rancour, which impoisons 
 every other moment of life ! What a barbarous method of con- 
 soling one's self ! And are you not worthy of pity, to seek a re- 
 source in your evils, which answers no purpose but that of eterni- 
 sing, by hatred, a transitory injury ? 
 
 But let us cease this human language, and speak that of the gos- 
 pel, to which our mouths are consecrated. If you were Christian, 
 my dear hearer ; if you had not lost faith, far from hating those 
 whom God hath made instrumental in blasting your hopes and 
 your projects of fortune, you would regard them as the instru- 
 ments of God's mercies upon your soul, as the ministers of your 
 sanctification, and the blessed rocks which have been the means 
 of saving you from shipwreck. You would have been lost in 
 credit and in elevation ; you would then have neglected your God ; 
 your ambition would have increased with your fortune, and death 
 would have surprised you in the vortex of the world of passions 
 
220 FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES. Sei*. 14. 
 
 and of human expectancies. But, in order to save your soul, the 
 Lord, in his great mercy, hath raised up obstacles which have 
 stopped your course. He hath employed an envious person, a 
 rival to supplant you, to keep you at a distance from favours, 
 and to place himself between you and the precipice, into which you 
 were running headlong, for ever to perish : he hath seconded, as I 
 may say, his ambition ; he hath favoured his designs ; and, through 
 an incomprehensible excess of goodness toward you, he hath crossed 
 your worldly schemes : he hath raised up your enemy in time, in 
 order to save you in eternity. You ought, therefore, to adore the 
 eternal designs of his justice and of his mercy upon men ; to con- 
 sider your brother as the blessed cause of your salvation ; to en- 
 treat of God, that seeing his ambition or his bad intentions have 
 been employed to save you, he may inspire him with sincere re- 
 pentance, and that the person who hath been the instrument of 
 your salvation be not permitted to perish himself. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, our hatreds proceed entirely from our want 
 of faith. Alas ! if we regarded every thing which passes, as a va- 
 pour without substance ; if we were thoroughly convinced that all 
 this is nothing, that salvation is the great and important affair, and 
 that our treasure and our true riches are only in eternity, where, in 
 the twinkling of an eye, we shall be ; if we were convinced of it, 
 alas ! we would consider men, who passionately quarrel and dis- 
 pute with each other for the dignities of the earth, as children who 
 fall out among themselves for the playthings which amuse their 
 eye, whose childish hatreds and animosities turn upon nothings, 
 which infancy alone, and the feeble state of reason, magnify in their 
 eyes. Tranquil on the greatest and most important events, on the 
 loss of the patrimony of their fathers, and the fall of their family, 
 and keen even to excess when deprived of any of the little trifling 
 objects which delight their infancy, thus, O my God, foolish and 
 puerile men feel not the loss of their heavenly inheritance, of that 
 immortal patrimony bequeathed to them by Jesus Christ, and which 
 their brethren are already enjoying in heaven. They unconcernedly 
 see the kingdom of God, and the only true riches, pass away from 
 them ; and, like children, they are inflamed with rage, and mu- 
 tually arm against each other, from the instant that their frivo- 
 lous possessions are encroached upon, or that any attempt is made 
 to deprive them of those childish playthings, the only value or im- 
 portance of which is that of serving to deceive their feeble reason, 
 and to amuse their childhood. 
 
 For a Christian, interest is therefore an unworthy and criminal 
 pretext for his hatred toward his brethren ; but vanity, which is 
 their last resource, is still less excusable. 
 
 For, my brethren, we wish to be approved, and to have our faults 
 as well as our virtues applauded ; and, although we feel our own 
 weaknesses, yet we are so unreasonable as to exact that others see 
 them not, and that they even give credit to us for certain qualities 
 which we inwardly reproach to ourselves as vices. We would wish 
 that all mouths were filled solely with our praises ; and that the 
 
Ser. 14. FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES. 221 
 
 world, which forgives nothing, which spares not even its masters, 
 should admire in us what it censures in others. 
 
 In effect, you complain that your enemy hath both privately and 
 publicly decried you ; that he hath added calumny to slander ; that 
 he hath attacked you in the tenderest and most feeling quarter, and 
 that he hath neglected nothing to blast your honour and your re- 
 putation in the opinion of men. 
 
 But, before replying to this, I might first say to you, mistrust 
 the reports which have been made to you of your brother: the 
 most innocent speeches reach us so impoisoned, through the 
 malignity of the tongues which have conveyed them ; there are 
 so many mean flatterers, who seek to be agreeable at the ex- 
 pense of those who are not so ; there are so many dark and 
 wicked minds, whose only pleasure is in finding out evil where 
 none is meant, and in sowing dissension among men ; there are so 
 many volatile and imprudent characters, who unseasonably, and 
 with an envenomed air, repeat what at first had been only 
 said with the most innocent intentions ; there are so many men, 
 naturally given to the hyperbole, and in whose mouth every 
 thing is magnified, and departs from the natural and simple truth. 
 I here appeal to yourself : has it never happened to you, that your 
 most innocent sayings have been impoisoned, and circumstances 
 added to your recitals, which you had never even thought of? 
 Have you not then exclaimed against the injustice and the malig- 
 nity of the repeaters ? Why might not you, in your turn, have 
 been deceived ? And if every thing which passes through a variety 
 of channels, be in general adulterated, and never reach us in its 
 original purity, why should you suppose that discourses which re- 
 late to you alone, were exempted from the same lot, and were enti- 
 tled to more attention and belief ? 
 
 You will no doubt reply, that these general maxims are not the 
 point in question, and that the actions of which you complain are 
 not doubtful, but positive. I admit it ; and I ask, if your brother 
 have not, on his side, the same reproaches to make to you ; if you 
 have always been very lenient, and very charitable to his faults ; if 
 you have always rendered justice even to his good qualities ; if you 
 never permitted him to be reviled in your presence ; if you have 
 not aided" the malignity of such discourses by an affected modera- 
 tion, which hath only tended to blow up the fire of detraction, and 
 to supply new traits against your brother? I ask you, if you are 
 even circumspect toward the rest of men ; if you readily forgive the 
 weakness of others ; if your tongue be not, in general, dipt in worm- 
 wood and gall ; if the best established reputation be not always in 
 danger in your hands ; and, if the saddest and most private histo- 
 ries do not speedily become matter of notoriety, through your ma- 
 lignity and imprudence ? O man ! thou pushest delicacy and 
 sensibility to such lengths upon whatever regards thyself ! We 
 have occasion for all the terror of our ministry, and for all the other 
 most weighty inducements of religion, to bring thee to forgive to 
 thy brother a single speech, frequently a word, which imprudence, 
 
222 forgiveness of injuries. Ser. 14. 
 
 which chance, which circumstances, which perhaps a just resent- 
 ment hath forced from him ; and the licentiousness of thy discourses 
 toward others knows neither the bounds of politeness nor of that 
 decency which the world itself prescribes. 
 
 But, granting that you have nothing to reproach yourself on the 
 part of moderation toward your brother, what do you gain by hating 
 him ? Do you thereby efface the fatal impressions which his dis- 
 courses may have left on the minds of men ? On the contrary, you 
 inflict a fresh wound upon your heart ; you give yourself a stab 
 which carries death to your soul : you wrench the sword from his 
 hands, if I may speak in this manner, in order to plunge it into 
 yourself. By the innocency of your manners, and the integrity of 
 your conduct, you make the injustice of his discourses evident ; 
 destroy by a life free from reproach, the prejudices to which he 
 may have given rise against you; make the meanness and the 
 iniquity of his calumnies revert upon himself, by the practice of 
 those virtues exactly opposite to the faults which he imputes to 
 you: such is the just and legal manner of revenging yourself. 
 Triumph over his malice by your manners and by your silence : 
 you will heap living coals upon his head ; you will gain the public 
 on your side, you will leave nothing to your enemy but the infamy 
 of his passion and of his impositions. But hating him is the re- 
 venge of the weak, and the sad consolation of the guilty; in a word, 
 it is the only refuge of those who can find none in virtue and in in- 
 nocence. 
 
 But let us now quit all these reasonings, and come to the essen- 
 tial point. You are commanded to love those who despitefully use 
 and calumniate you ; to pray for them, to entreat their conversion 
 to God, that he change their rancorous heart, that he inspire them 
 with sentiments of peace and of charity, and that he place them 
 among the number of his holy. You are commanded to consider 
 them as already citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, with whom you 
 shall form only one voice in singing the immortal praises of grace. 
 You are commanded to look upon injuries as blessings, as the pu- 
 nishment of your hidden crimes, for which you have so often 
 merited to be covered with confusion before men ; as the price of 
 the kingdom of God, which is promised to those alone who with 
 piety bear with persecution and calumny. 
 
 For, after all, it must come to this. Self-love alone would make 
 us love those who love us, who praise us, who publish our virtues, 
 false or true ; such was the whole virtue of the Pagans ; for, said 
 Jesus Christ, if ye love those that love you, what reward have ye ; 
 do not even the publicans so ? But religion goes farther : it re- 
 quires us to love those who hate and persecute us : it fixes at that 
 price the mercies of God upon us, and declares to us that no forgive- 
 ness is to be expected for ourselves, if we grant it not to our brethren. 
 
 And, candidly, would you have God to forget the crimes and the 
 horrors of your whole life, to be insensible to his own glory, which 
 you have so often insulted, while you cannot prevail upon yourself 
 to forget a word; while you are so warm, so delicate, and so pas- 
 
Ser. 14. FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES. 223 
 
 sionate upon the interests of your glory; you who perhaps enjoy a 
 reputation which you have never merited ; you, who, were you to 
 be known such as you are, would be covered with eternal shame 
 and confusion ; you, in a word, of whom the most injurious dis- 
 courses only imperfectly represent the secret wretchedness, and of 
 which God alone knoweth the extent ? Great God ! how little shall 
 sinners have to say for themselves when thou wilt pronounce against 
 them the sentence of their eternal condemnation ! 
 
 You will probably tell us that you perfectly agree to the duties 
 which religion hereupon imposes, but that the laws of honour have 
 prevailed over those of religion ; that if discourses and proceedings 
 of a certain description be tranquilly submitted to, lasting disho- 
 nour and infamy in the sight of men must necessarily follow ; that 
 to forgive through motives of religion, is nevertheless a stain of 
 cowardice, which the world never pardons, and that on this point, 
 honour acknowledges neither exception nor privilege. 
 
 What is this honour, my brethren, which is to be bought only 
 at the price of our souls and of our eternal salvation ? And how 
 worthy of pity, if guilt alone can save from ignominy ! I know 
 that it is here that the false laws of the world seem to prevail over 
 those of religion ; and that the wisest themselves, who execrate this 
 abuse, are, however, of opinion that it must be submitted to. But 
 I speak before a prince, who, wiser than the world, and filled with 
 a just indignation against a madness so contrary to the maxims of 
 the gospel, as well as to the interests of the state, hath shown to 
 his subjects what is the true honour, and who, in forcing criminal 
 arms out of their hands, hath marked with lasting infamy those bar- 
 barous modes of revenge to which the public error had attached a 
 deplorable glory. 
 
 What, my brethren, an abominable maxim, which the barbarity 
 of the first manners of our ancestors alone hath consecrated, and 
 handed down to us, should prevail over all the rules of Christianity 
 and all the most inviolable rules of the state ! It should be no dis- 
 honour to bathe your hands in your brother's blood, while it would 
 be one to obey God, and the prince who holds his place in the 
 world ! Glory would no longer then be but a madness, and cow- 
 ardice but a noble respect for religion, and for our master. You 
 dread passing for a coward ! Show your valour, then, by shedding 
 your blood in the defence of your country ; go and brave dangers at 
 the head of our armies, and there seek glory in the discharge of 
 your duty ; establish your reputation by actions worthy of being 
 ranked among the memorable events of a reign so glorious ; such is 
 that valour which the state requires, and which religion authorizes. 
 Then despise these brutal and personal vengeances ; look upon 
 them as a childish ostentation of valour, which is often used as a 
 cover to actual cowardice ; as the vile and vulgar refuge of those 
 who have nothing signal to establish their character ; as a forced 
 and an equivocal proof of courage, which the world wrests from us, 
 and against which the heart often revolts. Far from imputing shame 
 to you, the world itself will make it a fresh title of honour to you; 
 
224 FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES. StT. 14. 
 
 you will be still more exalted in its opinion ; and you will teach 
 your equals that misplaced valour is nothing but a brutal fear ; that 
 wisdom and moderation ever attend true glory ; that whatever dis- 
 honours humanity can never do honour to men ; and that the gos- 
 pel, which inculcates and commands forgiveness, hath made more 
 heroes than the world itself, which preaches up revenge. 
 
 You will perhaps say that these maxims do not regard you ; that 
 you have forgotten all the subjects of complaint which you had 
 against your brother ; and that a reconciliation hath put an end 
 to the eclat of your misunderstandings, and of your quarrel. Now, 
 I say, that it is more especially on this point that you are grossly 
 deceived; and, after having shown to you the injustice of our 
 hatreds, it is my duty now to prove to you the falsity of our re- 
 conciliations. 
 
 Part II. There is not a precept in the law which leaves less 
 room for doubt or for mistake, than that which obliges us to love 
 our brethren; and, nevertheless, there is none upon which more 
 illusions and false maxims are founded. In effect, there is not al- 
 most a person who doth not say, that he hath heartily forgiven his 
 brother, and that his conscience is perfectly tranquil on that head ; 
 and, nevertheless, nothing is more rare than sincere forgiveness, and 
 there are few instances of a reconcilement which changes the heart, 
 and which is not merely a false appearance of renewed amity, 
 whether it be considered in its principle, or whether the proceed- 
 ings and consequences of it be examined. 
 
 I say, in its principle ; for, my brethren, in order that a reconci- 
 liation be sincere and real, it is necessary that it take its source in 
 charity, and in a Christian love of our brother. Now, human 
 motives engross, in general, a work which can be the work of grace 
 alone. A reconciliation takes place, in order not to persist against 
 the pressing entreaties of friends ; in order to avoid a certain disa- 
 greeable eclat, which would necessarily follow an open hostility, 
 and which might revert upon ourselves ; in order not to exclude 
 ourselves from certain societies, from which we would be under the 
 necessity of banishing ourselves were we obstinately to persist in 
 being irreconcilable to our brother. A reconciliation takes place 
 through deference to the great, who exact of us that compliance, 
 in order to acquire a reputation for moderation and greatness of 
 soul, in order to avoid giving transactions to the public which 
 would not correspond with that idea which we would wish it to 
 have of us ; in order, at once, to cut short the continual complaints 
 and the insulting discourses of an enemy, who knows us perhaps 
 only too well, and who has once been too deep in our confidence, 
 not to merit some caution and deference on our part, and that, by 
 a reconciliation, we should endeavour to silence him. What more 
 shall I say ? We are reconciled perhaps like Saul, in order more 
 securely to ruin our enemy, and to lull his vigilance and precautions. 
 
 Such are, in general, the motives of those reconciliations which 
 every day take place in the world, and what T say here is so 
 
Ser. 14. FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES. 225 
 
 true, that sinners who show no sign of piety on any other occasion, 
 are, however, reconciled to their brethren in daily instances ; and 
 they who cannot prevail over themselves in the easiest duties of a 
 Christian life, appear as heroes in the accomplishment of this one, 
 which, of all others, is the most difficult. Ah ! it is because they 
 are heroes of vanity and not of charity : it is that they leave that 
 part of the reconciliation which alone is heroical and arduous in 
 the sight of God, namely, an oblivion upon the past injury, and a 
 total revolution of our heart toward our brother; and they retain 
 of it only that part which is glorious in the sight of men, namely, 
 an appearance of moderation, and a promptitude toward amity, 
 which the world itself praises and admires. 
 
 But, if the greatest part of reconciliations turn out to be false 
 when these motives are examined, they are not less so if we con- 
 sider them in their proceedings. Yes, my brethren, what mea- 
 sures and negotiations ! what formalities and solicitudes in con- 
 cluding them ! what attentions to bestow, and cautions to observe ! 
 what interests to conciliate, obstacles to remove, and steps to ac- 
 complish ! Thus your reconciliation is not the work of charity, but 
 of the wisdom and skill of your friends : it is a worldly affair ; it is 
 not a religious step : it is a treaty happily concluded ; it is not a 
 duty of faith fulfilled : it is the work of man, but it is not the deed 
 of God: in a word, it is a peace which comes from the earth, it is 
 not the peace of heaven. 
 
 For, candidly, have men been able, through their arrangements 
 and the ingenuity of their measures, in reconciling you with your 
 brother, to revive that charity which was extinguished in your 
 heart ? Have they been able to restore that treasure to you which 
 you had lost ? They have succeeded, indeed, in terminating the 
 scandal of declared enmity, and establishing between you and your 
 brother the outward duties of society ; but they have not changed 
 your heart, which God alone can do ; they have not extinguished 
 that hatred, which grace alone can extinguish. You are therefore 
 reconciled, but you still love not your brother ; and, in effect, if 
 you sincerely loved him, would so many mediators have been re- 
 quired to reconcile you ? Love is its own mediator and interpreter. 
 Charity is that brief word which would have saved to your friends 
 all those endless toils, which they have been obliged to employ in 
 order to reclaim you ; it is not so measured ; it frankly confesses 
 what it sincerely feels. Now, before giving way, you have insisted 
 upon a thousand conditions; you have disputed every step ; you 
 have been resolute in not going beyond a certain point; you have 
 exacted that your brother should make the first advances toward 
 meeting you. Charity knows nothing of all these rules ; it hath 
 only one, and that is, oblivion upon the injury, and to love our 
 brother as ourself. 
 
 I grant that certain prudential measures are to be observed, and 
 that too hasty or ill-timed advances might often be not only un- 
 successful, but even the means of hardening your brother still more 
 against you. But I say that charity ought to regulate these mea- 
 
 Q 
 
22G Forgiveness of injuries. Ser. 14. 
 
 sures, and not vanity ; I say, and I repeat it, that all these recon- 
 ciliations which are with such difficulty concluded, where both parties 
 are resolute in yielding only to a certain point, and even that with 
 precautions so strict and so precise ; where so many expedients 
 and so much mystery are necessary, are the fruits of fleshly 
 prudence : they correct the manners, but they affect not the heart; 
 they bring the persons, but not the affections, nearer ; they re-es- 
 tablish civilities, but leave the same sentiments ; in a word, they 
 terminate the scandal of hatred, but not the sin. Thus Jesus 
 Christ plainly commands us to go our way and be reconciled to 
 our brother. He says not to us, do not go too far, lest your bro- 
 ther take advantage by it ; be first convinced that he will meet you 
 half-way ; seek not after him, lest he consider your proceeding as 
 an apology for his complaints, as a tacit acknowledgment of your 
 blame, and a sentence pronounced against yourself. Jesus Christ 
 plainly tells us, go thy way and be reconciled to thy brother. He 
 desires that the reconciliation take place through- charity alone ; 
 he supposes, that, in order to love our brother, we have no occa- 
 sion for mediators, and that our heart should be fully capable of 
 every thing required without any foreign interference. 
 
 Such are the steps of reconciliations ; thence, the motives being 
 almost always human, the proceedings faulty, their consequences 
 can be only vain and of no effect. I say, the consequences ; for, 
 my brethren, in what do the far greater part of those reconciliations, 
 which every day take place in the world, terminate ? What is the 
 fruit of them ? What is it which is commonly called a reconcilia- 
 tion with our enemy? I shall explain it to you. 
 
 You say, in the first place, that you are reconciled to your bro- 
 ther, and that you have heartily forgiven him ; but that you have 
 taken your resolution to see him no more, and from henceforth to 
 have no farther intercourse with him. And upon this footing, you 
 live tranquil ; you believe that nothing more is prescribed by the 
 gospel, and that a confessor hath no title to demand more. Now 
 I declare that you have not forgiven your brother, and that you are 
 still, with respect to him, in hatred, in death, and in sin. 
 
 For I demand of you, do we dread the sight of those we love ? 
 And if your enemy be now your brother, what can there be so hate- 
 ful and so disagreeable to you in his presence ? You say, that you 
 have forgiven, and that you love him ; but, in order to avoid all ac- 
 cidents, and that his presence may not arouse vexatious ideas, you 
 find it more proper to exclude yourself from it. But what is that 
 kind of love which the sole presence of the beloved object irritates 
 against it, and inflames with hatred and wrath ? You love him! that 
 is to say, that perhaps you would not wish to injure, or to destroy 
 him. But that is not enough ; religion commands you likewise to 
 love him : for honour, indolence, moderation, fear, and want of op- 
 portunity, are sufficient inducements to prevent you from injuring 
 him ; but you must be Christian to love him ; and that is precisely 
 what you are not willing to be. 
 
 And, candidly, would you that God loved you, upon the con- 
 
Ser. 14. FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES. 227 
 
 dition that he should never see you ? Would you be satisfied with 
 his goodness, and with his mercy, were he, for ever to banish you 
 from his presence ? For you well know that he will treat you, as 
 you shall have treated your brother. Would you think yourself 
 much in favour with the prince, were he to forbid you ever to pre- 
 sent yourself before him ? You constantly say, that a man is in 
 disgrace, when he is no longer permitted to appear before the master; 
 and you pretend to persuade us that you love your brother, and 
 that no rancour remains in your heart against him, while his sole 
 presence displeases and irritates you. 
 
 And what less equivocal mark can be given of animosity against 
 your brother, than that of being unable to endure his presence ? 
 It is the very extreme of hatred and of rancour. For many 
 settled hatreds exist, which yet are kept under a kind of check; 
 are, as far as possible, concealed, and even borrow the out- 
 ward semblance of friendship and of decency; and, though unable 
 to reconcile the heart to duty, yet have sufficient command over 
 themselves, to preserve appearances to the world. But your hatred 
 is beyond all restraint; it knows neither prudence, caution, nor 
 decency; and you pretend to persuade us that it is now no more! 
 you still show the most violent proofs of animosity, and even these 
 you would have us to consider as the indubitable signs of a Chris- 
 tian and sincere love ! 
 
 But, besides, are Christians made to live estranged, and uncon- 
 nected with each other ? Christians ! the members of one body, 
 the children of the same Father, the disciples of the same Master, 
 the inheritors of the same kingdom, the stones of the same build- 
 ing, the particles of the same mass ! Christians ! the participation 
 of one same spirit, of one same redemption, of one same righteous- 
 ness ! Christians ! sprung from one bosom, regenerated in the same 
 water, incorporated in the same church, redeemed by one ransom, 
 are they made to fly each other, to make a punishment of seeing 
 each other, and to be unable to endure each other ? All religion 
 binds, unites us together ; the sacraments in which we join, the 
 public prayers and thanksgivings which we sing, the ceremonies of 
 that worship in which we pride ourselves, the assembly of believers 
 at which we assist ; all these externals are only symbols of that 
 union which ties us together. All religion itself is but one holy 
 society, a divine communication of prayers, of sacrifices, of works, 
 and of well-doings. Every thing connects and unites us, every 
 thing tends to make, of our brethren and of us, only one family, 
 one body, one heart, and one soul ; and you believe that you love 
 your brother, and that you preserve, with respect to him, all the 
 most sacred ties of religion, while you break through even those of 
 society, and that you cannot endure even his presence ? 
 
 I say much more : how shall you indulge the same hope with 
 him ? For, by that common hope, you are eternally to live with 
 him, to make his happiness your own, to be happy with him, to 
 be reunited with him in the bosom of God, and with him to sing 
 the eternal praises of grace. Ah ! how could the hope of being 
 
 Q2 
 
228 forgiveness of injuries. Ser. 14. 
 
 for ever united with him be the sweetest consolation of your life, 
 if it appear so desirable to live in separation from him, and if you 
 find even his presence a punishment ? Renounce, then, the pro- 
 mises and all the hopes of faith ; separate yourself as an accursed 
 from the communion of believers ; interdict to yourself the altar 
 and the awful mysteries ; banish yourself from the assembly of the 
 holy ; no longer come there to offer up your gifts and your prayers, 
 since all these religious duties, supposing you in union with your 
 brother, become derisions if you be not so ; depose against you in 
 the face of the altars ; and command you to quit the holy assembly 
 as a publican and a sinner. 
 
 Perhaps, alarmed at these holy truths, you will finally tell us, 
 that you will so far conquer yourself as to see your brother and to 
 live on good terms with him ; that you will not be wanting in civili- 
 ties ; but that, for the rest, you know where to stop, and that he 
 need not reckon much upon your friendship. 
 
 You will not be wanting in civilities ! And that, my dear hearer, 
 you believe, is to pardon and to be reconciled with your brother, 
 and to love him as yourself? But that charity which the gospel 
 commands is in the heart ; it is not a simple decorum, a vain out- 
 side, a useless ceremony; it is real feeling, and an active love; it is 
 a sincere tenderness, ever ready to manifest itself in actions. You 
 love as a Jew and as a Pharisee, but you love not as a Christian 
 and as a disciple of Jesus Christ. The law of charity is the law of 
 the heart ; it regulates the feelings, changes the inclinations, and 
 pours the oil of peace and of lenity over the wounds of an angry 
 and wounded will ; and you turn it into a law wholly external, a 
 Pharisaical and superficial law, which regulates only the outside, 
 which settles only the manners, and is fulfilled by vain appearances. 
 
 But you are not commanded that you shall merely refrain from 
 wounding the rules of courtesy, and that you shall pay to your 
 brother all those duties which society naturally imposes ; it is the 
 world which prescribes this law ; these are its rules and customs : 
 but Jesus Christ commands you to love him ; and, while your 
 heart is estranged from him, it is of little importance that you keep 
 up the vain externals of courtesy. You refuse to religion the es- 
 sential part; and the only difference between you and those sin- 
 ners who persist in not seeing their brethren, is, that you know 
 how to constrain yourself for the world, and you know not how to 
 thwart yourself for salvation. 
 
 And surely, my brethren, if men were united together by the 
 sole ties of society, they no doubt would discharge their duty, 
 by keeping up all the externals of politeness, and by maintaining 
 that mutual commerce of cares, attentions, and courtesies, which 
 constitute, as it were, the whole harmony of the body politic. But 
 we are united together by the sacred and close ties of faith, of hope, 
 of charity, and of religion. In the midst of the world we form a 
 society wholly internal and holy, of which charity is the invisible 
 bond, and altogether distinct from that civil society which legisla- 
 tors have established. Consequently, by fulfilling, with regard to 
 
Ser. 14. FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES. 229 
 
 your brethren, the external courtesies, you satisfy the claims which 
 civil society hath upon you, but you do not satisfy those of reli- 
 gion ; you disturb not the political order, but you overturn the or- 
 der of charity ; you are a peaceable citizen, but you are not a citizen 
 of heaven; you are a man of the age, but you are not a man of the 
 age to come; the world may acquit you, and demand no more, but 
 what you do is a blank in the sight of God, because you are not in 
 charity; and your condemnation is certain. Come and tell us, 
 after this, that you will not be wanting in decorum, and that religion 
 exacts no more of us. f It exacts, then, only dissimulation, outsides, 
 and vain appearances! It exacts, then, nothing true, nothing real, 
 nothing which changes the heart ! And the great precept of charity, 
 which alone gives reality to all our works, would no longer then be 
 but a false pretence and a vain hypocrisy ! 
 
 And trust not solely to us on this point ; consult the public it- 
 self. See if, in spite of all the appearances which you still keep 
 up with your brother, it be not an established opinion in the world, 
 that you love him not ; and if the world do not act in consequence 
 of that persuasion. See if your creatures, if all who approach and 
 who are attached to you, do not affect to keep at a distance from 
 your brother. See if all those who hate him, or who are in interests 
 opposite to his, do not court your friendship and form closer ties 
 with you, and if all those who are inimical to your brother do not 
 profess themselves your friends. See if those who have favours to 
 expect from you do not begin by forsaking him, and that if they 
 do not think that in so doing they are paying court to you. You 
 see that the w r orld knows you better than you know yourself; that 
 it is not mistaken in your real sentiments; and that in spite of all 
 these vain shows toward your brother, you are actually in hatred 
 and in death, and that in this respect the world itself is of our 
 opinion; that world which, on every other occasion, we have con- 
 stantly to combat. 
 
 Behold in what terminate the greatest part of the reconciliations 
 which are every day made in the world. They once more see each 
 other, but they are not reunited ; they promise a mutual friendship, 
 but it is never given; their persons meet, but their hearts are 
 always estranged ; and I had reason to say, that the hatreds are 
 unchangeable, and that almost all the reconciliations are mere pre- 
 tences; that the injury may be forgiven, but that the offender is 
 never loved; that they may cease to treat their brother as an ene- 
 my, but that they never regard him as a brother. 
 
 And, behold what takes place every day before our eyes. In 
 the world are to be seen public characters, families of illustrious 
 names, who still preserve with each other certain measures of 
 decency, which, indeed, they cannot break through without scan- 
 dal; yet, nevertheless, live in different interests, in public and 
 avowed sentiments of envy, of jealousy, and of mutual animosity; 
 thwart and do every thing in their power to ruin each other, view 
 each other with the most jealous eyes, and make all their creatures 
 partisans in their resentments and aversions; divide the world, the 
 
230 fougiveness of injuries. Ser. 14. 
 
 court, and the city ; interest the public in their quarrel, and estab- 
 lish in the world the opinion and the scandal that they hate each 
 other; that they would mutually destroy each other; that they still, it 
 is true, keep up appearances; but that, at bottom, their interests and 
 affections are for ever estranged. Yet, notwithstanding all this, 
 each party lives in a reputation of piety, and of the practice of good 
 works; they have distinguished and highly esteemed confessors ; 
 in mutually discharging to each other certain duties, yet living 
 otherwise in a public and avowed hostility, they frequent the sacra- 
 ments, they are continually in the intercourse of holy things, they 
 coolly approach the altar, they frequently and without scruple 
 present themselves at the penitential tribunal, where, far from con- 
 fessing their hatred before the Lord, and weeping over the scandal 
 with which it afflicts the people, they make fresh complaints 
 against the enemy; they accuse him, in place of accusing themselves; 
 they make a boast of the vain external duties which they pay to 
 him, and allege them as marks of the heart not being rancorous. 
 What shall I say ? And the very ministers of penitence, who 
 should have been the judges of our hatred, frequently become its 
 apologists, adopt a party with the public, enter into all the animosi- 
 ty and prejudices of their penitents, proclaim the justice of their 
 quarrel, and are the cause that the only remedy destined to strike 
 at the root of the evil, answers no other purpose than that of deco- 
 rating it with the appearance of godliness, and of rendering it more 
 incurable. 
 
 Great God ! thou alone canst close the wounds which a proud 
 sensibility hath made in my heart, by nourishing unreasonable and 
 iniquitous hatreds which have corrupted it in thy sight. Enable 
 me to forget fleeting and momentary injuries, in order that thou 
 mayest forget the crimes of my whole life. Is it for me, O my 
 God ! to be so feeling and so inexorable to the slightest insults, I 
 who have such necessity for thy mercy and indulgence ? Are the 
 injuries of which I complain to be compared with those with which 
 I have a thousand times dishonoured thy supreme grandeur ? Must 
 the worm of the earth be irritated and inflamed at the smallest marks 
 of disdain, while thy Sovereign Majesty hath so long, and with so 
 much goodness, endured his rebellions and his offences ? 
 
 Who am I, to be so keen upon the interests of my glory ; I who 
 dare not in thy presence cast mine eyes upon my secret ignominy ; 
 I who deserve to be the reproach of men, and the outcast of my 
 people ; I who have nothing praiseworthy, according even to the 
 world, but the good fortune of having concealed from it my infa- 
 mies and my weaknesses ; I to whom the most biting reproaches 
 would still be too gentle, and would treat me with too much indul- 
 gence ; I, in a word, who have no salvation now to hope, if thou 
 forget not thine own glory, which I have so often insulted ? 
 
 But no, great God ! thy glory is in pardoning the sinner, and 
 mine shall be in forgiving my brother. Accept, O Lord, this sacri- 
 fice which I make to thee of my resentments. Estimate not its 
 value by the puerility and the slightness of the injuries which I 
 
Ser. 15. THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. 231 
 
 forget, but by that pride which had magnified them, and had ren- 
 dered me so feeling to them. And seeing thou hast promised to 
 forgive us our trespasses whenever we shall have forgiven the tres- 
 passes of our brethren, fulfil, O Lord, thy promises. It is in this 
 hope that I presume to reckon upon thine eternal mercies. 
 
 SERMON XV. 
 
 THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. 
 
 " And behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat 
 at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster-box of ointment, and stood at 
 his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe 
 them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the 
 ointment." Luke vii. 37, 38. 
 
 From such abundant tears, so sincere a confusion, and a pro- 
 ceeding so humiliating and uncommon, it may easily be compre- 
 hended how great must once have been the influence of the pas- 
 sions over the heart of this sinner, and what grace now operateth 
 within her. Palestine had long beheld her as the shame and the 
 reproach of the city; the Pharisee's household views her to-day as 
 the glory of grace and a model of patience. What a change, and 
 what a spectacle ! 
 
 This soul, fettered, but a moment ago, with the most shameful 
 and the most indissoluble chains, finds nothing now capable of 
 stopping her ; and, without hesitation, she flies to seek, at the feet 
 of Jesus Christ, her salvation and deliverance : this soul, hitherto 
 plunged in the senses, and living totally, for voluptuousness, in a 
 moment sacrifices their liveliest charms and their dearest ties : this 
 soul, lastly, impatient till then of every yoke, and whose heart had 
 never acknowledged other rule than the caprice of its inclinations, 
 commences her penitence by the most humiliating proceedings and 
 the most melancholy subjections. How admirable, O my God, are 
 the works of thy grace ! and how near to its cure is the most hope- 
 less wretchedness, when once it becomes the object of thine infinite 
 mercies ! And how rapid and shortened are the ways by which 
 thou conductest thy chosen. 
 
 But whence comes it, my brethren, that such grand examples 
 make so trifling an impression upon us ? From two prejudices, ap- 
 parently the most opposite to each other, yet nevertheless, which 
 proceed from the same principle, and lead to the same error. 
 
 The first is, that we figure to ourselves that conversion of the 
 heart required by God as merely a cessation of guilt, the abstaining 
 from certain excessive irregularities, which even decency itself 
 holds out as improper. And as we are at last brought to that, 
 either by age, new situations, or even our own inclinations, which 
 time alone has changed, we never think of going farther ; we be- 
 lieve that all is completed, and we listen to the history of the most 
 
232 the woman who was a siNXEit. Ser. 15. 
 
 affecting conversions, held out to us by the church, as to lessons 
 which no longer, in any degree, regard us. 
 
 The second goes to another extreme: we represent Christian 
 penitence to ourselves as a horrible situation, and the despair of 
 human weakness ; a state without comfort or consolation, and at- 
 tended by a thousand duties, every one more disgusting than ano- 
 ther to the heart ; and, repulsed through the error of that gloomy 
 image, the examples of a change find us little disposed to be affected, 
 because they always find us discouraged* 
 
 Now, the conversion of our sinner confutes these two prejudices, 
 so dangerous to salvation. First, her penitence not only terminates 
 her errors, it likewise expiates and makes reparation for them. 
 Secondly, her penitence begins, it is true, her tears and sorrow ; 
 but it is likewise the commencement to her of new pleasures. 
 Whatever she had despoiled Jesus Christ of in her errors, she re- 
 stores to him in her penitence : behold their reparation ! But 
 with Jesus Christ she finds in her penitence, that peace and those 
 comforts which she had never experienced in her errors : behold 
 their consolations ! The reparations, and the consolations of her 
 penitence are the whole history of her conversion, and the subject 
 of this Discourse. 
 
 Part I. The office of penitence, says St. Augustine, is that of 
 establishing order wherever sin hath introduced corruption. It is 
 false, if it be not universal ; for order solely results from a perfect 
 subordination of all desires and emotions which spring up in our 
 hearts: every thing must be in its place, in order that that divine 
 harmony, which sin had disturbed, may be restored ; and, while 
 the smallest particular there remains deranged, in vain do you 
 labour to repair the rest ; you only rear up an edifice, which, being 
 improperly arranged, is continually giving way in some of its parts, 
 and confusion and disorder prevail through the whole. 
 
 Now, behold the important instruction held out to us in the con- 
 version of this sinner! Her sin comprised several disorders: first, 
 an iniquitous use of her heart, which had never been taken up but 
 with creatures : secondly, a criminal abuse of all natural gifts, 
 which she had made the instruments of her passions: thirdly, a 
 shameful abasement of her senses, which she had always made to 
 contribute to her voluptuousness and ignominy: lastly, a universal 
 scandal in the notoriety of her errors. Her penitence makes repa- 
 ration for all these disorders : all, consequently, are forgiven ; for 
 nothing is neglected in the repentance. 
 
 I say, first, an iniquitous use of her heart. Yes, my brethren, 
 every love, which has for its object only the creatures, degrades our 
 heart : it is a disorder, to love for itself that which can neither be 
 our happiness nor our perfection, nor, consequently, our ease ; for 
 to love, is to seek our felicity in that which we love; it is the hope 
 of finding, in the object beloved, whatever is wanting to our heart ; 
 it is the calling it in aid against that shocking void which we feel 
 within ourselves, in the confidence that they shall be able to fill it : 
 
Ser. 15. THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. 233 
 
 to love, is to look upon the object beloved as our resource against 
 all our wants, the cure of all our evils, and the author of all our 
 good. Now, as it is in God alone that we can find all these advan- 
 tages, it is a disorder, and a debasement of the heart, to seek for 
 them in a vile creature. 
 
 And, at bottom, we feel sensibly the injustice of that love : how- 
 ever passionate it be, we quickly discover, in the creatures which 
 inspire it, weaknesses and defects which render them unworthy of 
 it: we soon find them out to be unjust, fanciful, false, vain, and 
 inconstant: the deeper we examine them, the more we say to our- 
 selves, that our heart has been deceived, and that this is not the 
 object which it sought. Our reason inwardly blushes at the weak- 
 ness of our passion ; we no longer submit to our chains, but with 
 pain ; our passion becomes our burden and our punishment. But, 
 punished without being undeceived in our error, we seek, in a 
 change, a remedy for our mistake : we wander from object to ob- 
 ject, and if some one at last chance to fix us, it is not that we are 
 satisfied with our choice, it is that we are tired of our inconstancy. 
 
 Our sinner hath wandered in these ways: iniquitous loves had 
 been the cause of all her misfortunes and of all her crimes ; and, 
 born to love God alone, he alone it was whom she had never loved. 
 But scarcely hath she known him, says the gospel, when, blushing 
 at the meanness of her former passions, she no longer acknow- 
 ledges but him alone to be worthy of her heart ; all in the creature 
 appears to her empty, false, and disgusting: far from finding those 
 charms, from which her heart had formerly with such difficulty 
 defended itself, she no longer sees in them but their frivolity, their 
 danger, and their vanity. The Lord alone, in her sight, appears 
 good, real, faithful, constant to his promises, magnificent in his 
 gifts, true in his affection, indulgent even in his anger, alone suffi- 
 ciently great to fill the whole immensity of our heart ; alone suffi- 
 ciently powerful to satisfy all its desires ; alone sufficiently gene- 
 rous to soften all its distresses ; alone immortal, and who shall for 
 ever be loved : lastly, to love whom can be followed by the sole 
 repentance of having loved him too late. 
 
 It is love, therefore, my brethren, which makes true penitence : 
 for penitence is only a changing of the heart ; and the heart does not 
 change but in changing its love: penitence is only the re-establish- 
 ment of order in man; and man is only in order when he loves the 
 Lord, for whom he is made : penitence is only a reconciliation with 
 God ; and your reconciliation is fictitious, if you do not restore to 
 him your heart : in a word, penitence obtains the remission of sins, 
 and sins are remitted only in proportion to our love. 
 
 Tell us no more, then, my brethren, when we hold out these 
 grand examples for your imitation, that you do not feel yourselves 
 born for devotion, and that your heart is of such a nature that 
 every thing which is denominated piety is disagreeable to it. 
 What ! my dear hearer, your heart is not made for loving its 
 God ? Your heart is not made for the Creator who hath given it 
 to you? What! you are born then for vanity and falsehood? 
 
234 TtfE woman who w^s a sinner. Ser. 15. 
 
 Your heart so grand, so exalted, and which nothing here below 
 can satisfy, has been bestowed on you solely for pleasures which 
 weary you, creatures which deceive you, honours which embar- 
 rass you, a world which tires or disgusts you ? God alone, for 
 whom you are made, and who hath made you what you are, 
 should find nothing for himself in the principle of your being. 
 Ah ! you are unjust toward your own heart : you know not your- 
 self, and you take your corruption for yourself. And, in effect, 
 if not born for virtue, what then is the melancholy mystery of your 
 lot ? For what are you born ? What chimera then are you among 
 men ? You are born then only for remorse and gloomy care ? 
 The Author of your being hath drawn you from nonentity, only 
 to render you miserable ? You are gifted then with a heart only 
 to pursue a happiness which either is visionary or which flies from 
 you, and to be a continual burden to yourself? 
 
 O man ! open here thine eyes ; fathom to the bottom the destiny 
 of thy heart, and thou wilt acknowledge that these turbulent pas- 
 sions, which fill thee with such repugnances to virtue, are foreign 
 to thy nature ; that such is not the natural state of thy heart ; that 
 the Author of nature and of grace hath bestowed on thee a more 
 sublime lot; that thou wert born for order, for righteousness, and 
 for innocence ; that thou hast corrupted a happy nature, by turning 
 it toward iniquitous passions ; and that, if not born for virtue, we 
 know not what thou art, and thou becomest incomprehensible to 
 thyself. 
 
 But you are mistaken, when you consider, as inclinations in- 
 compatible with piety, those warm propensities toward pleasure 
 which are born with you. From the instant that grace shall have 
 sanctified them, they will become dispositions favourable for salva- 
 tion. The more you are animated in the pursuit of the world and 
 its false pleasures, the more eager shall you be for the Lord, and 
 for true riches : the more you have been found tender and feeling 
 by creatures, the easier shall be the access of grace to your heart: 
 in proportion as your nature is haughty, proud, and aspiring, the 
 more shall you serve the Lord, without fear, without disguise, 
 without meanness : the more your character now appears easy, 
 light, and inconstant, the easier it will be for you to detach yourself 
 from your criminal attachments, and to return to your God. 
 Lastly, your passions themselves, if I may venture to speak in this 
 manner, will become the means of facilitating your penitence. 
 Whatever had been the occasion of your destruction, you will ren- 
 der it conducive toward your salvation ; you will see and acknow- 
 ledge, that to have received a tender, faithful, and generous heart, 
 is to have been born for piety, and that a heart which creatures 
 have been able to touch, holds out great and favourable disposi- 
 tions toward grace. 
 
 Peruse what remains to us of the history of the just, and you 
 will see that those who have, at the first, been dragged away by mad 
 passions, who were born with every talent calculated for the world, 
 with the warmest propensities toward pleasures, and the most 
 
Ser. 15. THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. 235 
 
 opposite to every thing pious, have been those in whom grace hath 
 operated the most wonderful change. And, without mentioning 
 the sinner of our gospel, the Augustines, the Pelagiuses, the 
 Fabioleses, those worldly and dissipated souls, so obstinate and 
 rooted in their debaucheries, and so diametrically opposite, it would 
 seem, to piety, what progress have they not since made in the 
 ways of God ! And their former propensities have, as I may say, 
 only paved the way for their penitence. The same soil which 
 nourishes and produces great passions, gives birth likewise to the 
 greatest virtues, when it pleases the Lord to change the heart. 
 My God ! thou hast made us all for thee ; and in the incompre- 
 hensible arrangement of thy providence, and of thy mercy toward 
 man, even our weaknesses are to conduce toward our sanctifica- 
 tion. It is thus that our sinner made reparation for the iniquitous 
 use which she had made of her heart. 
 
 But, secondly, the love which she had for Jesus Christ was not 
 one of those vain and indolent sensibilities which are rather the 
 natural emotions of an easily affected heart than real impressions 
 of grace, and which never produce any thing in us farther than 
 that of rendering us satisfied with ourselves, and persuading us that 
 our heart is changed: the sacrifices, and not the feelings, prove 
 the reality of love. 
 
 Thus, the second disorder of her sin having been the criminal 
 and almost universal abuse of all creatures ; the second reparation 
 of her penitence, is the rigorously abstaining from all those things 
 which she had abused in her errors. Her hair, her perfumes, the 
 gifts of body and of nature, had been the instruments of her plea- 
 sures ; for none is ignorant of the use to which a deplorable passion 
 can apply them ; this is the first step of her penitence : the per- 
 fumes are abandoned, and even consecrated to a holy ministry ; 
 her hair is neglected, and no longer serves but to wipe the feet of 
 her deliverer ; beauty, and every attention to the body are neg- 
 lected, and her eyes are blinded with tears. Such are the first 
 sacrifices of her love : she is not contented with giving up cares 
 visibly criminal, she even sacrifices such as might have been looked 
 upon as innocent, and thinks that the most proper way of punishing 
 the abuse she had formerly made of them, is by depriving herself 
 of the liberty she might still have had of employing them. 
 
 In effect, by having once abused them, the sinner loses the right 
 he had over them : what is permitted to an innocent soul, is no 
 longer so to him who has been so unhappy as to deviate from the 
 right path. Sin renders us, as it were, anathematized to all crea- 
 tures around us, and which the Lord had destined to our use. 
 Thus, there are rules for an unfaithful soul, not made for other 
 men : he no longer enjoys, as I may say, the common right, and he 
 must no more judge of his duties by the general maxims, but by 
 the personal exceptions which concern him. 
 
 Now, upon this principle, you are continually demanding of us, 
 if the use of such and such an artifice in dress be a crime ? If such 
 and such public pleasures be forbidden ? I mean not here to decide 
 
236 THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. Ser. 15. 
 
 for others ; but I ask of you who maintain their innocency, whether 
 you have never made a bad use of them ? Have you never made 
 these cares of the body, these amusements, and these artifices, in- 
 strumental toward iniquitous passions ? Have you never employed 
 them in corrupting hearts, or in nourishing the corruption of your 
 own ? What ! your entire life has perhaps been one continued and 
 deplorable chain of passions and evils; you have abused every 
 thing around you, and have made them instrumental to your irre- 
 gular appetites ; you have called them all in aid to that unfortunate 
 tendency of your heart ; your intentions have even exceeded your 
 evil ; your eye hath never been single, and you would willingly 
 never have had that of others to have been so with regard to you ; 
 all your cares for your person have been crimes ; and when there 
 is question of returning to your God, and of making reparation for 
 a whole life of corruption and debauchery, you pretend to dispute 
 with him for vanities, of which you have always made so infamous 
 a use ? You pretend to maintain the innocency of a thousand 
 abuses, which, though permitted to the rest of men, would be for- 
 bidden to you ? You enter into contestation, when it is intended 
 to restrict you from the criminal pomps of the world; you, to whom 
 the most innocent, if such there be, are forbidden in future, and 
 whose only dress ought henceforth to be sackcloth and ashes ? Can 
 you still pretend to justify cares which are your inward shame, and 
 which have so often covered you with confusion at the feet of the 
 sacred tribunal ? And should so much contestation and so many 
 explanations be required, where your own shame alone should 
 amply suffice. 
 
 Besides, the holy sadness of piety no longer looks upon, but with 
 horror, that which has once been a stumbling-block to us. The 
 contrite soul examines not whether he may innocently indulge in 
 it ; it suffices for him to know, that it has a thousand times been 
 the rock upon which he has seen his innocence split. Whatever 
 has been instrumental in leading him to his evils, becomes equally 
 odious in his sight as the evils themselves ; whatever has been as- 
 sisting to his passions, he equally detests as the passions them- 
 selves ; whatever, in a word, has been favourable to his crimes, 
 becomes criminal in his eyes. Should it even happen that he 
 might be disposed to accord it to his weakness, ah ! his zeal, his 
 compunction, would reject the indulgence, and would adopt the in- 
 terests of God's righteousness against men ; he could not prevail 
 upon himself *to permit abuses, which would be the means of re- 
 calling to him his past disorders ; he would always entertain a dread 
 that the same manner of acting might recall the same dispositions, 
 and that, engrossed by the same cares, his heart would find itself 
 the same ; the sole image of his past infidelities disturbs and alarms 
 him ; and, far from bearing about with him their sad remains, he 
 would wish to have it in his power to remove even from the spots, 
 and to tear himself from the occupations which renew their remem- 
 brance. And, surely, what kind of a penitence must that be which 
 still permits us to love all those things which have been the occasion 
 
Ser. 15. THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. 237 
 
 of our greatest crimes ? And, while yet dripping from a shipwreck 
 can we too strenuously form the resolution of for ever shunning 
 those rocks upon which we had so lately split ? 
 
 Lastly, true penitence causes us to find every where matter of a 
 thousand invisible sacrifices. It does not confine itself to certain 
 essential privations ; every thing which flatters the passions, every 
 thing which nourishes the life of the senses, every superfluity which 
 tends solely to the gratification of self-love, all these become the 
 subject of its sacrifices ; and, like a sharp and grievous sword, it 
 every where makes divisions and separations painful to the heart, 
 and cuts even to the quick, whatever in the smallest degree ap- 
 proached too near to the corruption of our propensities. The grace 
 of compunction at once leads the contrite soul to this point ; it 
 renders him ingenuous in punishing himself, and arranges matters 
 so well that every thing serves in expiation of his crimes; that 
 duties, social intercourse, honours, prosperity, and the cares attend- 
 ant upon his station, become opportunities of proving his merit ; 
 and that even his pleasures, through the circumspection and faith 
 with which they are accompanied, become praiseworthy and virtu- 
 ous actions. 
 
 Behold the divine secret of penitence! As it officiates here 
 below toward the criminal soul, says Tertullian, as the justice of 
 God ; and as the justice of God shall one day punish guilt by the 
 eternal privation of all creatures which the sinner hath abused, pe- 
 nitence anticipates that terrible judgment ; it every where imposes 
 on itself the most rigorous privations; and if the miserable condi- 
 tion of human life render the use of present things still requisite, it 
 employs them much less to flatter than to punish the senses, by the 
 sober and austere manner in which it applies them. 
 
 You have only to calculate thereupon the truth of your penitence. 
 In vain do you appear to have left off the brutal gratification of the 
 passions, if the same pomp and splendour are requisite toward sa- 
 tisfying that natural inclination which courts distinction through a 
 vain magnificence ; the same profusions, in consequence of not hav- 
 ing the courage to deprive self-love of accustomed superfluities ; the 
 same pleasures of the world, in consequence of being unable to do 
 without it ; the same advantages on the part of fortune, in conse- 
 quence of the continual desire of rising superior to others : in a 
 word, if you can part with nothing, you exclude yourself from 
 nothing ; even admitting that all those attachments which you still 
 preserve should not be absolute crimes, your heart is not penitent; 
 your manners are apparently different, but all your passions are 
 still the same ; you are apparently changed, but you are not con- 
 verted. How rare, my brethren, are true penitents ! How com- 
 mon are vain and superficial conversions ! And how many souls, 
 changed in the eyes of the world, shall one day find themselves the 
 same before God ! 
 
 But it is not enough to have attained to that degree of self-de- 
 nial which keeps us without the circle of attraction of the allure- 
 ments of guilt ; those laborious atonements must likewise be added, 
 
238 THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. Ser. 15. 
 
 which wash out its stains. Thus, in the third place, the sinner of 
 our gospel is not contented with having sacrificed her hair and her 
 perfumes to Jesus Christ ; she prostrates herself at his feet, she 
 washes them with her tears, she wipes, she kisses them : and, as 
 the third disorder of her sin had been a shameful subjection of her 
 senses, she begins the reparation of these criminal lewdnesses, by 
 the humiliation and disgust of these lowly services. 
 
 New instruction : it is not sufficient to remove from the pas- 
 sions those allurements which incite them ; it is likewise necessary 
 that laborious exertions of such virtues as are most opposite to 
 them, insensibly repress, and recall them to duty and order. You 
 were fond of gaming, pleasures, amusements, and every thing which 
 composes a worldly life ; it is doing little to cut off from these plea- 
 sures that portion which may still conduct to guilt ; if you wish 
 that the love of the world be extinguished in your heart, it is ne- 
 cessary that prayer, retirement, silence, and acts of charity, succeed 
 to these dissolute manners ; and that, not satisfied with shunning 
 the crimes of the world, you likewise fly from the world itself. By 
 giving yourself up to boundless and shameful passions, you have 
 fortified the empire of the senses and of the flesh ; it is necessary 
 that fasting, watching, the yoke of mortification, gradually extin- 
 guish these impure fires, weaken these tendencies, become ungo- 
 vernable through a long indulgence of voluptuousness, and not only 
 remove guilt from you, but operate, as I may say, to dry up its 
 source in your heart. Otherwise, by sparing, you only render 
 yourself more miserable : the old attachments which you shall have 
 broken without having weakened, and, as it were, rooted them 
 from your heart by mortification, will incessantly be renewing their 
 attacks ; your passions, become more violent and impetuous by 
 being checked and suspended, without your having weakened and 
 overcome them, will make you undergo agitations and storms, such 
 as you had never experienced even in guilt : you will behold your- 
 self on the point, every moment, of a melancholy shipwreck ; you 
 will never taste of peace in this new life. You will find yourself 
 more weak, more exhausted, more animated for pleasure, more easy 
 to be shaken, and more disgusted with the service of God, in this 
 state of imperfect penitence, than you had even been formerly in 
 the midst of dissipation ; every thing will become a rock to you ; 
 you will be a continual temptation to yourself; you will be asto- 
 nished to find within you a still greater repugnance to duties ; and, 
 as it is hardly possible to stand out long against yourself, you will 
 soon become disgusted with a virtue by which you suffer so much ; 
 and, in consequence of your having wished to be only a tranquil 
 and mitigated penitent, you will be an unhappy one, without con- 
 solation, without peace, and, consequently, without perseverance. 
 To augment and multiply the sacrifices is to abridge the sufferings 
 in virtue; and whatever we are induced to spare to the passions, 
 becomes rather the punishment and the disgust, than the softening 
 of our penitence. 
 
 The last disorder which had accompanied the sin of the womap 
 
Ser. 15. the woman who was a sinner. 239 
 
 of our gospel, was the publicity of the scandal attending the cor- 
 ruption of her conduct. The scandal of the law, which was dis- 
 honoured in the opinion of the Romans and of so many other 
 Gentiles, spread throughout Palestine, and who, witnessing the 
 ill-conduct of our sinner, took occasion, no doubt, from it, to blas- 
 pheme the name of the Lord, to despise the sanctity of his law, 
 to harden themselves in their impious superstitions, and to look 
 upon the hope of Israel and the wonders of God, as related in the 
 holy books, as fictions invented to amuse a credulous people. 
 
 Scandal of place. Her ill conduct had been conspicuous in the 
 city, that is to say, in the capital of the country, from whence the 
 report of such accidents was soon circulated throughout Judea. 
 Now behold the scandals for which her penitence makes repara- 
 tion, the scandal of the law, by renouncing the superstitious tra- 
 ditions of the Pharisees, who had adulterated their precepts; and 
 by confessing Jesus Christ, who was the end and the fulfilment of 
 them. For, too frequently, after having dishonoured religion in 
 the minds of the impious, through our excesses and scandalous 
 conduct, we again dishonour it through our pretended piety ; we 
 create for ourselves a kind of virtue altogether worldly, superficial, 
 and pharisaical; we become superstitious without becoming peni- 
 tent ; we make the abuses of devotion succeed to those of the 
 world; the only reparation we make for the scandal of our de- 
 baucheries, is that of a sensual piety; and we reflect more dis- 
 grace upon virtue through the weaknesses and the illusions which 
 we mingle with it, than we did by our open and avowed excesses. 
 Thus the impious are more hardened in their iniquity, and more 
 removed from conversion, by the example of our false peni- 
 tence, than ever they had formerly been by the example even of 
 our vices. 
 
 Lastly, the scandal of place. That same city which had been 
 the theatre of her shame and of her crimes, becomes that of her 
 penitence. She goes not into retired places to give vent to her 
 sorrows and her tears ; she takes no advantage, like Nicodemus, 
 of the shades of night to come to Jesus Christ, nor waits the 
 opportunity of his being in a retired corner of the city, in order to 
 conceal from the eyes of the public the first steps of her conver- 
 sion. In the face of that great city which she had scandalized by 
 her conduct, she enters into the house of the Pharisee, and is not 
 afraid of submitting to have, as spectators of her penitence, those 
 who had been witnesses of her former crimes. For often, after 
 having despised the world's opinion in debauchery, it becomes 
 dreaded in virtue: the eyes of the public did not appear formidable 
 to us during our dissipation; they become so in our penitence; 
 our vices are carelessly laid open to view; our virtues are backward 
 and cautious: we dare not at first declare openly for Jesus Christ; 
 we are ashamed to show ourselves in a light so new to us; we have 
 gloried in vice as if it had been a virtue, and we blush for being 
 virtuous, as though it were a shame. 
 
 As our fortunate sinner had not been timid in evil, so she is not 
 
240 THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. Ser. 15. 
 
 timid in good; she bears, even with a holy insensibility, the re- 
 proaches of the Pharisee, who recounts, in the presence of all the 
 guests, the infamy of her past manners. For the world, typified 
 by that Pharisee, feels a gratification in the mean pleasure of re- 
 calling the former errors of those whom grace hath touched : far 
 from reaping any edification from their present good conduct, it is 
 continually dwelling upon their past irregularity; it tries to weaken 
 the merit of what they now do, by renewing upon every occasion 
 the remembrance of what they have done ; it would appear that 
 the errors which they lament authorize those which we love, and 
 in which we still continue to live; and that it is more allowable for 
 us to be sinners, since real and sincere penitents repent of having 
 been so. It is thus, O my God ! that every thing worketh out 
 our destruction, and that, instead of blessing and praising the 
 riches of thy mercy when thou withdrawest worldly and dissolute 
 souls from the ways of perdition, and instead of being excited by 
 these grand examples, to have recourse to thy clemency, always so 
 ready to receive the repentant sinner, insensible and blind to his 
 penitence, we are occupied only in recalling his errors, as if we 
 were entitled from thence to say to ourselves, that we have nothing 
 to dread in debauchery ; that one day or other we shall likewise 
 become contrite; and that the sincerest penitents having once 
 been perhaps still more deeply involved than we in mad passions, 
 we need not despair of one day or other being able to quit them 
 as well as they ! O inexplicable blindness of man, that finds in- 
 ducements to debauchery even in the examples of penitence I 
 
 Such were the reparations of our sinner But, if it be an error 
 to represent to ourselves a change of life as the simple cessation of 
 our former debaucheries, without adding to that those expiations 
 which wash them out; it is likewise another not less dangerous, 
 the considering these expiations as involving you in a situation, 
 gloomy, wretched, and hopeless. Thus, after having mentioned to 
 you the reparations of her penitence, it is proper that I now lay 
 before you the consolations. 
 
 Part II. Come unto me, says Jesus Christ, all ye who are 
 weary of the ways of iniquity ; take my yoke upon you, and learn 
 of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest 
 unto your souls; for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. 
 
 This promise, addressed to all criminal souls, who are always 
 miserable in debauchery, is completely fulfilled in the instance of 
 the sinner of our gospel. In effect, every thing which had former- 
 ly been to her, in her dissipations, an inexhaustible fund of disgust, 
 becomes now, in her penitence, a fruitful source of consolation ; 
 and with Jesus Christ she is happy,, through the same means 
 which, during her guilt had occasioned all her miseries. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, an iniquitous love had been her first guilt, 
 and the first source of all her distresses: the first consolation of 
 her penitence is a holy dilection for Jesus Christ, and the wide 
 difference between that divine and new love, and the profane love 
 
Ser. 15. THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. 241 
 
 which had hitherto engrossed her heart. I say, the difference in 
 the object, in the proceedings, and in the correspondence. 
 
 In the object: the depravity of her heart had attached her to 
 men, corrupted, inconstant, deceitful, rather companions of her 
 debauchery than real friends, less watchful to render her happy 
 than attentive to the gratification of their own inordinate passions ; 
 to men, who always join contempt to a gratified passion; to Am- 
 nons, in whose eyes, from the moment that they have obtained 
 their wishes, the unfortunate object of their love becomes vile and 
 hateful ; to men, whose weaknesses, artifices, transports, and de- 
 fects, she well knew, and whom she inwardly acknowledged to be 
 unworthy of her heart, and to whom she paid any attention, more 
 through the unfortunate bias of passion, than the free choice of her 
 reason; in a word, to men, who had never yet been able to fix the 
 natural instability and love of change of her heart. Her penitence 
 attaches her to Jesus Christ, the model of all virtue, the source of 
 all grace, the principle of all light : the more she studies him, the 
 more does she discover his greatness and sanctity; the more she 
 loves him, the more does she find him worthy of being loved : to 
 Jesus Christ, the faithful, immortal, and disinterested friend of 
 her soul, who is concerned for her eternal interests alone; who is 
 interested only in what may render her happy; who is even come 
 to sacrifice his ease, his glory, and his life, in order to secure her 
 immortal happiness; who has distinguished her from among so 
 many women of Judah, by an overflowing of mercy, when she had 
 rendered herself the most conspicuous of her sex, by the excess of 
 her wretchedness ; who expects nothing from her, but is willing to 
 bestow on her far more than she could ever have hoped ; lastly, to 
 Jesus Christ, who has tranquillized her heart, by purifying it ; who 
 has fixed its inconstancy, and subdued the multiplicity of its de- 
 sires; who has filled the whole extent of her love; who has restor- 
 ed to her that internal peace which creatures had never been able 
 to bestow. 
 
 O my soul ! how long shalt thou continue to love, in creatures, 
 what is but thine affliction and punishment? Wouldst thou suffer 
 more by breaking asunder thy chains, than thou now dost in bear- 
 ing them? Would virtue and innocence be more painful than 
 those shameful passions which at present debase and rend thee? 
 Ah ! thou shalt find every thing light and easy, in comparison with 
 the cruel agitations which render thee so unhappy in guilt. Dif- 
 ference in the object of her love. 
 
 Difference in the steps. The excess of passion had led her to a 
 thousand steps, in opposition to her inclination, her glory, and her 
 reason; had led her to make a sacrifice to men of her quiet, her 
 inclinations, her honour, and her liberty ; to shameful condescen- 
 sions and disagreeable submissions; to important sacrifices, for 
 which the only return was their thinking themselves more entitled 
 from thence to exact still more: for such is the ingratitude of men; 
 the more you allow them to become masters of your heart, the 
 more they erect themselves its tyrant: in their opinion, the excess 
 
 R 
 
242 THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. Ser. 15. 
 
 of your attachment to them diminishes its merit; and they punish 
 you for the fervour and the shame of your transports, by taking 
 occasion even from thence, to suffer all, even to their gratitude, 
 to be cooled. 
 
 Behold the ungrateful returns experienced by our sinner in the 
 ways of the passions ! But in her penitence every thing is reckoned; 
 the slightest step which she takes for Jesus Christ is noticed, is 
 praised, is defended by Jesus Christ himself. The Pharisee vainly 
 endeavours to lessen her merit (for the world never studies but to 
 diminish the value of the virtues of the just) ; the Saviour under- 
 takes her defence: "Seest thou this woman?" said he to him; as 
 if he thereby meant to say, Knowest thou all the merit of the sa- 
 crifices which she makes to me, and how far the strength and the 
 excess of her love for me extend? She hath not ceased to wash 
 my feet with tears, and to wipe them with the hairs of her head. 
 He reckons, he observes every thing ; a sigh, a tear, a simple move- 
 ment of the heart: nothing is lost upon him of whatever is done 
 for him; nothing escapes the exactness of his glances, and the ten- 
 derness of his heart ; we are well assured that we serve no ungrate- 
 ful master; he overvalues even the slightest sacrifices. "Seest 
 thou this woman ? " He would, it appears, that all men view her 
 with the same eyes that he did: that all men should be as equitable 
 estimators as himself of her love, and of her tears : he no longer 
 sees her debaucheries ; he forgets a whole life of error and guilt : 
 he sees only her repentance and her tears. 
 
 Now, what consolation for a contrite soul to have it in her power 
 to say to herself, Till now, I have lived only for error and vanity. 
 My days, my years, my cares, my inquietudes, my distresses, are 
 all hitherto lost, and no longer exist, even in the memory of those 
 men for whom alone I have lived, for whom alone I have sacrificed 
 every thing. My rectitude, my attentions, my anxieties, have 
 never been repaid but with ingratitude; but henceforth, whatever 
 I do for Jesus Christ will receive its full estimation : my sufferings, 
 my afflictions, the slightest sacrifices of my heart; my sighs, my 
 tears, which I have so often shed in vain for creatures, all shall be 
 written in immortal characters in the book of life : all these shall 
 eternally exist in the remembrance of that faithful Master whom 
 I serve; all these, in spite of the defects mingled with them by my 
 weakness and my corruption, shall be excused, and even purified 
 through the grace of my Redeemer, and he will crown his gifts by 
 rewarding my feeble deserts. I no longer live but for eternity; I 
 no longer labour in vain; my days are real, my life is no longer a 
 dream. O, my brethren, what a blessed gain is piety; and how 
 great are the consolations which a soul recalled to Jesus Christ 
 receives, in compensation for the trifling losses which he sacrifices 
 to him ! 
 
 Lastly, difference in the certitude of the correspondence. That 
 love of creatures which actuated our sinner, had always been at- 
 tended with the most cruel uncertainties. One is always suspicious 
 of an equal return of love : the heart is ingenious in rendering itself 
 
Ser. 15. THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. 243 
 
 unhappy, and in tormenting itself with vain fears, suspicions, and 
 jealousies: the more generous, true, and frank it is itself, the more 
 doth it suffer ; it is the martyr of its own distrusts. You know 
 this well ; and it does not belong to me to pretend to speak from 
 this place the language of your extravagant passions. 
 
 But what a new destiny in the change of her love ! Scarcely is 
 her love of Jesus Christ commenced, when she is certain of being 
 loved. She hears from his divine mouth the favourable sentence, 
 which, in remitting her sins, confirms to her the love and the affec- 
 tion of him who remits them. Not only are her debaucheries for- 
 gotten, but she is urged to be convinced, in her own mind, that they 
 are forgotten, pardoned, and washed out. All her fears are pre- 
 vented, and ground is no more left for mistrust or uncertainty ; nor 
 can she longer suspect the love of Jesus Christ, without at the same 
 time suspecting his power and the faithfulness of his promises. 
 
 Such is the lot of a contrite soul on quitting the tribunal where 
 Jesus Christ, through the ministry of the priest, has remitted de- 
 baucheries, which he has washed out with his tears and his love. 
 In spite of that uncertainty inseparable from the present state of 
 life, whether he be worthy of love or hatred, an internal peace bears 
 testimony in the bottom of his heart that he is restored to Jesus 
 Christ : he experiences a calm and a joy in his conscience which 
 can be the fruit of righteousness alone. Not that he is entirely 
 delivered from alarm and apprehension on account of his past infi- 
 delities, and that, in certain moments, more forcibly struck with 
 horror at his past errors, and the severity of God's judgments, he 
 is not tempted to consider all as hopeless to him; but Jesus Christ, 
 who himself excites these storms in his heart, has quickly calmed 
 them ; his voice still inwardly says to him, as formerly to Peter, 
 alarmed upon the waves, f? O thou of little faith, wherefore doubtest 
 thou?" Have I not given thee sufficient proofs of my kindness 
 and my protection ? Reflect upon all that I have done in order to 
 withdraw thee from the ways of iniquity. I seek not with such 
 perseverance the sheep that I love not ; I recall them not from so 
 far, to let them perish before my eyes. Distrust, then, no more 
 my affection ; dread only thine own lukewarmness or inconstancy. 
 First consolation of her penitence ; the difference of her love. 
 
 The second is the sacrifice of her passions. She throws at the 
 feet of Jesus Christ, her perfumes, her hair, all the attachments of 
 her heart, all the deplorable instruments of her vanities and of her 
 crimes ; and do not suppose that in acting thus she sacrifices her 
 pleasures; she sacrifices only her anxieties and her punishments. 
 
 In vain is it said that the cares of the passions constitute the 
 felicity of those possessed by them ; it is a language in which the 
 world glories, but which experience belies. What punishment to 
 a worldly soul, anxious to please, are the solicitous cares of a beauty 
 which fades and decays every day ! What attentions and constraints 
 they must take upon themselves, upon their inclinations, upon 
 their pleasures, upon their indolence ! What inward vexations, 
 when these cares have been unavailing, and when more fortunate 
 
 r2 
 
244 THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. Ser. 15. 
 
 charms have attracted the general attention ! What tyranny is that 
 of custom ! It must, however, be submitted to, in spite of de- 
 ranged affairs, a remonstrating husband, tradesmen who murmur, 
 and who dearly sell the remissions perhaps required. I say nothing 
 of the cares of ambition : what a life is that passed in designs, pro- 
 jects, fears, hopes, alarms, jealousies, subjection, and meannesses ! 
 I speak not of a profane connexion : what terrors lest the mystery 
 be laid open, what eyes to shun, what spies to deceive, what 
 mortifying repulses to undergo from the very person for whom they 
 have perhaps sacrificed their honour and their liberty, and of whom 
 they dare not even complain ! To all these, add those cruel mo- 
 ments when passion, less unruly, allows us leisure to inspect our- 
 selves, and to feel the whole infamy of our situation ; those moments 
 in which the heart, born for more solid joys, wearies of its own 
 idols, and finds ample punishment in its disgusts and in its own 
 inconstancy. World profane ! If such be the felicity thou vauntest 
 so much, distinguish thy worshippers, and, by crowning them with 
 such a happiness, punish them for the faith which they have so 
 credulously given to thy promises. 
 
 Behold what our sinner casts at the feet of Jesus Christ ! Her 
 bonds, her troubles, her slavery ; in appearance, the instruments of 
 her pleasures, in truth, the source of all her afflictions. Now, 
 granting that this were the only consolation of virtue, is it not a 
 sufficiently grand one, that of deliverance from the keenest anxie- 
 ties of the passions? To have your happiness no longer dependent 
 upon the inconstancy, the perfidy, and the injustice of creatures ; 
 to have placed yourself beyond the reach of events; to possess in 
 your own heart all that is wanting toward your happiness, or 
 to suffice, as I may say, to yourself? What do you lose in sacri- 
 ficing gloomy and anxious cares, in order to find peace and inward 
 joy; and to lose all for Jesus Christ, is it not, as the apostle says, 
 to have gained all ? Thy faith hath made thee whole, said the 
 Saviour to the woman ; go in peace. Behold the treasure which 
 she receives in return for the passions sacrificed to him ; behold 
 the reward and the consolation of her tears and of her repentance, 
 that peace of mind, which she had never as yet been able to find, 
 and which the world had never bestowed. Fools ! says a prophet; 
 misery to you, then, who drag on the load of your passions, as the 
 ox in labouring drags on the chains of the yoke which galls him, 
 and who rush on to your destruction, by the way even of anguish, 
 subjection, and constraint. 
 
 Lastly, by her sin she had been degraded in the eyes of men : 
 they beheld with contempt the shame and the infamy of her con- 
 duct ; she lived degraded from every right which a good reputation 
 and a life free from reproach bestow; and the Pharisee is even asto- 
 nished that Jesus Christ should condescend to suffer her at his feet. 
 
 For the world, which authorizes whatever leads to dissipation, 
 never fails to cover dissipation itself with infamy: it approves, it jus- 
 tifies the maxims, the habits, and the pleasures which corrupt the 
 heart; and yet it insists, that innocency and regularity of manners be 
 
Ser. 15. THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. 245 
 
 united with corruption of heart ; it inspires all the passions, yet it 
 always blames the consequences of them ; it requires you to study 
 the art of pleasing, and it despises you from the moment that you 
 have succeeded ; its lascivious theatres resound with extravagant 
 praises of profane love, and its conversations consist only of biting 
 satires upon those who yield themselves up to that unfortunate 
 tendency; it praises the graces, the charms, the miserable talents 
 which light up impure desires, and it loads you with everlasting 
 shame and reproach from the moment that you appear inflamed 
 with them. O, how infinitely above description wretched are those 
 who drag on in a still beloved world, and which they find them- 
 selves incapable of doing without, the miserable wrecks of reputation, 
 either blasted or but feebly confirmed; and wherever they showthem- 
 selves, to arouse the remembrance or the suspicion of their crimes ! 
 
 Such had been the afflictions and the disgraces with which the 
 passions and the debaucheries of our sinner were followed ; but 
 her penitence restores to her more honour and more glory than 
 had been taken from her by the infamy of her crimes. This sinner, 
 so despised in the world, whose name was never mentioned with- 
 out a blush, is praised for the very things which even the world 
 considers as most honourable, namely, kindness of heart, generosity 
 of sentiments, and the fidelity of a holy love ; this sinner, with 
 whom no comparison durst ever be made, and whose scandal was 
 without example in the city, is exalted above the Pharisee ; the 
 truth, the sincerity of her faith, of her compunction, of her love, 
 merits at once the preference over a superficial and pharisaical 
 virtue: lastly, this sinner, whose name was concealed, as if un- 
 worthy of being pronounced, and whose only appellation is that of 
 her crimes, is become the glory of Jesus Christ, the praise of grace, 
 and an honour to the Gospel. O matchless power of virtue ! 
 
 Yes, my brethren, virtue renders us a spectacle, worthy of God, 
 of angels, and of men : it once more exalts a fallen reputation : it 
 renews our claim, even here below, to rights and honours which we 
 had forfeited : it washes our stains, which the malignity of men 
 would wish to be immortal : it rejoins us to the servants of Jesus 
 Christ, and to the society of the just, of whose intercourse we 
 were formerly unworthy: it calls forth in us a thousand laudable 
 qualities, which the vortex of the passions had almost for ever in- 
 gulfed : lastly, it attracts more glory to us than our past manners 
 had attached shame and contempt. While Jonah is rebellious to 
 the will of God, he is the curse of heaven, and of the earth ; even 
 idolaters are under the necessity of separating him from their so- 
 ciety, and of casting him out as a child of infamy and malediction ; 
 and the belly of a monster is the only asylum in which he can con- 
 ceal his reproach and shame. But, touched with contrition, 
 scarcely hath he implored the eternal mercies of the God of his 
 fathers, when he becomes the admiration of the proud Nineveh ; 
 when the grandees and the people unite to render him honours till 
 then unheard of; when the prince himself, full of respect for his 
 virtue, descends from the throne, and covers himself with sackcloth 
 and ashes, in obedience to the man of God. Those passions which 
 
246 THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. Sei". 15. 
 
 the world praises and inspires, had drawn upon us the contempt even 
 of the world ; virtue, which the world censures and combats, attracts 
 to us, however unwillingly on its part, its veneration and homages. 
 
 What, my dear hearer, prevents you then from terminating your 
 shame, and your inquietudes, with your crimes ? Is it the repara- 
 tions of penitence which alarm you ? But the longer you delay, 
 the more they multiply, the more debts are contracted, the more 
 you increase the necessity of new rigours to your weakness. Ah ! 
 if the reparations discourage you at present, what shall it one day 
 be, when, your crimes multiplied to infinity, almost no punishment 
 whatever shall be capable of expiating them? They shall then 
 plunge you into despair; and you will adopt the miserable part of 
 casting off all yoke, and of no longer reckoning upon your salva- 
 tion ; you will raise up to yourself new maxims and modes of rea- 
 soning, in order to tranquillise your mind in freethinking ; you will 
 consider as needless a penitence which will then appear to you im- 
 possible. When the embarrassments of the conscience come to a 
 certain point, we feel a kind of gloomy satisfaction in persuading 
 ourselves that no resource is left ; we calm ourselves on the foun- 
 dations of truths, when we see ourselves so far removed from what 
 they prescribe ; we fly to unbelief for a remedy from the moment 
 that we believe it is no longer to be found in faith; from the moment 
 that the chaos becomes inexplicable to us, we* have soon settled it 
 in our minds that all is uncertain. And, besides what should there 
 be so melancholy and so rigorous in reparations, whose only merit 
 ought to spring from love ? 
 
 Unbelieving soul ! you dread being unable to support the holy 
 sadness of penitence ; yet you have hitherto been able to bear up 
 against the internal horrors of guilt : virtue in your eyes seems wea- 
 risome beyond sufferance ; yet you have long dragged on under the 
 stings of an ulcerated conscience, which no joy could enliven. Ah ! 
 since you have hitherto been able to bear up against all internal 
 anguish, the bitterness, the disgusts, the gloomy agitations of ini- 
 quity, no longer dread those of virtue : in the pains and sufferances 
 inseparable from guilt, you have undergone trials far beyond what 
 may be attached to virtue ; and doubly so, because grace softens, 
 and renders even pleasing, the sufferings of piety, while the only 
 sweetener of guilt is the bitterness of guilt itself. 
 
 My God ! is it possible, that, for so many years past, I have had 
 strength to wander in such arduous and dreary ways, under the ty- 
 ranny of the world and of the passions, and that I should be unable 
 to live with thee, under all the tenderness of thy regards, under 
 the wings of thy compassion, and under the protection of thy arm ? 
 Art thou then so cruel a master ? The world, which knows thee 
 not, believes that thou renderest miserable those who serve thee : 
 but we, O Lord, we know that thou art the gentlest and best of 
 masters, the tenderest of all fathers, the most faithful of all friends, 
 the most munificent of all benefactors ; and that thou givest a fore- 
 taste, by a thousand inward consolations with which thou indulgest 
 thy servants here below, of that eternal felicity which thou pre- 
 parest for them hereafter. 
 
Ser. 16. THE WORD OF god. 247 
 
 SERMON XVI. 
 
 THE WORD OF GOD. 
 
 " It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth 
 out of the mouth of God." Matthew iv. 4. 
 
 Nothing can give a better idea of the power and of the subli- 
 mity of the word of the Gospel, than the images employed by Jesus 
 Christ to foretel its effects. One while it is a sacred sword, which 
 is to divide father from child, husband from wife, brother from sis- 
 ter, and man from himself ; to bend all minds under the yoke of 
 faith, to subjugate the Caesars, to triumph over sages and the 
 learned, and to exalt the standard of the cross upon the wrecks of 
 idols and of empires : through that is represented to us its might, 
 which the whole world hath been unable to resist. 
 
 One while it is a divine fire, spread in an instant throughout the 
 earth, which goes to dissolve the mountains, to depopulate the 
 cities, to people the forest, to reduce into ashes the profane tem- 
 ples, to inflame the minds of men, and to make them fly, like 
 madmen, to death in the sight of nations ; and under these parabo- 
 lical traits are figured to us the promptitude of its operations and 
 the rapidity of its victories. 
 
 One while it is a mysterious leaven, which joins and reunites 
 the whole mass ; which binds all its parts together, and impresses 
 upon them one general efficacy and virtue ; which overthrows the 
 distinctions of Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, and gives 
 to all the same name and the same being : and here you compre- 
 hend how great must be its sanctity and inward might, seeing it 
 hath purified the whole universe, and of all nations hath made but 
 one people. 
 
 But at present Jesus Christ compares it to bread, which serves 
 as the food of man ; and he thereby means to inform us that the 
 word of the Gospel is a powerful and solid nourishment, often 
 pernicious to such as receive it into a diseased and corrupted heart, 
 and useful only to souls who, with a holy appetite, nourish them- 
 selves with it, and who bring to this place a heart prepared to 
 listen to it. 
 
 To confine myself, then, to this idea, I shall say nothing of the 
 wonders which this word, announced by twelve poor and humble 
 men, formerly wrought throughout the universe, I shall pass over 
 in silence the sanctity of its doctrine, the sublimity of its counsels, 
 the wisdom of its maxims ; and, limiting myself to the instruction, 
 and to that which may render the word of the Gospel, which we 
 announce, beneficial to you, I shall inform you, firstly, what are the 
 dispositions which ought to accompany you to this holy place for 
 the purpose of hearing it; and, secondly, in what mind you ought 
 afterward to listen to it : two duties, not only neglected, but even 
 
248 the word of god. Ser. 16. 
 
 unknown to the greatest part of the believers who run in crowds to 
 the feet of these Christian pulpits, and which are the ordinary- 
 cause of our ministry being attended with so little fruit. 
 
 Part I. It is not the body of external works, says St. Augus- 
 tine, which distinguishes the just from the carnal Christian : it is 
 the invisible spirit which animates them. Pious actions are fre- 
 quently common to the good and to the wicked; it is the disposi- 
 tion of the heart which discriminates them. All run, says the 
 Apostle, but all reach not the goal, for it is not the same spirit 
 which impels them. 
 
 Now, to apply this maxim to my subject : of all the duties of 
 Christian piety, there is undoubtedly none of which the external 
 is more equally fulfilled by the worldly, and by the pious, than that 
 of coming to hear the word of the Gospel. All run in crowds, like 
 the Israelites formerly to the foot of the holy mountain, to hear 
 the words of the law. Our temples are hardly sufficient to con- 
 tain the multitude of believers : profane assemblies break up to 
 swell the number of the holy assembly at the hours of instruction; 
 and the ages which have seen the zeal of Christians so relaxed on 
 every other duty of religion, have not, it would seem, witnessed it 
 in this. Nevertheless, of all the ministries confided to the church 
 for the consummation of the chosen, there is scarcely any so un- 
 profitable as that of the word; and the most efficacious means 
 which the church hath, in every age, employed for the conversion 
 of men, is become, at present, its feeblest resource. You, my 
 brethren, are yourselves a melancholy proof of this truth. Never 
 were instructions more frequent than in our days, and never were 
 conversions so rare. 
 
 It is of importance, therefore, to explain the causes of so com- 
 mon and so deplorable an abuse. Now, the first is undoubtedly 
 the want of those dispositions which ought to accompany you to 
 this holy place, in order to listen to the word of salvation. And, 
 surely, if St. Paul formerly commanded all believers to purify 
 themselves before coming to eat of the bread of life, if he de- 
 clared to them, that not to distinguish it from ordinary food was 
 to render themselves guilty of the body of the Lord, we have no 
 less reason to tell you that you ought to prove yourselves, and to 
 prepare your soul before you come to participate in that spiritual 
 food which we break to the people : and that not to distinguish it 
 from the word of men, in your manner of listening to it, is to ren- 
 der yourselves guilty even of the word of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The first disposition required of you by the sanctity of this word, 
 when you come to hear it, is a sincere desire that it may be useful 
 to you. Before coming to our temples, you ought, privately, in 
 your own house, to address yourself to the Father of Light, to en- 
 treat him to bestow upon you that ear of the heart which alone 
 makes his voice to be heard; to give to his word that efficacy, that 
 inward unction, those attractions so powerful and so successful in 
 the conversion of sinners, that he may overcome that insensibility 
 
Ser. 16. the word of god. 249 
 
 which you have opposed to all the truths hitherto heard ; that he 
 fix those momentary feelings which you have so often experienced 
 while listening to us, but which have never been productive of any 
 consequences toward your salvation ; that to us he give that zeal, 
 that wisdom, that dignity, that fulness of his Spirit, those piercing 
 lights, that divine vehemence which carries conviction to the heart, 
 and which never speaks in vain ; that he form in our hearts the re- 
 lish of those truths which he putteth in our mouths ; that he ren- 
 der us insensible to your praises, or to your censures, in order that 
 we may be more useful to your wants ; that the ardent desire to 
 accomplish your salvation fully compensate the want of those 
 talents denied to us by nature ; and that we honour our ministry, 
 not by seeking to please, but to save you. 
 
 And, surely, if the Israelites, before approaching Mount Sinai to 
 hear the words of the law which the angel was to announce to them, 
 were obliged, by the order of the Lord, to purify themselves, to 
 wash their garments, and even to abstain from the holy duties of 
 marriage, in order to prepare themselves for that grand operation, 
 and to carry nothing to the foot of the mountain unworthy of the 
 sanctity of the law they went to hear ; is it not, says a holy father, 
 much more reasonable, when you come to hear the words of a more 
 holy law, that you bring there at least those precautions of faith, of 
 piety, of external respect, which mark in you a sincere desire of 
 conforming your manners to those maxims which we are to an- 
 nounce to you ? What, my brethren ! are the precepts of Jesus 
 Christ, the words of eternal life, to be listened to with less precau- 
 tion than the ordinances of a figurative law? Is it because they 
 are no longer announced to you by an angel from heaven ? But 
 are not we equally as he, the instruments of God to promulgate his 
 word, and, like him, do we not speak in his place ? Did the angel 
 upon the mountain bear more the mark of Divinity than we bear 
 of him ? He wrote the law upon tables of stone ; the grace of our 
 ministry engraves it on hearts. He promised milk and honey ; 
 and we announce real and everlasting riches. The thunders of 
 heaven, which accompanied his menaces against the transgressors 
 of the law, overthrew the people struck with terror at the foot of 
 the mountain; but what were these threatenings and temporal 
 maledictions, their cities demolished, their wives and children led 
 into captivity, when compared to that eternal misery which we are 
 instructed continually to foretel to the violaters of the law of 
 God ? Separate what we are from the ministry which we fill, and 
 what is there here, either less awful or less respectable than upon 
 Mount Sinai ? 
 
 And, nevertheless, what preparations accompany you to an action 
 so holy and so worthy of respect ? A vain curiosity which you 
 wish to gratify ; an irksome leisure which you are well pleased to 
 have amused; a religious spectacle, the pleasure of which you 
 wish to share ; a custom which you follow, because the world hath 
 adopted it ? What do I know ? The pleasure, perhaps, of pleas- 
 ing a master, by imitating his respect for the word of the Gospel, 
 
250 the word of god. Ser. 1G. 
 
 and far more in order to attract his regards than those of divine 
 mercy ? Once more, what do I know ? Perhaps views still more 
 criminal, and of which we cannot speak without degrading the dig- 
 nity of our ministry. No motive of salvation leads you here ; no 
 view of faith prepares you, no sentiment of piety accompanies you 
 to this place ; in short, your coming to listen to the holy word is 
 no work of religion. 
 
 First cause of the inutility of our ministry. For, how is it pos- 
 sible that a proceeding altogether profane send a disposition to 
 grace ; and that, in this multitude of believers, assembled in this 
 holy place, the goodness of God distinguished you from among the 
 crowd, to open your heart to the word of life ; you who have brought 
 hither only those dispositions which are most calculated to keep at 
 a distance that mercy? My brethren, as religion hath nothing 
 grander, in one sense, than the charge of the doctrine and of truth; 
 so piety likewise knows nothing so important, and which requires 
 more religious precautions, than a proper attention to, and the being 
 well instructed in them. 
 
 The second disposition which ought to accompany you to this 
 holy place, is, a disposition of grief and shame, founded on the little 
 fruit you have hitherto reaped from so many truths already heard. 
 You ought to reflect upon all those feelings of compunction, which 
 the Lord, through the ministry of the word, hath operated in your 
 hearts, yet which have never been attended with any success toward 
 your salvation ; so many pious resolutions, inspired in this place, 
 which seemed to promise a change of life, yet which have all va- 
 nished on the first temptation. For, what in this ought most to 
 alarm you, is, that all those truths which have made only such mo- 
 mentary impressions on you, are so many witnesses, who shall one 
 day depose against you before the tribunal of Jesus Christ : in pro- 
 portion to the times that the word of the Gospel hath failed to touch 
 you even to repentance, so many times hath it rendered you more 
 unworthy of obtaining the grace of repentance. Faith, on this 
 point, admits of no medium ; and, if you depart unchanged, you 
 depart, in some respect, more culpable than before, because, to all 
 your other crimes, you have added that of contempt of the holy word. 
 
 Behold the reflections which ought to occupy your faith ; and, 
 when you enter the assembly of believers, you ought, while trem- 
 bling over the past, to demand of yourself, am I going to hear a 
 word which shall judge me, or truths which shall deliver me ? Am 
 I going to offer up to the compassion of God a docile and willing 
 heart, or to his justice fresh motives of condemnation against my- 
 self ? It is now so long since truths have been announced to me, 
 the force of which my utmost deference to the passions cannot 
 weaken in my mind ; for, in spite of myself, they make me inwardly 
 acknowledge the error of my ways : yet, have I taken a single step 
 toward quitting them? I have so long been warned, that the 
 body of a Christian is the temple of God ; have T, in consequence, 
 become more temperate and chaste ? I have so long heard it said, 
 that, u if thine eye be evil, pluck it out, and cast it far from thee f 
 
Ser. 16. the word of god. 251 
 
 have I attained strength for such separations which I know to be 
 so indispensable toward my salvation ? I have so long been told, 
 that to defer, as I have done, from day to day, my penitence, is to 
 be determined to die in sin ; do I, even now, find myself more dis- 
 posed to quit my deplorable situation, and with a willing heart to 
 begin the work of my salvation ? 
 
 Great God ! cease not to give me a heart susceptible to truths, 
 which always affect, but never change me ; and punish not the 
 abuse which I make of thy word, by depriving it, with regard to 
 me, of that efficacy which thou still permittest it to have, in order 
 to recall me from my errors to penitence ! And, my brethren, how 
 many believers who listen to me, formerly alive to those truths 
 which we announce, no longer offer to them now but a tranquil and 
 a hardened heart ! They neglected those happy times when grace 
 was yet willing to open this way of conversion ; and, ever since so 
 continued and so fatal a negligence, they listen to us with indiffer- 
 ence, and the most terrible truths in our mouths are no longer in 
 their ears but sounding brass, and a tinkling cymbal. 
 
 Now, I ask your own hearts, my brethren, if this feeling of sor- 
 row, for the little advantage you have hitherto reaped from so many 
 instructions, is even known to you ? Doth that outward pomp, 
 with which you come here, worldly women, announce that dispo- 
 sition ? Do not the same indecent and vain cares, which fit you 
 for profane spectacles, accompany you to our instructions, where 
 the world is condemned ? Do you make the smallest difference 
 there in your appearance ? And doth it not seem, either that we 
 are to announce the foolish maxims of the theatres, or that you 
 come for the sole purpose of insulting, by an indecent carriage, even 
 in the eyes of the world, the holy maxims of the Gospel ? 
 
 But what do I say, my dear hearer ? Far from reproaching to 
 yourselves so many truths, heard hitherto without fruit, alas ! you 
 are perhaps delighted at your insensibility ; you perhaps pride your- 
 selves and indulge a deplorable vanity, in listening to us with in- 
 difference ; you perhaps consider it as giving you an air of conse- 
 quence, and as a proof of superiority of mind, that what others are 
 affected by, should leave you tranquil and calm ; you perhaps make 
 a vain boast of your insensibility. It seems, that in you it would be 
 a weakness to be affected by truths which formerly triumphed over 
 philosophers and Ceesars; by truths, evidently come down from 
 heaven, and which bear with them such divine marks of sublimity 
 and wisdom ; by truths which do such honour to man, and alone 
 worthy of reason ; by truths, so soothing and consolatory to the 
 heart, and alone calculated to bestow internal tranquillity and peace. 
 Lastly, by truths, which propose to us such grand interests, and 
 toward which we can never be indifferent, without folly and mad- 
 ness. You vaunt the little success of our zeal, and that all our dis- 
 courses leave you exactly as they found you; and, in declaring this, 
 you think you are doing honour to your reason. I do not say 
 to you, that you make a boast of being in that depth of the 
 abyss, and in that state of reprobation which is now almost 
 
252 the word of god. Ser. 16. 
 
 beyond resource, and which is worthy both of horror and pity ; 
 but I say to you, that the surest and most established mark of a 
 light and frivolous mind, of a weak and limited reason, of an ill- 
 formed heart, equally incapable of elevation and dignity, is that of 
 finding nothing which strikes, which astonishes, which satisfies, and 
 which interests you, in the wise and sublime truths of the morality 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
 For the sinners of another character still preserve at least some 
 remains of respect for, and a certain consciousness of, the truth 
 which subsists with a life altogether criminal, but which is always 
 the mark of a good heart, of a heart which still retains a relish for 
 good, of a judicious reason, which, though led away by the world 
 and the passions, knows to do justice to itself, still feels the force 
 of that truth which condemns it, and leaves within us resources of 
 salvation and repentance. These sinners, at least, acknowledge 
 that we are right : they change nothing, it is true, of their manners; 
 but the truth at least affects, disturbs, agitates, and excites within 
 them some feeble desires of salvation and hopes of a future conver- 
 sion ; they are sorry to find themselves even too susceptible of the 
 terrors of faith; they are almost afraid of listening to us, lest 
 they lose that false tranquillity which is the only comfort of their 
 crimes ; on quitting our instructions, they seek, in dissipation, to 
 enliven a fund of anxiety and sadness which the truths they come 
 from hearing have left in their soul ; they immediately hurry into 
 the world and its pleasures, with that inward sting which the word 
 of God hath left in their heart, there to seek out a soothing and de- 
 ceitful hand which may draw it out, and which may close up that 
 wound from which alone its cure ought to flow ; they dread the 
 breaking of their chains ; they turn away their head, that they may 
 not see that light which comes to disturb the comfort of their sleep. 
 They love their passions, I confess, but at least they insult not the 
 truth; on the contrary, they render glory to its might, by erecting 
 defences against it ; they are feeble sinners, who, dreading their in- 
 capability of defence against God, fly from, and shun him. But 
 for you, you make a vain-glorious boast of listening to him with 
 indifference, and of not dreading him ; you find it grand and phi- 
 losophical to have placed yourselves above all these vulgar terrors ; 
 you believe that the pride of your reason would be dishonoured by 
 any religious dread ; and while you are internally the meanest and 
 the most cowardly soul, the most dejected by the first danger 
 which threatens you, the most disheartened by the smallest acci- 
 dent, the very shuttlecock of every frivolous hope and fear of the 
 earth, you pique yourself upon an undaunted courage against the 
 truth ; that is to say, that you are possessed of every thing which 
 is mean and vulgar in fear, and you are ashamed of having that 
 only portion of it which is dignified and reasonable ; you have no 
 resistance to offer against the world, and you make a vain parade 
 of a senseless valour against God. 
 
 Second disposition which ought to accompany you to our instruc- 
 tions, a sorrow for the little fruit you have hitherto reaped from 
 
Ser. 16. the word op god. 253 
 
 them. The last disposition is a grateful feeling for that mean of 
 salvation still provided for you by God, in preserving the sacred 
 trust of the truth, and in continuing amid you the succession of 
 those ministers alone authorized to announce to you the holy word. 
 
 In effect, the most terrible chastisement with which God formerly 
 struck the iniquities of his people, was that of rendering his word 
 rare and precious among them. As he saith, through his prophet 
 Amos, "And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the east 
 even to the west ; they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the 
 Lord, and shall not find it." And, not only he ceased to raise up 
 true prophets in Israel, but he likewise permitted false teachers 
 to spring up among his people, who turned the tribes away from 
 his worship, and preached gods to them which their fathers had 
 never known. 
 
 Now, my brethren, it is a signal mercy of God, that, notwith- 
 standing the iniquities whicKseem to have attained to their utmost 
 height among you, he still raiseth up to you prophets and pastors 
 who hold out a sound and a faultless word. It is a most singular 
 protection of the Lord, that error hath not been permitted to pre- 
 vail over truth among us. And what have you done to merit the 
 being thus distinguished from so many other nations ? Why is it 
 that you are not involved in the same condemnation ? Why have you 
 dwelt in that happy land of Goshen, alone shone upon by the lights 
 of heaven, while all the rest of Egypt was enveloped in darkness ? 
 Is it not the sole mercy of God who hath marked you out from 
 among so many nations which applaud themselves m their error ? 
 You are still under the care of your pastors ; you still receive from 
 their mouths the doctrine of the apostles; truth still flows upon 
 you in a pure and divine stream ; Christian pulpits still resound 
 in every part with the maxims of faith and of piety ; and by pre- 
 serving to you the doctrine and the blessings of instruction, the 
 goodness of God still provides for you a thousand means of sal- 
 vation. 
 
 Nevertheless," when you come to listen to us, do you bring a heart 
 filled with gratitude ? Do you consider, as a signal blessing of God, 
 the charge of the truth and of the holy word, which he hath pre- 
 served, and permitted still to be announced to you ? Do you ever 
 say, with the prophet, " He hath not dealt so with any nation ; 
 and as for his judgments, they have not known them ?" 
 
 Alas ! you bring here only vanity and irreligious disgust. The 
 most wearisome of your moments are those which you employ in 
 listening to truths which ought to compose the whole consolation 
 of your life. We are even obliged to respect your languors and 
 disgusts, by often mingling human ornaments with the truth, which 
 is thereby weakened. It would indeed appear, that we come here 
 to speak to you for ourselves ; and you give the same attention to 
 us as you do to troublesome mendicants who are soliciting your 
 favour. You have no regret for moments occupied by the frivolous 
 pleasures of a profane spectacle. There alone it is that every 
 thought of business, of fortune, and of family, is rejected as an 
 
254 the word of god. Ser. 16. 
 
 intrusion, and that, all else forgotten, the mind, formed for more 
 serious matters, feasts with avidity on chimerical adventures. It is 
 from thence that you always come out occupied and delighted with 
 the lascivious maxims promulgated by a criminal theatre. You 
 dwell with transports on those parts which have made the most 
 dangerous impressions upon the heart ; you come filled with their 
 remembrance even to the foot of the altar. These images, so fatal 
 to innocence, can no longer be effaced ; while, on quitting the word, 
 the only portion retained by your memory is perhaps the defects 
 of him who hath announced it to you. 
 
 My brethren, God no longer punisheth in a grievous manner the 
 contempt of his word. He, no doubt, might still transport his 
 Gospel amidst those barbarous nations who have never heard his 
 name, and abandon anew his heritage ; he might draw from out of 
 their deserts ferocious and infidel nations, and deliver up to them 
 our temples and our habitations, as he formerly delivered up those 
 churches so celebrated, which the Tertullians, the Cyprians, the 
 Augustines had illustrated, and where now not a trace of Christianity 
 remains but in the insults which Jesus Christ there receives, and in 
 the shackles with which believers are there loaded : he might do it ; 
 but he avengeth himself more secretly, and perhaps more terribly. 
 He leaveth to you still the spectacle and all the outward ceremony 
 of the preaching of the Gospel, but he turneth the whole fruit of it 
 upon the simple and ignorant inhabitants of the country ; the terrors 
 of faith are no longer but for them. He no longer withdraweth his 
 prophets from cities ; but he taketh away from them, if I may 
 venture to say so, the power and the influence of their ministry : 
 he striketh these holy clouds with dryness and unfruitfulness : he 
 raiseth up to you such as render truth flowery and beautiful, but 
 who do not render it amiable ; who please, but who do not convert 
 you : he permitteth the holy terrors of his doctrine to be weakened 
 in our mouths : he no longer draweth forth, from the treasures of 
 his mercy, grand characters like those raised up in the ages of our 
 forefathers, who renewed cities and kingdoms, who led the great 
 and the people, and who changed the palaces of kings into houses 
 of penitence : he permitteth that we, weak men, succeed to these 
 apostolic men. 
 
 What more shall I add ? We assemble here, like Paul formerly 
 in Athens, idle and curious spectators, whose only view is that of 
 hearing something new ; while those who perform the functions of 
 their ministry among your vassals, see with consolations at their 
 feet, like Esdras formerly, simple Israelites, who are unable to 
 retain their tears in hearing only the words of the law. We amuse 
 the leisure and the idleness of princes and the great of the earth, 
 while, in the country, holy ministers bring forth Jesus Christ, and 
 reap an abundant harvest : in a word, we preach, and they convert. 
 It is thus, O my God, that in secret thou exercisest severe and 
 terrible judgments. 
 
 But, my brethren, why may not we say here to you, what Paul 
 and Barnabas formerly said to the unbelieving Jews ? " It was 
 
Ser. 16. the word of god. 255 
 
 necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to 
 you ; but, seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves un- 
 worthy of everlasting life, lo ! we turn to the Gentiles." We shall 
 therefore turn toward the nations hitherto abandoned, toward those 
 humble and poor people buried in ignorance, who cultivate your 
 lands, and who will, with faith and gratitude, receive that grace 
 which you reject. Ah ! our labours there would be much more 
 availing, our yoke more easy, our ministry more consoling: we 
 should not then, it is true, reckon among our hearers, names cele- 
 brated in history ; but we would reckon the names of those who 
 are written in heaven : we should not see there assembled all those 
 titles and splendid dignities, which form the whole glory of the 
 world which passeth away ; but we would there see faith, piety, 
 and innocence, which compose the whole glory of the Christian 
 who eternally endureth : we should not hear there vain applauses 
 given to the language of the man, and not to that of faith ; but we 
 would behold those tears flowing which are the immortal praise of 
 grace : our pulpits might not, indeed, be surrounded with so much 
 pomp ; but our hearers would be a spectacle worthy of angels, and 
 of God. 
 
 Such are the dispositions which ought to prepare you for our 
 instructions. It is necessary now to instruct you on the mind in 
 which you ought to listen to us. 
 
 Part II. In order toward instructing you on the mind in which 
 you ought to listen to the holy word, it is required only to establish 
 at first what are its authority and its end. Its authority, which is 
 divine, demands a respectful and docile mind ; its end, which is the 
 conversion of hearts, demands a spirit of faith, which searches in 
 it only such lights as may enable it to quit its errors, and such 
 remedies as may cure its evils. 
 
 First. I say that its authority is divine. Yes, my brethren, the 
 word which we announce to you is not our word, but the word of 
 him who sendeth us. From the moment that we are established 
 by him in the holy ministry, through the way of a legitimate call, 
 he willeth that you consider us as sent by him, as speaking to you 
 here on his part, and as only lending our weak voice to his divine 
 words. We bear, it is true, that treasure in vessels of earth ; but 
 it thereby loses nothing of its majesty. Like those pitchers which 
 Gideon formerly employed against the enemies of the Lord, the 
 sound may be mean and contemptible ; but truth, that divine light 
 which God hath placed within us, is not from thence, less descended 
 from heaven, or destined, like the lamps of Gideon, still to strike 
 with terror unfaithful souls. 
 
 Now, you owe, in the first place, to the authority of this divine 
 word, a pious docility and an attention to it, rather in the light of 
 disciples than of judges. In effect, we expose to you the rules of 
 worship and of piety, the decisions of the Gospel, the laws of the 
 church, and the maxims^of the holy. We come not here to give 
 you our own opinions, our prejudices, our thoughts ; this is not a 
 
256 the word op god. Ser. 16. 
 
 pulpit of controversy, it is the place of truth : nothing which can 
 afford room for disputation ought ever to find place in the pulpit of 
 peace and of unity ; we speak here in the name of the church, and 
 are only the interpreters of her faith and of her doctrine. 
 
 Nevertheless, how many of those men, so wise in their own 
 conceit, and who pique themselves upon sagacity and reason, come 
 here with a mind set against, and, as it were, watchfully upon 
 guard against all the terrors of the holy word ! They make not a 
 boast, like the sinners we have lately mentioned, of being callous 
 to all truth ; but they look upon our ministry as an art of exagge- 
 ration and hyperbole ; the most holy emotions of zeal are only, in 
 their opinion, studied tricks of human artifice; the most awful 
 threatenings, only the sallies of a vain eloquence ; the most incon- 
 trovertible maxims, only discourses adapted rather to custom than 
 to truth. Such, my brethren, is the deplorable situation in which 
 the greatest part of you find yourselves here. You always inwardly 
 oppose, to that truth which we announce, the maxims and the 
 prejudices of the world, which contradict it ; you are ingenious in 
 weakening in your own breast, by specious reasons, the pretended 
 excess of our maxims ; you come here to combat, and not to yield 
 to the force, or to the light of truth ; you come here, it would 
 seem, only in order to enter into contestation with God, to inva- 
 lidate the eternal immutability of his word, to undertake the inte- 
 rests of error against the glory of truth, and to be the inward 
 apologists of the world and of the passions, even in that holy place 
 destined to condemn and to combat them. Ah ! suffer that truth, 
 at least, to triumph in its own temple ; dispute not with it that 
 feeble victory, which has formerly triumphed over the whole uni- 
 verse ; oppress it, and welcome, amidst the world, and in those 
 assemblies of vanity which error collects, and where error is en- 
 throned. Is it not enough that you have banished it from the 
 world, and that it dare no longer show itself without being exposed 
 to derisions and censures ? Leave to us, at least, the melancholy 
 consolation of daring still to publish it in the face of those altars 
 which it hath raised up, and which ought surely to serve it, at least, 
 as a place of refuge. 
 
 You accuse us of exaggeration. Great God ! And thou wilt one 
 day perhaps judge us for weakening the force and the influence of 
 thy word, in consequence of not giving sufficient consideration to it 
 at the feet of the altars ! And thou wilt one day perhaps reproach 
 us for having accommodated the holy severities of thy Gospel to 
 the indulgences and the softenings of our age ! And thou wilt 
 perhaps range us one day among the workers of iniquity, because 
 the lukewarmness and negligence of our manners have taken from 
 the word, which we announce, that terror and that divine vehe- 
 mence which can only be found in a mouth consecrated by piety 
 and by penitence ! 
 
 How, my brethren! The truths of salvation, such as Jesus 
 Christ hath set forth to us, would be incapable of alarming con- 
 sciences, were the mind of man not to add extraneous terrors to 
 
Ser. 16. the word of god. 257 
 
 them ? Paul formerly exaggerated, then, when the Roman governor, 
 in spite of the pride of a false wisdom, and all the prejudices of an 
 idolatrous worship, trembled, says St. Luke, while hearing him 
 speak of righteousness, of temperance, and of the awful spectacle 
 of a judgment to come ? Paul, then, exaggerated, when the inha- 
 bitants of cities came striking their breasts, melting in tears at his 
 feet, and bringing into the middle of the public places the lascivious 
 or impious books, and all the other instruments of their passions, 
 in order to make a sacrifice of them to the Lord ? 
 
 You accuse us of adding additional terrors to the words of the 
 Gospel ; but where are the consciences which we disturb ? Where 
 are the sinners whom we alarm ? Where are the worldly souls, 
 who, seized with dread on their departure from our discourses, go 
 to conceal themselves in the deepest solitudes, and, by holy ex- 
 cesses of penitence, to expiate the dissoluteness of their past 
 manners ? The ages which have preceded us have often been such 
 examples. Do we ever witness such instances now ? Ah ! would 
 to God, said formerly a holy father, that you could convict me of 
 having inspired a single soul with these salutary terrors ! Would 
 to God, said he to some worldly sages of his time, who accused 
 him of exaggerating the dangers and the corruption of the world, 
 that a single instance might support your assertion ! And I may 
 say to you here, with even more reason than that grand character, 
 Would to God that the consequences of so blessed an indiscretion 
 could be shown to me ! Would to God that you had examples 
 with which to reproach us, in justification of your censures ! Ah ! 
 we with pleasure would suffer the blame, could but the success be 
 shown to us with which we are reproached ! 
 
 Alas ! we manage only too much, perhaps, your weakness ; we 
 respect, perhaps too much, customs which a long usage has conse- 
 crated, in the fear of appearing to censure the grand examples by 
 which they are authorized ; we dare scarcely speak of certain irre- 
 gularities, lest our censures should appear to fall rather on the per- 
 sons than on the vices ; we are obliged to content ourselves with 
 showing truths to you from afar, which we ought to place immedi- 
 ately under your eye ; and even your salvation frequently suffers 
 through the excess of our precautions and our timid prudence. 
 What shall I say ? Weakness often extorts from us praises, where 
 zeal ought to place anathemas and censures : like the world, we 
 allow ourselves to be dazzled by names and titles ; that which for- 
 merly encouraged the Ambroses intimidates us; and, because we 
 owe you respect, we often keep back from you that truth which we 
 ought still more to respect : yet, after all this, you accuse us of ex- 
 aggerating, of overstraining truths, and of fashioning from them 
 phantoms of our own brain, in order to alarm those who listen to us. 
 
 But what advantage could we draw from an artifice so unworthy 
 of that truth confided to us? These overstrained and puerile de- 
 clamations might suit the venal eloquence of those Sophists, who, 
 amid the Grecian schools, anxiously sought to attract disciples to 
 themselves, by vaunting the wisdom of their sect. But for us, my 
 
25S THE WORD OF GOD. Sei\ 16. 
 
 brethren, ah ! our wish would be to have it in our power to render 
 your path more easy, far from throwing fresh obstacles in the way. 
 Wherefore should we dishearten you in the enterprise of salvation, 
 by starting chimerical difficulties ? It is our duty to smooth such as 
 may actually be found in it, and to tender you an assisting hand, in 
 order to sustain your weakness. 
 
 Meditate, my brethren, upon the law of Jesus Christ. What do 
 I say ? Only open the Gospel, and read ; then shall you find that 
 we draw' a veil of discretion over the severity of its maxims ; then, 
 far from complaining of our excesses, you will yourselves supply 
 the deficiencies of our silence and of our softenings, and will say to 
 yourselves what we dread to say, because ye could never bear it. 
 Great God ! To bear his cross every day, to despise the world and 
 all it contains, to live as a stranger upon the earth, to attach himself 
 to thee alone, to renounce all which flatters the senses, incessantly 
 to renounce himself, to consider as happy those who weep or who 
 are afflicted, behold the substance of thy holy law, and which every 
 Christian undertakes. O ! what can the human mind add to the 
 rigour of this doctrine ? What could we announce to you more 
 melancholy or more formidable to self-love ? Consequently, your 
 reproaches are merely a vain language of the world, and one of 
 those fashions of speaking which no one examines, and each adopts ; 
 your conscience inwardly belies it ; and when you speak candidly, 
 you confess that we are in the right, and that the Gospel is a preacher 
 much more severe and more fearful for the world, and for those 
 who love it, than it could be possible for us ever to be. 
 
 First duty which the authority of the holy word exacts of you, 
 namely, a docile spirit. 
 
 Secondly. You owe to the authority of this holy word, a spirit 
 of sincerity, and inward application of it to yourself; that is to say, 
 to be a rigorous examinator here of your own conscience ; to have 
 incessantly before your eyes, on one side, the state of your soul, 
 and, on the other, the truths which we announce ; to measure your- 
 self according to that rule ; to search into yourself by that light ; 
 to judge yourself by that law ; to listen to, as if addressed to you 
 alone, the holy maxims announced to the multitude; to consider 
 yourself as alone here before Jesus Christ, who speaks to you alone 
 through our mouth, and who sends us here perhaps for you alone. 
 For, my brethren, no one here takes to himself that truth which 
 attacks and condemns him ; no one thinks himself an interested 
 personage : it would seem that we form at pleasure to ourselves 
 phantoms of the brain, for the purpose of combating them, and that 
 the reality of that sinner whom we attack is no where in existence. 
 The lewd and dissolute person recognizes not himself in the most 
 animated and most striking traits of his passion. The man, loaded 
 with ill-acquired wealth, and perhaps with the blood and spoils of 
 the people, joins with us in deprecating that very iniquity in others, 
 and sees not that he judges himself. The courtier, consumed with 
 ambition, and who sacrifices conscience and integrity every day to 
 that idol, frankly admits of the meanness of that passion in his 
 equals, and looks upon it as a virtue, and as a deep experience of 
 
Ser. 16. the word of god. 259 
 
 the court, in himself. Every one continually views himself by cer- 
 tain favourable sides, which effectually hinder him from ever know- 
 ing himself such as he is. In vain do we mark you, as I may say, 
 in the most pointed manner; you always inwardly find out some soft- 
 ened traits, which alter the resemblance. You whisper to yourself, I 
 am not this man. And, while the public makes application of such 
 striking truths to us, we alone either succeed in being convinced 
 that they are not drawn for us, or we only find in them the defects 
 of our brethren : in our own exactest portraits, we search out fo- 
 reign likenesses ; we are ingenious in turning the blow upon others, 
 which truth hath given to us alone ; the malignity of the application 
 is the only fruit which we reap from that picture of our vices made 
 from the pulpit, and we rashly judge our brethren where we ought 
 to have judged only ourselves. And thus it is, O my God ! that 
 men become corrupted, misapply every thing, and that even the 
 light of truth seals up their eyes upon their own errors, and opens 
 them only to see in others either what is not, or what it ought to 
 have kept entirely hid from tihem. 
 
 Such are the duties which the authority of the holy word exacts 
 of you. Let us now proceed to those attached to its end. Its 
 end, my brethren, you know, is the conversion of hearts, the esta- 
 blishment of truth, the destruction of error and of sin, and the 
 sanctification of the name of Jesus Christ. All there is grand, ele- 
 vated, important, and worthy of the most sublime function of the 
 hierarchy ; and, consequently, it is from thence to be inferred, that 
 you ought to listen to us with a respectful and religious spirit, 
 which despises not the simplicity of our discourses, and with a 
 spirit of faith which seeks nothing human in it, nothing frivolous, 
 nothing which does not correspond with the excellency and the 
 dignity of its end. 
 
 I say, a spirit of religious respect, which despises not the sim- 
 plicity of our discourses ; for, however enlightened you may in 
 other respects be, you ought not, in consequence of your pretended 
 lights, to claim a title to neglect the instructions of the church to 
 believers. The unction of the Spirit will always inform you of 
 something here, of which you would perhaps have remained igno- 
 rant. If possessed of that knowledge which is the cause of pride, 
 you will be strengthened in that charity which edifies. If your 
 mind acquire nothing new, your heart shall perhaps be made to 
 feel new things : you will there, at least, learn that your knowledge 
 is nothing, if you be ignorant of the science of salvation ; that you 
 are but a cloud without moisture, elevated, it is true, above other 
 men, by your talents, and by the superiority of your knowledge, 
 but empty of grace, and the sport of every wind and of every pas- 
 sion in the sight of God ; and, lastly, that a simple and pure soul 
 shall, in an instant, be taught the whole in the bosom of God, and 
 shall be transformed from light to light ; while, on the contrary, 
 that you, after an entire life of watchings and ardent study, and the 
 attainment of a useless mass of knowledge and lights, shall perhaps 
 reap for your portion only eternal darkness. 
 
 s 2 
 
26*0 THE WORD OF GOD. Ser. 16. 
 
 What a mistake, my brethren, to banish yourselves from these 
 holy assemblies, under pretence that you already know enough, and 
 likewise that you are already sufficiently versed in all the duties of 
 piety, which you have long professed ; and that Christian reading, 
 and a small degree of reflection in private, go a greater way, and 
 are attended with more benefit, than all our discourses ! But, my 
 dear hearer, if you profess piety and righteousness, what sweeter 
 consolation can you enjoy, than that of hearing the wonders of the 
 Lord published, the ordinances of his holy law, truths which you 
 love and practise, and of which you ought to wish the knowledge 
 to be given to all men ? What sight more soothing and consoling 
 to you than that of your brethren assembled here at the foot of the 
 altar, attentive to the words of life, absent from the spectacles of 
 the world, and removed from the occasions of sin, forming holy de- 
 sires, opening their hearts to the voice of God, perhaps conceiving 
 the promises of the Holy Spirit, and the commencement of their 
 penitence, and to be enabled to join yourself with them, in order to 
 obtain from the Father of mercies, the completion in their soul of 
 the work of salvation, which he hath begun to operate within them ? 
 
 Not but that the most consolatory resources are furnished to Chris- 
 tian piety, by the meditation of the divine writings. But the Lord 
 hath attached graces to the power of our ministry, and to the legi- 
 timate calling, which you will not find elsewhere. The most simple 
 truths in the mouths of the pastors, or of those who speak to you 
 in their place, draw an efficacy from the grace of their mission, 
 which is not inherent to them. The same book of Isaiah, which, 
 when read from a chariot by that officer of the queen of Ethiopia, 
 was to him as a book sealed up, and only amused his leisure with- 
 out enlightening his faith, explained by Philip, instantly became 
 to him a word of life, and of salvation. And, lastly, you owe that 
 example to your brethren, that edification to the church, that re- 
 spect to the word of Jesus Christ, that uniformity to the spirit of 
 peace and of unity, which binds us together. O, banish your- 
 selves, and so much the better, from those profane and criminal 
 assemblies, where piety, alas ! is always a stranger, suffering, and 
 constrained : but here is its place, and its home ; this is the as- 
 sembly of the holy, seeing it is only toward their formation that 
 our ministry hath been established, and still continues to endure in 
 the church. 
 
 I have said, in the second place, a spirit of faith ; and in this dis- 
 position, two others are comprised : a love of the holy word, inde- 
 pendent of the talents of the man who announces it to you ; a 
 taste, formed by religion, which comes not here in search of vain 
 ornaments, but of the solid truths of salvation ; that is to say, to 
 listen to it, neither with a spirit of censure nor with a spirit of 
 curiosity. 
 
 And, in effect, your love of the word of Jesus Christ ought to 
 render you blind, as I may say, to the defects of those who announce 
 it to you : in a mouth even rude and unpolished, you ought to find 
 it lovely, divine, and worthy of all your homage ; in whatever shape 
 
Ser. 16. the word of god. 261 
 
 it be presented to you, decked with pompous ornaments, or simple 
 and neglected, provided that its celestial traits are still to be recog- 
 nised, it preserves the same rights over your heart. And, indeed, 
 is any portion of its sanctity lost by passing through less brilliant 
 and less copious channels ? Did the holy word of the Lord lose 
 any thing of its dignity, whether he formerly gave it out from a 
 bush, mean and despicable to the sight, or from a cloud of glory; 
 whether he gave out his oracles in the midst of the desert, and in 
 a tabernacle covered with the skins of animals, or in the temple of 
 Solomon, the most magnificent which hath ever been raised up to 
 the glory of his name ? And did the faith of Israel make any dis- 
 tinction, when it was the same Lord who every where spake ? 
 
 Nevertheless, how few among all those who listen to us, who do not 
 constitute themselves judges and censurers of the holy word ! They 
 come here merely for the purpose of deciding on the merit of those 
 who announce it, of drawing foolish comparisons, of pronouncing on 
 the difference of the lights and of the instructions ; they think it an 
 honour the being difficult to please ; they pass without attention 
 over the most striking truths, and which might be of the most 
 essential benefit to all ; and the only fruit reaped by them from a 
 Christian discourse is confined to the miserable pride of having, 
 better than any other, remarked its defects. This is so truly the 
 case, that we may with justice apply to the greatest part of our 
 hearers what Joseph, become the preserver of Egypt, said, through 
 pure artifice, to his brethren : It is not to seek food that you are 
 come here ; it is as spies, to see the nakedness of the land. It is 
 not to nourish yourselves with the bread of the word, or to seek 
 assistance and efficacious remedies for your evils, that you come to 
 listen to us ; it is in order to find out cause for applying some vain 
 censures, and to show your skill in remarking our defects ; which 
 defects are perhaps a terrible punishment upon you of the Lord, 
 who, in consequence of your crimes, refuseth more accomplished 
 labourers in his vineyard, who would have been enabled to recall 
 you to repentance. 
 
 But candidly, my brethren, however weak our language may be, 
 do we not always say enough to overthrow you, to dissipate your 
 errors, and to make you inwardly confess irregularities which you 
 are unable to justify to yourselves ? Are such sublime talents re- 
 quired to tell you that fornicators, extortioners, and men without 
 mercy, shall never enter the kingdom of God; that unless you be- 
 come penitent, you shall perish ; and that it matters little to be- 
 come master of the whole world, if you thereby lose your soul ? Is 
 it not, in fact, that very simplicity which constitutes the whole 
 force, and gives such energy to these divine truths ? And ought 
 they to be less alarming to the criminal souls, though in the mouth 
 of the most obscure individual of the ministry ? 
 
 And besides, granting that it were here permitted us to recom- 
 mend ourselves, as the apostle formerly said to ungrateful believers, 
 more attentive to censure the simplicity of his appearance and of 
 his language, and, as he says himself, his contemptible figure in 
 
262 THE WORD OF GOD. Ser. 16. 
 
 the eyes of men, than touched with the endless fatigues and dan- 
 gers which he had surmounted, in order to announce to them the 
 Gospel, and to convert them to truth ; were it permitted, we 
 might say to you, my brethren, we sustain, solely on your account, 
 the whole weight of a painful and laborious ministry ; our cares, 
 our watchings, our prayers, the endless toilings which qualify us for, 
 and accompany us in, these Christian pulpits, have no other object 
 but that of your salvation. O ! do not our pains entitle us at least 
 to your respect and gratitude ? Is it possible that that zeal which 
 suffers all, in order to secure your salvation, can ever become the 
 melancholy subject of your derisions and censures ? Demand of 
 God, good and well, that, for the glory of the church and for the 
 honour of his Gospel, he raise up to his people labourers powerful 
 in speech, of those men whom the sole unction of the Spirit of God 
 renders nervous and eloquent, and who announce the Gospel in a 
 manner worthy of its elevation and sanctity. But likewise de- 
 mand, that, when we happen therein to fail, your faith may supply 
 the deficiencies of our discourses ; that your piety may render the 
 truth, in your own hearts, that which it loses in our mouths ; and 
 that, through your unrighteous distastes, you force not the minis- 
 ters of the Gospel to have recourse, in order to please you, to the 
 vain artifices and colouring of a human eloquence, to shine rather 
 than to instruct, and like the Israelites formerly, to go down to the 
 Philistines to sharpen their instruments, destined solely to culti- 
 vate the earth : I mean to say, to seek in profane learning, or in 
 the language of a hostile world, foreign ornaments to embellish the 
 simplicity of the Gospel ; and to give to instruments, and to talents 
 destined to increase, to multiply, and to strengthen the holy 
 seed, a vain brilliancy and a subtlety which blunt its energy and 
 its virtue, and which substitute a false splendour in the place of 
 truth and zeal. 
 
 And now, my brethren, behold the last fault inimical to that 
 spirit of faith ; it is a spirit of curiosity. You do not sufficiently 
 distinguish the holy gravity of our ministry from that vain and 
 frivolous art which has nothing in view but the arrangement of the 
 Discourse and the glory of eloquence ; you assist at our discourses 
 with the same view as Augustine, still a sinner, did in former times 
 at those of Ambrose. It was not, says that illustrious penitent, in 
 order to learn from the mouth of the man of God the secrets of 
 eternal life, which I had so long sought, nor the desire of finding 
 in them remedies for the shameful and inveterate wounds of my 
 soul, and which thou, O my God ! alone art acquainted with ; it 
 was in order to examine whether his eloquence corresponded with 
 his great reputation, and if his discourses warranted the unbounded 
 applauses which his hearers bestowed upon him. The truths 
 which he announced interested me not ; I was moved only by the 
 beauty and the charms of the Discourse. 
 
 And such is still, at present, the deplorable situation of far too 
 many believers who listen to us ; who, like Augustine, loaded with 
 crimes, and fettered with the most shameful passions, far from 
 
Ser. 16. the word of god. 263 
 
 coming here to seek remedies for their evils, come in search of vain 
 ornaments, which amuse without curing the afflicted, which are the 
 means of our pleasing the sinner, but have no influence toward 
 making the sinner displeased with himself. They come here, it 
 would appear, to say to us what the inhabitants of Babylon formerly 
 said to the captive Israelites, " Sing us one of the songs of Zion." 
 They come in search of harmony and delight, in the serious and 
 important truths of the morality of Jesus Christ ; in the sighs of 
 the sorrowful Zion, captive in a strange land ; and require of us 
 that we flatter the ear while publishing the threaten ings and the 
 rigid maxims of the Gospel. 
 
 O ! you who now listen to me, and whom this Discourse regards, 
 reflect for a moment, I entreat of you, upon yourselves ! Your 
 case is, as it were, desperate in the eyes of God ; your wounds, 
 become virulent through their long-standing, no longer leave almost 
 a hope of cure ; your evils press ; time is short ; God, wearied 
 with having so long borne with you, is at last on the point of 
 striking and of surprising you : behold the eternal miseries which 
 we foretel to you, and which happen every day to your equals. 
 You are not far distant from the fulfilment : we show you the ter- 
 rible sword of the Lord suspended over your head, and ready to 
 fall upon you ; and, far from shuddering at the after part of your 
 destiny, or taking any measures to avoid the impending blow, you 
 childishly amuse yourselves in examining whether it shine and have 
 a lustre ! and you search, even in the terrors of the prediction, for 
 the puerile beauties of a vain eloquence. Great God ! how despi- 
 cable and how worthy of derision doth the sinner appear when we 
 view him through thy light ! 
 
 For, my brethren, are we then here upon a profane tribunal, for 
 the purpose of courting, with artificial words, the suffrages of an 
 idle assembly, or in a Christian pulpit, and in the place of Jesus 
 Christ, to instruct, to reprove, and to sanctify you, in the name and 
 under the eyes of him who sends us ? Is it here a dispute for worldly 
 fame, an idle exercise of the faculties, or the most holy and the most 
 important ministry of faith ? O ! why do you come to loiter away 
 with our feeble talents, or to seek human qualifications where God 
 alone speaketh and acteth ? Are not the humblest instruments the 
 most suitable to the mightiness of his grace ? Do not the walls of 
 Jericho fall when he pleaseth, at the sound of the weakest trum- 
 pets ? O ! what matters it to us that we please, if we do not change 
 you ? Of what consequence is it to us, the being eloquent, if you 
 continue always sinners ? What fruit can we reap from your ap- 
 plauses, if you reap none yourselves from our instructions ? Our 
 only praise, our only glory, is the establishment of the reign of God 
 in your hearts ; your tears alone, much rather than your applauses, 
 can prove our eulogium ; and we covet no other crown than your- 
 selves, and your eternal salvation. 
 
264 ON THE DELAY OF CONVERSION. Scr. 17- 
 
 SERMON XVII. 
 
 ON THE DELAY OF CONVERSION. 
 
 " I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord." 
 
 John i. 23. 
 
 It is that he may enter into our hearts, that Jesus Christ an- 
 nounces, by John the Baptist, that we have the way to make straight 
 for him, by removing all those obstacles, which, like a wall of se- 
 paration, rise up between his mercy and our wretchedness. Now, 
 these obstacles are the crimes with which we so often stain our- 
 selves, which always subsist because it would be necessary to expiate 
 them by penitence, and we expiate them not : these obstacles are 
 the passions by which our heart foolishly allows itself to be carried 
 away, which are always living, because, in order to destroy, it would 
 be necessary to conquer them : and we never conquer them : these 
 obstacles are the occasions against which our innocence hath so 
 often split, and which are still every day the rock fatal to all our 
 resolutions, because, in place of yielding to that inward inclination 
 which leads us toward them, it would be necessary to shun them ; 
 and we shun them not : in a word, the true and only manner of 
 making straight the way of our hearts for Jesus Christ, is that of 
 changing our life, and of being sincerely converted. 
 
 But though the business of our conversion be the most important 
 with which we can be entrusted here below, seeing that through it 
 alone we can draw Jesus Christ into our hearts ; though it be the 
 only one truly interesting to us, since on it depends our eternal 
 happiness ; yet, O deplorable blindness ! it is never considered by 
 us as a matter either of urgency or of importance ; it is continually 
 put off to some other time, as if times and seasons were at our 
 disposal. What wait you, Christians, my brethren ? Jesus Christ 
 ceaseth nor to forewarn you, by his ministers, of the evil which 
 threaten your impenitence, and the delay of your conversion $ he 
 hath long announced to you, through our mouth, that, unless you 
 repent, you most assuredly shall perish. 
 
 Nor is he satisfied with publicly warning you through the voice 
 of his ministers; he speaks to you in the bottom of your hearts, 
 and continually whispers to you, Is it not time now to withdraw 
 yourself from that guilt in which, for so many years, you have 
 been plunged, and from which almost nothing but a miracle can now 
 extricate you ? Is it not time to restore peace to your heart, to 
 banish from it that chaos of passions which has occasioned all the 
 misfortunes of your life, to prepare for yourself at least some few 
 happy and tranquil days, and, after having lived so long for a 
 world which hath always left you empty and uneasy, at last to live 
 for a God who alone can give peace and tranquillity to your heart? 
 Will you not at last bestow a thought upon your eternal interests, 
 and, after a life wholly frivolous, return to the true one ; and, in 
 
Ser. 17. on the delay of conversion. 265 
 
 serving God, adopt the only wise plan which man can pursue upon 
 the earth ? Are you not wearied out with struggling against those 
 remorses which tear you, that sadness of guilt which weighs you 
 down, that emptiness of the world which every where pursues you? 
 And do you not wish to finish at last your misfortunes and your 
 disquietudes, by finishing your crimes ? 
 
 What shall we reply to that inward monitor which hath so long 
 spoken in the bottom of our hearts? What pretext shall we op- 
 pose ? First, that w r e are not, as yet, furnished by God with the 
 succours necessary to enable us to quit the unhappy state in which 
 we live. Secondly, that we are at present too much engaged by 
 the passions to think of a new life. That is to say, that we start 
 two pretexts for delaying our conversion : the first drawn from the 
 part of God; the second from within ourselves. The first which 
 justifies us, by accusing God of being wanting to us ; the second 
 which comforts us, by alleging to ourselves our inability of, as yet, 
 returning to him. Thus we delay our conversion, under the belief 
 that grace is wanting, and that, as yet, God desireth us not; we 
 delay our conversion, because we flatter ourselves that some future 
 day we shall be less attached to the world and to the passions, and 
 more in a situation to begin a Christian and an orderly life : two 
 pretexts which are continually in the mouth of sinners, and which 
 I now mean to overthrow. 
 
 Part I. It is not of to-day that men have dared to accuse even 
 God himself for their transgressions, and have tried to render his 
 wisdom and his goodness responsible for their iniquitous weak- 
 nesses. It may be said, that this blindness entered with sin into 
 the world: the first man sought not elsewhere an excuse for his 
 guilt; and, far from appeasing the Lord whom he had so lately 
 disobeyed, by an humble confession of his wretchedness, he accused 
 him of having been himself the cause of his disobedience, in asso- 
 ciating with him the woman. 
 
 And such, my brethren, is the illusion of almost all souls living 
 in guilt, and who delay to a future day that conversion required of 
 them by God. They are continually repeating, that conversion 
 does not depend upon us; that it is the Lord who must change 
 their heart, and bestow upon them that faith and grace which 
 they, as yet, have not. Thus they are not satisfied with provoking 
 his anger, by delaying their conversion ; they even insult him, by 
 laying upon him the blame of their obstinacy and of the delay of 
 their penitence. Let us now overthrow the error and the impiety 
 of this disposition; and, in order to render the criminal soul more 
 inexcusable in his impenitence, let us deprive him at least of the 
 pretext. 
 
 You tell us, then, first, that if you had faith, and were thoroughly 
 convinced of the truth of religion, you would be converted; but 
 that faith is a gift of God which you expect from him alone, and 
 that as soon as he shall have given it to you, you will easily and 
 heartily begin to adopt your party. First pretext; the want of 
 faith, and it is God alone who can give it. 
 
266 ON THE DELAY OF CONVERSION. Ser. 17- 
 
 But I ought first to ask you, how have you then lost that faith 
 so precious ? You have received it in your baptism ; a Christian 
 education hath cherished it in your heart; it had grown up with 
 you ; it was an inestimable talent which the Lord had intrusted to 
 you in discerning you from so many infidel nation s, and in mark- 
 ing you, from the moment you quitted your mother's womb, with 
 the seal of salvation. What have you then done with the gift of 
 God ? Who hath effaced from your forehead that sign of eternal 
 election ? Is it not the corruptions of the passions, and that blind- 
 ness which has been their just punishment? Did you suspect the 
 faith of your fathers before you became dissolute and abandoned ? 
 Is it not yourself who hath extinguished in the dirt that celestial 
 torch, which the church, in regenerating you, had placed in your 
 hand, to enlighten your way through the obscurities and the dan- 
 gers of this life ? Why then accuse God of that waste which you 
 have made of his favours? He has the right of reclaiming his own 
 gift; to him it belongs to make you accountable for the talento 
 which he had entrusted to your care; to say to you, "Wicked and 
 ungrateful servant, what had I done for others that I had not done 
 for thee ? I had embellished thy soul with the gift of faith, and 
 with the mark of my children: thou hast cast that precious jewel 
 before unclean animals ; thou hast extinguished faith, and the light 
 that I had placed within thee. I have long, in spite of thyself, 
 preserved it in thy heart : I have caused it to outlive all the impi- 
 ous efforts which, because it was become troublesome to thy 
 debaucheries, thou hast made to extinguish it: thou knowest how 
 much it hath cost thee to throw off the yoke of faith, and to be 
 what thou now art; and this dreadful state, which isthejustest 
 punishment of thy crimes, should now become their only excuse? 
 And thou sayest that the want of faith is no fault of thine, seeing 
 it depends not on man, thou, who hast had such difficulty in 
 tearing it from the bottom of thy soul? And thou pretendest that it 
 is I who ought to give it to thee, if I wish thee to serve me, I, who 
 reclaim it from thee, and who so justly complain that thou hast lost 
 it?" Enter into judgment with your Lord, and justify yourself, 
 if you have any reply to make to him. 
 
 And to make you, my dear hearer, more sensible of all the weak- 
 ness of this pretext; you complain that you want faith; you say 
 that you would wish to have it; that happy are those who are 
 feelingly convinced, and that, in that state, no suffering can affect 
 them. But, if you wish for faith, if you believe that nothing is so 
 fortunate as that of being truly convinced of the truths of salvation, 
 and of the illusion of all that passeth away ; if you envy the lot of 
 those souls who have attained to that desirable state; if this be, 
 behold then that faith which you await, and which you thought to 
 have lost. What more do you require to know, in order to termi- 
 nate a criminal life, than the happiness of those who have forsaken 
 it, to labour toward their salvation? You say that you would wish 
 faith; but you have it from the moment that you think it worthy 
 of a wish ; at least you have enough of it to know, that the great- 
 est happiness of man is that of sacrificing all his promises. Now, 
 
Ser. 17. ON THE DELAY OP CONVERSION. 267 
 
 the souls whom we daily see returning to their God, are not led 
 by other lights: the righteous, who bear his yoke, are not sustain- 
 ed or animated by other truths;. we ourselves, who serve him, know 
 nothing more of it. 
 
 Cease, then, to deceive yourself, and to await what you already 
 have. Ah ! it is not faith that is wanting to you, it is the inclina- 
 tion to fulfil the duties it imposes on you : it is not your doubts, 
 but your passions which stop you. You know not yourself; you 
 willingly persuade yourself that you want faith, because that pretext 
 which you oppose to grace is less humiliating to self-love than 
 that of the shameful vices which retain you. But mount to the 
 source ; your doubts have sprung solely from your irregular mode 
 of living : regulate, then, your manners, and you will see nothing 
 in faith but what is certain and consoling : be chaste, modest, and 
 temperate, and I answer for that faith which you believe to have 
 lost: live uprightly, and you will find little difficulty in believing. 
 
 And a proof of the truth of what I tell you is, that if, in order 
 to be converted, nothing more were to be required than to bend 
 your reason to mysteries which exceed our comprehension; if a 
 Christian life were accompanied with no other difficulties than 
 certain apparent contradictions which it is necessary to believe 
 without being able to comprehend them ; if faith proposed the ful- 
 filment of no irksome duties ; if, in order to change your life, it 
 were not necessary to renounce passions the most lively, and attach- 
 ments the most dear to your heart ; if the matter in question were 
 merely a point of opinion and of belief, without either the heart or 
 the passions being interested in it, you would no longer have the 
 smallest difficulty in yielding to it; you would view in the light of 
 madmen those, who, for a moment, could hesitate between diffi- 
 culties of pure speculation, of which the belief can be followed by 
 no injury and an eternity of misery, which, after all, may be the 
 lot of unbelievers. Faith appears difficult to you, therefore, not 
 because it holds out mysteries, but because it regulates the pas- 
 sions : it is the sanctity of its maxims which shocks, and not the 
 incomprehensibility of its secrets : you are therefore corrupted, but 
 not an unbeliever. 
 
 And, in effect, notwithstanding all your pretended doubts upon 
 faith, you feel that avowed unbelief is a horrible course to adopt ; 
 you dare not determine upon it. It is a quicksand, under which 
 you have a glimpse of a thousand gulfs which fill you with horror, 
 in which you find no consistency, and on which you could not 
 venture to tread with a firm and confident foot. You continually 
 say to yourself, that there is no risk in devoting one's self to God, 
 that, after all, and even admitting the uncertainty of any thing after 
 this life, the alternative is too horrible not to require precautions, 
 and that, even in an actual uncertainty ofe th truths of faith, the 
 party of the godly would always be the wisest and the safest. Your 
 state, therefore, is rather the vague determination of an agitated 
 heart, which dreads to break its chains, than a real and actual sus- 
 picion of faith, and a fear lest, in sacrificing to it all your iniquitous 
 
268 ON THE DELAY OF CONVERSION. Sei". 17- 
 
 pleasures, your pains and time should be lost : your uncertainties 
 are efforts which you make to defend yourself against a remnant 
 of faith, which still inwardly enlightens you, rather than a proof 
 that you have already lost it. Seek no longer, then, to convince 
 yourself; rather endeavour to oppose no more that internal con- 
 viction which enlightens and condemns you. Follow the dictates 
 of your own heart; be reconciled to yourself; allow a conscience 
 to speak, which never fails to plead within you for faith, against 
 your own excesses ; in a word, hearken to yourself, and you will 
 be a believer. 
 
 But it is admitted, you will say, that if nothing more were to be 
 required than to believe, that would easily be subscribed to. This 
 is the second pretext of the sinners who delay; it is the want of 
 grace, and they await it: conversion is not the work of man, and 
 it belongs to God alone to change the heart. 
 
 Now, I say, that this pretext, so vulgar, so often repeated in 
 the world, and so continually in the mouth of almost all those 
 who live in guilt; if we consider the sinner who alleges it, it is un- 
 just; if we view it on the part of God, on whom he lays the blame, 
 it is rash and ungrateful; if we examine it in itself, it is foolish and 
 unwarrantable. 
 
 In the first place, if we consider the sinner who alleges it, it is 
 unjust ; for you complain that God hath not yet touched you, that 
 you feel no relish for devotion, and that you must wait the coming 
 of that relish before you can think of changing your life. But, full 
 of passions as you are, can you reasonably expect or exact of God 
 that he shall ever make you to feel a decided inclination for piety ? 
 Would you that your heart, still plunged in debauchery, feel the 
 pure delights and the chaste attractions of virtue ? You are similar 
 to a man who, nourishing himself with gall and wormwood, should 
 afterward complain that every thing feels bitter to his palate. You 
 say, that if God wish you to serve him, in his power alone it is to 
 give you a relish for his service ; you, who every day defile your 
 heart by the meanest excesses ; you who every moment place a 
 fresh chaos between God and you ; you, in a word, who, by new 
 debaucheries, finally extinguish in your soul even those sentiments 
 of natural virtue, those happy impressions of innocence and of regu- 
 larity born with you, which might have been the means of recalling 
 you to virtue and to righteousness. O man ! art thou then unjust 
 only when there is question of accusing the wisdom and the justice 
 of thy God ? 
 
 But I say farther, that were God even to operate in your heart 
 that relish for, and those feelings of, salvation, which you await, 
 dissolute and corrupted as you are, would you even feel the opera- 
 tion of his grace ? Were he to call upon you, plunged as you now 
 are in the pleasures of a life altogether worldly, would you even 
 hear his voice ? Were he to touch your heart, would that feeling 
 of grace have any consequence for your conversion, extinguished 
 as it would immediately be by the ardour and the frenzy of profane 
 passions ? And, after all, this God of longanimity and of patience 
 
Ser. 17. ON THE DELAY OF CONVERSION. 269 
 
 still operateth in your heart ; he still poureth out within you the 
 riches of his goodness and of his mercy. Ah ! it is not his grace 
 which fails you, but you receive it into a heart so full of corruption 
 and wretchedness, that it is ineffectual ; it excites no feeling there 
 of contrition ; it is a spark which, falling into a sink of filth and of 
 nastiness, is extinguished the moment it falls. 
 
 Reflect, then, my dear hearer, and comprehend all the injustice 
 of your pretexts. You complain that God is wanting to you, and 
 that you wait his grace to be converted ; but is there a sinner in 
 whose mouth that complaint would be more unjust than from your 
 lips ? Recall here the whole course of your life ; follow it from 
 the earliest period down to this day. The Lord had anticipated 
 you from your birth with his blessings ; he had placed in you a 
 happy disposition, a noble spirit, and all the inclinations most 
 favourable to virtue ; he had even provided for you, in the bosom 
 of a family, domestic succours and pious and godly examples. The 
 mercies of the Lord went still farther ; he hath preserved you from 
 a thousand dangers ; through his goodness you have outlived occa- 
 sions where your friends, and perhaps the accomplices of your de- 
 baucheries, have fallen a sacrifice to the scourge of war. To recall 
 you to him, he hath spared neither afflictions, disgusts, nor dis- 
 graces ; he hath torn from you the criminal objects of your passions, 
 even at the moment when your heart Avas most strongly attached 
 to them; he hath so mercifully conducted your destiny, that a 
 thousand obstacles have continually thwarted your passions, that 
 you have never been able to arrive at the accomplishment of all 
 your criminal wishes, and that something has always been wanting 
 to your iniquitous happiness ; he has formed for you serious en- 
 gagements and duties, which, in spite of yourself, have imposed 
 the obligation of a prudent and regular life in the eyes of men ; he 
 has not permitted your conscience to become hardened in iniquity, 
 and you have never been able to succeed in calming your remorses, 
 or in living tranquilly in guilt ; not a day hath past in which you 
 have not felt the emptiness of the world and the horror of your 
 situation ; amidst all your pleasures and excesses, conscience hath 
 awoke, and you have never succeeded in lulling your secret dis- 
 quiets but by promising to yourself a future change. A just and a 
 merciful God urges and pursues you every where : ever since you 
 have forsaken him, he has fixed himself to you, said a prophet, hke 
 a worm which burrows in the vestment, continually to gnaw your 
 heart, and to render the importunity of his biting a wholesome 
 remedy to your soul. Even while I am now speaking to you, he 
 worketh within you, filleth my mouth with these holy truths, and 
 placeth me here to proclaim them to you, for the sole purpose of 
 recalling perhaps you alone. What, then, is your whole life but 
 one continued succession of favours ? Who are you yourself but a 
 child of dilection and the work of God^s mercies? Unjust that thou 
 art ! And thou darest, after this, to complain that his grace is want- 
 ing ; thou, on whom alone on the earth the Lcrd seemeth to cast 
 his regards ; thou, in whose heart he so continually operateth, as 
 
270 ON THE DELAY CF CONVERSION. Sei*. 17. 
 
 though, of all men, he had only thee to save; thou, in a word, whose 
 every moment is a fresh grace, and whose greatest guilt shall one 
 day be, that of having received too many, and of having constantly 
 abused them. 
 
 But, to finish your overthrow, upon what grounds do you say 
 that you want grace ? You doubtless say so, because you feel that 
 in your present state conversion would require too many sacrifices ; 
 but you then believe that, with grace, you are converted without 
 any sacrifice on your part, without any self-denial, and almost 
 without being sensible of it yourself ? You believe, then, that to 
 have grace is to have no more passions to conquer, no more charms 
 to break, no more temptations to overcome ; that it is to be rege- 
 nerated through penitence, without tears, pain, or sorrow ? Ah ! I 
 assure you that on this footing you will never possess that chime- 
 rical grace, for conversion must always require many sacrifices ; be 
 the grace what it may, you will always be required to make heroical 
 efforts to repress your passions, to tear yourself from the most be- 
 loved objects, and to sacrifice every thing which may yet captivate 
 you. Look around, and see if no sacrifices are required of those 
 who are daily returning to their God ; yet they are favoured with 
 grace, since it is it which delivers them and changes their heart. 
 Inquire of them, if grace render every thing easy and smooth ; if 
 it leave nothing more for self-love to undergo. Ask them if they 
 have not had a thousand struggles to sustain, a thousand obstacles 
 to overcome, a thousand passions to moderate, and you will know 
 if to have grace is to be converted without any exertion on your 
 part. Conversion is, therefore, a painful sacrifice, a laborious bap- 
 tism, a grievous delivery, a victory which supposes combats and 
 fatigues. Grace, I confess, softens them all ; but it by no means 
 operates so as to leave nothing more to overcome ; and if, in order 
 to change your life, you await a grace of that nature, I declare to 
 you, that such never existed, and that so absurdly to await your 
 salvation and deliverance, is to be absolutely bent upon perishing. 
 
 But, if the pretext of the default of grace be unjust on the side 
 of the sinner who alleges it, it is not less rash and ungrateful with 
 regard to God, on whom he pretends to fix the blame. 
 
 For you say that God is the master, and that, when he shall 
 want you, he will perfectly know how to find you ; that is to say, 
 that you have only to leave him solely to act, and that, without 
 giving yourself any trouble with respect to your salvation, he, when 
 so inclined, will know how to change your heart ; that is to say, 
 that you have only to pass your life in pleasures and in guilt, and 
 that, without any interference on your part, without your bestowing 
 even a thought upon it, without bringing to that conversion, which 
 you expect, other preparation than a whole life of debauchery and 
 constant opposition to his grace, he will know how to obtain you, 
 when his moment shall be come ; that is to say, that your salva- 
 tion, that grand, that only business which you have upon the 
 earth, is no longer a concern of yours ; and that the Lord, who 
 hath given you that alone to manage, who hath commanded you to 
 
Ser. 17. ON THE DELAY OF CONVERSION. 2^1 
 
 give it the preference over all others, and even to neglect every 
 other in order to devote yourself to it alone, has, nevertheless, ab- 
 solutely discharged you from the trust, in order to take it wholly 
 upon himself. Show us, then, this promise in some new Gospel, 
 for you well know that it is no where to be found in that of Jesus 
 Christ. " The sinner," says the prophet Isaiah, " hath nothing but 
 foolish things wherewith to justify himself; and his heart worketh 
 iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the Lord." 
 
 Lastly. This pretext is foolish in itself, for you say that you want 
 grace: I have already replied that you deceive yourself; that, if 
 candid, you will acknowledge that grace has never been wanting to 
 you ; that you have more than once felt its salutary impressions ; 
 that, had so obstinate a resistance not been opposed by your hard- 
 ness of heart and impenitence, it would have triumphed over your 
 passions ; that God, who wishes all men to be saved, who out of 
 nothing has drawn reasonable beings, solely to praise, to bless, and 
 to glorify him ; in a word, who has only made us for himself, has 
 opened to you, my dear hearer, as well as to so many other sinners, 
 a thousand ways of conversion, which would have infallibly recalled 
 you ere now to the right path, had you not obstinately shut your 
 ears against his voice. You want grace, you say : well, what do 
 you thereby pretend ? Would it be to have it understood that God, 
 who is our Father, and of whom we are the children, who has an 
 affection for us infinitely surpassing that of the tenderest mother 
 for an only son, that a God so good leaves us, through want of 
 assistance, in the actual impossibility of well-doing ? But do you 
 reflect that such language would be a blasphemy against the wisdom 
 of God, and the justification of every crime ? Are you then igno- 
 rant, that whatever be the blow given to our liberty by the fall of 
 our first parent, it is still however left to us ; that neither law nor 
 duties would longer be imposed upon man, had he not the real and 
 actual power of fulfilling them ; that religion, far from being an aid 
 and a consolation, would consequently be no longer but a vexation 
 and a snare ; that if, notwithstanding all the cares which God has 
 for our salvation, we perish, it is always the fault of our own will, 
 and not the default of grace ; that we are individually the authors 
 of our misery and destruction ; that it has depended upon our- 
 selves to have avoided them ; and that a thousand sinners, with 
 neither more grace nor succours than we, have broken their chains, 
 and have rendered glory to God and to his mercies by a life alto- 
 gether new ? 
 
 But, granting that these truths were less certain, and that, in 
 reality, you, my dear hearer, want grace, it would equally be true 
 then that God hath altogether forsaken you ; that you are marked 
 with a character of reprobation, and that your state cannot be worse. 
 For, to be without grace, is surely the most terrible of all situations, 
 and the most certain presage of eternal condemnation. And it is 
 that horrible thought, however, which comforts you, which justifies 
 in your eyes your tranquillity in guilt, which makes you, without 
 trouble or remorse, to delay your conversion, and which even serves 
 
272 ON THE DELAY OF CONVERSION. Scr. l7 
 
 as an excuse for all your excesses : that is to say, that you are de- 
 lighted in the want of this precious grace ; that you continually say, 
 with satisfaction to yourself, God wishes me not as yet ; I have 
 only to live, in the meanwhile, tranquilly in guilt ; his grace will 
 not come yet awhile : that is to say, that you wish it not, and that 
 you would even be sorry were it to come to break those chains 
 which you still love. To you, the want of grace ought to be the 
 most fearful and the most powerful inducement to extricate your- 
 self from your deplorable state, and it is the only one which quiets 
 and stops you. 
 
 Besides, the more you delay, the less will you have of grace ; for 
 the more you delay, the more do your crimes increase, the more 
 does God estrange himself from you ; his mercies wear out, his mo- 
 ments of indulgence slip away, your measure becomes full, and the 
 dreadful term of his wrath approaches ; and if it be true, that you 
 have not at present sufficient grace to be converted, you will not, in 
 a little time, have wherewithal even to comprehend that you have 
 occasion either for penitence or conversion. 
 
 It is not grace, then, that you have to accuse, it is yourself. Did 
 Augustine, during his feeble desires of conversion, tax the Lord 
 with the delay of his penitence ? Ah ! he went no farther for the 
 reason of it than in the weakness and licentiousness of his own 
 heart. " I dragged on," said he, " a heart diseased and torn with 
 remorse, accusing myself alone for all my evils, and for all the 
 delays which I started against a new life. I turned me in my chains, 
 as though they should break off themselves, without any effort on 
 my part. For thee, Lord, never hast thou ceased to chastise my 
 heart with inward sorrows, continually operating there, through a 
 merciful severity, the most pungent remorses, which embittered 
 every comfort of my life. Nevertheless, the amusements of the 
 world, which I had always and still loved, withheld me; they se- 
 cretly whispered to me, Thou meanest, then, to renounce every 
 pleasure ? From this moment, then, thou biddest an eternal fare- 
 well to all that hath hitherto rendered life agreeable to thee ? 
 What! shall it no more be permitted to thee to see those persons 
 who have been so dear to thee ? Thou shalt henceforth be sepa- 
 rated from thy companions in pleasure, be banished from their as- 
 semblies, and be obliged to deny thyself the most innocent delights, 
 and all the comforts of society. And is it possible that thou canst 
 believe thyself capable of supporting the sad weariness of a life so 
 gloomy, so void, so uniform, and so different from the one thou 
 hast hitherto led ?" 
 
 Behold, where this half-contrite sinner found the reasons of his 
 delays and of his resistance; it was the dread of having to renounce 
 his passions, and of being unable to support the step of a new life, 
 and not any default of grace : and such is precisely the situation in 
 which you are, and what you say every day to yourself. 
 
 For, after all, supposing that grace is wanting to you, what do 
 you thence conclude ? That the crimes into which you continually 
 plunge yourself will not condemn you, should death surprise you 
 
Ser. 17. ON THE DELAY OF CONVERSION. 27^ 
 
 in that deplorable state ? You would not dare to say so. That you 
 have only to live tranquil in your debaucheries till God shall touch 
 you, and till grace shall be given to you ? But it is the height of 
 folly to expect grace while you render yourself every day more and 
 more unworthy of it. That you are not guilty before God of the 
 delay of your conversion, seeing it depends not on you ? But all 
 delaying sinners who die impenitent would then be justified, and 
 hell would no longer be but for the just who are converted. That 
 you ought no more to concern yourself with your salvation, but to 
 leave it to chance, without giving yourself any uneasiness or trouble 
 with regard to it ? But that is the resolution of impiety and des- 
 pair. That the moment of your conversion is marked, and that a 
 little more or less of debauchery will neither advance nor retard it 
 an instant? But, according to that doctrine, you have only to 
 pierce your heart or plunge yourself into the waves, under the pre- 
 text that the moment of your death is determined, and that such 
 madness will neither hasten nor retard it a single instant. u O 
 man !" cries the apostle, in replying to the folly and impiety of this 
 pretext, " is it thus that thou contemnest the riches of the good- 
 ness of thy God ? Art thou ignorant, that his patience in suffer- 
 ing thy debaucheries, far from authorizing them, ought to recall 
 thee to penitence ; and, nevertheless, it is his long forbearance itself 
 which hardens thee in guilt ; and through thine obstinacy of heart 
 thou amassest an overwhelming treasure of wrath for that terrible 
 day which shall surprise thee, and on which shall be rendered to 
 every one according to his works ?" 
 
 The only rational consequence, therefore, that you could be per- 
 mitted to draw, supposing that grace is wanting to you, is, that 
 you, more earnest than any other, ought to pray to obtain it ; to 
 neglect nothing to soften an irritated God, who has withdrawn him- 
 self from your heart ; to overcome by your importunities his resist- 
 ance ; to remove, in the meanwhile, whatever removes his grace 
 from your heart ; to make straight the way for him ; to throw aside 
 all the obstacles which have hitherto rendered it ineffectual to 
 you; to deny yourself every opportunity in which your in- 
 nocence almost always finds new rocks, and which completely 
 shut your heart against the holy inspirations : such is the Chris- 
 tian and prudent manner of rendering glory to God, of con- 
 fessing that he alone is the master of hearts, and that every 
 blessing and gift proceed from him. But to say, as you con- 
 tinually do, without changing in any respect your disorderly man- 
 ners, " When God shall want me, he knoweth how to find me," is 
 to say, P I wish him not as yet ; I have no occasion for him ; 
 I live happy and contented; when he shall force me, and I 
 can no longer avoid him, then I will yield ; but, in the mean time, 
 I will enjoy my prosperity, and the privilege which he granteth to 
 me of delaying my conversion ." What a shocking preparation 
 for that precious grace which changeth the heart ! Such is, 
 however, all that an impenitent soul can adduce for confidently 
 awaiting it. 
 
274 ON THE DELAY OF CONVERSION. Ser. 17- 
 
 Such are the pretexts which the sinner who delays his conversion 
 draws from the part of God. Let us now examine those which he 
 takes from within himself. 
 
 Part II. It is astonishing, my brethren, that, life being so 
 short, the moment of death so uncertain, every instant so precious, 
 conversions so rare, the examples of those who are taken unawares 
 so frequent, and futurity so awful, so many frivolous pretexts can 
 be urged for delaying a change of life. In all other dangers which 
 threaten either our life, our honour, or our property, the precautions 
 are prompt and ready, the danger alone is dubious and distant ; here 
 the danger is certain and present, and the precautions are always 
 uncertain and remote. It seems either that salvation is an arbitrary- 
 thing, or that our life is in our own hands, or that the time for our 
 penitence hath been promised to us, or that to die impenitent is no 
 great misfortune, so strongly do all sinners lull themselves in this 
 hope of being one day converted, without ever attempting a change 
 of life. And what is still more incomprehensible in the delay of 
 their penitence, is, that they all admit of the necessity of their con- 
 version, of the bad state of their conscience, and that they all con- 
 sider as the worst of evils, that of dying in that fatal state ; and, 
 nevertheless, that they all defer withdrawing from it, under pretexts 
 so childish, that even the gravity of the Christian pulpit suffers in 
 refuting and overthrowing them. 
 
 Age, the passions, the consequences of a change of life, which they 
 dread the being able to support, such are the vain pretexts inwardly 
 alleged for delaying that conversion which God demands of us. 
 
 I say, in the first place, the age. They wish to allow the years 
 of youth to pass away, to which a consideration so important as piety 
 seems little suited ; they wait a certain season of life, when, the 
 bloom of youth effaced, the manners become more sedate, the at- 
 tention more exact, the world less watchful upon us, even the mind 
 riper and more capable of supporting that grand undertaking ; they 
 promise themselves to labour at it, and that they will not then allow 
 any thing to divert them from it. 
 
 But, it would be natural to ask you first, who hath told you that 
 you shall arrive at the term which you mark to yourself ; that death 
 shall not surprise you in the course of those years which you still 
 allot to the world and to the passions; and that the Lord, whom 
 you do not expect till the evening, shall not arrive in the morning, 
 and when you least think of it ? Is youth a certain safeguard 
 against death ? See, without mentioning here what happens every 
 day to the rest of men, if, even in confining yourself to the small 
 number of your friends and of your relations, you shall find none 
 for whom the justice of God hath dug a grave in the first years of 
 their course, who, like the flower of the field, blooming to the morn, 
 have withered before the close of day, and have left you only the 
 melancholy regret of seeing so speedily blasted, a life of which the 
 blossoms had promised so fair. Fool ! Thy soul is to be re-de- 
 manded perhaps at the opening of thy race ; and those projects of 
 
Ser. 17. ON THE DELAY OF CONVERSION. 275 
 
 conversion which thou deferrest to a future period, what shall they 
 avail thee ? And those grand resolutions which thou promisest to 
 thyself to put in execution one day, what shall they change in 
 thine eternal misery, should death anticipate them, as it every day 
 doth in a thousand instances, and leave thee only the unavailing 
 regret of having vainly formed them ? 
 
 But, even granting that death shall not take you unawares, and 
 I ask you, upon what foundation do you promise yourself, that age 
 shall change your heart, and incline you more than you are at pre- 
 sent to a new life ? Did age change the heart of Solomon ? Ah ! 
 it was then that his passions rose to the highest, and that his shame- 
 ful frailty no longer knew any bounds. Did age prepare Saul for 
 his conversion ? Ah ! it was then that, to his past errors, he added 
 superstition, impiety, hardness of heart, and despair. Perhaps in 
 advancing in age, you shall leave off certain loose manners, because 
 the disgust alone which follows them shall have withdrawn you 
 from them; but you will not thereby be converted: you will 
 no longer live in debachery ; but you will not repent, you will 
 not do penance, your heart will not be changed ; you will still 
 be worldly, ambitious, voluptuous, and sensual : you will live 
 tranquil in that state, because you will no longer have but all the 
 dispositions of these vices without giving yourself up to their ex- 
 cesses. Years, examples, long habit of the world, shall have served 
 only to harden your conscience, to substitute indolence and a 
 worldly wisdom in the room of the passions, and to efface that sense 
 of religion which, in the youthful period of life, is left in the soul 
 as yet fearful and timorous ; you will die impenitent. 
 
 And if you suppose this to be merely a movement of zeal, and 
 not a truth founded on experience, examine what passes every day 
 before you ; view all the souls who have grown old in the world, 
 and who, through age alone, have withdrawn from its pleasures. 
 The love of the world is extinguished only with them under dif- 
 ferent exteriors, and which are changed solely through decency : 
 you see the same relish for the world, the same inclinations, the 
 same ardour for pleasures, a youthful heart in a changed and worn 
 out body. The delights of our younger years are recalled with satis- 
 faction ; the imagination dwells upon, and delights in reviving all 
 that time and age have wrested from us ; a blooming youth, and 
 all its attendant amusements, are regarded with envy ; all of them 
 are entered into, which can be thought in any degree compatible 
 with the sedateness proper to advanced age ; pretexts are formed 
 for still mingling in certain pleasures with decency, and without 
 being exposed to the public ridicule. Lastly, in proportion as the 
 world flies from, and deserts us, it is pursued with more relish than 
 ever : the long habit of it hath served only to render it more neces- 
 sary to us, and to render us incapable of doing without it ; and age 
 hath never as yet been the cause of conversion. 
 
 But, even admitting that this misfortune were not to be dreaded, 
 the Lord, is he not the God of all times, and of all ages ? Is there 
 a single one of our days which belongs not to him, and which he 
 
 t 2 
 
2?6 ON THE DELAY OF CONVERSION. Ser. 1?. 
 
 hath left to us for the world and for vanity? Is he not even jea- 
 lous of the first-fruits of our heart and of our life, figured by those 
 first-fruits of the earth, which were commanded by the law to be 
 offered up to him ? Why then would you retrench from him the 
 fairest portion of your years, to consecrate it to Satan and to his 
 works ? Is life too long to be wholly employed for the glory of the 
 Lord who hath given it to us, and who promiseth to us an eternal 
 one? Is youth too precious to be consecrated toward becoming 
 worthy of the eternal possession of the Supreme Being? You re- 
 serve, then, for him, only the remains and the dregs of your pas- 
 sions and life ! And it precisely is, as if you said to him, Lorcl, so 
 long as I shall be fit for the world and its pleasures, think not that 
 I shall turn toward or seek thee ; so long as the world shall be 
 pleased with me, I can never think of devoting myself to thee ; af- 
 terward, indeed, when it shall begin to neglect and to forsake me, 
 then I will turn me toward thee ; I will say to thee, Lo, I am here ! 
 I will pray thee to accept a heart which the world hath rejected, 
 and which reluctantly finds itself under the hard necessity of be- 
 stowing itself on thee ; but, till then, expect nothing from me but 
 perfect indifference, and a thorough neglect. After all, thou art 
 only entitled to our services when we ourselves are good for nothing 
 else ; we are always sure, at least, of finding thee ; all times are 
 the same to thee ; but, after a certain season of life, we are unfit- 
 ted for the world, and, while yet time, it is proper to enjoy it 
 before it deserts us. Soul, unworthy of ever confessing the mer- 
 cies of a God whom you treat with such insult ! and do you believe 
 that he will then accept of a homage so forced, and so disgraceful 
 to his glory, he, who taketh no delight but in voluntary sacrifices, 
 he, who hath no need of man, and who favoureth him when he 
 deigneth to accept even his purest vows and his sincerest homages? 
 
 The prophet Isaiah formerly mocked, in these terms, those who 
 worshipped vain idols : " You take/' said he to them, " a cedar 
 from Lebanon ; you set apart the best and handsomest parts of it 
 for your occasions, your pleasures, the luxury and ornament of 
 your palaces ; and when you know not how to employ otherwise the 
 remnant, you carve it into a vain idol, and offer up to it ridiculous 
 vows and homages." And I, in my turn, might say to you, you 
 set apart from your life the fairest and the most flourishing of your 
 years, to indulge your fancies and your iniquitous passions ; and 
 when you know not to what purpose to devote the remainder, and 
 it becomes useless to the world and to pleasures, then you make an 
 idol of it ; you make it serve for religion ; you form to yourself of 
 it a false, a superficial, and inanimate virtue, to which you reluct- 
 antly consecrate the wretched remains of your passions and of your 
 debaucheries. O my God ! is this then regarding thee as a jealous 
 God, whom the slightest stain in the purest offerings wounds and 
 offends, or as a vain idol, which feels not the indignity and the 
 hypocrisy of the homages offered up to it ? 
 
 Yes, my brethren, nothing can be reaped in an advanced age but 
 what has been sown in the younger years of life. If you sow in 
 
Ser. 17- ON THE DELAY OF CONVERSION. 277 
 
 corruption said the apostle, you will cut down in corruption. You 
 are continually saying, yourselves, that we always die as we have 
 lived ; that the character and disposition change not ; that we bear 
 within us in old age all the defects and all the tendencies of our 
 younger years; and that nothing is so fortunate for us as to have 
 formed laudable inclinations from an early period, and, as the pro- 
 phet said, to have accustomed ourselves from the tenderest youth 
 to bear the yoke of the Lord. 
 
 And, in effect, when we should attend solely to the quiet of our 
 life, when we should have no other interest in view than that of 
 securing peaceful and happy days to ourselves here below, what 
 happiness to anticipate, and to stifle in their birth, by bending from 
 the first toward virtue, so many violent passions which afterward 
 tear the heart, and occasion all the sorrows and misery of our life ! 
 What happiness to have grafted in ourselves only gentle and inno- 
 cent ideas, to spare ourselves the fatal experience of so many cri- 
 minal pleasures, which for ever corrupt the heart, defile the imagi- 
 nation, engender a thousand shameful and unruly fancies, which 
 accompany us even in virtue, outlive our crimes, and frequently 
 become new ones themselves ! What happiness to have created 
 innocent and tranquil pleasures for ourselves in these younger 
 years, to have accustomed the heart to be contented with them, not 
 to have contracted the sad necessity of being unable to do without 
 violent and criminal gratifications, and not to have rendered insup- 
 portable, by a long habit of warm and tumultuous passions, the 
 gentleness and the tranquillity of virtue and innocence ! How 
 these younger years, passed in modesty and in horror at vice, at- 
 tract blessings on the remainder of life ! How attentive to all our 
 ways do they render the Lord ! And how much do they render us 
 the well-beloved object of his cares and of his paternal kindness ! 
 
 But nobody denies, you will say, the happiness of being early 
 devoted to God, and of having been able to resist all the tempta- 
 tions of youth and of pleasure. But that such is not your case ; 
 you have followed the common track ; the torment of the world and 
 of the passions has swept all before it ; you find yourselves, even 
 still, under engagements too intimate and powerful to think of 
 breaking them ; you wait a more favourable situation ; and you 
 promise yourselves that, when the passion which now enslaves you 
 shall be extinguished, you will never again enter into new bonds, 
 but will heartily range yourselves on the side of duty and of virtue. 
 Second pretext ; the passions and the engagements, from which it 
 is impossible as yet to withdraw. 
 
 But, in the first place, are you quite certain that this more favour- 
 able situation which you await, in order to return to God, shall 
 arrive ? Who has revealed to you the course and the duration of 
 the passions which at present retain you ? Who has marked limits 
 to them, and said, like the Lord to the troubled waters, " Hitherto 
 shalt thou come, and no farther ?" When shall they have an end, 
 do you know ? Can you take upon you to say that they shall one 
 day be terminated, that they shall be ended at least before your- 
 
278 ON THE DELAY OP CONVERSION. Sei*. 1 J. 
 
 self? Would you be the first sinner surprised in his deplorable 
 passions ? Do not almost all around you die in that melancholy 
 state ? Do the ministers, called in to the assistance of the dying, 
 find many sinners on the bed of death, who, for a length of time, 
 have quitted their former habits in order to prepare themselves for 
 that last moment ? What do we find there but souls still bound 
 with a thousand chains, which death alone shall break asunder ; 
 but inexplicable consciences, if I may venture to say so, and still 
 enveloped in the chaos of a life wholly dissolute ? What indeed 
 do we expect on these occasions, but unavailing regrets on that 
 dreadful surprisal, and vain protestations of the different measures 
 they wouldhave adopted had they been able to have foreseen it ? What 
 are the usual offices of our ministry in these last moments ? To 
 enlighten consciences which ought then to need only consolation ; 
 to assist them in recalling crimes which we should then have only 
 to exhort them to forget ; to make the dying sinner sensible of his 
 debaucheries, we who should then have to support and to animate 
 him with the remembrance of his virtues ; in a word, to open the 
 dark concealments of his heart, we who should then have to open 
 only the bosom of Abraham, and the treasures of an immortal 
 glory, for the soul on the point of disengaging itself from the body. 
 Such are the melancholy offices which we shall one day perhaps 
 have to render to you ; you, in your turn, will call upon us, and, in 
 place of a soothing conversation with you on the advantages which 
 a holy death promises to the believer, we shall then be solely em- 
 ployed in receiving the narration of the crimes of your life. 
 
 But, should your passions not extend even to that last hour, the 
 more you delay, the deeper do you allow the roots of guilt to 
 become, the more do your chains form new folds round your heart, 
 the more does that leaven of corruption which you carry within you 
 spread itself, ferment, and corrupt all the capacity of your soul. 
 Judge of this by the progress which the passion has hitherto made 
 in your heart. At first it was only timid liberties, and, to quiet 
 yourself in which, you still sought some shadow of innocence ; af- 
 terward it was only dubious actions, in which it was still difficult 
 to distinguish guilt from a venial trespass ; licentiousness closely 
 followed, but striking excesses were still rare; you reproached your- 
 self in the very moment of commission ; you were unable to bear 
 them long upon a conscience still alarmed at its state : the back- 
 slidings are insensibly multiplied ; licentiousness is become a fixed 
 and habitual state ; conscience has no longer but feebly cried out 
 against the empire of the passion ; guilt is become necessary to you ; 
 it has no longer excited remorse ; you have swallowed it like water, 
 which passes unfelt, and without tickling the palate by any par- 
 ticular flavour. The more you advance, the more does the venom 
 gain; the weaker does any residue of strength, which modesty, 
 reason, and grace had placed in you, become, the more what was 
 yet wholesome in your soul becomes infected and defiled. What 
 folly, then, to allow wounds to become old and corrupted, under 
 pretence that they will afterward be more easily cured ! And what 
 
Ser. 17. ON THE DELAY OF CONVERSION. 279 
 
 do you, in delaying, but render your evils more incurable, and take 
 away from the hope of your conversion every resource which might 
 still be left to you ? 
 
 You perhaps flatter yourself that there are no lasting passions, 
 and that, sooner or later, time and disgust shall withdraw you from 
 them. 
 
 To this I answer, first, that, in all probability, you shall indeed 
 become tired of the objects which at present enslave you, but that 
 your passions shall not be consequently ended. You will doubt- 
 less form new ties, but you will not form to yourself a new heart. 
 There are no eternal passions, I confess, but corruption and licen- 
 tiousness are almost always so ; the passions which are terminated 
 solely by disgust, always leave the heart open for the reception of 
 some other, and it is commonly a new fire which expels and ex- 
 tinguishes the first. Call to your remembrance what has hitherto 
 happened to you. You firmly thought that, were such an engage- 
 ment once at an end, you should then be free, and wholly at liberty 
 to return to your God ; you fixed upon that happy moment as the 
 term for your penitence: that engagement has been terminated; death, 
 inconstancy, disgust, or some other accident, has broken it, and 
 nevertheless you are not converted ; new opportunities have offered, 
 you have formed new ties, you have forgotten your former resolu- 
 tions, and your last state is become worse than the first. The pas- 
 sions which are not extinguished by grace serve merely to light up 
 and to prepare the heart for new ones. 
 
 I answer, secondly, when all your criminal engagements should 
 even be ended, and that no particular object should interest your 
 heart, if time and disgust alone have effected this, yet will not your 
 conversion be more advanced. You will still hold to all, in no 
 longer holding to any thing ; you will find yourself in a certain 
 vague state of indolence and of insensibility, more removed from 
 the kingdom of God than even the ardour of mad passions ; your 
 heart, free from any particular passion, will be as if filled with a uni- 
 versal passion; if I may speak in this manner, with an immense void 
 which will wholly occupy it. It will even be so much the more 
 difficult for you to quit this state, as you will have nothing suffici- 
 ently striking to catch at. You will find yourself without vigour, 
 taste, or inclination for salvation ; it is a calm from which you will 
 find it more difficult to extricate yourself than even from the tem- 
 pest, for the same winds which cause the storm may sometimes drive 
 us fortunately into port ; but the greater the calm is, the more 
 certainly it leads to destruction. 
 
 But, lastly, you say, We would willingly change and adopt the 
 party of a more reasonable and more Christian life ; we feel the 
 utter emptiness of the world and of all its pleasures; we enter into 
 amusements, and into a certain dissipation, without relish, and as 
 if with regret; we would wish to renounce them, and seriously to 
 labour toward our salvation; but this first step startles us. It is a 
 matter of notoriety which engages us toward the public, and which 
 we have many doubts of being able to support; we are of a rank 
 
280 ON THE DELAY OF CONVERSION. Sei*. 17. 
 
 which renders the smallest change conspicuous ; and we are afraid 
 lest, like so many others, we act a part that will not be lasting, and 
 consequently will leave us only the ridicule without the merit of 
 devotion. 
 
 You dread, my dear hearer, the being able to go through with it? 
 What! in delaying your conversion, you promise yourself that 
 God shall one day touch you ; and, in being converted at present, 
 you dare not promise yourself that he will sustain you? You de- 
 pend upon his mercies while insulting him, and you e dare not trust 
 them when glorifying him ? You believe that you have nothing to 
 risk, on his part, in continuing to offend him, and you have no 
 confidence in him when beginning to serve him ? O man ! where 
 is here that reason and that rectitude of judgment which thou 
 vauntest so much ? And must it be, that in the business of thy 
 salvation alone thou art a sink of contradiction and an incompre- 
 hensible paradox? 
 
 Besides, might we not with reason say to you, Make a begin- 
 ning at least; try if, in effect, you shall be unable to sustain your- 
 self in the service of God? Is it not worth the trouble of being 
 tried? Does a man, precipitated by the tempest into the sea, and 
 who finds himself on the point of drowning, not strain every nerve, 
 in the first place, to gain the shore by swimming, before he resigns 
 himself to the mercy of the waves ? Would he say to himself, as 
 an excuse for making no effort to save himself, " I shall perhaps be 
 unable to go through with it; my strength will most likely fail me 
 by the way ? " Ah ! he tries, he makes every effort, he struggles 
 against the danger, he labours to the last moment of his strength, 
 and only gives way at last when, overpowered by the violence of 
 the waves, he is forced to yield to the evil of his destiny. You 
 perish, my dear hearer, the waves gain upon you, the torrent 
 sweeps you away, and you hesitate whether you shall try to ex- 
 tricate yourself from the danger; you waste, in calculating your 
 strength, the only moments left to provide for your safety; and 
 you sacrifice, in deliberating, the little time that is left to you for 
 the sole purpose of disengaging yourself from the (peril, which is 
 imminent, and in which so many others are continually perishing 
 before your eyes ! 
 
 But, lastly, even granting that in the end the various hardships 
 of virtue tire out your weakness, and that you find yourself under 
 the necessity of retreating ; at any rate, you will always have pass- 
 ed some little time without offending your God; you will always 
 have made some efforts toward appeasing him; you will always 
 have devoted some days to the praise of his holy name; at any 
 rate, it will be a portion cut off from your criminal life, and from 
 that treasure of iniquity which you amass for the terrible day of ven- 
 geance ; you will have acquired, at least, the right of representing 
 your weakness to God, and of saying to him, "Lord, thou beh old- 
 est my desires and my weakness; why, O my God I have I not a 
 heart more constant to thee, more determined in the cause of truth, 
 more callous to the world, and more difficult to be led astray ? Put 
 
Ser. 18. on false trust. 281 
 
 an end, O Lord, to mine uncertainties and to mine inconstancy; 
 take from the world that dominion which it hath over my heart; 
 resume thine ancient rights over it, and no longer imperfectly 
 attract me, lest I again fly off from thee. I am covered with shame 
 at the eternal variations of my life, and they make me that I am afraid 
 to raise up mine eyes to thee, or to promise a constant fidelity. 
 I have so often broken my promises after swearing to thee an eter- 
 nal love; my weakness hath so often led me to forget the happi- 
 ness of that engagement, that I have no longer the courage to 
 answer for myself. My heart betrays me every instant; and a 
 thousand times on rising from my feet, and with mine eyes still 
 bathed in tears of sorrow for having offended thee, an opportunity 
 hath seduced me ; and the very same infidelities, of which I had so 
 lately expressed my abhorrence, have found me, as formerly, weak 
 and unfaithful: with a heart so light and so uncertain, what assur- 
 ance, O my God ! can I give to thee ? And what, indeed, could 
 I presume to promise to myself ? I have so often thought that my 
 resolutions would now at last be constant; I have found myself in 
 moments so lively and so affecting of grace and of compunction, and 
 which seem for ever to fix the durability of my fidelity, that I now 
 see nothing which can either be capable of fixing me, or of afford- 
 ing me a hope of that stability in virtue which I have hitherto been 
 unable to attain. Let the danger of my situation touch thee, O 
 my God ! The character of my heart discourages and alarms me ; 
 I know that inconstancy in thy ways is a presage of perdition, and 
 that the versatile and changeable soul is cursed in thy holy books. 
 But, while yet sensible of the holy inspirations of thy grace, I will 
 once more endeavour to enter into thy ways; and, if I must 
 perish, I prefer being lost while exerting myself to return to thee, 
 O my God ! who permittest not the soul who sincerely seeketh thee 
 to perish, and who art the only Lord worthy of being served, to 
 the shocking tranquillity of an avowed and determined rebellion, 
 and to the melancholy idea of renouncing all hope of those eter- 
 nal riches which thou preparest for those who shall have loved and 
 served thee." 
 
 SERMON XVIII. 
 
 ON FALSE TRUST. 
 
 " But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel." 
 Luke xxiv. 21. 
 
 In vain had Jesus Christ, during his mortal life, a thousand 
 times declared to his disciples, that it was flattering themselves 
 to count upon a reward which had not been merited by crosses and 
 toils: this truth so little agreeable to nature, had never been will- 
 ingly received; and all the times that the Saviour had tried to un- 
 deceive them on the opposite error, they heard not that word of 
 
282 on false trust. Ser. 18. 
 
 the gospel, and it was not seen by them. Such is still at present 
 the disposition of the two disciples to whom Jesus Christ con- 
 descends to appear in their way to Emmaus; they expected that 
 their Master should deliver Israel from the yoke of nations, and 
 should cause them to be seated on twelve earthly thrones, without 
 any exertion being necessary on their part in order to mount them, 
 without the 1 Saviour himself having occasion to suffer, in order to 
 triumph over his enemies. 
 
 Besides the mistake which led them to consider Jesus Christ as 
 a temporal deliverer, I likewise observe another, which appears to 
 me not less dangerous in them, but which at present is more com- 
 mon among us : it is that false trust by which they are persuaded, 
 that, without co-operating toward it themselves, and in leaving to 
 Jesus Christ the whole management of their deliverance, they shall 
 receive the fulfilment of the magnificent promises, which, in his 
 conversations with them upon the earth, he had so often reiterated. 
 Now, my brethren, this false trust, which makes all to be expected 
 by sinners from grace alone, without any co-operation on their 
 part, and the reward of the holy to be hoped, although they labour 
 not toward meriting it; this false trust, which always reckons upon 
 the goodness of God whom it offends, which, without combating, 
 promises itself to be crowned, and which always hopes against 
 probability; this false trust, which is unwilling to purchase hea- 
 ven, and yet expects it, is the most universal and most estab- 
 lished error among Christians ; and when Jesus Christ shall once 
 more appear upon the earth, he will find many of his unbelieving 
 disciples, who shall have occasion to say to him, " we trusted." 
 
 This, my brethren, is what induces me to occupy your time at 
 present upon so important a matter, persuaded that a false trust is 
 the source of condemnation to almost all sinners ; that those who 
 are afraid of perishing, never perish ; and that I could not better 
 fulfil my ministry, than by establishing in your hearts those salu- 
 tary feelings of mistrust which lead to precautions and to remedies, 
 and which, in disturbing the peace of sin, leave, in its place, the 
 peace of Jesus Christ, which surpasseth all feeling. Thus, in order 
 to give a proper extension to so useful a subject, I reduce it to two 
 propositions. There is no disposition more foolish than that of the 
 sinner who presumes, without labouring toward his amendment, is 
 the first: there is none more injurious to God, is the second. The 
 folly of a false trust : the insult of a false trust. Let us explain 
 these two truths. 
 
 Part I. I am not afraid of openly agreeing with you, my bre- 
 thren, that the mercies of the Lord are always more abundant than 
 our wickednesses, and that his goodness may furnish legitimate mo- 
 tives of trust to all sinners. The doctrine which I go to establish 
 is sufficiently terrible, without adding to it new terrors by conceal- 
 ing part of those truths which may tend to soften it ; and if cau- 
 tion be required in this matter, it is rather in not bringing forward 
 all that might alarm the conscience, than in concealing what might 
 tend to console it. 
 
Ser. 18. on false trust. 283 
 
 It is true, that every where the holy books give us magnificent 
 and soothing ideas of the goodness of God. One while he is a mild 
 and long-forbearing master, who awaits the penitence of the sinner ; 
 who covers the sins of men, in order to lead them to repentance ; 
 who is silent and quiet ; who is slow to punish, and delays in order 
 that he may be prevented; who threatens in order to be disarmed: 
 another while he is a tender friend, who is never weary of knock- 
 ing at the gate of the heart; who flatters, entreats, and solicits us'; 
 and who, in order to draw us to himself, employs every thing 
 which an ingenious love can invent, to recall a rebellious heart. 
 Again, and lastly, for all would never be said, he is an indefatigable 
 Shepherd, who goes even through the wildest mountains, in search 
 of his strayed sheep ; and, having at last found it, places it upon 
 his shoulders, and is so transported with joy that even the celestial 
 harmony are ordered to celebrate its happy return. It must surely 
 be confessed, that the consolation of these images can receive no 
 addition ; and every sinner who, after this, despairs, or even gives 
 way to despondency, is the most foolish of all men. But do not 
 from thence conclude that the sinner who presumes is less foolish, 
 or that the mercy of the Lord can be a legitimate foundation of 
 trust to those who are continually desiring their conversion, and 
 yet, without labouring toward that great work, promise every 
 thing to themselves from a goodness which their very confidence 
 insults. To convince you of this, before I enter into the main 
 points of my subject, remark, I beg of you, that among that innu- 
 merable crowd of sinners, of every description, with which the 
 world is filled, there is not one who hath not hopes of his conver- 
 sion ; not one who, before-hand, considers himself as a child of 
 wrath, and doomed to perish ; not one who doth not flatter himself 
 that at last the Lord shall one day have pity upon him : the lewd, 
 the ambitious, the worldly, the revengeful, the unjust, all hope, yet 
 no one repents. Now, I mean, at present, to prove to you, that 
 this disposition of false trust is, of all others in which the creature 
 can be, the most foolish : follow, I beg of you, my reasons ; they 
 appear worthy of your attention. 
 
 In effect, when, in order to make the folly of false trust apparent, 
 I should have only the uncertainty in which a sinner, who hath 
 lost the sanctifying grace, is of his salvation, no other argument 
 would be required to justify my first proposition. And when I 
 speak of the uncertainty of his salvation, you easily comprehend 
 that there is no question here of that uncertainty common to all 
 believers, which occasions that no one can know whether he be 
 worthy of love or of hatred ; whether he shall persevere to the end, 
 or fall, never more to recover himself: terrible subject of dread, 
 even for the most righteous ! I speak of a more shocking uncer- 
 tainty, since it does not suppose, in the sinner in question, a doubt- 
 ful state of righteousness and Christian fears, upon backslidings to 
 come ; but because it is founded upon a certain state of sin, and 
 upon a repentance which nobody can guarantee to him. 
 
 Now, I say that it is the height of folly to presume in this state. 
 
284 ON FALSE TRUST. Ser. 18. 
 
 For confess it, my dear hearer, inveterate sinner as you are, abid- 
 ing, as you tranquilly do, in iniquitous passions, in the midst even 
 of all the solemnities of religion, and of all the terrors of the holy 
 word, upon the foolish hope of one day, at last, quitting this de- 
 plorable state ; you cannot deny that it is at least doubtful whether 
 you shall retrieve yourself, or, even to the end, remain in your sin. 
 I even admit you to be full of good desires : but you are not igno- 
 rant that desires convert nobody, and that the greatest sinners are 
 often those who most long for their conversion. Now, the doubt 
 here only equal, would you be prudent in remaining careless? 
 What ! In the frightful uncertainty whether you shall die in your 
 irregularity, or if God shall withdraw you from it ; floating, as I 
 may say, between heaven and hell ; on the poise between these two 
 destinies, you could be indifferent on the decision ? Hope is the 
 sweetest and most flattering choice ; and for that reason you would 
 incline to its side ? Ah ! my dear hearer, were there no other reason 
 to be afraid than that of hoping, you would not be prudent to live 
 in this profound calm. 
 
 But such is not even your case ; things are far indeed from being 
 equal ; in this shocking doubt which every sinner may inwardly 
 form, ei Shall I expire in mine iniquity, in the sin in which I ac- 
 tually and have so long lived ; or shall I not die in it ?" the first 
 part is infinitely the most probable. For, first, your own powers 
 are not sufficient to regain that sanctity you have lost ; a foreign, 
 supernatural, and heavenly aid is necessary, of which nobody can 
 assure you; in place of which, you need only yourself to remain 
 in your sin : there is nothing in your nature which can resuscitate 
 the grace lost, no seed of salvation, no principle of spiritual life ; and 
 you bear in your heart a fatal source of corruption which may every 
 day produce fresh fruits of death : it is more likely, therefore, that you 
 shall die in your guilt than it is that you shall be converted. Se- 
 condly, not only is a foreign and divine aid necessary, but also an 
 aid uncommon, rare, denied to almost all sinners ; in short, a miracle 
 for your conversion ; for the conversion of the sinner is one of the 
 greatest prodigies of grace, and you know yourself that such in- 
 stances are extremely rare in the world ; now and then some for- 
 tunate soul whom God writhdraweth from licentiousness. But 
 these are remarkable exertions of the Divine mercy, and not in the 
 common track. In place of which, you have only to let things pur- 
 sue their natural course, and you shall die such as you are : God 
 hath only to follow his ordinary laws, and your destruction is cer- 
 tain ; the possibility of your salvation is founded solely on a singular 
 effort of his power and mercy ; the certitude of your condemnation 
 is founded upon the commonest of all rules : in a word, that you 
 perish, is the ordinary lot of sinners who resemble you ; that you 
 are converted, is a singularity of which there are few examples. 
 Thirdly, in order to continue in your present state, you have only 
 to follow your inclinations, to yield yourself up to yourself, and 
 quietly to allow yourself to be carried down by the stream ; to do 
 this you have occasion for neither effort nor violence ; but to re- 
 
Ser. 18. ON FALSE TRUST. 285 
 
 turn, ah ! you must break through inclinations fortified by time ; 
 you must hate and resist yourself, tear yourself from the dearest 
 objects, break asunder the tenderest ties, make the most heroical 
 efforts, you who are incapable of the commonest ones. Now, I de- 
 mand, if, in a matter to come, or in uncertain events, we ever augur 
 in favour of those who have most obstacles to surmount, and most 
 difficulties to struggle against ? Doth not the most easy always 
 appear the most probable ? Soften as much as you please this 
 truth in your mind; view it in the most favourable light; this pro- 
 position on your eternal destiny is the most incontestable of the 
 Christian morality. It is beyond comparison more certain that I 
 shall never be converted, and that I shall die in my sin, than that 
 the Lord shall have pity upon me, and at last withdraw me from 
 it : this is your situation ; and, if you can still be indifferent, and 
 flatter yourself in such a state, your security, my dear hearer, ter- 
 rifies me. 
 
 But I go farther, and I entreat you to listen to me. The sinner 
 who, without labouring to reclaim himself, assures himself of con- 
 version, presumes not in a fearful uncertainty, and where every 
 thing seems to conclude against him, but also in spite of the moral 
 certainty, as we are taught by faith, that he is lost. Here are my 
 proofs : first, you expect that God shall convert you ; but how do 
 you expect it ? By continually placing new obstacles in the way 
 of his grace ; by rivetting your chains ; by aggravating your yoke ; 
 by multiplying your crimes; by neglecting every opportunity of 
 salvation, which, his solemnities, his mysteries, and even the ter- 
 rors of his word offer to you ; by always remaining in the same 
 dangers ; by changing nothing in your manners, your pleasures, 
 your intimacies ; in short, in every thing which continues to nou- 
 rish in your heart that fatal passion from which you hope that grace 
 shall deliver you. How ! the foolish virgins are rejected, solely for 
 having negligently and without fervour awaited the bridegroom ; 
 and you, faithless soul, who await him while completing the mea- 
 sure of your crimes, you dare to flatter yourself that you shall be 
 more favourably treated ? 
 
 Secondly. Grace is accorded only to tears, to solicitations, to 
 eager desires ; it requires to be long courted. Now, do you pray ? 
 At least, do you entreat ? Do you imitate the importunity of the 
 widow of the Gospel ? Do you labour, like Cornelius, the Gentile, 
 to attract that grace by charities and other Christian works ? Do 
 you say to the Lord, every day, with the prophet, ie Hide not thy 
 face from me, O Lord, lest I be like unto them that go down into 
 the pit?" Ah! you say to him, " Lord, thou wilt draw me to thy- 
 self ; in vain I resist thee ; thou wilt, at last, break asunder my 
 chains ; however great be the corruption of my heart, thou wilt ulti- 
 mately change it." Fool ! what more likely to repeal a gift than 
 the temerity which exacts it, and even in the very moment when 
 most unworthy dares to claim it as a right! Fresh argument 
 against you ; grace is reserved for the lowly and the fearful, who 
 dread being refused what is not owing to them : it is upon these 
 
286 on false trust. Ser. 18. 
 
 souls that the Spirit of God relieth, and taketh delight in his work- 
 ing wonders ; on the contrary, " he despiseth the presumptuous 
 sinner, and knoweth him afar off." 
 
 Thirdly. The grace of conversion which you so confidently ex- 
 pect, is, as you know, the greatest of all gifts. Nevertheless, as you 
 know still better, there is scarcely a sinner more unworthy of it 
 than yourself; unworthy through the nature of your disorders, of 
 which you alone know the infamy and the enormity ; unworthy 
 through the lights and inspirations you have a thousand times mis- 
 used ; unworthy through the favours of the mysteries and of the 
 truths which you have always neglected ; unworthy through the 
 sequel, even of your natural inclinations, which heaven, at your 
 birth, had formed so happy and so tractable to truth, and which 
 you have turned into melancholy means of vice ; unworthy through 
 the iniquitous derisions which you have made of piety, and those 
 impious desires, so injurious to the truth of God, which have a 
 thousand times led you to wish that all we say of a future state were 
 a fable ; lastly, unworthy through that profound security in which 
 you live, which, before God, is the worst of all your crimes. Now, 
 I ask nothing here but equity ; if only a single sinner were to be 
 excluded from that grace of conversion which you expect, you would 
 have every reason to dread that the exclusion fell upon you, and 
 that you were to be that single child of curse, separated as an ana- 
 thematized from all his brethren. But, if almost all be deprived of 
 that blessing, ah ! my dear hearer, ought you to reckon upon it as 
 secure ? And what have you but a superabundance of sins to dis- 
 tinguish you from others ? If the hope of the presumptuous sinner 
 perish in general with himself, can you suppose that your salvation 
 shall be accomplished by the same way in which all others perish ? 
 I know that we ought never to despair ; but humble confidence is 
 very different from presumption : humble confidence, after having 
 tried all, counts upon nothing, and you depend upon all without 
 having ever tried any thing. Humble trust considers the mercy 
 of the Lord only as the supplement of the defects of penitence, 
 and you make it the refuge of your crimes ; humble trust, with 
 fear and trembling, awaits the pardon of those faults it hath la- 
 mented, and you coolly expect that those should be forgiven of 
 which you never mean to repent. I know, and I again repeat, that we 
 ought never to despair; but were it possible that despair could be le- 
 gitimate, ah ! it would be when hope is presumptuously encouraged. 
 
 But age will mellow the passions, says inwardly the sinner here : 
 enticing opportunities will not always come in the way ; circum- 
 stances more favourable for salvation will occur ; and what is at 
 present impossible, shall one day perhaps be done when a thousand 
 actual impediments shall be removed. My God ! in this manner 
 doth the unfortunate soul deceive himself; and it is through an 
 illusion so palpable that the demon seduces almost all men, the 
 wisest as the most foolish, the most enlightened as the most credu- 
 lous, the great as the common people. For, say, my dear hearer, 
 when you promise yourself that one day the Lord shall at last have 
 
Ser. 18. on false trust. 287 
 
 pity upon you, you no doubt promise yourself that he will change 
 your heart; now, why do you depend upon this change, so necessary 
 to your salvation, more in future than at present? In the first place, 
 shall your disposition for penitence be then more favourable ? Shall 
 your heart find it easier to break asunder its chains ? What ! incli- 
 nations deeply rooted through time and years shall be more easily 
 torn out? A torrent which has already hollowed out its bed, shall 
 be more easy to turn aside? Are you in your senses when you 
 say so? Ah ! even now, it appears so difficult to repress your in- 
 ordinate passions, though yet in your infancy, and consequently 
 more tractable and easy to regulate! You delay your conversion 
 only because it would cost you too much to conquer yourself on 
 certain points : how ! you are persuaded that it will cost you less 
 in the end; that this fatal plant, then become a tree, shall be more 
 pliable; that this wound, inveterate and of longer standing, shall be 
 more easy to cure, and shall require less grievous remedies ? You 
 expect resources and facilities toward penitence from time; it is 
 time, my brethren, which will deprive you of all those yet remaining. 
 
 Secondly. Shall grace be either more frequent in future, or 
 more victorious? But, granting it even to be so, your cupidity, 
 then more powerful, opposing greater impediments, the grace which 
 would now triumph over your heart, and change you into a tho- 
 rough penitent, will no longer then but slightly agitate you, and 
 excite within you only weak and unavailing desires of repentance. 
 But you have little reason to flatter yourself even with this hope : 
 the more you irritate the goodness of God by delaying your con- 
 version, the more will he withdraw himself from you : every mo- 
 ment diminishes m some measure his ^favours and his kindness. 
 Recollect, that when you first began to deviate from his ways, not 
 a day passed without his operating within you some movement of 
 salvation, troubles, remorses, and desires of penitence. At present 
 if you attend to it, these inspirations are more rare : it is only on 
 certain occasions that your conscience is aroused ; you are partly 
 familiarized with your disorders. Ah ! my dear hearer, you easily 
 see that your insensibility will be only increased in the sequel : 
 God will more and more retire from you, and will deliver you up 
 to a reprobate feeling, and to that fatal tranquillity which is the 
 consummation and the most dreadful punishment of iniquity. Now 
 I ask, are you not absurd in thus marking out, for your conversion, 
 a time in which you shall never have had fewer aids on the part of 
 grace, and less facility on the part of your heart ? 
 
 I might still add, that the more you delay, the more you accu- 
 mulate debts; the more you enrich the treasure of iniquity, the 
 more crimes you shall have to expiate, the more rigorous shall your 
 reparation have to be, and consequently the more shall your peni- 
 tence be difficult. Slight austerities, some retrenchments, some 
 Christian charities, would perhaps suffice at present to acquit you 
 before your Judge, and to appease his justice. But, in the sequel, 
 when the abundance of your crimes shall have risen above your 
 head, and time and years shall have blunted, if not totally destroyed, 
 
288 on false trust. Ser. 18. 
 
 in your memory, the multitude and ihe flagrancy of your iniqui- 
 ties ; ah ! no reparation on your part shall then be sufficiently 
 rigorous, no mortification sufficiently austere, no humiliation suffi- 
 ciently profound, no pleasure, however innocent, which you must 
 not deny yourself, no indulgence which will not be criminal : holy 
 excesses of penitence will be necessary to compensate the duration 
 and the enormity of your crimes ; it will require you to quit all, to 
 tear yourself from every thing, to sacrifice your fortune, interests, 
 and conveniency, perhaps to condemn yourself to a perpetual re- 
 treat, for it is only through these means that the great sinners are 
 recalled. Now, if slight rigours, which would at present be suffi- 
 cient amends, appear so insupportable, and disgust you at the idea 
 of a change, shall penitence be more alluring, when more toils, 
 and steps a thousand times more bitter, present themselves in its 
 train ? My God ! upon the affair of salvation alone it is that men 
 are capable of such wilful mistakes. Ah ! my brethren, of what 
 avail are great lights, extent of genius, deep penetration, and solid 
 judgment in the management of earthly matters, and of vain under- 
 takings which shall perish with us, if we are children in the grand 
 work of eternity ? 
 
 And allow me to conclude this part of my Discourse with a final 
 reason, which, I trust will serve to convince you. You consider 
 the vain hope of a conversion as a feeling of grace and salvation, 
 and as a proof that the Lord visiteth you, and that he hath not yet 
 delivered you up to all the inveteracy of sin. But, my dear hearer, 
 the Lord cannot visit you in his mercy without inspiring you with 
 salutary troubles and fears on the state of your conscience : all the 
 operations of grace begin with these ; consequently, while you con- 
 tinue tranquil, it is evident that God treateth you according to all 
 the rigour of his justice, and that he exerciseth upon you the most 
 terrible of his chastisements; I mean to say, his neglect and the 
 denial of his grace. Peace in sin, the security in which you live, 
 is therefore the most infallible mark that God is no longer with 
 you, and that this grace, which in the criminal soul always works 
 trouble and anxiety, dread and distrust, is totally extinguished in 
 yours. Thus you comfort yourself on what ought to excite your 
 justest fears : the most deplorable signs of your reprobation form 
 in your mind the most solid foundation of your hope : trust in sin 
 is the most terrible chastisement with which God can punish the 
 sinner, and you draw from it a prejudication of salvation and of 
 penitence. Tremble, if any remains of faith be yet left you : this 
 calm is the forerunner of a shipwreck : you are stamped with the 
 mark of the reprobate ; reckon not upon a mercy which treats you 
 so much the more rigorously, as it permits you to hope and to 
 depend upon it. 
 
 The error of the majority of sinners is that of imagining that the 
 grace of conversion is one of those sudden miracles by which the 
 whole face of things is changed in the twinkling of an eye ; which 
 plants, tears up, destroys, rears up at the first stoke, and in an in- 
 stant creates the new man, as the earthly man was formerly drawn 
 
Ser. 18. on false trust. 289 
 
 from nothing. The grossest of all mistakes, my dear hearer; con- 
 version is in general a slow and tardy miracle, the fruit of cares, of 
 troubles, of fears, and of bitter anxieties. 
 
 The days, saith Jesus Christ, which are to precede the utter de- 
 struction of this visible world and the coming of the Son of Man, 
 shall be days of trouble and woe; nations shall rise against nations, 
 and kings against kings ; horrible signs shall be seen in the firma- 
 ment long before the King of Glory himself shall appear ; all nature 
 shall announce, by its disorder, the approaching destruction and the 
 coming of its God. Ah ! my dear hearer, behold the image of the 
 change of your heart, of the destruction of that world of passions 
 within you, of the coming of the Son of Man into your soul. Long 
 before that great event, internal wars shall take place ; you shall 
 feel your passions excited one against the other ; blessed signs of 
 salvation shall appear upon your person ; all shall be shaken, all 
 shall be disturbed ; all within you shall announce the destruction 
 of the carnal man, the coming of the Son of God, the end of your 
 iniquities, the renovation of your soul, a new heaven and a new 
 earth. Ah ! when these blessed things shall come to pass, then lift 
 up your head, and say that your redemption draweth nigh ; then be 
 confident, and adore the awful but consolatory preparations of a God 
 who is on the eve of entering into your heart. But, while nothing- 
 is shaken within you, and no change appears in your soul ; while 
 your heart faileth not for fear, and your passions, still tranquil, re- 
 main undisturbed but by the obstacles which retard their gratifica- 
 tion ; ah ! mistrust those who shall tell you that the Lord draweth 
 nigh ; that you will immediately find him in the sanctuary, I mean 
 to say, in the participation of the sacrament, in those retired places 
 to which you shall perhaps go to comfort him in the person of his 
 afflicted members ; who will be continually saying, " Lo, here is 
 Christ fi believe them not ; they are false prophets, saith Jesus 
 Christ : no sign of his coming hath taken place within you ; in vain 
 you expect and presume ; it is not in this manner that he will come; 
 trouble and dread walk before him ; and the soul who continues 
 tranquil, and yet trusts, shall never be visited by him. 
 
 Ci Happy, therefore, is the man that feareth always :" he whose 
 virtues do not entirely quiet him upon his eternal destiny, who 
 trembles lest the imperfections mingled with his most laudable works 
 not only destroy their whole merit before God, but even rank them 
 among those which God shall punish on the day of his wrath. But 
 what idea, will some one say to me, do you give us of the God we 
 worship ! An idea worthy of him, my brethren ; and, in my second 
 part, I shall prove to you, that false trust is injurious to him, and 
 forms to itself the idea of a God, who is neither true, wise, just, 
 nor even merciful. 
 
 Part II. It is rather surprising, my brethren, that false trust 
 should pretend to find even in religion motives which authorize it, 
 and should mistake the most criminal of all dispositions, for a sen- 
 timent of salvation, and a fruit of faith and of grace. In effect, the 
 
290 ON FALSE TRUST. Sei*. 18. 
 
 sinner, who without wishing to quit his irregularities, promises 
 himself a change, alleges, in justification of his presumption, first, 
 the power of God, who ruleth over the hearts of men, who can 
 change in an instant the will, and to whom it is equally easy to pro- 
 duce the child of promise from the sterility of old age, as from the 
 fecundity of youth. Secondly, his justice, for having formed man 
 of clay, that is to say, weak, and with almost unconquerable ten- 
 dencies to pleasure, he ought to have some consideration for his 
 weakness, and more readily pardon faults which are, as it were, 
 unavoidable to him. Lastly, his mercy, always ready to receive the 
 repentant sinner. Now, my brethren, it is easy to take from false 
 trust pretexts so unworthy of piety, and show that the disposition 
 of the presuming sinner insults God in all the above mentioned 
 perfections. Allow me to explain my reasons, and continue to ho- 
 nour me with your attention. 
 
 In the first place, when you conceive a powerful God, master of 
 hearts, and changing at his pleasure the rebellious wills of men, is 
 it not true, that you at the same time conceive a power regulated 
 by wisdom, that is to say, which doth nothing but in conformity 
 with that order it hath established ? Now, the presumptuous sinner 
 attributes to God a blind power, which acts indiscriminately. For, 
 though he can whatever he willeth, nevertheless, as he is infinitely 
 wise, there is an order in his wills ; he willeth not at random, and 
 whatever he doth hath its eternal reasons in the depth of his divine 
 wisdom. Now it is evident that this divine wisdom would not be 
 sufficiently justified before men, if the grace of conversion were to 
 be at last accorded to false trust. For say, in order to merit the 
 greatest of all favours, it would then be sufficient to have a thousand 
 times rejected it ? The righteous man, who continually crucifies 
 his flesh, who incessantly groans in order to obtain the precious 
 gift of perseverance, would then have no better claim than a sinner, 
 who without having ever placed himself in a situation to merit it, 
 hath always promised it to himself ? It would then be perfectly 
 indifferent either to serve the Lord, and to walk uprightly before 
 him, or to pursue the erroneous ways of the passions, since, at the 
 end, the lot of each would be the same? Much more, it would then 
 be a misfortune, a folly, a lost trouble, to have carried the yoke from 
 youth, since nothing would be risked by delaying it ? The maxims 
 of debauchery, on the love of pleasures in the early stage of fife, 
 and on deferring repentance to the years of decrepitude and debi- 
 lity, would then be the rules of wisdom and of religion? The won- 
 ders of grace would then serve but to tempt the fidelity of the just, 
 but to authorize the impenitence of sinners, but to destroy the fruit 
 of the sacrament, and to augment the ills of the church? Is this 
 the God whom we worship ? And would he be so wonderful in his 
 gifts, according to the expression of the prophet, if he were to dis- 
 pense them with so little either of order or of wisdom? 
 
 In effect, if the empire which God hath over hearts could serve 
 as a resource for a presumptuous sinner, upon that footing the con- 
 version of all men would be certain, even of those infidels who know 
 
Ser. 18. on false trust. 291 
 
 not the Lord, of those barbarous nations who have never heard his 
 name. Doth God not rule over the hearts of all men ? Who hath 
 ever withstood his will ? Is he not able to make his light shine 
 through the profoundest darkness, to change into lambs the fiercest 
 lions, and to turn his enemies into the most intrepid confessors of 
 his name ? Is the heart of an Indian, or of a savage, a more arduous 
 conquest to him than that of a presumptuous sinner ? Is not every 
 thing alike easy to him ? He hath only to say, and it is done. 
 Yet, nevertheless, would you thereupon be willing that your eternal 
 destiny should run the same hazard as that of a savage, who, in the 
 heart of his forests, almost inaccessible to the preaching of the 
 Gospel, worships absurd and monstrous divinities ? God may raise 
 up in his favour, evangelical ministers, who, along with the lights 
 of faith, shall bring grace and salvation to his soul. You say that 
 it requires one of those miraculous efforts of the Almighty power 
 to overcome all the difficulties which apparently render the conver- 
 sion of that unfortunate creature impossible : on the contrary, that 
 you, surrounded with the aids of sacrament, with the light of the 
 doctrine and of instruction, are surely in a situation much more 
 likely to secure your salvation, and consequently, that you have in- 
 finitely more ground to promise it to yourself. Ah ! my dear hearer, 
 you deceive yourself, and I assure you, that, to me, the salvation 
 of that infidel appears less hopeless than yours. He has never 
 abused favours, which he has never received ; and hitherto you have 
 unworthily rejected all those which have been offered to you : he has 
 never resisted that truth which he has never known, and you iniqui- 
 tously withstand it : the first impulse of grace will triumph over his 
 heart, and the strongest impressions are ineffectual against the inflex- 
 ibility of yours : a single ray of light will disclose to him errors and 
 truths till then unknown, and all the lights of faith are unable to 
 disturb the tranquillity of your passions : he holds out to the mercy 
 of God only the misfortune of his birth, only sins almost involun- 
 tary, only wretchedness rather than crimes, all of them proper mo- 
 tives to affect him, and you hold out to him affected acts of ingrati- 
 tude and vile perseverance in obstinacy, all subjects calculated to re- 
 move him for ever from you. Ah ! it is easy for the Lord to bear 
 upon the wings across the seas apostolical men ; his angels, when he 
 pleaseth, know to transport his prophets from the land in which 
 he is worshipped, even into Babylon, in order to visit a just man 
 exposed to the fury of lions ; but if any thing were difficult to him, 
 it would be that of conquering a rebellious heart, of recalling a soul 
 born in the kingdom of light, surrounded with all the succours of 
 faith, penetrated with all the feelings of grace, aided by all the ex- 
 amples of piety, and, nevertheless, always firm in its errors. It is 
 an illusion, therefore, in his power to search for vain motives of 
 security; God could operate so many other prodigies in favour of a 
 thousand sinners whom he forsaketh, although they be not so 
 unworthy as you of his grace. It is a dangerous maxim to regu- 
 late his will upon his power. 
 The second error which authorizes false trust, has its foundation 
 
 u 2 
 
292 on false trust. Ser. 18. 
 
 in the unjust idea formed of the divine justice. They persuade 
 themselves that, man being born with violent inclinations for plea- 
 sure, our errors are more worthy of the pity than of the anger of 
 the Lord ; and that our weakness alone solicits his favour, in place 
 of arming his indignation against us. 
 
 But, in the first place, it might be said to you, that the corrup- 
 tion of your nature comes not from the Creator; that it is the work 
 of man, and the punishment of his sin ; that the Lord had created 
 man righteous ; and consequently, that this unfortunate tendency, 
 of which you complain, is an irregularity which God must punish 
 whenever you fall under it ; how then can you suppose that it shall 
 serve you as an excuse ? It is in consequence of it that you are a 
 child of wrath and an outcast vessel : how do you pretend to draw 
 reasons from thence, in order to enter into contestation even with 
 God, and to challenge his j ustice ? It is, in a word, in consequence 
 of it that you are unworthy of all favours :^how dare you to hold it 
 out as a reason for demanding them ? 
 
 Secondly. It might be said to you, that whatever be the weak- 
 ness of our will, man is always master of his desires ; that he hath 
 been left under the charge of his own resolution ; that his passions 
 have no more empire over him than what he himself chooses to 
 allow them ; and that water, as well as fire, hath been placed in our 
 way, in order to allow a perfect freedom of choice to our own will. 
 Ah ! I could herein attest your own conscience, and demand of 
 you, above all, of you, my dear hearer, if, in spite of your weak- 
 ness, whenever you have forsaken the law of God, you have not felt 
 that it wholly depended upon yourself to have continued faithful ? 
 If piercing lights have not discovered to you all the horror of your 
 transgression ; if secret remorses have not turned you away from it; 
 if you have not then hesitated between pleasure and duty ; if, after 
 a thousand internal deliberations, and those secret vicissitudes, 
 where one while grace, and the other while cupidity gained the 
 victory, you have not at last declared for guilt, as if still trembling, 
 and ^almost unable to harden yourself against yourself? I might 
 go even farther, and demand of you, if, considering the happy in- 
 clinations of modesty and of reserve, the dispositions with which 
 God had favoured you at your birth, the innocency of virtue would 
 not have been more natural, more pleasing, and more easy to you 
 than the licentiousness of vice ; demand of you, if you have not 
 suffered more by being unfaithful to your God, than it would have 
 cost you to have been righteous ; if you have not been obliged to 
 encroach more upon yourself, to do more violence to your heart, to 
 bear with more vexations, to force your way through more intricate 
 and more arduous paths ? Ah ! what then can the justice of God 
 find in your dissipations which doth not furnish to him fresh matter 
 of severity and anger against you? 
 
 Lastly. It might be added, that, if you are born weak, yet the 
 goodness of God hath environed your soul with a thousand aids ; 
 that it is that well-beloved vine which he hath fostered with the 
 tenderest care, which he hath fenced with a deep moat, and forti- 
 
Ser. 18. on false trust. 293 
 
 fied with an inaccessible tower ; I mean to say, that your soul hath 
 been as if defended from its birth by the succours of the sacrament, 
 by the lights of the doctrine, by the force of examples, by continual 
 inspirations of grace, and perhaps by the special aids likewise of a 
 holy and a Christian education provided for you b,y the Lord, and 
 which so many others have wanted. Ingrate ! wherein could you 
 be able to justify your weakness before the Lord, and to interest 
 his justice itself to use indulgence toward you ? Ah ! what do your 
 transgressions present to him but the abuses of his grace, and 
 means of salvation perverted, through the licentiousness of your 
 will, into occasions of sin ? 
 
 But let us leave all these reasons, and tell me, that weakness of 
 which you complain, and for which you pretend that God will have 
 consideration, is it not your own handwork, and the fruit of your 
 own special irregularities? Recollect here, those happy days when 
 your innocence had not been wrecked ; were your passions then so 
 difficult to be overcome ? Did modesty, temperance, fidelity, piety, 
 then appear to you as impracticable virtues ? Did you find it im- 
 possible to resist occasions? Were your tendencies to pleasure so 
 violent that you were not then their master? Ah ! whence comes 
 it then that they now tyrannize with such dominion over your 
 heart ? Is it not, that having, through a fatal negligence, allowed 
 them to usurp the command, they have ever since been too power- 
 ful to be conquered? Have you not forged, with your own hands, 
 these chains ? Look around you, and see if so many just, who 
 bear (and from their earliest youth) the yoke, are even tempted in 
 situations in which you are always certain to perish. Ah ! why 
 then should you complain of a weakness which you have brought 
 upon yourself ? Why should you count, that what must irritate 
 the Lord against you shall serve to appease him ? What doth he see, 
 when he sees the weakness of your inclinations ? He sees the fruit 
 of your crimes, the consequences of a licentious and sensual life. 
 Is it here that you dare to appeal to justice itself, to that justice 
 before which the righteous themselves entreat not to be judged ? 
 My God ! upon what shall the sinner not flatter himself, since, in 
 the most terrible of thy perfections, he finds reasons of confidence? 
 
 The only rational and legitimate conclusion which it is permitted 
 to you to draw from your own weakness, and from these inclina- 
 tions for the world, and for pleasures, which, in spite of your reso- 
 lutions, hurry you away, is, that you have more occasion to watch, 
 to lament, and to pray, than others ; that, with more studious care, 
 you ought to shun the dangers and the attractions of the senses and 
 of the flesh. But then it is that you believe yourself invincible, 
 when we exhort you to fly all profane conversations, suspicious in- 
 tercourses, doubtful pleasures, lascivious spectacles, and assemblies 
 of sin. Ah ! you then defend yourself upon the ground that your 
 innocence is in no degree injured there : you resign to weak souls 
 all the precautions of flight and of circumspection : you tell us that 
 every one must feel and know himself, and that those who are weak 
 enough to be injured there, should in prudence keep away from 
 
294 on false trust. Ser. 18. 
 
 them. But how can you expect that God shall have consideration 
 for a weakness for which you have so little yourself? You are weak 
 when there is question of excusing your crimes to him ; you are no 
 longer so, when, upon that ground, it is necessary to adopt painful 
 measures in order to continue faithful to him. 
 
 But you will say, that if every thing be to be dreaded from his 
 justice, at least his mercies are infinite ; when his goodness should 
 find nothing in us proper to touch him, would it not find motives 
 sufficiently pressing in itself ? This would be the third illusion of 
 false trust which I should have to overthrow ; but, besides that I 
 have elsewhere sufficiently mentioned it, it is almost time to con- 
 clude. I mean, therefore, my dear hearer, to ask you only one 
 question : When you say that the goodness of God is infinite, what 
 do you pretend to say ? That he never punishes guilt? You would 
 not dare to mean so. That he never abandons the sinner ? The 
 Sauls, the Antiochuses, the Pharaohs, have taught you the contrary. 
 That the immodest, the worldly, the revengeful, the ambitious, shall 
 be alike saved as the just ? You know that nothing unclean shall 
 enter heaven. That he hath not created man to render him eter- 
 nally miserable ? But wherefore hath he prepared a hell ? That 
 he hath already given you a thousand marks of his goodness ? But 
 that is what ought to overwhelm your ingratitude on the past, and 
 to make you to dread every thing for the future. That he is not so 
 terrible as it is said ? But nothing is told of his justice but what 
 he has told you himself. That he would be under the necessity 
 of damning almost all men were all that we say true ? But the gos- 
 pel declares to you, in express terms, that few shall be saved : that 
 he punisheth not but at the worst ? But every rejected grace may 
 be the term of his mercies. That it costs him nothing to forgive ? 
 But hath he not the interests of his glory to attend to ? That 
 little is required to disarm him ? But a change must take place, 
 and the changing of the heart is the greatest of all his works. That 
 that lively trust which you have in his goodness can come only 
 from him ? But whatever leads not to him, by leading to repent- 
 ance, can never come from him. What then do you mean to say? 
 That he will not reject the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart ? 
 And behold, my dear hearer, what I have all along been preaching 
 to you. Turn to the Lord, and then place your trust in him ; 
 whatever your crimes may be, his mercy is always open to the re- 
 pentant sinner ; throw yourself unreservedly upon his goodness for 
 the permanence of your conversion, for perseverance in his service, 
 for victory over the numerous obstacles which the enemy to salva- 
 tion will continually be throwing in the way of your holy desires : 
 the grace which he doth, in inspiring the feelings of a sincere peni- 
 tence, is always a blessed presage of those which he prepareth : 
 never mistrust his mercy ; there is nothing but what may be ex- 
 pected from him, when it is the sorrow of having offended him 
 which entreats it ; never allow yourself to be cast down by the re- 
 membrance of your past iniquities ; whatever can be weeped can 
 be pardoned : lock up in the bosom of his mercy the whole dura- 
 
Ser. 18. ON false trust. 295 
 
 tion of the days which you have employed in offending him ; they 
 will be as though they had never been : from the moment that you 
 shall begin to serve him, you will begin to increase before him ; 
 a thousand years are only a day in his eyes, from the moment that 
 your crimes are terminated by a sincere change : he is the God 
 of sinners, the Benefactor of the ungrateful, the Father of prodigal 
 children, the Shepherd of strayed sheep, the friend of Samari- 
 tans ; in a word, all the consolations of faith seem to be for the re- 
 pentant sinner. 
 
 But if you continue to promise yourself, that, at last, the time 
 will come, when you shall seriously think upon your salvation 
 without doing it still ; ah ! remember, my dear hearer, that it is in 
 that very way that almost all sinners have perished, and that it is 
 the high-road to death in sin. Remember, that the sinner who 
 often vainly desires is never converted. Even the more you feel 
 within you these unproductive impulses of salvation, depend upon 
 it that the more is your measure filled, and that every rejected 
 grace draws you a degree nearer to hardness of heart : comfort 
 yourself not upon desires which hasten your ruin, and which, in 
 all times, have been the lot of the reprobate ; and say often to the 
 Lord, with the prophet, How long, O my God ! shall I amuse the 
 secret anxieties of my soul with vain projects of penitence ? How 
 long shall I see my days flowing rapidly on in promising to my 
 heart, in order to quiet it in its disorders, a sorrow and a repent- 
 ance which are more and more distant from me ? How long shall 
 the enemy, taking advantage of my weakness, employ so gross an 
 error to seduce me ? Ah ! dissipate this illusion which leads me 
 astray; regard these feeble desires of salvation as the cries of a 
 conscience which cannot be happy without thee ; accept these timid 
 beginnings of penitence ; favourably attend to them now, O my 
 God ! when to me it seems that thy grace renders them more lively 
 and more sincere ; and complete, by thy inward operation, what is 
 yet wanting to the fulness and to the sincerity of this offer ; and 
 perfect, in receiving, my desires, in order that they be worthy of 
 the reward which thou promisest to those who hunger and thirst 
 after righteousness. 
 
 Hear, said the Lord in his prophet, to the unfaithful soul, you 
 who live in ease and in pleasures, and who nevertheless hope in 
 me, sterility and widowhood shall at once burst upon your heads ; 
 sterility, that is to say, that you shall no longer be fit to bear the 
 fruits of penitence; cultivation and watering shall be in vain; the 
 power of my word, the virtue of my sacraments, the grace of my 
 mysteries, all care shall be unavailing, and you shall no longer be 
 but a withered tree alloted to the fire : widowhood, that is to say, 
 I will for ever forsake you ; I will leave you single ; I will deliver 
 you up to your inclinations, and to the false peace of your passions ; 
 I will no longer be your God, your protector, your spouse ; I will 
 for ever forsake you. 
 
 But may I here finish my ministry, my brethren, with the words 
 formerly made use of by Jesus Christ, in finishing his mission to 
 
296 on the vices and virtues Ser. 19. 
 
 an ungrateful people ? You have refused to believe in me, said he 
 to them a few days before his death ; you have shut your eyes 
 against the light ; you have had ears, yet you heard not ; I go, and 
 you shall die in you blindness. If you were still blind, and if you 
 had never known the truth, your sin would be more excuseable ; 
 but at present, you see, I have announced to you the truths which 
 my Father had taught me, and therefore your sin is without ex- 
 cuse : your obstinacy is consummate ; you have rejected that sal- 
 vation which shall be offered to you no more, and the guilt of the 
 truth despised must for ever be upon your head. 
 
 Great God ! should this then be the price of my toils, and the 
 whole fruit of my ministry ? Could the unworthiness of the in- 
 strument, which thou hast employed to announce thy word, have 
 destroyed its efficacy, and placed a fatal impediment to the pro- 
 gress of the gospel ? No, my dear brethren, the virtue of the 
 word of the cross is not attached to that of the minister who an- 
 nounces it. In the hands of the Lord, clay can give sight to the 
 blind ; and, when he pleaseth, the walls of Jericho fall at the sound 
 of the weakest trumpets. I trust then in the Lord for you, my 
 brethren, that having received his word with gladness, as Paul 
 formerly said to the believers of Corinth, that, having received it, 
 not as the word of man, but as the word of God, it shall fructify 
 in you ; and that, on the awful day of judgment, when account shall 
 be demanded from me of my ministry, and from you of the fruit 
 which you have reaped from it, I shall be your defence and your 
 Justification, and you my glory and my crown. So do I ardently 
 wish it. 
 
 SERMON XIX. 
 
 ON THE VICES AND VIRTUES OF THE GREAT. 
 
 " And the devil showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them : and 
 saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship 
 me." Matthew iv. 8, 9. 
 
 Human prosperities have always been one of the most dangerous 
 wiles employed by the de'vil to entrap men.^He knows that the 
 love of fame and of distinction is so natural to us, that, in general, 
 nothing is considered as too much for their attainment ; and that 
 the use of them is so seducing, and so apt to lead astray, that no- 
 thing is more rare than piety surrounded with pomp and power. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is God alone who raiseth up the great and the 
 powerful ; who placeth you above the rest, in order to be the fathers 
 of the people, the comforters of the afflicted, the refuge of the help- 
 less, the supports of the church, the protector of virtue, and the 
 models of all believers. 
 
 Suffer then, my brethren, that, entering into the spirit of our 
 gospel, I here lay before you the dangers, as well as the advantages 
 of your state ; and that I point out to you the obstacles and the 
 
Ser. 19. of the great. 297 
 
 facilities which the rank, to which, through Providence, you are 
 born, presents to your discharge of the duties of a Christian life. 
 
 Great temptations, I confess, are attached to your station ; but 
 it has likewise as great resources. People of rank are born, it would 
 seem, with more passions than the rest of men ; yet have they also 
 the opportunity of practising more virtues : their vices are followed 
 with more consequences ; but their piety becomes also more bene- 
 ficial : in a word, they are much more culpable than the people, 
 when they forget their God ; but they have likewise more merit in 
 remaining faithful to him. 
 
 My intention, therefore, at present, is to represent to you the 
 extensive good, or the boundless evils, which always accompany 
 your virtues or vices; to convince you of what influence the ele- 
 vated rank to which you are born, is toward good, or toward evil; 
 and, lastly, to render irregularity odious to you, by unfolding the 
 inexplicable consequences which your passions drag after them; 
 and piety amiable, through the unutterable benefits which always 
 follow your good examples. It would matter little to point out the 
 dangers of your station, were the advantages of it not likewise to 
 be shown. The Christian pulpit declaims in general against the 
 grandeurs and glory of the age ; but it would be of little avail to be 
 continually speaking of your complaints, were their remedies not 
 held out to you at the same time. These are the two truths which 
 I mean to unite in this Discourse, by laying before you the endless 
 consequences of the vices of the great and powerful, and what in- 
 estimable benefits flow from their virtues. 
 
 Part I. u A sore trial shall come upon the mighty, says the 
 Spirit of God; for mercy will soon pardon the meanest; but mighty 
 men shall be mightily tormented/' 
 
 It is not, my brethren, because he is mighty himself, that the 
 Lord, as the Scriptures say, rejects the great and the mighty, or 
 that rank and dignity are titles hateful in his eyes, to which his 
 favours are denied, and which, of themselves, constitute our guilt. 
 With the Lord there is no exception of persons: he is the Lord 
 of the cedars of Lebanon, as well as of the humble hyssop of the 
 valley : he causes his sun to rise over the highest mountains, as 
 well as over the lowest and obscurest places: he hath formed the 
 stars of heaven, as well as the worms which crawl upon the earth : 
 the great are even more natural images of his greatness and glory, 
 the ministers of his authority, the means through which his libe- 
 ralities and generosity are poured out upon his people. And I 
 come not here my brethren in the usual language, to pronounce 
 anathemas against human grandeurs, and to make your station a 
 crime, since that very station comes from God, and that the object 
 in question is not so much to exaggerate the perils of it, as to point 
 out the infinite ways of salvation attached to that rank to which, 
 through the will of Providence, you have been born. 
 
 But, I say, that the sins of the great and powerful have two 
 characters of enormity which render them infinitely -more punish- 
 
298 on the vices and virtues Ser. 19. 
 
 able before God than the sins of the commonalty of believers. 
 First, the scandal ; secondly, ingratitude. 
 
 The scandal. There is no crime to which the gospel leaves less 
 hopes of forgiveness than that of being a stumbling-block to our 
 brethren : " Woe unto the man," said Jesus Christ, (e who shall 
 offend one of these little ones which believe in me; it were better 
 for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he 
 were drowned in the depth of the sea." First, because you destroy 
 a soul which ought eternally to have enjoyed God. Secondly, 
 because you occasion your brother to perish, for whom Jesus Christ 
 hath died. Thirdly, because you become the minister of the devil's 
 designs for the destruction of souls. Fourthly, because you are 
 that man of sin, that antichrist, of whom the apostle speaks; for 
 Jesus Christ hath saved man, and you destroy him ; Jesus Christ 
 hath raised up true worshippers to his Father, and you deprive 
 him of them; Jesus Christ hath gained us by his blood, and you 
 snatch his conquest from him ; Jesus Christ is the physician of 
 souls, and you are their corrupter; he is their way, and you are 
 their snare ; he is the shepherd who comes in search of his perish- 
 ing sheep, and you are the ravenous wolf which slays and destroys 
 those his Father had given him. Fifthly, because all other sins 
 die, as I may say, with the sinner; but the fruit of his scandals 
 will outlive him, and his crimes will not go down with him into 
 the tomb of his fathers. 
 
 Achan was punished with so much rigour for having taken only 
 a wedge of gold from among the spoils which were consecrated to 
 the Lord: My God! what then shall be the punishment of him 
 who deprives Jesus Christ of a soul which was his precious spoil, 
 redeemed not with gold and silver, but with all the divine blood of 
 the Lamb without stain ? The golden calf was reduced into pow- 
 der for having occasioned the prevarication of Israel: great God ! 
 and could all the splendour which surrounds the great and the 
 powerful shelter them from thy wrath, when their exaltation be- 
 comes only a stumbling-block and a source of idolatry to the peo- 
 ple ? The brazen serpent itself, that sacred monument of God's 
 mercies upon Judah, was broken to pieces for having been an 
 occasion of scandal to the tribes : my God ! and the sinner already 
 so odious through his own crimes, shall he be spared when he be- 
 comes a snare and a stumbling-block to his brethren ? 
 
 Now, my brethren, such is the first character which always 
 accompanies your sins, you who are exalted through rank or birth, 
 over the commonalty of believers : the scandal. The obscure and 
 vulgar live only for themselves. Mingled in the crowd, and con- 
 cealed by the abjectness of their lot from the eyes of men, God 
 alone is the secret witness of their ways, and the invisible spectator 
 of their backslidings : if they fall, or if they remain steadfast, it is 
 for the Lord alone, who sees and who judges them ; the world, 
 which is unacquainted even with their names, is equally uninstruct- 
 edby their examples; their life is without consequence; they may 
 depart from the right path, but they quit it alone ; and if they 
 
Ser. 19. OF THE GREAT. 299 
 
 accomplish not their own salvation, their ruin is, at least, confined 
 to themselves, and has no influence over that of their brethren. 
 
 But persons of an exalted station, are like a public pageant, upon 
 which all eyes are fixed; they are those houses built upon a sum- 
 mit, the sole situation of which renders them visible from afar; 
 those flaming torches, the splendour of which at once betrays and 
 exposes them to view. Such is the misfortune of greatness and 
 of rank; you no longer live for yourself alone; to your destruction 
 or to your salvation is attached the destruction or the salvation of 
 almost all those around you: your manners form the manners of 
 the people; your examples are the rules of the multitude; your 
 actions are as well known as your titles ; it is impossible for you to 
 err unknown to the public, and the scandal of your faults is always 
 the melancholy privilege of your rank. 
 
 I say, the scandal, first, of imitation. Men always willingly copy 
 after evil, but more especially when held out by great examples; 
 they then ground a kind of vanity upon their errors, because 
 it is through these that they resemble you. The people consider 
 it as giving them an air of consequence to tread in your steps. The 
 city thinks it an honour to adopt all the vices of the court. Your 
 manners form a poison which penetrates even into the provinces; 
 which infects all stations, and gives a total change to the public 
 manners; which decks out licentiousness with an air of nobility 
 and spirit, and, in place of the simplicity of our ancient manners, 
 substitutes the miserable novelty of your pleasures, of your luxury, 
 of your profusions, and of your profane indecencies. Thus from 
 you it is that obscene fashions, vanity of dress, those artifices which 
 dishonour a visage where modesty alone ought to be painted, the rage 
 of gaming, freedom of manners, licentiousness of conversations, un- 
 bridled passions, and all the corruption of our ages, pass to the 
 people. 
 
 And from whence, think you, my brethren, comes that unbridled 
 licentiousness which reigns among the people? Those who live 
 far from you, in the most distant provinces, still preserve, at least, 
 some remains of their ancient simplicity and the primitive inno- 
 cence; they live in a happy ignorance of the greatest part of those 
 abuses which are now, through your examples, become laws. But 
 the nearer the countries approach to you, the more is the change 
 of manners visible, the more is innocence adulterated, the more 
 the abuses are common, and the greatest crime of the people is to 
 be acquainted with your manners and your customs. After the 
 chiefs of the tribes had entered into the tents of the daughters of 
 Midian, all Judah went aside from the Lord, and few were to be 
 found, who had kept free from the general guilt. Great God ! how 
 terrible shall one day be the trial of the great and powerful, since, 
 besides their own endless passions, they shall be made accountable 
 to thee for the public irregularities, the depravity of the manners, 
 and the corruption of their age ; and since even the sins of the peo- 
 ple shall become their own special sins ! 
 
 Secondly. A scandal of compliance. They endeavour to please, 
 
300 ON THE VICES AND VIRTUES Ser. 19. 
 
 by imitating you ; your inferiors, your creatures, your dependents, 
 consider a resemblance to you as the high road to your favour : 
 they copy your vices, because you hold them out to them as vir- 
 tues ; they enter into your fancies, in order to enter into your con- 
 fidence ; they outrival each other in copying, or in surpassing you, 
 because, in your eyes, their greatest merit is in resembling you. 
 Alas ! how many weak souls, born with the principles of virtue, 
 and who, far from you, would have nursed only those dispositions 
 favourable to salvation, have had their innocence wrecked through 
 the unfortunate necessity in which their fortune placed them of imi- 
 tating you ? 
 
 Thirdly. A scandal of impunity. You could never reprehend, 
 in your dependents, those abuses and those excesses which you 
 allow to yourself: you are under a necessity of suffering in them 
 what you have no inclination to refuse to yourself : your eyes must 
 be shut upon disorders which are authorized by your own manners ; 
 and you are forced to pardon those who resemble you, lest you 
 condemn yourself. A woman of the world, wholly devoted to the 
 art of pleasing, spreads through all her household an air of licen- 
 tiousness and of worldliness ; her house becomes a rock from 
 whence innocence never departs uninjured ; every one imitates at 
 home what she displays abroad ; and she must pass over these irre- 
 gularities, because her own manners do not permit her to censure 
 them. What excesses, in those houses kept open and appropriated 
 to everlasting gaming, among that people, as I may say, of domes- 
 tics, whom vanity has multiplied beyond all number ! You know 
 the truth of this, my brethren, and the dignity of the Christian 
 pulpit does not forbid me from repeating it here. How dearly do 
 these unfortunate wretches pay for your pleasures, who, out of your 
 sight, and no check to restrain them, fill up the idle time which 
 your pleasures leave to them, in every excess adapted to the mean- 
 ness of their education and their abject nature, and which they 
 think themselves authorized in doing by your examples ! O my God, 
 if he who neglects his people be worse in thy sight than an infidel, 
 what then is the guilt of him who scandalizes them, and is the cause 
 of their finding death and condemnation where they ought to have 
 found the succours of salvation and the asylum of their innocence ? 
 
 Fourthly. A scandal of employment and of necessity. How 
 many unfortunate wretches perish in order to feed your pleasures 
 and your iniquitous passions ! For you alone the dangerous arts 
 subsist : the theatres are erected solely for your criminal recrea- 
 tions; profane harmonies every where resound, and corrupt so 
 many hearts only to flatter the corruption of yours ; the works, 
 fatal to innocence, are transmitted to posterity solely through the 
 favour of your names and protection. It is you alone, my brethren, 
 who give to the world lascivious poets, pernicious authors, and 
 profane writers : it is to please you that these corrupters of the 
 public manners perfect their talents, and seek their exaltation and 
 fortune in a success, the only end of which is the destruction of 
 souls : it is you alone who protect, reward, and produce them; who 
 
Ser. 19. of the great. 301 
 
 take from them, by honouring them with your familiarity, that 
 mark of disgrace and infamy with which they had been stigmatized 
 by the laws of the church and of the state, and which degraded 
 them in the eyes of men. 
 
 Thus it is through you that the people participate in these de- 
 baucheries ; that this poison infects the cities and provinces ; that 
 these public pleasures become the source of the public miseries 
 and licentiousness ; that so many unfortunate victims renounce 
 their modesty to gratify your pleasures, and, seeking to improve 
 the mediocrity of their fortune by the exercise of talents which 
 your passions alone have rendered useful and recommendable, come 
 upon criminal theatres to express passions for the gratification of 
 yours ; to perish in order to please ; to sacrifice their innocence, in 
 occasioning the loss of it to those who listen to them ; to become 
 public rocks, and the scandal of religion ; to bring misery and dis- 
 sension even into your families, and to punish you, woman of the 
 world, for the support and credit which you give them by your 
 presence and your applauses, by becoming the criminal object of 
 the passion and of the ill-conduct of your children, and perhaps 
 dividing with yourself the heart of your husband, and completely 
 ruining his affairs and fortune. 
 
 Fifthly. A scandal of duration. It is little, my brethren, that 
 the corruption of our age is almost wholly the work of the great 
 and powerful ; the ages to come will likewise be indebted to you, 
 perhaps, for a part of their licentiousness and excesses. Those 
 profane poems, which have seen the light solely through your 
 means, shall still corrupt hearts in the following ages : those dan- 
 gerous authors, whom you honour with your protection, shall pass 
 into the hands of your posterity ; and your crimes shall be multi- 
 plied with that dangerous venom which they contain, and which 
 shall be communicated from age to age. Even your passions, im- 
 mortalized in history, after having been a scandal in their time, 
 will also become one in the following ages : the reading of your 
 errors, preserved to posterity, shall raise up imitators after your 
 death : instructions in guilt will be sought for in the narrative of 
 your adventures ; and your excesses shall not expire with you. 
 The voluptuousness of Solomon still furnishes blasphemies and de- 
 risions to the impious, and motives of confidence to libertinism ; 
 the infamous passion of Potiphar^s wife hath been preserved down 
 to us, and her rank hath immortalized her weakness. Such is the 
 destiny of the vices and of the passions of the great and powerful : 
 they do not live for their own age alone ; they live for the ages to 
 come, and the duration of their scandal hath no other limits than 
 that of their name. 
 
 You know this to be a truth, my brethren. Do they not, at 
 present, continue to read, with new danger, those scandalous me- 
 moirs composed in the age of our fathers, which have transmitted 
 down to us the excesses of the preceding courts, and immortalized 
 the passions of the principal persons who figured in them ? The 
 irregularities of an obscure people, and of the rest of men who then 
 
302 ON THE VICES AND VIRTUES Sei*. 19. 
 
 lived, remain sunk in oblivion: their passions terminated with 
 them; their vices, obscure as their names, have escaped history; 
 and, with regard to us, they are as though they had never been ; 
 and the errors of those who are distinguished in their age by their 
 rank and birth, are all that now remains to us of these past times. 
 It is their passions that continually inflame new ones, even at this 
 day, through the licentiousness of, and the open manner in which 
 they are mentioned by the authors who hand them down to us ; 
 and the sole privilege of their condition is, that, while the vices of 
 the lower orders of people sink with themselves, those of the great 
 and the powerful spring up again, as I may say, from their ashes, 
 pass from age to age, are engraven on the public monuments, and 
 are never blotted out from the memory of men. What crimes, 
 great God ! which are the scandal of all ages, the rock of all sta- 
 tions, and which, even to the end, shall serve as an excitement to 
 vice, as a pretext to the sinner, and as a lasting model of debau- 
 chery and licentiousness ! 
 
 Lastly. A scandal of seduction. Your examples, in honouring 
 vice, render virtue contemptible. The Christian life becomes so 
 ridiculous, that those who profess it are almost ashamed of it before 
 you. The exterior of piety has an ungracious and awkward appear- 
 ance, which is concealed in your presence, as if it were a bent which 
 dishonours the mind. How many souls touched by God, only re- 
 sist his grace and his spirit through the dread of forfeiting with 
 you that degree of confidence which a long society in pleasures hath 
 given to them ! How many souls, disgusted with the world, yet 
 who have not the courage to declare themselves, and return to God, 
 lest they expose themselves to your senseless derisions, still conti- 
 nue to copy your manners, upon which they have been fully unde- 
 ceived by grace, and, through an unrighteous complaisance and 
 respect for your rank, take a thousand steps from which their new 
 faith and likewise their inclination are equally distant ! 
 
 I speak not of the prejudices which you perpetuate in the world 
 against virtue ; of those lamentable discourses against the godly, 
 which your authority confirms ; which pass from you to the people, 
 and keep up, in all stations, those ancient prepossessions against 
 piety, and those continual derisions of the righteous, which deprive 
 virtue of all its dignity, and harden sinners in vice. 
 
 And from thence, my brethren, how many righteous seduced ! 
 how many weak led astray ! how many wavering souls retained in 
 sin ! how many impious and libertine souls strengthened ! What 
 an obstacle do you become to the fruit of our ministry ! How 
 many hearts, already prepared, oppose, to the force of the truth 
 which we announce, only the long engagements which bind them 
 to your manners and to your pleasures, and find within themselves 
 only you who serve as a wall and a buckler against grace ! My God ! 
 what a scourge for the age, what a misfortune for the people, is a 
 grandee according to the world, who lives not in the fear of thee, 
 who knows thee not, and who acts in contempt of thy laws and 
 eternal ordinances ! It is a present which thou sendest to men in 
 
Ser. 19. of the great. 303 
 
 thy wrath, and the most dreadful mark of thine indignation upon 
 the cities and upon the kingdoms. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, behold what you are when you belong not to 
 God. Such is the first character of your faults, the scandal. 
 Your lot decides in general that of the people : the excesses of the 
 lower ranks are always the consequence of your excesses ; and the 
 transgressions of Jacob, said the prophet, that is to say, of the 
 people and of the tribes, came only from Samaria, the seat of the 
 great and of the mighty. 
 
 But, even granting that no new degree of enormity should be 
 specially attached to the great by the scandal inseparable from 
 their sins, ingratitude, which forms the second character of them, 
 would be amply sufficient to attract, upon their heads, that neglect 
 of God by which his bowels are for ever shut to compassion and 
 clemency. 
 
 I say ingratitude : for God hath preferred you to so many unfor- 
 tunate fellow-creatures who languish in obscurity and in want : he 
 hath exalted you, and hath caused you to be born amid splendour 
 and abundance ; he hath chosen you above all the people, to load 
 you with benefits ; in you alone he hath assembled riches, honours, 
 titles, distinctions, and all the advantages of the earth. It would 
 seem that his providence watches only for you, while so many un- 
 fortunate millions eat the bread of tribulation and of sorrow. The 
 earth seems to be produced for you alone ; the sun to rise and to 
 go down solely for you; even the rest of men seem born only for 
 you ; and to contribute to your grandeur and purposes. It would 
 appear that the Lord is occupied solely with you, while he neglected 
 so many obscure souls, whose days are days of sorrow and want, 
 and for whom it would seem that there is no God upon earth. 
 Yet, nevertheless, you turn against God all that you have received 
 from his hands ; your abundance serves for the indulgence of your 
 passions ; your exaltation facilitates your criminal pleasures, and 
 his blessings become your crimes. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, while thousands of unfortunate fellow-crea- 
 tures, upon whom his hand is, so heavy ; while an obscure populace, 
 for whom life has nothing but hardships and toil, invoke and bless 
 him, raise up the hands to him in the simplicity of their heart, 
 regard him as their father, and give him every mark of an unaffected 
 piety, and of a sincere religion you, whom he loads with his bene- 
 fits ; you for whom the entire world seems to be made, you ac- 
 knowledge him not; you deign not to lift up your eyes to him; you 
 never bestow even a moment's reflection whether there be or be 
 not a God above you who interferes in the things of the earth ; in 
 place of thanksgivings you return him insults, and religion is only 
 for the people. 
 
 Alas ! you think it so mean and so ungenerous when those whose 
 advancement was your work, neglect you, deny their obligations, 
 and even employ that credit which they owe solely to you, in 
 thwarting and ruining you. But, my brethren, they only act by 
 you as you do toward your God. Is not your exaltation his work ? 
 
304 ON THE VICES AND VIRTUES. Sei\ 19. 
 
 Is not his hand alone which hath separated your ancestors from the 
 crowd, and hath placed him at the head of the people ? Is it not 
 through his providence alone that you are born of an illustrious 
 blood, and that you enjoy, from your birth, what a whole life of 
 care and toil could never have afforded you reason to expect? What 
 had you in his eyes more than so many unfortunate fellow-creatures 
 whom he leaveth in want ? Ah ! if he had paid regard only to the 
 natural qualities of the soul, to probity, honesty, modesty, innocence, 
 how many obscure souls, born with all these virtues, might have 
 been preferred, and would now have been occupying your place! 
 If he had consulted only the use which you were one day to make 
 of his benefits, how many unfortunate souls, had they been placed 
 in your situation, would have been an example to the people, the 
 protectors of virtue, and in their abundance would have glorified 
 God, they who even in their indigence invoke and bless him; while 
 you, on the contrary, are the cause of his name being blasphemed, 
 and your example becomes a seduction for his people ! 
 
 He chooseth you, however, and rejecteth them ; he humble th 
 them and exalteth you ; for them he is a hard and severe master, 
 and for you a liberal and bountiful father. What more could he 
 have done to engage you to serve and to be faithful to him? What 
 more powerful attraction, or more likely to secure the homages of 
 hearts than benefits ? "Thine, O Lord," said David, at the height 
 of all his prosperity, "is the greatness, and the power, and the 
 glory : both riches and honour come from thee ; and in thine hand 
 it is to make great, and to give strength unto all. It is just, 
 then O my God, to glorify thee in thy gifts ; to measure what 
 I owe thee upon what thou hast done for me; and to render 
 mine exaltation, my greatness, and all that I am, subservient to thy 
 glory." 
 
 Yet, nevertheless, my brethren, the more he hath done for you, the 
 more do you raise yourselves up against him. It is the rich and the 
 powerful who live without other God in this world than their iniqui- 
 tous pleasures. It is you alone who dispute* the slightest homages 
 to him ; who believe yourselves to be dispensed from whatever is 
 irksome or severe in his law ; who fancy yourselves born for the 
 sole purpose of enjoying yourselves, of applying his benefits to the 
 gratification of your passions, and who remit to the common people 
 the care of serving him, of returning him thanks, and of religiously 
 observing the ordinances of his holy law. 
 
 Thus frequently the people worship, and you insult him; the 
 people appease, and you provoke him ; the people invoke, and you 
 neglect him ; the people zealously serve him, and you look down 
 upon his servants ; the people are continually raising up their hands 
 to him 3 and you doubt whether he even exists, you who alone feel 
 the effects of his liberality and of his power; his chastisements 
 form worshippers to him, and his benefits are followed with only 
 derisions and insults. 
 
 I say his benefits : for, with regard to you, he hath not confined 
 them to the mere external advantages of fortune. He hath likewise 
 
Ser. 19. or the great. 305 
 
 produced you with more favourable dispositions to virtue than the 
 simple people ; a heart more noble, and more exalted ; happier in- 
 clinations ; sentiments more worthy of the grandeur of faith ; more 
 understanding, elevation of mind, knowledge, instruction, and relish 
 for good. You have received from nature, milder passions, more 
 cultivated manners, and all the other incidental advantages of high 
 birth ; that politeness which softens the temper ; that dignity 
 which restrains the sallies of the disposition ; that humanity which 
 renders you more open to the impressions of grace. How many 
 benefits do you then abuse, when you live not according to God ! 
 What a monster is a man of high rank, loaded with honours and 
 prosperity, who never lifts his eyes to heaven to worship the hand 
 which bestows them ! 
 
 And whence, think you, come the public calamities, the scourges 
 with which the cities and provinces are afflicted ? It is solely in 
 punishment of your iniquitous abuse of abundance, that God some- 
 times striketh the land with barrenness. His justice irritated that 
 you turned his own benefits against himself, withdraws them from 
 your passions, curses the land, permits wars and dissensions, crum- 
 bles your fortunes into dust, extinguishes your families, withers the 
 root of your posterity, makes your titles and possessions to pass 
 into the hands of strangers, and holds you out as striking examples 
 of the inconstancy of human affairs and the anticipated monuments 
 of his wrath against hearts equally ungrateful and insensible to the 
 paternal cares of his providence. 
 
 Such, my brethren, are the two characters inseparable from your 
 sins, the scandal and the ingratitude. Behold what you are when 
 you depart from God ; and this is what you have never perhaps 
 paid attention to. From the moment that you are guilty, you 
 cannot be indifferently so. The passions are the same in the peo- 
 ple and among the powerful ; but very different is the guilt ; and a 
 single one of your crimes often leads to more miseries, and hath, 
 before God, more extended and more terrible consequences, than a 
 whole life of iniquity in an obscure and vulgar soul. But your vir- 
 tues have also the same advantage and the same lot : and this is 
 what remains for me to prove in the last part of this Discourse. 
 
 Part II. If scandal and ingratitude be the inseparable, conse- 
 quences of the vices and passions of persons of high rank, their 
 virtues have also two particular characters, which render them far 
 more acceptable to God than those of common believers : firstly, 
 the example ; secondly, the authority. And this, my brethren, is a 
 truth highly consoling to you, who are placed by Providence in an 
 exalted station, and well calculated to animate you to serve God, 
 and to render virtue lovely to you. For it is an illusion to consider 
 the rank to which you are born as an obstacle to salvation, and to 
 the duties imposed upon us by religion. The rocks are more dange- 
 rous there, I confess, than in an obscure lot, the temptation 
 stronger and more frequent ; and, while pointing out the advantages, 
 with regard to salvation, of high rank, I pretend not to conceal 
 
306 ON THE VICES AND VIRTUES Ser. 19. 
 
 those dangers which Jesus Christ himself hath pointed out to us 
 in the gospel, as being attached to it. 
 
 I mean only to establish this truth, that you may do more for 
 God than the common people; that infinitely more advantages 
 accrue to religion from the piety of a single person of distinction, 
 than from that of almost a whole people of believers ; and that you 
 are so much the more culpable when you neglect God, in proportion 
 to the glory that he would draw from your fidelity, and that your vir- 
 tues have more extended consequences for the edification of believers. 
 
 The first is the example. A soul from among the people who 
 fears God, glorifies him only in his own heart : he is a child of 
 light, who walks, as I may say, amid darkness : he pays his own 
 homage, but he attracts no others to him. Shut up in the obscu- 
 rity of his fortune, he lives under the eyes of God alone ; he wishes 
 that his name be glorified, and, by these desires, he renders to him 
 that glory which he cannot do by his examples : his virtues tend 
 to his own salvation ; but they are as lost for the salvation of his 
 brethren : he is here below as a treasure hidden in the earth, which 
 the vineyard of Jesus Christ beareth unwittingly, and of which he 
 maketh no use. 
 
 But for you, my brethren, who live exposed to the view of the 
 public, and whose eyes are always upon you, your virtuous exam- 
 ples become equally shining as your names : you spread the good 
 savour of Jesus Christ wherever that of your rank and titles is 
 spread : you make the name of the Lord to be glorified wherever 
 your own is known. The same elevation which makes you to be 
 known upon the earth, likewise informs all men what you do for 
 heaven. The wonders of grace are every where seen in your na- 
 tional advantages : the people, the cities, the provinces, who are 
 continually hearing your names repeated, feel awakened with them, 
 that idea of virtue which your examples have attached to them. 
 You honour piety in the opinion of the public: you preach it to 
 those whom you know not : you become, says the prophet, like a 
 signal of virtue raised up amid the people : a whole kingdom has 
 its eyes upon you, and speaks of your examples, and even abroad 
 your piety becomes equally known as your birth. 
 
 Now, amid this general estimation, what attraction to virtue for 
 the people ! First, the great models are more striking, and, when 
 countenanced by the great, piety becomes as it were fashionable 
 with the people. Secondly, that idea of weakness commonly at- 
 tached to virtue is dissipated from the moment that you ennoble it, 
 as I may say, with your names, and that they can produce your 
 examples in honour of it. Thirdly, the rest of men no longer 
 blush at modesty and frugality, when they see, in your instance, 
 that modesty is perfectly compatible with greatness ; and that to 
 shun luxury and profusion is so far from being a subject of shame 
 to any rank whatever, that, on the contrary, it adds lustre and dig- 
 nity to the highest rank and birth. Fourthly, how many weak 
 souls, who would blush at virtue, are confirmed by your example, 
 are no longer afraid of acting as you act, and who even pride them- 
 
Ser. 19. OF THE GREAT. 30 7 
 
 selves in following your steps! Fifthly, how many souls, still 
 too attached to worldly interests, would dread lest piety should be 
 an obstacle to their advancement, and perhaps find, in this temp- 
 tation, an effectual bar to all their penitential desires, if they were 
 not taught, in seeing you, that piety is useful to all, and that, 
 while attracting the favours of heaven, they do not prevent those 
 of the earth ! Sixthly, your inferiors, your creatures, and all who de- 
 pend upon you, view virtue in a much more amiable light, since it is 
 become a certain way of pleasing you, and that their progress in your 
 confidence and esteem depends upon their advancement in piety. 
 
 Lastly. What an honour to religion, when, in your persons, she 
 proves that she is still capable of forming righteous men, who de- 
 spise honours, dignities, and riches ; who live amidst prosperity 
 without being dazzled with it ; who enjoy the first places without 
 losing sight of eternal riches ; who possess all, as though possess- 
 ing nothing ; who are greater than the whole world, and consider 
 as dirt all the advantages of the earth, whenever they become an 
 obstacle to promises held out by faith in heaven ! What confusion 
 for the wicked to feel, in seeing you treading the paths of salvation 
 amidst every human prosperity, that virtue is not an adoption of 
 despair ! that they vainly endeavour to persuade themselves, that 
 recourse is had to God only when forsaken by the world, since you 
 fail not, though loaded with all the favours of the world, to love 
 the shame of Jesus Christ ! What consolation, even for our mi- 
 nistry, to be enabled to employ your examples in these Christian 
 pulpits, in overthrowing the sinners of a more obscure lot ; to cite 
 your virtues to make them blush at their vices ; to cover with 
 shame all their vain excuses, by proving your fidelity to the law of 
 God ; that their dangers are not greater than yours ; that the ob- 
 jects of their passions are less seductive ; that more charms and 
 more illusions are not held out by the world to them than to you ; 
 that if grace can raise up faithful hearts even in the palaces of 
 kings, it must be equally able to form them under the roof of the 
 citizen and of the magistrate, and, consequently, that salvation is 
 open to all, and that our station becomes a favourable pretext to 
 our passions, only when the corruption of our hearts is the true 
 reason which authorizes them. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, I repeat, that, in serving God, you give a new 
 force to our ministry ; more weight to the truths announced by us 
 to the people ; more confidence to our zeal ; more dignity to the 
 word of Jesus Christ; more credit to our censures ; more consola- 
 tion to our toils ; and, in viewing you, the world is convinced of 
 truths which it hath disputed with us. What benefits, then, accrue 
 from your examples ! You accredit piety, and honour religion in 
 the mind of the people ; you animate the righteous of every sta- 
 tion ; you console the servants of God ; you spread throughout a 
 whole kingdom a savour of life that overthrows vice and counte- 
 nances virtue ; you support the rules of the gospel against the 
 maxims of the world ; you are cited in the cities and in the most 
 distant provinces to encourage the weak, and to aggrandize the 
 
 x 2 
 
308 ON THE VICES AND VIRTUES Sei\ 19. 
 
 kingdom of Jesus Christ ; fathers teach your names to their chil- 
 dren, to animate them to virtue ; and, without knowing it, you be- 
 come the model of the people, the conversation of the lower orders, 
 the edification of families, the example of every station and of every 
 class. Scarcely had the heads of the tribes in the desert, and the 
 most distinguished women, brought to Moses their most precious 
 ornaments for the construction of the tabernacle, when all the peo- 
 ple, incited by their example, presented themselves in crowds to 
 offer their gifts and presents ; and Moses was even under the ne- 
 cessity of placing bounds to their pious alacrity, and of moderating 
 the excess of their liberalities. 
 
 Ah ! my brethren, what good, once more, may your examples do 
 among the people ! Public dissipations discredited from the moment 
 that you cease to countenance them; indecent fashions pro- 
 scribed whenever you neglect them ; dangerous customs anti- 
 quated as soon as you forsake them ; the source of almost all dis- 
 orders dried up from the moment that you live according to God. 
 And how many souls thereby saved what evils prevented what 
 crimes checked what misfortunes hindered ! What gain for re- 
 ligion is a single person of rank, who lives according to faith ! 
 What a present doth God make to the earth, to a kingdom, to a 
 people, when he bestoweth grandees who live in his fear ! And, 
 should the interest even of your own soul be insufficient to render 
 virtue amiable to you, should not the interest of so many souls, to 
 whom, by living according to God, you are an occasion of salvation, 
 induce you to prefer the fear and the love of his law, to all the 
 vain pleasures of the earth ? Is the heart capable of tasting a more 
 exquisite pleasure than that of being a source of salvation and of 
 benediction to our brethren ? 
 
 And what is yet more fortunate here for you, is, that you do not 
 live for your own age alone. I have already observed that your 
 examples will pass to the following ages : the virtues of the simple 
 believers perish, as I may say, with them, but your virtues will be 
 recorded in history with your names. You will become a pious 
 model for our posterity, equally as you have been so for the people 
 of your own times. Connected, through your rank and your em- 
 ployments, with the principal events of our age, you will be trans- 
 mitted with them to the ages to come. Succeeding courts will 
 still find the history of your piety and of your manners blended 
 with the public history of our days. You will do credit to piety 
 even in the ages to follow. The memory of your virtues, preserved 
 in our annals, will still serve as an instruction to those of your de- 
 scendants who shall read them ; and it shall one day be said of 
 you, as of those men full of glory and of righteousness, mentioned 
 by Scripture, that your piety has not finished with you ; that your 
 bodies, indeed, are buried in peace, but that your name liveth for 
 evermore, that your seed standeth for ever, and that your name 
 shall not be blotted out. 
 
 Nor is this all : the example renders your virtues a public good, 
 which is their first character ; but authority, which is their second, 
 
Ser. 19. of the great. 309 
 
 finishes and sustains the endless good which your examples have 
 begun. And, in speaking of the authority, why can I not here un- 
 fold all the immensity of the fruitful consequences of the piety of 
 the great, which this idea excites in my mind ? 
 
 First. The protection of virtue. Timid virtue is often oppressed 
 because it wants either boldness to show itself, or protection to de- 
 fend it ; obscure virtue is often despised, because nothing exalts 
 it to the eyes of the senses, and the world is delighted to turn into 
 a crime against piety the obscurity of those who practise it. But, 
 so soon as you adopt its cause, ah ! virtue no longer wants pro- 
 tection : you become the interpreters of the godly with the prince, 
 and the channels by which they find continual access to the throne ; 
 you bring righteous characters into office, who become public ex- 
 amples ; you bring to light servants of God, men of learning and 
 of virtue, who would have remained in the dust, and who, through 
 favour of your support, appear to the public, employ their talents, 
 contribute to the edification of believers, to the instruction of the 
 people, to the consummation of the holy, teach the rules of virtue 
 to those who know them not, will teach them to our descendants, 
 and will hand down, to all ages to come, with the pious monuments 
 of their own zeal, the immortal fruits of that protection with which 
 you have honoured virtue, and of your love for the righteous. 
 
 What shall I say ? You strengthen the zeal of the godly in holy 
 undertakings ; and your protection animates and enables them to 
 conquer all the obstacles which the demon constantly throws in the 
 way of works which are to glorify God and to contribute to the 
 salvation of souls. What noble foundations and pious designs, now 
 carried into execution, would have failed, if the authority of a 
 righteous man in office had not removed the impediments which 
 rendered their accomplishment apparently impossible ! 
 
 What more shall I say ? By your examples you render virtue 
 respectable to those who love it not, and they are no longer 
 ashamed of being a Christian from the moment that they therein 
 resemble you. You divest impiety of that air of confidence and of 
 ostentation with which it dares to show itself, and free-thinking 
 ceases to be fashionable as soon as you declare against it. You 
 maintain the religion of our fathers among the people ; you pre- 
 serve faith to the following ages ; and often it requires only a single 
 person of rank in a kingdom, firm in faith, to stop the progress of 
 error and innovation, and to preserve to a whole people the faith 
 of their ancestors. The single Esther saved the people and the 
 law of God in a great empire; Matthias individually stood out 
 against foreign altars, and prevented superstitions from prevailing 
 in the midst of Judah. Oh ! my brethren, how grand when you 
 belong to Jesus Christ ! and with what superior lustre and dignity 
 do your rank and your birth appear in the vast fruits of your 
 piety, than in the luxury of your passions, and in all the vain pomp 
 of human magnificence ! 
 
 Secondly. The rewards of virtue. You render it honourable by 
 giving it that preference which is its due, in the choice of places 
 
310 OX THE VICES AND VIRTUES Sei\ 19. 
 
 dependent upon you, and in intrusting with employments only those 
 whose piety entitles them to the public confidence ; by placing de- 
 pendence upon the fidelity of your inferiors only in proportion as 
 they are faithful to God, and, in men, looking principally for recti- 
 tude of heart and innocence of manners, without which all other 
 talents no longer form but an equivocal merit, either injurious to 
 themselves, or useless to the public. 
 
 And from thence, what new weal to the public! What happiness 
 for a kingdom in which the godly occupy the first places ; where 
 employments are the rewards of virtue ; where the public affairs are 
 intrusted only to those who have more the public interest in view 
 than their own, and who consider as nothing the gain of the whole 
 world if they thereby lose their soul ! 
 
 What advantage for the people when they find their fathers in 
 their judges, the protectors of their helplessness in the arbiters of 
 their lot, the consolers of their sufferings in the interpreters of 
 their interests ! What abuses prevented ! what tears wiped away ! 
 what crimes avoided ! what harmony in families ! what con- 
 solation for the unfortunate ! What a compliment even to virtue, 
 when the people are rejoiced to see it in office, and when the 
 world, all worldly as it is, is, however, well pleased to have the 
 godly for its defenders and judges ! What an attraction to virtue, 
 when it is seen to have the promise, not only of the life that now 
 is, but of that also which is to come ! 
 
 And say not, my brethren, that, in rewarding virtue, sinners are 
 not corrected, but only hypocrites multiplied, I know how far 
 men may be carried by a thirst of advancement, and what abuses 
 they are capable of making of religion in order to accomplish 
 their ends : but, at least, you force vice to hide itself ; you divets 
 it of that notoriety and security which spread and communicate 
 it ; you preserve the externals of religion among the people ; you 
 multiply the examples of piety among believers, and if licentious- 
 ness be not in reality diminished, at least the scandals are more rare ! 
 
 Lastly. The holy liberalities of virtue. But I feel that my sub- 
 ject leads me away, and it is time to conclude. Yes, my brethren, 
 what an additional fund of comfort for the people in the Christian 
 and charitable use of your riches ! You shelter innocence ; you 
 open asylums of penitence for guilt ; you render virtue lovely to the 
 unfortunate by the resources which they find in yours ; you secure 
 to husbands the fidelity of their wives, to fathers the salvation of 
 their children, to pastors the safety of their flock ; peace to fami- 
 lies, comfort to the afflicted, innocence to the deserted widow, an 
 aid to the orphan, good order to the public, and, to all, the support 
 of their virtue, or the cure of their vices. 
 
 And here, my brethren, could you but comprehend the wide- 
 extended fruits of your virtue, and the inexplicable advantages ac- 
 cruing from it to the church, what scandals avoided ! what crimes 
 prevented ! what public scourges checked ! how many weak pre- 
 served ! how many righteous sustained ! how many sinners re- 
 called ! how many souls withdrawn from the precipice ! how 
 
Ser. 19. of the great. 31 L 
 
 much you contribute to the aggrandizement of the kingdom of 
 Jesus Christ, to the honour of religion, to the consummation of the 
 holy, and to the salvation of all believers ! how many of the 
 chosen of every tongue and of every tribe shall one day, in heaven, 
 place at your feet their crown of immortality, as if publicly to ac- 
 knowledge their obligation to you ! what consolation to be able to 
 say to yourself, that, in serving God, you will attract other servants 
 to him, and that your piety becomes a blessing upon the people ! 
 No, my brethren, if there be any thing nattering in rank, it is not 
 those vain distinctions attached to it by custom ; it is the power of 
 becoming, by serving God, the source of public blessings, the sup- 
 port of religion, the consolation of the church, and the chief instru- 
 ments employed by God for the accomplishment of his merciful 
 designs upon men. 
 
 Ah ! what then do you not lose when you do not live according 
 to God ! What do we ourselves not lose when you are want- 
 ing to us ! Of how many advantages do you deprive believers ! 
 Of what consolations do you not deprive yourselves ! What joy in 
 heaven for the conversion of a single great sinner in the age ! How 
 highly criminal when you live not according to God ! You can 
 neither be saved nor condemned alone. You resemble either that 
 dragon of the Revelation, who, being cast out from heaven into the 
 earth, drags after him in his fall so many of the stars ; or that mys- 
 terious serpent spoken of by Jesus Christ, who, being exalted upon 
 the earth, haply attracts all after him. You are established for the 
 ruin or for the salvation of many; public scourges or comforts. 
 May you, my brethren, know your true interests ; may you feel 
 what you are in the designs of God, how much you have it in your 
 power to do for his glory, how much he expecteth of you, how 
 much the church, and even we ourselves, expect of you ! Ah ! you 
 have so high an idea of your rank and of your stations with rela- 
 tion to the world ! 
 
 But, my brethren, permit me to say it to you, you are yet unac- 
 quainted with all their greatness ; you see but the humblest part of 
 what you are ; you are still greater with relation to piety, and the 
 privileges of your virtue are much more illustrious and more marked 
 than those of your titles. May you, my brethren, act up to your 
 lot ! And thou, O my God ! touch, during these days of salvation, 
 through the force of that truth with which thou fillest our mouths, 
 the great and the powerful; draw to thyself those hearts upon 
 whose conquest depends that of the rest of believers ; have com- 
 passion upon thy people by sanctifying those whom thy providence 
 hath placed at their head ; save Israel, in saving those who rule 
 it ; give to thy church great examples, who perpetuate virtue from 
 age to age ; and who assist, even to the end, in forming that im- 
 mortal assembly of the righteous which shall bless thy name for 
 ever and ever ! 
 
312 injustice -of the world Ser. 20. 
 
 SERMON XX. 
 
 ON THE INJUSTICE OF THE WORLD TOWARD THE GODLY. 
 
 " Give God the praise : we know that this man is a sinner." John ix. 24. 
 
 What can the purest and most irreproachable virtue expect 
 from the injustice of the worlds seeing it hath formerly found sub- 
 jects for scandal and censure in the sanctity even of Jesus Christ ? 
 If, before their eyes, he work wonderful miracles ; if, on this occa- 
 sion, he restores sight to the blind, the Jews accuse him of being 
 a sabbath-breaker; of working miracles through Beelzebub rather 
 than in the name of the Lord, and of only wishing, through these 
 impostures, to overturn and to destroy the law of Moses ; that is 
 to say, that they attack his intentions, in order to render suspicious 
 and to criminate his works. 
 
 If he honour with his presence the table of the Pharisees, that 
 he may have an opportunity of recalling and instructing them, he is 
 looked upon as a sinner, and as a lover of good cheer : that is to 
 say, that they make a crime to him of his works, when they find it 
 convenient not to search into the integrity of his intentions. 
 
 Lastly. If he appear in the temple, armed with zeal and severity, 
 to avenge the profanations which disgrace that holy place, the zeal 
 with which he is inflamed for the glory of his Father is no longer 
 in their mouth, but an unjust usurpation of an authority which be- 
 longs not to him : that is to say, that they exercise themselves in 
 vague and unfounded reproaches, when they have nothing to say 
 against his intentions or his works. 
 
 I say, and I say it with sorrow, that the piety of the godly doth 
 not, at present, experience more indulgence amongst us, than the 
 sanctity of Jesus Christ formerly met with in Judea. The pious 
 are become objects of censure and derision to the public ; and in an 
 age where dissipation is become so general, where scandalous ex- 
 cesses of every kind furnish such ample matter to the malignity of 
 conversations and censures, favour is liberally shown to all, except- 
 ing to virtue and innocence. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, if the conduct of the godly be apparently irre- 
 proachable, and furnish no materials for censure, you fix yourselves 
 on their intentions which appear not ; you accuse them of labour- 
 ing toward their own purposes, and of having their own particular 
 views and designs. 
 
 If their virtue seem to draw nearer to an equality with our own, 
 and sometimes abate from its severity to attach us to God, by an 
 ostensible conformity to our manners and customs ; without search- 
 ing into, or giving yourselves any concern about their intentions, you 
 constitute as a crime in them, the most innocent complaisances, 
 and concessions the most worthy of indulgence. 
 
Ser. 20. toward the godly. 313 
 
 Lastly. If their virtue, inspired by a divine fire, no longer keep 
 measures with the world, and leave nothing to be alleged against 
 either their intentions or their works, then you exercise yourselves 
 in vague discourses and unfounded reproaches against even their 
 zeal and piety. 
 
 Now, suffer me, my brethren, for once to stand up against an 
 abuse so disgraceful to religion, so injurious to that Being who 
 forms the holy, so scandalous among Christians, so likely to draw 
 down upon us those lasting curses which formerly turned the inhe- 
 ritance of the Lord into a deserted and forsaken land, and so 
 worthy of the zeal of our ministry. 
 
 You attack the intentions, when you have nothing to say against 
 the works of the godly ; and that is a temerity. You exaggerate 
 their weaknesses, and you make a crime to them of the slightest 
 imperfections ; and that is an inhumanity. You turn even their 
 zeal and fervour into ridicule ; and that is an impiety. And behold, 
 my brethren, the three descriptions of the world's injustice toward 
 the pious: an injustice of temerity, which always suspects their 
 intentions; an injustice of inhumanity, which gives no palliation to 
 the slightest imperfections; an injustice of impiety, which, of their 
 zeal and sanctity, makes a subject of contempt and derision. May 
 these truths, O my God ! render to virtue that honour and glory 
 which are due to it, and force the world itself to respect the pious 
 characters whom it is unworthy to possess ! 
 
 Part I. Nothing is more sublime, or more worthy of venera- 
 tion on the earth, than true virtue : the world itself is forced to 
 acknowledge this truth. The elevation of sentiment, the nobility 
 of motive, the empire over the passions, the patience under adver- 
 sity, the gentleness under injuries, the contempt of one's self under 
 praise, the courage under difficulties, the austerity in pleasures, the 
 fidelity in duties, the equality of temper in all events with which 
 philosophy hath decked out its imaginary sage, find their reality 
 only in the disciple of the gospel. The more our manners are even 
 corrupted, the more our times are dissolute, the more doth a just 
 soul, who, in the midst of the general corruption, know how to 
 preserve his righteousness and his innocence, merit the public ad- 
 miration ; and if the Pagans themselves so highly respected Chris- 
 tians, in a time when all Christians were holy, with much greater 
 reason are those Christians, who act up to the name of Christian, 
 worthy of our veneration and respect, at this period, when sanctity 
 is become so rare among believers. 
 
 How melancholy then for our ministry, that the corruption of 
 manners should oblige us to do here what the first defenders of 
 faith formerly did with so much dignity before the Pagan tribu- 
 nals ; that is to say, to make the apology of the servants of Jesus 
 Christ ; and that it should be necessary to teach Christians to ho- 
 nour those who profess themselves such ! Yet true it is ; for de- 
 rision and censure against piety seem at present to be the most 
 dominant language of the world. I confess, that the world ideally 
 
S14 INJUSTICE OF THE WORLD Sei\ 20. 
 
 respects virtue ; but it always despises those who make a profes- 
 sion of it : it acknowledges that nothing is more estimable than a 
 solid and sincere piety ; but it complains that such is no where to 
 be found : and, by always separating virtue from those who prac- 
 tise it, it only makes a show of respecting the phantom of sanctity 
 and righteousness, that it may be the better entitled to contemn 
 and to censure the just. 
 
 Now the first object, on which the ordinary discourses of the 
 world fall against virtue, is the probity of the intentions of the just. 
 As what is apparent in their actions gives little hold, in general, to 
 malignity and censure, they confine themselves to the intentions : 
 they pretend, and above all at present, when, under a prince 
 equally great as religious, virtue, formerly a stranger, and dreaded 
 at court, is now become the surest path to favour and reward, 
 they pretend that it is there to which all who make a public pro- 
 fession of it, point their aim ; that their only wish is to accomplish 
 their ends; and that those who appear the most sanctified and 
 disinterested, are superior to the rest only in art and cunning. If 
 they excuse them from the meanness of such a motive, they give 
 them others equally unworthy of the elevation of virtue and of 
 Christian sincerity. Thus when a soul, touched for its errors, be- 
 comes contrite, it is not God, but the world, whom it seeks through 
 a more cunning and concealed path ; it is not grace which hath 
 changed the heart, it is age which begins to efface its attractions, 
 and to withdraw it from pleasures, only because pleasures begin to 
 fly from it. If zeal attaches itself to works of piety, it is not that 
 they are charitable, it is because they wish to become consequen- 
 tial. If they shut themselves up in solitude and in prayer, it is 
 not their piety which dreads the dangers of the world, it is their 
 singularity and ostentation which wish to attract its suffrages. 
 Lastly, the merit of the most holy and the most virtuous actions is 
 always disparaged in the mouth of the worldly, by the suspicions 
 with which they endeavour to blacken the intentions. 
 
 Now, in this temerity, I find three hateful characters, which ex- 
 pose the absurdity and the injustice of it : it is a temerity of indis- 
 cretion, seeing you judge, you decide upon what you know not : 
 it is a temerity of corruption, seeing we generally suppose in others 
 only what we feel in ourselves : lastly, it is a temerity of contra- 
 diction, seeing you find unjust and foolish when directed against 
 yourself, the very same suspicions which to you appear so well- 
 founded against your brother. Lose not, I entreat of you, the con- 
 sequence of these truths. 
 
 I say, first, a temerity of indiscretion. For, my brethren, to 
 God alone is reserved the judgment of intentions and thoughts : 
 He alone who sees the secrecy of hearts can judge them ; nor will 
 they be manifested till that terrible day when his light shall shine 
 through and dispel every darkness. An impenetrable veil is spread 
 here below, over the depth of the human heart ; we must then wait 
 till that veil shall be rent, before the shameful passion which it 
 conceals, as the apostle says, can become manifest, and before the 
 

 Ser. 20. toward the godly. 315 
 
 mystery of iniquity, which worketh in secret, can be revealed ; till 
 then, whatever passes in the heart of men, buried from our know- 
 ledge, is interdicted to the temerity of our judgments : even when 
 what is visible in the conduct of our brethren appears unfavourable 
 to them, charity obliges us to suppose that what we see not makes 
 amends for and rectifies it ; and it requires us to excuse the faults 
 of the actions which offend us by the innocency of the intentions 
 which are concealed from our knowledge. Now, if religion ought 
 to render us indulgent, and even favourable to their vices, will it 
 suffer us to be cruel and inexorable to their virtues ? 
 
 Indeed, my brethren, what renders your temerity here more un- 
 just, more black, and more cruel, is the nature of your suspicions. 
 For, were your suspicions of the pious to be directed only toward 
 some of those weaknesses inseparable from human nature, for 
 instance, too much sensibility of injury, too much attention to their 
 interests, too much inflexibility in their opinions, we would be 
 entitled to reply to you, as we shall afterwards tell you, that you 
 exact from the virtuous an exemption from error, and a degree of 
 perfection which exist not in life. But you rest not there : you 
 attack their probity and integrity of heart ; you suspect them of 
 atrocity, dissimulation, and hypocrisy ; of making the most holy 
 things subservient to their own views and passions ; of being public 
 impostors ; of sporting with God and man ; and all these through 
 the ostensible appearances of virtue. What, my brethren ! you 
 would not dare, after the most notorious guilt, to pronounce such a 
 sentence on a convicted criminal ; you would rather consider his 
 fault as one of those misfortunes which may happen to all men, and 
 of which an evil moment may render us capable ; and you decid- 
 edly give judgment against the virtuous ; and you suspect in a pious 
 character, from a holy and praiseworthy life, what you would not 
 dare to suspect from the most scandalous and criminal conduct of a 
 sinner ? And you consider as a witticism, when directed against 
 the servants of God, what would appear to you as a barbarity when 
 against a man stained with a thousand crimes. Is virtue, then, the 
 only crime unworthy of indulgence ; or is it sufficient, to serve Jesus 
 Christ, to become unworthy of all respect ? Do the holy practices 
 of piety, which surely ought rather to attract respect and estimation 
 to your brother, become the only titles which confound him, in your 
 mind, with the infamous and the wicked ? 
 
 I allow that the hypocrite deserves the execration of both God 
 and man ; that the abuse which he makes of religion is the greatest 
 of crimes ; that derisions and satires are too mild to decry a vice 
 which deserves detestation and horror from the human race ; and 
 that a profane theatre errs in throwing only ridicule upon a cha- 
 racter so abominable, so shameful, and so afflicting to the church ; 
 for it ought to excite the tears and indignation rather than the 
 laughter of believers. 
 
 But I say, that this eternal inveteracy against virtue ; that the 
 rash suspicions which always confound the pious man with the 
 hypocrite; that that malignity which, in making the most pompous 
 
316 INJUSTICE OF THE WORLD Ser. 20. 
 
 eulogiums on righteousness, finds no character amongst the upright 
 who is entitled to them ; I say, that such language, of which so 
 little scruple is made by the world, saps religion, and tends toward 
 rendering all virtue suspicious : I say, that you thereby furnish 
 arms to the impious in an age when too many other scandals coun- 
 tenance and authorize impiety. You assist in making them believe 
 that none, truly pious, exist on the earth ; that even the saints, who 
 have formerly edified the church, and whose memory we so warmly 
 cherish, have held out to men only a false spectacle of virtue, of 
 which, in reality, they had only the phantom and the appearances : 
 and that the Gospel hath never formed but pharisees and hypocrites. 
 Do you, my brethren, comprehend all the guilt of these foolish 
 derisions? You think that you are only deriding false virtue, and 
 you are blaspheming religion. I repeat it ; in mistrusting the sin- 
 cerity of the just whom you see, the freethinker concludes that all 
 who have preceded them, and whom we see not, were equally insin- 
 cere ; that the martyrs themselves, who met death with such forti- 
 tude, and who rendered to truth the most shining and least suspi- 
 cious testimony which can be given by man, were only madmen, 
 who sought a human glory by a vain ostentation of courage and 
 heroism ; and lastly, that the venerable tradition of so many saints, 
 who, from age to age, have honoured and edified the church is 
 merely a tradition of knavery and deceit. And would to God that 
 this were only a transport of zeal and exaggeration ! These blas- 
 phemies, which strike us with such horror, and which ought to 
 have been buried with Paganism, we have still the sorrow to hear 
 repeated among us. And you who shudder at them, unknowingly 
 put them, however, into the mouth of the freethinker ; it is your 
 continual sarcasms and censures upon piety which have rendered, 
 in our days, impiety so general and so uncurbed. 
 
 I do not add, that, by these means, every thing in society becomes 
 dubious and uncertain. There is no longer, then, either good faith, 
 integrity, or fidelity among men. For, if we must no longer depend 
 on the sincerity and virtue of the just; if their piety be only a 
 mask to their passions, we assuredly will not place any confidence 
 in the probity of sinners and worldly characters : all men are con- 
 sequently only cheats and villains, of whom too much care cannot 
 be taken, and with whom we ought to live as with enemies ; and 
 these so much the more to be dreaded, as, under a treacherous 
 outside of friendship and humanity, they conceal the design of 
 either deceiving or ruining us. None but a heart pofoundly 
 wicked and corrupted can suppose such iniquity and corruption in 
 that of others. 
 
 And behold the second character of that temerity of which we 
 speak. Yes, my brethren, that fund of malignity, which sees guilt 
 through the appearances even of virtue, and attributes criminal in- 
 tentions to works of holiness, can proceed only from a black and 
 corrupted heart. As the passions have poisoned your heart, you 
 whom this discourse regards, as you are capable yourself of every 
 duplicity and meanness, as you have nothing in your own breast 
 
Set*. 20. toward the godly. 3i7 
 
 right, noble, or sincere, you easily suspect your brethren to be 
 what you are ; you cannot persuade yourself that there still exist 
 simple, sincere, and generous hearts on the earth ; you think that 
 you every where see what you feel in yourself ; you cannot com- 
 prehend how honour, fidelity, sincerity, and so many other virtues, 
 always false in your own heart, should have more reality in the 
 hearts of persons, even the most respectable for their rank and cha- 
 racter ; you resemble the courtiers of the king of the Ammonites, 
 having no other occupation than that of being incessantly on the 
 watch to supplant and lay snares for each other, they had little 
 difficulty in believing that David was not more upright in his in- 
 tentions with regard to their master. You think, said they to that 
 prince, that David means to honour the memory of your father, by 
 sending comforters to you to condole with you on his death ? They 
 are not comforters, but spies, whom he sends to you : he is a vil- 
 lain, who, under the specious outside of an honourable and amica- 
 ble embassy, seeks to discover the weaknesses of your kingdom, 
 and to take measures to surprise you. Such is more especially the 
 misfortune of courts : bred up, and living in deceit, they see only 
 dissimulation equally in virtue as in vice ; as it is a stage upon which 
 every one acts a borrowed character, they conclude that the pious 
 man merely acts the personage of virtue; uncommon or unprofita- 
 ble sincerity seems always impossible. 
 
 A worthy heart, a heart upright, simple, and sincere, can hardly 
 comprehend that there are impostors on the earth; he finds within 
 himself the apology of other men, and, by what it would cost him- 
 self to be dishonest, he measures what it ought to cost others. 
 Thus, my brethren, search into those who form these shameful and 
 rash suspicions against the pious, and you will find that, in general, 
 they are disorderly and corrupted characters, who seek to quiet 
 themselves in their dissipations by the illusive supposition that 
 their weaknesses are the weaknesses of all men; that those who are 
 apparently the most virtuous are superior to themselves only in 
 the art of concealment; and that, were they narrowly examined, we 
 should find them in reality, made like other men : this idea is an 
 iniquitous comfort to them in their debaucheries. They harden 
 themselves in iniquity, by thus associating with themselves in it all 
 whom the credulity of the people calls virtuous: they form and en- 
 deavour to establish in themselves a shocking idea of the human 
 race, in order to be less shocked with what they are forced to 
 entertain of themselves, and they try to persuade themselves that 
 virtue no longer exists, in order that vice may appear to them more 
 excusable; as if, O my God! the multitude of criminals could dis- 
 arm thy wrath, or deprive thy justice of the right to punish guilt. 
 
 But, say you, one has seen so many hypocrites who have so long 
 abused the world, whom it regarded as saints and the friends of 
 God, and who, nevertheless, were only perverse and corrupted men. 
 
 I confess it with sorrow, my brethren : but, from that, what would 
 you wish to conclude ? That all the virtuous are similar to them ? 
 The conclusion is detestable; and what would become of mankind, 
 
vU8 INJUSTICE OF THE WORLD Sei*. 20. 
 
 were you, in this manner, to reason on the rest of men ? We have 
 seen many wives faithless, to their honour and to their duty; but 
 do modesty and fidelity no longer exist in the sacred bond of mar- 
 riage? Many magistrates have sold their honour and disgraced 
 their function ; but are justice and integrity consequently banished 
 from every tribunal? History, hath preserved to us the remem- 
 brance of too many perfidious, dissembling, unfaithful, and dishon- 
 ourable princes, equally faithless to their subjects, their allies, and 
 their enemies; but are integrity, truth, and religion, for ever ex- 
 cluded from a throne? The past ages have seen many subjects, 
 distinguished for their names, their offices, and the gifts of their 
 sovereign, betray their prince and country, and keep up the most 
 criminal intelligence with the enemy: would you find just the mas- 
 ter whom you serve with so much zeal and courage, were he merely 
 upon such grounds to suspect the truth of your fidelity? Why 
 then is a suspicion, which excites the indignation of all other de- 
 scriptions of men, only supportable when directed against the 
 pious ? Why is a conclusion, so ridiculous in every other case, 
 only judicious when against virtue? Doth the perfidy of a single 
 Judas give you grounds to conclude that all the other disciples 
 were traitors and without faith? Doth the hypocrisy of Simon the 
 magician prove, that the conversion of the other disciples who 
 embraced faith was merely an artifice to accomplish their own pur- 
 poses ; and that, like him, they walked not uprightly in the path 
 of the Lord? What can be more unjust or foolish, than of the 
 guilt of an individual to constitute a general crime? It is difficult, 
 I confess, but that vice may sometimes assume the garb of virtue ; 
 that the angel of darkness may not sometimes have the appearance 
 of an angel of light; and that the passions, which generally strain 
 every nerve to succeed, may not sometimes call in the appearances 
 of piety to their aid, particularly under a reign when piety, held 
 in honour, is almost a certain road to fortune and favour. But it 
 is the height of folly to reflect upon all virtue for the impious use 
 which some individuals may make even of piety; and to believe 
 that some abuses, discovered in a holy and venerable profession, 
 universally dishonour all who have embraced it. The truth, my 
 brethren', is, that we hate all men who are not similar to our- 
 selves; and that we are delighted to be enabled to condemn piety, 
 because piety itself condemns us. 
 
 But one has so often been deceived, say you. I confess it : but 
 in reply, I say, that, granting you are even deceived while refusing 
 to suspect your brethren, and while rendering to a fictitious virtue 
 that esteem and honour which are due to real virtue alone, what 
 would be the consequence? By what would your credulity be 
 followed, either sorrowful or disgraceful? You would have judged 
 according to the rules of charity, which doth not easily believe in 
 evil, and which delighteth in even the appearances of good ; ac- 
 cording to the rules of justice, which is incapable of every malig- 
 nity or deed to others which it would not wish to have done to 
 itself; according to the rules of prudence, which judges only from 
 
Ser, 20. toward the godly. 319 
 
 what is visible, and leaves to the Lord to judge of the intentions 
 and thoughts ; lastly, according to the rules of goodness and hu- 
 manity, which always oblige us to presume in favour of our bre- 
 thren. What would there be in such a mistake to alarm you? 
 How noble for the mind when the deception proceeds from a mo- 
 tive of humanity and kindness! What honour do not such mis- 
 takes render to a good heart; for none but the virtuous and the 
 sincere are capable of them ! But you, alas ! not being such, prefer 
 that deception which degrades the virtuous and pious man from 
 that estimation which is his due, to hazarding the chance of not 
 covering the hypocrite with the shame he deserves. 
 
 But, besides, whence spring this zeal and inveteracy against the 
 abuse, made by the hypocrite, of real virtue ? Is the glory of God 
 so warmly taken to heart by you, that you wish to avenge him on 
 the impostors who dishonour him? What matters it to you, who 
 neither serve nor love him, whether the Lord be served by a double 
 or a sincere heart? What is there which can so strongly interest 
 you for the integrity or the hypocrisy of his worshipper, you 
 who know not how he is even worshipped ? Ah ! were he the God 
 of your heart, did you love him as your Lord and Father, were his 
 glory dear to you, we might then indeed pardon, as an excess of 
 zeal, the boldness with which you rise up against the outrage done 
 to God and his worship by the simulated piety of the hypocrite. 
 The just, who love and serve him, are surely more entitled to cry 
 out against an abuse so injurious to sincere piety; but you, who 
 live like the Pagans, who, sunk in debauchery, are without hope, 
 and whose whole life is one continued guilt, ah ! it belongs little 
 to you to take the interest of God's glory against the fictitious 
 piety which is the cause of so much disgrace aud sorrow to the 
 church; whether he be faithfully served, or merely through grimace 
 is no affair of yours. Whence then comes a zeal so misplaced? 
 Would you wish to know? It is not the Lord whom you wish to 
 avenge, nor is it his glory which interests you; it is the good name 
 of the pious which you wish to stain; it is not hypocrisy which 
 irritates your feelings, it is piety which displeases you; you are not 
 the censurer of vice, you are only the enemy of virtue; in a word, 
 you hate in the hypocrite only the resemblance of the pious. 
 
 In effect, did your censures proceed from a fund of religion and 
 true zeal, ah ! with grief alone would you recall the history of these 
 impostors, who have sometimes succeeded in deceiving the world. 
 What do I say ? Far from alleging to us, with an air of tri- 
 umph, these examples, you would lament over the scandals with 
 which they have afflicted the church; far from applauding your- 
 selves, when you renew their remembrance, you would wish that 
 such melancholy events were for ever effaced from the memory of 
 men. The law cursed him who should dare to uncover the shame 
 and turpitude of those who had given him life; but it is the shame 
 and dishonour of the church, your mother, which you expose with 
 such pleasure to public derision. Do you carefully recall certain 
 humiliating circumstances to the house from which you spring, and 
 
320 injustice of the world Ser. 20. 
 
 which have formerly disgraced the name and life of some one of 
 your ancestors? Would you not wish for ever to efface these hate- 
 ful vestiges of disgrace from the histories which hand them down 
 to posterity ? Do you not consider as enemies to your name those 
 who ransack the past ages, in order to lay open these hateful par- 
 ticulars, and to revive them in the memory of men ? Do you not 
 in opposition to their malignity, loudly proclaim that maxim of 
 equity, that faults are personal ; and that it is unjust to attach the 
 idea of dishonour to all who bear your name, merely because it has 
 once been disgraced through the bad conduct of an individual ? 
 
 Apply the rule to yourself: the church is your house: the just 
 alone are your relations, your brethren, your predecessors, your 
 ancestors: they alone compose that family of first-born, to whom 
 you ought to be eternally united. The wicked shall one day be 
 as though they had never been : the ties of nature, of blood, and of 
 society, which now unite you to them, shall perish; an immeasur- 
 able and an eternal chaos shall separate them from the children 
 of God ; they shall no longer be your brethren, your forefathers, 
 or your relatives; they shall be cast out, forgotten, effaced from the 
 land of the living, unnecessary to the designs of God, cut off for 
 ever from his kingdom, and no longer, by any tie, holding to the 
 society of the just, who shall then be your only brethren, your an- 
 cestors, your people, your tribe. What do you then, when you un- 
 cover with such pleasure, the ignominy of some false just, who 
 dishonour their history ? It is your house, your name, your rela- 
 tions, your ancestors, whom you dishonour: you come to stain the 
 splendour of so many glorious actions, which, in all ages, have ren- 
 dered their memory immortal by the infidelity of an individual, who, 
 bearing the name they bear, stain it by manners and a conduct 
 totally dissimilar: upon yourselves then it is that you make the 
 dishonour fall; unless you have already renounced the society of 
 the holy, and prefer to associate your eternal lot with that of the 
 wicked and the unfaithful. 
 
 But what is more particularly absurd in that temerity which is 
 always so ready to judge and to blacken the intentions of the pious, 
 is, that you thereby fall into the most ridiculous contradiction with 
 yourselves : last character of that temerity. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, you accuse them of cunningly working toward 
 their own point, of having their own views in the most holy actions, 
 and of only acting the personage of virtue. But doth it become 
 you, the inhabitants of a court, to make this reproach ? Your 
 whole life is one continued disguise ; you every where act a part 
 which is not your own ; you flatter those whom you love not ; you 
 crouch to others whom you despise ; you act the assiduous servant 
 to those from whom you have emolument to expect, though, in 
 your heart, you look up with envy to their rank, and think them 
 unworthy of their elevation ; in a word, your whole life is an as- 
 sumed character. Your heart, on every occasion, belies your con- 
 duct ; every where your countenance is in contradiction to your 
 sentiments ; you are the hypocrites of the world, of ambition, of 
 
Ser. 20. toward the godly. 321 
 
 favour, and of fortune ; and it well becomes you, after that, to ac- 
 cuse the just of the same tricks, and so loudly to ring their dissimu- 
 lation and pretended hypocrisy : when you shall have nothing in 
 the same way with which to reproach yourselves, then will we 
 listen to the temerity of your censures ; or rather, you shall have 
 reason to be jealous for the glory of artifice and meanness, and to 
 be dissatisfied, that the pious should dare to interfere with a science 
 which so justly belongs, and is so especially adapted to you. 
 
 Besides, you so nervously clamour out against the world, when, 
 too attentive to your actions, it maliciously interprets certain sus- 
 picious assiduities, certain animated looks ; you so loudly proclaim 
 then, that, if things go on thus, no person will in future be inno- 
 cent ; that no woman in the world will be considered as a person 
 of regular conduct ; that nothing is more easy than to give an air 
 of guilt to the most innocent things ; that it will be necessary totally 
 to banish one's self from society, and to deny one's self every in- 
 tercourse with mankind ; you then so feelingly declaim against the 
 malignity of men, who, on the most trivial grounds, accuse you of 
 criminal intentions. But do the pious give juster foundation for 
 the suspicions which you form against them ? And, if it be per- 
 mitted to you to hunt for guilt in them, though hidden under the 
 appearances of virtue, why are you so enraged that the world should 
 dare to suppose it in you, and should believe you criminal under 
 the appearances of guilt? 
 
 Lastly. O worldly women ! when we reproach you with your 
 assiduity at theatres, and other places where innocence encounters 
 so many dangers, or the indecency and immodesty of your dress, 
 you reply that you have no bad intentions ; that you wish injury 
 to none ; you would wish indecent and criminal manners to be 
 passed over, for the sake of a pretended innocency of intention, 
 which your whole exterior belies ; and you cannot pass over to the 
 pious, virtuous, and laudable manners, for the sake of an integrity 
 of heart, to which every thing external bears ample testimony. 
 You exact that they shall suppose your intentions pure, when your 
 works are not so ; and you think yourselves entitled to believe that 
 the intentions of the pious are not innocent, when all their actions 
 are visibly so. Cease, then, either to justify your own vices, or to 
 censure their virtues. 
 
 It is thus, my brethren, that every thing poisons in our keeping, 
 and that every thing removes us farther from God : the spectacle 
 even of virtue becomes to us a pretext for vice ; and the examples 
 themselves of piety are rocks to our innocence. It would seem, O 
 my God! that the world doth not sufficiently furnish us with oppor- 
 tunities for our ruin: that the examples of sinners are not sufficient 
 to authorize our errors ; for we seek a support for them even in the 
 virtues of the just. 
 
 But you will tell us, that the world is not so far wrong in cen- 
 suring those who profess themselves people of piety ; that such are 
 every day seen, who, if possible, are more animated than other men 
 in the pursuit of a worldly fortune, more eager after pleasures, 
 
 Y 
 
322 injustice op the world Ser. 20. 
 
 more delicate in submitting to injury, more proud in elevation, and 
 more attached to their own interests. This is the second injustice 
 of the world toward the pious : not only does it maliciously inter- 
 pret their intentions, which is a temerity, but it also scrutinizes 
 their slightest imperfections, which is an inhumanity. 
 
 Part II. It may truly be said, that the world is a more rigid 
 and severer critic upon the pious than the gospel itself ; that it 
 exacts a greater degree of perfection from them, and that their 
 weaknesses find less indulgence before the tribunal of men than they 
 shall one day experience before the tribunal of God himself. 
 
 Now, I say that this attention to exaggerate the slightest errors of 
 the pious, (second injustice into which the world falls with regard 
 to them,) is an inhumanity, considering the weakness of man, the 
 difficulty of virtue, and, lastly, the maxims of the world itself. I 
 entreat your attention here, my brethren. 
 
 Inhumanity, considering the weakness of man. Yet, my brethren, 
 it is an illusion to suppose that there are perfect virtues among 
 men ; it is not the condition of this mortal life ; almost every one 
 bears with him in piety, his faults, his humours, and his peculiar 
 weaknesses ; grace corrects, but does not overturn nature ; the 
 Spirit of God, which creates in us a new man, leaves still many 
 remains of the old : conversion terminates our vices, but does not 
 extinguish our passions ; in a word, it forms the Christian within 
 us, but it still leaves us men. The most righteous, consequently, 
 still preserve many remains of the sinner : David, that model of 
 penitence, still blended with his virtues a too great indulgence for 
 his children, a secret pride at the number of his people and the 
 prosperity of his reign ; the mother of Zebedee's children, in spite 
 of faith, through which she was so strongly attached to Jesus Christ, 
 lost nothing of her anxiety for the elevation of her children, or of 
 her concern toward procuring for them the first stations in an 
 earthly kingdom ; the apostles themselves disputed rank and pre- 
 cedency with each other : never shall we be divested of all these 
 little weaknesses till we are delivered from this body of death, 
 which is the fountain from which they spring. The most shining 
 virtue here below, always, therefore, hath its spots and its flaws, 
 which are not to be too narrowly examined : and the just must 
 always in some points resemble the rest of men. All, then, that 
 can be exacted from human weakness, is, that the virtues rise 
 superior to the vices, the good to the evil ; that the essential be 
 regulated, and that we incessantly labour toward regulating the rest. 
 
 And surely, my brethren, overflowing with passions, as we are 
 in the wretched condition of this life ; loaded with a body of sin, 
 which oppresses the soul ; slaves to our senses and to the flesh ; 
 bearing within us an eternal opposition to the law of God ; the 
 continual prey of a thousand desires which combat against our 
 soul; the everlasting sport of our inconstancy and the natural 
 instability of our heart; finding nothing within us but what is 
 repugnant to duty ; eagerly pursuing whatever removes us from 
 
Ser. 20. toward the godly. 323 
 
 God; disgusted with every thing which brings us nearer to him; 
 loving only what tends to our ruin ; hating only what tends to our 
 salvation ; weak in good ; always ripe for evil ; and, in a word, 
 finding in virtue the rock of virtue itself, is it to be wondered at, 
 that men, surrounded, filled with so many miseries, should some- 
 times allow some of them to be visible ; that men so corrupted, 
 should not be always equally holy? And were you, in any measure, 
 equitable, would you not rather find it worthy of admiration that 
 some virtue still remained, than worthy of censure that they still 
 preserve some vices ? 
 
 Besides, God hath his reasons for still leaving to the most pious, 
 certain sensible weaknesses which strike and offend you. In the 
 first place, he thereby wisheth to humble them, and to render their 
 virtue more secure by concealing it even from themselves. 
 Secondly, he wisheth to animate their vigilance, for he leaveth not 
 Amorites in the land of Canaan, that is to say, passions in the 
 heart of his servants, but, lest, freed from all their enemies, they 
 should lull themselves in idleness and in a dangerous security. 
 Thirdly, he wisheth to excite in them a continual desire for the 
 eternal land, and to render the exilement of this life more bitter, 
 through a proper sense of those miseries from which they can never, 
 here below, obtain a complete deliverance. Fourthly, perhaps not 
 to discourage sinners by the sight of too perfect a virtue, which 
 might probably induce them to cease every exertion, under the idea 
 of never being able to attain it. Fifthly, in order to preserve to 
 the just a continual subject of prayer and penitence, by leaving 
 them a continual source of sin. Sixthly, to prevent those exces- 
 sive honours which the world would render to virtue were it pure 
 and sparkling, and lest it should find its recompense, in other 
 words, its rock, in the vain applauses of men. What shall I lastly 
 say ? it perhaps is still more to lull and to blindfold the enemies of 
 piety ; by the weakness of the pious to strengthen you, who listen 
 to me, in the foolish opinion that there is no real virtue on the earth; 
 to authorize you in your disorders, by the supposition that they 
 are similar to yourselves ; and to render unavailing to you all the 
 pious examples of the just. You triumph in the weaknesses of 
 the pious ; yet are there weaknesses perhaps punishments from God 
 on you^nd means employed by his justice to nourish your unjust 
 prepossessions against virtue, and completely to harden you in 
 guilt. God is terrible in his judgments ; and the consummation of 
 iniquity, is, in general, the sequel of iniquity itself. 
 
 But, secondly, were your censures on those weaknesses, which 
 may still remain to the pious, not rendered barbarous and inhuman, 
 when the natural weakness of man is considered, the difficulty 
 alone of virtue would amply render them so. 
 
 For, candidly, my brethren, doth it appear so easy to you to live 
 according to God, and to walk in the straight path of salvation, 
 that you should become so implacable against the pious, from the 
 moment that they err but for an instant ? Is it so easy continually 
 to renounce one^s self, to be ever guarded against one^s own heart, 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 injustice of the wokld Ser. 20. 
 
 to overcome its antipathies, to repress its likings, to lower its pride, 
 and to fix its inconstancy ? Is it so easy a matter to restrain the 
 sallies of the mind, to moderate its judgments, to disavow its sus- 
 picions, to soften its keenness, and to smother its malignity ? Is it 
 so easy to be the eternal enemy of one's own body, to conquer its 
 indolence, to mortify its tastes and to crucify its desires ? Is it so 
 natural to pardon injuries, to bear with contempt, to love, and even 
 to load with benefits those who do evil to us, to sacrifice one's 
 fortune in order not to fail to his conscience, to deny one's self 
 pleasures to which all our inclinations lead us, to resist example, 
 and singly to maintain the cause of virtue against the multitude 
 which condemns it ? Do all these appear, in fact, so easy to you, 
 that you deem those, who for an instant depart from them, unworthy 
 of the least indulgence ? How feelingly do you expatiate every 
 day on the difficulties of a Christian life, when we propose to you 
 these holy rules ! Is it so very astonishing, that, in a long march 
 through rough and dangerous ways, a man should sometimes stum- 
 ble, or even fall, through fatigue and weakness ? 
 
 Inhuman that we are ! And nevertheless, the slightest imperfec- 
 tion in the pious destroys, in our mind, all their most estimable 
 qualities : far from excusing their weaknesses, in consideration of 
 their virtue, it is their virtue itself which renders us doubly cruel 
 and inexorable to their weaknesses. To be just is sufficient, it 
 would appear, to forfeit every claim to indulgence : to their vices 
 we are clear-sighted ; to their virtues we are blind ; a moment of 
 weakness effaces from our remembrance a whole life of fidelity and 
 innocence. 
 
 But what renders your injustice toward the pious still more cruel, 
 is, that it is your own examples, your irregularities, and even your 
 censures, which stagger, weaken, and force them sometimes to 
 imitate you; it is the corruption of your manners which becomes 
 the continual and the most dangerous snare to their innocence ; 
 it is those foolish derisions with which you continually assault 
 virtue, that force them reluctantly to shelter themselves under the 
 appearances of guilt. And how can you suppose it possible that 
 the piety of the most righteous should always preserve itself pure, 
 in the midst of the present manners, in a perverse world, whose 
 customs are abuses, and its communications crimes ; where the 
 passions are the only bond of society, and where the wisest and 
 most virtuous are those who retrenched from guilt only its scandal 
 and publicity ? How can you suppose it possible, that, amidst 
 these eternal derisions which ridicule the pious, which make them 
 almost ashamed of virtue, and often oblige them to counterfeit vice; 
 that, in the midst of so many disorders, authorized by the public 
 manners, by senseless applauses, by examples rendered respectable 
 by rank and dignity, by the ridicule cast on those who dare to 
 hesitate at them, and lastly, by the weakness even of their own 
 heart ; how do you think it possible that the pious should be 
 always enabled to stem such a torrent, and that, obliged continually 
 to fortify themselves against so rapid and so impetuous a course, 
 
Ser. 20. toward the godly. 325 
 
 which hurries away the rest of men, watchfulness and vigour should 
 not sometimes fail them for an instant, and that they should not 
 sometimes feel a momentary influence of the fatal vortex ? You 
 are their seducers ; and you pretend to be displeased because they 
 allow themselves to be seduced? No longer, therefore, reproach to 
 them your scandals, which weaken their faith, and which they shall 
 one day reproach to you before the tribunal of Jesus Christ ; and 
 triumph no more over their weaknesses, which are your own work, 
 and for which they shall afterward demand vengeance against you. 
 
 I have also said, that even your maxims cannot be excused from 
 severity and extravagance with respect to the pious. Judge from 
 what I shall now repeat. You are continually saying that such an 
 individual, with all his devotion, fails not, however to prosecute his 
 own designs ; that another is very attentive in paying court to his 
 superiors ; again, that a third has a piety so delicate and sensible, 
 that the merest trifle wounds and shocks it ; that such an indivi- 
 dual pardons nothing ; that the other is not sorry to be thought 
 still agreeable and amusing ; that a third has a very commodious 
 piety, and lives a very easy and agreeable life ; lastly, that another 
 is full of caprice and fancies, and that none of her household can 
 put up with her temper : such are your daily discourses ; nor do 
 your satires stop there, for you boldly decide from thence that a 
 devotion, blended with so many faults, can never lead them to sal- 
 vation : behold your maxims. Yet, nevertheless, when we an- 
 nounce to you, from this seat, that a worldly, idle, sensual, dissipated, 
 and almost wholly profane life, such as you lead, can never be a 
 way to salvation, you say that you cannot see any harm in it; you 
 accuse us of severity, and of exaggerating the rule and duties of 
 your station ; you do not believe that more is required for salva- 
 tion. But my brethren, to which side here do severity and injus- 
 tice belong ? You condemn the pious, because to their piety they 
 add some particulars which resemble you ; because they mingle 
 some of your faults with an infinity of virtues and good works, 
 which amply repair the errors : and you believe yourselves in the 
 path of salvation, you who have only their faults, without even the 
 piety which purifies them ? O man ! who then art thou that thus 
 pretendest to save those whom the Lord condemneth, and to con- 
 demn those whom he justifieth ? 
 
 Nor is this all ; and you shall immediately see how little, on this 
 point, you are consonant with yourselves. In effect, when the 
 pious live in total retirement; when no longer keeping any mea- 
 sures with the world, they conceal themselves from the eyes of the 
 public ; when they resign certain places of emolument and distinc- 
 tion, and divest themselves of all their employments and dignities, 
 for the sole purpose of attending to their salvation ; when they lead 
 a life of tears, prayer, mortification, and silence, (and happily our 
 age hath furnished such examples,) what have you then said ? That 
 they carried matters too far ; that violent counsels had been given 
 them ; that their zeal was not according to knowledge ; that, were 
 all to imitate them, public duties would be neglected ; that those 
 
326 INJUSTICE OF THE WORLD Ser. 20. 
 
 services, incumbent on every citizen to his country and state, would 
 no longer be given ; that such an extreme of singularity is not re- 
 quired; and that real devotion proves itself, by living together and 
 fulfilling the duties of the station in which God hath placed us : 
 such are your maxims. But, on the other hand, when the virtuous 
 unite with piety the duties of their station and the innocent inter- 
 ests of their fortune ; when they still keep up a certain degree of 
 intercourse and society with the world, and show themselves in 
 places from which their rank does not allow them to banish them- 
 selves ; when they still partake in certain public pleasures, which 
 their station renders inevitable ; in a word, when they are prudent 
 in good, and simple in evil, ah ! you then proclaim that they are 
 made like other men ; that it appears very easy to you, at that 
 price, to serve God ; that you see nothing in their devotion to 
 frighten you ; and that if nothing more were required, you would 
 soon be yourself a great saint. In vain may piety assume every 
 appearance ; it is sufficient that it is piety, to displease and to merit 
 your censures. Be consistent with yourselves ; you would have 
 the pious to resemble yourselves, yet you condemn them from the 
 moment that you can trace a resemblance. 
 
 The obstinacy and injustice of the Jews, in our gospel, are re- 
 newed in you. When John the Baptist appeared in the desert, 
 clothed in goats' skins, neither eating nor drinking, and holding out 
 to Judea an austerity of virtue which none of the preceding just or 
 prophets had ever equalled, they considered, says Jesus Christ, the 
 austerity of his manners as the illusion of a false spirit, which se- 
 duced and urged him on to these excesses, merely that, in a worldly 
 vanity, he might find the recompense of his penance. On the 
 contrary, the Son of Man afterward came, continues the Saviour, 
 eating and drinking ; exhibiting to them, in his conduct, the model 
 of a virtue more consonant with human weakness, and serving as 
 an example to all, by leading a simple and ordinary life which all 
 may imitate : is he more sheltered from their censures ? Ah ! they 
 declaim against him, as being a man of pleasure and a lover of 
 good cheer ; and the bendings of his virtue are no longer, in their 
 opinion, but a relaxation which stains and dishonours it. The 
 most dissimilar virtues are successful only in attracting the same 
 reproaches. Ah ! my brethren, how much to be pitied would the 
 pious be, were they to be judged before the tribunal of men ! But 
 they know that that world, which sits in judgment on them, is 
 itself already judged. 
 
 And what in this severity, with which you condemn the slightest 
 imperfections of the pious, is more deplorable, is, that, if a noto- 
 rious and infamous sinner, after a whole life of iniquity and crimes, 
 but give, on the bed of death, some weak proof of repentance ; if 
 he but pronounce the name of that God whom he has never known, 
 and has always blasphemed ; if he at last consent, after many de- 
 lays and repugnances, to receive the last offices of the church, 
 which he formerly held in contempt ; ah ! you rank him among the 
 saints ; you maintain that he has died the death of a Christian ; 
 
Ser. 20. toward the godly. 327 
 
 that he has attained to the state of repentance ; and that he has 
 entreated forgiveness and mercy from God ; upon these grounds 
 you hope every thing for his salvation, and you no longer entertain 
 a doubt but that the Lord hath shown him mercy : some reluctant 
 marks of religion, which have been extorted from him, are sufficient, 
 in your idea, to secure to him the kingdom of God, into which no- 
 thing defiled shall ever enter ; are sufficient, I say, in spite of the 
 excesses and abominations of his whole life ; and an entire life of 
 virtue is not sufficient, in your opinion, to render it certain to a 
 faithful soul, from the moment that he mingles the smallest infide- 
 lity with his past conduct : you save the wicked on the most frivo- 
 lous and equivocal appearances of piety, and you condemn the 
 just on the slightest and most excusable proofs of humanity and 
 weakness. 
 
 I might add, my brethren, that, consulting only your own inte- 
 rests, the imperfections of the pious ought to find you more indul- 
 gent and favourable. 
 
 For they alone, my brethren, spare you : they alone conceal your 
 vices, smooth your faults, excuse your errors, and with pleasure 
 dwell upon whatever may be praiseworthy in your virtue ; while 
 the world, your equals, your rivals, and your pretended friends, 
 perhaps lessen your talents and services, speak with contempt of 
 all your good qualities, ridicule your defects, number your misfor- 
 tunes amongst your faults, exaggerate these very faults, and im- 
 poison your most innocent words and actions ; the virtuous alone 
 excuse you, justify your heart, and are the eulogists of your vir- 
 tues, or the prudent dissemblers of your vices ; they alone break 
 up those conversations in which your reputation is attacked ; they 
 alone refuse to join with the public against you ; and for them 
 alone you are destitute of humanity, and to them alone you cannot 
 pardon even the virtues which render them estimable. Ah ! my 
 brethren, return them at least what they lend to you ; spare your 
 protectors and apologists, and by decrying them, do not debilitate 
 the only favourable testimony which is left for you among men. 
 
 But I speak too gently ; not only the pious refuse to join with 
 the malignity of the public against you, but they alone are your 
 true friends ; they alone are touched with your misfortunes, affected 
 by your wanderings, and interested in your salvation ; they carry 
 you in their heart ; while excusing your passions and irregularities 
 before men, they silently lament over them before God ; they raise 
 up their hands for you to heaven; they supplicate your conversion; 
 they entreat the forgiveness of your crimes ; and you cannot bring 
 yourselves to render justice even to their piety and innocence? 
 Ah ! they may make against you the same complaint to the Lord, 
 that the prophet Jeremiah formerly made against the Jews of his 
 time, unjust censurers of his piety and conduct ; * Give heed to me, 
 O Lord/ 3 said that man of God, " and hearken to the voice of 
 them that contend with me. Shall evil be recompensed for good ? 
 For they have digged a pit for my soul ; remember that I stood before 
 thee to speak good for them, and to turn away thy wrath from them." 
 
328 INJUSTICE OF THE WORLD Ser. 20. 
 
 You are surely sensible, my brethren, of all the injustice of your 
 conduct with regard to what I have been mentioning ; but what 
 would it be, if, in completing what I had at first intended, I were 
 to show you, that not only you give corrupted motives to the good 
 works of the pious, which is a temerity; not only you exaggerate 
 their slightest weaknesses, which is an inhumanity; but, likewise, 
 when you have nothing to say against the probity of their inten- 
 tions, and when their imperfections give no handle to your cen- 
 sures, that you fly to your last hold, that of casting an air of 
 ridicule over their virtue itself; which is an impiety. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, an impiety. You make a sport, a comic scene 
 of religion ; you still introduce it, like the Pagans formerly, on an 
 infamous theatre ; and there you expose its holy mysteries, and all 
 that is most sacred and most respectable on the earth, to the laughter 
 of the spectators. You may apologize for your passions, through 
 the weakness of temperament and human frailty ; but your derisions 
 of virtue can find no excuse but in the impious contempt of virtue 
 itself ; nevertheless, this irreligious and blasphemous mode of 
 speaking is now regarded as a pleasantry, as a sally of wit, and as a 
 language from which vanity appropriates to itself peculiar honour. 
 
 But, my brethren, you thereby persecute virtue, and render it 
 useless to yourselves ; you dishonour virtue, and render it useless 
 to others ; you try virtue, and render it insupportable to itself. 
 
 You persecute virtue, and render it useless to yourselves. Yes, 
 my dear hearer, the example of the pious was a mean of salvation 
 provided for you by the goodness of God; now, his justice, incensed 
 at your derisions on his mercies to his servants, for ever withdraws 
 them from you, and punishes your contempt of piety, by denying 
 to you the gift of piety itself. The kings of the earth take signal 
 vengeance on those who dare to injure their statues, for these are 
 to be considered as public and sacred monuments representing 
 themselves. But the just, here below, are the living statues of the 
 great King, the real images of a holy God ; in them he hath ex- 
 pressed the majesty of his purest and most resplendent features ; 
 and he for ever curseth those sacrilegious and corrupted hearts who 
 dare to make them a subject of derision and insult. 
 
 Besides, even granting that the Lord should not deny to you 
 the gift of piety in punishment of your derisions, they still form an 
 invincible human barrier which will for ever exclude you from its 
 cause. For I demand, if, when tired of the world, of your disorders, 
 of yourself, you wish to return to God, and to save that soul which 
 you now labour to destroy, how shall you dare to declare for piety, 
 you who have so often made it the butt of your public and profane 
 pleasantries ? How shall you ever boast of the duties of religion, 
 you who are every day heard to say, that, to become devout, is, in 
 other words, to say that the senses are lost ; that such an individual 
 had a thousand good qualities which rendered his society agreeable 
 to all, but that devotion has now altered him to such a degree, that 
 he is fully as insupportable as he was formerly pleasing ; that he 
 affects to make himself ridiculous ; that we must renounce common 
 
Ser. 20. toward the godly. 329 
 
 sense before we can erect, it would appear, the standard of piety ; 
 that, may God preserve you from such madness ; that you endea- 
 vour to be an honest man, but, God be praised you are no de- 
 votee ? What language ! that is to say, that God be praised you 
 are already marked with the stamp of the reprobate ; that with con- 
 fidence you can say to yourself, " I shall never alter, but shall die 
 exactly such as I am." What impiety ! And yet it is among Chris- 
 tians that such discourses are every day ostentatiously, and with 
 apparent satisfaction, repeated. 
 
 Ah ! my brethren, permit my sorrow to vent itself here in one 
 reflection. The patriarchs, those men so venerable, so powerful, 
 even according to the world, never had communication with the 
 kings and nations of the different countries, where they were con- 
 ducted by the order of the Lord, but in the following religious 
 terms : " I fear the Lord." They claimed no respect from the 
 grandeur of their race, whose origin was almost coeval with the 
 world itself, from the lustre of their ancestors, from the splendour 
 of the blood of Abraham, that man, the conqueror of kings, the 
 model of all sages of the earth, and the only hero of whom the 
 world could then boast. " We fear the Lord." Behold their most 
 pompous title, their most august nobility, the only character by 
 which they wished to be distinguished from other men : such was 
 the magnificent sign which appeared at the head of their tents and 
 flocks, which shone on their standards, and every where bore with 
 them the glory of their name, and that of the God of their fathers. 
 And we, my brethren, we shun the reputation of a man just and 
 fearing God, as a title of reproach and shame ; we pompously dwell 
 upon the vain distinctions of rank and birth ; wherever we go, the 
 frivolous mark of our names and dignities precedes and announces 
 us; and we hide the glorious sign of the God of our fathers; we 
 even glorify ourselves in not being among the number of those who 
 fear and adore him. O God ! leave, then, to these foolish men a 
 glory so hideous ; confound their folly and impiety, by permitting 
 them to the end to glorify themselves in their confusion and ig- 
 nominy. 
 
 Nor is this all. By these deplorable derisions not, only do you 
 render virtue useless to yourselves, but you likewise render it odious 
 and useless to others ; that is to say, not only do you bar against 
 yourselves every path which leads to God, but you likewise shut 
 it against an infinity of souls, whomj grace still urges in secret to 
 relinquish their crimes, and to live in a Christian manner; who 
 dare not declare themselves, lest they should be exposed to the lash 
 of your satire and profane railleries ; who, in a new life, dread only 
 the ridicule which you cast upon virtue ; who, in secret, oppose only 
 that single obstacle to the voice of Heaven which calls upon them ; 
 and tremblingly hesitate, in the grand affair of eternity, between the 
 judgments of God and your senseless and impious derisions. 
 
 That is to say, that you thereby blast the fruit of that Gospel 
 which we announce, and render our ministry unavailing ; you de- 
 prive religion of its terrors and majesty, and spread through the 
 
330 INJUSTICE OF THE WORLD Sei". 20. 
 
 whole exterior of piety a ridicule which falls upon religion itself. 
 You perpetuate in the world, and support among men, those pre- 
 judices against virtue, and that universal illusion employed by Satan 
 to deceive them, which is that of treating piety as perverse and a 
 folly; you authorize the blasphemies of freethinkers and of the 
 wicked ; you accustom sinners to arrogate to themselves an osten- 
 tatious glory from vice and irregularity, and to consider debauchery 
 as fashionable and genteel when contrasted with the ridicule of 
 virtue. What, indeed, may I not say ? Through your means piety 
 becomes the fable of the world, the sport of the wicked, the shame 
 of sinners, the scandal of the weak, and the rock even of the just ; 
 through you vice is held in honour, virtue is debased, truth is weak- 
 ened, faith is extinguished, religion is annihilated, and corruption 
 universally spreads ; and, as foretold by the prophet, desolation per- 
 severes even to the consummation and to the end. 
 
 Let me likewise add, that, through you, virtue becomes insup- 
 portable to itself: your derisions become a rock to the piety even 
 of the just : you shake their faith ; you discourage their zeal ; you 
 suspend their good desires ; you stifle in their heart the liveliest 
 impressions of grace ; you stop them in a thousand deeds of fervour 
 and virtue, which they dare not expose to the impiety of your 
 censures ; in spite of themselves, you force them to conform to your 
 habits and maxims, which they detest ; to abate from their retire- 
 ment, their mortifications, and their prayers ; and to consecrate to 
 these duties only those concealed moments which may escape your 
 knowledge and railleries. Through these means, you deprive the 
 church of their edifying example ; you deprive the weak of those 
 succours which they would otherwise find there ; sinners of that 
 shame with which their presence would cover them ; the just of that 
 consolation which would animate them ; and religion of a sight which 
 would do it honour. 
 
 Alas ! my brethren, in former ages tyrants never derided Chris- 
 tians, but in reproaching to them their pretended superstitions : 
 they ridiculed the public honours which they saw them render to 
 Jesus Christ, a person crucified, and the preference which was 
 given to him by Christians over Jupiter and all the gods of the 
 empire, whose worship was become respectable through the pomp 
 and magnificence of their temples and altars, the antiquity of the 
 laws, and the majesty of the Caesars : but, on the other hand, they 
 bestowed loud and public praises on their manners ; they admired 
 their modesty, frugality, charity, patience, innocent and mortified 
 life, and their absence from theatres, or every other place of public 
 amusement ; they could not, without veneration, regard the wise, 
 retired, modest, humble, and benevolent manners of those 
 simple and faithful believers. You, on the contrary, more sense- 
 less, find no fault with them for adoring Jesus Christ, and for plac- 
 ing their confidence and hope of salvation in the mystery of the 
 cross ; but you find it ridiculous that they should deny themselves 
 every public pleasure ; that they should live in the practice of re- 
 tirement, mortification, and prayer ; but you find them worthy of 
 
Ser. 20. toward the godly. 331 
 
 your derision and censure, because they are humble, simple, chaste, 
 and modest : and the Christian life, which found admirers and pa- 
 negyrists even among tyrants, experiences from you only mockery 
 and profane railleries. 
 
 What folly, my brethren ! to find worthy of laughter in the 
 world, which is itself but a mass of trifles and absurdities, only 
 those who know its frivolity, and whose only thoughts are bent on 
 placing themselves secure from the wrath to come ! What folly, 
 to despise in men the very qualities which render them displeasing 
 to God, respectable to angels, and useful to their fellow-creatures ! 
 What folly, to be convinced that an eternal happiness or misery 
 awaits us, yet to find ridiculous only those who are interested in so 
 important an affair ! 
 
 Let us hold virtue in respect, my brethren ; it alone, on the 
 earth, merits our admiration and praise. If we find ourselves still 
 too weak to fulfil its duties, let us at least be equitable, and esteem 
 its lustre and innocence ; if we cannot live the life of the just, let 
 us wish to attain it, let us envy their lot ; if we cannot as yet imi- 
 tate their example, let us consider every derision on virtue not only 
 as a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, but as an outrage on hu- 
 manity, which virtue alone honours and dignifies ; far from re- 
 proaching the godly with those virtues which render them dissimi- 
 lar to us, let us reproach ourselves with the vices which prevent us 
 from resembling them ; in a word, let us, by a true and sincere res- 
 pect for piety, deserve to obtain one day the gift of piety itself. 
 
 And you, my brethren, who serve the Lord, remember, that the 
 interests of virtue are in your hands ; that the weaknesses, the 
 stains with which you blend it, become, as I may say, stains on re- 
 ligion itself ; consider how much the world expects from you, and 
 what engagements you contract toward the public, when you es- 
 pouse the cause of piety ; consider with what dignity, what fidelity, 
 what respectability, you ought to support the character and per- 
 sonage of a servant of Jesus Christ. Yes, my brethren, let us, 
 with majesty, support the interests of piety against the sneers of 
 those who despise it ; let us purchase the right of being insensible 
 to their censures by giving no foundation for them ; let us force 
 the world to respect what it cannot love ; let us not of the holy 
 profession of piety make a sordid gain, a vile worldly interest, a 
 life of ill-nature and caprice, a claim to effeminacy and idleness, a 
 singularity from which we arrogate honour, a prejudice, a spirit of 
 intolerance which flatters us, and a spirit of division which sepa- 
 rates us from our fellow-creatures ; let us make it the price of 
 eternity, the path to heaven, the rule of our duties, and the repa- 
 ration of our crimes ; a spirit of modesty which makes us unas- 
 suming, a compunction which humbles us, a gentleness which 
 draws us to our brethren, a charity which makes us bear with them, 
 an indulgence which attracts their regard, a spirit of peace which 
 ties us to them ; and, lastly, a union of hearts, of desires, of affec- 
 tions, of good and evil on the earth, which shall be the forerunner 
 and hope of that eternal union which charity is to consummate in 
 heaven. 
 
332 respect in THE Ser. 21. 
 
 SERMON XXI. 
 
 RESPECT IN THE TEMPLES OF GOD. 
 
 " And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in 
 the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of them 
 that sold doves." Matthew xxi. 12. 
 
 Whence comes this aspect of zeal and of indignation which 
 Jesus Christy on this occasion, allows his countenance to betray ? 
 Is this, then, that King of Peace who was to appear in Zion armed 
 with his meekness alone ? We have seen him sitting as judge over 
 an adulteress, and he hath not even condemned'her. We have seen 
 at his feet the prostitute of the city, and he hath graciously for- 
 given her debaucheries and scandals. His disciples wanted the fire 
 of heaven to descend upon an ungrateful and perverse city; but he 
 reproached them with being still unacquainted with that new spirit 
 of mercy and of charity which he came to spread throughout the 
 earth. He hath just been lamenting with tears the miseries which 
 threaten Jerusalem, that criminal city, the murderer of the pro- 
 phets, which is on the eve of sealing the sentence of her reproba- 
 tion by the iniquitous death she is so soon to inflict on him whom 
 God had sent to be her Redeemer. On every occasion he hath 
 appeared feeling and merciful; and, in consequence of the excess 
 of his meekness, he hath been called the friend even of publicans 
 and sinners. 
 
 What then are the outrages which now triumph over all his cle- 
 mency, and arm his gracious hands with the rod of justice and of 
 wrath? The holy temple is profaned; his Father's house is disho- 
 noured; the place of prayer and the sacred asylum of the penitent, 
 is turned into a house of traffic and of avarice: this is what calls 
 the lightning into those eyes which would wish to cast only looks 
 of compassion upon sinners. Behold what obliges him to termi- 
 nate a ministry of love and reconciliation, by a step of severity and 
 of wrath similar to that with which he had opened it. For remark, 
 that what Jesus Christ doth here, in terminating his career, he had 
 already done, when, after thirty-three years of a private life, he 
 entered for the first time into Jerusalem, there to open his mission, 
 and to do the work of his Father. It might be said, that he had 
 himself forgotten that spirit of meekness and of long-suffering 
 which was to distinguish his ministry from that of the ancient 
 covenant, and under which he was announced by the prophets. 
 
 Many other scandals, besides those seen in the temple, doubtless 
 took place in that city, and were perhaps no less worthy of the 
 zeal and the chastisement of the Saviour ; but, as if his Father's 
 glory had been less wounded by them, he can conceal them for a 
 
Ser. 21. temples of god. 333 
 
 time, and delay their punishment. He bursts not forth at once 
 against the hypocrisy of the pharisees, and the corruption of the 
 scribes and priests; but the chastisement of the profaners of the 
 temple can admit of no delay; his zeal on this occasion admits of 
 no bounds ; and scarcely is he entered into Jerusalem when he 
 flies to the holy place, to avenge the honour of his Father there 
 insulted, and the glory of his house which they dishonour. 
 
 Of all crimes, in effect, by which the greatness of God is insulted, 
 I see almost none more deserving of his chastisements than the 
 profanations of his temples ; and they are so much the more crimi- 
 nal, as the dispositions required of us by religion, when assisting 
 there, ought to be more holy. 
 
 For, my brethren, since our temples are a new heaven, where 
 God dwelleth with men, they require the same dispositions of us as 
 those of the blessed in the heavenly temple; that is to say, that the 
 earthly altar, being the same as that of heaven, and the Lamb, who 
 offers himself and is sacrificed there, being the same, the dispo- 
 sitions of those around him ought to be alike. Now, the first 
 disposition of the blessed before the throne of God and the altar 
 of the Lamb, is a disposition of purity and innocence. The second, 
 a disposition of religion and internal humiliation. Thirdly, and 
 lastly, a disposition even of decency and of modesty in dress. 
 Three dispositions, which comprise all the feelings of faith with 
 which we ought to enter the temples of God; a disposition of purity 
 and innocence; a disposition of adoration and internal humiliation; 
 a disposition even of external decency and modesty in dress. 
 
 Part I. The whole universe is a temple which God filleth with 
 his glory and with his presence. Wherever we go, says the apostle, 
 he is always beside us; in him we live, move, and have our being. 
 If we mount up to the heavens, he is there; if we plunge to the 
 centre, there shall we find him; if we traverse the ocean on the 
 wings of the winds, it is his hand that guides us : and he is alike 
 the God of the distant isles which know him not, as of the king- 
 doms and regions which invoke his name. 
 
 Nevertheless, in all times, men have consecrated places to him 
 which he hath honoured with a special presence. The patriarchs 
 erected altars to him on certain spots where he had appeared. 
 The Israelites, in the desert, considered the tabernacle as the place 
 in which his glory and his presence continually resided; and, come 
 afterward to Jerusalem, they no more invoked him with the so- 
 lemnity of incense and of victims, but in that august temple erect- 
 ed to him by Solomon. It was the first temple consecrated by 
 men of the true God. It was the most holy place in the universe; 
 the only one where it was permitted to offer up gifts and sacrifices 
 to the Lord. From all quarters of the earth the Israelites were 
 obliged to come there to worship him. Captives in foreign king- 
 doms, their eyes, their wishes, and their homages were incessantly 
 bent toward that holy place: in the midst of Babylon, Jerusalem 
 and her temple were always the source of their delights, of their re- 
 
334 respect in the Ser. 21. 
 
 grets, and the object of their worship and of their prayers; and 
 Daniel chose to expose himself to all the fury of the lions, rather 
 than to fail in that pious duty, and to deprive himself of that con- 
 solation. Jerusalem, indeed, had often seen infidel princes, attracted 
 by the sanctity and the fame of her temple, coming to render homage 
 to a God whom they knew not; and Alexander himself, struck 
 with the majesty of that place, and with the august gravity of its 
 venerable pontiff, remembered that he was man, and bowed his 
 proud head before the God of hosts whom they there worshipped. 
 
 At the birth of the gospel, the houses of believers were at first 
 domestic churches. The cruelty of tyrants obliged those first dis- 
 ciples of faith to seek obscure and hidden places to conceal them- 
 selves from the rage of the persecutions, there to celebrate the holy 
 mysteries and to invoke the name of the Lord. The majesty of 
 the ceremonies entered into the church only with that of the 
 Csesars. Religion had its Davids and its Solomons, who blushed to 
 inhabit superb palaces, while the Lord had not whereon to lay his 
 head: sumptuous edifices gradually rose up in our cities: the God 
 of heaven and of the earth again, if I dare to say so, resumed his 
 rights ; and the temples themselves, where the demon had so long 
 been invoked, were restored to him as to their rightful master, 
 consecrated to his worship, and became his dwelling-place. 
 
 But here they are no more empty temples like that of Jerusalem, 
 where every thing took place figuratively. The Lord still dwelt 
 in the heavens, said the prophet, and his throne was still above 
 the clouds; but since he hath deigned to appear upon the earth, to 
 hold converse with men, and to leave us, in the mystical benedic- 
 tions, the real pledge of his body and of his blood, actually con- 
 tained under these sacred signs, the heavenly altar hath no longer 
 any advantage over ours; the victims which we there immolate is 
 the Lamb of God ; the bread in which we participate is the im- 
 mortal food of the angels and blessed spirits; the mystical wine we 
 there drink is that new beverage with which they make glad in the 
 kingdom of the heavenly Father; the sacred canticle we there sing 
 is that which the celestial harmony makes continually to resound 
 around the throne of the Lamb ; lastly, our temples are those new 
 heavens promised by the prophet to men. We see not fully there, 
 it is true, all that is seen in the heavenly Jerusalem, for here below 
 we see only mystically, and, as it were, through a veil; but we 
 possess him, we enjoy him, and heaven hath no longer any advan- 
 tage over the earth. 
 
 Now, I say, that our temples being a new heaven, filled with the 
 glory and the presence of the Lord, innocence and purity are the 
 first disposition by which we are entitled, like the blessed in the 
 eternal temple, to appear there; for the God before whom we appear 
 is a holy God. 
 
 In effect, my brethren, the sanctity of God, spread throughout 
 the universe, is one of the greatest motives held out by religion to 
 induce us every where to walk before him in purity and in innocence. 
 As all creatures are sanctified by the intimate residence of the 
 
Ser. 21. temples of god. 335 
 
 Divinity who dwelleth in them, and all places are full of his glory 
 and immensity, the divine writings incessantly warn us every where 
 to respect the presence of God, who seeth and who watcheth us ; 
 on no occasion to offer any thing to his eyes which may wound 
 the sanctity of his regards ; and not sully with our crimes that 
 earth which wholly is his temple and the dwelling-place of his glory. 
 The sinner who bears an impure conscience, is therefore a kind 
 of profaner, unworthy of living upon the earth ; for, by the sole 
 situation of his corrupted heart, he every where dishonours the pre- 
 sence of the holy God who is ever beside him, and he profanes 
 every spot where he bears his crimes, for all places are sanctified 
 through the immensity of the God who filleth and consecrateth 
 them. 
 
 But, if the universal presence of God be a reason why we should 
 every where appear pure and without stain to his eyes, doubtless 
 those places which, in that universe, are particularly consecrated to 
 him, our temples, in which the Divinity, as I may say, corporeally 
 resides, much more require that we should appear in them pure 
 and without stain, lest the sanctity of the God who filleth and 
 dwelleth in them be dishonoured. 
 
 Thus, when the Lord had permitted Solomon to erect, to his 
 glory, that temple so famed for its magnificence, and so venerable 
 through the splendour of its worship and the majesty of its cere- 
 monies, what rigid precautions did he not take, lest men should 
 abuse his goodness in choosing a special dwelling-place amid them, 
 and lest they should dare to appear there, in his presence, covered 
 with stains and defilements ! What barriers did he not place be- 
 tween himself, as I may say, and man; and, in drawing near to 
 us, what an interval did not his holiness leave between the spot 
 filled with his presence, and the eyes of the people who came to 
 invoke him? 
 
 Yes, my brethren, take a description of it. Within the circle of 
 that vast edifice which Solomon consecrated to the majesty of the 
 God of his fathers, the Lord chose, for the place of his abode, only 
 the most retired and the most inaccessible spot ; that was the 
 holy of holies, that is to say, the sole spot of that immense temple 
 which was regarded as the dwelling-place and the temple of the 
 Lord upon earth. And, besides, what terrible precautions defended 
 its entry ! An outer and far distant wall surrounded it ; and there, 
 the Gentiles and foreigners, who wished to be instructed in the 
 law, could only approach. Secondly, another wall very distant 
 concealed it ; and there the Israelites alone were entitled to enter : 
 yet was it necessary that they should be free from stain, and that 
 they had carefully purified themselves, through stated fastings and 
 ablutions, before they should dare to approach a place still so dis- 
 tant from the holy of holies. Thirdly, another wall more advanced 
 still separated it from the rest of the temple ; and there the priests 
 alone entered every day to offer sacrifices, and to renew the sacred 
 loaves exposed upon the altar. The law required that every other 
 Israelite who should dare to approach it, should be stoned as a sa- 
 
336 respect in the Ser. 21. 
 
 crilegious profaner ; and even a king of Israel, who thought himself 
 entitled, through his regal dignity, to come there to offer up in- 
 cense, was instantly covered with leprosy, degraded from his royalty, 
 and excluded for the rest of his life from all society and commerce 
 with men. Lastly, after so many barriers and separations, ap- 
 peared the holy of holies ; that place, so terrible and so concealed, 
 covered with an impenetrable veil, inaccessible to every mortal, to 
 every righteous, to every prophet, even to every minister of the 
 Lord, the sovereign pontiff alone excepted ; and even he was en- 
 titled to appear there only once in the year, after a thousand strict 
 and religious precautions, and bearing in his hands the blood of the 
 victim for which alone the gates of that sacred place were opened. 
 
 Yet, after all, what did that holy of holies, that spot so formid- 
 able and so inaccessible, contain ? The tables of the law, the manna, 
 the rod of Aaron ; empty figures, and the shadows of futurity : the 
 holy God himself, who sometimes gave out from thence his oracles, 
 yet dwelt not there as in the sanctuary of Christians, the gates of 
 which are indiscriminately opened to every believer. 
 
 Now, my brethren, if the goodness of God, in a law of love and 
 grace, hath no longer placed these terrible barriers between him 
 and us, if he hath destroyed that wall of separation which removed 
 him so far from man, and hath permitted to every believer to ap- 
 proach the holy of holies, where he himself now dwelleth, it is not 
 that his sanctity exacts less purity and innocence of those who 
 come to present themselves before him. His design hath only 
 been to render us more pure, more holy, and more faithful, and to 
 make us feel what ought to be the sanctity of a Christian ; seeing 
 he is every day obliged to support, at the foot of the altar, and of 
 the terrible sanctuary, the presence of the God whom he invokes 
 and whom he worships. 
 
 And for this reason it is that Peter calls all Christians a holy na- 
 tion ; for they are all equally entitled to present themselves before 
 the holy altar : a chosen generation ; for they are all separated from 
 the world and from every profane custom, consecrated to the Lord, 
 and solely destined to his worship and to his service : and, lastly, 
 a royal priesthood; for they all participate, in one sense, in 
 the priesthood of his Son, the High-priest of the new law, and 
 because the privilege of entering into the holy of holies, formerly 
 granted to the sovereign pontiff alone, is become the common and 
 daily right of every believer. 
 
 It is solely through the sanctity, then, of our baptism and of our 
 consecration, that these sacred gates are opened to us. If impure, 
 we, in some respect forfeit this right ; we have no longer a part in 
 the altar: we are no longer worthy of the assembly of the holy, and 
 the temple of God is no longer for us. 
 
 Our temples, my brethren, ought therefore to be the house of 
 the righteous alone. Every thing that takes place there supposes 
 righteousness and sanctity in the spectators ; the mysteries which 
 we there celebrate are holy and awful mysteries, and which require 
 pure eyes ; the victim we there offer up is the reconciliation of the 
 
Ser. 21. TEMPLES OF god. 33J 
 
 penitent, or the bread of the strong and perfect ; the sacred anthems 
 heard there are the groanings of a contrite heart, or the sighs of a 
 chaste and believing soul. And on this account it is that the 
 church takes care to purify even every thing that is to appear on 
 the altar; she consecrates with prayers even the stones of these 
 holy buildings, as if to render them worthy of sustaining the pre- 
 sence and the looks of the God who dwelleth in them : she exposes 
 at the doors of our temples a water sanctified by prayers, and re- 
 commends to believers to sprinkle it over their heads before 
 they enter into the holy place, as if to complete their purifica- 
 tion from any slight stains which might still remain ; lest the sanc- 
 tity of the God before whom they come to appear should be in- 
 jured by them. 
 
 Formerly, the church permitted not, within the circle of her sa- 
 cred walls, even tombs to the bodies of believers ; she received not 
 into that holy spot the spoils of their mortality ; she did not believe 
 that the temple of God, that new heaven filled with his presence 
 and glory, should serve as an asylum to the ashes of those whom 
 she numbered not as yet among the blessed. 
 
 The public penitents themselves were for a long time excluded 
 from assisting at the holy mysteries. Prostrated at the doors of 
 the temple, covered with hair-cloth and ashes, even the assembly 
 of believers was denied to them equally as to the anathematized : 
 their tears and their mortifications alone could at length open to 
 them these sacred gates. And what delight, when, after having 
 groaned for, and supplicated their reconciliation, they found them- 
 selves in the temple among their brethren ; they once more beheld 
 those altars, that sanctuary, those ministers so deeply engaged in 
 the awful mysteries ; they heard their names pronounced at the 
 altar with those of the believers, and sung with them hymns and 
 holy songs ! What tears of rapture and of religion were then not 
 shed ! What regret for having so long deprived themselves of so 
 sweet a consolation ! A single day, O my God, passed in thy holy 
 house, cried they, no doubt, with the prophet, is more consoling to 
 the heart than whole years spent in pleasure and in the tents of 
 the wicked! Such were formerly the temples of Christians. Far 
 from these sacred walls, said then the minister with a loud voice to 
 all the assembly of believers, far from these sacred walls be the 
 unclean, the impure, the worshippers of idols, and whosoever loveth 
 or maketh a lie. 
 
 The church, it is true, no longer makes this rigorous discrimina- 
 tion. The multitude of believers, and the depravation of manners, 
 having rendered it impossible, she opens the gates of our temples 
 indifferently to the righteous and to sinners : she draws the veil of 
 her sanctuary in presence even of the profane ; and, in order to 
 begin the awful mysteries, her ministers no longer wait the depar- 
 ture of the sinful and unclean. But the church supposes that, if 
 you be not righteous in coming here to appear before the majesty 
 of a God so holy, you bring with you at least desires of righteous- 
 ness and of penitence : she supposes, that, if not yet altogether 
 
338 respect in the Ser. 21. 
 
 purified from your crimes, you at least feel contrition for them ; 
 that you come to lament them at the foot of the altar ; and that 
 your confusion and the sincere regret of your faults are now to be- 
 gin here your justification and your innocence. 
 
 If, sinners, it is your desires toward a more Christian life which 
 alone can authorize your appearing in this holy place ; and if you 
 come not here to lament over your crimes, but bring with you, 
 even to the foot of the altar, the will, and the actual and rooted 
 affection for them, the church, it is true, who sees not, nor judges the 
 heart, excludes you not from these sacred walls ; but God invisibly 
 rejecteth you. In his eyes you are accursed and excommunicated, 
 and have no right in the altar or in the sacrifices ; you are one who 
 comes to stain, by your sole presence, the sanctity of the awful 
 mysteries, to seat yourself in a place where you have no right to 
 be seated, and from whence the angel of the Lord, who watches at 
 the gate of the temple, invisibly chases you, as he formerly chased 
 the first sinner from that place of innocence and of sanctity which 
 the Lord sanctified with his presence. 
 
 And, in effect, to feel guilty of the most shameful crimes, and to 
 come to appear here in the most holy place of the earth ; to come 
 to appear before God, without being, at least, touched with shame 
 and sorrow, without thinking, at least, upon the means of quitting 
 so deplorable a situation, without at least wishing it, and forming 
 some sentiments of religion ; to bring even to the foot of the altar 
 defiled bodies and souls ; to force the eyes even of God, as I may 
 say, to familiarize themselves with guilt, without at least confessing 
 to him the sorrow of thus appearing before him, covered with 
 shame and reproach, and saying to him, like Peter, * Depart from 
 me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man ;" or, like the prophet, " Hide 
 thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities," that I may 
 be worthy of appearing here in thy presence, is to profane the 
 temple of God, to insult his glory and majesty, and the sanctity of 
 his mysteries. 
 
 For, my dear hearer, be whom ye may who come to assist here, 
 you come to offer up spiritually with the priest the awful sacrifice : 
 you come to present to God the blood of his Son, as the propitia- 
 tion of your sins : you come to appease his justice, through the 
 dignity and the excellence of these holy offerings ; and to represent 
 to him the claim which you have upon his mercies, ever since the 
 blood of his Son hath purified you ; and that you no longer form, 
 in one sense, with him, but one same priest and one same victim. 
 Now, when you appear with a hardened and corrupted heart, with- 
 out any sentiment of faith, or any desire of amendment, you disa- 
 vow the ministry of the priest who offers in your stead : you disa- 
 vow the prayers he sends up to the Lord, in which, through the 
 mouth of the priest, you entreat him to cast his propitious looks 
 on these holy offerings which are upon the altar, and to accept of 
 them as the price of the abolition of your crimes : you even insult 
 the love of Jesus Christ himself, who renews the grand object of 
 your redemption, and who presents you to his Father as a portion 
 
Ser. 21. TEMPLES OF GOD. 339 
 
 of that pure and spotless church which he hath washed in his 
 blood : you insult the piety of the church, who, believing you uni- 
 ted in her faith and in her charity, places in your mouth, through 
 the hymns which accompany the holy mysteries, sentiments of re- 
 ligion, of sorrow, and of penitence. Lastly, you receive the faith 
 and the piety of the righteous there present, and who, considering 
 you as forming with them only one heart, one mind, and one same 
 sacrifice, join themselves with you, and offer to the Lord your faith, 
 your desires, your prayers, as their own. You are there, then, as 
 an anathematized, separated from all the rest of your brethren : 
 an impostor, who secretly disavows what you are publicly profess- 
 ing, and who comes to insult religion, and to reject all share in the 
 redemption and in the sacrifices of Jesus Christ, in the very mo- 
 ment that he is renewing the memory, and offering up the price of 
 it to his Father. 
 
 What are we thence to conclude ? that, if a sinner, we are to 
 banish ourselves from our temples, and from the holy mysteries ? 
 God forbid ! Ah ! then it is, that we ought to come to this holy 
 place in search of our deliverance ; then it is, that we ought to come 
 to solicit, at the foot of the altar, the tender mercies of the Lord, 
 ever ready in that place to lend a favourable ear to sinners ; then 
 it is, that we ought to call in every religious aid held out to faith, 
 to arouse in ourselves, if possible, some sentiments of piety and of 
 repentance. And whither, O my brethren, shall we fly, when un- 
 happily fallen under the displeasure of God ? And what other re- 
 source could remain for us ? It is here alone that sinners can find 
 a refuge : here flow the quickening waters of the sacrament, which 
 alone have the virtue of purifying the conscience : here the sacrifice 
 of propitiation is offered up for them, alone capable of appeasing 
 the justice of God, which their crimes have irritated : here the 
 truths of salvation, enforced upon their heart, inspire them with 
 hatred against sin and love of righteousness : here their ignorance 
 is enlightened, their errors dissipated, their weakness sustained, 
 their good desires strengthened: here, in a word, religion offers 
 remedies for all their ills. It is sinners, therefore, who ought most 
 to frequent these holy temples ; and the more their wounds are inve- 
 terate and hopeless, the more eagerly ought they to fly here in 
 search of a cure. 
 
 Such is the first disposition of innocence and of purity, which the 
 presence here of a holy God requires of us, and of the blessed in 
 heaven : " For they are without fault before the throne of God." 
 
 But if the sole state of guilt, without remorse, without any wish 
 for a change, and with an actual intention of preserving in it, be a 
 kind of irreverence, by which the sanctity of our temples and of 
 our mysteries is profaned ; what, O my God ! shall it be to choose 
 these holy places, and the hour of the awful mysteries, to come to 
 inspire infamous passions, to permit themselves impure looks, 
 to form criminal desires, to seek opportunities which decency alone 
 prevents them from seeking elsewhere,- to meet objects whom 
 the vigilance of those who instruct us keeps at a distance in all 
 
 z 2 
 
340 RESPECT IN THE Sei\ 2l. 
 
 other resorts ? What shall it be to make instrumental to guilt, 
 what in religion is most holy ; to choose thy presence, great God ! 
 to conceal the secret of an impure passion, and to make thy holy 
 temple a rendezvous of iniquity, a place more dangerous than even 
 those assemblies of sin, which religion interdicts to believers ? 
 What guilt, to come to crucify afresh Jesus Christ, in the very place 
 where he offers himself up for us every day to his Father! What 
 guilt, to employ, in order to forward our own ruin, the very hour 
 in which the mysteries of salvation, and the redemption of all men, 
 are operated ! What madness, to come to choose the eyes of our 
 Judge to render him the witness of our crimes, and of his presence 
 to make the most horrible cause of our condemnation ! What a 
 neglect of God, and what a mark of reprobation, to change the 
 sacred asylums of our reconciliation into opportunities of debau- 
 chery and licentiousness ! 
 
 Great God ! when insulted on Mount Calvary, where thou wert 
 still a suffering God, the tombs opened around Jerusalem ; the dead 
 arose, as if to reproach to their descendants the horror of their sa- 
 crilege. Ah ! reanimate, then, the ashes of our fathers who await, 
 in this holy temple, the blessed immortality ; let their bodies rise 
 out of these pompous tombs which our vanity hath erected to 
 them ; and, inflamed with a holy indignation against irreverences 
 which crucify thee afresh, and which profane the sacred asylum of 
 the remains of their mortality, let them appear upon these monu- 
 ments ; and, since our instructions and our threatenings are una- 
 vailing, let them come themselves to reproach to their successors 
 their irreligion and their sacrileges. But if the terror of thy pre- 
 sence, O my God ! be insufficient to retain them in respect, were 
 the dead even to rise up, as thou hast formerly said, they would, in 
 consequence of it, be neither more religious nor more believing. 
 
 But if the presence of a holy God require here, as of the blessed 
 in heaven, a disposition of purity and innocence, the presence of a 
 God, terrible, and full of majesty, requires one of dread and of in- 
 ternal collection. Second disposition, marked by the profound hu- 
 miliation of the blessed in the heavenly temple ; " And they fell 
 before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God." 
 
 Part II. God is spirit and truth, and it is in spirit and in 
 truth that he requireth principally to be honoured. That dispo- 
 sition of profound humiliation which we owe to him in our tem- 
 ples, consists not, therefore, solely in the external posture of our 
 bodies ; it also comprises, like that of the blessed in heaven, a 
 spirit of adoration, of praise, of prayer, and of thanksgiving ; and 
 such is that spirit of religion and humiliation which God demand- 
 eth of us in the holy temple, similar to that of the blessed in the 
 heavenly temple. 
 
 I say a spirit of adoration ; for as it is here that God manifesteth 
 his wonders and his supreme greatness, and descendeth from hea- 
 ven to receive our homages, the first sentiment which should be 
 formed within us, on entering into this holy place, is a sentiment 
 
Ser. 21. temples of god, 341 
 
 of terror, of silence, and profound recollection, of internal humilia- 
 tion, on viewing the majesty of the Most High, and our own mean- 
 ness ; to be occupied with God alone who showeth himself to us ; 
 to feel all the weight of his glory and of his presence ; to collect all 
 our attention, all our thoughts, all our desires, our whole soul, to 
 pay him the homage of it, and to cast it wholly at the feet of the 
 God whom we worship ; to forget all the grandeurs of the earth ; 
 to see only him ; to be occupied only with him ; and, by our pro- 
 found humiliation, to confess, like the blessed in heaven, that he 
 alone is almighty, alone immortal, alone great, alone worthy of all 
 our love and of our homages. 
 
 But, alas ! my brethren, where, in our temples, are those respect- 
 ful souls, who, seized with a holy dread at the sight of these sacred 
 places, feel all the weight of the majesty of the God who dwelleth 
 in them, and are incapable of supporting the splendour of his pre- 
 sence, otherwise than in the immobility of a humiliated body, and 
 the profound religion of a soul who adores ? Where are those 
 who, losing sight of all the grandeurs of the earth, are here occu- 
 pied with that of God alone ? Let us boldly say it before a king, 
 whose profound respect, at the foot of the altar, does equal honour 
 to religion and to himself; it is not to honour the God who dwell- 
 eth here that too many enter into this holy temple ; it is to cover 
 themselves with the cloak of piety, and to make it instrumental 
 toward views and interests which sincere piety condemns. They 
 come to bow the knee, as Haman bowed it before the profane altar, 
 to attract the regards and to follow the example of the prince who 
 worships ; they come here to seek another God than he who ap- 
 pears on our altars ; to make their court to another master than the 
 Supreme Master ; to seek other favours than the grace of Heaven ; 
 and to attract the kindness of another paymaster than the immortal 
 Rewarder. Amid a crowd of worshippers, he is an unknown God 
 in his own temple, as he formerly was in the pagan Athens. Every 
 look here is for the prince, who hath none himself but for God; all 
 wishes are addressed to him ; and his profound humiliation at the 
 foot of the altar, far from teaching us to respect here the Lord, 
 before whom a great king bows his head and forgets all his great- 
 ness, teaches us only to take advantage of his religion, and of the 
 favours with which he honours virtue, to adopt their semblance, 
 and, through that deception, to exalt ourselves to new degrees 
 of greatness upon the earth. O my God ! is not this what thou 
 announcedst to thy disciples that times would come when faith 
 should be extinguished, when piety would become an infamous 
 traffic, and when men, living without God upon the earth, would no 
 longer acknowledge thee but in order to make thee subservient to 
 their iniquitous desires ? 
 
 A spirit of prayer is also comprised in this disposition of humi- 
 liation ; for the more we are struck here with the greatness and 
 with the power of the God whom we worship, the more do our 
 endless wants warn us to have recourse to him from whom alone 
 we can obtain relief and deliverance from them. Thus the temple 
 
342 respect in the Ser. 21. 
 
 is the house of prayer, where every one ought to come to lay 
 his secret wants before the Lord ; where, in public calamities, he 
 is appeased by the general prayers ; where the assembled minis- 
 ters lift up their hands for the sins of the people ; and where the 
 eyes of the Lord are ever open to our wants, and his ears attentive 
 to our cries. 
 
 Not but we may address ourselves to him, as the apostle says, 
 in every place ; but the temple is the spot where he is more pro- 
 pit ious, and where he hath promised to be always present to receive 
 our homages, and to lend a favourable ear to our requests. Yes, 
 my brethren, it is here that we ought to come to join in lamenta- 
 tion with the church, over the scandals with which she is afflicted, 
 over the divisions with which she is torn, and over the dangers 
 which surround her ; over the obstinacy of sinners, and the cold- 
 ness of charity among believers : we come, with her, to solicit the 
 mercies of the Lord upon his people ; to entreat of him the cessa- 
 tion of wars and other public scourges ; the extinction of schisms 
 and errors ; the knowledge and the love of righteousness and of 
 truth for sinners ; and perseverance for the just. You ought, 
 therefore, to come with an attentive and collected mind, a prepared 
 heart, and which offers nothing to the eyes of God that may avert 
 the favours solicited by the church for you, and to appear with that 
 exterior of a suppliant, which, of itself, shows that he prays and 
 that he worships. 
 
 Nevertheless, my brethren, while the ministers are lifting up 
 their hands here for you ; are supplicating the Lord for the pros- 
 perity of your families, for abundance to your lands, for the pre- 
 servation of your relations and children, who perhaps expose them- 
 selves for the welfare of their country, for the end of wars, dissen- 
 sions, and all the miseries with which we are afflicted ; while they 
 are entreating remedies for your backslidings, and aids for your 
 weakness ; while they are speaking to the holy God in your favour, 
 you deign not even to accompany their prayers with your attention 
 and your respect. You dishonour the holy gravity of the church's 
 lamentations by a spirit of inattention, and by indecencies which 
 would hardly become even those criminal resorts where you listen 
 to profane songs ; and the only difference in your behaviour is, 
 that, in the one, you are touched and rendered attentive by a las- 
 civious harmony, while here you endure, with impatience, the divine 
 songs of thanksgiving and in praise of the Lord. 
 
 Thus, my brethren, in place of the public prayers arresting the 
 arm of the Lord, so long impending over our heads ; in place of 
 the supplications, which resound in every part of our temples, 
 being able, as formerly, to suspend the scourges of Heaven, to 
 bring back days of peace and of tranquillity, to reconcile nations 
 and kings, and to attract peace from heaven to the earth ; alas ! the 
 days of evil still endure ; the times of trouble, of mourning, and of 
 desolation, cease not ; war and fury seem to have for ever taken 
 up their abode among men ; the desolate widow demands her hus- 
 band ; the afflicted father in vain looks out for his child ; brother 
 
Ser. 21. temples of god. 343 
 
 is divided from brother ; even our successes shed mourning and 
 sorrow through our families, and we are forced to weep over our 
 own victories. Whence comes this ? Ah ! it is that the prayers 
 of the church, the only sources of the favours which God sheddeth 
 upon kingdoms and upon empires, are no longer listened to ; and 
 that you force the Lord, through the irreverence with which you 
 accompany them, to avert his ears, and to turn his attention from 
 them, and which thereby renders them useless to the earth. 
 
 But, not only ought you to appear here as suppliants, and in a spirit 
 of prayer, since it is here that the Lord dealeth out his favours and 
 his grace ; as it is here, likewise, that every thing renews to you 
 the remembrance of those already received, you ought also to bring 
 hither a spirit of gratitude and of thanksgiving, seeing that, on 
 whichever way you turn your eyes, every thing recalls to you the re- 
 membrance of God's blessings and the sight of his eternal mercies 
 upon your soul. 
 
 And, first, it is here where, in the sacrament by which we are 
 regenerated, you have become believers : it is here that the goodness 
 of God, in associating you, through baptism, to the hope of Jesus 
 Christ, hath discerned you from so many heathens who know him 
 not : it is here that you have engaged your faith to the Lord ; your 
 written promises are still preserved under the altar. Here is the 
 book of the covenant which you have made with the God of your 
 fathers : you should no longer then, appear here but to ratify the 
 engagements of your baptism, and to thank the Lord for the ines- 
 timable blessing which hath associated you with his people, and 
 honoured you with the name of Christian ; you ought to feel all 
 the tenderness and respect of a child, for the blessed womb which 
 hath brought you forth in Jesus Christ, and the glory of this house 
 ought to be your glory. 
 
 What are you then, when, in place of bringing your thanksgiv- 
 ings to the feet of the altar for so singular and so distinguished a 
 blessing, you come to dishonour it by your irreverences? You are 
 an unnatural child, who profane the place of your birth according 
 to faith ; a perfidious Christian, who come to retract your promises 
 before the very altars which witnessed them ; who come to break 
 the treaty on the sacred spot where it was concluded; to blot your- 
 self out of the book of life, where your name was written with those 
 of the faithful ; to abjure the religion of Jesus Christ on the very 
 fonts where you had received it ; to make a pompous display of all 
 the vanities of the age, at the feet of the altar where you had so- 
 lemnly renounced them ; and to profess worldliness where you had 
 made professions of Christianity. 
 
 Nor is this all ; for, secondly, it is here that Jesus Christ hath 
 so often said to you, through the mouth of his ministers, u My son, 
 thy sins are forgiven thee; go and sin no more, lest a worse thing 
 befal thee/ 5 It is here, that, melting in tears, you have so often 
 said to him, a Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee/ 5 
 Now, my brethren, on the very spot where you have so often expe- 
 rienced the grace of forgiveness, not only you forget the blessing, 
 
344 respect in the Ser. 21. 
 
 but you come to give new subject of offence ; on the very spot where 
 you have so often appeared penitent, you proclaim yourselves still 
 worldly and profane. Ah ! far from coming to these holy tribunals 
 to recapitulate the disorders of your life ; far from coming to renew 
 those promises of penitence, those sentiments of compunction, 
 those emotions of shame and of confusion, of which they have so 
 often been the depositories ; you boldly appear before them with 
 an unblushing countenance, your eyes wandering here and there, 
 full, perhaps, of guilt and adultery, as the apostle says, to renew in 
 their presence the same infidelities that your tears had once ex- 
 piated, and to render them ocular witnesses of the same prevari- 
 cations of which they had been the secret confidants and the blessed 
 purgers ! 
 
 What more shall I say, my brethren ? In the third place, the 
 temple is the house of doctrine and of truth ; and it is here that, 
 through the mouth of the pastors, the church announces to you 
 the maxims of salvation, and the mysteries of the heavenly king- 
 dom, concealed from so many infidel nations : fresh motive of 
 gratitude on your part. But, alas ! it is rather a fresh subject of 
 condemnation ; and even here, where, from these Christian pulpits, 
 we are continually telling you from Jesus Christ that the unclean 
 shall never enjoy the kingdom of heaven, you come to form profane 
 desires; even here where you are warned that you shall one day 
 have to render account of an idle word, you permit yourselves cri- 
 minal ones : lastly, even here, where you so often hear repeated 
 that evil to him that scandalizeth, you become yourself a stumbling 
 block and a subject of scandal. Thus, my brethren, why do you 
 believe that the word of the gospel, which we preach to princes 
 and to grandees of the earth, is no longer but a tinkling brass, and 
 that our ministry is now become almost unnecessary ? It may be 
 that our private weaknesses place a bar to the fruit and to the pro- 
 gress of the gospel, and that God bless not a ministry, the minis- 
 ters of which are not pleasing in his sight : but besides this reason, 
 so humiliating for us, and which we cannot, however, either dis- 
 semble from you, or even conceal from ourselves, it is doubtless, 
 the profanation of the temples, and the indecent and disrespectful 
 manner in which you listen to us, that deprive the word, of which 
 we are the ministers, of all its energy and virtue. The Lord, 
 estranged from this holy place through your profanations, no longer 
 giveth increase to our toils, nor sheddeth his grace, which alone 
 causeth his doctrine and his word to fructify : he no longer looketh 
 upon these assemblies, formerly so holy, but as an assembly of 
 worldly-minded, of voluptuous, of ambitious, and of profane. 
 And how would you, that he turn not his countenance from them, 
 and that the word of his gospel fructify there? Reconcile, in 
 the first place, with him, by your homages, by your collected be- 
 haviour, and by your piety, these houses of the doctrine and of 
 truth : then will he compensate for your deficiencies ; he will open 
 your hearts to our instructions, and his word shall no longer return 
 empty to him. 
 
Ser. 21. temples of god. 345 
 
 But a final reason, which renders your irreverential behaviour 
 still more criminal and more disgraceful to religion, is, that it is in 
 the temple where you come to offer up, in one sense, with the 
 priest the awful sacrifice, to renew the oblation of the cross, and 
 to present to God the blood of his Son as the propitiation of your 
 sins. Now, my brethren, while mysteries so august are celebrating; 
 during these awful moments when heaven opens above our altars ; 
 in a time when the affair of your salvation is agitated between 
 Jesus Christ and his Father ; while the blood of the Lamb is flow- 
 ing upon the altar to wash you from stain ; while the angels of 
 heaven tremble and adore ; while the solemnity of the ministers, 
 the majesty of the ceremonies, and even the piety of the true be- 
 lievers, all inspire fear, gratitude, and respect, scarcely do you bow 
 the knee, scarcely do you cast a look upon the holy altar, where 
 mysteries so blessed for you are consummating. It is even with 
 reluctance that you are in the temple ; you measure the duration 
 and the fatiguing length of the salutary sacrifice ; you count the 
 moments of a time so precious to the earth, and so replete with 
 wonders and grace for men. You who are so embarrassed with 
 your time, who sacrifice it to an eternal inutility and circle of 
 nothings, and who are even difficulted in contriving to kill it ; you 
 complain of the pious solemnity of the minister, and of the circum- 
 spection with which he treats the holy things. Ah ! you require 
 such respect and such precaution in those who serve you ; and 
 you would that a priest clothed in all his dignity, that a priest re- 
 presenting Jesus Christ, and performing his office of mediator and 
 high-priest with his Father, should treat the holy mysteries with 
 precipitation, and dishonour the presence of the God whom he 
 serves, and whom he immolates, by a shameful carelessness and 
 haste? In what times, O my God, are we come? And was it to 
 be expected that thy most precious and most signal kindnesses 
 should become a burden to the Christians of our ages ? 
 
 Alas ! the first believers, who met in the temple at stated hours 
 of the day, to celebrate, in hymns and songs with their pastor, the 
 praises of the Lord, they almost never quitted these sacred abodes, 
 and that only with regret, when obliged to attend to the affairs of 
 the age, and to the duties of their station. How beautiful, my 
 brethren, to see in those happy times the holy assembly of believers 
 in the house of prayer, each in the place adapted to his station; 
 on one side, the recluse, the holy confessors, the common believers; 
 on the other, the virgins, the widows, the married women, all 
 attentive to the holy mysteries, all beholding, with tears of joy and 
 of religion, to flow upon the altar, the blood still reeking, as I may 
 say, of the Lamb, and so lately crucified before their eyes; praying 
 for the princes, for the Caesars, for their persecutors, for their brethren ; 
 mutually exhorting each other to martyrdom; tasting all the conso- 
 lation of the divine writings explained by their holy pastors, and 
 retracing, in the church of the earth, the joy, the peace, the inno- 
 cence, and the profound meditation of the heavenly church! How 
 beautiful and splendid were the the tents of Jacob, although the 
 
346 respect in the Ser. 21. 
 
 church was as yet under oppression and obscurity; and the ene- 
 mies of faith, even the prophets of the idols, in viewing their good 
 order, their innocence, and their majesty, with what difficulty did 
 they refuse to them their admiration and their homage ! Alas ! and 
 at present the rapid moments which you consecrate here to religion, 
 and which ought to sanctify the remainder of the day, often become 
 themselves the greatest guilt of it. 
 
 Lastly, niy brethren, to all these inward dispositions of prayer 
 of adoration, and of gratitude, which the sanctity of our temples 
 exacts of you, there is likewise to be added the external modesty, 
 and the decency of ornaments and of dress last disposition of 
 the blessed in the heavenly temple: but on this part I shall be 
 very brief. 
 
 And, in effect, should any instruction on our part be necessary 
 to you on this point, O, worldly women ? for it is you whom this 
 part of my discourse principally regards. To what purpose all that 
 display, I say not only of ostentation and of vanity, but of immo- 
 desty and of impudence, with which you make your appearance 
 in this house of tears and of prayer ? Do you come here to dispute 
 with Jesus the looks and the homages of those who worship him ? 
 Do you come to insult the mysteries which operate the salvation 
 of believers, by seeking to corrupt their heart at the feet even of 
 the altars, where these mysteries take place for them ? Are you 
 determined that innocence shall in no place of the earth, not even 
 in the temple, that asylum of religion and piety, be protected from 
 your profane and lascivious nakedness ? Doth the world not suf- 
 ficiently furnish you with impure theatres, with assemblies of dis- 
 sipation, where you may make a boast of being a stumbling block 
 to your brethren ? Even your houses, open to dissipation and to 
 riot, do they not suffice for you to figure with an indecency which 
 would formerly have been suited only to houses of debauchery and 
 of guilt; and which is the cause that, not respecting yourselves, 
 that respect is lost for you, of which the national politeness hath 
 always been so jealous ? For modesty alone is estimable, as St. 
 Paul formerly reproached to believers. Must the holy temple be 
 also stained by your immodesties ? Ah ! when you appear before 
 your earthly sovereign, you mark, by the dignity and by the pro- 
 priety of your deportment, the respect which you know to be due 
 to his presence; and before the Sovereign of heaven and of the 
 earth, you make your appearance, not only without precaution, 
 but even without decency or modesty; and you display under his 
 eyes an effrontery which wounds even the eyes of the wise and 
 respectable! You come to disturb the attention of the believers 
 who had expected to have found here a place of peace and of silence, 
 and an asylum against all the objects of vanity; to disturb even the 
 deep meditation and the holy gravity of the ministers, and to sully, 
 by the indecency of your dress, the purity of their looks attentive 
 to the holy things. 
 
 Thus the apostle desired, that the Christian woman should be 
 covered with a veil in the temple, on account of the angels ; that 
 
Ser. 21. TEMPLES OF god. 347 
 
 is to say, of the priests, who are continually present there before 
 God, and whose innocence and purity ought to equal that of the 
 heavenly spirits. True it is, that thou thereby warn est us, O my 
 God ! what ought, in our temples, to be the holy gravity, and the 
 inviolable sanctity of thy ministers; that it is for us to bear here, 
 stamped upon our countenance, the holy dread of the mysteries 
 which we offer up, and the lively and intimate sense of thy presence; 
 that it is for us to inspire here the people around us with respect, 
 by the sole appearance of our modesty; that it is for us not to ap- 
 pear around the altar, and employed in the holy ministry, often 
 more wearied, more careless, and more in haste than even the 
 assisting multitude; and not to authorize their irreverences by our 
 own. For, O my God ! the desolation of the holy place hath com- 
 menced with the sanctuary itself; the respect of the people there 
 hath become weakened only in consequence of being no longer 
 supported by the holy gravity of the worship and the majesty of 
 the ceremonies ; and thy house hath begun to be a house of dissi- 
 pation and of scandal, only since thy ministers have made of it a 
 house of traffic, of weariness, and of avarice. But our examples, 
 in authorizing your profanations, do not excuse them, my brethren. 
 
 And, in effect, it seems that God hath never left them unpun- 
 ished. The shameful indecencies of the children of Levi, which 
 had so long profaned his house, were followed with the most dis- 
 mal calamities : the holy ark became a prey to the Philistines ; it 
 was placed at the side of Dagon, in an infamous temple; the glory 
 of Israel was blasted; the Lord withdrew himself from amidst his 
 people; the lamp of Judah was extinguished; there was no high- 
 priest, and Jacob was, all of a sudden, without altar, and without 
 sacrifice. 
 
 There is little doubt, my brethren, but that the miseries of the 
 last age have been the fatal consequences of the profanations and 
 of the irreverences of our fathers. It was just that the Lord should 
 abandon temples where he had so long been insulted. Dread, my 
 brethren, lest we prepare for our posterity the same calamities, in 
 imitating the disorders of those who have preceded us. Dread, 
 lest an irritated God should one day abandon these temples which 
 we profane, and lest they, in their turn, become the asylum of 
 error. What do I know but that he is already preparing all these 
 evils for us, in permitting the purity and the simplicity of faith to be 
 adulterated in the minds, in multiplying those men so wise in their 
 own conceit, and so common in this age, who measure every thing 
 by the lights of a weak reason, who would wish to fathom the se- 
 crecies of God, and who, far from making religion the subject of 
 their worship and of their thanksgivings, make it the subject of 
 their doubts and of their censures ? Thou art terrible in thy judg- 
 ments, O my God ! and thy punishments are sometimes so much 
 the more rigorous, as they have been tardy and slow. 
 
 Let us reflect, then, my brethren, on all these grand motives of 
 religion; let us bring into this holy place a tender and an attentive 
 piety, a spirit of piety, of compunction, of collection, of thanksgiv- 
 
348 THE TRUTH OF RELIGION. Sei". 22. 
 
 ing, of adoration, and of praise; let us never quit our temples 
 without bearing from them some new grace, since here is the throne 
 of mercy from whence they are shed upon men ; never quit them 
 without an additional relish for heaven, without new desires of ter- 
 minating your errors, and of attaching yourselves solely to God; 
 without envying the happiness of those who serve him, who have 
 it in their power to be continually worshipping him at the feet of 
 the altar, and whose station and functions particularly consecrate 
 them to his holy ministry. Say to him, as the queen of Sheba 
 formerly said to Solomon, " Happy are thy men, happy are these 
 thy servants, which stand continually before thee, and that hear 
 thy wisdom." And should the duties of your station not permit 
 you to come here to worship the Lord at the different hours of the 
 day, when his ministers assemble to praise him; ah! continually 
 turn, at least, toward the holy place, like the Israelites formerly, 
 your longings and your desires. Let our temples be the sweetest 
 consolation of your troubles, the only asylum of your afflictions, 
 the only resource of your wants, the most certain recreation from 
 the confinements, the fatiguing attentions, and the painful subjec- 
 tions of the world: in a word, find there the beginning of that un- 
 alterable peace, the plenitude and the consummation of which you 
 will find only with the blessed, in the eternal temple of the heavenly 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 SERMON XXII. 
 
 THE TRUTH OF RELIGION. 
 
 " Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel." 
 Matthew viii. 10. 
 
 Whence came, then, the incredulity with which Jesus Christ at 
 present reproaches the Jews; and what cause could they still have 
 for doubting the sanctity of his doctrine and the truth of his minis- 
 try ? They had demanded miracles, and, before their eyes, he had 
 wrought such evident ones that no person before him had done the 
 like. They had wished that his mission were authorized by testi- 
 monies ; Moses and the prophets had amply borne them to him ; 
 the precursor had openly proclaimed, Behold the Christ and the 
 Lamb of God, which taketh sway the sin of the world; a Gentile 
 renders glory in our gospel to his almightiness; the heavenly 
 Father had declared from on high, that it was his well-beloved Son ; 
 lastly, the demons themselves, struck with his sanctity, quitted the 
 bodies, confessing that he was the Holy, and the Son of the living 
 God. What could the incredulity of the Jews still oppose to so 
 many proofs and prodigies ? 
 
 Behold, my brethren, what, with much greater surprise, might 
 be demanded of those unbelieving minds, who, after the fulfilment 
 
Ser. 22. the truth of religion. 349 
 
 of all that had been foretold, after the consummation of the mysteries 
 of Jesus Christ, the exaltation of his name, the manifestation of 
 his gifts, the calling of his people, the destruction of idols, the con- 
 version of Caesars, and the agreement of the universe, still doubt, 
 and take upon themselves to confute and to overthrow what the 
 toils of the apostolic men, the blood of so many martyrs, the prodi- 
 gies of so many servants of Jesus Christ, the writings of so many 
 great men, the austerities of so many holy anchorites, and the reli- 
 gion of seventeen hundred years, have so universally and so divinely 
 established in the minds of almost all people. 
 
 For, my brethren, amid all the triumphs of faith, children of un- 
 belief still privately spring up among us, whom God hath delivered 
 up to the vanity of their own thoughts, and who blaspheme what 
 they know not ; impious men, who change, as the apostle says, the 
 grace of our God into wantonness, defile their flesh, contemn all 
 rule, blaspheme majesty, corrupt all their ways like the animals 
 not gifted with reason, and are set apart to serve one day as an 
 example of the awful judgments of God upon men. 
 
 Now, if, among so many believers assembled here through re- 
 ligion, any soul of this description should happen to be, allow me, 
 you, my brethren, who preserve with respect the sacred doctrine 
 which you have received from your ancestors and from your pastors, 
 to seize this opportunity either of undeceiving them or of confuting 
 their incredulity. Allow me for once to do here what the first pas- 
 tors of the church so often did before their assembled people, that 
 is to say, to take upon myself the defence of the religion of Jesus 
 Christ against unbelief; and, before entering into the particulars of 
 your duties during this long term, allow me to begin by laying the 
 first foundations of faith. It is so consoling for those who believe 
 to find how reasonable their submission is, and to be convinced 
 that faith, which is apparently the rock of reason, is, however, its 
 only consolation, guide, and refuge ! 
 
 Here, then, is my whole design. The unbeliever refuses sub- 
 mission to the revealed truths, either through a vain affectation of 
 reason, or through a false sentiment of pride, or through an ill- 
 placed love of independence. 
 
 Now, I mean at present to show, that the submission which the 
 unbeliever refuses, through a vain affectation of reason, is the most 
 prudent use which he can make even of reason : that the submis- 
 sion which he refuses through a false sentiment of pride, is the most 
 glorious step of it : and, lastly, that the submission which he re- 
 jects through an ill-placed love of independence, is the most in- 
 dispensable sacrifice of it. And from thence I shall draw the 
 three great characters of religion : it is reasonable, it is glorious, 
 it is necessary. 
 
 O my Saviour, eternal author and finisher of our faith, defend 
 thyself, thy doctrine. Suffer not that thy cross, by which the uni- 
 verse hath been submitted to thee, be still the folly and the scandal 
 of proud minds. Once more triumph at present, through the se- 
 cret wonders of thy grace, over that same unbelief which thou for- 
 
350 THE TRUTH OF RELIGION. Ser. 22. 
 
 merly triumphedst over through the striking operations of thy 
 power ; and by those lively lights which enlighten hearts, more 
 efficacious than all our discourses, destroy every sentiment of pride 
 which may still rise up against the knowledge of thy mysteries. 
 
 Part I. Let us begin with admitting that it is faith, and not 
 reason, which makes Christians ; and that the first step exacted of 
 a disciple of Jesus Christ, is to captivate his mind, and to believe 
 what he may not comprehend. Nevertheless, I say, that we are 
 led to that submission by reason itself; that the more even 
 our lights are superior, the more do they point out the necessity 
 of our submission ; and that unbelief, far from being the result of 
 strength of mind and of reason, is, on the contrary, that of error 
 and weakness. 
 
 In faith, reason hath therefore its uses, as it hath its limits : 
 and as the law, good and holy in itself, served only to conduct to 
 Jesus Christ, and there stopped as at its term ; in the same way, 
 reason, good and just in itself, since it is the gift of God, and a 
 participation of the sovereign reason, ought only to serve, and is 
 given to us, for the sole purpose of preparing the way for faith. It 
 is forward, and quits the bounds of its first institution, when it at- 
 tempts to go beyond these sacred limits. 
 
 This taken for granted, let us see which of the two, namely, the 
 believer or the unbeliever, makes the most prudent use of his rea- 
 son. Submission to things held out to our belief, perhaps sus- 
 pected of credulity, either on the side of the authority which pro- 
 poses them ; if it be light, it is weakness to give credit to them : 
 or on the side of the things of which they wish to persuade us ; if 
 they be in opposition to the principles of equity, of honour, of so- 
 ciety, and of conscience, it is ignorance to receive them as true : 
 or, lastly, on the side of the motives which are employed to per- 
 suade us ; if they be vain, frivolous, and incapable of determining 
 a wise mind, it is imprudence to give way to them. Now, it is 
 easy to prove that the authority which exacts the submission of 
 the believer, is the greatest, the most respectable, and the best es- 
 tablished, which can possibly be upon the earth ; that the truths 
 proposed to his belief are the only ones conformable to the prin- 
 ciples of equity, of honour, of society, and of conscience ; and, 
 lastly, that the motives employed to persuade him are the most deci- 
 sive, the most triumphant, and the most proper to gain submission 
 from the least credulous minds. 
 
 When I speak of the authority of the Christian religion, I do 
 not pretend to confine the extent of that term to the single autho- 
 rity of its holy assemblies, in which, through the mouths of its 
 pastors, the church makes decisions, and holds out to all believers 
 the infallible rules of worship and of doctrine. As it is not heresy, 
 but unbelief, which this discourse concerns, I do not here so much 
 consider religion as opposed to the sects which the spirit of error 
 hath separated from the unity, that is to say, as confined to the 
 sole catholic church, but as forming, since the beginning of the 
 
Ser. 22. the truth of religion. 351 
 
 world, a society apart, a sole depository of the knowledge of a God, 
 and of the promise of a Mediator ; always opposed to all the re- 
 ligions which have arisen in the universe ; always contradicted, and 
 always the same ; and I say that its authority bears along with it 
 such shining characters of truth, that it is impossible, without folly, 
 to refuse submission to it. 
 
 In the first place, in matters of religion, antiquity is a character 
 which reason respects ; and, we may say, that a prepossession is al- 
 ready formed in favour of that belief, consecrated by the religion of 
 the first men, and by the simplicity of the primitive times. Not 
 but what falsehood is often decked out with the same titles, and 
 that old errors exist among men, which seem to contest the anti- 
 quity of their origin with the truth; but it is not difficult, to who- 
 ever wishes to trace their history, to go back even to their origin. 
 Novelty is always the constant and most inseparable character of 
 error ; and the reproach of the prophet may alike be made to them 
 all : * They sacrifice to new gods that come newly up, whom their 
 fathers feared not." 
 
 In effect, if there be a true religion upon the earth, it must be the 
 most ancient of all ; for, if there be a true religion upon the earth, 
 it must be the first and the most essential duty of man toward the 
 God who wishes to be honoured by it. This duty must therefore 
 be equally ancient as man ; and, as it is attached to his nature, it 
 must, as I may say, be born with him. And this, my brethren, is 
 the first character by which the religion of Christians is at once 
 distinguished from superstitions and sects. It is the most ancient 
 religion in the world. The first men, before an impious worship 
 was carved out of divinities of wood and of stone, worshipped the 
 same God whom we adore, raised up altars, and offered sacrifices 
 to him, expected from his liberality the reward of their virtue, and 
 from his justice, the punishment of their disobedience. The his- 
 tory of the birth of this religion, is the history of the birth of the 
 world itself. The divine books which have preserved it down to 
 us, contain the first monuments of the origin of things. They are 
 themselves more ancient than all those fabulous productions of the 
 human mind which afterward so miserably amused the credulity of 
 the following ages ; and, as error ever springs from the truth, and 
 is only a faulty imitation of it, all the fables of Paganism are 
 founded on some of the principal features of that divine history ; 
 insomuch, that it may be affirmed that every thing, even to error 
 itself, renders homage to the antiquity and to the authority of our 
 holy Scriptures. 
 
 Now, my brethren, is there not already something respectable in 
 this character alone ? The other religions, which have vaunted a 
 more ancient origin, have produced nothing in support of their 
 antiquity, but fabulous legends, which sunk into nothing of them- 
 selves. They have disfigured the history of the world by a chaos 
 of innumerable and imaginary ages, of which no event hath been 
 left to posterity, and which the history of the world hath never 
 known. The authors of these gross fictions did not write till many 
 
352 THE TRUTH OF RELIGION. Ser. 22. 
 
 ages after the actions which they relate, and it is saying every thing 
 to add, that that theology was the fruit of poesy, and the inventions 
 of that art the most solid foundations of their religion. 
 
 Here, it is a train of facts, reasonable, natural, and in agreement 
 with itself. It is the history of a family continued from its first 
 head down to him who writes it, and authenticated in all its cir- 
 cumstances. It is a genealogy in which every chief is characterized 
 by his own actions, by events which still subsisted then, by marks 
 which were still known in the places where they had dwelt. It is 
 a living tradition, the most authenticated upon the earth, since 
 Moses hath written only what he had heard from the children of 
 the patriarchs, and they related only what their fathers had seen. 
 Every part of it is coherent, hangs properly together, and tends to 
 clear up the whole. The features are not copied, nor the adven- 
 tures drawn from elsewhere, and accommodated to the subject. 
 Before Moses, the people of God had nothing in writing. He 
 hath left nothing to posterity but what he had verbally collected 
 from his ancestors, that is to say, the whole tradition of mankind ; 
 and the first he hath comprised in one volume, the history of God's 
 wonders and of his manifestations to men, the remembrance of 
 which had till then composed the whole religion, the whole know- 
 ledge, and the whole consolation of the family of Abraham. The 
 candour and sincerity of this author appear in the simplicity of his 
 history. He takes no precaution to secure belief, because he sup- 
 poses that those for whom he writes require none to believe ; and 
 all the facts which he relates being well known among them, it is 
 more for the purpose of preserving them to their posterity than for 
 any instruction in them to themselves. 
 
 Behold, my brethren, which way the Christian religion begins to 
 acquire influence over the mind of men. Turn on all sides, read 
 the history of every people and of every nation, and you will find 
 nothing so well established upon the earth. What do I say ? you 
 will find nothing more worthy the attention of a rational mind. 
 If men be born for a religion, they are born for this one alone. If 
 there be a Supreme Being who hath manifested the truth to men, 
 this alone is worthy of men and of him. Every where else the 
 origin is fabulous ; here it is equally certain as all the rest ; and 
 the latter ages, which cannot be disputed, are, however, only the 
 proofs of the certitude of the first. Therefore, if there be an au- 
 thority upon the earth to which reason ought to yield, it is to that 
 of the Christian religion. 
 
 To the character of its antiquity must be added that of its per- 
 petuity. Figure to yourselves here that endless variety of sects 
 and of religions which have successively reigned upon the earth. 
 Follow the history of the superstitions of every people and of every 
 country ; they have flourished a few years, and afterward sunk into 
 oblivion along with the power of their followers. Where are the 
 gods of Emath, of Arphad, and of Sepharvaim ? Recollect the 
 history of those first conquerors : in conquering the people, they 
 conquered the gods of the people ; and, in overturning their power, 
 
Ser. 22. the truth of religion. 353 
 
 they overturned their worship. How beautiful, my brethren, to 
 see the religion of our fathers alone maintaining itself from the 
 first, surviving all sects ; and, notwithstanding the diverse fortunes 
 of those who have professed it, alone passing from father to son, 
 and braving every exertion to efface it from the heart of men ! It 
 is not the arm of flesh which hath preserved it. Ah ! the peo- 
 ple of God hath, almost always, been weak, oppressed, and 
 persecuted. No : it is not, says the prophet, by their own sword 
 that our fathers got the land in possession ; but thy right hand, O 
 Lord, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, because 
 thou hadst a favour unto them. One while slaves, another fugi- 
 tives, another tributaries of various nations ; they a thousand times 
 saw Chaldea, Assyria, Babylon, the most formidable powers of the 
 earth, the whole universe, conspire their ruin and the total ex- 
 tinction of their worship ; but this people, so weak, oppressed in 
 Egypt, wandering in the desert, and afterward carried in captivity 
 into a foreign land, no power hath ever been able to exterminate, 
 while so many others, more powerful, have followed the destiny of 
 human things; and its worship hath always subsisted with itself, in 
 spite of all the efforts made by almost every age to destroy it. 
 
 Now, whence comes it, that a worship so contradicted, so ar- 
 duous in its observances, so rigorous in its punishments upon trans- 
 gressors, and even so liable to be established or to be overthrown, 
 through the mere inconstancy and ignorance of the people who was 
 its first depositary ; whence comes it that it alone hath been per- 
 petuated amid so many revolutions, while the superstitions sup- 
 ported by all the power of empires and of kingdoms, have sunk 
 into their original oblivion ? Ah ! is it not God, and not man, 
 who hath done all these things ? Is it not the arm of the Almighty 
 which hath preserved his work ? And since every thing invented 
 by the human mind has perished, is it not to be inferred that what 
 hath always endured was alone the work of the divine wisdom ? 
 
 Lastly, if, to its antiquity, and to its perpetuity, you add its uni- 
 formity, no pretext for resistance will be left to reason. For, my 
 brethren, every thing changes upon the earth, because every thing 
 follows the mutability of its origin. Occasions, the difference of 
 ages, the diverse humours of climates, and the necessity of the 
 times, have introduced a thousand changes in all the human laws. 
 Faith alone hath never changed. Such as our fathers received it, 
 such have we it at present, and such shall our descendants one day 
 receive it. It hath been unfolded through the course of ages, and 
 likewise, I confess, through the necessity of securing it from the 
 errors which have been attempted to be introduced into it ; but 
 every thing which once appeared to belong to it, hath always ap- 
 peared as appertaining to it. There is little wonder in the duration 
 of a religion, when accommodations are made to times and to con- 
 junctures, and when they may add or diminish according to the 
 fancy of the ages, and of those who govern ; but never to relax, in 
 spite of the change of manners and of times ; to see every thing 
 change around, and yet be always the same, is the grand privilege 
 
 A A 
 
354 THE TRUTH OF RELIGION. Ser. 22. 
 
 of the Christian religion. And by these three characters, of anti- 
 quity, of perpetuity, and of uniformity, which exclusively belong to 
 it, its authority is the only one upon the earth capable of determin- 
 ing a wise mind. 
 
 But if the submission of the believer be reasonable on the part 
 of the authority which exacts it, it is not less so on the part of the 
 things which are proposed to his belief. And here, my brethren, 
 let us enter into the foundation of the Christian worship. It is not 
 afraid of investigation, like those abominable mysteries of idolatry, 
 the infamy and horror of which were concealed by the darkest ob- 
 scurity. A religion, says Tertullian, which would shun examina- 
 tion, and would dread being searched into, should ever be suspected. 
 The more the Christian worship is investigated, the more are beau- 
 ties and hidden wonders found in it. Idolatry inspired men with 
 foolish sentiments of the Divinity ; philosophy, with very unrea- 
 sonable ones of himself ; cupidity, with iniquitous ones toward the 
 rest of men. Now, admire the wisdom of religion, which remedies 
 all these three evils, which the reason of all ages had never been 
 able to eradicate, or even to find out. 
 
 And, first, what other legislator hath spoken of the Divinity, like 
 that of the Christians ? Find elsewhere, if you can, more sublime 
 ideas of his power, of his immensity, of his wisdom, of his gran- 
 deur, and of his justice, than those which are given us in our Scrip- 
 tures. If there be over us a supreme and eternal Being, in whom 
 all things live, he must be such as the Christian religion represents 
 him. We alone compare him not to the likeness of man. We 
 alone worship him seated above the cherubim, filling every where 
 with his presence, regulating all by his wisdom, creating light and 
 darkness, author of good and punisher of vice. We alone honour 
 him as he wishes to be honoured ; that is to say, we make not the 
 worship due to him, to consist in the multitude of victims, nor in 
 the external pomp of our homages ; but in adoration, in love, in 
 praise, and in thanksgiving. We refer to him the good which is in 
 us, as to its principal ; and we always attribute vice to ourselves, 
 which takes its rise only in our corruption. We hope to find in 
 him the reward of a fidelity which is the gift of his grace, and the 
 punishment of transgressions, which are always the consequence of 
 the bad use which we make of our liberty. Now, what can be 
 more worthy of the Supreme Being than all these ideas ! 
 
 Secondly. A vain philosophy either had degraded man to the 
 level of the beast, by centring his felicity in the senses ; or had 
 foolishly exalted him even to the likeness of God, by persuading 
 him that he might find his own happiness in his own wisdom. 
 Now, the Christian morality avoids these two extremes : it with- 
 draws man from carnal pleasures, by discovering to him the excel- 
 lency of his nature and the holiness of his destination : it corrects his 
 pride, by making him sensible of his own wretchedness and meanness. 
 
 Lastly. Cupidity rendered man unjust toward the rest of men. 
 Now, what other doctrine than that of Christians hath ever so well 
 regulated our duties on this head. It instructs us to yield obedi- 
 
Ser. 22. the truth of religion. 355 
 
 ence to the powers established by God, not only through fear of 
 their authority, but through an obligation of conscience : to respect 
 our superiors, to bear with our equals, to be affable toward our in- 
 feriors, to love all men as ourselves. It alone is capable of forming 
 good citizens, faithful subjects, patient servants, humble masters, 
 incorruptible magistrates, clement princes, and zealous friends. It 
 alone renders the honour of marriage inviolable, secures the peace 
 of families, and maintains the tranquillity of states. It not only 
 checks usurpations, but it prohibits even the desire of other's pro- 
 perty; it not only requires us not to view with an envious eye the 
 prosperity of our brother, but it commands us to share our own 
 riches with him, if need require ; it not only forbids to attempt his 
 life, but it requires us to do good, even to those who injure us; to 
 bless those who curse us, and to be all only of one heart and of one 
 mind. Give me, said St. Augustine, formerly, to the heathens of 
 his time, a kingdom all composed of people of this kind : good 
 God, what peace ! what felicity ! what a representation of heaven 
 upon the earth ! Have all the ideas of philosophy ever come near 
 to the plan of this heavenly republic ? And is it not true, that if a 
 God hath spoken to men, to lay open to them the ways of salva- 
 tion, he could never have held any other language ? 
 
 To all these maxims, so worthy of reason, it is true that religion 
 adds mysteries which exceed our comprehension. But, besides 
 that, good sense should induce us to yield thereon to a religion so 
 venerable through its antiquity, so divine in its morality, so supe- 
 rior to every thing on the earth in its authority, and alone worthy 
 of being believed, the motives it employs for our persuasion are 
 sufficient to conquer unbelief. 
 
 First. These mysteries were foretold many ages before their ac- 
 complishment, and foretold with every circumstance of times and 
 places ; nor are the vague prophecies, referred to the credulity of 
 the vulgar alone, uttered in a corner of the earth, of the same age 
 as the events, and unknown to the rest of the universe. They are 
 prophecies which, from the beginning of the world, have consti- 
 tuted the religion of an entire people ; which fathers transmitted to 
 their children as their most precious inheritance ; which were pre- 
 served in the holy temple as the most sacred pledge of the divine 
 promises : and, lastly, to the truth of which the nation most inve- 
 terate against Jesus Christ, and their first depository, still at present 
 bears witness in the face of the whole universe : prophecies, which 
 were not mysteriously hidden from the people, lest their falsehood 
 should be betrayed ; like those vain oracles of the Sybils, carefully 
 shut up in the capitol, fabricated to support the Roman pride, ex- 
 posed to the view of the pontiffs alone, and produced, piece-meal, 
 from time to time, to authorize, in the mind of the people, either a 
 dangerous enterprise or an unjust war. On the contrary, our pro- 
 phetical books were the daily study of a whole people. The young 
 and the old, women and children, priests and men of all ranks, 
 princes and subjects, were indispensably obliged to have them con- 
 tinually in their hands ; every one was entitled to study his duties 
 
 aa 2 
 
35G THE TRUTH OF RELIGION. Ser. 22. 
 
 there, and to discover his hopes. Far from flattering their pride, 
 they held forth only the ingratitude of their fathers : in every page 
 they announced misfortunes to them as the just punishment of their 
 crimes ; to kings they reproached their dissipations, to the pontiffs 
 their profusion, to the people their inconstancy and unbelief; and, 
 nevertheless, these holy books were dear to them ; and, from the 
 oracles which they saw continually accomplishing in them, they 
 awaited with confidence the fulfilment of those which the whole 
 universe hath now witnessed. Now, the knowledge of what is to 
 come is the least suspicious character of the Divinity. 
 
 Secondly. These mysteries are found upon facts so evidently mi- 
 raculous, so well known in Judea, so agreed to then, even by those 
 whose interest it was to reject them, so signalized by events which 
 interested the whole nation, so often repeated in the cities, in the 
 country, in the temple, and in the public places, that the eyes must 
 be shut against the light to call them in question. The apostles 
 have preached them, have written them, even in Judea, a very short 
 time after their fulfilment ; that is to say, in a time when the pon- 
 tiffs, who had condemned Jesus Christ, still living, might so easily 
 have controverted and proclaimed their imposture, had they really 
 been a deception upon mankind. Jesus Christ, by fulfilling his 
 promise of rising again, confirmed his gospel, and it is not to be 
 supposed, either that the apostles could be deceived on a fact 
 so decisive and so essential for them, on that fact so often 
 foretold, and looked forward to, as the principal point on which 
 all the rest was to turn ; that fact so often confirmed, and that 
 before so many witnesses ; nor that they themselves wished to 
 deceive us, and to preach a falsehood to men at the expence of 
 their own ease, honour, and life, the only return which they had to 
 expect for their imposture. Would these men, who have left to 
 us only such pious and wise precepts, have given to the earth an 
 example of folly hitherto unknown to every people, and, without 
 view, interest, or motive, have coolly devoted themselves to the 
 most excruciating tortures, and to a death suffered with the most 
 heroical piety, merely to maintain the truth of a thing of which they 
 themselves knew the falsehood ? Would these men have all tran- 
 quilly submitted to death for the sake of another man who had de- 
 ceived them, and who, having failed in his promise of rising again 
 from the grave, had only imposed, during life, upon their credulity 
 and weakness ? Let the impious man no longer reproach to us, as 
 a credulity, the incomprehensible mysteries of faith. He must be 
 very credulous himself to be able to persuade himself of the possi- 
 bility of suppositions so absurd. 
 
 Lastly. The whole universe hath been docile to the faith of 
 these mysteries ; the Caesars, whom it degraded from the rank of 
 gods ; the philosophers, whom it convicted of ignorance and vanity ; 
 the voluptuous, to whom it preached self-denial and sufferance; 
 the rich, whom it obliged to poverty and humility ; the poor, whom 
 it commanded to love even their abjection and indigence ; all men, 
 of whom it combated all the passions. This faith, preached by 
 
Ser. 22. the truth of religion. 357 
 
 twelve poor men, without learning, talents, or support, hath sub- 
 jected emperors, the learned equally as the illiterate, cities and em- 
 pires; mysteries, apparently so absurd, have overthrown all the 
 sects, and all the monuments of a proud reason, and the folly of 
 the cross hath been wiser than all the wisdom of the age. The 
 whole universe hath conspired against it, and every effort of its 
 enemies hath only added fresh confirmation to it. To be a be- 
 liever, and to be destined to death, were two things inseparable ; 
 yet the danger was only an additional charm ; the more the perse- 
 cutions were violent, the more progress did faith make ; and the 
 blood of the martyrs was the seed of believers. O God ! who 
 doth not feel thy finger here ? Who, in these traits, would not 
 acknowledge the character of thy work ? Where is the reason which 
 doth not feel the vanity of its doubts to sink into nothing here, and 
 which still blushes to submit to a doctrine to which the whole uni- 
 verse hath yielded ? But not only is this submission reasonable, 
 it is likewise glorious to men ? 
 
 Part II. Pride is the secret source of unbelief. In that osten- 
 tation of reason, which induces the unbeliever to contemn the com- 
 mon belief, there is a deplorable singularity which natters him, and 
 occasions him to suppose in himself more vigour of mind and more 
 light than in the rest of men, because he boldly ventures to cast off 
 a yoke to which they have all submitted, and to stand up against 
 what all the rest had hitherto been contented to worship. 
 
 Now, in order to deprive the unbeliver of so wretched a consola- 
 tion, it is only necessary to demonstrate, in the first place, that no- 
 thing is more glorious to reason than faith ; glorious on the side of 
 its promises for the future ; glorious from the situation in which it 
 places the believer for the present : lastly, glorious from the grand 
 models which it holds out to his imitation. 
 
 Glorious on the side of the promises contained in it. What are 
 the promises of faith, my brethren ? The adoption of God, an im- 
 mortal society with him, the complete redemption of our bodies, 
 the eternal felicity of our souls, freedom from the passions, our 
 hearts fixed by the possession of the true riches, our minds pene- 
 trated with the ineffable light of the sovereign reason, and happy 
 in the clear and always durable view of the truth. Such are the 
 promises of faith ; it informs us that our origin is divine, and our 
 hopes eternal. 
 
 Now, I ask, is it disgraceful to reason to believe truths which 
 do such honour to the immortality of its nature ? What, my bre- 
 thren, would it then be more glorious to man to believe himself of 
 the same nature as the beasts, and to look forward to the same end ? 
 What, the unbeliever would think himself more honoured by the 
 conviction that he is only a vile clay, put together by chance, and 
 which chance shall dissolve, without end, destination, hope, or any 
 other use of his reason and of his body, than that of brutally 
 plunging himself, like the brutes, into carnal gratifications ! What ! 
 he would have a higher opinion of himself, when viewed in the light 
 
358 THE TRUTH OF RELIGION. Set*. 22. 
 
 of an unfortunate wretch, accidentally placed upon the earth, who 
 looks forward to nothing beyond life, whose sweetest hope is that 
 of sinking back to nonentity, who relates to nothing but himself, and 
 is reduced to find his felicity in himself, though he can there find only 
 anxieties and secret terrors ! Is this, then, that miserable distinction 
 by which the pride of unbelief is so much flattered ? Great God ! 
 how glorious to thy truth, to have no enemies but men of this cha- 
 racter! For my part, as St. Ambrose formerly said to the unbe- 
 lievers of his time, I glory in believing truths so honourable to 
 man, and in expecting the fulfilment of promises so consolatory. 
 To refuse belief to them is sorrily to punish one^s self. Ah ! if I 
 be deceived in preferring the hope of one day enjoying the eternal 
 society of the righteous in the bosom of God, to the humbling be- 
 lief of being of the same nature as the beasts, it is an error dear 
 to me, which I delight in, and upon which I wish never to be un- 
 deceived. 
 
 But if faith be glorious on the side of its promises for the future, 
 it is not less so from the situation in which it places the believer 
 for the present. And here, my brethren, figure to yourselves a 
 truly righteous man, who lives by faith, and you will acknowledge 
 that there is nothing on the earth more sublime. Master of his 
 desires and of all the movements of his heart ; exercising a glorious 
 empire over himself ; in patience and in equanimity enjoying his 
 soul, and regulating all his passions by the bridle of temperance ; 
 humble in prosperity, firm under misfortunes, cheerful in tribula- 
 tions, peaceful with those who hate peace, callous to injuries, feel- 
 ing for the afflictions of those who trespass against him, faithful in 
 his promises, religious in his friendships, and unshaken in his du- 
 ties ; little affected with riches, which he contemns ; fatigued with 
 honours, which he dreads ; greater than the world, which he con- 
 siders only as a mass of earth what dignity ! 
 
 Philosophy conquered one vice only by another. It pompously 
 taught contempt of the world, merely to attract the applauses of 
 the world ; it sought more the glory of wisdom than wisdom itself. 
 In destroying the other passions, it continually, upon their ruins, 
 raised up one much more dangerous ; I mean to say, pride : like that 
 prince of Babylon who overthrew the altars of the national gods, 
 merely to exalt upon their wrecks his own impious statue, and 
 that monstrous colossus of pride which he wanted the whole earth 
 to worship. 
 
 But faith exalts the just man above even his virtue. Through 
 it he is still greater in the secrecy of his heart, and in the eyes of 
 God than before men. He forgives without pride ; he is disinter- 
 ested without show ; he suffers without wishing it to be known ; 
 he moderates his passions without perceiving it himself; he alone 
 is ignorant of the glory and of the merit of his actions ; far from 
 graciously looking upon himself, he is ashamed of his virtues much 
 more than the sinner is of his vices ; far from courting applauses, 
 he hides his works from the light, as if they were deeds of dark- 
 ness ; love of duty is the sole source of his virtue ; he acts under 
 
Ser. 22. the truth of religion. 359 
 
 the eyes of God alone, and as if there were no longer men upon 
 the earth what dignity ! Find, if you can, any thing greater fn 
 the universe. Review all the various kinds of glory with which 
 the world gratifies the vanity of men ; and see, if, all together, 
 they can bestow that degree of dignity to which the godly are raised 
 by faith. 
 
 Now, my dear hearer, what more honourable to man than this 
 situation ? Do you consider him as more glorious, more respecta- 
 ble, more grand, when he follows the impulses of a brutal instinct ; 
 when he is the slave of hatred, revenge, voluptuousness, ambition, 
 envy, and all those other monsters which alternately reign in his 
 heart ? 
 
 For, are you, who make a boast of unbelief, thoroughly ac- 
 quainted with what is an unbeliever ? He is a man without morals, 
 probity, faith, or character, who owns no rule but his passions, no 
 law but his iniquitous thoughts, no master but his desires, no check 
 but the dread of authority, no God but himself : an unnatural child, 
 seeing he believes that chance alone hath given him fathers ; a faith- 
 less friend, seeing he looks upon men, merely as the wretched fruits 
 of a wild and fortuitous concurrence, to whom he is connected only 
 by transitory ties ; a cruel master, seeing he is convinced that the 
 strongest and the most fortunate have always reason on their side. 
 For, who could henceforth place any dependence upon you ? You 
 no longer fear a God ; you no longer respect men ; you look for- 
 ward to nothing after this life ; virtue and vice are merely prejudices 
 of education in your eyes, and the consequences of popular credu- 
 lity. Adulteries, revenge, blasphemies, the blackest treacheries, 
 abominations which we dare not even to name, are no longer, in 
 your opinion, but human prohibitions, and regulations established 
 through the policy of legislators. According to you, the most hor- 
 rible crimes, or the purest virtues, are all equally the same, since 
 an eternal annihilation shall soon equalize the just and the impious, 
 and for ever confound them both in the dreary mansion of the 
 tomb. What a monster must you then be upon the earth ! Does 
 this representation of you highly gratify your pride, or can you sup- 
 port even its idea ? 
 
 Besides, you pride yourself upon irreligion, as springing from 
 your superiority of mind ; but trace it to its source. What hath 
 led you to free-thinking ? Is it not the corruption of your heart ? 
 Would you have ever thought of impiety had you been able to ally 
 religion with your pleasures ? You began to hesitate upon a doc- 
 trine which incommoded your passions ; and you have marked it 
 down as false from the moment that you found it irksome. You 
 have anxiously sought to persuade yourself what you had such an 
 interest to believe ; that all died with us ; that eternal punishments 
 were merely the terrors of education ; that inclinations born with 
 us could never be crimes ; what know I ? And all those maxims 
 of free-thinking originating from hell. We are easily persuaded 
 of what we wish. Solomon worshipped the gods of foreign women 
 only to quiet himself in his debaucheries. If men had never had 
 
360 THE TRUTH OF RELIGION. Sei\ 22. 
 
 passions, or if religion had countenanced them, unbelief would 
 never have appeared upon the earth. And a proof that what I say 
 is true, is, that in the moments when you are disgusted with guilt, 
 you imperceptibly turn toward religion ; in the moments when your 
 passions are more cool, your doubts diminish ; you render, as if in 
 spite of yourself, a secret homage in the bottom of your heart to 
 the truth of faith : in vain you try to weaken it, you cannot succeed 
 in extinguishing it ; at the first signal of death, you raise your eyes 
 toward heaven, you acknowledge the God whose finger is upon you, 
 you cast yourself upon the bosom of your Father and the Author 
 of your being ; you tremble over a futurity which you had vaunted 
 not to believe ; and, humbled under the hand of the Almighty, on 
 the point of falling upon and crushing you like a worm of the earth, 
 you confess that he is alone great, alone wise, alone immortal, and 
 that man is only vanity and lies. 
 
 Lastly. If fresh proofs were necessary to my subject, I could 
 prove to you how glorious faith is to man, on the side of the grand 
 models which it holds out for our imitation. Consider Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob, said formerly the Jews to their children. Consi- 
 der the holy men who have gone before you, to whom their faith 
 hath merited so honourable a testimony, said formerly St. Paul to 
 the faithful, after having related to them, in that beautiful chapter 
 of his Epistle to the Hebrews, their names, and the most wonder- 
 ful circumstances of their history, from age to age. 
 
 Behold the excellency of the Christian faith. Recollect all the 
 great men who, in all ages, have submitted to it ; such magnani- 
 mous princes, such religious conquerors, such venerable pastors, 
 such enlightened philosophers, such estimable learned men, wits 
 so vaunted in their age, such noble martyrs, such penitent ancho- 
 rites, such pure and constant virgins, heroes in every description 
 of virtue. Philosophy preached a pompous wisdom ; but its sage 
 was no where to be found. Here what a cloud of witnesses ! What 
 an uninterrupted tradition of Christian heroes from the blood of 
 Abel down to us ! 
 
 Now, I ask, shall you blush to tread in the steps of so many il- 
 lustrious names ? Place on the one side all the great men whom, 
 in all ages, religion hath given to the world, and on the other that 
 small number of black and desperate minds whom unbelief hath 
 produced. Doth it appear more honourable for you to rank your- 
 self among the latter party ? To adopt for guides, and for your 
 models, those men whose names are only recollected with horror, 
 those monsters whom it hath pleased Providence to permit that 
 nature should, from time to time, bring forth ; or the Abrahams, 
 the Josephs, the Moseses, the Davids, the apostolic men, the right- 
 eous of the ancient and of modern times ? Support, if you can, 
 this comparison. Ah ! said formerly St. Jerome, on a different 
 occasion, if you believe me in error, it is glorious for me to be de- 
 ceived with such guides. 
 
 And here, my brethren, leaving unbelievers for a moment, allow 
 me to address myself to you. Avowed unbelief is a vice perhaps 
 
Ser. 22. the truth of religion. 361 
 
 rare among us, but the simplicity of faith is not perhaps the less 
 so. We would feel a horror at quitting the belief of our fathers ; 
 but we wish to refine upon our sincerity. We do not permit our- 
 selves to doubt upon the main part of the mysteries ; but obedi- 
 ence is philosophically given, by imposing our own yoke, by weigh- 
 ing the holy truths, receiving some as reasonable, reasoning upon 
 others, and measuring them by our own feeble lights ; and our age, 
 more than any other, is full of these half believers, who, under the 
 pretext of taking away from religion all that credulity or prejudice 
 may have added to it, deprive faith of the whole merit of sub- 
 mission. 
 
 Now, my brethren, sanctity ought only to be spoken of with a 
 religious circumspection. Faith is a virtue almost equally delicate 
 as modesty: a single doubt, a single word injures it; a breath, as 
 I may say, tarnishes it. Yet nevertheless, what license do they 
 not allow themselves in modern conversations on all that is most 
 respectable in the faith of our fathers ? Alas ! the terrible name of 
 the Lord could not be even pronounced under the law by the 
 mouth of man ; and at present, all that is most sacred and most 
 august in religion is become a common subject of conversation; 
 there every thing is talked over, and freely decided upon. Vain 
 and superficial men, whose only knowledge of religion consists of a 
 little more temerity than the illiterate and the common people ; 
 producing, as their whole stock of learning, some common-place 
 and hackneyed doubts, which they have picked up, but never had 
 formed themselves ; doubts which have so often been cleared up, 
 that they seem now to exist no longer but to glorify the truth; men 
 who, amid the most dissolute manners, have never devoted an hour 
 of serious attention to the truth of religion, act the philosopher, 
 and boldly decide upon points which a whole life of study, accom- 
 panied with learning and piety, could scarcely clear up. 
 
 Even persons of a sect, in whom ignorance on certain points 
 would be meritorious, and who, though knowing, good-breeding 
 and decency require that they should affect to be ignorant; persons 
 who are better acquainted with the world than with Jesus Christ ; 
 who even know not of religion what is necessary to regulate their 
 manners, pretend doubts, wish to have them explained, are afraid 
 of believing too much, have suspicions upon the whole, yet have 
 none upon their own miserable situation and the visible impro- 
 priety of their life. O God ! it is thus that thou deliverest up sin- 
 ners to the vanity of their own fancies, and permittest that those 
 who pretend to penetrate into thine adorable secrecies know not 
 themselves. Faith is therefore glorious to man: this has just 
 been shown to you: it now remains for me to prove that it is 
 necessary to him. 
 
 Part III. Of all the characters of faith, the necessity of it is 
 the one which renders the unbeliever most inexcusable. All the 
 other motives which are employed to lead him to the truth, are 
 foreign, as I may say, to him; this one is drawn from his 
 
362 THE TRUTH OF RELIGION. Ser. 22. 
 
 own ground-work, I mean to say, from the nature itself of his 
 reason. 
 
 Now, I say that faith is absolutely necessary to man, in the 
 gloomy and obscure paths of this life; for his reason is weak, and 
 it requires to be assisted; because it is corrupted, and it requires to 
 be cured; because it is changeable, and it requires to be fixed. 
 Now, faith alone is the aid which assists and enlightens it, the 
 remedy which cures it, the bridle and the rule which retain and 
 fix it. Yet a moment of attention; I shall not misemploy it. 
 
 I say, first, that reason is weak, and that an aid is necessary to 
 it. Alas ! my brethren, we know not, neither ourselves, nor what 
 is external to us. We are totally ignorant how we have been 
 formed, by what imperceptible progressions our bodies have received 
 arrangement and life, and what are the infinite springs, and the 
 divine skill, which give motion to the whole machine. " I cannot 
 tell/' said that illustrious mother, mentioned in the Maccabees, to 
 her children, "how ye came into my womb; for I neither gave you 
 breath nor life, neither was it I that formed the members of every 
 one of you : but doubtless the creator of the world, who formed 
 the generation of man, and found out the beginning of all things, 
 will also, of his own mercy, give you breath and life again, as ye 
 now regard not your own selves for his law's sake/' Our body 
 is itself a mystery, in which the human mind is lost, and over- 
 whelmed, and of which the secrets shall never be fathomed; for 
 there is none but him alone who hath presided at its formation, 
 who is capable of comprehending them. 
 
 That breath of the Divinity which animates us, that portion of 
 ourselves which renders us capable of loving and of knowing, is not 
 less unknown to us; we are entirely ignorant how its desires, its 
 fears, its hopes, are formed, and how it can giye to itself its ideas 
 and images. None have yet been able to comprehend how that 
 spiritual being, so different in its nature from matter, hath possibly 
 been united in us with it by such indissoluble ties, that the two 
 substances no longer form but one whole, and the good and evil of 
 the one become the good and evil of the other. We are a mystery 
 therefore to ourselves, as St. Augustine formerly said; and it 
 would be difficult to say, what is even that vain curiosity which 
 pries into every thing, or how it hath been formed in our soul. 
 
 In all around us we still find nothing but enigmas; we live as 
 strangers upon the earth, and amid objects which we know not. 
 To man, nature is a closed book; and the Creator, to confound, it 
 would appear, human pride, hath been pleased to overspread the 
 face of this abyss with an impenetrable obscurity. 
 
 Lift up thine eyes, O man! consider those grand luminaries 
 suspended over thy head, and which swim, as I may say, through 
 those immense spaces in which thy reason is lost. Who, says Job, 
 hath formed the sun, and given a name to the infinite multitude of 
 stars? Comprehend, if thou canst, their nature, their use, their 
 properties, their situation, their distance, their revolutions, the 
 equality or the inequality of their movements. Our age hath pene- 
 
Ser. 22. the truth of religion. 363 
 
 trated a little into their obscurity, that is to say, it hath a little bet- 
 ter conjectured upon them than the preceding ages ; but what are 
 its discoveries when compared to what we are still ignorant of? 
 
 Descend upon the earth, and tell us, if thou knowest, what it is 
 that keeps the winds bound up ; what regulates the course of the 
 thunders and of the tempests ; what is the fatal boundary which 
 places its mark, and says to the rushing waves, " Here you shall 
 go, and no farther;" and how the prodigy so regular of its move- 
 ments is formed? Explain to us the surprising effects of plants, 
 of metals, of the elements; find out in what manner gold is puri- 
 fied in the bowels of the earth ; unravel, if thou canst, the infinite 
 skill employed in the formation of the very insects which crawl be- 
 fore us ; give us an explanation of the various instincts of animals 
 turn on every side ; nature in all her parts offers nothing to thee 
 but enigmas. O man ! thou knowest nothing of the objects, even 
 under thine eyes, and thou wouldst pretend to fathom the eternal 
 depths of faith ! Nature is a mystery to thee, and thou wouldst 
 have a religion which had none ! Thou art ignorant of the secrets of 
 man, and thou wouldst pretend to know the secrets of God ! Thou 
 knowest not thyself, and thou wouldst pretend to fathom what is so 
 much above thee ! The universe, which God hath yielded up to thy 
 curiosity and to thy disputes, is an abyss in which thou art lost ; and 
 thou wouldst that the mysteries of faith, which he hath solely ex- 
 posed to thy docility and to thy respect, should have nothing which 
 surpasses thy feeble lights ! O, blindness ! Were every thing, 
 excepting religion, clear and evident, thou then, with some show 
 of reason, mightest mistrust its obscurities ; but, since every 
 thing around thee is a labyrinth in which thou art bewildered, 
 ought not the secret of God, as Augustine formerly said, to ren- 
 der thee more respectful and more attentive, far from being more 
 incredulous ? 
 
 The necessity of faith is therefore founded, in the first place, upon 
 the weakness of reason ; but it is likewise founded upon its pro- 
 found depravity. And, in effect, what was more natural to man 
 than to confess his God, the author of his being and of his felicity, 
 his end and his principle ; than to adore his wisdom, his power, 
 his goodness, and all those divine perfections of which he hath en- 
 graved upon his work such profound and evident marks ? These 
 lights were born with us. Nevertheless, review all those ages of 
 darkness and of superstition which preceded the gospel, and see 
 how far man had degraded his Creator, and to what he had likened 
 his God. There was nothing so vile in the created world but his 
 impiety erected into gods, and man was the noblest divinity which 
 was worshipped by man. 
 
 If, from religion, you pass to the morality, all the principles of 
 natural equity were effaced, and man no longer bore, written in 
 his heart, the work of that law which nature has engraven on it. 
 Plato, even that man so wise, and who, according to St. Augus- 
 tine, had so nearly approached to the truth, nevertheless abolishes 
 the holy institution of marriage ; and, permitting a brutal confusion 
 
364 THE TRUTH OF RELIGION. Ser. 22. 
 
 among men, he for ever does away all paternal names and rights, 
 which, even in animals, nature hath so evidently respected ; and 
 gives to the earth men all uncertain of their origin, all coming into 
 the world, without parents, as I may say ; and, consequently, with- 
 out ties, tenderness, affection, or humanity ; all in a situation to 
 become incestuous, or parricides, without even knowing it. 
 
 Others came to announce to men, that voluptuousness was the 
 sovereign good ; and whatever might have been the intention of the 
 first author of this sect, it is certain that his disciples sought no 
 other felicity than that of brutes ; the most shameful debaucheries 
 became philosophical maxims. Rome, Athens, Corinth, beheld ex- 
 cesses, where, it may be said, that man was no longer man. Even 
 this is nothing; the most abominable vices were consecrated there: 
 temples and altars were erected to them : lasciviousness, incest, 
 cruelty, treachery, and other still more abandoned crimes, were 
 made divinities of : the worship became a public debauch and pros- 
 titution : and gods, so criminal, were no longer honoured but by 
 crimes ; and the apostle, who relates them to us, takes care to in- 
 form us, that such was not merely the licentiousness of the people, 
 but of sages and philosophers who had erred in the vanity of their 
 own thoughts, and whom God had delivered up to the corruption 
 of their own heart. O God ! in permitting human reason to fall 
 into such horrible errors, thou intendest to let man know, that rea- 
 son when delivered up to its own darkness, is capable of every 
 thing, and that it can never take upon itself to be its own guide, 
 without plunging into abysses from which thy law and thy light are 
 alone capable of withdrawing him. 
 
 Lastly. If the depravity of reason so evidently expose the neces- 
 sity of a remedy to cure it, its eternal inconstancies and fluctua- 
 tions yet more instruct man that a check and a rule are absolutely 
 necessary to fix it. 
 
 And here, my brethren, if the brevity of a discourse would per- 
 mit all to be said, what vain disputes, what endless questions, what 
 different opinions have formerly engrossed all the schools of the 
 heathen philosophy ! And think not that it was upon matters 
 which God seems to have yielded up to the contestation of men ; 
 it was upon the nature even of God, upon his existence, upon the 
 immortality of the soul, upon the true felicity. 
 
 Some doubted the whole ; others believed that they knew 
 every thing. Some denied a God; others gave us one of their 
 own fashioning ; that is to say, some of them slothful, an indolent 
 spectator of human things, and tranquilly leaving to chance the 
 management of his own work, as a care unworthy of his greatness, 
 and incompatible with his conveniency ; some others made him 
 the slave of fates, and subject to laws which he had no hand in 
 imposing upon himself: others again incorporated, with the whole 
 universe, the soul of that vast body, and composing, as it were, a 
 part of that world which is entirely his work. Many others of 
 ' which I know nothing, for I pretend not to recapitulate them all ; but 
 as many schools, so many were the sentiments upon so essential a 
 
Ser. 22. the truth of religion. 365 
 
 point. So many ages, so many fresh absurdities upon the immor- 
 tality and the nature of the soul : here, it was an assemblage of 
 atoms : there, a subtle fire ; in another place, a minute and pene- 
 trating air ; in another school, a portion of the Divinity. Some made 
 it to die with the body ; others* would have it to have existed before 
 the body ; some again made it to pass from one body to another ; 
 from man to the horse, from the condition of a reasonable being to 
 that of animals without reason. There were some who taught, that 
 the true happiness of man is in the senses; a greater number 
 placed it in the reason ; others again found it only in fame and 
 glory j many in sloth and indolence. And what is the most deplo- 
 rable here is, that the existence of God, his nature, the immortality 
 of the soul, the destination and the happiness of men, all point so 
 essential to his destiny, so decisive with regard to his eternal mi- 
 sery or happiness, were, nevertheless, become problems, every where 
 destined merely to amuse the leisure of the schools and the vanity 
 of the sophists ; idle questions, in which they were never interested 
 for the principle of truth, but solely for the glory of coming off con- 
 queror. Great God ! it is in this manner that thou sportest with hu- 
 man wisdom. 
 
 If from thence we entered into the Christian ages, who could 
 enumerate that endless variety of sects which, in all times hath 
 broken the unity, in order to follow strange doctrines ? What were 
 the abominations of the Gnostics, the extravagant follies of the 
 Valentinians, the fanaticisms of Montanus, the contradictions of 
 the Manicheans ? Follow every age ; as, in order to prove the just, 
 it is necessary that there be heresies. You will find that in every 
 age the church hath always been miserably rent with them. 
 
 Recall to your remembrance the sad dissensions of only the past 
 age. Since the separation of our brethren, what a monstrous variety 
 in their doctrine ! What endless sects sprung from only one sect ! 
 What numberless particular assemblies in one same schism ! O 
 faith ! O gift of God ! O divine torch, which comes to clear up 
 darkness, how necessary art thou to man ! O infallible rule, sent 
 from heaven, and given in trust to the church of Jesus Christ, always 
 the same in all ages, always independent of places, of times, of 
 nations, and of interests, how requisite it is that thou served as a 
 check upon the eternal fluctuations of the human mind ! O pillar 
 of fire, at the same time so obscure and so luminous, of what im- 
 portance it is that thou always conducted the camp of the Lord, 
 the tabernacle and the tents of Israel, through all the perils of the 
 desert, the rocks, the temptations, and the dark and unknown paths 
 of this life ! 
 
 For you, my brethren, what instruction should we draw from 
 this discourse, and what should I say to you in concluding ? You 
 say that you have faith ; show your faith by your works. What 
 shall it avail you to have believed, if your manners have belied your 
 belief ? The gospel is yet more the religion of the heart than of 
 the mind. That faith which makes Christians is not a simple sub- 
 mission of the reason ; it is a pious tenderness of the soul ; it is a 
 
366 doubts upon religion. Ser. 23. 
 
 continual longing to become like unto Jesus Christ ! it is an inde- 
 fatigable application in rooting out from ourselves whatever may 
 be inimical to a life of faith. There is an unbelief of the heart 
 equally dangerous to salvation as that of the mind. A man who 
 obstinately refuses belief, after all the proofs of religion, is a mon- 
 ster, whom we contemplate with horror ; but a Christian who believes, 
 yet lives as though he believed not, is a madman, whose folly sur- 
 passeth comprehension : the one procures his own condemnation, 
 like a man desperate ; the other, like an indolent one, who tran- 
 quilly allows himself to be carried down by the waves, and thinks 
 that he is thereby saving himself. Make your faith then certain, my 
 brethren, by your good works ; and if you shudder at the sole name 
 of an impious person, have the same horror at yourselves, seeing 
 we are taught by faith that the destiny of the wicked Christian shall 
 not be different from his, and that his lot shall be the same as that 
 of the unbeliever. Live conformably to what you believe. Such 
 is the faith of the righteous, and the only one to which the eternal 
 promises have been made. 
 
 SERMON XXIII. 
 
 DOUBTS UPON RELIGION. 
 
 " Howbeit we know this man, whence he is ; but when Christ cometh, no man 
 knoweth whence he is." John vii. 27. 
 
 Such is the grand pretext opposed by the unbelief of the Jews 
 to the doctrine and to the ministry of Jesus Christ ; doubts upon 
 the truth of his mission. We know who thou art, and whence 
 thou comest, said they to him : but the Christ whom we expect, 
 when he cometh, no man knoweth whence he is. It is far from 
 clear, then, that thou art the Messiah promised to our fathers ; per- 
 haps it is an evil spirit which, through thee, operates these won- 
 ders before our eyes, and imposes upon the credulity of the vulgar; 
 so many deceivers have already appeared in Judea, who, giving 
 themselves out for the great Prophet who is to come, have seduced 
 the people, and at last drawn down upon themselves the punish- 
 ment due to their imposture. Keep us no longer in doubt : if thou 
 be the Christ, tell us plainly, and in such a way as that room shall 
 no longer be left either for doubt or for mistake. 
 
 I would not dare to say this here, my brethren, were the lan- 
 guage of doubts upon faith not become so common now among us, 
 that precaution is needless in undertaking to confute it : behold 
 the almost universal pretext employed in the world to authorize a 
 life altogether criminal. We every where meet with sinners who 
 coolly tell us, that they would be converted were they well assured 
 that all we tell them of religion were true; that perhaps there is 
 nothing after this life ; that they have doubts and difficulties upon 
 
Ser. 23. doubts upon religion. 367 
 
 our mysteries, to which they can find no satisfactory answer ; that, 
 after all, the whole appears very uncertain : and that, before en- 
 gaging to follow all the rigid maxims of the gospel, it would be 
 proper to be well assured that our toils shall not be lost. 
 
 Now, my intention, at present, is not to overthrow unbelief by 
 the grand proofs which establish the truth of the Christian faith. 
 Setting aside that elsewhere we have already established them, it is 
 a subject far too extensive for a Discourse, and often beyond even 
 the capacity of the majority of those who listen to us ; it is fre- 
 quently paying too much deference to the frivolous objections of 
 those who give themselves out as free-thinkers in the world, to 
 employ the gravity of our ministry in refuting and overthrowing 
 them. 
 
 We must take a shorter and more easy way, therefore, at pre- 
 sent. My design is not to enter into the foundation of the proofs 
 which render testimony to the truth of faith ; I mean only to ex- 
 pose the falsity of unbelief : I mean to prove, that the greatest part 
 of those who call themselves unbelievers, are not so ; that almost 
 all those sinners who vaunt, and are continually alleging to us their 
 doubts, as the only obstacle to their conversion, have actually none; 
 and that, of all the pretexts employed as an excuse for not chang- 
 ing their life, that of doubts upon religion, now the most com- 
 mon, is the least true and the least sincere. 
 
 It appears surprising at first, that I should undertake to prove 
 to those who believe to have doubts upon religion, and are con- 
 tinually objecting them to us, that they have actually none: never- 
 theless, with a proper knowledge of men, and, above all, with a 
 proper attention to the character of those who make a boast of 
 doubting, nothing is more easy than this conviction: I say, to 
 their character, in which are always to be found licentiousness, 
 ignorance, and vanity; and such are the three usual sources of 
 their doubts : they give the credit of them to unbelief, which has 
 scarcely a share in them. 
 
 First. It is licentiousness which proposes, without daring to be- 
 lieve them. First reflection. 
 
 Secondly. It is ignorance which adopts, without comprehend- 
 ing them. Second reflection. 
 
 Lastly. It is vanity which boasts, without being able to suc- 
 ceed in drawing any resource from them. Last reflection. 
 
 This is to say, that the greatest part of those who call themselves 
 unbelievers, are licentious enough to wish to be so ; too ignorant 
 to be so in reality ; and nevertheless, sufficiently vain to wish to 
 appear so. Let us unfold these three reflections, now become so 
 important among us ; and let us overthrow licentiousness rather 
 than unbelief, by laying it open to itself. 
 
 Part I. It must at once be admitted, my brethren, and it is 
 melancholy for us that we owe this confession to the truth, it must 
 be admitted, I say, that our age and those of our fathers have seen 
 real unbelievers. In that depravity of manners in which we live, and 
 
368 doubts upon religion. Ser. 23. 
 
 amid all the scandals which have so long afflicted the churchy it is 
 not surprising that men have sometimes been found who have de- 
 nied the existence of a God ; and that faith, so weakened in all, 
 should in some be at last wholly extinguished. As chosen and ex- 
 traordinary souls appear in every age, whom the Lord filleth with 
 his grace, his lights, and his most shining gifts, and upon whom he 
 delighteth in liberally pouring forth all the riches of his mercy ; so, 
 likewise, are seen others in whom iniquity is, as I may say, con- 
 summate, and whom the Lord seems to have marked out, to dis- 
 play in them the most terrible judgments of his justice, and the 
 most fatal effects of his neglect and wrath. 
 
 The church, where all these scandals are to increase even to the 
 end, cannot therefore boast of being entirely purged from the scandal 
 of unbelief: she hath, from time to time, her stars which enlighten, 
 and her monsters who disfigure her ; and, along with those great 
 men, celebrated for their lights and for their sanctity, who in every 
 age have served as her support and ornament, she hath also wit- 
 nessed a list of impious men, whose names are still at present the 
 horror of the universe, who have dared, in writings full of blasphemy 
 and impiety, to attack the mysteries of God, to deny salvation and 
 the promises made to our fathers, to overturn the foundation of 
 faith, and to preach free-thinking among believers. 
 
 I do not pretend, therefore, to say, that among so many wretches 
 who speak the language of unbelief among us, there may not per- 
 haps be found some one sufficiently corrupted in mind and in 
 heart, and so far abandoned by God, as actually, and in effect 
 to be an unbeliever : I mean only to establish, that these men, 
 grounded in impiety, are rare; and that, among all those who 
 are continually vaunting their doubts and their unbelief, and make 
 a deplorable ostentation of them, there is not perhaps a single one 
 upon whose heart faith doth not still preserve its rights, and who 
 doth not inwardly dread that God whom he apparently refuses to 
 acknowledge. To overthrow, it is not always necessary to combat 
 our pretended unbelievers ; it would often be combating only phan- 
 toms ; they require only to be displayed such as they are : the 
 wretched declaration of unbelief quickly tumbles down, and nothing 
 remains but their passions and their debaucheries. 
 
 And, behold the first reason upon which I have established the 
 general proposition, that the majority of those who make a boast 
 of their doubts have actually none ; it is, that their doubts are those 
 of licentiousness, and not of unbelief. Why, my brethren ? Because 
 it is of licentiousness which hath formed their doubts, and not their 
 doubts licentiousness ; because that, in fact, it is to their passions 
 and not to their doubts that they hold : lastly, because that, in ge- 
 neral, they attack in religion only those truths inimical to their pas- 
 sions. Behold reflections which, in my opinion, are worthy of your 
 attention ; I shall lay them before you without ornament, and in 
 the same order in which they presented themselves to my mind. 
 
 I say, in the first place, because their doubts have sprung from 
 licentiousness and not licentiousness from their doubts. Yes, my 
 
Ser. 23. doubts upon religion. 369 
 
 brethren : not one of all those who affect to profess themselves un- 
 believers has ever been seen to begin by doubts upon the truths of 
 faith, and afterward from doubts to fall into licentiousness : they 
 begin with the passions ; doubts come afterward : they first give 
 way to the regularities of the age and to the excesses of debauchery ; 
 and when attained to a certain length, and they find it no longer 
 possible to return upon their steps, they then say, in order to quiet 
 themselves, that there is nothing after this life, or at least, they 
 are well pleased to find people who say so. It is not, therefore, 
 the little certainty they find in religion, which authorizes their con- 
 clusion that we ought to yield ourselves up to pleasure, and that 
 self-denial is needless, since every thing dies with us : it is the 
 yielding of themselves up to pleasure which creates doubts upon 
 religion, and, by rendering self-denial next to impossible, leads them 
 to conclude that consequently it is neeedless. Faith becomes sus- 
 pected only when it begins to be troublesome ; and to this day un- 
 belief hath never made a voluptuary, but voluptuousness hath made 
 almost all the unbelievers. 
 
 And a proof of what I say, you whom this Discourse regards, is, 
 that while you have lived with modesty and innocence, you never 
 doubted. Recollect those happy times when the passions had not 
 yet corrupted your heart : the faith of your fathers had then nothing 
 but what was august and respectable ; reason bent without pain to 
 the yoke of authority ; you never thought of doubts or difficulties : 
 from the moment your manners changed, your views upon religion 
 have no longer been the same. It is not faith, therefore, which 
 hath found new difficulties in your reason ; it is the practice of du- 
 ties which hath encountered new obstacles in your heart. And, 
 should you tell us, that your first impressions, so favourable to 
 faith, sprung solely from the prejudices of education and of child- 
 hood ; we shall answer, that the second, so favourable to impiety, 
 have sprung solely from the prejudices of the passions and of de- 
 bauchery ; and that, prejudices for prejudices, it appears to us, that 
 it is still better to keep by those which are formed in innocence 
 and lead us to virtue, than to those which are born in the infamy 
 of the passions, and preach up only free-thinking and guilt. 
 
 Thus nothing is more humiliating for unbelief than recalling it 
 to its origin ; it bears a false name of learning and of light : and it 
 is a child of iniquity and of darkness. It is not the strength of 
 reason which has led our pretended unbelievers to scepticism; it is 
 the weakness of a corrupted heart, which has been unable to sur- 
 mount its infamous passions ; it is even a mean cowardliness, which, 
 unable to support and to view with a steady eye the terrors and the 
 threatenings of religion, endeavours to shake off their thoughts by 
 continually repeating, that they are childish terrors : it is a man 
 who, afraid of the night, sings as he goes along, to prevent himself 
 from thinking ; debauchery always makes us cowardly and fearful ; 
 and it is nothing but an excess of fear of eternal punishments, which 
 occasions a sinner to be continually preaching up and singing to us 
 that they are doubtful ; he trembles, and wishes to strengthen him- 
 
 B B 
 
370 DOUBTS I'PON RELIGION. Sei*. 23. 
 
 self against himself ; he cannot support, at the same time, the view 
 of his crimes and that of the i)unishment which awaits them ; that 
 faith, so venerable, and of which he speaks with such contempt, 
 nevertheless terrifies and disquiets him still more than those other 
 sinners, who, without doubting its punishments, yet are frequently 
 not less unfaithful to its precepts ; it is a coward, who hides his 
 fear under a false ostentation of bravery. No, my brethren, our 
 pretended free-thinkers give themselves out as men of courage and 
 firmness ; examine them narrowly, and they are the weakest and 
 most cowardly of men. 
 
 Besides, it is not surprising that licentiousness leads us to doubt 
 of religion : the passions require the aid of unbelief ; for they are 
 too feeble and too unreasonable to maintain their own cause. Our 
 lights, our feelings, our conscience, all struggle within us against 
 them : we are under the necessity, therefore, of seeking a support 
 for them, and of defending them against ourselves ; for, it is a 
 matter of satisfaction to justify to one's self whatever is pleasing. 
 We would neither wish that passions which are dear to us should 
 be criminal, nor that we should continually have to support the in- 
 terests of our pleasures against those of our conscience : we wish 
 tranquilly to enjoy our crimes, and to free ourselves from that trou- 
 blesome monitor which continually espouses the cause of virtue 
 against ourselves : while remorses contest the pleasure of our enjoy- 
 ments, they must be very imperfectly tasted ; it is paying too great 
 a price for guilt, to purchase it at the expense of that quiet which 
 is sought in it : we must either terminate our debaucheries, or try 
 to quiet ourselves in them ; and as it is impossible to enjoy peace 
 of mind in them, and next to impossible to terminate them, the 
 only refuge seems that of doubting the truths which disquiet us ; 
 and, in order to attain to tranquillity, every effort is used to incul- 
 cate the persuasion of unbelief. 
 
 That is to say, that the great effort of licentiousness is that of 
 leading us to the desire of unbelief ; the horrible security of the 
 unbeliever is coveted ; total hardness of heart is considered as a 
 happy state ; it is unpleasant to have been bom with a weaker and 
 more fearful conscience ; the lot of those apparently firm and un- 
 shaken in impiety, is envied : while they, in their turn, perhaps a 
 prey to the most gloomy remorses, and vaunting a courage they 
 are far from having, view our lot with envy ; for, judging of us from 
 the language we hold upon free-thinking, they take us for what we 
 take them ; that is to say, for what we are not, and for what both 
 they and we would wish to be. And it is thus, O my God ! that 
 these false heroes of impiety live in a perpetual illusion, continually 
 deceive themselves, and appear what they are not, only because 
 they would wish to be it. They would willingly have religion to 
 be but a dream : they say in their heart, " There is no God;" that 
 is to say, this impious language is the desire of their heart ; they 
 would ardently wish no God ; that that Being, so grand and so 
 necessary, were a chimera ; that they were the sole masters of their 
 own destiny ; that they were accountable only to themselves for 
 
Ser. 23. doubts upon religion. 371 
 
 the horrors of their life and the infamy of their passions ; that all 
 finished with them ; and that, beyond the grave, there were no su- 
 preme and eternal Judge, the punisher of vice and the rewarder of 
 virtue : they wish it ; they destroy as much as they can, through 
 the impious wishes of their heart, but they cannot efface from the 
 foundation of their being, the idea of his power and the dread of 
 his punishments. 
 
 In effect, it would be too vulgar for a man, vain and plunged in 
 debauchery, inwardly to say to himself, I am still too weak, and 
 too much abandoned to pleasure, to quit it, or to lead a more re- 
 gular and Christian life. That pretext would still leave all his re- 
 morses. It is much sooner done to say to himself, It is needless to 
 live otherwise, for there is nothing after this life. This pretext is 
 far more convenient, for it puts an end to every thing ; it is the 
 most favourable to indolence, for it estranges us from the sacra- 
 ments, and from all the other slaveries of religion. It is much 
 shorter to say to himself, " There is nothing/ 5 and to live as if he 
 were in effect persuaded of it ; it is at once throwing off every yoke 
 and all restraint ; it puts an end to all the irksome measures which 
 sinners of another description still guard with religion and with 
 the conscience. This pretext of unbelief, by persuading us that 
 we actually doubt, leaves us in a certain state of indolence on 
 every thing regarding religion, which prevents us from searching 
 into ourselves and from making too melancholy reflections on our 
 passions. We meanly allow ourselves to be swept away by the 
 fatal course, upon the general prepossession that we believe no- 
 thing; we have few remorses, for we think ourselves unbelievers, 
 and because that supposition leaves us almost the same security as 
 impiety : at least, it is a diversion which dulls and suspends the 
 sensibility of the conscience ; and, by operating so as to make us 
 always take ourselves for what we are not, it induces us to live as if 
 we actually were what we wish to be. 
 
 That is to say, that the greatest part of these pretended free- 
 thinkers, and of these debauched and licentious unbelievers, ought 
 to be considered as weak and dissolute men, who, not having the 
 force to live Chris tianly, nor even the hardiness to be atheists, 
 remain in that state of estrangement from religion, as the most con- 
 venient to indolence ; and, as they never try to quit it, they fancy 
 that they actually hold to it ; it is a kind of neutrality between faith 
 and irreligion, contrived by indolence for its own ease ; for it re- 
 quires exertion to adopt a side ; and, in order to remain neuter, 
 nothing more is required than not to think, and to live by habit; 
 thus they never fathom, nor take any resolution upon themselves. 
 Hardened and avowed impiety hath something I know not what, 
 which strikes with horror: religion on the other hand, presents objects 
 which alarm and are by no means convenient to the passions. What 
 is to be done in these two extremities, of which the one shocks 
 reason and the other the senses ? They rest wavering and unde- 
 cided ; in the mean time they enjoy the calm which is left by that 
 state of indecision and indifference : they live without wishing to 
 
 B B 2 
 
372 doubts upon religion. Ser. 2.3. 
 
 know what they are ; for it is much more convenient to be nothing, 
 and to live without thinking, or any knowledge of themselves. No, 
 my brethren, I repeat it, these are not unbelievers, they are cow- 
 ards, who have not the courage to espouse a side ; who know only 
 to live voluptuously, without rule, without morality, and often 
 without decency ; and who, without being atheists, live however 
 without religion, for religion requires consistency, reason, elevation 
 of mind, firmness, noble sentiments ; and of all these they are in- 
 capable. Such, however, are the heroes of whom impiety boasts ; 
 behold the suffrages upon which it grounds its defence, and opposes 
 to religion by insulting us ; behold the partitans with whom it thinks 
 itself invincible ; and weak and wretched must its resources indeed 
 be, since it is reduced to seek them in men of this description. 
 
 First reason, which proves that licentiousness springs not from 
 doubts, but doubts from licentiousness. The second reason is only 
 a fresh proof of the first ; it is that actually, if they do not change 
 their life, it is not to their doubts, but solely to their passions, that 
 they hold. 
 
 For I ask nothing of you here but candour, you who continually 
 allege your doubts upon our mysteries. When you sometimes 
 think of quitting that sink of vice and debauchery in which you 
 live, and when the passions, more tranquil, allow you to reflect, do 
 you then oppose your uncertainties upon religion ? Do you say to 
 yourselves, (i But if I return, it will be necessary to believe things 
 which seem incredible ?" Is this the grand difficulty ? Ah ! you 
 inwardly say, but if I return, it will be necessary to break off this 
 connexion, to deny myself these excesses, to terminate these socie- 
 ties, to shun these places, to proceed to things which I shall never 
 support and to adopt a manner of life to which all my inclinations 
 are repugnant. These are what check you ; these are the wall of 
 separation which removes you from God. You speak so much to 
 others of your doubts; how comes it that you never speak of 
 them to yourselves ? This is not a matter, therefore, of reason and 
 of belief; it is a matter of the heart and of licentiousness ; and the 
 delay of your conversion springs not from your uncertainties upon 
 faith, but from the sole doubt in which the violence and the em- 
 pire of your passions leave you of ever being able to free yourselves 
 from their subjection and infamy. Such, my brethren, are the 
 true chains which bind our pretended unbelievers to their own 
 wretchedness. 
 
 And this truth is more evident from this, that the majority of 
 those who profess themselves unbelievers, live, nevertheless, in 
 perpetual variations upon the point even of unbelief. In certain 
 moments they are affected with the truths of religion: they feel 
 themselves torn with the keenest remorses; they even apply to the 
 servants of God most distinguished for their learning and piety, 
 to hold converse with, and receive instruction from them : in others, 
 they make game of these truths; they treat the servants of God 
 with derision, and piety itself as a chimera: there is scarcely one 
 of these sinners, even of those who make the greatest ostentation 
 
Ser. 23. doubts upon religion. 373 
 
 of their unbelief, whom the spectacle of an unexpected death, a 
 fatal accident, a grievous loss, a reverse of fortune, hath not 
 cast into gloomy reflections on his situation, and excited desires 
 of a more Christian life : there is hardly one who, in these trying 
 situations, seeks not consolation in the support of the godly, 
 and takes not some step which leaves hopes of amendment. It is 
 not to their companions in impiety and licentiousness that they 
 then have recourse for consolation ; it is not by those impious rail- 
 leries upon our mysteries, and by that horrible philosophy, that 
 they try to alleviate their sufferings : these are discourses of festivity 
 and dissipation, and not of affliction and sorrow: it is the religion 
 of the table, of pleasures, of riotings; it is not that of solemn adver- 
 sity and sadness; the relish of impiety vanishes with that of plea- 
 sures. Now, if their unbelief were founded in real uncertainties 
 upon religion, so long as these uncertainties existed, unbelief should 
 be the same; but, as their doubts spring only from their passions, 
 and as their passions are not always the same, nor equally violent 
 and masters of their heart, so their doubts continually fluctuate like 
 their passions; they increase, they diminish, they are eclipsed, they 
 re-appear, they are mutable, exactly in the same degree as their 
 passions. In a word they share the lot of the passions, for they 
 are nothing but the passions themselves. 
 
 In effect, to leave nothing unsaid on this subject, and to make 
 you thoroughly feel how much this vaunted profession of unbelief 
 is despicable, observe this reply to every difficulty of the boasting 
 sinner, reduce him to have nothing more to say, and yet still he does 
 not yield : you have not thereby gained him ; he retires within him- 
 self, as if he had still more overpowering reasons which he disdains 
 to bring forward: he keeps firm, and opposes a mysterious and 
 decisive air to all those proofs which he cannot resolve. You then 
 pity his madness and obstinacy; you are mistaken; be touched 
 only for his libertine life, and his want of candour; for, let a mor- 
 tal disease strike him on quitting you ; approach his bed of anguish, 
 ah ! you will find this pretended unbeliever convinced ; his doubts 
 cease, his uncertainties end, all that deplorable display of unbelief 
 vanishes and tumbles in pieces ; there is no longer even question of 
 it: he has recourse to the God of his fathers, and trembles at the 
 judgments he made a show of not believing. The minister of 
 Jesus Christ, called in, has no occasion to enter into controversy to 
 undeceive him on his impiety: the dying sinner anticipates his 
 cares and his ministry: he is ashamed of his past blasphemies, and 
 repents of them; he acknowledges their falsity and deception; he 
 makes a public reparation of them to the majesty and to the truth 
 of religion; he no longer demands proofs, he asks only consolations. 
 Nevertheless, this disease hath not brought new lights upon faith; 
 the blow which strikes his flesh hath not cleared up the doubts of 
 his mind; ah! it is because it touches his heart, and terminates his 
 riots; in a word, it is that his doubts were in his passions, and 
 that whatever tends to extinguish his passions, tends, at the same 
 time, to extinguish his doubts. 
 
374 doubts upon religion. Ser. 2.3. 
 
 It happens, I confess, that sinners are sometimes found, who 
 push their madness and impiety even to that last moment: who 
 expire in vomiting forth, with their impious souls, blasphemies 
 against the God who is to judge them, and whom they refuse to 
 acknowledge. For, O my God ! thou art terrible in thy judg- 
 ments, and sometimes permittest that the atheist die in his im- 
 piety. But such examples are rare; and you well know, my 
 brethren, that an entire age scarcely furnishes one of these shock- 
 ing spectacles. But view, in that last moment, all the others who 
 vaunted their unbelief; see a sinner on the bed of death, who had 
 hitherto appeared the firmest in impiety, and the most resolute in 
 denying all belief; he even anticipates the proposal of having re- 
 course to the church remedies : he lifts up his hands to heaven, 
 and gives striking and sincere marks of a religion which was never 
 effaced from the bottom of his heart : he no longer rejects, as child- 
 ish bugbears, the threatenings and chastisements of a future life ; 
 what do I say? this sinner, formerly so firm, so stately in his 
 pretended unbelief, so much above the vulgar fears, then becomes 
 weaker, more fearful, and more credulous, than the lowest of the 
 people; his fears are more excessive, his very religion more super- 
 stitious, his practices of worship more silly, and more extravagant 
 than those of the vulgar; and, as one excess borders on its opposite 
 excess, he is seen to pass in a moment from impiety to supersti- 
 tion; from the firmness of the philosopher to all the weakness of 
 the ignorant and simple. 
 
 And here it is, that, with Tertullian, I would appeal to this dying 
 sinner, and let him hold forth, in my stead, against unbelief; it is 
 here that, to the honour of the religion of our fathers, I would wish 
 no other testimony of the weakness and of the insincerity of the 
 pretended atheist, than this expiring soul, who, surely, now can 
 speak only the language of truth ; it is here that I would assemble 
 all unbelievers around his bed of death ; and, to overthrow them 
 by a testimony which could not be suspicious, would say to him, 
 with Tertullian, " O soul ! before thou quittest this earthly body, 
 which thou art so soon to be freed from, suffer me to call upon thy 
 testimony: speak, in this last moment, when vanity is no more, 
 and thou owest all to the truth : say, if thou considerest the terrible 
 God, into whose hands thou goest, as a chimerical being with 
 whom weak and credulous minds are alarmed? Say, if all now 
 disappearing from thine eyes, if, for thee, all creatures returning to 
 nothing, God alone doth not appear to thee immortal, unchange- 
 able, the being of all ages and of eternity, and who filleth the 
 heavens and the earth? We now consent, we, whom thou hast 
 always considered as superstitious and vulgar minds, we consent 
 that thou judge between us and unbelief, to which thou hast ever 
 been so partial. Though, with regard to faith, thou hast hitherto 
 been as a stranger and the enemy of religion, religion refers its 
 cause to thee, against those with whom the shocking tie of impiety 
 had so closely united thee. If all die with thee, why does death 
 appear so dreadful? Why these uplifted hands to heaven, if there 
 
Ser. 23. doubts upon religion. 375 
 
 be no God who may listen to thy prayers and be touched by thy 
 groanings? If nothing thyself, why belie the nothingness of thy 
 being, and why tremble upon the sequel of thy destiny ? Whence 
 come, in this last moment, these feelings of dread and of respect 
 for the Supreme Being? Is it not, that they have ever been in 
 thee, that thou hast imposed upon the public by a false ostentation 
 of impiety, and that death only unfolds those dispositions of 
 faith and of religion, which, though dormant, have never ceased 
 during life?" 
 
 Yes, my brethren, could the passions be destroyed, all unbe- 
 lievers would soon be recalled; and a final reason, which fully 
 proves it, is that, if they seem to rise up against the incomprehen- 
 sibility of our mysteries, it is solely for the purpose of combating 
 what touches them, and of attacking the truths which interest the 
 passions ; that is to say, the truth of a future state, and the eter- 
 nity of future punishments ; this is always the favourite conclusion 
 and fruit of their doubts. 
 
 In effect, if religion, without adding maxims and truths which 
 restrain the passions, proposed only mysteries which exceed reason, 
 we may boldly say, that unbelievers would be rare ; almost no one 
 is interested in those abstruse truths or errors, which it is indifferent 
 to believe or to deny. You will find few real votaries of truth 
 who become partisans and zealots in support of merely speculative 
 and unimportant points, because they believe them to be true. 
 The abstruse truths of mathematics have found, in our days, some 
 zealous and estimable followers, who have devoted themselves to 
 the elucidation of what is held as most impenetrable in the infinite 
 secrets and profound obscurities of that science; but these are rare 
 and singular men ; the infection was little to be dreaded, nor, in 
 truth, has it spread; they are admired, but few would wish to 
 follow their example. If religion proposed only truths equally 
 abstruse, equally indifferent to the felicity of the senses, equally 
 uninteresting to the passions and to self-love, the atheists would 
 be still more rare than the mathematicians. The truths of religion 
 are objected to, merely because they threaten us; no objections 
 are made to the others, because their truth or their falsity is alike 
 indifferent. 
 
 And tell us not that it is not through self-interest, but the sole 
 love of truth, that the unbeliever rejects mysteries which reason 
 rejects. This, I well know, is the boast of the pretended unbe- 
 liever, and he would wish us to think so ; but of what consequence 
 is the truth to men, who, so far from either seeking, loving, or 
 knowing it, wish even to conceal it from themselves ? What mat- 
 ters to them a truth beyond their reach, and to which they have 
 never devoted a single serious moment; which, having nothing 
 flattering to the passions, can never be interesting to these men of 
 flesh and blood, plunged in a voluptuous life ? Their object is to 
 gratify their irregular desires, and yet have nothing to dread after 
 this life ; this is the only truth which interests them ; give up that 
 point, and the obscurity of all the other mysteries will not occupy 
 
376 doubts upon religion. Ser. 23. 
 
 even a thought ; let them but tranquilly enjoy their crimes, and 
 they will agree to every thing. 
 
 Thus the majority of atheists, who have left in writing the 
 wretched fruits of their impiety, have always striven to prove there 
 was nothing above us ; that all died with the body, and that future 
 punishments or rewards were fables ; to attract followers it was ne- 
 cessary to secure the suffrage of the passions. If ever they at- 
 tacked the other points of religion, it was only to come to the main 
 conclusion, that there is nothing after this life ; that vices or virtues 
 are names invented by policy to restrain the people ; and that the 
 passions are only natural and innocent inclinations, which every one 
 may follow, because every one finds them in himself. 
 
 Behold why the impious, in the Book of Wisdom, the Sadducees 
 themselves, in the Gospel, who may be considered as the fathers 
 and predecessors of our unbelievers, never took any pains to refute 
 the truth of the miracles related in the books of Moses, and which 
 God formerly wrought in favour of his people, nor the promise of 
 the Mediator made to their fathers : they attacked only the resur- 
 rection of the dead, and the immortality of the soul : that point 
 decided every thing for them. u Man dies like the beast," said 
 they in the Book of Wisdom ; " we know not if their nature be dif- 
 ferent, but their end and their lot are the same : trouble us no 
 more, therefore, with a futurity which is not: let us enjoy life; let 
 us refuse ourselves no gratification : time is short ; let us hasten 
 to live, for we shall die to-morrow, and because all shall die with 
 us." No, my brethren, unbelief hath always originated in the pas- 
 sions. The yoke of faith is never rejected but in order to shake 
 off the yoke of duties ; and religion would never have an enemy, 
 were it not the enemy of licentiousness and vice. 
 
 But, if the doubts of our unbelievers are not real, in consequence 
 of being formed solely by licentiousness, they are also false, because 
 it is ignorance which adopts without comprehending them, and va- 
 nity which makes a boast without being able to make a resource of 
 them : this is what now remains to me to unfold. 
 
 Part II. The same answer might be made to the majority of 
 those who are continually vaunting their doubts upon religion, and 
 find nothing but contradictions in what faith obliges us to believe, 
 that Tertullian formerly made to the heathens, upon all the re- 
 proaches they invented against the mysteries, and the doctrine of 
 Jesus Christ. They condemn, said he, what they do not under- 
 stand : they blame what they have never examined, and what they 
 know only by hearsay; they blaspheme what they are ignorant of, 
 and they are ignorant of it because they hate it too much to give 
 themselves the trouble of searching into and knowing it. Now, 
 continues this father, nothing is more indecent and foolish than 
 boldly to decide upon what they know not ; and all that religion 
 would require of these frivolous and dissolute men, who so warmly 
 rise up against it, is, not to condemn before they are well acquaint- 
 ed with it. 
 
Ser. 23. doubts upon religion. 377 
 
 Such, my brethren, is the situation of almost all who give them- 
 selves out in the world as unbelievers ; they have investigated nei- 
 ther the difficulties nor the respectable proofs of religion ; they 
 know not even enough to doubt of them. They hate it ; for how 
 is it possible to love our condemnation ? And upon that hatred 
 are founded their doubts and their only arguments to oppose it. 
 
 In effect, when I glance my eye over all that the Christian ages 
 have had of great men, elevated geniuses, profound and enlightened 
 scholars, who, after an entire life of study and indefatigable appli- 
 cation, have, with a humble docility, submitted to the mysteries of 
 faith ; have found the proofs of religion so strong, that the proud- 
 est and most untractable reason might, in their opinion, without 
 derogation, comply ; have defended it against the blasphemies of 
 the pagans ; have silenced the vain philosophy of the sages of the 
 age, and made the folly of the cross to triumph over all the wisdom 
 and erudition of Rome and Athens ; it strikes me, that, in order to 
 renew the attack against mysteries so long and so universally esta- 
 blished ; that, in order to be heard in appeal, if I may venture to 
 say so, from the submission of so many ages, from the writings of 
 so many great men, from so many victories achieved by faith, from 
 the consent of the universe ; in a word, from a prescription so long 
 and so well strengthened, it would require either new proofs that had 
 never yet been controverted, or new difficulties that had never yet 
 been started, or new methods which discovered a weak side in reli- 
 gion, as yet never found out. It seems to me, that, singly to rise 
 up against so many testimonies, so many prodigies, so many ages, 
 so many divine monuments, so many famous personages, so many 
 works which time hath consecrated, and which, like pure gold, have 
 quitted the ordeal of unbelief only more resplendent and immortal ; 
 in a word, so many surprising, and, till then, unheard of events, 
 which establish the faith of Christians, it would require very deci- 
 sive and very evident reasons, very rare and new lights, to pretend 
 even to doubt, much less to oppose it. Would not that man be 
 deservedly considered as out of his senses, who should go to defy 
 a whole army, merely to make an ostentation of a vain defiance, and 
 to pride himself upon a burlesque bravery ? 
 
 Nevertheless, when you examine the majority of those who call 
 themselves unbelievers, who are continually clamouring against the 
 popular prejudices, who vaunt their doubts, and defy us to satisfy 
 or to answer them ; you find that their only knowledge consists of 
 some hackneyed and vulgar doubts, which, in all times, have been, 
 and still continue to be, argued in the world ; that they know no- 
 thing but a certain jargon of licentiousness which goes from hand 
 to hand, which they receive without examination, and repeat with- 
 out understanding : you find that their whole skill and study of 
 religion are reduced to some licentious sayings, which, if I may de- 
 scend so low, are the proper language of the streets ; to certain 
 maxims which, through mere repetition, begin to relish of prover- 
 bial meanness. You will find no foundation, no principle, no se- 
 quence of doctrine, no knowledge even of the religion which they 
 
378 DOUBTS UPON RELIGION. Ser. 23. 
 
 attack ; they are men immersed in pleasure, and who would be very 
 sorry to have a spare moment to devote to the investigation of 
 wearisome truths which they are indifferent whether they know or 
 not ; men of a light and superficial character, and wholly unfitted 
 for a moment's serious meditation or investigation ; let me again 
 repeat, men drowned in voluptuousness, and in whom even that 
 portion of penetration and understanding, accorded by nature, hath 
 been debased and extinguished by debauchery. 
 
 Such are the formidable supports of unbelief against the know- 
 ledge of God : behold the frivolous, dissipated, and ignorant cha- 
 racters who dare to tax, with credulity and ignorance, all that the 
 Christian ages have had, and still have, of learned, able, and cele- 
 brated personages; they know the language of doubts; but they 
 have learned it by rote, for they have never formed them ; they 
 only repeat what they have heard : it is a tradition of ignorance 
 and impiety : they have no doubts ; they only preserve, for those 
 to come, the language of irreligion and doubts; they are not unbe- 
 lievers, they are only the echoes of unbelief; in a word, they 
 know how to express a doubt, but they are too ignorant to doubt 
 themselves. 
 
 And a proof of what I advance is, that, in all other doubts, we 
 hesitate only in order to be instructed ; every thing is examined 
 which can elucidate the concealed truth. But here the doubt is 
 merely for doubting's sake ; a proof that we are equally uninterested 
 in the doubt as in the truth which conceals it from us ; they would 
 be very sorry were they under the necessity of clearing up either 
 the falsity or the truth of uncertainties which they pretend to have 
 on our mysteries. Yes, my brethren, were the punishment of 
 doubters to be that of an indispensable obligation to seek the truth, 
 no one would doubt ; no one would purchase, at such a price, the 
 pleasure of calling himself an unbeliever; few indeed would be ca- 
 pable of it ; decisive proof that they do not doubt, and that they 
 are as little attached to their doubts, as to religion (for their know- 
 ledge in both is much about the same) ; but only that they have 
 lost those first feelings of discretion and of faith which left us still 
 some vestige of respect for the religion of our fathers. Thus, it is 
 doing too much honour to men, so worthy both of pity and con- 
 tempt, to suppose that they have taken a side, that they have em- 
 braced a system ; you honour them too much by ranking them 
 among the impious followers of a Socinus, by ennobling them with 
 the shocking titles of deists or atheists : alas ! they are nothing ; 
 they are of no system; at least, they neither know themselves what 
 they are, nor can they tell us what that system is ; and, strange as 
 it may appear, they have found out the secret of forming a state 
 more despicable, more mean, and more unworthy of reason, than 
 even that of impiety ; and it is even doing them credit to call them 
 by the shocking title of unbeliever, which had hitherto been con- 
 sidered as the shame of humanity and the highest reproach of man. 
 
 And, to conclude this article with a reflection which confirms 
 the same truth, and is very humiliating for our pretended unbe- 
 
Ser. 23. doubts upon religion. 379 
 
 lievers, I observe, that they who affect to treat us as weak and cre- 
 dulous minds, who vaunt their reason, who accuse us of grounding a 
 religion upon the popular prejudices, and of believing solely because 
 our predecessors have believed; they, I say, are unbelievers, and 
 doubt upon the sole and deplorable authority of a debauchee, whom 
 they have often heard to say that futurity is a bugbear, and made 
 use of as a scarecrow to frighten only children and the common 
 people; such is their only knowledge and their only use of reason. 
 They are impious, as they accuse us of being believers without ex- 
 amination, and through credulousness, but through a credulity 
 which can find no excuse but in madness and folly; the authority 
 of a single impious discourse, pronounced in a bold and decisive 
 tone, hath subjugated their reason, and ranked them in the lists 
 of impiety. They call us credulous, in yielding to the authority of 
 the prophets, of the apostles, of men inspired by God, of the 
 shining miracles wrought to establish the truth of our mysteries, 
 and to that venerable tradition of holy pastors, who, from age to 
 age, have transmitted to us the charge of doctrine and of truth, 
 that is to say, to the greatest authority that hath ever been on the 
 earth ; and they think themselves less credulous, and it appears 
 to them more worthy of reason, to submit to the authority of a 
 freethinker, who, in a moment of debauchery, pronounces, with a 
 firm tone, that there is no God, yet most likely inwardly belies his 
 own words ! Ah ! my brethren, how much does man degrade and 
 render himself contemptible when he arrogates a false glory from 
 being no longer in the belief of a God ! 
 
 Thus, why is it, think you, that our pretended unbelievers are so 
 desirous of seeing real atheists confirmed in impiety ; that they seek 
 and entice them even from foreign countries, like a Spinosa, if the 
 fact be, that he was called into France to be heard and consulted ? 
 It is because our unbelievers are not firm in unbelief, nor can they 
 find any who are so ; and, in order to harden themselves, they 
 would gladly see some one actually confirmed in that detestable 
 cause; they seek, in precedent, resources, and defences against 
 their own conscience ; and, not daring of themselves to become im- 
 pious, they expect from an example what their reason and even 
 their heart refuses ; and, in so doing, they surely fall into a credu- 
 lity much more childish and absurd than that with which they re- 
 proach believers. A Spinosa, that monster, who, after embracing 
 various religions, ended with none, was most anxious to find out 
 some professed freethinker who might confirm him in the cause of 
 irreligion and atheism : he formed to himself that impenetrable 
 chaos of impiety, that work of confusion and darkness in which the 
 sole desire of not believing in God can support the weariness and 
 disgust of those who read it ; in which, excepting the impiety, all 
 is unintelligible, and which would, from its birth, have sunk into 
 oblivion, had it not, to the shame of humanity, attacked the Su- 
 preme Being: that impious wretch, I say, lived concealed, retired, 
 tranquil : his dark productions were his only occupation, and, to 
 harden himself he needed only himself. But those who so eagerly 
 
380 doubts upon religion. Ser. 23. 
 
 sought him, who longed to consult and see him, those frivolous and 
 dissolute men were fools who wished to become impious ; and who, 
 not finding sufficient authority to remain believers in the testimony 
 of all ages, of all nations, and of all the great men who have ho- 
 noured religion, sought, in the single testimony of an obscure indi- 
 vidual, of a deserter from every religion, of a monster obliged to 
 hide himself from the eyes of men, a deplorable and monstrous au- 
 thority which might confirm them in impiety, and defend them 
 from their own conscience. Great God ! let the impious here hide 
 their faces ; let them cease to make an ostentation of an unbelief 
 which is the fruit of their depravity and ignorance, and no longer 
 speak, but with blushes, of the submission of believers : it is all a 
 language of deceit ; they give to vanity what we give to truth. 
 
 I say vanity ; and this is the grand and final reason which more 
 clearly exposes all the falsity and weakness of unbelief. Yes, my 
 brethren, all our pretended unbelievers are bullies, who give them- 
 selves out for what they are not : they consider unbelief as convey- 
 ing the idea of something above the common ; they are continually 
 boasting that they believe nothing, and, by dint of boasting, they 
 at last persuade themselves of it : like certain mushroom characters 
 among us, who, though touching the obscurity and vulgarity of 
 their ancestors, have the deplorable vanity of wishing to be thought 
 of an illustrious birth, and descended from the greatest names ; by 
 dint of blazoning and repeating it, they attain almost to the belief 
 of it themselves. It is the same with our pretended unbelievers ; 
 they still touch, as I may say, that faith which they have received 
 at their birth, which still flows with their blood, and is not yet ef- 
 faced from their heart : but they think it a vulgarity and meanness, 
 at which they blush ; by dint of saying and boasting that they be- 
 lieve nothing, they are convinced that they really do not believe, 
 and have consequently a much higher opinion of themselves. 
 
 First. Because that deplorable profession of unbelief supposes 
 an uncommon understanding, strength, and superiority of mind, and 
 a singularity which is pleasing and flattering ; on the contrary, that 
 the passions infer only licentiousness and debauchery, of which all 
 men are capable, though they are not so of that wonderful supe- 
 riority attributed to itself by impiety. 
 
 Secondly. Because faith is so weakened in our age, that we find 
 few in the world who pique themselves upon wit and a little more 
 knowledge or erudition than others, who do not allow themselves 
 doubts and difficulties upon the most august and most sacred parts 
 of religion. It would be a disgrace, therefore, in their company to 
 appear religious and believers : they are men high in the public 
 esteem, and any resemblance to them is flattering ; in adopting 
 their language, their talents and reputation are thought likewise to 
 be adopted ; and not to dare to follow or to copy them would, it 
 seems, be making a public avowal of weakness and mediocrity : 
 miserable and childish vanity ! Besides, because they have heard 
 say, that certain characters, distinguished in their age, did not be- 
 lieve, and as the memory of their talents and great actions has been 
 
Ser. 23. doubts upon religion. 381 
 
 preserved only with that of their irreligion, they vaunt these grand 
 examples ; after such illustrious models, it appears dignified to be- 
 lieve nothing ; their names are constantly in their mouths : it is a 
 false embroidery, where a laughable vanity and littleness of mind 
 alone are conspicuous, since nothing can be more miserable or mean 
 than to give ourselves out for what we are not, or to assume the 
 personage of another. 
 
 Thirdly, and lastly. Because the language of impiety is in gene- 
 ral the consequence of licentious society. We wish to appear 
 the same as our companions in debauchery ; for it would be a 
 shame to be dissolute, and yet seem to believe, in the very presence 
 of our accomplices in riot. It is a sorry cause, that of a debauchee 
 who still believes : impiety and licentiousness are the only colour 
 for debauchery ; without these he would only be a novice in pro- 
 fligacy : the dread of punishments and of a hell is left to those yet 
 unexercised in guilt ; that remnant of religion seems to savour too 
 much of childhood and the college. But when attained to a cer- 
 tain length in debauchery, ah ! these vulgar weaknesses must all 
 be soared above ; their opinion of themselves is raised in propor- 
 tion as they can persuade others that they are now above all these 
 fears ; they even mock those who appear still to dread : like the 
 wife of Job, they say, with a tone of irony and impiety, " Dost 
 thou still retain thine integrity ? Art thou so simpie as to believe 
 all these tales with which thy childhood hath been alarmed ? Thou 
 seest not that all these are merely the visions of a weak mind, and 
 that the more knowing, who preach them up so much, believe not 
 a word of them themselves !" 
 
 O my God ! how mean and despicable is the impious man, who 
 seems so proudly to contemn thee ! He is a coward, who outwardly 
 insults, yet inwardly fears thee ; he is a vain boaster, who makes a 
 show of unbelief, but tells not what passes within ; he is an im- 
 postor, who, wishing to deceive us, cannot succeed in deceiving 
 himself; he is a fool, who, without a single inducement, adopts all 
 the horror of impiety ; he is a madman, who, unable to attain 
 irreligion, or to extinguish the terrors of his conscience, extinguishes 
 in himself all modesty and decency, and endeavours to make an 
 impious merit of it in the eyes of men ; who madly sacrifices, to 
 the deplorable vanity of being thought an unbeliever, his religion 
 which he still preserves, his God whom he dreads, his conscince 
 which he feels, his eternal salvation which he hopes. What a de- 
 sertion of God, and what a sink of madness and folly ! 
 
 And could you, my brethren, (and in this wish I comprise the 
 whole fruit of this Discourse,) who still feel a reverence for the re- 
 ligion of our fathers, but be sensible of the contemptibility of those 
 men who give themselves out as freethinkers, and whom you often 
 so much esteem, you would then comprehend how much the pro- 
 fession of unbelief, now so fashionable among us, is, of all other 
 characters, the most frivolous, cowardly, and worthy of laughter : 
 you would then know, that every thing mean and shameful, even 
 according to the world, is concealed under this ostentation of im- 
 
382 doubts upon religion. Ser. 23. 
 
 piety, which the corruption of our manners hath now rendered so 
 common even to both sexes. 
 
 First, of licentiousness. They reach the avowal of impiety only 
 when the heart is profoundly corrupted ; when they actually live 
 in private in the most shameful debauchery ; and, were they known 
 for what they are, they would for ever be dishonoured even in the 
 eyes of men. 
 
 Secondly, of meanness. They act the philosopher and the wit ; 
 while, in secret, they are the most sneaking, the most dissolute, the 
 most abandoned, and weakest of sinners, the veriest slaves of every 
 passion, unworthy of modesty, and even of reason. 
 
 Thirdly, of deceit and imposition. They act a borrowed cha- 
 racter ; they give themselves out for what they are not ; and, while 
 so loudly exclaiming against the godly, and treating them as impos- 
 tors and hypocrites, they are themselves the very cheat they decry, 
 and the hypocrite of impiety and freethinking. 
 
 Fourthly, of ostentation and wretched vanity. They act the 
 hero, while inwardly trembling ; for, on the first signal of death, 
 they betray more cowardice than even the commonest of the peo- 
 ple ; they make a show of openly insulting that God whom they 
 still inwardly dread and even hope to render favourable one day to 
 themselves ; a character of childishness and buffoonery, which the 
 world itself hath always considered as the lowest, the vilest, and 
 the most risible of all characters. 
 
 Fifthly, of temerity. Without erudition or knowledge, they dare 
 to set up as deciders upon what they are totally ignorant of; to 
 condemn the greatest characters of every age ; and to decide upon 
 important points to which they have never given, and, indeed, to 
 which they are incapable of giving, a single moment of serious at- 
 tention ; an indecency of character which can accord only with men 
 who have nothing more to lose on the side of honour. 
 
 Sixthly, of folly. They pride themselves in appearing without 
 religion : that is to say, without character, morals, probity, fear of 
 God and of man, and capable of every thing excepting virtue and 
 innocence. 
 
 Seventhly, of superstition. We have seen these pretended free- 
 thinkers, who refuse to consult the oracles of the holy prophets, 
 consulting conjurors ; admitting in men that knowledge of futu- 
 rity which they refuse to God ; giving in to every childish credu- 
 lity, while rising up against the majesty of faith ; expecting their 
 aggrandizement and fortune from a deceitful oracle, and unwilling 
 to hope their salvation from the oracles of our holy books ; and, 
 in a word, ridiculously believing in demons, while they make a 
 boast of disbelieving a God. 
 
 Lastly, what, in my opinion, is most deplorable in these charac- 
 ters, is, that they are in a situation which precludes almost every 
 hope of salvation. For an actual unbeliever, if such there be, may 
 in a moment be stricken of God, and overwhelmed, as it were, 
 under the weight of that glory and majesty which he unknowingly 
 had blasphemed : the eyes of this unfortunate wretch may still be 
 
Ser. 23. doubts upon religion. 383 
 
 opened by the Lord in his mercy ; he may make his light to shine 
 through his darkness, and reveal that truth which he resists only 
 because he knows it not : he has still resources, such as perhaps 
 rectitude, consistency, principles (of error and illusion, I confess, 
 but still they are principles) : he will be equally warm for his God 
 when known, as he was his enemy when unknown. But the un- 
 believers, of whom I speak, have scarcely a way left of returning 
 to God ; they insult the Lord whom they know ; they blaspheme 
 that religion which they still preserve in their heart : they resist 
 the impressions of conscience, which still inwardly espouse the 
 cause of faith against themselves ; in vain does the light of God 
 shine upon their heart, it serves only to render more inexcusable 
 the treachery of their impiety. Were they, saith Jesus Christ, 
 absolutely blind, they would be worthy of pity, and their sin would 
 be less : but at present they see, and consequently the guilt of 
 their irreligion is blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, which dwell- 
 eth for ever upon their head. 
 
 Let us repair, then, my brethren, by our respect for the religion 
 of our fathers ; by a continual gratitude toward the Lord, who 
 hath permitted us to be born in the way of salvation, into which so 
 many nations have not as yet been deemed worthy to enter, let 
 us repair, I say, the scandal of unbelief so common in this age, so 
 countenanced among us, and which, become more bold through 
 the number and quality of its partisans, no longer hides its head, 
 but openly shows itself, and braves, as it were, the religion of the 
 prince and the zeal of the pastors. Let us have in horror those 
 impious and despicable men, who pride themselves in turning into 
 ridicule the majesty of the religion they profess : let us fly them as 
 monsters unworthy to live, not only among believers, but even 
 among those connected together by honour, probity, and reason ; 
 far from applauding their impious discourses, let us cover them 
 with shame by that contempt which they merit. It is so low and so 
 mean, even according to the world, to dishonour that religion in 
 which one lives ; it is so beautiful, and there is so much real dig- 
 nity in making a pride of respecting and of defending it, even with an 
 air of authority and of indignation, against the silly speeches which 
 attack it. By despising unbelief, let us deprive it of the deplorable 
 glory it seeks. From the moment they are despised, unbelievers 
 will be rare among us ; and the same vanity which forms their 
 doubts will soon annihilate or conceal them, when it shall be a dis- 
 grace among us to appear impious, and a glory to be a believer. It 
 is thus that this scandal shall be done away, and that altogether we 
 shall glorify the Lord in the same faith, and in the expectation of 
 the eternal promises. Amen. 
 
384 EVIDENCE OF THE LAW OF GOD. Ser. 24 
 
 SERMON XXIV. 
 
 EVIDENCE OF THE LAW OF GOD. 
 
 " And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me ?" John viii. 46. 
 
 Jesus Christ had hitherto confuted the incredulity of the Jews 
 by his works and by his miracles; at present he recalls them to the 
 judgment of their own conscience and to the evidence of the truth, 
 which, in spite of themselves, rendered testimony to his doctrine 
 and to his ministry. Nevertheless, as they shut their eyes against 
 the evidence of his miracles, in accusing him of operating them 
 through the ministry of devils, so they likewise harden themselves 
 against the evidence of his doctrine and of his mission, so clearly 
 foretold in the Scriptures, by alleging pretended obscurities, which 
 rendered them in their eyes, still doubtful and suspicious. 
 
 For, my brethren, however evident may be the truth, that is to 
 say, the law of God, whether in our heart, where it is written in 
 shining and ineffaceable characters, or in the rules which Jesus 
 Christ hath left to us ; we would always, either that our conscience 
 see nothing in it but what our passions see, or that these rules be 
 not so explicit but what we may always be able to find out some 
 favourable interpretation and modification of them. 
 
 In effect, two pretexts are commonly opposed by the sinners of 
 the world against the evidence of truths the most terrible of the 
 law of God. 
 
 First. In order to calm themselves on a thousand abuses, au- 
 thorized by the world, they tell us that they believe themselves to 
 be in safety in that state; that their conscience reproaches them 
 with nothing on that head ; and that, could they be persuaded that 
 they were in the path of error, they would instantly quit it. First 
 pretext which is opposed to the evidence of the law of God : can- 
 dour and tranquillity of conscience. 
 
 Secondly. They oppose that the gospel is not so clear and so 
 explicit on certain points as we maintain it to be ; that each inter- 
 prets it in his own way, and makes it to say whatever he wishes ; 
 that what appears so positive to us, appears not so to all the world. 
 Second pretext : the obscurity and uncertainty of the rules. 
 
 Now, I say that the law of God hath a two-fold mark of evidence, 
 which shall overthrow these two pretexts, and shall condemn, at the 
 day of judgment, all the vain excuses of sinners. 
 
 First. It is evident in the conscience of the sinner : first reflec- 
 tion. Secondly, it is evident in the simplicity of the rules : second 
 reflection. The evidence of the law of God in the conscience of 
 men : first character of the law of God, which shall judge the false 
 security and pretended candour of worldly souls. The evidence of 
 the law of God in the simplicity of its rules : second character of 
 
Ser. 24. evidence of the law of god. 385 
 
 the law of God, which shall judge the affected uncertainties and 
 the false interpretations of sinners. And thus it is, O my God 1 
 that thy holy law shall judge the world, and that the criminal con- 
 science shall one day be confounded before thy tribunal, both by 
 the lights of his own conscience and by the perspicuity of thy hea- 
 venly maxims. 
 
 Part I. It is rather surprising that the greatest part of worldly 
 souls, in justification of the abuses of the world, and the danger of 
 its maxims, allege to us the candour and the tranquillity of their 
 conscience. Besides, that peace and security, in the false paths of 
 iniquity, are rather their punishment than their excuse ; and that, 
 were it even true that the conscience should reproach them with 
 nothing in manners regulated solely according to the false judgments 
 of the world, that state would still be only so much the worse, and 
 more hopeless of salvation. It appears that, of all tribunals, that 
 of conscience is the last to which an unbelieving soul should ap- 
 peal ; and that nothing is less favourable to the errors of a sinner 
 than the sinner himself. 
 
 I know that there are hardened souls, to whom no ray of grace 
 or of light can carry conviction ; who live without remorse and with- 
 out anxiety in the horrors of an infamous licentiousness ; in whom 
 all conscience seems extinguished, and who carry the excess of their 
 blindness, says St. Augustine, so far as even to glory in their blind- 
 ness. But these are only dreadful examples of God's justice upon 
 men ; and if such have appeared upon the earth, they only prove 
 how far his neglect and the power of his wrath may sometimes go. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, whether we affect boldly and openly to cast 
 off the authority of the law, like the impious and the licentious ; whe- 
 ther we endeavour to mollify and artificially to reconcile it with our 
 passions, by favourable interpretations, like the greatest part of 
 worldly souls and common sinners ; our conscience renders a two- 
 fold testimony within us to this divine law : a testimony of truth to 
 the equity and to the necessity of its maxims, and a testimony of 
 severity to the exactitude of its rules. 
 
 I say in the first place, a testimony of truth to the equity of its 
 maxims. For, my brethren, God is too wise not to love order ; 
 and he is, at the same time, too good not to wish our welfare. 
 His law must consequently bear these two characters, a character 
 of equity, and a character of goodness : a character of equity, 
 which regulates all the duties ; a character of goodness which makes 
 us to find our peace and our happiness here below, in duty and in 
 regularity. 
 
 Thus, we feel, in the bottom of our hearts, that these rules are 
 just and reasonable; that the law of God commands nothing but 
 what is consistent with the real interests of man ; that nothing is 
 more consonant to the reasonable creature than gentleness, hu- 
 manity, temperance, modesty, and all the virtues recommended in 
 the Gospel ; that the passions prohibited by the law are the sole 
 source of all our troubles ; that the more we deviate from the pre- 
 
 c c 
 
386 EVIDENCE OF THE LAW OF GOD. Sei*. 24. 
 
 cept, and from the law, the more do we remove ourselves from 
 peace and tranquillity of heart ; and that the Lord, in forbidding us 
 to yield ourselves up to impetuous and iniquitous passions, hath 
 only forbidden us to yield ourselves up to our own tyrants, and 
 that his only intention hath been to render us happy in rendering 
 us believers. 
 
 Behold a testimony which the law of God finds in the bottom of 
 our hearts. Hurried away by the delusion of the senses, we vainly 
 cast off the yoke of the holy rules ; we can never succeed in justi- 
 fying, even to ourselves, our own irregularities ; we always inter- 
 nally adopt the interests of the law against ourselves ; we always 
 find within us a justification of the rules against the passions. We 
 cannot corrupt this internal witness of the truth, which pleads 
 within us for virtue ; we always feel a secret misunderstanding be- 
 tween our inclinations and our lights : the law of God, born in our 
 heart, incessantly struggles there against the law of the flesh foreign 
 to man ; it maintains its truths there in spite of ourselves, if it can- 
 not maintain its authority ; it officiates as a censurer, if it cannot 
 serve as a director : in a word, it renders us unhappy, if it cannot 
 render us believers. 
 
 Thus, in vain do we sometimes give way to all the bitterness of 
 hatred and of revenge ; we immediately feel that this cruel pleasure 
 is not made for the heart of man ; that to hate, is, in fact, to punish 
 ourselves; and, in returning to ourselves after the transports of 
 passion, we find within us a principle of humanity which disavows 
 their violence, and clearly points out to us, that gentleness and 
 kindness were our first inclinations ; and that, in commanding us 
 to love our brethren, the law of God hath only done so, as to con- 
 sult the right and most reasonable feelings of our heart, and to re- 
 concile us with ourselves. Thou art more righteous than I, said 
 Saul to David, in the time of his strongest hatred against him. 
 That goodness, born in the heart of all men, forced from him that 
 confession, and inwardly disavowed the injustice and the cruelty of 
 his revenge. 
 
 In vain do we plunge ourselves into brutal and sensual gratifica- 
 tions, and madly range after whatever may satisfy the insatiable 
 desires of pleasure : we quickly feel that debauchery leads us too 
 far to be agreeable to nature : that whatever enslaves and tyran- 
 nizes over us, overturns the order of our first institution : and that 
 the Gospel, in prohibiting the voluptuous passions, hath provided 
 for the tranquillity of our heart, and for restoring to us all its ele- 
 vation and nobility. How many hired servants of my father's, said 
 the prodigal, still bound in the chains of vice, have bread enough, 
 and to spare, and I consume my days in weariness and in shame ! 
 It was a remnant of reason and of nobility which still spake in the 
 bottom of his heart. 
 
 Lastly. Investigate all the precepts of the law of God, and you 
 will feel that they have a necessary connexion with the heart of 
 man ; that they are rules founded on a profound knowledge of what 
 takes place within us ; that they solely contain the remedies of our 
 
Ser. 24. evidence of the law of god. 387 
 
 most secret evils, and the succours of our most righteous inclina- 
 tions ; and that none but He alone who knoweth the bottom of 
 hearts, could be capable of laying down such maxims to men. The 
 heathens themselves, in whom all truth was not yet extinguished, 
 rendered this glory to the Christian morality ; they were forced to 
 admire the wisdom of its precepts, the necessity of its restraints, 
 the sanctity of its counsels, the good sense and sublimity of all its 
 rules ; they were astonished to find, in the discourses of Jesus Christ, 
 a more sublime philosophy than in the Roman or Grecian schools; 
 and they could not comprehend how the Son of Mary should be 
 better acquainted with the duties, the desires, and all the secret 
 folds of the human heart, than Plato and all his disciples. 
 
 Will you tell us, after this, that nature is our first law, and that 
 tendencies to pleasures, inherent in our being, can never be crimes ? 
 I have often said it; it is an impiety only of conversation ; it is an 
 ostentation of freethinking, of which vanity makes a boast, but 
 which truth inwardly belies. Augustine in his errors had spared no 
 pains to efface, from the bottom of his heart, those remains of faith 
 and of conscience which still recalled him to the truth ; he had 
 eagerly sought, in the most impious opinions and in the most shock- 
 ing errors, wherewithal to comfort himself against his crimes ; his 
 mind, flying the light which pursued him, wandered from impiety 
 to impiety and from error to error : nevertheless, in spite of all his 
 efforts and flights, the truth, always victorious in the bottom of his 
 soul, proclaimed its triumph in spite of himself: he could succeed 
 neither in seducing nor in quieting himself in his disorders : " I 
 bore, O my God," says he, u a conscience racked, and still bleed- 
 ing, as it were, from the grievous wounds which my passions in- 
 cessantly made there : I was a burden to myself; I could no longer 
 sustain my own heart ; I turned myself on every side, and no 
 where could it find ease ; I knew not where to lay it, that I might 
 be delivered from it, and that mine anxiety might be comforted." 
 
 Behold the testimony which a sinner, who, to all the keenness 
 of the passions, added the impiety of opinions and the abuse of 
 lights, renders of himself. And these examples are of every age : 
 our own has beheld famous and avowed sinners who made an in- 
 famous boast of not believing in God, and who were looked upon 
 as heroes in impiety and freethinking: we have seen them touched 
 at last with repentance, like Augustine, and recalled from their 
 errors ; we have seen them, I say, make an open avowal, that they 
 had never been able to succeed in effacing the rules and truth from 
 their soul ; that, amidst all their most shocking impieties and ex- 
 cesses, their heart, still Christian, inwardly belied their derisions 
 and blasphemies ; that before men they vaunted a strength of mind 
 which forsook them in private; that that apparent unbelief con- 
 cealed the most cruel remorses, and the most gloomy fears ; and 
 that they had never been firm and tranquil in guilt. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, guilt, always timorous, every where bears a 
 witness of condemnation against itself. Ever/ where you render 
 homage, by your inward anxieties and remorses, to the sanctity of 
 
 cc2 
 
388 EVIDENCE OF THE LAW OF GOD. Ser. 24. 
 
 that law which you violate ; every where a fund of weariness and of 
 sorrow, inseparable from guilt, makes you to feel that regularity 
 and innocence are the only happiness which was intended for you 
 on the earth ; you vainly display an affected intrepidity : the guilty 
 conscience always betrays itself. Cruel terrors march every where 
 before you : solitude disquiets, darkness alarms you ; you fancy to 
 see phantoms coming from every quarter to reproach you with the 
 secret errors of your soul; unlucky dreams fill you with black and 
 gloomy fancies; and guilt, after which you run with so much relish, 
 pursues you afterward like a cruel vulture, and fixes itself upon you, 
 to tear your heart, and to punish you for the pleasure it had form- 
 erly given you. O my God ! what resources hast thou not left 
 in our heart to recall us to thee ! and how powerful is the protec- 
 tion which the goodness and the righteousness of thy law finds in 
 the bottom of our being ! First testimony which the conscience 
 renders to the law of God, a testimony of truth to the sanctity of 
 its maxims. 
 
 But it also renders a testimony of severity to the exactitude of 
 its rules. For a second illusion of the greatest part of w T orldly 
 souls, who live exempted from great irregularities, but who other- 
 wise live amidst all the pleasures, all the abuses, all the sensualities, 
 and all the dissipations authorized by the world, is, that of wishing 
 to persuade themselves that the gospel requires no more, and to 
 persuade us that their conscience reproaches them with nothing, 
 and that they believe themselves safe in that state. Now, I say, 
 that here the worldly conscience is again not candid, and is deceived ; 
 and that, in spite of all those mollifications which they endeavour 
 to justify to themselves, it renders, in the bottom of our hearts, a 
 testimony of severity to the law of God. 
 
 In effect, order requires that all our passions be regulated by the 
 bridle of the law. All our inclinations, corrupted in their source, 
 have occasion for a rule to rectify and correct them : we confess 
 this ourselves; we feel that our corruption pervades the smallest 
 as well as the greatest things; that self-love infects all our proceed- 
 ings; and that we every where find ourselves w T eak, and in con- 
 tinual opposition to order and duty; we feel, then, that the rule 
 ought, in no instance, to be favourable to our inclinations; that 
 we ought every where to find it severe, because it ought every 
 where to be in opposition to us; that the law cannot be in unity 
 with us; that whatever favours our inclinations, can never be the 
 remedy intended to cure them ; that whatever flatters our desires, 
 can never be the bridle which is to restrain them: in a word, that 
 whatever nourishes self-love, is not the law which is established for 
 the sole purpose of destroying and annihilating it. Thus, by an 
 inward feeling, inseparable from our being, we always discriminate 
 ourselves from the law, our inclinations from its rules, our pleasures 
 from its duties; and, in all dubious actions where we decide in 
 favour of our inclinations, we perfectly feel that we are deviating 
 from the law of God, always more rigid than ourselves. 
 
 And allow me here, my brethren, to appeal to your conscience 
 
Ser. 24. evidence of the law of god. 389 
 
 itself, which you always allege, and to which you continually refer 
 us. Are you, honestly speaking, at your ease, as you wish to 
 persuade us, in this life, altogether of pleasures, of dissipation, of 
 indolence, and of sensuality: in a word, in this worldly life, of 
 which you constantly maintain the innocence, have you hitherto 
 been able to succeed in persuading yourselves that it is the path 
 which leads to salvation? Do you not feel that something more is 
 required of you by the gospel than you perform ? Would you 
 wish to appear before God with nothing to offer to him but these 
 pleasures, these amusements which you call innocent, and of which 
 the principal groundwork of your life is composed? I put the 
 question to you, in those moments when, more warmly affected 
 perhaps by grace, you purpose seriously to think upon eternity, 
 do you not place, in the plan which you then form of a new life, 
 the privation of almost all the very things in which you are con- 
 tinually telling us that you see no harm? Do you not begin by 
 promising to yourselves, that, solely occupied then with your sal- 
 vation, you will renounce the excesses of gaming, the theatres, the 
 vanities and indecencies of dress, the dissipation of public assem- 
 blies and pleasures ; that you will devote more time to prayer, to 
 retirement, to holy reading, and to the duties of religion? Now, 
 what is it that you hereby acknowledge, unless it be, that, while 
 you renounce not all these abuses, that you devote not more time 
 to all these pious duties, you think not seriously upon your salva- 
 tion; you ought to have no pretension to it; you are in the path 
 of death and perdition ? 
 
 But, besides, you who carry so far the severity of your censures 
 against the godly, recollect all the rigour of your maxims, and of 
 your derisions upon their conduct; do you not blame, do you not 
 continually censure those persons who wish to connect with a pub- 
 lic profession of piety those abuses, those amusements, of which 
 you are the daily apologists, and who wish to enjoy the reputation 
 of virtue without losing any of the pleasures of the world ? Do you 
 not mock their piety as a piece of mere grimace ? Here it is that 
 you emphatically display all the austerity of the Christian life. Do 
 you not say, that it is necessary either totally to renounce the 
 world, or continue to live as the world lives; and that all these 
 ambiguous virtues serve only to decry the true virtue? I agree 
 with you in this; but I reply to you, Your conscience dictates to 
 you that it is not safe to give yourself partially to God, and your 
 conscience reproaches you nothing, as you say, in a life in which 
 God enters not at all? You condemn those mistaken souls whom, 
 at least, an apparent division between the world and Jesus Christ 
 may comfort? And you justify to us your conduct, you who have 
 nothing in its justification but the abuses of the world and the 
 danger of its habits? Do you then believe that the path of salva- 
 tion is more rugged for those who profess piety than for you ; 
 that the world hath privileges thereon, which are forfeited from the 
 moment that we mean to serve God? Be consistent, then, with 
 yourselves, and either condemn no more a worldly virtue, or no 
 
390 EVIDENCE OF THE LAW OF GOD. Ser. 24. 
 
 longer justify the world itself; since whatever you blame in that 
 virtue is only that portion of it which the world supplies. 
 
 And, in order to make you more sensibly feel how far you are 
 from being candid on this head, you continually take a pride in 
 repeating that we despair of human weakness; that in order to act 
 up to all that we say in these Christian pulpits, it would be neces- 
 sary to withdraw to the deserts, or to be angels rather than men: 
 nevertheless, render glory to the force of truth. If a minister of 
 the gospel were to deliver to you from this place a doctrine quite 
 opposite to that which we teach; were he to announce to you the 
 same maxims which you daily hold forth in the world; were he to 
 preach to you in this place of the truth, that the gospel is not so 
 severe as it is published; that we may love the world, and yet serve 
 God; that there is no harm in gaming, in pleasures, in theatres, 
 except what we ourselves occasion; that we must live like the world 
 while we live in the world ; that all that language of the cross, of 
 penitence, mortification, and self-denial, is more calculated for 
 cloisters than for the court, and for persons of a certain rank; and, 
 lastly, that God is too good to consider as crimes a thousand things 
 which are become habitual, and of which we wish you to make a 
 matter of conscience ; were he, I say, to preach these maxims to 
 you in this holy place, what would you think of him? What would 
 you say to his new doctrine? What idea would you have of this 
 new apostle? Would you consider him as a man come down from 
 heaven to announce to you this new gospel? Would you believe 
 him to be better instructed than we in the holy truths of salvation, 
 and in the rules of the Christian life? You would laugh at his 
 ignorance or his folly; you would perhaps be struck with horror 
 at the profanation which he would make of his ministry. 
 
 And what, my brethren, these maxims announced before the 
 altars would appear to you as blasphemy or madness; and, pro- 
 mulgated in your daily conversations, would they become rules of 
 reason and of wisdom? In the mouth of a minister of the gospel 
 you would look upon them as the speeches of a madman; and, in 
 your mouth, should they appear more solid and more weighty? 
 You would laugh, or rather you would be struck with horror, at a 
 preacher who should announce them to you; and you wish to 
 persuade us that you speak seriously, and that you are consistent 
 with yourselves, when with so much confidence you hold them 
 forth to us. 
 
 Ah ! my brethren, how treacherous we are to God ! and how 
 terrible will he be when he shall come to avenge upon the lights of 
 our own heart the honour of his holy law! Our apparent obstinacy 
 for the abuses of the world, of which we maintain the innocence, is 
 a secret persuasion that the world and its abuses are a path of per- 
 dition: we publicly justify what we condemn in private: we are 
 the hypocrites of the world and of its pleasures ; and, through a 
 most deplorable destiny, our life passes away in dissembling with 
 ourselves, and in obstinately determining to perish in spite of our- 
 selves. And surely, says the apostle John, if our heart, notwith- 
 
Ser. 24. evidence of the law of god. 591 
 
 standing all our self-blindness, cannot help already condemning us 
 in secret, have we more indulgence to expect from the terrible and 
 sovereign Judge of hearts than from our heart itself? 
 
 Thus, my brethren, study the law of God in your own con- 
 science, and you will see that it is not more favourable than we to 
 your passions: consult the lights of your heart, and you will feel 
 that they perfectly accord with our maxims ; listen to the voice of 
 truth, which speaks within you, and you will admit that we 
 only repeat what it is continually whispering to your heart. You 
 have no occasion, says St. Augustine, to apply to able men, in 
 order to have the greatest part of your doubts cleared up; go no 
 farther than yourselves for explanations and answers; apply to 
 yourselves for what you have to do; listen to the decisions of 
 your heart ; follow the first impulse of your conscience, and you 
 will always determine for that choice most conformable to the law 
 of God ; the first impression of the heart is always for the strict- 
 ness of the law against the softenings of self-love : your conscience 
 will always go farther, and will be more strict than yourselves ; 
 and if you have occasion for our decisions, it will rather be in 
 order to moderate the severity than to expose the false indul- 
 gence of it. 
 
 Behold the first manner in which the law of God shall one day 
 judge us : that law, manifested in the conscience of the sinner, and, 
 as if born with him, shall rise up against him ; our heart, marked 
 with the seal of truth, shall be the witness to depose for our condem- 
 nation ; our lights shall be opposed to our actions, our remorses to 
 our manners, our speeches to our thoughts, our inward sentiments 
 to our public proceedings, and ourselves to ourselves. Thus we 
 bear, each of us, our condemnation in our own heart. The Lord 
 will not bring other proof than ourselves to determine the decision 
 of our eternal reprobation ; and the soul before the tribunal of God, 
 says Tertullian, shall appear at the same time both the criminal 
 condemned and the witness which shall testify against his crimes. 
 He will have nothing to reply, continues this father. You knew 
 the truth, will be said to him, and you iniquitously withheld it: you 
 admitted of the happiness of the souls who seek only God, and 
 you sought him not yourselves: you drew shocking pictures of the 
 world, of its wearinesses, of its perfidies, and of its wickednesses, and 
 you were always its slave and blind worshipper: you inwardly re- 
 spected the religion of your fathers, and you made a deplorable 
 vaunt of impiety: you secretly dreaded the judgments of God, and 
 you affected not to believe in him. In the bottom of your heart 
 you rendered justice to the piety of the godly; you proposed to re- 
 semble them at some future period ; and you tore and persecuted 
 them with your derisions and censures : in a word, your lights have 
 ever been for God, and your actions for the world. 
 
 O my God ! to what do men not carry their ingratitude and 
 folly ! Thou hast placed in us lights inseparable from our being, 
 which, by disturbing the false peace of our passions and errors, con- 
 tinually recall us to order and to the truth ; and, through an impo- 
 
392 EVIDENCE OF THE LAW OF GOD. Sei\ 24. 
 
 sition of vanity, we make a boast of being tranquil in our errors ; 
 we glory in a peace which thy mercy is still willing to disturb ; and, 
 far from publishing the riches of thy grace upon our soul, which 
 leaves us still open to the truth, we vaunt an obstinacy and a blind- 
 ness which, sooner or later, shall be realized, and shall at last be 
 the just punishment of an ingratitude and of a deceit so injurious 
 to thy grace. First character of the evidence of the law of God : 
 it is evident in the conscience of the sinner ; but it is likewise so in 
 the simplicity of its rules. 
 
 Part II. Since man is the work of God, man can no longer 
 live but conformably to the will of his author; and since God hath 
 of man made his work, and his most perfect work, he could never 
 leave him to live by chance upon the earth without manifesting to 
 him his will ; that is to say, without pointing out to him what he 
 owed to his Creator, to his fellow-creatures, and to himself. There- 
 fore, in creating him, he imprinted in his being a living light, inces- 
 santly visible to his heart, which regulated all his duties. But all 
 flesh having perverted its way, and the abundance of iniquity which 
 had prevailed over the earth, (unable, it is true, to efface that light 
 entirely from the heart of men,) no longer permitting them to re- 
 flect or to consult it, and apparently no longer even maintaining 
 itself in them, unless to render them more inexcusable; God, whose 
 mercies seem to become more abundant in proportion as the wick- 
 edness of men increases, caused to be engraven, on tables of stone, 
 that law which nature, that is to say, which himself, had engraven 
 on our hearts : he placed before our eyes the law which we bear 
 within us, in order to recall us to ourselves. Nevertheless, the 
 people, who were its first depositaries, having again disfigured it by 
 interpretations which adulterated its purity, Jesus Christ, the wis- 
 dom and the light of God, came at last upon the earth to restore it 
 to its original beauty ; to purge it from the alterations of the syna- 
 gogue ; to dissipate the obscurities which a false learning and human 
 traditions had spread through it; to lay open all its sublimity; to 
 apply its rules to our wants ; and, in leaving to us his Gospel, no 
 longer to leave an excuse, either to the ignorance or to the wicked- 
 ness of those who violate its precepts. 
 
 Nevertheless, the second pretext which is opposed in the world 
 to the evidence of the law of God, is the pretended ambiguity of its 
 rules ; they accuse us of making the Gospel to say whatever we 
 wish; they contest, they find answers, they spread obscurities 
 through all, and they darken the law in such a manner that the 
 world itself insists on having the Gospel on its side. 
 
 Now I say, that, besides the evidence of the conscience, the law 
 of God is also evident in the simplicity of its rules, and conse- 
 quently that the sinners, who wish thus to justify their iniquitous 
 ways, shall one day be overthrown, both by the testimony of their 
 own heart and by the evidence of the holy rules. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, the law of God, says the prophet, is pure, en- 
 lightening the eyes even of those who would wish to conceal it from 
 
Ser. 24. evidence of the law of god. 393 
 
 themselves. In effect, Jesus Christ, in coming himself to give to 
 us a law of life and of truth for the regulation of our manners and 
 our duties, and in which the evidence could not be too great, could 
 never undoubtedly have meant to leave obscurities in it capable of 
 deluding us, and of favouring passions which he expressly came to 
 overthrow. Human laws may be liable to these inconveniences ; 
 the mind of man, which hath invented them, being unable to fore- 
 see all, it hath also been unable to obviate all the difficulties which 
 might one day arise in the minds of other men, on the strength of 
 its expressions, and even on the nature of its rules. But the Spirit 
 of God, author of the holy rules held out in the Gospel, hath fore- 
 seen all the doubts which the human mind could oppose to his 
 law; he hath read, in the hearts of all men to come, the obscurities 
 which their corruption might shed over the nature of his rules : 
 consequently, he hath concerted them in a manner so divine and so 
 intelligible, so simple and so sublime, that the most ignorant, 
 equally as the most learned, can never misconstrue his intentions, 
 and be ignorant of the ways of eternal life. 
 
 It is true, that sacred obscurities conceal it in the incomprehen- 
 sible mysteries of faith ; but the rules of the manners are explicit 
 and precise; the duties are there evident; and nothing can be more 
 clear, or less equivocal, than the precepts of Jesus Christ. Not 
 but that doubts and difficulties may spring up in the detail of the 
 obligations ; that the assemblage of a thousand different circum- 
 stances may not in such a manner darken the rule, but that it may 
 sometimes escape the most learned ; and that, upon all the infinite 
 duties of stations and conditions, all be so decided in the Gospel 
 that mistakes cannot often take place. 
 
 But I say, (and I entreat of you to pursue these reflections, which 
 to me appear of the utmost consequence, and to comprise all the 
 rules of the manners,) in the first place, that if, upon the detail of 
 duties, the letter of the law be sometimes dubious, the spirit of it 
 is almost never so : that it is easily seen to which side the Gospel 
 inclines, and to what the analogy and ruling spirit of its maxims 
 lead us : I say, that they mutually clear up each other ; that they 
 all go to the same end ; that they are like so many rays, which, 
 uniting in one centre, form so grand a lustre that it is impossible 
 longer to mistake them ; that there are principal rules which serve 
 to elucidate every particular difficulty; and, lastly, that if the law 
 appear sometimes equivocal to us, the intention of the legislator, 
 by which we ought to interpret it, never leaves room for either 
 doubt or mistake. 
 
 Thus, you would wish to know, you who live at the court, where 
 ambition is, as it were, the virtue of persons of your rank ; you 
 would wish to know if it be a crime ardently to long for the ho- 
 nours and the prosperities of the earth, to be never satisfied with 
 your station, continually to wish advancement, and to connect with 
 that single desire, all your views, all your proceedings, all your 
 cares, the whole foundation of your life. In answer to this, you 
 are there told, that your heart ought to be where your treasure is ; 
 
394 EVIDENCE OF THE LAW OF GOD. Ser. 24. 
 
 that is to say, in the desire and in the hope of eternal riches ; and 
 that the Christian is not of this world. Decide thereupon the dif- 
 ficulty yourselves. 
 
 You demand, if continual gaming, amusing, theatres, and so 
 many other pleasures, so innocent in the eyes of the world, ought 
 to be banished from the Christian life. You are there told, that 
 blessed are they who weep now ; but woe unto those who laugh, 
 and who receive their consolation in this world. Follow the spirit 
 of this rule, and see to what it leads. 
 
 You inquire, if, having to live in the world, you ought to live like 
 the world ; if we would wish to condemn almost all men who live 
 like you; and if, in order to serve God, it be necessary to affect 
 singularities which excite the ridicule of other men. You are there 
 told, that we are not to conform to this corrupted age ; that it is 
 impossible to please men and to be the servant of Jesus Christ; 
 and that the multitude is always the party of the reprobate. You 
 have now to say whether the answer be explicit. 
 
 You doubt, if, having pardoned your enemy, you be also obliged 
 to see him, to serve him, to assist him with your wealth and cre- 
 dit ; and if it be not more equitable to reserve your favours and 
 preferences for your friends. You are there told, do good to those 
 who have wished evil to you ; speak well of those who calumniate 
 you ; love those who hate you. Enter into the spirit of this pre 
 cept, and say if it doth not shed a light over your doubt, which in- 
 stantly clears it up, and dissipates it. 
 
 Lastly, propose as many doubts as you please, upon duties, and 
 it will be easy for you to decide them by the spirit of the law, if 
 the letter say nothing of them ; for the letter kills me, says the 
 apostle : that is to say, to stop there, to look upon as duty only 
 what is literally marked, to stop at the rude limits, and to enter no 
 farther into the principle and into the spirit which vivifies it, is to 
 be a Jew, and to be willing to be self-deceived. No longer tell us, 
 then, my brethren, when we condemn so many abuses, which you, 
 without scruple, allow yourselves, " But the Gospel says nothing of 
 them." Ah! the Gospel says every thing to those who wish to 
 understand it : the Gospel leaves nothing undecided to whoever 
 loves the law of God: the Gospel is competent to all, to whoever 
 searches it only for instruction ; and it goes on much the farther, 
 and says so much the more, as that, without stopping to regulate a 
 particular detail, it regulates the passions themselves ; that, with- 
 out detailing all the actions, it goes to repress those inclinations 
 which are the sources of them ; and that, without confining itself 
 to certain external circumstances of the manners, it proposes to us, 
 as rules of duty, only self-denial, hatred of the world, love of suf- 
 ferance, contempt for whatever takes place, and the whole extent 
 of its crucifying maxims. First reflection. 
 
 I say, in the second place, that it is not the obscurity of the law, 
 but our passions, still dear, which give rise to all our doubts upon 
 the duties ; that the worldly souls are those who find most diffi- 
 culty and most obscurity in the rules of the manners ; that nothing 
 
Ser. 24. evidence of the law of god. 395 
 
 appears clear to those who would wish that nothing were so ; that 
 every thing appears doubtful to those who have an interest in its 
 being so. I say, with St. Augustine, that it is a willing spirit 
 alone which gives understanding of the precepts ; that unless the 
 rules and duties are loved, they can never be thoroughly known ; 
 that we enter into the truth only through charity ; and that the 
 sincere desire of salvation is the grand solver of all difficulties : 
 I say, that faithful and fervent souls have almost never any thing 
 to oppose to the law of God; and that their doubts are rather 
 pious alarms upon holy actions, than pretexts and difficulties to 
 authorize profane ones. 
 
 Men have learned to doubt upon the rules of the manners, 
 only since they have wished to connect them with their iniqui- 
 tous passions. Alas ! all was almost decided for the first be- 
 lievers. In those happy ages, we see not that the first pastors of 
 the church had many difficulties to resolve upon the detail of the 
 duties. Those immense volumes, which decide their doubts by 
 endless resolutions, have appeared only with the corruption of 
 manners : in proportion as believers have had more passions to sa- 
 tisfy, they have had more doubts to propose ; it hath been necessary 
 to multiply volumes upon volumes, in order to resolve difficulties 
 which cupidity alone formed, difficulties already all resolved in 
 the Gospel, and upon which the first ages of faith would have been 
 scandalized that they had dared to form even a doubt. Our ages, 
 still more dissolute than those which preceded us, have still beheld 
 these enormous collections of cases and resolutions increasing and 
 multiplying to infinity: all the most incontestable rules of the 
 morality of Jesus Christ are there become almost problems ; there 
 is no duty upon which corruption hath not had difficulties to pro- 
 pose, and to which a false learning hath not found mollifications : 
 every thing has there been agitated, contested, and put in doubt : 
 the mind of man hath there been seen quibbling with the spirit of 
 God, and substituting human doctrines in place of that doctrine 
 which Jesus Christ hath brought to us from heaven ; and although 
 we pretend not universally to blame all those pious and able men, 
 who have left to us these laborious masses of decisions, it had 
 been to be wished that the church had never called in such 
 aids ; and we cannot help looking upon them as remedies which 
 are themselves become diseases, and as the sad fruits of the 
 necessity of the times, of the depravity of manners, and of the 
 decay of truth among men. 
 
 Doubts upon the duties arise, therefore, from the corruption of 
 our hearts, much more than from the obscurities of the rules. 
 
 The light of the law, says St. Augustine, resembles that of the 
 sun ; but vainly doth it shine, glitter, enlighten, the blind are un- 
 affected by it : now every sinner is that blind person ; the light is 
 near to him, surrounds him, penetrates him, enters from every 
 quarter into his soul ; but he is always himself far from the light. 
 Purify your heart, continues that holy father ; remove from it the 
 fatal bandage of the passions ; then shall you clearly see all your 
 
396 EVIDENCE OF THE LAW OF GOD. Ser. 24. 
 
 duties, and all your doubts shall vanish. Thus we continually see, 
 that when touched with grace, a soul begins to adopt solid mea- 
 sures for eternity, his eyes are opened upon a thousand truths, 
 which, till then, he had concealed from himself: in proportion as 
 his passions diminish, his lights increase ; he is astonished by what 
 means he could so long have shut his eyes upon truths which now 
 appear to him so evident and so incontestable ; and far from a 
 sacred guide having then occasion to contest, and to maintain 
 against him the interests of the law of God, his prudence is required 
 to conceal, as I may say, from that contrite soul, the whole extent 
 and all the terrors of the holy truths ; to quiet him on the horror 
 of past irregularities, and to moderate the fears into which he is 
 thrown by the novelty and the surprise of his lights. It is not, 
 then, the rules which are cleared up, it is the soul which frees it- 
 self from, and quits its blindness : it is not the law of God which 
 becomes more evident, it is the eyes of the heart which are opened 
 to its lustre ; in a word, it is not the Gospel, but the sinner who is 
 changed. 
 
 And a fresh proof of what I advance is, that, upon those points 
 of the law where no particular passion or interest blinds us, we are 
 equitable and clear-sighted. A miser, who hides from himself the 
 rules of faith upon the insatiable love of riches, clearly sees the 
 maxims which condemn ambition or luxury. A voluptuary, who 
 tries to justify to himself the weakness of his inclinations, gives no 
 quarter to the mean desires and to the sordid attachments of ava- 
 rice. A man, mad for exaltation and, fortune, and who considers 
 the eternal exertions which he is under the necessity of making 
 in order to succeed, as weighty and serious cares, and alone worthy 
 his birth and his name, sees all the unworthiness of a life of amuse- 
 ment and pleasure, and clearly comprehends that a man, born with 
 a name, degrades and dishonours himself by laziness and indolence. 
 A woman, seized with the rage of gaming, yet otherwise regular, 
 is inveterate against the slightest faults which attack the conduct, 
 and continually justifies the innocence of, excessive gaming, by con- 
 trasting it with irregularities of another description, from which 
 she finds herself free. Another on the contrary, intoxicated with 
 her person and with her beauty, totally engrossed by her deplora- 
 ble passions, considers that obstinate perseverance in an eternal 
 gaming as a kind of disease and derangement of the mind, and, 
 in the shame of her own engagements sees nothing but an innocent 
 weakness and involuntary inclinations, the destiny of which we 
 find in our hearts. 
 
 Review all the passions, and you will see that, in proportion as 
 we are exempted from some one we see, we condemn it in others : 
 we know the rules which forbid it ; we go even to the rigour 
 against others, upon the observance of duties which interest not 
 our own weaknesses, and we carry our severity beyond even the rule 
 itself. The Pharisees, so instructed in, and so severe upon the 
 guilt of the adulteress, and upon the punishments attached by the 
 law to the infamy of that infidelity, saw not their own pride, their 
 
Ser. 24. evidence of the law of god. 397 
 
 hypocrisy, their implacable hatred, and their secret envy against 
 Jesus Christ. Obscurities are only in our own heart; and we 
 never begin to doubt upon our duties but when we begin to love 
 those maxims which oppose them. Second reflection. 
 
 In effect, I tell you, in the third place, you believe that the Gos- 
 pel is not so express as we pretend, upon the greater part of the 
 rules which we wish to prescribe to you ; that we carry its severity 
 to excess, and that we make it to say whatever we please. Hear 
 it then itself, my brethren ; we consent that, of all the duties pre- 
 scribed to you by it, you shall think yourselves obliged to observe 
 only those which are marked there in terms so precise and clear 
 that it is impossible to mistake or misconstrue them : more is not 
 required of you, and we free you from all the rest. Hear it then : 
 u And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, can- 
 not be my disciple. Whosoever he be of you, that forsaketh not 
 all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. The kingdom of hea- 
 ven sufTereth violence, and the violent take it by force. Except ye 
 repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Ye cannot serve God and 
 mammon. Woe unto you that are full, for ye shall hunger ; woe 
 unto you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep. Blessed 
 are they that weep now, for ye shall laugh. He that loveth his 
 father, his wife, his children, yea, and his life also, better than me, 
 is not worthy of me. I say unto you, that ye shall weep and la- 
 ment, but the world shall rejoice ; and ye shall be sorrowful, but 
 your sorrow shall be turned into joy." 
 
 Do I speak here, my brethren ? Do I come to deceive you by 
 an excess of severity, to add to the Gospel, and to bring you only 
 my own thoughts ? Weak creature that I am, I have occasion my- 
 self for indulgence ; and if I took, in the weakness of my own heart, 
 the doctrine which I announce to you, alas ! I would speak to 
 you only the language of man : I would tell you that God is too 
 good to punish inclinations which are born, it would appear, with 
 us; that, to love God, it is not necessary to hate one*s self; that, 
 when rich, we ought to enjoy our wealth, and allow ourselves every 
 gratification. Behold the language which I would hold ; for man, 
 delivered up to himself, can speak only this language of flesh and 
 blood. But would you believe me, as I have already demanded ; 
 would you respect my ministry ; would you look upon me as an 
 angel from heaven, who should come to announce to you this new 
 Gospel ? 
 
 That of Jesus Christ speaks another language to you. I have 
 related to you only his own divine words ; these are the duties 
 which he prescribes to you in clear and express terms. We con- 
 sent that you confine your whole piety to these limits, and that 
 you leave all the rest as doubtful, or, at least commanded in terms 
 less clear, and more susceptible of favourable interpretations. 
 Reckon not among your duties but these holy and incontestable 
 rules ; we exact nothing more : limit yourselves to performing what 
 they prescribe to you ; and you will see that you shall do more 
 than we even demand of you ; and that the most common and most 
 
398 EVIDENCE OF THE LAW OF GOD. Ser. 24. 
 
 familiar maxims of the Gospel go infinitely farther than all our dis- 
 courses. Third reflection. 
 
 I also say to you, in the fourth place, that if almost all be con- 
 tested in the world upon the most incontestable duties of Christian 
 piety, it is because the Gospel is a book unknown to the greatest 
 part of believers ; it is that, through a deplorable abuse, a whole 
 life is passed in acquiring vain learning, equally useless to man, to 
 his happiness, and to his eternity; and the book of the law is never 
 read, in which is contained the knowledge of salvation, the truth 
 which is to deliver us, the light which is to conduct us, the titles of 
 our hopes, the testimony of our immortality, the consolations of our 
 exilement, and the aids of our pilgrimage : it is that, on entering 
 into the world, care is taken to present to us those books in which 
 are explained the rules of that profession to which we are allotted, 
 and, that the book of the law, in which the rules of the profession 
 of the Christian are contained, that profession which shall survive all 
 others, alone necessary, and the only one which shall accompany 
 us into eternity ; that book, I say is left in neglect, and enters not 
 into the plan of studies which ought to occupy our earlier years: 
 lastly, it is that fabulous and lascivious histories childishly amuse 
 our leisure ; and that the history of God^s wonders and mercies 
 upon men, filled with events so grand, so weighty, so interesting, 
 which ought to be the sole occupation, and the whole consolation 
 of our life, does not appear to us worthy even of our curiosity. 
 
 I am not surprised, after this, if we have continual occasion to 
 maintain the Gospel against the abuses and the prejudices of the 
 world ; if we are listened to with the same surprise, when we an- 
 nounce the commonest truths of the Christian morality, as though 
 we announced the belief and the mysteries of those savage and far 
 distant nations, whose countries and manners are hardly known. 
 And if the doctrine of Jesus Christ find the same opposition at 
 present in minds, that it experienced at the birth of faith, it is, 
 that there are Christians to whom the book of the Gospel is almost 
 equally unknown as it then was to the heathens ; who scarcely 
 know whether Jesus Christ be come to bring laws to men, and 
 who cannot, for a single moment, support without weariness, the 
 reading of that divine book, the rules of which are so sublime, the 
 promises so consoling, and of which the pagans themselves, who 
 embraced faith, so much admired the beauty and the divine philo- 
 sophy. Thus, my brethren, read the holy books, and read them 
 with that spirit of faith, of submission, of trust, which the church 
 exacts, and you will soon be as well acquainted with your duties, 
 and with the rules of the manners, as the doctors themselves who 
 teach you. 
 
 And, indeed, my brethren, whence comes it, I beg of you, that 
 the first believers carried so far the purity of manners and the holi- 
 ness of Christianity? Were other maxims announced to them 
 than those which we announce to you? Was another gospel 
 preached to them, more clear and more explicit than that which we 
 preach to you ? Nevertheless, they were idolatrous and dissolute 
 
Ser. 24. evidence of the law of god. 399 
 
 nations, who had brought to the truths of faith all the prejudices 
 of the superstitions and of the most infamous voluptuousnesses 
 authorized even by their worship. Did the Gospel contain the 
 smallest obscurities favourable to the passions, it surely ought to 
 have been those first disciples of faith who should have made the 
 mistake. Nevertheless, whence comes it they never proposed to 
 the apostles and to their successors the same difficulties which you 
 continually oppose to us, in support of the abuses of the world and 
 of the interests of the passions ? Whence comes it, that, with 
 more inclinations and more prejudices than we for pleasures, those 
 blessed believers at once comprehended how far, in order to obey 
 the Gospel, it was necessary to deny them to themselves ? 
 
 Ah ! it was that, night and day, they had the book of the law in 
 their hands ; it was that patience, and the consolation of the Scrip- 
 tures, were the sweetest occupation of their faith ; it was that the 
 letters of the holy apostles, and the relation of the life, and of the 
 maxims of Jesus Christ, were the sole bond and the daily conver- 
 sations of these infant churches : in a word, it is that, to whoever 
 reads the gospel, whatever regards the duties is quickly decided. 
 Fourth reflection. 
 
 Lastly, I say, even admitting that some obscurities should be 
 found there, doth not the law of God find all its evidence in in- 
 struction and in the ministry ? The Christian pulpits announce to 
 you the purity of the holy maxims ; the pastors publicly preach 
 them ; men, full of zeal and of knowledge, convey them down to 
 posterity, in works worthy of the better times of the church : never 
 had the piety of believers more aids ; no age ever was more en- 
 lightened, or better knew the spirit of faith and the whole extent of 
 duties. We no longer live in those ages of ignorance, in which the 
 rules subsisted only in the abuses which had adulterated them ; in 
 which the ministry was often an occasion of error and of scandal for 
 believers, and in which the priest was considered as more enlight- 
 ened, whenever he was more superstitious than his people. 
 
 It would seem, O my God ! that in order to render us more in- 
 excusable, in proportion as the wickedness of men increases on the 
 one side, the knowledge of the truth, which is to condemn them, 
 augments on the other ; in proportion as the manners become cor- 
 rupted, the rules become more evident ; in proportion as faith be- 
 comes languid, it is cleared up and purified ; like those fires, which, 
 in expiring give a momentary flash, and never display their lustre 
 with such brilliancy as when on the eve of being extinguished. 
 
 Not that there are not still among us many blind guides and 
 prophets who announce their own dreams. But the snare is to be 
 dreaded only by those who are willing to be deceived. When sin- 
 cerely inclined to seek the Lord, we soon find the hand which 
 knows to lead us to him. It is not, then, properly speaking, the 
 false guides who lead us astray, it is ourselves who seek them, be- 
 cause we wish to err with them : they are not the first authors of 
 our ruin, they are only the encouragers of it : they do not lead us 
 into the path of perdition, they only leave us there ; and we are 
 already determined to perish before we apply for their suffrage. 
 
400 EVIDENCE OF THE LAW OF GOD. Sei*. 24. 
 
 In effect, we sensibly feel ourselves the danger and the imprudence 
 of the choice we make : even the more we find the oracle comply- 
 ing, the more we mistrust his lights ; the more he respects our pas- 
 sions, the less we respect his ministry; he is frequently made the 
 subject even of our derisions ; we turn into ridicule that very in- 
 dulgence which we have sought ; we vaunt the having found a pro- 
 tector so convenient for the human weaknesses ; and, through a 
 blindness which, cannot be mentioned without tears, the soul and 
 eternal salvation are confided to a man who is believed unworthy, 
 not only of respect, but even of attention and decency ; like those 
 Israelites, who, a moment after having bowed the knee to the 
 golden calf, and expected from it their salvation and their deliver- 
 ance, broke it in pieces with disgrace, and reduced it to ashes. 
 
 But, after all, when the ignorance or the weakening of ministers 
 should even be an oceasion of error, the examples of the holy un- 
 deceive you. You see what, from the beginning, hath been the 
 path of those who have obtained the promises, and whose memory 
 and holy toils we still honour upon the earth : you see that none 
 of them hath accomplished his salvation by that way which the 
 world vaunts as being so safe and so innocent : you see that all the 
 holy have repented, crucified the flesh, despised the world with its 
 pleasures and maxims : you see that those ages, so opposite to 
 each other for their manners and customs, have never made any 
 change in the manners of the just; that the holy of the first times 
 were the same as those of the last ; that the countries, even the 
 most dissimilar for their disposition and behaviour, have produced 
 holy men, all resembling each other ; that those of the most distant 
 climates, and the most different from our own, resemble those of 
 our own nation; that, in every tongue and in every tribe, they have 
 all been the same ; lastly, that their situations have been different ; 
 that some have wrought out their salvation in obscurity, others in 
 elevation ; some in poverty, others in abundance ; some in the dis- 
 sipation of dignities and of public cares, others in silence and in the 
 calm of solitude ; in a word, some in the cottage, others on the 
 throne ; but that the cross, violence, and self-denial hath been the 
 common path of all. 
 
 What then art thou, to pretend to reach heaven by other ways ? 
 And thou flatterest thyself that, in that crowd of illustrious ser- 
 vants of the living God, thou alone shalt be privileged. My God ! 
 with what lustre hast thou not surrounded the truth, in order to 
 render man inexcusable ! His conscience shows it to him ; thy holy 
 law guards it for him ; the voice of the church makes it to resound 
 in his ears ; the example of the holy incessantly places it before his 
 eyes ; every thing rises up against guilt ; all take the interests of thy 
 holy law against his false peace ; from every quarter proceed rays 
 of light which go to bear the truth even to the bottom of his soul : 
 no place, no situation can protect him from those divine sparks 
 emitted from thy bosom, which every where pursue him, and which, 
 in enlightening, rack him: the truth, which ought to deliver him, 
 renders him unhappy ; and, unwilling to love its light, he is forced, 
 beforehand, to feel its just severity. 
 
Ser. 25. immutability of the law of god. 401 
 
 What then, my dear hearer, prevents the truth from triumphing 
 in your heart ? Wherefore do you change, into an inexhaustible 
 source of cruel remorses, lights which ought to be, within you, the 
 whole consolation of your sorrows ? Since, by a consequence of 
 the riches of God's mercy upon your soul, you cannot succeed, like 
 so many impious and hardened hearts, to stifle that internal moni- 
 tor which incessantly recalls you to order and duty, why will you 
 obstinately withstand the happiness of your lot 2 Why so many 
 efforts to defend you from yourself, so many starts and flights to 
 shun yourself? At last, reconcile your hearts with your lights, 
 your conscience with your manners, yourself with the law of God : 
 behold the only secret of attaining to that peace of heart which you 
 seek. Turn yourself on every side, you must always come to that. 
 Observance of the law is the true happiness of man ; it is deceiving 
 himself to look upon it as a yoke; it alone places the heart at li- 
 berty. Whatever favours our passions, sharpens our ills, increases 
 our troubles, multiplies our bonds, and aggravates our slavery ; the 
 law of God alone, in repressing them, places us in order, quiets, 
 cures, and delivers us. Such is the destiny of sinful man, to be 
 incapable of happiness here below but by overcoming his passions ; 
 to attain by violence alone to the true pleasures of the heart, and 
 afterward to that eternal peace prepared for those who shall have 
 loved the law of the Lord. 
 
 SERMON XXV. 
 IMMUTABILITY of the law of god. 
 
 " And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me ?" John viii. 46. 
 
 It is not enough to have defended the evidence of the law of 
 God against the affected ignorance of the sinners who violate it ; it 
 is necessary likewise to establish its immutability against all the 
 pretexts which seem to authorize the world to dispense itself from 
 its holy rules. 
 
 Jesus Christ is not satisfied with announcing to the Pharisees, 
 that the truth which they knew shall one day judge them : that in 
 vain they concealed it from themselves ; and that the guilt of the 
 truth, known and contemned, would be for ever upon their head. 
 It is through the evidence of the law that he at first recalls them 
 to their own conscience ; he afterward accuses them of having 
 struck even at its immutability ; of substituting human customs and 
 traditions in place of the perpetuity of its rules; of accommodating 
 them to times, to circumstances, and to interests ; and declares to 
 them that, even to the end of ages, a single iota shall not be 
 changed in his law; that heaven and earth shall pass away, but 
 that his law and his holy word shall for ever be the same. 
 
 D D 
 
402 IMMUTABILITY OF Ser. 25. 
 
 And behold, my brethren, the abuses which still reign among us 
 against the law of God. We have shown to you that, in spite of 
 the doubts and the obscurities which our lusts have spread over 
 our duties, the light of the law, always superior to our passions, 
 dissipated, in spite of ourselves, these obscurities, and that we were 
 never hearty in the transgressions which we tried to justify to our- 
 selves. But it is little to be willing, like the Pharisees, to darken 
 the evidence of tfre law : like them, we likewise strike at its immu- 
 tability ; and, as if the law of God could change with the manners 
 of the age, the differences of conditions, the necessity of situations, 
 we believe that we can accommodate it to these three different cir- 
 cumstances, and in them find pretexts, either to mollify its severity 
 or altogether to violate its precepts. 
 
 First. In effect, the heart of men is changeable ; every age sees 
 new customs spring up among us ; times and the customs always 
 determine our manners. Now, the law of God is immutable in its 
 duration, always the same in all times and in all places ; and, by 
 this first character of immutability, it alone ought to be the con- 
 stant and perpetual rule of our manners. First reflection. 
 
 Secondly. The heart of man is vain : whatever levels us with the 
 rest of men, wounds our pride ; we love distinctions and preferences ; 
 we believe that, in the elevation of rank and of birth, we find pri- 
 vileges against the law. Now, the law of God is immutable in its 
 extent ; it levels all stations and all conditions ; it is the same for 
 the great and for the people, for the prince and for the subject ; and, 
 by this second character of immutability, it ought to recall to the 
 same duties that variety of stations and conditions which spreads 
 so much inequality over the detail of manners and of the rules. 
 Second reflection. 
 
 Lastly. The heart of man connects every thing with itself; he 
 persuades himself that his interests ought to be preferred to the 
 law and to the interests of God himself ; the slightest inconvenien- 
 cies are reasons, in his eyes, against the rule. Now, the law of 
 God is immutable in all situations of life ; and, by this last cha- 
 racter of immutability, there is neither perplexity, nor inconveni- 
 ency, nor apparent necessity, which can dispense us from its pre- 
 cepts. Last reflection. % 
 
 And behold the three pretexts, which the world opposes to the 
 immutability of the law of God, overthrown : the pretext of man- 
 ners and customs ; the pretext of rank and of birth ; the pretext 
 of situations and inconveniencies. The law of God is immutable in 
 its durations ; therefore, the manners and the customs can never 
 change it : the law of God is immutable in its extent ; therefore, 
 the difference of ranks and of conditions leaves it every where the 
 same : the law of God is immutable in all situations ; therefore, 
 inconveniencies, perplexities, never justify the smallest transgres- 
 sion of it. 
 
 Part 1. One of the most urgent and most usual reproaches 
 which the first supporters of religion formerly made to the hea- 
 
Ser. 25. the law of god. 403 
 
 thens, was the instability of their moral system, and the continual 
 fluctuations of their doctrine. As the fulness of truth was not in 
 vain philosophy, and as they drew not their lights, said Tertullian, 
 from that sovereign reason which enlightens all minds, and which 
 is the immutable teacher of the truth, but from the corruption of 
 their heart and the vanity of their thoughts, they qualified good 
 and evil according to their caprices, and, among them, vice and 
 virtue were almost arbitrary names. Nevertheless, continues this 
 father, the most inseparable character of truth is that of being 
 always the same : good and evil take their immutability from that 
 of God himself, whom they glorify or insult ; his wisdom, his holi- 
 ness, his righteousness, are the only eternal rules of our manners: 
 and it belongs not to men, at their pleasure, to change what 
 men have not established, and what is more ancient than men 
 themselves. 
 
 Now, it was not surprising that morality had nothing determi- 
 nate, in the heathen schools, delivered up to the pride and to 
 the variations of the human mind : it was vanity, and not the 
 truth, which made philosophers ; the rules changed with the ages ; 
 new times brought new laws : in a word, the tenets did not change 
 the manners ; it was the change of manners which drew after it 
 that of the tenets. 
 
 But what is astonishing is, that Christians, who have received 
 from heaven the eternal and immutable law which regulates their 
 manners, believe it to be equally changeable as the morality of 
 philosophers : that they persuade themselves that the rigorous 
 duties which the Gospel at first prescribed to the primitive ages 
 of the church, are mollified with the relaxation of manners, and 
 are no longer made for the weakness and the corruption of our ages. 
 
 In effect, the Gospel, the law of Jesus Christ, is immutable in 
 its duration : seeing every thing change around it, it alone changes 
 not ; the duties which it prescribes to us, founded upon the wants 
 and upon the nature of man, are, like it, of all times and of all 
 places. Every thing changes upon the earth, because every thing 
 partakes of the mutability of its origin : empires and states have 
 their rise and their fall ; arts and sciences fall or spring up with 
 the ages ; customs continually change with the taste of the people, 
 and with climates ; from on high, in his immutability, God seems 
 to sport with human affairs, by leaving them in an eternal revolu- 
 tion ; the ages to come will destroy what we, with so much anxiety 
 rear up ; we destroy what our fathers had thought worthy of an 
 eternal duration : and, in order to teach us in what estimation we 
 ought to hold things here below, God permitteth that they have 
 nothing determinate or solid but that very inconstancy which in- 
 cessantly agitates them. 
 
 But, amid all the changes of manners and ages, the law of 
 God always remains the immutable rule of ages and of manners. 
 Heaven and earth shall pass away ; but the holy words of the law 
 shall never pass away : such as the first believers received them at 
 the birth of faith, such have we them at present ; such shall our 
 
 dd2 
 
404 IMMUTABILITY OF Sei*. 25. 
 
 descendants one day receive them ; lastly, such shall the blessed 
 in heaven eternally love and adore them. The fervour or the 
 licentiousness of ages adds or diminishes nothing to their indul- 
 gence, or from their severity ; the zeal or the complaisance of men 
 renders them neither more austere nor more accommodating ; the 
 intolerant rigour, or the excessive relaxation of opinions and tenets 
 leaves them all the wise sobriety of their rules ; and they form that 
 eternal gospel which the angel, in the Revelation, announces from 
 on high in heaven, from the beginning, to every tongue and to 
 every nation. 
 
 Nevertheless, my brethren, when in the manners of the primi- 
 tive believers, we sometimes represent to you all the duties of the 
 Gospel exactly fulfilled, their freedom from the world, their ab- 
 sence from theatres and public pleasures, their assiduity in the 
 temples, the modesty and the decency of their dress, their charity 
 for their brethren, their indifference for all perishable things, their 
 continual desire of going to be reunited to Jesus Christ; in a 
 word, that simple, retired, and mortified life, sustained by fervent 
 prayer, and by the consolation of the holy books, and such, in 
 effect, as the gospel prescribes to all the disciples of faith ; when 
 we bring forward to you, I say, these ancient models, in order to 
 make you feel, by the difference between the primitive manners 
 and yours, how distant you are from the kingdom of God : far 
 from being alarmed at finding yourselves dissimilar to such a de- 
 gree, that hardly could it be believed that you were disciples of 
 the same Master and followers of the same law ; you reproach us 
 with continual recalling, even to weariness, these primitive times, 
 of never speaking but of the primitive church, as if it were possible 
 to regulate our manners, upon manners of which every trace hath 
 long been done away, impracticable at present among us, and 
 which the times and customs have universally abolished. You 
 say, that men must be taken as they are ; that it were to be wished 
 that the primitive fervour had been kept up in the church ; but 
 that every thing becomes relaxed and weakened through time, and 
 that, to pretend to bring us back to the life of the primitive ages, 
 is not holding out means of salvation, but is merely preaching up 
 that nobody can now pretend to it. 
 
 But I demand of you, in the first place, my brethren, if the 
 times and the years, which have so much adulterated the purity 
 of Christianity, have adulterated that of the gospel ? Are the 
 rules become more pliable and more favourable to the passions, 
 because men are become more sensual and more voluptuous ? And 
 hath the relaxation of manners softened the maxims of Jesus 
 Christ ? When he hath foretold in the gospel that, in the latter 
 times, that is to say, in the ages in which we have the misfortune 
 to live, faith should almost no longer be found upon the earth ; 
 that his name should hardly be known there, that his maxims 
 should be destroyed, that the duties should be incompatible with 
 the customs, and that the just themselves should allow themselves 
 to be almost infected by the universal contagion, and to be dragged 
 
Ser. 25. the law of god. 405 
 
 away by the torrent of example ; hath he then added, that, in order 
 to accommodate himself to the corruption of these latter times, he 
 would relax something of the severity of his Gospel ; that he would 
 consent that customs, established by the ignorance and the licen- 
 tiousness of the ages, should succeed to the rules and to the duties 
 of his doctrine ; that he would then exact of his disciples infinitely 
 less than he exacted at the birth of faith ; and that his kingdom, 
 which, at first, was promised only to force, should then be granted 
 to indolence and laziness ? Hath he added this, I demand of you ? 
 On the contrary, he warns his disciples that then, in these latter 
 times, it will more than ever be necessary to pray, to fast, to 
 retire to the mountains, in order to shun the general corrup- 
 tion ; he warns them that woe unto those who shall then remain 
 exposed amid the world ; that those alone shall be safe who shall 
 divest themselves of all, and who shall fly from amid the cities : 
 and he concludes by exhorting them once more to watch and 
 to pray without ceasing, in order not to be included in the general 
 condemnation. 
 
 And, in effect, my brethren, the more disorders augment, the 
 more ought piety to be fervent and watchful : the more we are sur- 
 rounded with dangers, the more doth prayer, retreat, and mortifi- 
 cation become necessary to us. The licentiousness of the present 
 manners add still new obligations to those of our fathers ; and, 
 far from the path of salvation having become more easy than in 
 those former times, we shall perish with a moderate virtue, which, 
 supported then by the common example, would perhaps have been 
 sufficient to secure our salvation. 
 
 Besides, my brethren, I demand of you, in the second place, 
 Do you really believe that the rigorous precepts of the gospel, 
 those maxims of the cross, of violence, of self-denial, of contempt 
 for the world, have been made only for the primitive ages of faith ? 
 Do you believe that Jesus Christ hath destined all the rigours of 
 his doctrine for those chaste, innocent, charitable, and fervent men, 
 who lived in these happy times of the church ; those men who 
 denied themselves every pleasure, those primitive heroes of religion, 
 who, almost all, preserved, even to the end, the grace of regenera- 
 tion which had made them Christians ? What ! my brethren, 
 Jesus Christ would have rewarded their zeal and their fidelity only 
 by aggravating their yoke, and he would have reserved all his 
 indulgence for the corrupted men of our ages ? Jesus Christ 
 would have made strict laws of reserve, of modesty, of retirement, 
 only for those primitive Christian women who renounced all to 
 please him; who divided themselves only with the Lord and their 
 husbands ; who, shut up in the inclosures of their houses, brought 
 up their children in faith and in piety ? And he would exact less 
 at present of those sensual, voluptuous, and worldly women, who 
 continually wound our eyes by the indecency of their dress, and 
 who corrupt the heart by the looseness of their manners, and by 
 the snares which they lay for innocence ? And where would here 
 be that so much vaunted equity and wisdom of the Christian 
 
406 immutability of Ser. 25. 
 
 morality ? More should then be exacted of him who owes less. 
 The transgressions of the law should then dispense from its seve- 
 rity those who violate it. It would suffice to have passions, to be 
 entitled to gratify them. The way of heaven would be rendered 
 easy to sinners, while all its roughness would be kept for the just. 
 And the more vices men should have, the less should they have 
 occasion for virtues. 
 
 Again, allow me, my brethren, to add, in the last place, if the 
 change of manners could change the rules, if customs could justify 
 abuses, the eternal law of God should then accommodate itself to 
 the inconstancy of the times, and to the ridiculous taste of men ; a 
 Gospel would then be necessary for every age and for every na- 
 tion; for our customs were not established in the times of our 
 fathers, and undoubtedly they shall not pass to our last descend- 
 ants ; they are not common to all the nations, who, like us, worship 
 Jesus Christ. Therefore, these customs cannot either become our 
 rule or change it, for the rule is of all times and of all places ; there- 
 fore, new manners do not form a new Gospel, seeing we should 
 anathematize even an angel who should come to announce to us a 
 new one ; and that the Gospel would be no longer but a human 
 and little-to-be-trusted law for men, if it could change with men ; 
 therefore, the rules and duties are not to be judged by manners and 
 customs, but the manners and customs are to be judged by the du- 
 ties and rules ; therefore, it is the law of God which ought to be the 
 constant rule of the times, and not the variation of times to be- 
 come even the rule of the law of God. 
 
 No longer tell us, then, my brethren, that the times are no longer 
 the same ; but the law of God, is it not ? That you cannot reform 
 manners universally established : but you are not charged with the 
 reformation of the universe : change yourself; save your own soul 
 with which you are intrusted : behold all that is exacted of you. 
 Lastly, that the Christians of the primitive times had either more 
 force or more grace than we; ah! they had more faith, more con- 
 stancy, more love for Jesus Christ, more contempt for the world : 
 behold all that distinguished them from us. 
 
 Have we not the same sources of grace as they, the same minis- 
 try, the same altar, the same victim? Do the mercies of the Lord 
 not flow with the same abundance upon his church? Have we not 
 still among us pure and holy souls, who renew the fervour and faith 
 of the primitive times, and who are living proofs of the possibility 
 of the duties, and of the mercies of the Lord upon his people? 
 u Tell us no longer, then/ 5 says the Spirit of God, u that the former 
 days were better than these ; for thou dost not inquire wisely con- 
 cerning this." To follow Jesus Christ, sufferance must always be 
 required. In all ages, it hath been necessary to bear his cross, not 
 to conform to the corrupted age, and to live as strangers upon the 
 earth: in all times, the holy have had the same passions as we to 
 resist, the same abuses to shun, the same snares to dread, the same 
 obstacles to surmount : and if there be any difference here, it is, 
 that, in former times, it was not merely arbitrary customs which 
 
Ser. 25. the law of god. 407 
 
 they had to shun, nor the derisions of the world which they had 
 only to dread in declaring for Jesus Christ ; it was the most cruel 
 punishments to which they must expose themselves ; it was the 
 power of the Caesars, and the rage of tyrants, which they must de- 
 spise ; it was superstitions, become respectable through their anti- 
 quity, countenanced by the laws of the empire, and by the consent 
 of almost all the people, which they had to shake off ; it was, in a 
 word, the whole universe which they had to arm against them- 
 selves. But the faith of these pious men was stronger than punish- 
 ments, than the tyrants, than the Caesars, than the whole world : 
 and our faith cannot hold out against the absurdity of customs or 
 the puerility of derision ; and the Gospel, which could formerly 
 make martyrs, scarcely at present can it form a believer. The law 
 of God is then immutable in its duration; always the same in all 
 times and in all places ; but it is likewise immutable in its extent, 
 and the same for all stations and conditions. This is my second 
 reflection. 
 
 Part II. The most essential character of the law of Jesus 
 Christ, is that of uniting, under the same rules, the Jew and the 
 Gentile, the Greek and the Barbarian, the great and the people, the 
 prince and the subject ; in it there is no longer exception of per- 
 sons. The law of Moses, at least in its customs and in its ceremo- 
 nies, was given only to a single people: but Jesus Christ is a 
 universal legislator ; his law, as his death, is for all men. He came, 
 of all people to make only one people: of all stations and of all 
 conditions to form only one body: it is the same spirit which ani- 
 mates it, the same laws which govern it ; different functions may 
 there be exercised, different places, more or less honourable, be 
 occupied ; but it is the same spring which rules all the members 
 of it. All these hateful distinctions, which formerly divided 
 men, are destroyed by the church ; that holy law knows neither 
 poor nor rich, neither noble nor base-born, neither master nor 
 slave ; it sees in men only the title of believer, which equals them 
 all ; it distinguishes them not by their names or by their offices, 
 but by their virtues ; and the greatest in its sight are those who 
 are the most holy. 
 
 Nevertheless, a second illusion, pretty common against the im- 
 mutability of the law of God, is the persuasion that it changes and 
 becomes mollified in favour of rank and of birth; that its obliga- 
 tions are less rigid for persons born to elevation ; and that the ob- 
 stacles, which high places and the manners attached to grandeur 
 throw in the way of the observance of the strict duties of the Gos- 
 pel, and which render the practice of them almost impossible to the 
 great, likewise render their transgressions more innocent. They 
 figure to themselves that the abuses, permitted, in all times, by 
 custom to the great, are likewise accorded to them by the law of 
 God, and that there is another path of salvation for them than for 
 the people. Thence, all the laws of the church violated ; the times 
 and the days consecrated to abstinence, confounded with the rest 
 
408 immutability of Ser. 25. 
 
 of days, are looked upon as privileges refused to the vulgar, and 
 reserved solely for rank and birth : thence, to live only for the 
 senses, to be attentive only to satisfy them, to refuse nothing to 
 taste, to vanity, to curiosity, to idleness, to ambition, to make a 
 god of one's self ; the same prosperity, which facilitates all these 
 excesses, excuses and justifies them. 
 
 But, my brethren, I have already said it, the Gospel is the law 
 of all men : high and low, you have all promised, upon the sacred 
 fonts, to observe it. The church, in receiving you into the num- 
 ber of her children, hath not proposed to the great other vows to 
 make, and other rules to practise, than to the common people : 
 you have all there made the same promises ; all sworn, in the face 
 of the altars, to observe the same Gospel. The church hath not 
 then demanded of you, if, by your birth according to the flesh, you 
 were great, or of the common people ; but if, by your regeneration 
 in Jesus Christ, you meant to be faithful, and to engage yourself to 
 follow his law: upon the vow which you have made of it, she hath 
 placed the holy Gospel upon your head, in order to mark that you 
 submitted yourself to that sacred yoke. 
 
 Now, my brethren, all the duties of the Gospel are reduced to 
 two points. Some are proposed in order to resist and to weaken 
 that fund of corruption which we bear from our birth ; the others 
 in order to perfect that first grace of the Christian which we have 
 received in baptism ; that is to say, the one in order to destroy in 
 us the old Adam, the other in order to make Jesus Christ to grow 
 there. Violence, self-denial, and mortification regard the first : 
 prayer, retirement, vigilance, contempt for the world, desire of in- 
 visible riches, are comprised in the second : behold the whole Gos- 
 pel. Now, I demand of you, what is there in these two descriptions 
 of duties from which rank or birth can dispense you ? 
 
 Ought you to pray less than the other believers ? Have you 
 fewer favours to ask than they, fewer obstacles to overcome, fewer 
 snares to avoid, fewer desires to resist ? Alas ! the more you are 
 exalted, the more do dangers augment, the more do occasions of 
 sin spring up under your feet, the more is the world beloved, the 
 more doth every thing favour your passions, the more doth every 
 thing militate against your good desires ; it is in a situation so ter- 
 rible for salvation that you find privileges which render it more 
 mild and more commodious. The more, therefore, that you are 
 exalted, the more doth mortification become necessary to you; for, 
 the more that pleasures corrupt your heart, the more is vigilance 
 necessary, because the dangers are more frequent; the more ought 
 faith to be lively, because every thing around you weakens and ex- 
 tinguishes it ; the more ought prayer to be continual, because the 
 grace, in order to support you, ought to be more powerful ; humi- 
 lity of heart more heroical, because the attachment to things here 
 below is more unavoidable : lastly, the more you are exalted, the 
 more doth salvation become difficult to you ; this is the only privi- 
 lege you can expect from elevation. Also, thou often warnest us, 
 great God, that thy kingdom is only for the poor and the lowly : 
 
Ser. 25. the law of god. 409 
 
 thou speakest not of the difficulty of salvation for the great and the 
 powerful, but in terms which would seem to deprive them of all 
 hope of pretending to it, if we knew not that thou wishest the sal- 
 vation of all men, and that thy grace is still more powerful for our 
 sanctification than prosperity for our corruption. 
 
 And surely, my brethren, if grandeur and elevation were to ren- 
 der our condition more fortunate and more favourable with regard 
 to salvation, in vain would the doctrine of Jesus Christ teach us to 
 dread grandeurs and human prosperities ; in vain would it be said 
 to us, that blessed are they who weep, and who suffer here below ; 
 that woe unto those who laugh now, for they shall mourn and weep; 
 and unto those who are rich, for they have received their consola- 
 tion ; and that, to receive our reward in this world, through the 
 transitory riches and honours which we there receive, is almost a 
 certain sign that we are not to receive it in the other. On the con- 
 trary, grandeur and prosperity would become a state worthy of 
 envy, even according to the rules of faith : against the maxim of 
 Jesus Christ, it would be necessary to call those happy who are 
 immersed in pleasures and in opulence ; since, besides the comforts 
 of a smiling fortune, they would likewise find there a way of salva- 
 tion more mild and more easy than in an obscure state ; those who 
 suffer, and who weep here below, would then be the most miserable 
 of all men; since to all the bitterness of their condition, would 
 likewise be added those of a Gospel, more rigorous and more aus- 
 tere for them than for the persons born in abundance. What new 
 Gospel would it then be necessary to announce to you, if such were 
 the rules of the morality of Jesus Christ ! 
 
 But I say not even enough. Granting that prosperity should 
 not exact more rigid precautions, in consequence of the dangers 
 which surround it, it would exact, at least, more rigorous repara- 
 tions, through the crimes and excesses which are inseparable from 
 it. Alas ! my brethren, is it not among you that the passions no 
 longer know any bounds ; that the jealousies are more keen, the 
 hatreds more lasting, revenge more honourable, evil speaking more 
 cruel, ambition more boundless, and voluptuousness more shame- 
 ful? Is it not among the great that the most shocking de- 
 bauchery even refines upon the common crimes ; that dissipations 
 become an art ; and that, in order to prevent those disgusts inse- 
 parable from licentiousness, resources are sought in guilt against 
 guilt itself ? What indulgence, then, can you promise yourselves on 
 the part of religion ? If the most righteous be responsible for the 
 whole law, should the greatest sinners be discharged from it ? Mea- 
 sure your duties upon your crimes, and not upon your rank ; judge 
 of yourselves by the insults which you have offered to God, and 
 not by the vain homages which are paid to you by men ; number 
 the days and the years of your crimes which shall be the eternal 
 titles of your condemnation, and not the years and the ages of 
 the antiquity of your race, which are only vain titles written 
 upon the ashes of your tombs ; examine what you owe to God, and 
 not what men owe to you. If the world were to judge you, you 
 
410 immutability of Ser. 25. 
 
 might promise yourselves distinctions and preferences; but the 
 world shall itself be judged ; and he, who will judge it and you also, 
 shall distinguish men only by their vices or by their virtues. He 
 will not demand the names, he will demand only the deeds : calcu- 
 late thereupon the distinctions which you ought to expect. 
 
 Thus, we see not that Jesus Christ, in the Gospel, proposed to 
 the princes of the people, and to the grandees of Jerusalem, other 
 maxims than to the citizens of Judea, and to his disciples, all taken 
 from the lowest ranks of the people; he speaks in the capital of 
 Judea, and before all that Palestine held the most illustrious, as he 
 speaks upon the borders of the sea, or upon the mountains, to that 
 obscure populace which followed him ; his maxims are not changed 
 with the rank of those who listened to him. The cross, violence, 
 contempt of the world, self-denial, abstinence from pleasures: be- 
 hold what he announces at Jerusalem, the seat of kings, as at Na- 
 zareth, the most obscure place of Judea ; to that young man who 
 was so rich, as to the children of Zebedee, whose only inheritance 
 was their nets ; to the sisters of Lazarus, of a distinguished rank in 
 Palestine, as to the woman of Samaria, of a more obscure condi- 
 tion. His enemies themselves confessed that this was his peculiar 
 character, and were forced to render him this justice, that he 
 taught the way of God in truth, and that he had no respect of 
 rank or of persons. 
 
 What do I say? Even after his death the Gospel seemed a doc- 
 trine sent down from heaven, only because that, announcing to the 
 great and to the powerful, sorrowful and crucifying maxims, ap- 
 parently so incompatible with their station, they, nevertheless, 
 submitted to the yoke of Jesus Christ, and embraced a law which, 
 amid all their prosperity and abundance, permitted to them no 
 more pleasures and comforts here below than to the common and 
 simple people. And, in effect, why should the first defenders of 
 faith have regarded the conversions of Csesars, and of the power- 
 ful of the age, as a proof of the truth and of the divinity of the 
 Gospel? What would there be so surprising, that the rich and the 
 powerful had embraced a doctrine which would distinguish them 
 from the people by a greater indulgence ; which, while it would 
 prescribe tears, fasting, self-denial, to others, would relax in favour 
 of the great, and would consent that profusions, pleasures, sensuali- 
 ties, gaming, public places, all so rigorously forbidden to common 
 believers, become an innocent occupation for them; and that 
 what is a road to perdition for others, should for them alone be a 
 road of salvation ? It would then be the wisdom of the age which 
 would have established the Gospel, and not the folly of the cross ; 
 it would be the artifices and the deferences of men, and not the 
 arm of the Almighty ; it would be flesh and blood, and not the 
 power of God ; and the conversion of the universe would have no- 
 thing more wonderful, than the establishment of superstitions and 
 of sects. 
 
 And candidly, my brethren, if the Gospel had distinctions to 
 make, and condescensions to grant; if the law of God could relax 
 
Ser. 25. the law of god; 411 
 
 something of its severity, would it be in favour of those who are 
 born to rank and to abundance? What! Would it preserve all 
 its rigour for the poor and the unfortunate? Would it condemn 
 to tears, to fastings, to penitence, to poverty, those unfortunate 
 souls whose days are mingled with almost nothing but sufferance 
 and sorrow, and whose only comfort is that of eating with temper- 
 ance the bread earned with the sweat of their brow ? And would 
 it discharge from their rigorous duties the grandees of the earth ? 
 And would it exact nothing painful of those whose days are only 
 diversified by the variety of their pleasures ? And would it reserve 
 all its indulgence for those soft and voluptuous souls, who live only 
 for the senses, who believe they are upon the earth for the sole 
 purpose of enjoying an iniquitous felicity, and who know no other 
 god than themselves ? 
 
 Great God ! It is the blindness which thy justice sheds over 
 human prosperities ; after having corrupted the heart, they like- 
 wise extinguish all the lights of faith. It rarely happens but that 
 the great, so enlightened upon the interests of the earth, upon the 
 ways to fortune and to glory, upon the secret springs which give 
 motion to courts and empires, live in a profound ignorance of the 
 ways of salvation. They have been so much accustomed to pre- 
 ferences by the world, that they are persuaded they ought likewise 
 to find them in religion. Because men do them credit for the 
 smallest steps taken in their favour, they believe, O my God ! 
 that thou regardest them with the same eyes as men ; and, that, 
 in fulfilling some weak duties of piety, in taking some small steps 
 for thee, they go even beyond what they owe to thee ; as if their 
 smallest religious works acquired a new merit from their rank: in 
 place of which, they acquire it, in thy sight, only from that faith 
 and from that charity which animate them. 
 
 It is thus that the law of God, immutable in its extent, is the 
 same for all stations, for the great and for the people. But it is 
 likewise immutable in all the situations of fife ; and it is neither a 
 difficult conjecture, nor perplexity, nor apparent danger, nor pre- 
 text of public good, in which to violate, or even to soften it, be- 
 comes a legitimate and necessary modification. This was to have 
 been my last reflection ; but I abridge and go on. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, every thing becomes reason and necessity 
 against our duties, that is to say, against the law of God; situa- 
 tions the least dangerous, conjectures the least embarrassing, 
 furnish us with pretexts to violate it with safety, and persuade us 
 that the law of God would be unjust, and would exact too much 
 of men, if, on these occasions, it were not to use indulgence with 
 regard to us. 
 
 Thus, the law of God commands us to render to each that 
 which is his due; to retrench, in order to pay those debts incurred 
 through our excesses, and not to permit that our unfortunate cre- 
 ditors suffer by our senseless profusions. Nevertheless, the general 
 persuasion is, that, in a grand place, it is necessary to support the 
 eclat of a public dignity: that the honour of the master requires 
 
412 immutability of Ser. 25. 
 
 that mean and sorry externals disgrace not the elevated post which 
 he hath confided to us; that we are responsible to the sovereign, 
 to the state, and to ourselves, before being so to individuals; and 
 that public property is then superior to the particular rule. 
 
 Thus, the law of God enjoins us to tear out the eye which 
 giveth offence, and to cast it from us ; to separate ourselves from 
 an object which, in all times, hath been the rock of our innocence, 
 and near to which we can never be in safety. Nevertheless, 
 the noise which a rupture would make, the suspicions which 
 it might awaken in the public mind, the ties of society, of rela- 
 tionship, of friendship, which seem to render the separation im- 
 possible without eclat, persuade us that it is not then command- 
 ed, and that a danger, become as if necessary, becomes a security 
 to us. 
 
 Thus, the law of God commands us to render glory to the truth ; 
 not to betray our conscience by iniquitously withholding it; that is 
 to say, not to dissemble it, through human interests, from those to 
 whom our duty obliges us to announce it. Nevertheless we per- 
 suade ourselves that truths, which would be unavailing, ought to 
 be suppressed ; and that a liberty, of which the only fruit would 
 be that of risking our fortune, and of rendering ourselves hated, 
 without rendering those better to whom we owe the truth, would 
 rather be an indiscretion than a law of charity and of justice. 
 
 Thus, the law of God prescribes to us to have in view, in public 
 cares, only the utility of the people, for whom alone the authority 
 is intrusted to us; to consider ourselves as charged with the inter- 
 ests of the multitude, as the avengers of injustice, the refuge against 
 oppression and poverty. Nevertheless, we believe ourselves to be 
 situated in conjunctures in which it is necessary to shut our eyes 
 upon iniquity, to support abuses which we know to be untenable; to 
 sacrifice conscience and duty to the necessity of the times, and, with- 
 out scruple, to violate the clearest rules, because the inconveni- 
 encies, which would arise from their observance, seem to render their 
 transgression necessary. Lastly, human pretexts, interests, and 
 inconveniencies, always make the balance to turn to their side ; 
 and duty, and the law of God, always yield to conjunctures and to 
 the necessity of the times. 
 
 Now, my brethren, I do not tell you, in the first place, that the 
 interest of salvation is the greatest of all interests ; that fortune, 
 life, reputation, the whole world itself, put in comparison with 
 your soul, ought to be reckoned as nothing; and that though 
 heaven and the earth should change, that the whole world should 
 perish, and every evil should burst upon our head, these inconve- 
 niencies should always be infinitely less than the transgression of 
 the law of God. 
 
 Secondly. I do not tell you that the law hath always, at least, 
 security in its favour against the pretext, because the obligation of 
 the law is clear and precise, in place of which, the pretext, which 
 introduces the exception, is always doubtful; and, that, conse- 
 quently, to prefer the pretext to the law, is to leave a safe way, 
 
Ser. 25. the law of cod. 413 
 
 and to make choice of another, for which no person can be answer- 
 able to you. 
 
 Lastly. I do not tell you that, the Gospel having been only 
 given to us in order to detach us from the world and from our- 
 selves, and to make us die to all our terrestrial affections, it is de- 
 ceiving ourselves to consider, as inconveniencies, certain conse- 
 quences of that divine law, fatal either to our fortune, to our glory, 
 or to our ease, and to persuade ourselves that it is then permitted 
 to us to have recourse to expedients which mollify it, and conciliate 
 its severity with the interests of our self-love. Jesus Christ hath 
 never meant to prescribe to us easy and commodious duties, and 
 which take nothing from the passions; he came to bring the sword 
 and separation to hearts, to divide man from his relations, from his 
 friends, from himself; to hold out to us a way rugged and difficult 
 to keep. Thus, what we call inconveniencies and unheard-of ex- 
 tremities, are, at bottom, only the spirit of the law, the most 
 natural consequences of the rules, and the end that Jesus Christ 
 hath intended in prescribing them to us. 
 
 That young man of the Gospel regarded, as an inconveniency, 
 the being unable to go to pay the last duties to his father, and 
 to gather in what he had succeeded to, if he followed Jesus Christ ; 
 and it was precisely that sacrifice which Jesus Christ exacted of 
 him. Those men invited to the feast looked upon as an inconve- 
 niency, the one to forsake his country-house, the other his trade, 
 the last to delay his marriage; and it was in order to break asunder 
 all these ties, which bound them still too much to the earth, that 
 the father of the family invited them to come and seat themselves 
 at the feast. Esther, at first, considered as an inconveniency to go 
 to appear before Ahasuerus, contrary to the law of the empire, and 
 to declare herself a daughter of Abraham, and protectress of the 
 children of Israel ; and, nevertheless, as the wise Mordecai repre- 
 sented to her, the Lord had raised her to that point of glory and 
 prosperity only for that important occasion. Whatever is a con- 
 straint to us, appears a reason against the law ; and we take for 
 inconveniencies the obligations themselves. 
 
 Besides, my brethren, is it not certain that the principal merit 
 of our duties is derived from the obstacles which never fail to op- 
 pose their practice ; that the most essential character of the law of 
 Jesus Christ is that of exciting against it all the reasons of flesh 
 and blood; and virtue would resemble vice, if outwardly and in- 
 wardly it found in us only facilities and conveniencies ? The 
 righteous, my brethren, have never been peaceable observers of the 
 holy rules. Abel found inconveniencies in the jealousy of his own 
 brother ; Noah, in the unbelief of his own citizens ; Abraham in 
 the disputes of his servants ; Joseph in the dangers to which he 
 was exposed through his love of modesty and the rage of a faith- 
 less woman ; Daniel in the customs of a profane court ; the pious 
 Esdras in the manners of the age ; the noble Eleazar in the snares 
 of a specious temperament : lastly, follow the history of the just, 
 and you will see that, in all ages, all those who have walked in the 
 
414 immutability of Ser. 25. 
 
 precepts and in the ordinances of the law, have experienced incon- 
 veniencies in which righteousness itself seemed to authorize the 
 transgression of the rules ; have encountered obstacles in their way 
 where the lights of human reason seemed to decide in favour of the 
 pretext against the law : in a word, where virtue seemed to con- 
 demn virtue itself : and that, consequently, it is not new for the law 
 of God to meet with obstacles ; but that it is new to pretend to 
 find in these obstacles legitimate excuses for dispensing ourselves 
 from the law of God. 
 
 And the decisive argument which confirms this truth is, that our 
 passions alone form the inconveniencies which authorize us in seek- 
 ing mollifications to our duties and to the law of God ; and that 
 views of fortune, of glory, of favour, engage us in certain proceed- 
 ings, justify them in our eyes, in spite of the evidence of rules which 
 condemn them, only because we love our glory and our fortune 
 more than the rules themselves. 
 
 Let us die to the world and to ourselves, my brethren ; let us re- 
 store to our heart the sentiments of love and of preference, which 
 it owes to its Lord: then every thing shall appear possible; diffi- 
 culties shall, in an instant, be done away ; and what we call incon- 
 veniencies either shall no longer be reckoned as any thing, or we 
 shall consider them as inseparable proofs of virtue, and not as the 
 excuses of vice. How easy is it to find pretexts when we love 
 them! Arguments are never wanting to the passions. Self-love is 
 always ready in placing, at least, appearances on its side ; it always 
 changes our weaknesses into duties, and our inclinations soon be- 
 come legitimate claims ; and what in this is most deplorable, says 
 St. Augustine, is, that we call in even religion itself in aid of our 
 passions ; that we draw motives from piety, in order to violate piety 
 itself ; and that we have recourse to holy pretexts to authorize ini- 
 quitous desires. 
 
 It is thus, O my God ! that almost our whole life is passed in 
 seducing ourselves ; that we employ the lights of our reason only in 
 darkening those of faith ; that we consume the few days we have 
 to pass upon the earth, only in seeking authorities for our passions, 
 in imagining situations in which we believe ourselves to be enabled 
 to disobey thee with impunity ; that is to say, that all our cares, all 
 our reflections, all the superiority of our views, of our lights, of our 
 talents, all the wisdom of our measures and of our counsels, are 
 limited to the accomplishment of our ruin, and to conceal from our- 
 selves our eternal destruction. 
 
 Let us shun this evil, my brethren ; let us reckon no way safe for 
 us but that of the rules and of the law ; and let us remember that 
 there shall be more sinners condemned through the pretexts which 
 seem to authorize the transgressions of the law, than through the 
 avowed crimes which violate it. It is thus that the law of God, 
 after having been the rule of our manners upon the earth, shall be 
 their eternal consolation in heaven. 
 
Ser. 26. for Christmas day. 415 
 
 SERMON XXVI. 
 
 FOR CHRISTMAS DAY. 
 
 " For, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people ; for 
 nnto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the 
 Lord." Luke ii. 10, 11. 
 
 Behold, in effect, the grand tidings which, for four thousand 
 years, the world had expected ; behold the grand event which so 
 many prophets had foretold, so many ceremonies had figured, so 
 many righteous had awaited, and which all nature seemed to pro- 
 mise, and to hasten by the universal corruption spread through all 
 flesh : behold the grand blessing which God's goodness prepared 
 for men, after the infidelity of their first parent had rendered them 
 all subject to sin and death. 
 
 The Saviour, the Christ, the Lord, at last appears this day on the 
 earth. The over-shadowed brings forth the righteous ; the star of 
 Jacob appears to the universe ; the sceptre is departed from Judah, 
 and he, who was to come, is arrived; the age of darkness is accom- 
 plished ; the promised sign of the Lord to Judea hath appeared ; a 
 virgin has conceived and brought forth, and out of Bethlehem comes 
 the leader who is to enlighten and govern all Israel. 
 
 What new blessings, my brethren, doth this birth not announce 
 to men ! It would not, during so many ages, have been an- 
 nounced, awaited, desired ; it would not have formed the religion 
 of a whole people, the object of all the prophecies, the unravelling 
 of all the figures, the sole end of all the proceedings of God toward 
 men, had it not been the grandest mark of his love which he could 
 give them. What a blessed night is that which presides at this 
 divine bringing forth ! It hath seen the light of the world shine 
 forth in its darkness; the heavens resound with joy and songs of 
 thanksgiving. 
 
 But, my brethren, we must participate in the blessings which 
 this birth is meant to bring us, in order to enter into all the trans- 
 ports of delight which it spreads, through the heavens and the 
 earth. The common joy is founded only on the common salvation 
 which is offered to us ; and if, in spite of this aid, we still obsti- 
 nately persist in perishing, the church weeps over us, and we min- 
 gle mourning and sorrow with that joy with which such blessed 
 tidings inspire it. 
 
 Now, what are the inestimable blessings which this birth brings 
 to men ? The heavenly spirits come themselves to make it known 
 to the shepherds ; it comes to render glory to God, and peace to 
 men ; and behold the whole foundation of this grand mystery laid 
 open. To God, that glory of which men had wished to deprive 
 him ; to men, that peace of which they had never ceased their 
 struggles to deprive themselves. 
 
416 for Christmas dav. Ser. 26*. 
 
 Part I. Man had been placed upon the earth for the sole pur- 
 pose of rendering, to the author of his being, that glory and that 
 homage which were his due. All called him to these duties ; and 
 every thing, which ought to have called, removed him from them. 
 To his Supreme Majesty he owed his adoration and his homage ; 
 to his paternal goodness, his love ; to his infinite wisdom, the sa- 
 crifice of his reason and of his lights. These duties, engraven on 
 his heart, and born with him, were still also incessantly proclaimed 
 to him by all creatures ; he could neither listen to himself, nor to 
 all things around him, without finding them ; nevertheless, he for- 
 gets, he effaces them from his heart. He no longer saw, in the 
 work, that honour and that worship which were due to the sove- 
 reign Architect ; in the blessings with which he loaded him, that 
 love which he owed to his benefactor ; in the obscurity spread 
 through even natural causes, that impossibility, much less, of 
 fathoming the secrecies of God, and that mistrust, in which he ought 
 to live, of his own lights. Idolatry, therefore, rendered to the crea- 
 ture that worship which the Creator had reserved for himself alone : 
 the synagogue honoured him from the lips, and that love, which it 
 owed to him, was confined to external homages totally unworthy 
 of him : philosophy lost itself in its own ideas, measured the lights 
 of God by those of men, and vainly believed that reason, which 
 knew not itself, was able to know all truth : three sores, spread over 
 the face of the whole earth. In a word, God was no longer either 
 known or glorified, and man was no longer known to himself. 
 
 And, first, to what excesses had idolatry not carried its profane 
 worship ? The death of a person loved, quickly exalted him to a 
 divinity ; and his vile ashes, on which his nothingness was stamped 
 in characters so indelible, became themselves the title of his glory 
 and of his immortality. Conjugal love made gods to itself; im- 
 pure love followed the example, and determined to have its altars : 
 the wife and the mistress, the husband and the lover, had temples, 
 priests, and sacrifices. The folly, or the general corruption, adopted 
 a worship so ridiculous and so abominable ; the whole universe 
 was infected with it; the majesty of the laws of the empire 
 authorized it ; and the magnificence of the temples, the pomp of 
 the sacrifices, the immense riches of the images, rendered that 
 folly respectable. Every people was jealous in having their gods ; 
 in default of man they offered incense to the beast; impure 
 homages became the worship of these impure divinities; the 
 towns, the mountains, the fields, the deserts, were stained with 
 them, and beheld superb edifices consecrated to pride, to lascivi- 
 ousness, to revenge. The number of the divinities equalled that 
 of the passions ; the gods were almost as numerous as the men ; 
 all became god with man ; and the true God was the only one un- 
 known to man. 
 
 The world was plunged, almost from its creation, in the horror 
 of this darkness ; every age had added to it fresh impieties. In 
 proportion as the appointed time of the Deliverer drew near, the 
 depravity of men seemed to increase. Rome itself, mistress of 
 
Ser. 26. for Christmas day. 417 
 
 the universe, gave way to all the different worships of the nations 
 she had subjugated ; and beheld, exalted within her walls, the 
 different idols of so many conquered countries, that they became 
 the public monuments of her folly and blindness, rather than of 
 her victories. 
 
 But, after all, though all flesh had corrupted bis way, God no 
 longer wished to pour out his wrath upon men, nor to exterminate 
 them by a fresh deluge ; he wished to save them. He had placed 
 in the heavens the sign of his covenant with the world ; and that 
 sign was not the shining, though vulgar rainbow which appears in 
 the clouds ; it was Jesus Christ his only Son, the Word made flesh, 
 the true seal of the eternal covenant, and the sole light which comes 
 to enlighten the whole world. 
 
 He appears on the earth, and restores to his Father that glory 
 of which the impiety of a public worship had wished to deprive 
 him. The homage rendered to him, by his holy soul united to the 
 world, at once makes amends to his Supreme Majesty for all the 
 honours which the universe had hitherto denied him, in order to 
 prostitute them to a creature. A Man-God adorer renders more 
 glory to the Divinity than all idolatrous ages and nations had de- 
 prived him of; and such homage must indeed have been agreeable 
 to the sovereign God, seeing it alone effaced idolatry from the 
 earth, made the blood of impure victims cease to flow, overturned 
 the profane altars, silenced the oracles of demons, reduced to dust 
 the vain idols, and changed their superb temples, till then the re- 
 ceptacle of every abomination, into houses of adoration and prayer. 
 Thus was the universe changed : the only God, unknown even in 
 Athens, and in those cities most celebrated for knowledge and po- 
 lished manners, was worshipped: the world acknowledged its Author: 
 God entered into his rights; a worship worthy of him was estab- 
 lished over the whole earth ; and he had every where adorers, who 
 worshipped him in spirit and in truth. 
 
 Behold the first blessing accruing from the birth of Jesus Christ, 
 and the first glory which he renders to his Father. But, my bre- 
 thren, is this grand blessing for us ? We no longer worship vain 
 idols, an incestuous Jupiter, a lascivious Venus, a cruel and a re- 
 vengeful Mars ; but is God, therefore, more glorified among us ? 
 In their place do we not substitute fortune, voluptuousness, court 
 favour, the world, with all its pleasures ? For, whatever we love 
 more than God, that we worship ; whatever we prefer to God, that 
 becomes our God: whatever becomes the sole object of our thoughts, 
 of our desires, of our affections, of our fears and hopes, becomes 
 likewise the object of our worship ; and our gods are our passions, 
 to which we sacrifice the true God. 
 
 Now, what idols of this kind still remain in the Christian world ? 
 You, that unfortunate creature, to whom you have prostituted your 
 heart ; to whom you sacrifice your wealth, your fortune, your glory, 
 your peace ; and from whom neither religious motives, nor even 
 those of the world, can detach you, that is your idol ; and what 
 less is she than your divinity, since, in your madness, you do not 
 
 E E 
 
418 for Christmas day. Ser. 26. 
 
 refuse her even the name ? You that court that fortune which en- 
 grosses you, to which you devote all your cares, all your exertions, 
 all your movements, in short, your whole soul, mind, will, and life, 
 that is your idol ; and what criminal homage do you refuse from 
 the moment that it is exacted of you, and that it may become the 
 price of its favour ? You, that shameful intemperance, which de- 
 bases your name and birth ; which no longer accords even with 
 our manners; which has drowned and besotted all your talents 
 in the excesses of wine and debauchery ; which, by rendering you 
 callous to every thing else, leaves you neither relish nor feeling but 
 for the brutal pleasures of the table, that is your idol : you think 
 that you live only in those moments given to it : and your heart 
 renders more homage to that infamous and abject god than your 
 despicable and profane songs. The passions formerly made the gods; 
 and Jesus Christ hath destroyed these idols only by destroying the 
 passions which had raised them up ; you exalt them again, by 
 reviving all the passions which had rendered the whole world idol- 
 atrous. And what matters it to know a single god, if you elsewhere 
 bestow your homages ? Worship is in the heart ; and if the true 
 God be not the God of your heart, you place, like the pagans, vile 
 creatures in his place, and you render not to him that glory which 
 is his due. 
 
 Thus, Jesus Christ doth not confine himself to manifesting 
 the name of his Father to men, and to establishing, on the ruins 
 of idols, the knowledge of the true God. He raiseth up worship- 
 pers, who reckon external homages as nothing, unless animated 
 and sanctified by love ; and who shall consider mercy, justice, 
 and holiness, as the offerings most worthy of God, and the most 
 shining attendants of their worship. Second blessing from the 
 birth of Jesus Christ, and second sort of glory which he renders to 
 his Father. 
 
 In effect, God was known, says the prophet, in Judea ; Jerusa- 
 lem beheld no idols in the public places, usurping the homages 
 due to the God of Abraham ; " There was neither iniquity in 
 Jacob, nor perverseness in Israel:" that single portion of the 
 earth was free from the general contagion. But the magnificence 
 of its temple, the pomp of its sacrifices, the splendour of its so- 
 lemnities, the exactitude of its lawful observances, constituted the 
 whole merit of its worship ; all religion was confined to these ex- 
 ternal duties. Its morals were not less criminal. Injustice, fraud, 
 falsehood, adultery, every vice subsisted, and was even counte- 
 nanced by these vain appearances of worship. God was honoured 
 from the lips ; but the heart of that ungrateful people was ever 
 distant from him. 
 
 Jesus Christ comes to open the eyes of Judea on an error so 
 gross, so ancient, and so injurious to his Father. He comes to in- 
 form them, that man may be satisfied with externals alone, but that 
 God regards only the heart; that every outward homage which 
 withholds it from him, is an insult and a hypocrisy rather than a 
 true worship ; that it matters little to purify the external, if the 
 
Ser. 26. for Christmas day. 419 
 
 internal be full of infection and putrefaction ; and that God is truly 
 worshipped only by loving him. 
 
 But, alas ! my brethren, is this mistake, so wretched, and so often 
 reproached to the synagogue by Jesus Christ, not still the error of 
 the majority of us ? To what, in fact, is the whole of our worship 
 reduced ? To some external ceremonies ; to fulfilling certain public 
 duties prescribed by the law; and even this is the religion of the most 
 respectable. They come to assist in the holy mysteries ; they do 
 not, without scruple, depart from the laws of the church ; they re- 
 peat some prayers which custom has consecrated ; they go through 
 the solemnities, and increase the crowd which runs to our tem- 
 ples : behold the whole. But are they, in consequence, more 
 detached from the world and from its criminal pleasures; less 
 occupied with the cares of a vain dress, or of fortune ; more 
 inclined to break off a criminal engagement, or to fly opportuni- 
 ties which have so often been a rock to their innocence ? Do 
 they bring to these external practices of religion, a pure heart, 
 a lively faith, a guileless charity ? All their passions submit amid 
 all these religious works, which are given to custom rather than 
 to religion. 
 
 And remark, I pray you, my brethren, that they would not dare 
 to dispense themselves altogether from them ; to live, like the 
 impious, without any profession of worship, and without fulfilling at 
 least some of its public duties. They would consider themselves as 
 anathematized, and worthy of the thunder of heaven. And yet they 
 dare to sully these holy duties by the most criminal manners ! and 
 yet they do not view themselves with horror, while rendering use- 
 less these superficial remains of religion, by a life which religion 
 condemns and abhors ! and they dread not the wrath of God, in 
 continuing crimes which attract it on our heads, and in limiting all 
 that is his due to vain homages which insult him ! 
 
 Nevertheless, as I have already said, of all the worldly, these are 
 the most prudent, and, in the eyes of the world, the most regular. 
 They have not yet thrown off the yoke, like so many others ; they 
 do not arrogate to themselves a shocking glory in not believing in 
 God ; they blaspheme not what they do not know ; they do not 
 consider religion as a mockery and a human invention ; they still 
 wish to hold to it by some externals ; but they hold not to it by the 
 heart ; but they dishonour it by their irregularities; but they are 
 not Christians but in name. Thus, even in a greater degree than 
 formerly under the synagogue, the magnificent externals of religion 
 subsist among us, along with a more profound and more general 
 depravity of manners than ever the prophets reproached to the 
 obstinacy and hypocrisy of the Jews : thus, that religion, in which 
 we glory, is no longer, to the greatest number of believers, but a 
 superficial worship : thus, that new covenant, which ought to be 
 written only in the heart ; that law of spirit and life, which ought 
 to render men wholly spiritual; that inward worship, which ought 
 to have given to God worshippers in spirit and in truth, has given 
 him only phantoms, only fictitious adorers; the mere appear- 
 
 e e 2 
 
420 for Christmas day. Ser. 26. 
 
 ances of worship : in a word, but a people still Jewish, which ho- 
 nours him from the lips, but whose corrupted heart, stained with a 
 thousand crimes, chained by a thousand iniquitous passions, is al- 
 ways far distant from him. 
 
 Behold the second blessing of the birth of Jesus Christ, in which 
 we have no part. He comes to abolish a worship wholly external, 
 which was confined to sacrifices of animals and lawful ceremonies, 
 and which, in not rendering to God the homage of our love, alone 
 capable of glorifying him, rendered not to him that glory which is 
 his due : in place of these appearances of religion, he comes to sub- 
 stitute a law which ought to be fulfilled wholly in the heart : a wor- 
 ship, of which the love of his Father ought to be the first and prin- 
 cipal homage. Nevertheless, this holy worship, this new precept, 
 this sacred trust, which he hath confided to us, has miserably 
 degenerated in our hands ; we have turned it into a worship wholly 
 pharisaical, in which the heart has no part ; which has no in- 
 fluence in changing our irregular propensities ; which has no ef- 
 fect upon our manners, and which only renders us so much the 
 more criminal, as we abuse the blessing which ought to wash out 
 and purify all our crimes. 
 
 Lastly, men had likewise wished to ravish from God the glory 
 of his providence and of his eternal wisdom. Philosophers, struck 
 with the absurdity of a worship which multiplied gods to infinity, 
 and forced, by the sole lights of reason, to acknowledge one sole 
 Supreme Being, disfigured the nature of that Being by a thousand 
 absurd opinions. Some figured to themselves an indolent god ; 
 retired within himself, in full possession of his own happiness, dis- 
 daining to abase himself by paying attention to what passes on 
 the earth, reckoning as nothing men whom he had created, equally 
 insensible to their virtues as to their vices, and leaving wholly to 
 chance the course of ages and seasons, the revolutions of empires, 
 the lot of each individual, the whole machine of this vast universe, 
 and the whole dispensation of human things. Others subjected 
 him to a fatal chain of events ; they made him a God without li- 
 berty and without power ; and, while they regarded him as the 
 master of men, they believed him to be the slave of destiny. The errors 
 of reason were then the only rule of religion, and of the belief of 
 those who were considered as even the wisest and most enlightened. 
 
 Jesus Christ comes to restore to his Father that glory of which 
 the vain reasonings of philosophy had deprived him. He comes 
 to teach to men that faith is the source of true light ; and that the 
 sacrifice of reason is the first step of Christian philosophy. He 
 comes to fix uncertainty, by instructing us in what we ought to 
 know of the Supreme Being, and, what, with regard to him, we 
 ought not to know. 
 
 It was not, in effect, sufficient that men, in order to render glory 
 to God, should make a sacrifice to him of their life, as to the 
 author of their being, and should, by that avowal, acknowledge 
 the impiety of idolatry ; that they should make a sacrifice to him 
 of their love and of their heart, as to their sovereign felicity, and 
 
Sen 26. for Christmas day. 421 
 
 thereby proclaim the insufficiency and the inutility of the external 
 and pharisaical worship of the synagogue ; it was likewise required, 
 that to him they should sacrifice their reason, as to their wisdom 
 and to their eternal truth, and thus be undeceived with regard to 
 the vain researches and the conceited knowledge of philosophers. 
 
 Now, the sole birth of a Man-God, the ineffable union of our 
 nature with a divine person, disconcerts all human reason ; and this 
 incomprehensible mystery held out to men as their whole know- 
 ledge, their whole truth, their whole philosophy, their whole reli- 
 gion, at once makes them feel that the truth, which they hitherto 
 had in vain sought, must be sought, not by vain efforts, but by the 
 sacrifice of reason and of our feeble lights. 
 
 But, alas ! where among us are believers who make a thorough 
 sacrifice of their reason to faith ; and who, rejecting their own lights, 
 humble their eyes, in a respectful and sile/it adoration, before the 
 majestic impenetrability of religion ? I speak not of those impious, 
 still to be found among us, who deny a God. Ah ! we must leave 
 them to the horror and the indignation of the whole universe which 
 knows a Divinity, and which worships him ; or rather leave them 
 to the horror of their own conscience, which inwardly invokes and 
 calls upon him in spite of themselves, while outwardly they are glo- 
 rifying themselves in professing not to know him. 
 
 I speak of the majority of believers, who have an idea of the 
 Divinity, almost equally false and equally human, as had formerly 
 the pagan philosophers; who consider him as nothing in all the 
 accidents of life ; who live as if chance, or the caprice of men, de- 
 termined all things here below ; and who acknowledge good luck 
 and bad luck as two sole divinities which govern the world, and 
 which preside over every thing relative to the earth. I speak of 
 those men of little faith, who, far from adoring the secrecies of 
 futurity in the profound and impenetrable councils of Providence, 
 go to search for them in ridiculous and childish prophecies ; attri- 
 bute to man a knowledge which God hath solely reserved to him- 
 self ; with a senseless belief await, from the dreams of a false pro- 
 phet, events and revolutions which are to decide the destiny of 
 nations and empires ; found thereupon vain hopes for themselves, 
 and renew either the folly of pagan augurs and soothsayers, or the 
 impiety of the pythoness of Saul, and of the oracles of Delphi and 
 Dodona. I speak of those who wish to penetrate into the eternal 
 ways of God on our lots; and who, being unable, by the sole 
 powers of reason, to solve the insurmountable difficulties of the 
 mysteries of grace with regard to the salvation of men, far from 
 crying out with the apostle, " O the depth of the riches both of 
 the wisdom and knowledge of God V* are tempted to believe, either 
 that God doth not interfere in our salvation ; or, if he do, that it is 
 needless for us to interfere in it ourselves. I speak of those disso- 
 lute characters in the world, who always find plausible and con- 
 vincing, though, in fact, weak and foolish in the extreme, whatever 
 unbelief opposes to faith; who are staggered by the first frivolous 
 doubt proposed by the impious ; who appear as if they would be 
 
422 for Christmas day. Ser. 26. 
 
 delighted that religion were false ; and who are less touched with 
 that respectable load of proofs which overpowers a conceited reason 
 and its truth, than with a senseless discourse which opposes it, in 
 which there is generally nothing important but the boldness of the 
 impiety and of the blasphemy. Lastly, I speak of many believers 
 who turn over to the people the belief of so many wonderful actions 
 which the history of religion has preserved to us ; who seem to 
 believe that whatever is above the power of man is likewise beyond 
 the power of God; and who refuse credit to the miracles of a reli- 
 gion which is solely founded on them, and which is itself the greatest 
 of all miracles. 
 
 Behold how we still snatched from God that glory which the 
 birth of Jesus Christ had rendered to him. It had taught us to 
 sacrifice our own lights to the incomprehensible mystery of his 
 manifestation in our flesh, and no longer to live but by faith ; it 
 had fixed the uncertainties of the human mind, and recalled it from 
 the errors and the abyss in which reason had plunged it, to the way 
 of truth and life, and we abandon it : and even under the empire 
 of faith we wish still to walk as formerly, under the standards, if 
 I may venture to speak in this manner, of a weak reason : the mys- 
 teries of religion, which we cannot comprehend, shock us ; we sus- 
 pect, we reform all ; we would have God to think like man. With- 
 out altogether losing our faith, we suffer it to be inwardly weak- 
 ened; we allow it to remain inactive: and it is this relaxation of 
 faith which has corrupted our manners, multiplied vices, inflamed 
 all hearts with a love of things present ; extinguished the love of 
 riches to come ; placed trouble, hatred, and dissension among be- 
 lievers, and effaced those original marks of innocence, of sanctity, 
 and of charity, which at first had rendered Christianity so respecta- 
 ble even to those who refused submission to it. But not only doth 
 the birth of Jesus Christ restore to God that glory of which men 
 had wished to deprive him ; it likewise restores to men that peace, 
 of which they had never ceased to deprive themselves : " And on 
 earth peace, good-will toward men." 
 
 Part II. A universal peace reigned throughout the universe, 
 when Jesus Christ, the "Prince of Peace," appeared on the earth. 
 All the nations subject to the Roman empire peaceably supported 
 the yoke of those haughty masters of the world. Rome herself, 
 after civil dissensions, which had almost depopulated her walls, 
 filled the islands and deserts with her proscribed, and bathed Europe 
 and Asia with the blood of her citizens, breathed from the horror of 
 these troubles, and reunited under the authority of a Ceesar, expe- 
 rienced in slavery, a peace which she had never, during the enjoy- 
 ment of her liberty, been able to accomplish. 
 
 The universe was then at rest ; but that was but a deceitful calm. 
 Man, the prey of his own violent and iniquitous passions, experi- 
 enced within himself the most cruel dissension and war : far from 
 God, delivered up to the agitations and frenzies of his own heart, 
 combated by the multiplicity and the eternal contrariety of his 
 
Ser. 26. for Christmas day. 423 
 
 irregular propensities, he was unable to find peace, because he 
 never sought it but in the source of all his troubles and disquiets. 
 Philosophers made a boast of being able to bestow it on their fol- 
 lowers ; but that universal calm of the passions which they gave 
 hopes of to their sage, and which they so emphatically announced, 
 might suppress their sallies, but it left the whole venom in the 
 heart. It was a piece of pride and ostentation ; it masked the out- 
 ward man ; but under that mask of ceremony, man always knew 
 himself to be the same. 
 
 Jesus Christ comes to-day upon the earth, to bring that true 
 peace to men which the world had never hitherto been able to give 
 them. He comes radically to cure the evil ; his divine philosophy 
 is not confined to the promulgation of pompous precepts, which 
 might be agreeable to reason, but which cured not the wounds of 
 the heart ; and, as pride, voluptuousness, hatred, and revenge, had 
 been the fatal sources of all the agitations experienced by the heart 
 of man, he comes to restore peace to him, by draining them off, 
 through his grace, his doctrine, and his example. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, I say that pride had been the original source 
 of all the troubles which tore the heart of men. What wars, what 
 frenzies, had that fatal passion not lighted upon the earth ! With 
 what torrents of blood had it not inundated the universe ! And 
 what is the history of nations and of empires, of princes and of 
 conquerors, of every age and people, but the history of those cala- 
 mities with which pride from the beginning had afflicted men ! 
 The entire world was but a gloomy theatre, upon which that haughty 
 and senseless passion every day exhibited the most bloody scenes. 
 But the external operations were but a faint image of the troubles 
 which the proud man inwardly experienced. Ambition was a vir- 
 tue: moderation was looked upon as meanness: an individual 
 overthrew his country, overturned the laws and customs, rendered 
 millions miserable, in order to usurp the first place among his 
 fellow-citizens; and the success of his guilt insured him every 
 homage ; and his name, stained with the blood of his brethren, 
 acquired only additional lustre in the public annals which preserved 
 its memory : and a prosperous villain became the grandest character 
 of his age. That passion, descending among the crowd, became 
 less striking; but it was neither less animated nor furious: the 
 obscure was not more at his ease than the public man ; each wish- 
 ed to carry off the prize from his equals : the orator, the philoso- 
 pher, wrangled for, and tore from each other that glory, which, in 
 fact, was the sole end of all their toils and watchings ; and, as the 
 desires of pride are insatiable, man, to whom it was then honour- 
 able totally to yield himself up to it, being unable to rest in any 
 degree of elevation, was likewise incapable of peace and tranquillity. 
 Pride, become the sole source of human honour and glory, was 
 likewise become the fatal rock of the quiet and happiness of men. 
 
 The birth of Jesus Christ, by correcting the world of this error, 
 re-establishes on the earth that peace which pride had banished 
 from it. He might have manifested himself to men, with all the 
 
424 FOR CHRISTMAS DAY. Sei*. 26. 
 
 marks of splendour which the prophets attributed to him: he 
 might have assumed the pompous titles of conqueror of Judah, of 
 legislator of the people, of deliverer of Israel: Jerusalem, in these 
 glorious marks, would have recognized him whom she awaited: 
 but Jerusalem, in these titles, saw only a human glory; and Jesus 
 Christ comes to undeceive, and to teach her, that such glory is 
 nothing; that such an expectation had been unworthy of the 
 oracles of so many prophets who had announced him : that the 
 Holy Spirit, which inspired them, could hold out only holiness 
 and eternal riches to men; that all other riches, far from rendering 
 them happy, only increased their evils and crimes : and that his 
 visible ministry was to correspond with the splendid promises, 
 which had, for so many ages announced him, only by being wholly 
 spiritual, and that he should intend only the salvation of men. 
 
 Thus, he is born at Bethlehem, in a poor and abject state, with- 
 out external state or splendour ; he whose birth the songs of all 
 the armies of heaven then celebrated: without title which might 
 distinguish him in the eyes of men ; he who was exalted above all 
 principality or power: he suffers his name to be written down 
 among those of the obscurest subjects of Ceesar; he whose name 
 was above all other names, and who alone had the right of writing 
 down the names of his chosen in the book of eternity: vulgar and 
 simple shepherds alone came to pay him homage; he, before whom 
 whatever is mighty on the earth, in heaven, and in hell, ought to 
 bend the knee: lastly, whatever can confound human pride is as- 
 sembled at the spectacle of his birth. If titles, rank, or prosperity, 
 had been able to render us happy here below, and to shed peace 
 through our heart, Jesus Christ would have made his appearance 
 clothed in them, and would have brought all these riches to his 
 disciples; but he brings peace to us only by holding them in con- 
 tempt, and by teaching us to hold them equally in contempt: 
 he comes to render us happy, only by coming to suppress desires 
 which hitherto had occasioned all our disquiets: he comes to point 
 out to us more solid and more durable riches, alone capable of 
 calming our hearts, of filling our desires, of easing our troubles ; 
 riches of which man cannot deprive us, and which require only to 
 be loved and to be wished for, to be assured of possessing them. 
 
 Nevertheless, who tastes of this blessed peace ? Wars, troubles, 
 frenzies, are they more rare since his birth ? Are those empires 
 and states which worship him, in consequence more peaceful ? 
 Does that pride which he came to destroy occasion less commotion 
 and confusion among men ? Alas ! seek among Christians that 
 peace which ought to be their inheritance, and where shall you 
 find it ? In cities ? Pride sets every thing there in motion; every 
 one wishes to soar above the rank of his ancestors : an individual, 
 exalted by fortune, destroys the happiness of thousands who walk 
 in his steps, without being able to attain the same point of prospe- 
 rity. In the circle of domestic walls? They conceal only distresses 
 and cares : and the father of the family, solely occupied with the 
 advancement, rather than the Christian education of his offspring, 
 
Ser. 26. for Christmas day. 425 
 
 leaves to them, for inheritance, his agitations and disquiets, which 
 they, in their turn, shall one day transmit to their descendants. 
 In the palaces of kings ? But there it is that a lawless and bound- 
 less ambition gnaws and devours every heart; it is there that 
 under the specious mask of joy and tranquillity, the most violent 
 and the bitterest passions are nourished; it is there that hap- 
 piness apparently resides, and yet where pride occasions the greatest 
 number of discontented and miserable. In the sanctuary ? Alas ! 
 there ought surely to be found an asylum of peace; but ambition 
 pervades even the holy place; the efforts there are more to raise 
 themselves above their brethren, than to render themselves useful 
 to them; the holy dignities of the church become, like those of the 
 age, the reward of intrigue and caballing ; the religious circumspec- 
 tion of the prince cannot put a stop to solicitations and private 
 intrigues; we there see the same inveteracy and rivalships, the 
 same sorrow in consequence of neglect, the same jealousy toward 
 those who are preferred to us; a ministry is boldly canvassed for, 
 which ought to be accepted only with fear and trembling : they 
 seat themselves in the temple of God, though placed there by 
 other hands than his : they head the flock without his consent to 
 whom it belongs, and without his having said, as to Peter, ** Feed 
 my sheep ; ? and as they have taken the charge without call and 
 without ability, the flock are led without edification and without 
 fruit: alas ! and often with shame. O peace of Jesus Christ! which 
 surpassest all sense, sole remedy against the troubles which pride 
 incessantly excites in our hearts, who shall then be able to give 
 thee to man? 
 
 But, secondly, if the disquiets of pride had banished peace from 
 the earth, the impure desires of the flesh had not given rise to 
 fewer troubles. Man, forgetting the excellency of his nature, and 
 the sanctity of his origin, gave himself up, like the beasts, without 
 scruple, to the impetuosity of that brutal instinct. Finding it the 
 most violent and the most universal of his propensities, he believed 
 it to be also the most innocent and the most lawful. In order still 
 more to authorize it, he made it part of his worship, and formed to 
 himself impure gods, in whose temples that infamous vice became 
 the only homage which did honour to their altars: even a philoso- 
 pher, in other respects the wisest of pagans, dreading that marriage 
 should put a kind of check on that deplorable passion, had wished 
 to abolish that sacred bond; to permit among men, as among ani- 
 mals, a brutal confusion, and only multiply the human race through 
 crimes. The more that vice became general, the more it lost the 
 name of vice : and, nevertheless, what a deluge of miseries had it 
 not poured out upon the earth ! With what fury had it not been 
 seen to arm people against people, kings against kings, blood 
 against blood, brethren against brethren, every where carrying 
 trouble and carnage, and shaking the whole universe ! Ruins of 
 cities, wrecks of the most flourishing empires, sceptres and crowns 
 overthrown, became the public and gloomy monuments which every 
 age reared up, in order, it would seem, to preserve, to following 
 ages, the remembrance and the fatal tradition of those calamities 
 
426 for Christmas day. Ser. 26. 
 
 with which that vice had afflicted the human race. It became 
 itself an inexhaustible source of troubles and anxieties to the man 
 who then gave himself up to a boundless gratification of it: it held 
 out peace and pleasure; but jealousy, excess, frenzy, disgust, 
 inconstancy, and black chagrin, continually walked in its steps ; till 
 then, that the laws, the religion, and the common example author- 
 izing it, the sole love of ease, even in these ages of darkness and 
 corruption, kept free from it a small number of sages. 
 
 But that motive was too feeble to check its impetuous course, 
 and to extinguish its fires in the heart of men ; a more powerful 
 remedy was required, and that is the birth of the Deliverer, who 
 comes to draw men out of that abyss of corruption in order to 
 render them pure and without stain; to break asunder those 
 shameful bonds, and to give peace to their hearts, by restoring to 
 them that freedom and innocence, of which the slavery and tyranny 
 of that vice had deprived them. He is born of a virgin-mother, 
 and the purest of all created beings : he thereby gives estimation 
 and honour to a virtue unknown to the world, and which even his 
 people considered as a reproach. Besides, in uniting himself with 
 us, he becomes our head, incorporates us with himself, makes us 
 become members of his mystical body, of that body which no 
 longer receives life and influence but from him, of that body whose 
 every ministry is holy, which is to be seated at the right hand of 
 the living God, and to glorify him for ever. 
 
 Behold, my brethren, to what height of honour Jesus Christ, in 
 this mystery, exalts our flesh ; he makes of it the temple of God, 
 the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit, the portion of a body in which 
 the fulness of the Divinity resides, the object of the kindness and 
 the love of his Father. But do we not still profane this holy tem- 
 ple ? Do we not still turn to shame the members of Jesus Christ? 
 Do we, in a higher degree, respect our flesh since it is become a 
 holy portion of his mystical body ? Does that shameful passion 
 not still exercise the same tyranny over Christians, that is to say, 
 over the children of sanctity and liberty ? Does it not still disturb 
 the peace of the universe, the tranquillity of empires, the harmony 
 of families, the order of society, the confidence of marriage, the in- 
 nocence of social intercourse, the lot of every individual? Are 
 not the most tragical spectacles still every day furnished to the 
 world by it? Does it respect the most sacred ties and the most 
 respectable character ? Does it not reckon as nothing every duty ? 
 Does it pay attention even to decency? And does it not turn all 
 society into a frightful confusion, where custom has effaced every 
 rule ? Even you, who listen to me, from whence have arisen all 
 the miseries and unhappinesses of your life ? Is it not from that 
 deplorable passion ? Is it not that which has overturned your for- 
 tune, which has cast trouble and dissension through the heart of 
 your family, which has swallowed up the patrimony of your fathers, 
 which has dishonoured your name, which has ruined your health, 
 and now makes you to drag on a gloomy and disgraceful life on the 
 earth ? Is it not, at least, that which actually rends your heart, at 
 present filled with it ? What goes on within you but a tumultuous 
 
Ser. 26. fob Christmas day. 427 
 
 revolution of fears, desires, jealousies, mistrusts, disgusts, and fren- 
 zies? And since that passion has stained your soul, have you en- 
 joyed a moment of peace ? Let Jesus Christ again be born 
 within your heart ; he alone can be your true peace : chase from 
 it the impure spirits, and the mansion of your soul will be at rest; 
 become once more a child of grace : innocence is the only source 
 of tranquillity. 
 
 Lastly, the birth of Jesus Christ reconciles men to his Father; 
 it reunites the Gentile and the Jew ; it destroys all those hateful 
 distinctions of Greek and Barbarian, of Roman and Scythian ; it 
 extinguishes all animosities and hatreds : of all nations it makes 
 only one people, of all his disciples only one heart and one soul : 
 last kind of peace which it brings to men. Formerly they were 
 united together neither by worship, a common hope, nor by the 
 new covenant, which, in an enemy holds out to us a friend. They 
 considered each other almost as creatures of a different species : the 
 diversity of religions, of manners, of countries, of languages, of in- 
 terests, had, it would appear, as if diversified in them the same na- 
 ture: scarcely did they recognise each other by that figure of 
 humanity which was the only sign of connexion still remaining to 
 them. Like wild beasts, they mutually exterminated each other : 
 they centred their glory in depopulating the lands of their fellow- 
 creatures, and in carrying in triumph their bloody heads as the 
 splendid memorials of their victories : it might have been said that 
 they held their existence from different irreconcilable creators, al- 
 ways watchful to destroy each other, and who had placed them here 
 below only to revenge their quarrel, and to terminate their dis- 
 agreement by the general extinction of one of the two parties ; every 
 thing disunited man, and nothing bound them together but interest 
 and the passions, which were themselves the sole source of their 
 divisions and animosities. 
 
 But Jesus Christ is become our peace, our reconciliation, the 
 corner-stone which binds and unites the whole fabric, the living 
 head which unites all its members, and makes but one body of the 
 whole. Every thing knits us to him, and whatever knits us to him 
 unites us to each other. It is the same Spirit which animates us, 
 the same hope which sustains us, the same bosom which brings us 
 forth, the same fold which assembles us, and the same Shepherd 
 who conducts us : we are children of the same Father, inheritors of 
 the same promises, citizens of the same eternal city, and members 
 of the same body. 
 
 Now, my brethren, have so many sacred ties been successful in 
 binding us together? Christianity, which ought to be but the union 
 of hearts, the tie to knit believers to each other, and Jesus Christ 
 to believers, and which ought to represent upon the earth an image 
 of the peace of heaven ; Christianity itself is no longer but a horrible 
 theatre of troubles and dissensions : war and fury seem to have esta- 
 blished an eternal abode among Christians ; religion itself, which ought 
 to unite, divides them. The unbeliever, the enemy of Jesus Christ, 
 the children of the false prophet, who came to spread war and devas- 
 
428 for Christmas day. Ser. 26. 
 
 tation through men, are at peace ; and the children of peace, and the 
 disciples of him who, this day, comes to bring it to men, have their 
 hands continually armed with fire and sword against each other ! 
 Kings rise up against kings, nations against nations; the seas, 
 which separate, reunite them for their mutual destruction : a vile 
 morsel of stone arms their fury and revenge ; and whole nations go 
 to perish and to bury themselves under its walls, in contesting to 
 whom shall belong its ruins : the earth is not sufficiently vast to 
 contain them, and to fix them each one in the bonds which nature 
 herself seems to have pointed out for states and empires; each 
 wishes to usurp from his neighbour ; and a miserable field of bat- 
 tle, which is scarcely sufficient to serve as a burial-place to those 
 who have disputed it, becomes the prize of those rivers of blood 
 with which it is for ever stained. O divine Reconciliator of men ! 
 return then once more upon the earth, since the peace which thou 
 broughtest to it at thy birth still leaves so many wars and so many 
 calamities in the universe ! 
 
 Nor is this all : that circle itself, which unites us under the same 
 laws, unites not the heart and affections; hatred and jealousies di- 
 vide citizens equally as they divide nations ; animosities are perpe- 
 tuated in families, and fathers transmit them to their children, as 
 an accursed inheritance. In vain may the authority of the prince 
 disarm the hand, it disarms not the heart ; in vain may the sword 
 be wrested from them, with the sword of the tongue they continue 
 a thousand times more cruelly to pierce their enemy; hatred, under 
 the necessity of confining itself within, becomes deeper and more 
 rancorous, and to forgive is looked upon as a dishonourable weak- 
 ness. Oh ! my brethren, in vain then hath Jesus Christ descended 
 upon the earth! He is come to bring peace to us; he hath left it 
 to us as his inheritance; nothing hath he so strongly recommended 
 to us as that of loving each other ; yet fellowship and peace seem 
 as if banished from among us, and hatred and animosity divide 
 court, city, and families ; and those whom the offices, the interests 
 of the state, decency itself, and blood, ought, at least, to unite, 
 tear, defame, would wish to destroy, and to exalt themselves on the 
 ruins of each other: and religion, which shows us our brethren 
 even in our enemies, is no longer listened to; and that awful threat- 
 ening, which gives us room to expect the same severity on the 
 part of God which we shall have shown to our brethren, no longer 
 touches or affects us; and all these motives, so capable of softening 
 the heart, still leave it filled with all the bitterness of hatred. We 
 tranquilly live in this frightful state : the justice of our complaints 
 with regard to our enemies calms us on the injustice of our hatred 
 and of our rooted aversion toward them ; and if, on the approach of 
 death, we apparently hold out to them the hand of reconciliation, 
 it is not that we love them more, it is because the expiring heart 
 hath no longer the force to sustain its hatred, that almost all our 
 feelings are extinguished, or, at least, that we are no longer capable 
 of feeling any thing but our own weakness and our approaching 
 dissolution. Let us then unite ourselves to the newly-born Jesus 
 
Ser. 27. FOR THE DAY OF THE EPIPHANY. 429 
 
 Christ; let us enter into the spirit of that mystery; with him let us 
 render to God that glory which is his due ; it is the only means of 
 restoring to ourselves that peace, of which our passions have 
 hitherto deprived us. 
 
 SERMON XXVII. 
 
 FOR THE DAY OF THE EPIPHANY. 
 
 " For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him." 
 Matthew ii. 2. 
 
 Truth, that light of Heaven, figured by the star which on this 
 day appears to the magi, is the only thing here below worthy of the 
 cares and the researches of man. It alone is the light of our mind, 
 the rule of our heart, the source of solid joys, the foundation of our 
 hopes, the consolation of our fears, the alleviation of our evils, the 
 cure for all our afflictions: it alone is the refuge of the good con- 
 science, and the terror of the bad; the inward punishment of vice, 
 the internal recompense of virtue: it alone immortalizes those who 
 have loved it, and renders illustrious the chains of those who suffer 
 for it; attracts public honours to the ashes of its martyrs and de- 
 fenders, and bestows respectability on the abjection and the 
 poverty of those who have quitted all to follow it: lastly, it alone 
 inspires magnanimous thoughts, forms heroical men, souls of whom 
 the world is unworthy, sages alone worthy of that name. All our 
 attentions ought therefore to be confined to know it; all our ta- 
 lents to manifest it; all our zeal to defend it. In men we ought 
 then to look only for truth, to have no wish of pleasing them but 
 by truth, to esteem in them only truth, and to be resolved that they 
 never shall please us but by it. In a word, it would appear that it 
 should have only to show itself, as on this day to the magi, to be 
 loved ; and that it shows us to ourselves in order to teach us to 
 know ourselves. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is astonishing what different impressions the 
 same truth makes upon men. To some it is a light which directs 
 their steps, and, in pointing out their duty, renders it amiable to 
 them : to others it is a troublesome light, and as it were, a kind of 
 dazzling, which vexes and fatigues them : lastly, to many it is 
 a thick mist which irritates, inflames them with rage, and com- 
 pletes their blindness. It is the same star which, on this day, ap- 
 pears in the firmament : the magi see it ; the priests of Jerusalem 
 know that it is foretold in the prophets ; Herod can no longer doubt 
 that it hath appeared, seeing wise men come from the extremities 
 of the east, to seek, guided by its light, the new King of the Jews. 
 Nevertheless, how dissimilar are the dispositions with which they 
 receive the same truth manifested to them ! 
 
430 for the day. Ser. 27. 
 
 In the magi it finds a docile and sincere heart : in the priests, 
 a heart mean, deceitful, cowardly, and dissembling : in Herod, a 
 corrupted and hardened heart. Consequently, it forms worship- 
 pers in the magi, dissemblers in the priests, and in Herod a perse- 
 cutor. Now, my brethern, such is still at present among us the 
 lot of truth: it is a celestial light which is shown to us, says St. 
 Augustine ; but few receive it, many hide and dim it, and a still 
 greater number contemn and persecute it : it shows itself to all, 
 but how many indocile souls who reject it ! How many mean and 
 cowardly souls who dissemble it ! How many black and har- 
 dened hearts who oppress and persecute it ! Let us collect these 
 three marked characters in our Gospel, which are to instruct 
 us in all our duties relative to truth : truth received, truth dis- 
 sembled, truth persecuted. Holy Spirit, Spirit of Truth, destroy 
 in us the spirit of the world, that spirit of error, of dissimulation, 
 of hatred against the truth ; and in this holy place, destined to 
 form ministers, who are to announce it even in the extremities of 
 the earth, render us worthy of loving the truth, of manifesting it to 
 those who know it not, and of suffering all for its sake. 
 
 Part I. I call truth that eternal rule, that internal light inces- 
 santly present within us, which, in every action, points out to us 
 what we ought, and what we ought not to do ; which enlightens 
 our doubts, judges our judgments ; which inwardly condemns or 
 approves us, according as our behaviour is agreeable or contrary to 
 its light ; and which, in certain moments more splendid and bright, 
 more evidently points out to us the way in which we ought to walk, 
 and is figured to us by that miraculous light which on this day, 
 conducts the magi to Jesus Christ. 
 
 Now, I say, that the first use which we ought to make of truth, 
 being for ourselves, the church, on this day, proposes to us, in the 
 conduct of the magi, a model of those dispositions which alone can 
 render the knowledge of truth beneficial and salutary to us. There 
 are few souls, however they may be plunged in the senses and in 
 the passions, whose eyes are not at times opened upon the vanity 
 of the interests they pursue, upon the grandeur of the hopes which 
 they sacrifice, and upon the ignominy of the life which they lead. 
 But, alas ! their eyes are opened to the light, only to be closed 
 again in an instant ; and the sole fruit which they reap, from the 
 truth which is visible to, and enlightens them, is that of adding to 
 the misfortune of having hitherto been ignorant of it, the guilt of 
 having afterward known it in vain. 
 
 Some confine themselves to vain reasonings upon the light which 
 strikes them, and turn truth into a subject of controversy and vain 
 philosophy: others, with minds yet unsettled, wish, it would ap- 
 pear, to know it ; but they seek it not in an effectual way, because 
 they would, at bottom, be heartily sorry to have found it : lastly, 
 others, more tractable, allow themselves to be wrought upon by its 
 evidence, but, discouraged by the difficulties and the self-denials 
 which it presents to them, they receive it not with that delight 
 
Ser. 27. OF THE EPIPHANY. 431 
 
 and that gratitude which, when once known, it inspires. And 
 behold the rocks, which the dispositions of the sages of the east 
 toward that light of Heaven, which comes to show new routes to 
 them, teach us to shun. 
 
 Accustomed, in consequence of a public profession of wisdom 
 and philosophy, to investigate every thing, and reduce it to the 
 judgment of a vain reason, and to be far above all popular preju- 
 dices, they stop not, however, before commencing their journey, 
 upon the faith of the celestial light, to examine if the appearance 
 of this new star might not be solved by natural causes ; they do 
 not assemble from every quarter scientific men, in order to reason 
 on an event so uncommon ; they sacrifice no time to vain difficul- 
 ties, which generally arise, more from the repugnance we feel to 
 truth, than from a sincere desire of enlightening ourselves, and of 
 knowing it. Instructed by that tradition of their fathers which 
 the captive Israelites had formerly carried into the east, and which 
 Daniel and so many other prophets, had announced there, relative 
 to the Star of Jacob which should one day appear, they at once 
 comprehended, that the vain reflections of the human mind have 
 no connexion with the light of heaven ; that the portion of light 
 which heaven shows them is sufficient to determine and to con- 
 duct them ; that grace always leaves obscurities in the ways to 
 which it calls us, in order not to deprive faith of the merit of 
 submission ; and that, whenever we are so happy as to catch a 
 single gleam of truth, the uprightness of the heart ought to supply 
 whatever deficiency may yet remain in the evidence of the light. 
 
 Nevertheless, how many souls in the world, wavering upon 
 faith, or rather enslaved by passions which render doubtful to 
 them that truth which condemns them; how many souls thus 
 floating, clearly see, that, at bottom, the religion of our fathers 
 hath marks of truth which the most high-flown and proudest 
 reason would not dare to deny to it ; that unbelief leads to too 
 much ; that after all, we must hold to something ; and that total 
 unbelief is a choice still more incomprehensible to reason than the 
 mysteries which shock it ; who see it, and who struggle, by endless 
 disputes, to lull that worm of the conscience which incessantly 
 reproaches their error and their folly ; who resist that truth, which 
 proves itself in the bottom of their heart, under the pretence of 
 enlightening themselves ; who apply for advice only that they 
 may say to themselves, that their doubts are unanswerable ; who 
 have recourse to the most learned, only to have the power of 
 alleging, as a fresh motive of unbelief, the having had recourse in 
 vain ! It would seem that religion is no longer but a matter of 
 discourse ; it is no longer considered as that important affair in 
 which not a moment is to be lost ; it is a simple matter of contro- 
 versy, as formerly in the Areopagus ; it fills up the idle time ; it is 
 one of those unimportant questions which fill up the vacancies 
 of conversation, and amuse the languor and the vanity of general 
 intercourse. 
 
 But, my brethern, "the kingdom of God cometh not with 
 
432 for the day Scr. 2j. 
 
 observation." Truth is not the fruit of controversy and dis- 
 pute, but of tears and groanings; it is by purifying our heart 
 in meditation and in prayer that we alone must expect, like the 
 magi, the light of heaven, and to become worthy of distinguish- 
 ing and knowing it. A corrupted heart, says St. Augustine, 
 may see the truth ; but he is incapable of relishing or of loving 
 it; in vain do you enlighten and instruct yourselves : your 
 doubts are in your passions : religion will become evident and 
 clear from the moment that you shall become chaste, temperate, 
 and equitable ; and you will have faith from the moment that you 
 shall cease to have vice. Consequently, from the instant that you 
 cease to have an interest in finding religion false, you will find it 
 incontestable ; no longer hate its maxims, and you will no longer 
 contest its mysteries. 
 
 Augustine himself, already convinced of the truth of the Gospel, 
 still found, in the love of pleasure, a source of doubts and perplex- 
 ities which checked him. It was no longer the dreams of the 
 Manicheans which kept him removed from faith ; he was fully 
 sensible of their absurdity and fanaticism : it was no longer the 
 pretended contradictions of our holy books ; Ambrose had ex- 
 plained their purport and their adorable mysteries. Nevertheless, 
 he still doubted ; the sole thought of having to renounce his shame- 
 ful passions in becoming a disciple of faith, rendered it still 
 suspicious to him. He would have wished either that the doctrine 
 of Jesus Christ had been an imposition, or that it had not con- 
 demned his voluptuous excesses, without which, indeed, he was 
 then unable to comprehend how either a happy or a comfortable 
 life could be led. Thus, always floating and unwilling to be settled ; 
 continually consulting, yet dreading to be instructed ; by turns the 
 disciple and admirer of Ambrose, and racked by the perplexities 
 of a heart which shunned the truth, he dragged his chain, as he 
 says himself, dreading to be delivered from it; he continued to 
 start doubts merely to prolong his passions; he wished to be 
 yet more enlightened because he dreaded to be it too much ; and, 
 more the slave of his passions than of his errors, he rejected truth, 
 which manifested itself to him, merely because he looked upon 
 it as a victorious and irresistible hand which was at last come 
 to break asunder those fetters which he still loved. The light 
 of Heaven finds, therefore, no doubts to dissipate in the minds of 
 the magi, because it finds no passion in their hearts to overcome ; 
 and they well deserve to be the first-fruits of the Gentiles, and 
 the first disciples of that faith which was to subjugate all nations 
 to the Gospel. 
 
 Not but it is often necessary to acid, to our own light, the ap- 
 probation of those who are established, to distinguish whether it 
 be the right spirit which moves us ; fallacy is so similar to truth, 
 that it is not easy to avoid being sometimes deceived. Thus the 
 magi, in order to be more surely confirmed in the truth of the 
 prodigy which guides their steps, come straight to Jerusalem : 
 they consult the priests and the scribes, as the only persons capable 
 
Ser. 2/. OF THE EPIPHANY. 433 
 
 of discovering to them that truth which they seek ; they boldly 
 and openly demand in the midst of that great city. " Where 
 is he that is born King of the Jews ?" They propose their ques- 
 tion with no palliations calculated to attract an equivocal answer ; 
 they are determined to be enlightened; and wish not to be flattered ; 
 from their heart they seek the truth, and for that reason, they find it. 
 
 New disposition, sufficiently rare among believers. Alas ! we 
 find not truth, because we never seek it with a sincere and upright 
 heart; we diffuse a kind of mist over every attempt to find it, which 
 conceals it from our view : we consult, but we place our passions 
 in so favourable a light, we hold them out in colours so softened, 
 and so similar to the truth, that we procure a reply of its being 
 really so : we wish not to be instructed ; we wish to be deceived, 
 and to add, to the passion which enslaves us, an authority which 
 may calm us. 
 
 Such is the illusion of the majority of men, and frequently even 
 of those who, become contrite, have quitted the errors of a worldly 
 life. Yes, my brethren, let us search our own hearts, and we shall 
 find, that, however sincere our conversion may otherwise be, yet 
 there is always within us some particular point, some secret and 
 privileged attachment, upon which we are not candid ; upon which 
 we never but very imperfectly instruct the guide of our conscience ; 
 upon which we seek not with sincerity the truth ; upon which, in a 
 word, it would even grieve us to have found it ; and from thence it 
 is, that the weaknesses of the pious and good always furnish so 
 many traits to the derision of the worldly ; from thence we attract 
 upon virtue continual reproaches and censures, which ought to 
 light only upon ourselves. Nevertheless, to hear us speak, we love 
 the truth ; we are desirous of having it shown to us. But a con- 
 vincing proof of that being only a vain mode of speaking, is, that 
 whatever concerns, or has any allusion to this cherished passion, 
 is carefully avoided by all around us ; our friends are silent upon 
 it; our superiors are obliged to use an artful delicacy, not to injure 
 our feelings ; our inferiors are upon their guard, and employ con- 
 tinual precautions ; we are never spoken to but with lenitives which 
 draw a veil over our sore ; we are almost the only persons ignorant 
 of our defect : the whole world sees it, yet no one has the courage 
 to make it known to ourselves : it is clearly seen that we seek not 
 with sincerity the truth ; and that, far from curing us, the hand 
 which should dare to probe our sore, would only succeed in making 
 a fresh one. 
 
 David knew not, and respected not, the sanctity of Nathan, till 
 after that prophet had spoken to him, with sincerity, of the scandal 
 of his condnct ; from that day, and ever afterward, he considered 
 him as his father and deliverer ; but, with us, a person loses all his 
 merit from the moment that he has forced us to know ourselves. 
 Before that, he was enlightened, prudent, full of charity ; he pos- 
 sessed every talent calculated to attract esteem and confidence ; the 
 John the Baptists were listened to with pleasure, as formerly by 
 an incestuous king : but, from the moment that they have undis- 
 
 F F 
 
434 for the day Ser. 27. 
 
 guisedly spoken to us ; from the moment that they have said to 
 us, " It is not lawful for thee/ 5 they are stripped, in our opinion, of 
 all their grand qualities : their zeal is no longer but whim ; their 
 charity but an ostentation, or a desire to censure and contradict; 
 their piety but an imprudence or a cheat, with which they cover 
 their pride ; their truth but a mistaken phantom. Thus, frequently 
 convinced in our minds of the iniquity of our passions, w T e would 
 wish others to give them their approbation ; forced, by the inward 
 testimony of the truth, to reproach them to ourselves, we cannot 
 endure that they should be mentioned to us by others : we are hurt 
 and irritated that others should join us against ourselves. Like 
 Saul, we exact of the Samuels, that they approve, in public, what 
 we inwardly condemn ; and, through a corruption of the heart, per- 
 haps more deplorable than our passions themselves, unable to 
 silence truth in the bottom of our heart, we would wish to extin- 
 guish it in the hearts of all who approach us. I was right, there- 
 fore, in saying, that we all make a boast of loving the truth, but 
 that few court it, like the magi, with an upright and a sincere heart. 
 
 Thus, the little attention which they pay to the difficulties which 
 seemed to dissuade them from that research, is a fresh proof of its 
 sincerity and heartiness. For, my brethren, how singular must 
 not this extraordinary step, which grace proposed to them, have at 
 first appeared to their mind ! They alone, of all their nation, among 
 so many sages and learned men, without regard to friends and con- 
 nexions, in spite of public observations and derisions, while all 
 others either contemn this miraculous star, or consider the atten- 
 tion paid to it, and the design of these three sages, as an absurd 
 undertaking and a popular weakness, unworthy of their mind and 
 knowledge, they alone declare against the common opinion; they 
 alone entrust themselves to the new guide, which Heaven sends 
 them ; they alone abandon their country and their children, and 
 reckon as nothing a singularity, the necessity and wisdom of which 
 the celestial light discloses to them. 
 
 Last instruction. The cause, my brethren, of truth being always 
 unavailingly shown to us, is, that we judge not of it by the lights 
 which it leaves in our soul, but by the impression which it makes 
 on the rest of men with whom we live : we never consult the truth 
 in our heart ; we consult only the opinions which others have of it. 
 Thus, in vain doth the light of Heaven a thousand times intrude 
 upon us, and point out the ways in which we ought to go ; the very 
 first glance which we afterward cast upon the example of others 
 who live like us, revives us, and spreads a fresh mist over our heart. 
 In those fortunate moments when we consult the sole truth of our 
 own conscience, we condemn ourselves; we tremble over a futurity ; 
 we promise to ourselves a new life ; yet, a moment after, when re- 
 turned to the world, and no longer consulting but the general ex- 
 ample, we justify ourselves, and regain that false security which 
 we had lost. We have no confidence in the truth which the com- 
 mon example disproves; we sacrifice it to error and to the public opi- 
 nion ; it becomes suspicious to us, because it has chosen out us 
 alone to favour with its light, and the very singularity of the bless- 
 
Ser. 27. OF THE EPIPHANY. 435 
 
 ing is the cause of our ingratitude and opposition. We cannot 
 comprehend, that, to work out our salvation, is to distinguish our- 
 selves from the rest of men ; is to live single amidst the multitude ; 
 is to be an individual supporter of our own cause, in the midst of a 
 world which either condemns or despises us ; is, in a word, to count 
 examples as nothing, and to be affected by our duty alone. We 
 cannot comprehend, that, to devote ourselves to destruction, it re- 
 quires only to live as others do ; to conform to the multitude ; to 
 form with it only one body and one world ; seeing the world is 
 already judged ; that it is that body of the antichrist which shall 
 perish with its head and members ; that criminal city, accursed and 
 condemned to an eternal anathema. Yes, my brethren, the greatest 
 obstacle in our hearts, to grace and truth, is the public opinion. 
 How many timid souls, who have not the courage to adopt the 
 righteous side, merely because the world, to whose view they are 
 exposed, would join against them ! Thus, the king of Assyria 
 durst not declare himself for the God of Daniel, because the 
 grandees of his court would have reprobated such a step. How 
 many weak souls, who, disgusted with pleasures, only continue to 
 pursue them through a false honour, and that they may not dis- 
 tinguish themselves from those who set an example of them ! 
 Thus, Aaron, in the midst of the Israelites, danced around the 
 golden calf, and joined them in offering up incense to the idol 
 which he detested, because he had not the courage, singly, to resist 
 the public error and blindness. Fools that we are ! it is the sole 
 example of the public which confirms us against truth ; as if men 
 were our truth, or that it were upon the earth, and not in heaven, 
 that we ought, like the magi, to search for that rule and that light 
 which are to guide us. 
 
 It is true, that, frequently, it is not respect for the world's opi- 
 nion, but the sufferings and self-denials it holds out to us, which 
 extinguish truth in our heart : thus, it makes us sorrowful, like that 
 young man of the Gospel, and we do not receive it with that delight 
 testified by the magi on seeing the miraculous star. They had 
 beheld the magnificence of Jerusalem, the pomp of its buildings, 
 the majesty of its temple, the splendour and grandeur of Herod's 
 court ; but the Gospel makes no mention of their having been af- 
 fected by that vain display of human pomp : they behold all these 
 grand objects of desire without attention, pleasure, or any exterior 
 marks of admiration or surprise ; they express no wish to view the 
 treasures and the riches of the temple, as those ambassadors from 
 Babylon formerly did to Hezekiah : solely taken up with the light 
 of Heaven manifested to them, they have no eyes for any earthly 
 object ; feeling to the truth alone which has enlightened them, every 
 thing else is an object of indifference, or a burden to them ; and 
 their heart, viewing all things in their proper light, no longer ac- 
 knowledges either delight, interest, or consolation to be found in any 
 thing but the truth. 
 
 On our part, my brethren, the first rays of truth which the good- 
 ness of God shed on our heart, probably excited a sensible delight. 
 
 ff2 
 
4.36 for the day Ser. 2j . 
 
 The project we at first formed of a new life ; the novelty of the 
 lights which shone upon us, and upon which we had not as yet 
 fully opened our eyes ; the lassitude itself, and disgust of those 
 passions of which our heart now felt only the bitterness and the 
 punishment ; the novelty of the occupations which we proposed to 
 ourselves in a change ; all these offered smiling images to our 
 fancy : for novelty itself is pleasing : but this, as the Gospel says, 
 was only the joy of a season. In proportion as truth drew near, it 
 assumed to us, as to Augustine, yet a sinner, an appearance less 
 captivating and smiling. When, after our first glance, as I may 
 say, of it, we had leisurely and minutely examined the various 
 duties it prescribed to us ; the grievous separations which were 
 now to be a law to us ; retirement, prayer, the self-denials which it 
 proved to be indispensable ; that serious, occupied, and private life 
 in which we were to be engaged ; ah ! we immediately, like the 
 young man of the Gospel, began to draw back sorrowful and uneasy ; 
 all our passions roused up fresh obstacles to it ; every thing now 
 presented itself in gloomy and totally different colours ; and that 
 which we had at first thought to be so attractive, when brought 
 near, was no longer in our eyes but a frightful object, a way rugged, 
 terrifying, and impracticable to human weakness. 
 
 Where are the souls, who, like the magi, after having once known 
 the truth, never afterward wish to see but it alone ; have no longer 
 eyes for the world, for its empty pleasures, or for the vanity of its 
 pompous shows ; who feel no delight but in the contemplation of 
 truth : in making it their resource in every affliction, the spur of 
 their indolence, their succour against temptation, and the purest 
 delight of their soul ? And how vain, puerile, and disgusting doth 
 the world, with all its pleasures, hopes, and grandeurs, indeed ap- 
 pear to a soul who hath known thee, O my God ! and who hath 
 felt the truth of thine eternal promises ; to a soul who feels that 
 whatever is not thee is unworthy of him : and who considers the 
 earth only as the country of those who must perish for ever ! No- 
 thing is consolatory to him but what opens the prospect of real and 
 lasting riches ; nothing appears worthy of his regard but what is 
 to endure for ever ; nothing has the power of pleasing him but what 
 shall eternally please him : nothing is longer capable of attaching 
 him but that which he is no more to lose ; and all the trifling ob- 
 jects of vanity are no longer, on his part, but the embarrassments 
 of his piety, or gloomy monuments which recall the remembrance 
 of his crimes. 
 
 Behold, in the instance of the magi, truth received with submis- 
 sion, with sincerity, and with delight ; in the conduct of the priests, 
 let us see the truth dissembled ; and, after being instructed in the 
 use which we ought to make of truth with regard to ourselves, let 
 us learn what is our duty, respecting it, to others. 
 
 Part II. The first duty required of us by the law of charity 
 toward our brethren, is the duty of truth. We are not bound to 
 bestow on all men our attentions, our cares, and our officious ser- 
 
Ser. 27. OF THE EPIPHANY. 437 
 
 vices : to all we owe the truth. The different situations in which 
 rank and birth place us in the world, diversify our duties with re- 
 gard to our fellow-creatures : in every situation of life that of truth 
 is the same. We owe it to the great equally as the humble ; to our 
 subjects as to our masters ; to the lovers of it, as to those who hate 
 it ; to those who mean to employ it against ourselves, as to those who 
 wish it only for their own benefit. There are conjunctures in which 
 prudence permits to hide and to dissemble the love which we bear 
 for our brethren 5 none can possibly exist in which we are permitted 
 to dissemble the truth : in a word, truth is not our own property, 
 we are only its witnesses, its defenders, and its depositaries. It is 
 that spark, that light of God, which should illuminate the whole 
 world ; and, when we dissemble or obscure it, we are unjust toward 
 our brethren, and ungrateful toward the Father of Light who hath 
 spread it through our soul. 
 
 Nevertheless, the world is filled with dissemblers of the truth. 
 We live, it would appear, only to deceive each other : and society, 
 the first bond of which ought to be truth, is no longer but a com- 
 merce of dissimulation, duplicity, and cunning. Now, in the con- 
 duct of the priests of our Gospel, let us view all the different kinds 
 of dissimulation of which men render themselves every day culpa- 
 ble toward truth ; we shall there find a dissimulation of silence, a 
 dissimulation of compliance and palliation, a dissimulation of dis- 
 guise and falsehood. 
 
 A dissimulation of silence. Consulted by Herod on the place 
 on which the Christ was to be born, they made answer, it is true, 
 that Bethlehem was the place marked in the prophets for the ful- 
 filment of that grand event ; but they add not, that the star fore- 
 told in the holy books, having at last appeared, and the kings of 
 Saba and of Arabia coming with presents to worship the new chief 
 who was to lead Israel, it was no longer to be doubted that the 
 overshadowed had at last brought forth the righteous. They do 
 not gather together the people, in order to announce this blessed 
 intelligence ; they do not run first to Bethlehem, in order, by their 
 example, to animate Jerusalem. Wrapped up in their criminal 
 timidity, they guard a profound silence they iniquitously retain the 
 truth ; and while strangers come from the extremities of the east, 
 loudly to proclaim in Jerusalem that the king of the Jews is born, 
 the priests, the scribes are silent, and sacrifice, to the ambition of 
 Herod, the interests of truth, the dearest hope of their nation, and 
 the honour of their ministry. 
 
 What a shameful degradation of the ministers of truth ! The 
 good-will of the prince influences them more than the sacred de- 
 posit of the religion with which they are intrusted ; the lustre of 
 the throne stifles, in their heart, the light of Heaven ; by a criminal 
 silence, they flatter a king who applies to them for the truth, and 
 who can learn it from them alone ; they confirm him in error by 
 concealing that which might have undeceived him ; and how, in- 
 deed, shall truth ever make its way to the ear of sovereigns, if even 
 the Lord's anointed, who surround the throne, have not the cou- 
 
438 for the day Ser. 27. 
 
 rage to announce it, but join their efforts, with those who dwell in 
 courts, to conceal and stifle it ? 
 
 But this duty, my brethren, is, in certain respects, common to 
 you as to us ; yet, nevertheless, there are few persons in the world, 
 even of those who set an example of piety, who do not, almost 
 every day, render themselves culpable, toward their brethren, of 
 the dissimulation of silence. They think that they render to truth 
 all that they owe to it, when they do not declare against it ; when 
 they hear virtue continually decried by the worldly, the doctrine 
 of the world maintained, its abuses and maxims justified, those of 
 the Gospel opposed or weakened, the wicked often blaspheming 
 what they know not, and setting themselves up as judges of that 
 faith which shall judge them : that they listen to them, I say, with- 
 out joining in their impiety, is true, but they do not boldly show 
 their disapprobation, and content themselves with merely authoriz- 
 ing their blasphemies or their prejudices by their suffrage. 
 
 Now, I say that, being all individually intrusted with the inter- 
 ests of truth, to be silent when it is openly attacked in our pre- 
 sence, is to become, in a measure, its persecutor and adversary. 
 But, I add, that you, above all whom God hath enlightened, you 
 then fail in that love which you owe to your brethren, seeing your 
 obligations with regard to them augment in proportion to the grace 
 with which God hath favoured you ; you also render yourselves 
 culpable toward God of ingratitude ; you do not make a proper 
 return for the blessing of grace and of truth with which he hath 
 favoured you in the midst of your extravagant passions. He hath 
 illuminated your darkness ; he hath recalled you to himself, while 
 wandering in treacherous and iniquitous ways ; he, no doubt, in 
 thus shedding light through your heart, hath not had your benefit 
 alone in view ; he hath meant that it should operate as the instruc- 
 tion or as the reproach of your connexions, your friends, your sub- 
 jects, or your masters ; he hath intended to favour your age, your 
 nation, your country, in favouring you ; for his chosen are formed 
 only for the salvation or the condemnation of sinners. His design 
 has been to place in you a light which might shine amid the sur- 
 rounding darkness, and be a salutary guide to your fellow-creatures ; 
 which might perpetuate truth among men, and render testimony to 
 the righteousness and to the wisdom of his law, amidst all the pre- 
 judices and all the vain conclusions of a profane world. 
 
 Now, by opposing only a cowardly and timid silence to the 
 maxims which attack the truth, you do not enter into the views of 
 God's mercy upon your brethren ; you render unavailing to his 
 glory and to the aggrandizement of his kingdom, that talent of the 
 truth which he had intrusted to you, and of which he will one day 
 demand a particular and severe reckoning : I say, more particularly 
 of you who had formerly, with so much eclat, supported the errors 
 and profane maxims of the world, and who had at once been its 
 firmest and most avowed apologist. He surely had a right to 
 exact of you, that you should declare yourselves with the same 
 courage in favour of truth 5 nevertheless, from a zealous partisan 
 
Ser. 27. OF THE EPIPHANY. 439 
 
 of the world, his grace hath only succeeded in making a timid dis- 
 ciple of the Gospel. That grand air of confidence and of intrepidity 
 with which you formerly apologised for the passions, has forsaken 
 you evef since you have undertaken the defence of the interests of 
 virtue : that audacity which once imposed silence on truth, is now 
 itself mute in the presence of error ; and truth, which, as St. Au- 
 gustine says, gives confidence and intrepidity to all who have it on 
 their side, has rendered you only weak and timid. 
 
 I admit, that there is a time to be silent as well as a time to speak ; 
 and that the zeal of truth hath its rules and measures ; but I would 
 not that the souls, who know God and serve him continually, 
 hear the maxims of religion subverted, the reputation of their 
 brethren attacked, the most criminal abuses of the world jus- 
 tified, without having the courage to adopt the cause of that 
 truth which they dishonour. I would not that the world have its 
 avowed partisans, and that Jesus Christ hath no one to stand up 
 for him. I would not that the pious and good, through a mistaken 
 idea of good-breeding, dissemble upon those irregularities of sinners 
 which they are daily witnessing ; while sinners, on the contrary, 
 consider it as giving themselves an important and fashionable air, 
 to defend and to maintain them in their presence. I would that 
 a faithful soul comprehend that he is responsible to the truth 
 alone; that he is upon the earth solely to render glory to the 
 truth : I would that he bear upon his countenance that no- 
 ble and, I may say, lofty dignity, which grace inspires; that 
 heroical candour which contempt of the world and all its glory 
 produces : that generous and Christian liberty, which expects 
 only eternal riches, which has no hope but in God, which dreads 
 nothing but the internal judge, which pays court to, and spares 
 nothing but the interests of righteousness and of charity, and 
 which has no wish of making itself agreeable but by the truth. 
 I would that the sole presence of a righteous soul impose si- 
 lence on the enemies of virtue; that they respect that character 
 of truth which he should bear engraven on his forehead; that 
 they crouch under his holy greatness of soul, and that they render 
 homage, at least by their silence and their confusion, to that 
 virtue which they inwardly despise. Thus, the Israelites, taken 
 up with their dances, their profane rejoicings, and their foolish 
 and impious shouts around the golden calf, stop all in a moment, 
 and keep a profound silence on the sole appearance of Moses, who 
 comes down from the mountain, armed with the law of the Lord 
 and with his eternal truth. First dissimulation of the truth, a 
 dissimulation of silence. 
 
 The second manner in which it is dissembled, is that of soften- 
 ing it by modifications, and by condescensions which injure it. 
 The magi, no doubt, could not be ignorant that the intelligence 
 which they came to announce to Jerusalem would be highly dis- 
 pleasing to Herod. That foreigner, through his artifices, had seat- 
 ed himself on the throne of David ; he did not so peaceably enjoy 
 the fruit of his usurpation, but that he constantly had a dread lest 
 
440 FOR THE DAY Sei\ 27. 
 
 some heir of the blood of the kings of Judah should expel him 
 from the heritage of his fathers, and remount a throne promised to 
 his posterity. With what eye must he then regard men who come 
 to publish, in the midst of Jerusalem, that the King of the Jews is 
 born, and to proclaim him to a people so attached to, and so zeal- 
 ous for the blood of David, and so impatient under every foreign 
 rule ! Nevertheless, the magi conceal nothing of what they had 
 seen in the east: they do not soften that grand event by measured 
 expressions less proper to arouse the jealousy of Herod. They 
 might have called the Messiah whom they seek, the messenger of 
 Heaven, or the longed-for of nations; they might have designed 
 him by titles less hateful to the ambition of Herod ; but, full of 
 the truth which hath appeared to them, they know none of these 
 timid and servile time-servings; persuaded that those who are de- 
 termined to receive the truth only through the means of their 
 errors, are unworthy of knowing it. They are unacquainted with 
 the art of covering it with disguises and considerations for indi- 
 viduals, which dishonour it: they boldly come to the point, and de- 
 mand, "Where is he that is born King of the Jews? " and, not 
 satisfied with considering him as the sovereign of Judea, they de- 
 clare that heaven itself is his birthright; that the stars are his, and 
 make their appearance in the firmament only in obedience to his 
 orders. 
 
 The priests and scribes, on the contrary, forced, by the evidence 
 of the Scriptures, to render glory to the truth, soften it by guarded 
 expressions. They endeavour to unite that respect which they 
 owe to the truth, with that complaisance which they wish still to 
 preserve for Herod; they suppress the title of king, which the 
 magi had given to him, and which had so often been bestowed by 
 the prophets upon the Messiah; they design him by a title which, 
 might equally mark an authority of doctrine or of superior power ; 
 they announce him rather as a legislator established to regulate 
 the manners, than as a sovereign raised up for the deliverance of 
 his people from bondage. And, notwithstanding that they them- 
 selves expect a Messiah, King, and Conqueror, they soften the 
 truth which they wish to announce, and complete the blindness of 
 Herod, with whom they temporise. 
 
 Deplorable destiny of the great! The lips of the priests quiver 
 in speaking to them: from the moment that their passions are 
 known, they are temporised with ; truth never offers itself to them 
 but with a double face, of which one side is always favourable to 
 them; the servants of God wish not avowedly to betray their mi- 
 nistry and the interests of truth; but they wish to conciliate them 
 with their own interest ; they endeavour to save, as it were, both 
 the rule and their passions, as if the passions could subsist with 
 that rule which condemns them. It seldom happens that the 
 great are instructed, because it seldom happens that the intention 
 is not to please in instructing them. Nevertheless, the greater 
 part would love the truth were it once known to them: the pas- 
 sions and the extravagancies of the age, nourished by all the plea- 
 
Ser. 27. OF THE EPIPHANY. 441 
 
 sures which surround them, may lead them astray; but a remain- 
 ing principle of religion renders truth always respectable to them. 
 We may venture to say, that ignorance condemns more princes 
 and persons of high rank than people of the lowest condition; and 
 that the mean complaisance which is paid to them is more dishon- 
 ourable to the ministry, and is the cause of more reproach to reli- 
 gion, than the most notorious scandals which afflict the church. 
 
 The conduct of these priests appears base to you, my brethren: 
 but, if you are disposed to enter into judgment with yourselves, 
 and to follow yourselves through the detail of your duties, of your 
 friendships, of your conversations, you will see that all your dis- 
 courses and all your proceedings are merely mollifications of the 
 truth, and temporisings, in order to reconcile it with the preju- 
 dices or the passions of those with whom it is your lot to live. 
 We never hold out the truth to them but in a point of view in 
 which it may please ; in their most despicable vices we always find 
 some favourable side; and, as all the passions have always some 
 apparent resemblance to some virtue, we never fail to save our- 
 selves through the assistance of that resemblance. 
 
 Thus, in the presence of an ambitious person, we never fail to 
 hold forth the love of glory, and the desire of exalting one's self, 
 only as tendencies which give birth to great men ; we flatter his 
 pride; we inflame his desires with hopes and with false and chi- 
 merical predictions; we nourish the error of his imagination by 
 bringing phantoms within his reach, upon which he incessantly 
 feasts himself. We perhaps venture, in general terms, to pity men 
 who interest themselves so deeply for things which chance alone 
 bestows, and of which death shall perhaps deprive us to-morrow; 
 but we have not the courage to censure the madman, who, to that 
 vapour, sacrifices his quiet, his life, and his conscience. With a 
 vindictive person we justify his resentment and anger; we justify 
 his guilt in his mind, by countenancing the justice of his accu- 
 sations ; we spare his passion in exaggerating the injury and fault 
 of his enemy. We perhaps venture to say, how noble it is to for- 
 give; but we have not the courage to add, that the first step to- 
 ward forgiveness, is the ceasing to speak of the injury received. 
 
 With a courtier equally discontented with his own fortune, and 
 jealous of that of others, we never fail to expose his rivals in the 
 most unfavourable light: we artfully spread a cloud over their 
 merit and their glory, lest they should injure the jealous eyes of 
 him who listens to us; we diminish, we cast a shade over the fame 
 of their talents and of their services ; and, by our iniquitous crouch- 
 ings to his passions, we nourish it, we assist him in blinding him- 
 self, and induce him to consider, as honours unjustly ravished from 
 himself, all those which are bestowed upon his brethren. What 
 shall I say ? With a prodigal, his profusions are no longer, in our 
 mouths, but a display of generosity and magnificence. With a 
 miser, his sordid callousness of heart, in which every feeling is 
 lost, is no longer but a prudent moderation, and a laudable domes- 
 tic economy. With a person of high rank, his prejudices and his 
 
442 FOR THE DAY Ser. 27. 
 
 errors always find in us ready apologies ; we respect his passions 
 equally as his authority, and his prejudices always become our 
 own. Lastly, we catch the infection, and imbibe the errors of all 
 with whom we live ; we transform ourselves, as I may say, into 
 other selves; our grand study is to find out their weaknesses, that 
 we may appropriate and apply them to our own purposes: we 
 have, in fact, no language of our own; we always speak the 
 language of others; our discourses are merely a repetition of their 
 prejudicies; and this infamous debasement of truth we call know- 
 ledge of the world, a prudence which knows its own interest, the 
 grand art of pleasing and of succeeding in the world. O ye sons 
 of men ! how "long will ye love vanity, and seek after leasing }" 
 
 Yes, my brethren, by that we perpetuate error among men; we 
 authorize every deceit; we justify every false maxim ; we give an 
 air of innocence to every vice; we maintain the reign of the world, 
 and of its doctrine, against that of Jesus Christ; we corrupt socie- 
 ty, of which truth ought to be the first tie; we pervert those duties 
 and mutual offices of civil life, established to animate us to virtue, 
 into snares, and inevitable occasions of a departure from righteous- 
 ness; we change friendship, which ought to be a grand resource 
 to us against our errors and irregularities, into a commerce of dis- 
 simulation and mutual deception; by that, in a word, we render 
 truth hateful and ridiculous by rendering it rare among men ; and, 
 when I say we, I mean more especially the souls who belong to 
 God, and who are intrusted with the interests of truth upon the 
 earth. Yes, my brethren, I would that faithful souls had a lan- 
 guage peculiar to them amid the world; that other maxims, other 
 sentiments were found in them than in the rest of men; and while 
 all others speak the language of the passions, that they alone speak 
 the language of truth, I would that, while the world hath its 
 Balaams, who, by their discourses and counsels, authorize irregu- 
 larity and licentiousness, piety had its Phineases, who durst boldly 
 adopt the interests of the law of God, and of the sanctity of its 
 maxims; that, while the world hath its impious philosophers and 
 false sages, who think that it does them honour, openly to pro- 
 claim that we ought to live only for the present, and that the end 
 of man is, in no respect, different from that of the beast, piety had 
 its Solomons, who, undeceived by their own experience, durst 
 publicly avow, that, excepting the fear of the Lord and the observ- 
 ance of his commandments, all else is vanity and vexation of spirit: 
 that while the world hath its charms and enchantments, which se- 
 duce kings and the people by their delusions and flatteries, piety 
 had its Moseses and Aarons, who had the courage to confound, by 
 the sole force of truth, their imposition and artifice; in a word, 
 that, while the world had its priests and its scribes, who, like those 
 of the Gospel, weaken the truth, piety had its magi, who dread not 
 to announce it in the presence even of those to whom it cannot 
 but be displeasing. 
 
 Not that I condemn the modifications of a sage prudence, which 
 apparently gives up something to the prejudices of men, only that 
 
Ser. 27 of the epiphany. 443 
 
 it may more surely recall them to rule and duty. I know that 
 truth loves neither rash nor indiscreet defenders; that the passions 
 of men require a certain deference and management ; that they are 
 in the situation of sick persons, to whom it is often necessary to 
 disguise and render palateable their medicines, and to cure them 
 without their privity. I know that all deferences paid to the pas- 
 sions, when their tendency is to establish the truth, are not weak- 
 eners, but auxiliaries of it ; and that the grand rule of the zeal of 
 truth, is prudence and charity. But such is not the intention when 
 they weaken it by nattering and servile adulations : they seek to 
 please, and not to edify; they substitue themselves in the place of 
 truth; and their sole wish is to attract those suffrages which are due 
 to it alone. And let it not be said that it is more through sourness 
 and ostentation, than through charity, that the just claim a merit 
 in disdaining to betray truth. The world, which is always involved 
 in deceit, of which the commerce and mutual ties revolve only upon 
 dissimulation and artifice, which considers these even as an honour- 
 able science, and which is totally unacquainted with this noble rec- 
 titude of heart, cannot suppose it in others; it is its profound 
 corruption which is the cause of its suspecting the sincerity and the 
 courage of the upright: it is a mode of acting which appears ridi- 
 culous, because it is new to it; and, as it finds in it so marked a 
 singularity, it loves better to suppose that it is rather the conse- 
 quence of pride, or folly, than of virtue. 
 
 From thence it is that the truth is not only disguised, but is like- 
 wise openly betrayed. Last dissimulation of the priests of our 
 Gospel, a dissimulation of falsehood. They are not satisfied with 
 quoting the prophecies in obscure and mollified terms : but, seeing 
 that the magi did not return to Jerusalem, as they had intended, 
 they add, no doubt in order to calm Herod, that, ashamed of not 
 having been able to find that new King of whom they came in 
 search, they have not had the courage to return : that they are 
 strangers little versed in the knowledge of the law and of the pro- 
 phets; and that the light of Heaven, which they pretended to fol- 
 low, was nothing but a vulgar illusion, and a superstitious preju- 
 dice of a rude and credulous nation. And such must indeed have 
 been their language to Herod, since they themselves act accord- 
 ing to it, and do not run to Bethlehem to seek the new-born King, 
 in order, it appears, to complete the persuasion of Herod, that 
 there was more credulity than truth in the superstitious research of 
 these magi. 
 
 And behold to what we at last come : in consequence of a servile 
 compliance with the passions of men, and of continually wishing to 
 please them at the expense of truth, we at last openly abandon it ; 
 we cowardly and downrightly sacrifice it to our interest, our for- 
 tune, and our reputation ; we betray our conscience, our duty, and 
 our understanding ; and, consequently, from the moment that truth 
 becomes irksome to us, or renders us displeasing, we disavow it; 
 and deliver it up to oppression and iniquity; like Peter, we deny 
 that we have ever been seen as its disciple. In this manner we 
 
444 for the day Ser. 27. 
 
 change our heart into a cowardly and grovelling one, to which any- 
 profitable falsehood costs nothing; into an artificial and pliable 
 heart, which assumes every form, and never possesses any deter- 
 minate one; into a weak and flattering heart, which has not the 
 courage to refuse its suffrage to any thing but the unprofitable and 
 the unfortunate virtue ; into a corrupted and interested heart, which 
 makes subservient to its purposes, religion, truth, justice, and all 
 that is most sacred among men; in a word, a heart capable of every 
 thing except that of being true, noble, and sincere. And think not 
 that sinners of this description are so very rare in the world. We 
 shun only the notoriety and shame of these faults ; secret and se- 
 cure basenesses find few scrupulous hearts ; we often love only the 
 reputation and glory of truth. 
 
 It is only proper to take care that, in pretending to defend the 
 truth, we are not defending the mere illusions of our own mind. 
 Pride, ignorance, and self-conceit, every day furnish defenders to 
 error, equally intrepid and obstinate as any of whom faith can 
 boast. The only truth worthy of our love, of our zeal, and of our 
 courage, is that held out to us by the church; for it alone we ought 
 to endure everything; beyond that, we are no longer but the mar- 
 tyrs of our own obstinacy and vanity. 
 
 O my God ! pour then through my soul that humble and gene- 
 rous love of the truth, with which thy chosen are filled in heaven, 
 and which is the only characteristic mark of the just upon the 
 earth. Let my life be only such as to render glory to thine eternal 
 truths; let me honour them through the sanctity of my manners; 
 let me defend them through zeal for thy interests alone, and enable 
 me continually to oppose them to error and vanity: annihilate in 
 my heart those human fears, that prudence of the flesh which 
 dreads to lay open to persons their errors and their vices. Suffer 
 not that I be a feeble reed which bends to every blast, nor that I 
 ever blush to bear the truth imprinted on my forehead, as the 
 most illustrious title with which thy creature can glorify himself, 
 and as the most glorious mark of thy mercies upon my soul. In 
 effect, it is not sufficient to be the witness and depository of it, it 
 is also necessary to be its defender : character contrasted with that 
 of Herod, who is, in our Gospel at present, its enemy and perse- 
 cutor. Last instruction with which our Gospel furnishes us, the 
 truth persecuted. 
 
 Part III. If it is a crime to withstand the truth when it shines 
 upon us, iniquitously to withhold it when we owe it to others ; it is 
 the fulness of iniquity, and the most distinguished character of re- 
 probation, to persecute and combat it. Nevertheless, nothing is 
 more common in the world than this persecution of truth ; and the 
 impious Herod, who, on the present occasion, sets himself up against 
 it, has more imitators than is supposed. 
 
 For, in the first place, he persecutes it through that repugnancy 
 which he visibly shows to the truth, and which induces all Jerusa- 
 lem to follow his example; and this is what I call a persecution of 
 
Ser. 27- of the epiphany. 445 
 
 scandal. Secondly, he persecutes it by endeavouring to corrupt 
 the priests, and even by laying snares for the piety of the magi ; 
 and this is what I call a persecution of seduction. Lastly, he per- 
 secutes it by shedding innocent blood; and this is a persecution of 
 power and violence. Now, my brethren, if the brevity of a Dis- 
 course permitted me to examine these three descriptions of perse- 
 cution of the truth, there is not perhaps one of them of which you 
 would not find yourselves culpable. 
 
 For, first, who can flatter himself with not being among the num- 
 ber of the persecutors of truth, under the description of scandals ? 
 I even speak not of those disorderly souls who have erected the 
 standard of guilt and licentiousness, and who pay little, if indeed 
 any, attention to the public opinion : the most notorious scandals 
 are not always those which are most to be dreaded ; and avowed 
 debauchery, when carried to a certain degree, occasions, in general, 
 more censures upon our conduct than imitations of our excesses. 
 I speak of those souls delivered up to the pleasures, to the vanities, 
 and to all the abuses of the age, and whose conduct, in other re- 
 spects regular, is not only irreproachable in the sight of the world, 
 but attracts even the praises and the esteem of men; and I say that 
 they persecute the truth through their sole examples; that they 
 undo, as much as in them lies, the maxims of the Gospel in every 
 heart; that they cry out to all men, that shunning of pleasure is a 
 needless precaution; that love of the world and the love of virtue 
 are not at all incompatible ; that a taste for theatres, for dress, and 
 for all public amusements, is entirely innocent; and that it is easy 
 to lead a good life even while living like the rest of the world. This 
 worldly regularity is therefore a continual persecution of the truth ; 
 and ; and so much the more dangerous, as it is an authorized per- 
 secution which has nothing odious in it, and against which no pre- 
 caution is taken ; which attacks the truth without violence, without 
 effusion of blood, under the smiling image of peace and society : 
 and which, through these means, occasions more deserters from the 
 truth than ever all tyrants and tortures formerly did. 
 
 I speak even of those good characters who only imperfectly fulfil 
 the duties of piety, who still retain, too, public remains of the 
 passions of the world and of its maxims : and I say, that they per- 
 secute the truth through these unfortunate remains of infidelity 
 and weakness ; that they are the occasion of its being blasphemed 
 bv the impious and other sinners ; that they authorize the senseless 
 discourses of the world against the piety of the servants of God ; 
 that they are the cause of souls being disgusted with virtue, who 
 might otherwise feel themselves disposed to it ; that they confirm, 
 in the path of error, those who seek pretexts to remain in it : in a 
 word, that they render virtue either suspicious or ridiculous. Thus, 
 still every day, as the Lord formerly complained, through his pro- 
 phet Jeremiah, the backsliding Israel, that is to say, the world, 
 justifies herself more than treacherous Judah, that is to say, the 
 weaknesses of the good : I mean to say, that the world thinks itself 
 secure when it sees that those souls, who profess piety, join in its 
 
446 fou the day Ser. 2/. 
 
 pleasures and frivolities ; are warm, like the rest of men, upon for- 
 tune, upon favour, upon preferences, and upon injuries ; pursue 
 their own ends, have still a desire of pleasing, eagerly seek after 
 distinctions and favours, and sometimes make even piety subser- 
 vient toward more surely attaining them. Ah ! it is then that the 
 world triumphs, and that it feels itself comforted in the comparison ; 
 it is then that, finding such a resemblance between the virtue of the 
 good' and its own vices, it feels tranquil upon its situation, and 
 thinks that it is needless to change, since, in changing the name, 
 the same things are still retained. 
 
 And it is here that I cannot prevent myself from saying, with 
 the apostle Peter, to you whom God hath recalled, from the 
 ways of the world and of the passions, to those of truth and 
 righteousness: let us act in such a manner among the worldly, 
 that, in place of decrying virtue as they have hitherto done, and 
 of despising or censuring those who practise it ; the good works 
 which they shatl behold in us, our pure and holy manners, our 
 patience under scorn, our wisdom and our circumspection in 
 discourse, our modesty and humility in exaltation, our equality 
 of mind and submission under disgrace, our gentleness toward 
 our inferiors, our regard for our equals, our fidelity toward our 
 masters, our universal charity toward our brethern, force them 
 to render glory to God, make them to respect and even to envy 
 the destiny of virtue, and dispose their hearts to receive the 
 grace of light and of truth when it shall deign to visit them, 
 and to enlighten them upon their erroneous ways. Let us shut 
 up the mouth of all the enemies of virtue by the sight of an 
 irreprehensible life : let us honour piety, that it may honour us : 
 let us render it respectable, if we wish to gain partisans to it : let us 
 furnish to the world examples which condemn it, and not censures 
 which justify it : let us accustom it to think, that godliness is pro- 
 fitable unto all things, having promises not only of the life to come, 
 but also peace, satisfaction, and content, which are the only good, 
 and the only real pleasures of the present life. 
 
 To this persecution of scandal, Herod adds a persecution of 
 seduction : he tempts the sanctity and the fidelity of the minis- 
 ters of the law ; he wishes to make the zeal and the holy bold- 
 ness of the magi instrumental to his impious designs : in a 
 word, he neglects nothing to undo the truth before he openly 
 attacks it. 
 
 And behold a fresh manner in which we continually perse- 
 cute the truth. In the first place, we weaken the piety of the 
 just by accusing their fervour of excess, and by struggling to 
 persuade them that they do too much ; we exhort them, like 
 the grand tempter, to change their stones into bread ; that is to 
 say, to abate from their austerity, and to change that retired, 
 gloomy, and laborious life, into a more ordinary and comfort- 
 able one : we give them room to dread that the sequel will not 
 correspond with the beginnings : in a word, we endeavour to 
 draw them nearer to us, being unwilling to rise ourselves to a 
 
Ser. 27. OF THE EPIPHANY. 447 
 
 level with them. Secondly, we perhaps tempt even their fidelity 
 and their innocence, by giving the most animated descriptions 
 of those pleasures from which they fly : like the wife of Job, 
 we blame their simplicity and weakness : we exaggerate to them 
 the inconveniencies of virtue and the difficulties of perseverance : 
 we shake them by the example of unfaithful souls, who, after 
 putting their hand to the plough, have cast a look behind, and 
 abandoned their labour : what shall I say ? We perhaps attack 
 even the immoveable groundwork of faith, and we insinuate the in- 
 utility of self-denials it proposes, from the uncertainty of its 
 promises. Thirdly, we harass, by our authority, the zeal and the 
 piety of those persons who are dependent upon us : we exact duties 
 of them, either incompatible with their innocence, or dangerous to 
 their virtue : we place them in situations either painful or trying to 
 their faith: we interdict them from practices and observances, either 
 necessary for their support in piety, or profitable toward their pro- 
 gress in it : in a word, we become domestic tempters with respect 
 to them, being neither capable of tasting good ourselves, nor of 
 suffering it in others, and performing toward these souls, the office 
 of the demon, who only watches in order to destroy. Lastly, we 
 render ourselves culpable of this persecution of seduction, by making 
 our talents instrumental to the destruction of the reign of Jesus 
 Christ: the talents of the body in inspiring iniquitous passions; in 
 placing ourselves in hearts where God alone ought to be ; in cor- 
 rupting the souls for whom Jesus Christ gave his blood; the talents 
 of the mind in inducing to vice : in embellishing it with all the 
 charms most calculated to hide its infamy and horror ; in present- 
 ing the poison under the most alluring and seductive form ; and in 
 rendering it immortal by lascivious works, through the means of 
 which, a miserable author shall, to the end of ages, preach up vice, 
 corrupt hearts, and inspire his brethren with every deplorable pas- 
 sion which had enslaved himself during life ; shall see his punish- 
 ment and his torments increased in proportion as the impious fire 
 he has lighted up shall spread upon the earth ; shall have the 
 shocking consolation of declaring himself, even after death, against 
 his God, of gaining souls from him whom he had redeemed, of 
 still insulting his holiness and majesty, of perpetuating his own 
 rebellion and disorders even beyond the tomb, and of making, even 
 to the fulfilment of time, the crimes of all men his own crimes. 
 Woe, saith the Lord, to all those who rise up against my name and 
 glory, and who lay snares for my people ! I will take vengeance of 
 them on the day of my judgment : I will demand of them the blood 
 of their brethren whom they have seduced, and whom they have 
 caused to perish : and I will multiply upon them, and make them 
 for ever to feel, the most dreadful evils, in return for that glory 
 which they have ravished from me. 
 
 But a last description of persecution, still more fatal to truth, is 
 that which I call a persecution of power and violence. Herod, 
 having gained nothing by his artifices, at last throws off the mask, 
 openly declares himself the persecutor of Jesus Christ, and wishes 
 
448 for the day Ser. 2y. 
 
 to extinguish in its birth, that light which comes to illuminate the 
 whole world. 
 
 The sole mention of the cruelty of that impious prince strikes 
 us with horror; and it does not appear that so barbarous an 
 example can ever find imitators among us : nevertheless, the world 
 is full of these kinds of public and avowed persecutors of the 
 truth : and, if the church be no longer afflicted with the bar- 
 barity of tyrants, and with the effusion of her children's blood, 
 she is still every day persecuted by the public derisions which the 
 worldly make of virtue, and by the ruin of those faithful souls, 
 whom she, with grief, so often beholds sinking under the dread of 
 their derisions and censures. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, those discourses which you so readily allow 
 yourselves against the piety of the servants of God, of those souls 
 who, by their fervent homages, recompense his glory for your crimes 
 and insults ; those derisions of their zeal and of their holy intoxi- 
 cation for their God : those biting sarcasms which rebound from 
 their person upon virtue itself, and are the most dangerous temp- 
 tation of their penitence ; that severity, on their account, which 
 forgives them nothing, and changes even their virtues into vices ; 
 that language of blasphemy and of mockery, which throws an 
 air of ridicule over the seriousness of their compunction ; which 
 gives appellations of irony and contempt to the most respectable, 
 practices of their piety; which shakes their faith, checks their 
 holy resolutions, disheartens their weakness, makes them, as it 
 were, ashamed of virtue, and often is the cause of their return- 
 ing to vice: behold what, with the saints, I call an open and 
 declared persecution of the truth. You persecute in your brother, 
 says St. Augustine, that which the tyrants themselves have 
 never persecuted : they have deprived him only of life ; your 
 scheme is to deprive him of innocence and virtue : their persecu- 
 tion extended only to the body : you carry yours even to the de- 
 struction of his soul. 
 
 What, my brethren! is it not enough that you do not your- 
 selves serve the God for whom you are created ? (This is what 
 the first defenders of faith, the Tertullians and the Cyprians, 
 formerly said to the Pagan persecutors of the faithful ; and must 
 it be that we, alas ! have the same complaints to make against 
 Christians ?) Is it not enough ? Must you also persecute those 
 who serve him ? You are then determined neither to adore him 
 yourselves, nor to suffer that others do it ? You every day for- 
 give so many extravagancies to the followers of the world, so 
 many unreasonable passions; you excuse them; what do I say? 
 you applaud them in the inordinate desires of their heart; in 
 their most shameful passions you find constancy, fidelity, and 
 dignity: you give honourable names to their most infamous 
 vices ; and it is a just and faithful soul alone, a servant of the true 
 God, who has no indulgence to expect from you, and is certain of 
 drawing upon himself your contempt and censures ? But, my bre- 
 thren, theatrical and other amusements are publicly licensed, and 
 
Ser. 27. OF THE EPIPHANY. 449 
 
 nothing is said against them : the madness of gambling has its de- 
 clared partisans, and they are quietly put up with: ambition has 
 its worshippers and slaves, and they are even commended: volup- 
 tuousness has its altars and victims, and no one contests them; 
 avarice has its idolators, and not a word is said against them ; all 
 the passions, like so many sacrilegious divinities, have their esta- 
 blished worship, without the smallest exception being taken; and 
 the sole Lord of the universe, and the Sovereign of all men, and 
 the only God upon the earth, either shall not be served at all, or 
 it shall not be with impunity, and without every obstacle being 
 placed in the way of his service ? 
 
 Great God ! avenge then thine own glory; render again to thy ser- 
 vants that honour and that lustre which the impious unceasingly 
 ravish from them: do not, as formerly, send ferocious beasts 
 from the depths of their forests to devour the contemners of virtue 
 and of the holy simplicity of thy prophets ; but deliver them up to 
 their inordinate desires, still more cruel and insatiable than the lion 
 or the bear, in order, that, worn out, racked by their internal con- 
 vulsions and the frenzies of their own passions, they may know 
 all the value and all the excellence of that virtue which they con- 
 temn, and aspire to the felicity and to the destiny of those souls 
 who serve thee. 
 
 For, my brethren, you whom this discourse regards, allow me, 
 and with grief, to say it here, must you be the instruments which 
 the demon employs to tempt the chosen of God, and, if it were 
 possible, to lead them astray? Must it be that you appear upon 
 the earth merely in order to justify the prophecies of the holy books 
 with regard to the persecutions, which, even to the end, are inevi- 
 table to all those who shall wish to live in godliness which is in 
 Jesus Christ ? Must you alone be the means of sustaining the per- 
 petuity of that frightful succession of persecutors of faith and of 
 virtue, which is to endure as long as the church? Must you, in 
 default now of tyrants and of tortures, continue to be the rock and 
 the scandal of the Gospel ? Renounce, then, yourselves the hope 
 which is in Jesus Christ; join yourselves with those barbarous na- 
 tions, or with those impious characters who blaspheme his glory 
 and his divinity, if to you it appears so worthy of derision and 
 laughter to live under his laws, and according to his maxims. An 
 infidel or a savage might suppose that we, who serve and who wor- 
 ship him, are under delusion; he might pity our credulity and 
 weakness, when he sees us sacrificing the present to a futurity, and 
 a hope which, in his eyes, might appear fabulous and chimerical : 
 but he would be forced, at least, to confess, that, if we do not de- 
 ceive ourselves, and if our faith be justly grounded, we are the 
 wisest and the most estimable of all men. But for you, who would 
 not dare to start a doubt of the certitude of faith, and of the hope 
 which is in Jesus Christ, with what eyes, with what astonishment 
 would that infidel regard the censures which you so plentifully be- 
 stow upon his servants ! You prostrate yourselves before his cross, 
 he would say to you, as before the pledge of your salvation ; and 
 
 G G 
 
450 FOR THE DAY OF THE EPIPHANY. Sei". 27. 
 
 you laugh at those who bear it in their heart, and who ground their 
 whole' hope and expectation in it! You worship him as your 
 Judge; and you contemn and load with ridicule those who dread 
 him, and who anxiously labour to render him favourable to their 
 interests ! You believe him to be sincere and faithful in his word; 
 and you look upon, as weak minds, those who place their trust in 
 him, and who sacrifice every thing to the grandeur and to the cer- 
 tainty of his promises ! O man, so astonishing, so full of contra- 
 dictions, so little in unison with thyself, would the infidel exclaim, 
 how great and how holy must the God of the Christians therefore 
 be, seeing that, among all those who know him, he hath no enemies 
 but such as are of thy description ! 
 
 Let us, therefore, respect virtue, my brethren ; let us honour, in 
 his servants, the gifts of God, and the wonders of his grace. Let 
 us merit, by our deference and our esteem for piety, the blessing 
 of piety itself. Let us regard the worthy and pious as the souls 
 who alone continue to draw down the favours of Heaven upon the 
 earth, as resources established to reconcile us one day with God, 
 as blessed signs, which prove to us that the Lord still looketh 
 upon men with pity, and continueth his mercies upon his church. 
 Let us encourage by our praises, if we cannot strengthen by our 
 example, the souls who return to him : let us applaud their change, 
 if we think it impossible, as yet to change ourselves ; let us glory 
 in defending them, if our passions will not, as yet, permit us to 
 imitate them. Let us reverence and esteem virtue? Let us have 
 no friends but the friends of God. Let us count upon the fidelity 
 of men only in proportion as they are faithful to their Master and 
 Creator. Let us confide our sorrows and our sufferings only to 
 those who can present them to him, who alone can console them : 
 let us believe to be in our real interests only those who are in the 
 interests of our salvation. Let us smooth the way to our conver- 
 sion : let us, by our respect for the just, prepare the world to be- 
 hold us one day, without surprise, just ourselves. Let us not, by 
 our derisions and censures, raise up an invincible stumbling-block 
 of human respect, which shall for ever prevent us from declaring 
 ourselves disciples of that piety which we have so loudly and so 
 publicly decried. Let us render glory to the truth ; and, in order 
 that it may deliver us, let us religiously receive it, like the magi, 
 from the moment that it is manifested to us : let us not dissemble 
 it, like the priests, when we owe it to our brethren ; let us not de- 
 clare against it, like Herod, when we can no longer dissemble it 
 to ourselves, in order that, after having walked in the ways of truth 
 upon the earth, we may all together one day be sanctified in truth, 
 and perfected in charity. 
 
Ser. 28. the divinity of jesus christ. 451 
 
 SERMON XXVIII. 
 
 THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 " His name was called Jesus, which was so named of the angel." 
 Luke ii. 21. 
 
 A God lowering himself so far as even to become man, asto- 
 nishes and confounds reason ; and into what an abyss of errors is it 
 not plunged, if the light of faith come not speedily to its aid, to 
 discover the depth of the divine wisdom concealed under the appa- 
 rent absurdity of the mystery of a Man-God ! Thus, in all times, 
 this fundamental point of our holy religion, I mean the divinity of 
 Jesus Christ, hath been the object most exposed to the foolish op- 
 positions of the human mind. Men, full of pride, whose mouths 
 ought to be filled with only thanksgivings for the ineffable gift, made 
 to them by the Father of mercies, of his only Son, have continu- 
 ally insulted him, by vomiting forth the most impious blasphemies 
 against that adorable Son ; full of blindness, who have not seen 
 that the sole name of Jesus, which is given to him on this day, that 
 name which he at first receives in heaven, and which an angel con- 
 veys to the earth, to Mary and Joseph, is the incontestable proof 
 of his divinity. That sacred name establishes him the Saviour of 
 mankind ; Saviour, in that, through the effusion of blood, which 
 becomes our ransom, he delivers us from sin, and from the conse- 
 quences inseparable from it, namely, the tyranny of the demon and 
 of hell : Saviour, in that, attracting upon his own head the chas- 
 tisement due to our transgressions, he reconciles us with God, and 
 opens to us afresh the entry of the eternal sanctuary, which sin had 
 shut against us. But, my brethren, if the Son of Mary be but a 
 mere man, of what value, in the eyes of God, will be the oblation 
 of his blood ? If Jesus Christ be not God, how will his mediation 
 be accepted, while he would himself have occasion for a mediator 
 to reconcile him with God ? 
 
 This proof, which I only touch upon here, and so many others 
 with which religion furnishes me, would quickly stop the mouth of 
 the ungodly, and confound his impiety, if I undertook to show them 
 in all their light, and to give an extension in proportion to their 
 importance. But, God forbid that I should come here, into the 
 holy temple, where the altars of our divine Saviour are raised up, 
 where his worshippers assemble, to enter into contestation, as if I 
 spake in the presence of his enemies, or to make the apology of the 
 mystery of the Man-God, before a believing people, and a sovereign 
 whose most illustrious and most cherished title is that of Christian. 
 It is not, therefore, to combat these ungodly, that, on this day, I 
 consecrate my discourse to the divinity, and to the eternal glory of 
 Jesus, Son of the living God ; I come for the sole purpose of con- 
 
 G G 2 
 
452 the divinity of Ser. 28 
 
 soling our faith, while recounting the wonders of him who is its 
 Author and Perfecter ; and to reanimate our piety in exposing to 
 you the glory and the divinity of our Mediator, who is its object and 
 its sweetest hope. 
 
 It is even proper to renew, from time to time, these grand truths 
 in the minds of the great and of the princes of the people, in order 
 to strengthen them against those discourses of infidelity which they, 
 in general, are only too much in the way of hearing; and it is ex- 
 pedient sometimes to raise up the veil which covers the sanctuary, 
 that they may have a view of those hidden beauties which religion 
 only holds out to their respect and their homages. 
 
 Now, the divinity of the Mediator can only be proved by his mi- 
 nistry; his titles can appear only in his functions; and, in order to 
 know whether he be descended from heaven, and equal with the 
 Most High, it requires only to relate the purposes for which he 
 came upon the earth. He came, my brethren, to form a holy and 
 a believing people ; a believing people, who subject their reason 
 to the sacred yoke of faith ; a holy people, whose conversation is in 
 heaven, and who are no longer responsible to the flesh, to live 
 according to the flesh: such is the grand design of his temporal 
 mission. 
 
 The lustre of his ministry is the firmest foundation of our faith : 
 the spirit of his ministry, the sole rule of our morals. Now, if he 
 was only a man commissioned of God, the lustre of his ministry 
 would be the inevitable occasion of our superstition and idolatry ; 
 the spirit of his ministry would be the fatal snare to entrap our in- 
 nocence. Thus, whether we consider the lustre or the spirit of his 
 his ministry, the glory of his divinity remains equally and invinci- 
 bly established. 
 
 O Jesus, sole Lord of all, accept this public homage of our con- 
 fession and of our faith ! While impiety blasphemes in secret, and 
 under the shades of darkness, against thy glory, allow us the con- 
 solation of publishing it with the voice of all ages in the face of 
 these altars ; and form, in our heart, not only that faith which con- 
 fesses and worships thee, but also that which follows and which 
 imitates thee. 
 
 Part I. God can manifest himself to men, only in order to 
 teach them what he is, and what men owe to him ; and religion is, 
 properly speaking, but a divine light, which discovers God to man, 
 and which regulates the duties of man toward God. Whether the 
 Most High show himself to the earth, or whether he fill extraordi- 
 nary men with his spirit, the end of all his proceedings can be only 
 the knowledge and the sanctifi cation of his name in the universe, 
 and the establishment of a worship in which they render to him 
 what is due to him alone. 
 
 Now, if the Lord Jesus, come in the fulness of time, was nothing 
 more than an upright and innocent man, only chosen to be the 
 messenger of God upon the earth, the principal end of his ministry 
 would have been that of rendering the world idolatrous, and of 
 
Ser. 28. jesus christ. 453 
 
 ravishing from the Divinity that glory which is his due, in order to 
 appropriate it to himself. 
 
 In effect, my brethren, whether we consider the lustre of his 
 ministry in that pompous train of oracles and of figurative allu- 
 sions which have preceded him, in the wonderful circumstances 
 which have accompanied him, and, lastly, in the works which 
 he hath operated ; the lustre of it is such, that, if Jesus Christ 
 was only a man, similar to us, God, who hath sent him upon 
 the earth, arrayed in such glory and power, would himself have 
 deceived us, and would be culpable of the idolatry of those who 
 worship him. 
 
 The first signal character of the ministry of Jesus Christ is, that, / 
 from the beginning of the world, it was foretold and promised to 
 men. Scarcely had the fall of Adam taken place, when the Re- 
 storer, whom his guilt had rendered necessary to the earth, is shown 
 to him from afar. In the following ages, God, it would appear, is 
 only occupied in preparing mankind for his coming : if he manifest 
 himself to the patriarchs, it is in order to confirm their faith in that 
 expectation ; if he inspire prophets, it is in order to announce him ; 
 if he choose to himself a people, it is for the purpose of making it 
 the depositary of that grand promise ; if he prescribe sacrifices and 
 religious ceremonies to men, it is in order to trace out in them, as 
 from afar, the history of him who was to come. Whatever took 
 place upon the earth seems to lead to that grand event : empires 
 and kingdoms fall or rise only in order to prepare the way for it : 
 the heavens are only opened to promise it : and, as St. Paul says, 
 the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain to bring forth 
 the Righteous, who is to come for the redemption of our body from 
 the bondage of corruption and sin. 
 
 Now, my brethren, to inspire, from the beginning of all ages, 
 the earth with the expectation of a man, and to announce him to 
 it from heaven, is already, in fact, to prepare men to receive him 
 with a kind of religion and worship; and even granting that Jesus 
 Christ were to have only the eclat of that particular circumstance 
 which distinguishes him from all other men, the superstition of the 
 people, with regard to him, were he only a simple creature, had 
 been to dread. But even the circumstance of Jesus Christ being 
 foretold is not so wonderful as those in which he hath been, 
 which are more surprising than even the prophecies themselves. 
 In effect, if Cyrus and John the Baptist had been foretold, long 
 before their birth, in the prophecies of Isaiah and of Malachi, these 
 are only individual prophecies, without consequence or train, and 
 which are found in a single prophet; predictions which announce 
 only particular events, and by which the religion of the people 
 could never be caught or surprised : Cyrus to be the re-establisher 
 of the walls of Jerusalem ; John the Baptist to prepare the way for 
 him who has to come : both in order to confirm, by the accomplish- 
 ment of their particular prophecies, the truth and the divinity of 
 all the prophecies which announce Jesus Christ. 
 
 But here, my brethren, it is a Messenger of Heaven, foretold by 
 
454 the divinity of Ser. 28. 
 
 a whole people, announced, during four thousand years, by a long 
 train of prophecies, desired of all nations, figured by all the cere- 
 monies, expected by all the just, and shown from afar in all ages. 
 The patriarchs expire in wishing to see him : the just live in that 
 expectation : fathers instruct their children to wish for him : and 
 this desire is like a domestic religion which is perpetuated from age 
 to age. The prophets themselves of the Gentiles, see the Star of 
 Jacob shining from afar ; and this great event is announced even 
 in the oracles of idols. Here, it is not for a particular event ; it is 
 to be the resource of the condemned world, the legislator of all 
 people, the light all nations, the salvation of Israel ; it is in order 
 to blot out iniquity from the earth, to bring an eternal righteous- 
 ness, to fill the universe with the spirit of God, and to be the 
 blessed bearer of an immortal peace to all men. What a pompous 
 train ! What a snare for the religion of all ages, if such magnifi- 
 cent preparations announce only a simple creature ; and, more es- 
 pecially, in times when the credulity of the people so easily placed 
 extraordinary men in the rank of gods ! 
 
 Besides, when John the Baptist appears on the borders of the 
 Jordan, afraid, it would seem, that the single oracle which had fore- 
 told him might become an occasion of idolatry to the people, whom 
 the fame of his sanctity attracted around him, he performs no mira- 
 cles; he never ceases to say, P I am not he whom you expect; but 
 one mightier than me cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not 
 worthy to unloose f* he is only watchful, it would appear, to pre- 
 vent superstitious honours. Jesus Christ, on the contrary, whom 
 four thousand years of expectation, of allusions, of prophecies, of 
 promises, had with so much magnificence announced to the earth ; 
 Jesus Christ, far from preventing the superstition of the people 
 with regard to himself, comes in full authority and might ; he does 
 miracles and deeds which no one had ever done before him ; and, 
 not only does he raise himself above John the Baptist, but he gives 
 out that he is equal with God himself. Had the error been to dread, 
 and, if to render to him divine honours had been idolatry, where 
 would be his zeal for the glory of him who sends him, or where 
 would be his love for men ? 
 
 And yet more, my brethren : all the extraordinary men of which 
 the preceding ages could boast, all the just of the law and of the 
 age of the patriarchs, had been only the imperfect types of the 
 Christ ; and again, each of them represented only some individual 
 trait of his life and ministry : Melchizedek, his priesthood ; Abra- 
 ham, his quality of Head and Father of believers ; Isaac, his sacri- 
 fice ; Job, his persecutions and sufferings ; Moses, his office of Me- 
 diator ; Joshua, his triumphant entry into the land of the living 
 with a chosen people. All these men, however, so venerable and so 
 miraculous, were only rude sketches of the Messiah to come ; and 
 how great must have been that Messiah himself, seeing his figures 
 were so illustrious and so shining ! But, deprive Jesus Christ of 
 his divinity and of his eternal origin, and the reality has nothing 
 superior to the figure. I know, as we shall afterward say, that, 
 
Ser. 28. jesus christ. 455 
 
 when we narrowly examine the lustre of his wonders, we shall see 
 them marked with divine characters which are only to be found in 
 the life of those great men. But, to judge of them by the eyes of 
 the senses alone, the parallel would not be favourable to Jesus 
 Christ. Is he greater than Abraham ; that man so great, that the 
 Lord himself, among his most pompous names, had taken that of 
 the God of Abraham, as if in order to proclaim to the world that 
 the homages of a man, so righteous and so extraordinary, were 
 more glorious to his sovereignty than the title of God of empires 
 and of nations : so great, that the Jews believed themselves supe- 
 rior to all other nations of the earth, only because they were the 
 posterity of that famous chief so cherished of Heaven ; and that fa- 
 thers, in recounting to their children the wonders of their nation, 
 and the history of their ancestors, animated them to virtue, only 
 by putting them in remembrance that they were the children of 
 Abraham and the members of a holy race ? Is he more wonderful 
 than Moses ; that man, mighty in words and in deeds, mediator of 
 a holy covenant, who broke the yoke of Egypt, and delivered his 
 people from bondage ; that man, who was established the god of 
 Pharaoh, who seemed the master of nature, who covered the earth 
 with plagues, who divided seas, who made a new nourishment to 
 be showered from heaven ; that man, who saw the Lord face to 
 face upon the holy mountain, and who appeared before Israel all 
 resplendent in light ? What is there more astonishing or more 
 magnificent in the life of Jesus Christ ? Nevertheless, these were 
 only rude sketches of his glory and might : he was to be the last 
 finishing and perfection of them. Now, if Jesus Christ were not 
 the image of the substance of his Father, and the eternal splendour 
 of his glory, he at the utmost, could only be equalled with these 
 first men ; and the credulity of the Jews might, without blasphemy, 
 demand of him, u Art thou greater than our father Abraham, or 
 than the prophets which are dead ? Whom makest thou thyself r" 
 I have then justly said, that if, in the first place, you will estimate 
 his ministry from that pompous train of oracles and of figures 
 which have announced him, the splendour is such, that, if Jesus 
 Christ be but a man similar to us, the wisdom itself of God would 
 be culpable of the mistake of those who worship him. 
 
 But, my brethren, the Christ hath been foretold with his mem- 
 bers ; we are comprised in the prophecies which have announced 
 him to the earth ; we have been promised as a holy race, a spiritual 
 people, who were to bear the law engraven on their heart, who 
 were to sigh only after eternal riches, and who were to adore in 
 spirit and in truth : like Jesus Christ, we have composed the ex- 
 pectation of the just of ancient times, and the desire of nations : 
 we are that new Jerusalem, pure and undefiled, so often announced 
 in the prophets, where God alone was to be known and worshipped ; 
 where faith was to be the sole light to illuminate us, charity the 
 only bond of union, and the land of promise the only hope to ani- 
 mate us. Now, do we answer an expectation so illustrious and so 
 holy ? Are we worthy of having been the earnest desire of all 
 
456 the divinity of Ser. 28. 
 
 those distant ages which have preceded us ? Do we merit to have 
 been looked forward to like celestial men, who were to fill the earth 
 with sanctity and righteousness ? Have not those ages been de- 
 ceived in their expectation of the Christian people ? Were the 
 just of those distant times to return upon the earth, could we pre- 
 sent ourselves to them, and say, Behold those celestial, spiritual, 
 temperate, believing, and charitable men, whom you expected? 
 Alas ! my brethren, the just of former times were Christians 
 before the birth of faith ; and we are still Jews, under all the ad- 
 vantages of the Gospel: we live solely for the earth : we know no 
 true riches but the present good : our whole religion is grounded in 
 the senses : we have received more assistances, but we are not more 
 believing. 
 
 To the lustre of the prophecies which have announced Jesus 
 Christ, we must add that of his works and of his miracles : second 
 resplendent character of his ministry. Yes, my brethren, even 
 admitting that Heaven had not promised him to the earth with 
 such magnificence ; that the manner in which he was to appear to 
 the earth had not constituted, during all these first ages, the sole 
 occupation and expectation of the universe ; did ever man appear 
 more wonderful, more divine in his actions, and in all the circum- 
 stances of his life ? 
 
 I say, first, in his actions and in his miracles. I know, and we 
 come from saying it, that, in the ages which preceded him, extra- 
 ordinary men had appeared upon the earth, to whom the Lord 
 seemed to have delegated his omnipotence and virtue: in Egypt 
 and in the desert Moses appeared the master of heaven and earth; 
 in the following ages Elijah came to present the same sight to men. 
 But, when we narrowly examine their power itself, we find that all 
 these miraculous men always bore with them the marks of weakness 
 and dependence. 
 
 Moses only operated his miracles with his mysterious rod; with- 
 out it he was no longer but a weak and powerless man; and it 
 would seem that the Lord had attached the virtue of miracles to 
 that morsel of parched wood for the purpose of making the Israelites 
 sensible that, in his hands, Moses himself was but a weak and 
 fragile instrument, whom he was pleased to employ in the opera- 
 tion of grand effects: Jesus Christ operates the grandest miracles, 
 even without speaking; and the sole touch of his garment cures 
 inveterate infirmities. Moses communicates not to his disciples 
 the power of operating miracles; for it was an extraneous gift 
 which he had received from Heaven, and which he had not the 
 power of delegating: Jesus Christ leaves to his disciples a still 
 greater efficacy than had appeared even in himself. Moses always 
 acts in the name of the Lord : Jesus Christ operates all in his own 
 name; and the works of his Father are his. Nevertheless, this 
 Moses, who had not been prophesied of like Jesus Christ, who re- 
 mitted not sins as he did, who never gave himself out as equal to 
 God, but only as his faithful servant, this Moses, dreading that, 
 after his death, his miracles should make him pass for a god, takes 
 
Ser. 28, jesus christ. 457 
 
 precautions lest, in the revolution of ages, the credulity of his 
 people render to him divine honours: he goes up alone to the 
 mountain, to expire far from the sight of his brethren, in the fear 
 of their coming to offer up victims upon his tomb, and for ever 
 removes his body from the superstition of the tribes: he does not 
 show himself to his disciples after his death; he contents himself 
 with leaving to them the law of God, and employs every mean to 
 obliterate himself from their remembrance. And Jesus Christ, 
 after all the miracles which he operates in Judea, after all the pro- 
 phecies which had announced him, after having appeared as a God 
 upon the earth, his tomb is known to all the universe, exposed to 
 the veneration of all people and ages; even after his death he shows 
 himself to his disciples. Was superstition, then, less to be dreaded 
 here? Or is Jesus Christ less zealous than Moses, for the glory 
 of the Supreme Being and for the salvation of men ? 
 
 Elijah, it is true, raises up the dead; but he is obliged to stretch 
 himself out upon the body of the child whom he recalls to life ; 
 and it is easily seen that he invokes a foreign power; that he with- 
 draws from the empire of death a soul which is not subjugated to 
 him; and that he is not himself the master of life and death. 
 Jesus Christ raised up the dead as easily as he performs the most 
 common actions; he speaks as master of those who repose in an 
 eternal sleep; and it is thoroughly felt that he is the God of the 
 dead as of the living, never more tranquil and calm than when he 
 is operating the grandest things. 
 
 Lastly. The poets represented to us their sybils and their 
 priestesses as mad women, while foretelling the future: it would 
 seem that they were unable to sustain the presence of the false 
 spirit which dwelt within them. Even our own prophets, when 
 announcing future things, without losing the use of their reason, 
 or departing from the solemnity and the decency of their ministry, 
 partook of a divine enthusiasm: the soft sounds of the lyre were 
 often necessary to arouse in them the prophetic spirit; it was easily 
 to be seen that they were animated by a foreign impulse, and that 
 it was not from their own funds they drew the knowledge of the 
 future, and those hidden mysteries which they announced to men. 
 Jesus Christ prophesies as he speaks ; the knowledge of the future 
 has nothing either to move, disquiet, or surprise him, because all 
 times are contained in his mind; the future mysteries which he 
 announces are not sudden and infused lights to his soul; they are 
 familiar objects to him, always present to his view, and the images 
 of which he finds within himself; and all ages to come, under the 
 immensity of his regards, are as the present day which illuminates 
 us. Thus, neither the resurrection of the dead, nor the foretelling 
 of the future, ever injures his natural tranquillity ; he sports him- 
 self, if I may venture to say so, in operating miracles in the uni- 
 verse ; and if he, at times, appear to tremble and to be troubled, 
 it is solely when viewing the sin and the perversity of his people; 
 because the more exalted one is in sanctity, the more does sin 
 offer new horrors ; and that the only thing which a Man-God can 
 
458 the divinity of Ser. 28. 
 
 view with trembling, is the spectacle of a conscience stained with 
 crimes. 
 
 Such is the omnipotency of Jesus Christ: his miracles bear no 
 mark of dependence ; and, not satisfied with thereby showing to 
 us that he is equal to God, he also advertises us, that, whatever 
 wonder is operated by his Father upon the earth, he likewise ope- 
 rates; and that his Fathers works are his. Hath any prophet, 
 down to the period of Jesus Christ, spoken in this manner; and who, 
 far from rendering glory to God as the author of every excellent 
 gift, hath attributed to himself all the grand things which it had 
 pleased the Lord to operate through his ministry? 
 
 But, my brethren, if we have also been prophesied with Jesus 
 Christ, we are moreover participators of his sovereignty over all 
 creatures. Through faith the Christian is master of nature: all is 
 subjected to him, because he himself is inferior only to God; all 
 his actions ought to be miraculous, because they ought all to pro- 
 ceed from a sublime and divine principle, and far above the pow- 
 ers of human weakness. We ought to be, as I may say, miraculous 
 men, masters of the world, in contemning it; exalted above the 
 laws of nature, by overcoming them ; sovereign disposers of events, 
 by a thorough and tranquil submission to them; more powerful 
 than death itself, by wishing for it. Such is the sublimity of the 
 Christian: and how great must Jesus Christ have been to have 
 exalted human weakness to such a pinnacle of grandeur and might ! 
 
 Finally. The last splendid character of his ministry is the mar- 
 vellous, and, till then, unheard-of circumstances which compose 
 the whole course of his mortal life. I know that he came in na- 
 kedness and humiliation; but, through these obscure and con- 
 temptible externals, what lustre are not even the enemies of his 
 divinity forced to acknowledge there ! 
 
 In the first place, although they consider him as a man similar 
 to us, they, nevertheless, believe him to have been formed, through 
 the invisible operation of the Most High, in the womb of a virgin 
 of Judah, in opposition to the common law of the children of Adam. 
 What glory already for a simple creature ! 
 
 Secondly. Scarcely is he born, when celestial legions sing the 
 praises of the Lord, and give us to understand, that this birth ren- 
 ders glory to the Most High, and brings an eternal peace upon 
 the earth. What then is this creature who can render glory to 
 the Most High, whose glory is in himself alone? Immediately 
 after this a new star calls the wise men from the heart of the East; 
 and, guided by that miraculous light, those righteous men come 
 from the extremities of the earth to worship the new King of 
 the Jews. 
 
 Trace all the circumstances of his life. If Mary bring him to 
 the temple, a righteous man and a holy woman proclaim his future 
 greatness; and, transported with a holy joy, they die with pleasure, 
 after having seen him whom they call the salvation of the world, 
 the light of nations, and the glory of Israel. The doctors, assem- 
 bled in the temple, behold, with terror, his infancy to be wiser 
 
Ser. 28. jesus christ. 459 
 
 and more enlightened than all the wisdom of old men. In pro- 
 portion as he grows up, his glory unfolds itself: John the Baptist, 
 that man, the greatest of the children of men, humbles himself 
 before him, and says that he is not worthy of performing the 
 meanest offices to him. A voice from Heaven declares that he is 
 the well-beloved Son. The affrighted demons fly from before him, 
 are unable to support the sole presence of his sanctity, and confess 
 that he is the holy of God. Collect together testimonies so differ- 
 ent and so new, circumstances so unheard-of and so extraordinary; 
 what is this man who appears upon the earth with so much eclat ? 
 And are not the people who have worshipped him at least excusable ? 
 
 But these are only weak preludes of his glory. If he privately 
 withdraw himself upon the Tabor, accompanied with three disci- 
 ples, his glory, impatient, if I dare to say it, at having hitherto 
 been held captive under the veil of humanity, openly bursts forth : 
 he appears all resplendent in light; the heavenly Father, who 
 then, it would appear, lest the glory of Jesus Christ should become 
 an occasion of error and idolatry to the astonished disciples, spec- 
 tators of this sight, ought to have warned them that this Jesus, 
 whom they beheld so glorious, was nevertheless only his servant 
 and messenger, declares to them, on the contrary, that this is his 
 well-beloved Son, in whom he his well pleased, and affixes no 
 bounds to the homages which, according to his pleasure, they are 
 to render to him. When Moses appeared surrounded with glory, 
 and, as it were transfigured on Mount Sinai, afraid lest the Israel- 
 ites, always superstitious, should consider him as a god descended 
 upon the earth, the Lord, amid a flame of fire, declared at the 
 same time from on high, " I am that I am, and thou shalt worship 
 only me." Moses himself appears before the people with only the 
 tables of the law in his hands, as if to let them know that, not- 
 withstanding the glory with which they had seen him arrayed, he 
 nevertheless was only the minister, and not the author of the holy 
 law ; that he could offer it to them only engraven on stone, and 
 that it belonged solely to God to engrave it on hearts. But on 
 the Tabor, Jesus Christ appears as the legislator himself: the new 
 law is not given to him by his Father to bear it to men; he only 
 commandeth them to listen to him, and from his own mouth he 
 proposeth him as their legislator, or rather as their living and 
 eternal law. 
 
 What more shall I say, my brethren ? If from the Tabor we 
 pass to Mount Calvary, that place, in which all the ignominy of the 
 Son of Man was to be consummated, is not less, however, the thea- 
 tre of his glory and divinity. All nature, disorganized, confesses 
 its Author in him; the stars which are hidden; the dead who arise; 
 the stones of the tombs, which open of their own accord, and 
 break in pieces; the veil of the temple, which is rent from top to 
 bottom; even incredulity itself, which confesses him through the 
 mouth of the centurion; all feel that it is not an ordinary man who 
 dies, and that things take place upon that mouni totally new and 
 extraordinary. 
 
460 the divinity of Ser. 28. 
 
 Many righteous before him had died for the truth, by the hands 
 of the impious. The head of the forerunner had lately been seen 
 in the palace of Herod, as the price of voluptuousness. Isaiah, by 
 a grievous death, had rendered glory to God; and, notwithstand- 
 ing his royal blood, his august birth was ineffectual in sheltering 
 him from those persecutions which are always the recompense of 
 truth and zeal. Many others have died for the sake of righteous- 
 ness; but nature seemed not wholly interested in their sufferings; 
 the dead forsook not their tombs, to come, and, as it were, reproach 
 to the living their sacrilege; nothing, in any degree similar, had, 
 as yet, appeared upon the earth. 
 
 Survey the rest of his mysteries; everywhere you will find traits 
 which distinguish him from all other men. If he rise up from 
 among the dead, besides that it is through his own efficiency, 
 (which no eye had ever yet beheld,) it is not, like so many others, 
 who had been raised up through the ministry of the prophets, to 
 return once more into the empire of death : he arises, never more 
 to die; and, even here below, he receives an immortal life, which 
 is what had never yet been accorded to any creature. 
 
 If he is carried up into heaven, it is not in a flaming chariot that 
 he vanishes in the twinkling of an eye; he ascends with majesty, 
 and allows all leisure to his affectionate disciples to worship him, 
 and to accompany their divine Master with their eyes and their 
 homages. The angels, as if to receive him into his empire, come 
 to greet this King of Glory and comfort the affliction of the disci- 
 ples, by promising him once more to the earth, surrounded with 
 glory and immortality. All here announces the God of heaven, 
 who returns to the place from whence he came, and who goes to 
 resume the possession of his own glory ; at least, every thing in- 
 clines men to believe so. 
 
 And, in truth, my brethren, when Elijah is taken up to heaven 
 in a fiery chariot, a single disciple is the only spectator of that mi- 
 raculous ascension ; it takes place in a retired spot, removed from 
 the view of the other children of the prophets, who, perhaps more 
 credulous and less enlightened than Eliseus, might have been in- 
 clined to render divine honours to that miraculous man. But 
 Jesus Christ surrounded with glory, mounts up to heaven before the 
 eyes of five hundred disciples : the weakest and those who are least 
 confirmed in the faith of his resurrection, are the first who are in- 
 vited to the holy mountain : nothing is dreaded from their credu- 
 lity: on the contrary, their adorations are equally permitted as 
 their regrets and tears ; and a life full of prodigies, till then so un- 
 heard-of on the earth, is at last terminated by a circumstance still 
 more wonderful, and sufficient of itself to make him to be regarded 
 as a God, and to immortalize error and idolatry among men. 
 
 In effect, if the pagan ages, in order to justify the ridiculous and 
 impious homages which they paid to their legislators, to the foun- 
 ders of empires, and to other celebrated men, gave it out, in their 
 historians and poets, that these heroes were not dead, but had only 
 disappeared from the earth; and that, being of the same nature 
 
Ser. 28. jesus christ. 461 
 
 with the gods, they had ascended to heaven in order to assume 
 their station among the other stars, which, according to them, were 
 so many divinities who enlighten us, and for the purpose of there 
 enjoying that immortality to which their divine birth entitled them: 
 if so very vulgar a fiction had of itself been able to render men so 
 long idolatrous, what impression must the reality of that fable not 
 have made upon the people! And if the universe had worshipped 
 impostors, who were falsely said to have mounted up to heaven, 
 would it not have been excusable to worship a miraculous man, 
 whom men, with their own eyes, had seen exalted above the stars ? 
 But observe, my brethren, that the occasion of error finishes 
 not with Jesus Christ ; it is announced to us that, at the end of 
 ages, he will again appear in the heavens, surrounded with power 
 and majesty, and accompanied with all the heavenly host; all 
 assembled nations shall, with trembling, await at his feet the de- 
 cision of their eternal destiny: he will sovereignly pronounce their 
 decisive sentence. The Abrahams, the Moseses, the Davids, the 
 Elijahs, the John the Baptists, and all that ages have produced 
 of great and most wonderful, shall be submitted to his judgment 
 and to his empire; he will himself be exalted above all power, 
 all dominion, and all which is termed great in heaven and in the 
 earth: he will erect his throne above the clouds, and sit on the 
 right hand of the Most High: he will appear Master, not only of 
 life and death, but the immortal King of ages, the Prince of 
 eternity, the chief of a holy people, the supreme Arbiter of all the 
 created. What then is this man to whom the Lord hath delegated 
 such power? And the dead themselves who shall appear in judg- 
 ment before him, shall they be condemned for having worshipped 
 him, when they shall see him clothed with such glory, majesty, 
 and power. 
 
 And one reflection, which I beg you to make in finishing this 
 part of my Discourse, is, that, if only one extraordinary and divine 
 trait were to be found here in the course of a long life, we might be 
 inclined to believe that it sometimes pleaseth the Lord to allow 
 his glory and his power to shine forth in his servants. Thus Enoch 
 was carried up, Moses appeared transfigured on the holy moun- 
 tain, Elijah was raised up to heaven in a fiery chariot, John the 
 Baptist was foretold. But, besides that these were individual cir- 
 cumstances, and that the language of those miraculous men and of 
 their disciples, with respect to the Divinity and to themselves, left 
 no room for superstition and mistake ; here, it is an assemblage of 
 wonders, which all, or even taken separately, would have been suf- 
 ficient to deceive the credulity of men ; here, all the different traits, 
 dispersed among all these extraordinary men, who had been con- 
 sidered almost as gods upon the earth, are collected together in 
 Jesus Chtist, but in a manner a thousand times more glorious and 
 more divine. He prophecies, but more loftily, and with more 
 striking characters, than John the Baptist : he appears transfigured 
 in the holy mount, but surrounded with more glory than Moses : 
 he ascends to heaven, but with more marks of power and majesty 
 
462 the divinity of Ser. 28. 
 
 than Elijah : he penetrates into the future, but with more accuracy 
 and clearness than all the prophets : he is produced, not only from 
 a barren womb like Samuel, but likewise by a pure and innocent 
 virgin. What shall I say ? And not only he does not undeceive 
 men by certain precise expressions upon his origin as purely 
 human ; but his sole language, with respect to his equality to the 
 Most High, nay, the sole doctrine of his disciples, who tell us 
 that he was in the bosom of God from all eternity, and that all 
 hath been made through him, who call him their Lord and their 
 God, who inform us that he is all and in all things, would jus- 
 tify the errors of those who worship him, had even his life been, 
 in other respects, an ordinary one, and similar to that of other men. 
 
 O you ! who refuse to him his glory and his divinity,, yet never- 
 theless, consider him as a messenger sent by God to instruct 
 men, complete the blasphemy, and confound him with those im- 
 postors who have come to seduce the world, since, far from tending 
 to establish the glory of God and the knowledge of his name, 
 the splendour of his ministry has answered the sole purpose of 
 erecting himself into a divinity, of placing him at the side of the 
 Most High, and of plunging the whole universe into the most dan- 
 gerous, the most durable, the most inevitable, and the most uni- 
 versal of all idolatries. 
 
 For our part, my brethren, we who believe in him, and to whom 
 the mystery of the Christ hath been revealed, let us never lose sight 
 of that divine model which the Father shows to us from on high on 
 the holy mount. Let us enter into the spirit of the divers myste- 
 ries of which his whole mortal life is composed ; they are merely 
 the different states of the life of the Christian on this earth ; let us 
 confess the new empire which Jesus Christ came to form in our 
 hearts. The world, which we have hitherto served, hath never 
 been able to deliver us from our grievances and wretchedness. 
 We vainly sought in it, freedom, peace, and comfort of life ; and 
 we have found only slavery, disquiet, bitterness, and the curse of 
 life. Behold a new Redeemer, who comes to bring peace to the 
 earth ; but it is not as the world promises it that he gives it to us. 
 The world had wished to conduct us to peace and happiness 
 through the pleasures of the senses, indolence, and a vain philo- 
 sophy : it hath not been successful ; by favouring our passions 
 it hath only augmented our punishments. Jesus Christ comes 
 to propose a new way for the attainment of that peace and happi- 
 ness which we search after : detachment from, and contempt of the 
 world, mortification of the senses, self-denial; behold the new 
 riches which he comes to display to men. Let us be undeceived ; 
 we have no happiness to expect, even in this life, but by repressing 
 our passions, and by refusing ourselves the gratification of every 
 pleasure which disquiets and corrupts the heart : there is no phi- 
 losophy, but that of the Gospel, which can bestow happiness, or 
 make real sages, because it alone regulates the mind, fixes the 
 heart, and, by restoring man to God, restores him to himself. All 
 those who have pursued other ways, have found only vanity and 
 
Ser. 28* jesus Christ. 463 
 
 vexation of spirit ; and Jesus Christ alone, in bringing the sword 
 and separation, is come to bring peace among men. 
 
 O my God ! I know only too well that the world and its plea- 
 sures make none happy ! Come, then, and resume thy influence 
 over a heart which in vain endeavours to fly from thee, and which 
 its own disgusts recall to thee in spite of itself : come to be its Re- 
 deemer, its peace, and its light, and pay more regard to its wretch- 
 edness than to its crimes. 
 
 Behold how the lustre of the ministry of Jesus Christ would 
 operate as an inevitable occasion of idolatry in men, were he only 
 a simple creature. Let us now see how the spirit of his ministry 
 would become the snare of our innocence. 
 
 Part II. The lustre of the ministry of Jesus Christ is not the 
 most august and most magnificent side of it. However dignified 
 he hath appeared, in consequence of all the oracles which have 
 announced him, the works which he hath operated, and the shining 
 circumstances of his mysteries, these are merely the outward ap- 
 pearances, as I may say, of his glory and of his grandeur ; and, in 
 order to know all that he is, we must enter into the principle and 
 spirit of his ministry. Now, in the spirit of his ministry are com- 
 prised his doctrine, his favours, and his promises. Let us display 
 these in their proper extent, and prove, either that we must deny 
 to Jesus Christ his quality of a righteous man, and of a messenger 
 of the Almighty God, which the enemies of his divinity grant him 
 to have been, or we must admit that he is himself a God mani- 
 fested in the flesh, and come down upon the earth in order to save 
 mankind. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, this is an inevitable alternative : if Jesus 
 Christ be holy, he is God ; and if his ministry be not a ministry 
 of deceit and imposition, it is the ministry of Eternal Truth itself, 
 which hath been manifested for our instruction. Now, the enemies 
 of his" divine birth, are forced to admit, that he hath been a man 
 righteous, innocent, and a friend of God : and if the world hath 
 beheld dark and impious minds, who have likewise dared to blas- 
 pheme against his innocence, and to confound him with seducers, 
 these have been only some individual monsters who were held in 
 abhorrence by the human race, and whose names, too odious to all 
 nature, are for ever buried in the same darkness from which the 
 horror of their impiety originally came. 
 
 In effect, what man, till then, had appeared upon the earth with 
 more incontestable marks of innocence and sanctity than Jesus, 
 Son of the living God ? In what philosopher had ever been ob- 
 served such a love of virtue, so sincere a contempt of the world, so 
 much charity toward men, such indifference for human glory, such 
 zeal for the glory of the Supreme Being, such elevation above 
 whatever is admired or sought after by men ? How great is his 
 zeal for the salvation of men ! It is to that object that he directs 
 all his discourses, all his cares, all his desires, and all his anxieties. 
 The philosophers criticised only the men, and solely endeavoured 
 
464 the divinity of Ser. 28. 
 
 to expose their weakness or their absurdities : Jesus Christ never 
 speaks of their vices but in order to point out their remedies. The 
 former were the censurers of human weaknesses ; Jesus Christ is 
 their physician : the former gloried in being able to point out vices 
 in others, from which they themselves were not exempted ; he 
 never speaks, but with the bitterest sorrow, of faults, from which 
 his own innocence protects him, and even sheds tears over the 
 disorders of an unbelieving city : it is easily seen that the former 
 had no intention to reclaim men, but merely to attract esteem to 
 themselves, by pretending to contemn them ; and that the only wish 
 of the latter is to save them, and that he is little affected with their 
 applauses or esteem. 
 
 Pursue the whole detail of his manners and of his conduct, and 
 see if any righteous character hath ever appeared on the earth 
 more generally exempted from all the most inseparable weaknesses 
 of humanity. The more narrowly he is examined, the more is his 
 sanctity displayed. His disciples, who have it best in their power 
 to know him, are the most affected with the innocence of his life ; 
 and familiarity, so dangerous to the most heroical virtue, serves 
 only in his to discover fresh matter of wonder. He speaks only 
 the language of heaven: he never replies but when his answers 
 may be useful toward the salvation of those who interrogate 
 him. We see not in him those intervals, as I may say, in which 
 the man re-appears; on every occasion he is the messenger of the 
 Most High. The commonest actions are extraordinary in him, 
 through the novelty and the sublimity of the dispositions with 
 which he accompanies them ; and, when he eats with the pharisee, 
 he does not appear a man less divine than when he raises up 
 Lazarus. Surely, my brethern, nature alone could never lead 
 human weakness so far; this is not a philosopher who enjoins to 
 others what he doth not himself, it is a righteous character, who, 
 in his own examples, adopts the rules and precepts of his doctrine; 
 and holy must he indeed be, seeing the very disciple who betrayed 
 him, so interested to justify his own perfidy by an exposure of his 
 faults, renders public testimony, however, to his innocence and 
 sanctity : and that the whole challenged malice of his enemies 
 hath never been able to convict him of sin. 
 
 Now, I say, that, if Jesus Christ be holy, he is God ; and that, 
 whether you should consider the doctrine which he hath taught 
 us with respect to his Father or with respect to men, it is no 
 longer but a mass of equivocations, or qualified blasphemies, if 
 he be only an ordinary man, merely deputed by God for the in- 
 struction of men. 
 
 I say, whether you should consider it with respect to his Father. 
 In effect, if Jesus Christ be but a simple messenger of the Most 
 High, he comes, then, for the sole purpose of manifesting to idola- 
 trous nations the unity of the Divine essence. But, besides, that 
 his mission principally regards the Jews, who for a long time past, 
 had not returned to idolatry, and, consequently, needed not that 
 God should raise up a prophet to reclaim them from an error of 
 
Ser. 28. jesus christ. 465 
 
 which they were not guilty, and a prophet whom they were taught 
 from the beginning of the world to expect as the light of Israel 
 and the Redeemer of his people ; and, besides, in what manner doth 
 Jesus Christ fulfil his ministry, and what is his language with regard 
 to the Supreme Being ? Moses and the prophets, charged with the 
 same mission, never cease to proclaim that the Lord was one and 
 the same ; that it was impious to compare him to the similitude 
 of the creature ; and that they themselves were only his servants 
 and messengers, vile instruments in the hands of a God, who, 
 through them, operated great things. No dubious expression 
 escapes from their mouth on so essential a point of their mission ; 
 no comparison of themselves to the Supreme Being, always dan- 
 gerous, in consequence of the natural tendency of man to prostitute 
 his homages to men, and to raise up for himself palpable and visi- 
 ble gods ; no equivocal term which might have blended themselves 
 with the Lord, in whose name they spake, and have given birth to 
 a superstition and an idolatry, to combat which they only came. 
 
 But if Jesus Christ be only a messenger such as they were, 
 with how much less fidelity doth he fulfil his ministry ! He con- 
 tinually says, that he is equal to his Father ; he acquaints us, that 
 he hath come down from heaven, and that he hath quitted the 
 bosom of God ; that he was before Abraham ; that he was before 
 all things ; that the Father and he are one ; that eternal life con- 
 sists in the knowledge of the Son, as well as in the knowledge of 
 the Father; that whatever is done by the Father, the Son also 
 doth. Had any prophet, down to Jesus Christ, spoken in a lan- 
 guage so new, so strange, so disrespectful toward the Supreme 
 God; and who, far from rendering the glory to God as the author 
 of every good gift, hath attributed to his own efficiency the great 
 things which the Lord hath deigned to operate through his minis- 
 try ? Every where he compares himself to the sovereign God ; on 
 one occasion, indeed, he says that the Father is greater than he ; 
 but what language is that, if he be not himself a God manifested 
 in flesh? And would we not consider as a fool any man who 
 should seriously tell us that the Supreme Being is greater than 
 he ? Even to dare to compare himself with the Divinity, is it not 
 equalling himself to him ? Is there any proportion either of greater 
 or less between God and man, between the whole and nothing ? 
 But what do I say ? Jesus Christ is not content with saying that 
 he is equal to God ; he even justifies the novelty of these expres- 
 sions against the murmurings of the Jews who are offended at 
 them ; far from clearly undeceiving them, he confirms them in 
 the offence ; on every occasion he affects a language, which, un- 
 less cleared up and justified by his equality to his Father, becomes 
 either foolish or impious. If he be not God, what came he to do 
 upon the earth ? He comes to offend the Jews, by giving them 
 room to believe that he compares himself to the Most High: 
 he comes to seduce nations, by procuring to himself the adora- 
 tion of the whole earth after his death : he comes to spread fresh 
 obscurity over the universe, and not, as he hath vaunted, to 
 
 H H 
 
466 the divinity of Ser. 28. 
 
 spread understanding, light, and the knowledge of God. What ! 
 my brethern, Paul and Barnabas rend their garments when they 
 are taken for gods ; they loudly proclaim to the people who wished 
 to offer up victims to them Worship the Lord alone, whose ser- 
 vants and ministers we are. The angel in the Revelation, when 
 St. John prostrates himself to worship him, rejects the homage 
 with horror, and says to him, " Worship God alone ; I am only 
 thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of 
 Jesus." And Jesus Christ tranquilly suffers that they render divine 
 honours to him ! And Jesus Christ praises the faith of the dis- 
 ciples who worship him, and who, with Thomas, call him their 
 Lord and their God! And Jesus Christ even confutes his enemies 
 who contest his divinity and divine orgin ! Is he, then, less zealous 
 than his disciples for the glory of him who sends him ? Or is it a 
 matter of less importance to him, pointedly to undeceive the people 
 on a mistake so injurious to the Supreme Being, and which, in 
 fact, destroys the whole fruit of his ministry? 
 
 Yes, my brethern, what a blessing hath the coming of Jesus 
 Christ brought to the world, if those who worship him be idolatrous 
 and profane ! All who have believed in him have worshipped him 
 as the eternal Son of the Father, the image of his substance, and 
 the splendour of his glory. There is but a small number of men in 
 Christianity, who, though they acknowledge him as a messen- 
 ger of God, yet refuse to him divine honours ; even this sect, uni- 
 versally banished, and execrable even in those places where every 
 error finds an asylum, is reduced to a few obscure and concealed 
 followers, every where punished as an impiety from the instant 
 that it dares to avow itself, and forced to hide itself in obscurity, 
 and in the extremities of the most distant provinces and king- 
 doms. Is it, then, that numerous people of every tongue, of every 
 tribe, and of every nation, which Jesus Christ came to form upon 
 the earth ? Is it a Jerusalem, formerly barren, and become fruit- 
 ful, which was to contain tribes and nations in its bosom, and 
 where the most distant isles, princes, and kings, were to come to 
 worship ? Are these the grand advantages which the world was 
 to reap from the ministry of Jesus Christ ? Is this, then, that 
 abundance of grace, that plenitude of the Spirit God shed over 
 all men, that universal regeneration, that spiritual and lasting 
 reign which the prophets had foretold with such majesty, and 
 which was to attend the coming of the Redeemer? What, my 
 brethren, an expectation so magnificent is then reduced to the mi- 
 serable sight of the world plunged into a new idolatry ? That event, 
 so blessed for the earth, promised for so many ages, announced 
 with so much pomp, so earnestly longed for by all the righteous, 
 and held out from afar to the whole universe as its only resource, 
 was then to corrupt and to prevent it for ever ? That church, so 
 fruitful, of which kings and Caesars, at the head of their people, 
 were to be the children, was then to contain, in its bosom, only a 
 small number of men, equally odious to heaven and to the earth, 
 the disgrace of nature and of religion, and obliged to seek, in 
 
Ser. 28. jesus Christ. 467 
 
 obscurity, a shelter for the horror of their blasphemy ? And all the 
 future magnificence of the Gospel was then to be limited to the 
 formation of the detestable sect of an impious Socinus ? 
 
 O God ! how wise and reasonable doth the faith of thy church 
 appear, when opposed to the absurd contradictions of unbelief? 
 And how consoling for those who believe in Jesus Christ, and who 
 place their hope in him, to behold the abysses which pride digs for 
 itself when it pretends to open new ways, and to sap the only 
 foundation of the hope of Christians. 
 
 Behold, my brethren, how the doctrine of Jesus Christ, with 
 relation to his Father, establishes the glory of his eternal origin. 
 Thus, when the prophets speak of the God of heaven and of the 
 earth, their expressions are too weak for the magnificence and the 
 grandeur of their ideas. Full of the immensity, the omnipotence, 
 and the majesty of the Supreme Being, they exhaust the weakness 
 of the human language, in order, if possible, to correspond with 
 the sublimity of these images. That God is he who measures the 
 waters of the ocean in the hollow of his hand, who weighs the 
 mountains in his balance, in whose hands are the thunders and the 
 tempests, who speaks, and all is done; who faints not, neither is 
 weary, in upholding the universe. It was natural for simple men 
 to speak in this manner of the glory of the Most High; the infinite 
 disproportion between the immensity of the Supreme Being and 
 the weaknesses of the human mind must strike, dazzle, and con- 
 found it; and the most pompous expressions are too feeble to con- 
 vey its astonishment and admiration. 
 
 But when Jesus Christ speaks of the glory of the Lord, it is no 
 longer in the pompous style of the prophets; he calls him a holy 
 Father, a righteous Father, a merciful Father, a Shepherd who 
 pursues a strayed sheep, who kindly bears it home himself; a 
 Friend who yields to the importunities of his friend; a Father feel- 
 ingly affected with the return and the amendment of his son: it 
 is clearly seen that this is a Child who speaks a domestic language; 
 that the familarity and the simplicity of his expressions suppose in 
 him a sublimity of knowledge which renders the idea of a Supreme 
 Being familiar to him, and prevents him from being struck and 
 dazzled, as we are, with his majesty and glory; and, lastly, that he 
 only speaks of what is laid open to his view, and which he pos- 
 sesses himself. A person is much less struck with the eclat of 
 titles which he has borne, as I may say, from his birth : the chil- 
 dren of kings speak, without emotion, of sceptres and crowns ; 
 and it is likewise the eternal Son alone of the living God who can 
 speak so familiarly of the glory of God himself. 
 
 Behold, my brethren, seeing we participate with Jesus Christ in 
 all his blessings, the right which he hath acquired for us, of consi- 
 dering God as our Father, of daring to call ourselves his children, 
 and of loving rather than of fearing him. Nevertheless, we serve 
 him like slaves and hirelings; we dread his chastisement, but we 
 are little affected by his love and his promises: his law, so righte- 
 ous, so holy, has nothing pleasing for us; it is a yoke which op- 
 
 h h 2 
 
468 the divinity of Ser. 28. 
 
 presses us, which excites our murmurs, and which we would soon 
 free ourselves from, were our transgressions against it to go un- 
 punished : nothing is heard but complaints against the severity of 
 its precepts, but contentions in order to support the propriety of 
 those sufferings which the world always mingles with their prac- 
 tice: in a word, were he not an avenging God, we would never 
 confess him ; and it is to his justice and to his chastisements alone 
 that he is indebted for our respect and homages. 
 
 But the doctrine of Jesus Christ, with relation to men whom he 
 came to instruct, doth not less establish the truth of his divine 
 birth; for I speak not here of the wisdom, the sanctity, and the 
 sublimity of that doctrine : in it every thing is worthy of reason, 
 and of the soundest philosophy: every thing is proportioned to the 
 wretchedness and the excellency of man, to his wants and to his 
 exalted lot; every thing there inspires contempt for perishable 
 things, and the love of eternal riches: every thing there maintains 
 good order, and the peace and tranquillity of states: every thing 
 there is grand, because every thing is true : the glory of the deeds 
 is more real and more shining in the heart than the deeds them- 
 selves. The wise man of the Gospel seeks, from his virtue here 
 below, only the satisfaction of obeying God, who will one day am- 
 ply recompense him for it; and he prefers the testimony of his own 
 conscience to all the applauses of men: he is greater than the en- 
 tire world, through his exalted faith; and he is below the least of 
 men, through the modesty of his sentiments. His virtue seeks not, 
 in pride, the indemnity of its sufferings : that is the first enemy 
 which it attacks; and, in that divine philosophy, the most heroical 
 actions are nothing, from the moment that we count them as any 
 thing ourselves : it considers glory as an error, prosperity as a mis- 
 fortune, elevation as a precipice, afflictions as favours, the earth as 
 a place of exilement, all that happens as a dream. What is this 
 new language ? What man prior to Jesus Christ hath ever spoken 
 in this manner? And if his disciples, merely in consequence of 
 having announced this divine doctrine, were taken by a whole 
 people for gods descended upon the earth, what worship shall they 
 have it in their power to refuse to him who is the Author of it, 
 and in whose name they announce it ? 
 
 But let us leave these general reflections, and come to the more 
 precise duties of that love and dependence which his doctrine ex- 
 acts of men with regard to himself. He commands us to love him 
 as he commands us to love his Father: he insists that we dwell in 
 him, that is to say, that we establish ourselves in him, that we 
 seek our happiness in him, as in his Father; that we direct all our 
 actions, all our thoughts, all our desires, that we direct ourselves 
 to his glory, as to the glory of his Father. Sins themselves are 
 not remitted but to those who sincerely love him; and all the 
 righteousness of the just, and the reconciliation of the sinner, are 
 the effects of the love which we have for him. What is this man 
 who comes to usurp the place of God in our hearts? Is a creature 
 worthy of being loved for itself, and every noble and estimable 
 
Ser. 28. jesus christ. 469 
 
 quality which it may possess, is it not the sole gift of him who 
 alone is worthy of all love ? 
 
 What prophet prior to Jesus Christ had ever spoken thus to men, 
 You shall love me : whatever you do, you shall do it for my glory? 
 You shall love the Lord your God, said Moses to the chil- 
 dren of Israel. Nothing is amiable in itself but what can bestow 
 happiness upon us : now, no creature can be our happiness or our 
 perfection: no creature, consequently, is worthy of being loved for 
 itself; it would be an idolatry. Any man, who comes to propose 
 himself to men as the object of their love, is impious and an im- 
 postor, who seeks to usurp the most essential right of the Supreme 
 Being: he is a monster of pride and folly, who wants to erect altars 
 to himself, even in hearts, the only sanctuary which the Divinity 
 had never yielded up to profane idols. The doctrine of Jesus Christ, 
 that doctrine so divine, and so much admired even by the pagans, 
 would no longer, in that case, be but a monstrous mixture of im- 
 piety, of presumption, and of folly, if, not being himself the God 
 blessed in all ages, he had made that love which he exacted of his 
 disciples the most essential precept of his morality; and it would 
 be a ridiculous mark of ostentation in him to have held himself out 
 to men as a model of humility and modesty, while, in fact, he was 
 carrying presumption and unlimited compliance to a degree far be- 
 yond all the proudest philosophers, who had never aspired to more 
 than the esteem and the applauses of men. 
 
 Nor is this all: not only Jesus Christ insists that we love him, 
 but he also exacts of men marks of the most disinterested and most 
 heroical love : he insists that we love him more than our relations, 
 than our friends, than our fortune, than our life, than the whole 
 world, than ourselves ; that we suffer all for his sake, that we re- 
 nounce all for him, that we shed, even to the last drop, our blood 
 for him : whoever renders not to him these grand homages is un- 
 worthy of him : whoever puts him in competition with any crea- 
 ture, or with himself, insults and dishonours him, and forfeits every 
 pretension to his promises. 
 
 What! my brethren, he is not satisfied, as the idols, and even 
 the true God himself had appeared to be, with the sacrifices of 
 goats and bulls! he carries his pretensions still farther, and 
 requires of man the sacrifice of himself; that he fly to gibbets; 
 that he offered himself to death and to martyrdom for the glory 
 of his name! But if he be not the master of our life, by what right 
 doth he exact it of us ? If our soul be not originally come from 
 him, is it to him that we ought to return it ? Is that regaining it, 
 to have lost it for his sake ? If he be not the Author of our being, 
 do we not become sacrilegious and murderers, when we sacrifice 
 ourselves for his glory, and when we transfer to a creature, and to 
 a simple messenger of God, the grand sacrifice of our being, solely 
 destined to confess the sovereignty and the power of the eternal 
 Maker, who hath drawn us from nothing? That Jesus Christ die 
 for himself, well and good, for the glory of God, and even that he 
 exhort us to follow his example : many prophets before him had 
 died for the Lord's sake, and had exhorted their disciples to walk 
 
470 the divinity of Ser. 28. 
 
 in their steps ; but that Jesus Christ if he be not God himself, 
 should order us to die for himself, should exact of men that last proof 
 of love, that he should command us to offer up a life for him 
 which we hold not of him, is it possible that men should have ever 
 existed upon the earth so vulgar and so stupid as to allow them- 
 selves to be led away by the extravagance of such a doctrine ? Is 
 it possible that maxims so ridiculous and so impious should have 
 been able to triumph over the whole universe, to overthrow all 
 sects, to recall all minds, and to prevail over every thing which had 
 hitherto appeared exalted, either in learning, in doctrine, or in the 
 wisdom of the earth ? And, if we consider as barbarians those sa- 
 vage nations who make a sacrifice of themselves upon the tombs 
 and ashes of their relations and friends, why should we view in a 
 more respectable light those disciples of Jesus Christ who have 
 sacrificed themselves for his sake ? and shall not his religion be 
 equally a religion of barbarity and of blood. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, the Agnesses, the Lucias, the Agathas, those 
 first martyrs of faith and of modesty, would then have sacrificed 
 themselves to a mortal man. And, in preferring to shed their 
 blood rather than to bend the knee before vain idols, they would 
 have shunned one idolatry only in order to fall into another more 
 condemnable, in dying for Jesus Christ. The generous avowers 
 of faith would then have been only a set of desperate and fanatical 
 men, who, like madmen, had run to death. The tradition of the 
 martyrs would then be no longer but the list of an impious and 
 bloody scene. The tyrants and persecutors would then have been 
 the defenders of righteousness, and of the glory of the Divinity, 
 Christianity itself a sacrilegious and profane sect. The human 
 race would then have totally erred. And the blood of the martyrs, 
 far from having been the seed of believers, would have answered 
 the sole purpose of inundating the whole universe with superstition 
 and idolatry. O God ! can the ear of man listen to such blas- 
 phemies without horror ? and what more is necessary to overthrow 
 unbelief than to show it to itself ? 
 
 Such are our first duties toward Jesus Christ; to sacrifice to 
 him our inclinations, our friends, our relations, our fortune, our 
 life itself, and, in a word, whatever may stand in the way of our 
 salvation ; it is to confess his divinity : it is to acknowledge that 
 he alone can supply the place of all that we forsake for him, and 
 render to us even more than we quit, by giving us himself. It is 
 he alone, says the apostle John, who contemns the world and all 
 its pleasures, who confesses that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, 
 because he thereby pronounces that Jesus Christ is greater than 
 the world, more capable of rendering us happy, and consequently 
 more worthy of our love. 
 
 But it is not sufficient to have considered the spirit of the 
 ministry of Jesus Christ in his doctrine ; it is necessary to con- 
 sider it, secondly, in the special favours and blessings which 
 the universe has received from him. He came to deliver all 
 men from eternal death; from enemies of God, as they were, 
 he hath rendered them his children ; he hath secured to them 
 
Ser. 28. jesus christ. 471 
 
 the possession of the kingdom of God, and of immutable riches ; 
 he hath brought to them the knowledge of salvation and the 
 doctrine of truth. These gifts, so magnificent, have not ended 
 even with him : seated on the right hand of his Father, he still 
 sheds them over our hearts; all our miseries still find their 
 remedy in him; he nourishes us with his body; he washes 
 us from our stains by continually applying to us the price of his 
 blood ; he forms pastors to conduct us ; be inspires prophets to 
 instruct us; he sanctifies righteous characters to animate us by 
 their example ; he is continually present in our hearts to com- 
 fort all their wants : man hath no passion which his grace doth 
 not cure, no affliction which it doth not render pleasing, no 
 power but what springs from him: in a word, he assures us 
 himself, that he is our way, our truth, our life, our righteous- 
 ness, our redemption, our light. What new doctrine is this? 
 Can an individual man be the source of so many benefits to 
 other men? Can the sovereign God, so jealous of his glory, 
 attach us to a creature, by duties and ties so intimate and sacred, 
 that we depend almost more upon that creature than upon himself? 
 Would there be no danger that a man, become so beneficial and 
 so necessary to other men, should at last become their idol ? That 
 a man, author and dispenser of so many blessings, and who dis- 
 charges, with regard to us, the office and all the functions of a God, 
 should likewise, in a little time, occupy his place in our hearts ? 
 
 For observe, my brethren, that it is gratitude alone which hath 
 formerly made so many gods. Men, neglecting the Author of 
 their being and of the universe, worshipped, at first, the air which 
 enabled them to live, the earth which nourished them, the sun 
 which gave them light, and the moon which presided over the 
 night: such were their Cybeles, their Apollos, their Dianas. They 
 worshipped those conquerors who had delivered them from their 
 enemies, those benevolent and upright princes who had rendered 
 their subjects happy, and the memory of their reign immortal ; 
 and Jupiter and Hercules were placed in the rank of gods, the one 
 for the number of his victories, and the other in consequence of 
 the happiness and tranquillity of his reign. In the ages of super- 
 stition and credulity, men knew no other gods than those who 
 were serviceable to them ; and such is the character of man, his 
 worship is but his love and his gratitude. 
 
 Now, what man hath ever benefitted mankind so much as 
 Jesus Christ? Recollect all that the pagan ages have told us of 
 the history of their gods, and see if they believed themselves 
 indebted to them what unbelief itself acknowledges, with the holy 
 books, the world to be indebted to Jesus Christ. To some they 
 thought themselves indebted for favourable winds and a fortunate 
 navigation ; to others for the fertility of seasons ; to their Mars for 
 success in battle ; to their Janus for the peace and tranquillity of 
 the people ; to Esculapius for their health : but what are these 
 weak benefits, if you compare them with those which Jesus Christ 
 hath showered upon the earth ? He hath brought to it an eternal 
 
4/2 the divinity of Ser. 28. 
 
 peace, a lasting happiness, righteousness and truth ; he hath made 
 of it a new world and a new earth ; he hath not loaded a single 
 people with his benefits, he hath loaded all nations, the whole 
 universe : and what is more, he hath become our benefactor only by 
 suffering as our victim. What could he do more exalted or more 
 noble for the earth ? If gratitude hath made gods, could Jesus 
 Christ fail to find worshippers among men ? And were it possible 
 that any excess could take place in our love and in our gratitude 
 to him, was it at all proper that we should be so deeply indebted 
 to him. 
 
 Again, if Jesus Christ, in dying, had informed his disciples 
 that to the Lord alone they were indebted for so many benefits, 
 that he himself had been merely the instrument, and not the 
 author and source of all these special favours, and that they ought, 
 consequently, to forget him, and to render to God that glory which 
 was due to him alone ; but very differently than with such instruc- 
 tions doth Jesus Christ terminate his wonders and his ministry. 
 He not only requires that his disciples forget him not, and that 
 they do not cease, even after his death, to hope in him ; but, on 
 the point of quitting them, he assures them that, even to the con- 
 summation of time, he will be present with them ; he promises 
 still more than he hath already bestowed upon them, and attaches 
 them for ever to himself by indissoluble and immortal ties. 
 
 In effect, the promises which, in that last moment, he makes 
 to them, are still more astonishing than all the favours he had 
 granted to them during his life. In the first place, he promises to 
 them the consoling Spirit, which he calls the Spirit of his Father ; 
 that Spirit of truth, which the world cannot receive ; that Spirit of 
 energy, which was to form the martyrs ; that Spirit of intelligence, 
 which was to enlighten the prophets ; that Spirit of wisdom, 
 which was to conduct the pastors ; that Spirit of peace and charity, 
 which of all believers was to make only one heart and one soul. 
 What right hath Jesus Christ over the Spirit of God, to dispose of 
 it at his pleasure, and to promise it to men, if it be not his own 
 Spirit? Elijah, ascending to heaven, looks upon it as a thing 
 hardly possible to promise to Eliseus, individually, his twofold 
 spirit of zeal and prophecy : how far was he from promising to him 
 the eternal Spirit of the heavenly Father, that Spirit of liberty 
 which agitates where he thinks fit ! Nevertheless, the promises of 
 Jesus Christ are accomplished; scarcely hath he ascended to 
 heaven when the Spirit of God descends upon the disciples : the 
 illiterate become at once more learned than all the sages and phi- 
 losophers, the weak more powerful than the tyrants, the foolish, 
 according to the world, more prudent than all the wisdom of the 
 age. New men, animated with a new Spirit, appear upon the 
 earth : they attract all to walk in their steps ; they change the 
 face of the universe, and, even to the end of ages, shall that Spirit 
 animate his church, form righteous souls, overthrow the unbeliev- 
 ing, console his disciples, sustain them amid persecutions and dis- 
 graces, and shall bear witness in the bottom of their heart that 
 
Ser. 28. jesus christ. 473 
 
 they are the children of God, and that they are entitled, through 
 that august title, to more real and more solid riches than all those 
 of which the world can ever despoil them. 
 
 Secondly. Jesus Christ promises to his disciples the keys of. 
 heaven and of hell, and the power of remitting sins. What ! my 
 brethren, the Jews are deeply offended when he pretends to remit 
 them himself, and when he seems to attribute to himself a power 
 reserved to God alone ; but how will all nations of the earth be 
 scandalized when they shall read in his Gospel that he hath even 
 delegated his power to his disciples ! And, if he be not God, hath 
 the mind of man ever imagined such an instance of temerity and 
 folly ! What right, in effect, hath he over consciences, to bind or 
 unbind them at his pleasure, and to tranfer to weak men a power 
 which he himself could not exercise without blasphemy ! 
 
 Thirdly. But this is not all : he promises to his disciples the gift 
 likewise of miracles ; that, in his name, they should raise up the 
 dead ; that they should restore sight to the blind, health to the 
 sick, and speech to the dumb ; that they should be masters of all 
 nature. Moses promises not to his disciples the gifts with which 
 the Lord had favoured him : he is sensible that the power is not 
 his own, and that the Lord alone can bestow it on whomsoever he 
 may think fit. Thus, after his death, when Joshua arrests the sun 
 in the middle of his course, in order to complete the victory over 
 the enemies of the people of God, it is not in the name of Moses 
 that he commands that planet to stand still; it is not of him that 
 he holds the power of making even the stars obedient to him ; 
 when he wishes to exercise it, it is not to him that he addresses 
 himself: but the disciples of Jesus Christ can operate nothing but 
 in the name of their Master; it is in his name that they raise up 
 the dead and make the lame to walk; and, without the assistance 
 of that divine name, they are equally weak as the rest of men. The 
 ministry and the power of Moses terminate with his life ; the mi- 
 nistry and the power of Jesus Christ only begin, as I may say, after 
 his death, and we are assured that his reign is to be eternal. 
 
 What more shall I say ? He promises to his disciples the con- 
 version of the universe, the triumph of the cross, the compliance 
 of all the nations of the earth, of philosophers, of Caesars, of 
 tyrants ; and that his Gospel shall be received by the whole world : 
 but, doth he hold the hearts of all men in his hands thus to answer 
 for a change of which the world had hitherto no example ? You 
 will, no doubt, tell us, that God layeth open the future to his ser- 
 vant. But you are mistaken : if he be not God, he is not even a 
 prophet ; his predictions are dreams and chimeras : it is a false spirit 
 which seduces him, and which is concerned in his knowledge of 
 the future, and the sequel hath belied the truth of his promises : 
 he prophesies that all nations, seated under the shadow of death, 
 shall open their eyes to the light ; and he sees not that they are on 
 the point of falling into a more criminal blindness in worshipping 
 him : he prophesies that his Father shall be glorified, and that his 
 Gospel shall every where form to him worshippers in spirit and in 
 
474 the divinity of Ser. 28. 
 
 truth ; and he sees not that men are going for ever to dishonour 
 him, in placing upon an equality, with him, even to the end of ages, 
 that Jesus who ought to have been considered only as his servant 
 , and prophet : he prophesies that idols shall be overthrown ; and he 
 sees not that he himself shall occupy their place : he prophesies 
 that he will form to himself a holy people of every tongue and of 
 every tribe ; and he sees not that he comes only to form a new 
 people of idolaters of every nation, who shall place him in the tem- 
 ple as the living God ; whose actions, worship, and homages shall 
 all be directed to him ; who shall do all for his glory ; who shall de- 
 pend solely upon him, live only for and through him, and have 
 neither force nor energy but what they receive from him : in a 
 word, who shall worship him, who shall love him a thousand times 
 more spiritually, more intimately, and more universally, than ever 
 the pagans had worshipped their idols. This, then, is not even a 
 prophet ; and his relations according to the flesh, are guilty of no 
 blasphemy when they say " he is beside himself," and that he 
 bestows, on the dreams of a heated imagination, all the weight and 
 reality of revelations and mysteries. 
 
 Behold to what unbelief conducts. Overturn the foundation, 
 which is the Lord Jesus, eternal Son of the living God, and the 
 whole edifice tumbles in pieces : take away the grand mystery of 
 piety, and all the religion is but a dream : deny the divinity of Jesus 
 Christ, and you cut off, from the doctrine of Christians, all the 
 merit of faith, all the consolation of hope, all the motives of charity. 
 Thus, with what zeal did not the first disciples of the Gospel op- 
 pose those impious men who, from that time, ventured to attack 
 the glory of their Master's divinity ? They well knew that it was 
 striking at the heart of their religion ; that it was ravishing from 
 them the only alleviation of their persecutions and sufferings, all 
 confidence in the promises to come, and all the dignity and grandeur 
 of their pretensions ; and that, that principle once overthrown, the 
 whole religion dissipated in smoke, and was no longer but a human 
 doctrine and the sect of a mortal man, who, like all the other chiefs, 
 had left nothing but his name to his disciples. 
 
 Thus the pagans themselves then reproached the Christians with 
 rendering divine honours to their Christ. Pliny, a Roman pro- 
 consul, celebrated for his works, giving an account to the emperor 
 Trajan of their morals and doctrine ; after being forced to confess 
 that the Christians were pious, innocent, and upright men, and that 
 they assembled before the rising of the sun, not to concert the 
 commission of crimes, or to disturb the peace of the empire, but 
 to live in piety and righteousness, to detest frauds, adulteries, and 
 even the coveting of the wealth of others ; he only reproaches them 
 with chaunting hymns in honour of their Christ, and of rendering 
 to him the same homages as to a god. Now, if these first believers 
 had not rendered divine honours to Jesus Christ, they would have 
 justified themselves against that calumny: they would have rejected 
 that scandal from their religion, almost the only one which shocked 
 the zeal of the Jews and the wisdom of the Gentiles ; they would 
 
Ser. 28. jesus christ. j 475 
 
 openly have said, We do not worship Jesus Christ, for we know 
 better than to transfer to a creature that honour and worship which 
 are due to God alone. Nevertheless, they make no reply to this 
 accusation. Their apologists refute all the other calumnies with . 
 which the pagans endeavoured to blacken their doctrine; they 
 clear up and overthrow the slightest accusations ; and their apologies, 
 addressed to the senate, attract to them even the admiration of 
 Rome, and impose silence on their enemies. And, upon the accu- 
 sation of idolatry toward Jesus Christ, which should be the most 
 crying and the most horrible ; upon the reproach of worshipping a 
 crucified person, which was the most likely to discredit them, and 
 which ought indeed to have been the most grievous to men so holy, 
 so declared against idolatry, and so jealous of the glory of God, they 
 are totally silent ; and, far from defending themselves, they even 
 justify the accusation by their silence ? What do I say ? By their 
 silence? They authorize it by their language, in professing to 
 suffer for his name, in dying for him, in confessing him before the 
 tyrants, in joyfully expiring upon gibbets, in the sweet expectation 
 of going to enjoy him, and of receiving, in his bosom, a more im- 
 mortal life than that which they had lost for his glory. They suf- 
 fered martyrdom rather than bend to the statue of the Caesars, 
 rather than allow their pagan friends, through a human compassion, 
 and to save them from torture, to falsely attest, before the magis- 
 trates, that they had offered incense to the idols, and they would 
 have submitted to the accusation of paying divine honours to Jesus 
 Christ, without any attempt to destroy the imputation ? Ah ! they 
 would have proclaimed the contrary from the house-tops; they 
 would have exposed themselves even to death, rather than to have 
 given room to so hateful and so execrable a suspicion. What can 
 unbelief oppose to this ? And, if it be an error to equal Jesus 
 Christ to God, it is an error which has been born with the church, 
 and upon which the whole structure hath been reared ; which has 
 formed so many martyrs, and converted the whole universe. 
 
 But what fruit, my brethren, are we to draw from this Discourse? 
 That Jesus Christ is the grand object of Christian piety. Never- 
 theless, scarcely do we know Jesus Christ : we never consider that 
 all the other practices of piety are, as I may say, arbitrary; but 
 that this is the ground-work of faith and of salvation ; that this is 
 pure and sincere piety ; that, continually to meditate upon Jesus 
 Christ, to have recourse to him, to nourish ourselves with this doc- 
 trine, to enter into the spirit of his mysteries, to study his actions, 
 to count solely upon the merit of his blood and of his sacrifice, is 
 the only true knowledge and the most essential duty of the believer. 
 Remember, then, my brethren, that piety toward Jesus Christ is 
 the cordial spirit of the Christian religion ; that nothing is solid but 
 what you shall build upon that foundation ; and that the principal 
 homage which he expects of you is, that you become like him, and 
 that his life be the model of your own, in order that, through your 
 resemblance to him, you may be included in the number of those who 
 shall be partakers of his glory. 
 
476 ON THE RESURRECTION Ser. 29. 
 
 SERMON XXIX. 
 
 ON THE RESURRECTION OF LAZARUS. 
 
 " Come and see." John xi. 34. 
 
 The most hardened sinner could never submit to the horror of 
 his situation, were he able to see and to know him self such as he is. 
 A soul grown old in guilt, is only bearable to itself, because that 
 the same passion, from which all his miseries spring, conceals them 
 from him, and that his disorder is, at the same time, both the 
 weapon which inflicts the wound and the fatal bandage which hides 
 it from the eyes of the patient. 
 
 Behold wherefore the church, in order to lay the sinner open 
 to himself during this time of penitence, almost continually dis- 
 plays to us, under various images, the deplorable state of a soul 
 who has grown old in his iniquity : one while under the figure of a 
 paralytic young man ; that is, to mark to us the insensibility and 
 fatal ease which always follow habitual guilt : another, under the 
 symbol of a prodigal reduced to feed with the vilest animals ; and, 
 under these traits, it wishes to make us feel his abasement and his 
 infamy : again, under the image of a person born blind, and that 
 is in order to paint to us the depth and the horror of his blindness: 
 and, lastly, under the parable of a deaf and dumb person possessed 
 with a devil ; and that is, more animatedly to figure to us the sub- 
 jection under which habitual guilt holds all the powers of an un- 
 fortunate soul. 
 
 To-day, in order, as it were to assemble all these traits under a 
 single image, still more terrible and striking, the church proposes 
 to us Lazarus in the tomb, dead for four days, emitting stench and 
 infection, bound hand and foot, his face covered with a napkin, and 
 exciting only horror even in those whom affection and blood had 
 most closely united to him in life. 
 
 Come then and see, you, my dear hearer, who live, for so many 
 years past, under the shameful yoke of dissipation, and who 
 are insensible to the misery of your situation. Approach this 
 tomb which the voice of Jesus Christ is now to open before 
 your eyes; and, in that spectacle of infection and putrefaction, be- 
 hold the true picture of your soul. You fly to profane spectacles 
 in order to see your passions represented under pleasing and de- 
 ceitful colours : approach, and see them expressed here such as 
 they are: come, and, in that infectious and loathsome carcass, 
 behold what you are in the sight of God, and how much your situ- 
 ation is worthy of your tears. 
 
 But in exposing here only the horrible situation of a soul who 
 lives in disorder, lest I trouble and discourage, without holding out 
 to him a hand in order to assist him in quitting that abyss, that I 
 
Ser. 29. of lazarus. 477 
 
 may omit nothing of our Gospel, I shall divide it into three reflec- 
 tions: in the first, you will see how shocking and deplorable is 
 the situation of a soul who lives in habitual irregularity; in the se- 
 cond, I shall show to you the means by which he may quit it ; and, 
 in the third, what the motives are which determine Jesus Christ 
 to operate the miracle of his resurrection and deliverance. O my 
 God ! let thine all-powerful voice be now heard by those unfortu- 
 nate souls who sleep in the darkness and shadow of death ; com- 
 mand these withered bones once more to be animated, and to recover 
 that light and that life of grace which they have lost. 
 
 Reflection I. I remark, at first, three principal circumstances 
 in the deplorable spectacle which Lazarus, dead and buried, offers 
 to our eyes. First, already become a mass of worms and corrup- 
 tion, he spreads infection and stench; and behold the profound cor- 
 ruption of a soul in habitual sin. Secondly, a gloomy napkin covers 
 his eyes and his face ; and behold the fatal blindness of a soul in 
 habitual sin. Lastly, he appears in the tomb, bound hand and 
 foot; and behold the melancholy subjection of a soul in habi- 
 tual sin. Now, it is that profound corruption, that fatal blind- 
 ness, and that melancholy servitude, typified in the spectacle of 
 Lazarus, dead and buried, which precisely form all the horror and 
 all the wretchedness of a soul long dead in the eyes of God. 
 
 In the first place, there is not a more natural image of a soul 
 grown old in iniquity, than that of a carcass already a prey to 
 worms and putrefaction. Thus the holy books every where repre- 
 sent the state of sin under the idea of a shocking death ; and it 
 seems as if the Spirit of God had found that melancholy image the 
 most calculated to give us, at least, a glimpse of all the deformity 
 of a soul in which sin dwells. 
 
 Now, two effects are produced on the body by death ; it deprives 
 it of fife, it afterward alters all its features and corrupts all its mem- 
 bers. It deprives it of life : in the same manner it is that sin be- 
 gins to disfigure the beauty of the soul ; for, God is the life of our 
 souls, the light of our minds, and the spring, as I may say, of our 
 hearts: our righteousness, our wisdom, our truth, are only the 
 union of a righteous, wise, and true God with our soul : all our vir- 
 tues are only the different influences of his Spirit which dwells 
 within us; it is he who exciteth our good desires, who formeth our 
 holy thoughts, who produceth our pure lights, who operateth our 
 righteous propensities; insomuch that all the spiritual and super- 
 natural life of our soul is only, as the apostle speaks, the life of 
 God within us. 
 
 Now, by a single sin, that life ceases, that light is extinguished, 
 that Spirit withdrawn, all these springs are suspended. Thus the 
 soul, without God, is a soul without life, without motion, light, 
 truth, righteousness, or charity: it is no longer but a chaos, a dead 
 body; its life is no longer but an imaginary and chimerical life; and, 
 like those inanimate substances set in motion by a foreign influence, 
 it seems to live and to act; but "it is dead while living." 
 
478 ON THE RESURRECTION Ser. 29. 
 
 Behold the first degree of death, which every sin which separates 
 a soul from God introduces into it; but habitual sin, like inveterate 
 death, goes farther. Thus, Lazarus not only is without life in the 
 tomb, but, having been there for four days, the corruption of his 
 body begins to spread infection : for, although the first sin, which 
 causes the loss of grace, leaves us, in the eyes of God, without life 
 and without motion, yet we may say, that certain impressions of 
 the Holy Spirit, certain seeds of spiritual life, certain means of re- 
 covering the grace lost, still remain to us. Faith is not yet extin- 
 guished ; the feelings of virtue not yet effaced ; a sense of the truths 
 of salvation not yet lost: it is a dead body in truth; but life being 
 only just withdrawn, it still preserves, I know not what, of marks 
 of warmth, which seem to spring from some remain of life. But, 
 in proportion as the soul remains in death, and perseveres in guilt, 
 grace withdraws; all extinguishes, all changes, all corrupts, and its 
 corruption becomes universal. 
 
 I say universal ; yes, my brethren, all changes, all corrupts, in 
 the soul, through a continuance of disorder: the gifts of nature, 
 gentleness, rectitude, humanity, modesty, even the mental talents ; 
 the blessings of grace, the feelings of religion, the remorses of con- 
 science, the terrors of faith, and faith itself; the corruption pene- 
 trates all, and changes into putrefaction and a spectacle of horror 
 both the gifts of heaven and the blessings of the earth : nothing re- 
 mains in its original situation : the loveliest features are those which 
 become the most hideous and the most undistinguishable ; the 
 charms of wit become the seasoning of debauchery and the pas- 
 sions; feelings of religion are changed into freethinking; superiority 
 of knowledge into pride and a vain and shocking philosophy ; no- 
 bility of mind is no longer but a boundless ambition ; generosity 
 and tenderness of heart but a yielding to the sway of impure and 
 profane connexions ; the principles of glory and honour handed 
 down to us with the blood of our ancestors, but a vain ostenta- 
 tion, and the source of all our hatreds and animosities ; our rank, 
 our elevation, the cause of our envies and mean jealousies : lastly, 
 our riches and our prosperity, the fatal instruments of all our crimes. 
 
 But the corruption is not confined to the sinner alone : a dead 
 body cannot be long concealed without a smell of death being 
 spread around: it is impossible to live long in debauchery without 
 the smell of a bad life making itself felt. In vain is every precau- 
 tion employed to conceal the ignominy of a disorderly life ; in vain is 
 the sepulchre, full of putrefaction and infection, externally whitened 
 and embellished, the stench spreads; guilt, sooner or later, betrays 
 itself ; a black and infectious air always proceeds from that pro- 
 fane fire which, with so much care was concealed. A disorderly 
 life betrays itself in a thousand ways; the public, at last un- 
 deceived, opens its eyes, and the more their character becomes 
 blown, the more they discover themselves; they become accus- 
 tomed to their shame; they become weary of constraint and de- 
 cency; that guilt which is only to be purchased with attention and 
 arrangements, appears too dear; they unmask themselves; they 
 
Ser. 29. of lazarus. 479 
 
 throw off that remainder of restraint and modesty which make us 
 still cautious of the eyes of men; they wish to riot in disorder with- 
 out precaution or care : and then, servants, friends, connexions, the 
 city, and country, all feel the infection of their irregularities and 
 example. Our rank, our elevation, no longer serve but to render 
 more striking and more durable the scandal of our debaucheries ; 
 in a thousand places our excesses serve as a model : the view of 
 our manners perhaps strengthens, in secret, consciences whom 
 guilt still rendered uneasy: perhaps they even cite us, and make 
 use of our example, in seducing innocence, and in conquering a 
 still timorous modesty; and, even after our death, the fame of our 
 debaucheries shall stain the history of men, shall perhaps embel- 
 lish lascivious tales, and, long after our day, in ages yet to come, 
 the remembrance of our crimes shall still be an occasion and a 
 source of guilt. 
 
 Lastly, (but I would not dare to enlarge here,) the corruption 
 which habitual guilt sheds through the whole interior of the sinner 
 is so universal that even his body is infected ; debauchery leaves 
 the shameful marks of his irregularities on his flesh : the infection 
 of his soul often extends even to a body which he has made sub- 
 servient to ignominy. He says, in advance, to corruption, like 
 Job, " Thou art my father ; and to the worm, thou art my mother 
 and my sister !" The corruption of his body is a shocking picture 
 of that of his soul. 
 
 Great God ! can I then flatter myself that thou wilt yet cast upon 
 me some looks of compassion ! Wilt thou not groan at the sight 
 of that mass of crimes and putrefaction which my soul presents to 
 thine eyes, as thou now groanest in the spirit over the tomb of Laza- 
 rus? Ah! avert thine holy eyes from the spectacle of my profound 
 wretchedness; but let me no more turn away from it myself, and 
 let me be enabled to view myself with all that horror which my situa- 
 tion deserves : tear asunder the veil which hides me from myself ; 
 my evils shall in part be done away from the moment that I shall 
 be able to see and to know them. 
 
 And behold the second circumstance of the deplorable situation 
 of Lazarus ; a mournful cloth covers his face : that is the profound 
 blindness which forms the second character of habitual sin. 
 
 I confess that every sin is an error which makes us mistake evil 
 for good ; it is a false judgment which makes us seek in the creature 
 that ease, grandeur, and independence which we can find in God 
 alone; it is a mist which hides order, truth, and righteousness from 
 our eyes, and, in their place, substitutes vain phantoms. Never- 
 theless, a first falling off from God does not altogether extinguish 
 our lights; nor is it always productive of total darkness. It is true 
 that the Spirit of God, source of all light, retires, and no longer 
 dwells within us; but some traces of light are still left in the soul: 
 thus, though the sun be already withdrawn from our hemisphere, 
 yet certain rays of his light still tinge the sky, and form, as it were, 
 an imperfect day; it is only in proportion as he sinks that the gloom 
 gains, and the darkness of night at last prevails. In the same man- 
 
480 ON THE RESURRECTION 8ei\ 29. 
 
 ner, in proportion as sin degenerates into habit, the light of God 
 retires, darkness gains, and the profound night of total blindness at 
 last arrives. 
 
 And then all becomes occasion of error to the criminal soul ; all 
 changes its aspect to his eyes ; the most shameful passions no 
 longer appear but as weaknesses ; the most criminal attachments 
 but sympathies brought with us into the world and inherent to 
 our hearts ; the excesses of the table but innocent pleasures of so- 
 ciety ; revenge but a just sense of injury ; licentious and impious 
 conversations but lively and agreeable sallies ; the blackest defam- 
 ation but a customary language, of which none but weak and timid 
 minds can make a scruple ; the laws of the church but old-fashioned 
 customs ; the severity of God's judgments but absurd declamations 
 which equally disgrace his goodness and mercy ; death in sin, the 
 inevitable consequence of a criminal life, mere predictions in which 
 there is more of zeal than of truth, and refuted by the confidence 
 which a return to God, previous to that last moment, promises to 
 us : lastly, heaven, the earth, hell, all creatures, religion, crimes, 
 virtues, good and evil, things present and to come, all change their 
 aspect to the eyes of a soul who lives in habitual guilt ; all show 
 themselves under false appearances ; his whole life is no longer but 
 a delusion and a continued error. Alas ! could you tear away the 
 fatal veil which covers your eyes, like those of Lazarus, and behold 
 yourself, like him, buried in darkness, all covered with putrefaction, 
 and spreading around infection and a smell of death ! But now, 
 says our Saviour, all these things are hid from thine eyes ; you see 
 in yourself only the embellishments and the pompous externals of the 
 fatal tomb in which you drag on in sin ; your rank, your birth, your 
 talents, your dignities, your titles, that is to say, the trophies, and 
 the ornaments which the vanity of men has there raised up ; 
 but, remove the stone which covers that place of horror; look 
 within, judge not of yourself from these pompous outsides, which 
 serve only to embellish your carcass ; see what, in the eyes of God, 
 you are ; and if the corruption and the profound blindness of 
 your soul touch you not, let its slavery at least rouse and recall 
 you to yourself. 
 
 Last circumstance of the situation of Lazarus dead and buried ; 
 he was bound hand and foot : and behold the image of the wretched 
 slavery of a soul long under the dominion of sin. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, in vain does the world decry a Christian life 
 as a life of subjection and slavery. The reign of righteousness is 
 a reign of liberty ; the soul, faithful and submissive to God, be- 
 comes master over all creatures ; the just man is above all, be- 
 cause he is unconnected with all; he is master of the world, be- 
 cause he despises the world ; he is dependent neither on his masters, 
 because he only serves them for God ; nor on his friends, because he 
 only loves them according to the order of charity and of righteous- 
 ness ; nor on his inferiors, because he exacts from them no ini- 
 quitous compliance ; nor on his fortune, because he rather dreads 
 it ; nor on the judgments of men, because he dreads those of God 
 
Ser. 29. of lazarus. 481 
 
 alone ; nor on events, because he considers them all as in the or- 
 der of Providence ; nor even on his passions, because the charity 
 which is within him is their rule and measure. The just man 
 alone, then, enjoys a perfect liberty: superior to the world, to him- 
 self, to all creatures, to all events, he begins, even in this life, to 
 reign with Jesus Christ ; all is below him, while he is himself in- 
 ferior to God alone. 
 
 But the sinner, who seems to live without either rule or restraint, 
 is, however, a vile slave ; he is dependent on all, on his body, on 
 his propensities, on his caprices, on his passions, on his fortune, 
 on his masters, on his friends, on his enemies, on his rivals, on all 
 surrounding creatures ; so many gods to which love or fear sub- 
 ject him; so many idols which multiply his slavery, while he thinks 
 himself more free by casting off that obedience which he owes to 
 God alone ; he multiplies his masters, by refusing submission to 
 him alone who renders free those who serve him, and who gives to 
 his servants dominion over the world, and over every thing which 
 the world contains. 
 
 You often complain, my dear hearer, of the hardships of virtue ; 
 you dread a Christian life, as a life of subjection and sorrow : but 
 what in it could you find so gloomy as you experience in debauchery? 
 Ah ! if you durst complain of the bitterness and of the tyranny of 
 the passions ; if you durst confess the troubles, the disgusts, the 
 frenzies, the anxieties of your soul ; if you were candid on the 
 gloomy transactions of your heart, there is no lot but what would 
 appear preferable to your own ; but you despise the inquietudes 
 of guilt which you feel ; and you exaggerate the hardships of virtue 
 which you have never known. But, in order to hold out to you 
 an assisting hand, let us continue the history of our Gospel, and 
 let us see, in the resurrection of Lazarus, what are the means of- 
 fered to you, by the goodness of God, of quitting so deplorable 
 a situation. 
 
 Reflection II. The power of God, says the apostle, is not 
 less conspicuous in the conversion of sinners than in raising up 
 the dead; and the same supernatural power which wrought upon 
 Jesus Christ to deliver him from the tomb, ought to operate upon 
 the soul long dead in sin, in order to recall it to the life of grace. 
 I find there only this difference, that the Almighty voice of God 
 meets no resistance from the body which he revives and recalls to 
 life. On the contrary, the soul, dead and corrupted, as I may say, 
 through the long duration of guilt, seems to retain a remainder of 
 strength and motion only to oppose that powerful voice which is 
 heard even in the abyss in which it is plunged, and which resounds 
 for the purpose of restoring it to light and life. Nevertheless, how- 
 ever difficult may be the conversion of a soul of this description, 
 and however rare such examples may be, the Spirit of God, in or- 
 der to teach us never to despair of divine mercy, when we sincerely 
 wish to quit the ways of iniquity, points out to up at present, in the 
 resurrection of Lazarus, the means of accomplishing it. 
 
 i i 
 
482 ON THE RESURRECTION Sei*. 29. 
 
 The first is, confidence in Jesus Christ. Lord, says Mary, the 
 sister of Lazarus, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died; 
 but I know that, even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God 
 will give it thee. I am the resurrection and the life, said Jesus 
 unto her ; believest thou this ? Yes, Lord, said she, I believe that 
 thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the 
 world. It is through this that the miracle of raising up Lazarus 
 begins, namely, the perfect confidence that Jesus Christ is able to 
 deliver him from death and corruption. 
 
 For, my brethren, the delusion continually employed by the de- 
 mon, in order to render our desires of conversion unavailing, and 
 to counteract their progress, is that of despondency and mistrust : 
 he warmly retraces to our imagination the horrors of an entire life 
 of guilt ; he says to us, in secret, that which the sisters of Lazarus 
 say to Jesus Christ, though in a different sense, that we ought, 
 at a much earlier period, to have checked our career ; that it is now 
 impossible, when so far advanced, to return ; that the time for at- 
 tempting a change is now passed : and that the virulency and age 
 of our wounds no longer admit a resource. Upon this they abandon 
 themselves to languor and indolence ; and, after having incensed 
 the righteousness of God through our debaucheries, we insult his 
 mercy through the excess of our mistrust. 
 
 I confess that a soul long dead in sin must suffer much in 
 returning to God ; that it is difficult, after so many years of dissi- 
 pation, to form to one's self a new heart and new inclinations ; and 
 that it is even fit that the obstacles, the sufferings, and the difficul- 
 ties, which always attend the conversion of souls of that description, 
 should make great sinners feel how dreadful it is to have been al- 
 most a whole life-time removed from God. 
 
 But I say, that from the moment a truly contrite soul wishes to 
 return to him, his wounds, however virulent or old, ought no longer 
 to alarm his confidence : I say, that his wretchedness ought to in- 
 crease his compunction, but not his despondency : I say, that the 
 first step of his penitence ought to be that of adoring Jesus Christ 
 as the resurrection and the life ; a secret confidence that our wants 
 are always less than his mercies; a firm persuasion that the blood 
 of Jesus Christ is more powerful in washing out our stains than 
 our corruption can be in contracting them: I say, that the fewer 
 resources of strength a criminal soul may find in himself, the more 
 ought he to expect from him who taketh delight in rearing up 
 the work of grace upon the nothingness of nature ; and that the 
 more he is inwardly opposed to grace, the more does he, in one 
 sense, become an object worthy of divine power and mercy, for 
 God wisheth that all good shall evidently appear as coming from 
 above, and that man shall attribute nothing to himself. 
 
 And, in effect, my dear hearer, whatever may the horror of your 
 past crimes be, the Lord will not long refuse you grace, from the 
 moment that he hath inspired you with the desire and the resolu- 
 tion of asking it. It is written in Judges, that the father of Sam- 
 son, terrified by the apparition of the angel of the Lord, who, after 
 
Ser. 29. of lazarus. 483 
 
 announcing to him the birth of a son, commanded him to offer up 
 a sacrifice, and then, like a devouring fire consumed the victim 
 and the pile, and vanished from his sight ; that, terrified, I say, 
 at the spectacle, he was convinced that both himself and his 
 wife were to be struck with death because they had seen the 
 Lord. But his wife, holy and enlightened, condemned his mis- 
 trust. If the Lord, said she to him, wished to destroy us, he would 
 not have made fire from heaven to descend on our sacrifice; he 
 would not have accepted it from our hands ; he would not have 
 discovered to us his secrets and his wonders, and what we had 
 hitherto been ignorant of. 
 
 And behold what I now answer to you. You believe your death 
 and your destruction to be inevitable ; the state of your conscience 
 discourages you ; in vain do sparks of grace and of light fall upon 
 your heart ; in vain do they touch you, solicit you, and almost gain 
 the point of consuming the sacrifice of your passions ; you per- 
 suade yourself that you are lost beyond resource. But, if the Lord 
 wished to abandon and to destroy you, he would not make fire from 
 heaven to descend upon your heart ; he would not light up within 
 you holy desires and sentiments of penitence : if he wished to let 
 you die in the blindness of your passions, he would not manifest to 
 you the truths of salvation ; he would not open your eyes on those 
 miseries to come which you prepare for yourself. Besides, how 
 do you know if Jesus Christ has not permitted your falling into 
 such a deplorable state, for the purpose of making a prodigy of your 
 conversion an incitement to the conversion of your brethren ? How 
 do you know if his mercy has not rendered your passions so no- 
 torious, in order that thousands of sinners, witnesses of your 
 errors, despair not of conversion, and be inflamed at the sight 
 of your penitence ? How do you know if your crimes, and even 
 your scandals, have not entered into the designs of God's goodness 
 with regard to your brethren ; and if your situation, which seems 
 hopeless, like that of Lazarus, is not rather an occasion of manifest- 
 ing God's glory than a presage of death to you? 
 
 When grace recalls a common sinner, the fruit of his conversion 
 is limited to himself; but when it singles out a grand sinner, a 
 Lazarus, long dead and corrupted, ah ! the designs of its mercy are 
 then much more extensive ; in one change it prepares a thousand 
 to come ; it raises up a thousand out of one ; and the crimes of a 
 sinner become the seed of a thousand just. You give way to des- 
 pondency in feeling the extremity of your wretchedness; but it is 
 perhaps that very extremity which draws you nearer to the happy 
 moment of your conversion, and which the goodness of God has 
 reserved for you, that you might be a public monument of the ex- 
 cess of his mercies toward the greatest sinners. Only believe, as 
 Jesus Christ said to the sisters of Lazarus, and you shall see the 
 glory of God ; you shall see your relations, your friends, your in- 
 feriors, and even the accomplices of your debaucheries, become 
 imitators of your penitence : you shall see the most hopeless souls 
 sighing after the happiness of your new life ; and the world itself 
 
 i i 2 
 
484 ox the resurrection* Ser. 29. 
 
 forced to render glory to God, and, in recalling your past errors, to 
 admire the prodigy of your present lot. Take, even from your 
 wretchedness itself, new motives of confidence : bless, in advance, 
 the merciful wisdom of that Being, who, even from your passions, 
 shall know how to extract advantages to his glory : every thing 
 co-operates toward the salvation of his chosen, and he permitteth 
 great excesses only in order to operate great mercies. God ever 
 wisheth the salvation of his creature ; and, from the moment that 
 we form a wish of returning to him, our only dread ought to be, 
 not that his justice reject us, but lest our intention be not sincere. 
 
 And the surest proof of our sincerity is the absenting ourselves 
 from every occasion which may place an obstacle to our resurrec- 
 tion and our deliverance; obstacle, figured by the stone which 
 shut up the mouth of Lazarus's tomb, and which Jesus Christ 
 orders to be removed before he begins to operate the miracle 
 of his resurrection. Remove the stone : second mean, marked in 
 our Gospel. 
 
 In effect, every day shows sinners, who, tired of disorder, wish 
 to return to God, but who cannot prevail upon themselves to quit 
 those objects, those places, those situations, and those rocks, 
 which have been the cause of their removal from him : they vainly 
 persuade themselves that they shall be able to extinguish their 
 passions, to terminate a disorderly life ; in a word, to rise from 
 the dead, without removing the stone. They even make some 
 efforts: they address themselves to men and God; they adopt 
 measures for a change; but it is of those measures which, not 
 removing the dangers, do not, in the smallest degree, forward 
 their safety; and thus their whole life sorrowfully passes away in 
 detesting their chains, and in the utter inability of breaking them 
 asunder. 
 
 Whence comes this, my brethren ? It is that the passions begin 
 to weaken only after the removal of such objects as have lighted 
 them up ; it is absurd to suppose that the heart can change while 
 every thing around us continues, with regard to us, the same : you 
 would become chaste, yet you live in the midst of the dangers, the 
 connexions, the familiarities, the pleasures, which have a thousand 
 times corrupted your heart ; you would wish to reflect seriously on 
 your eternity, and to place some interval between life and death, 
 yet you are unwilling to place any between death and those de- 
 baucheries which prevent you from reflecting on your salvation ; 
 and, in the midst of agitations, pleasures, trifles, and worldly ex- 
 pectations, from which, on no account, will you abate, you expect 
 that the inclination and relish for a Christian life will come to you 
 unsought-for : you would that your heart form new propensities, 
 surrounded by every thing which nourishes and fortifies the old ; 
 and that the lamp of faith and grace blaze up in the midst of 
 winds and tempests, that light which, even in the sanctuary, is 
 so often extinguished through want of oil and nourishment, and, to 
 lukewarm and retired souls, converts into a danger even the safety 
 of their retreat. 
 
Ser. 29, of lazarus. 485 
 
 You come, after that, to tell us that good- will is not wanting ; 
 that the moment is not yet come. How, indeed, should it come in 
 the midst of every thing that repels it ? But what is that good will, 
 shut up within you, which has never any consequence, which never 
 leads to any thing real, and never seriously adopts a single mea- 
 sure toward a change ? That is to say, that you would wish to 
 change, could it be done for nothing; you would wish to work 
 out your salvation by the same conduct which occasions your 
 destruction; you would wish that the same manners which have 
 separated your heart from God should approach you to him ; and 
 that what has hitherto been the cause of your ruin should itself 
 become the way and the mean of your salvation. Begin by 
 removing the occasions which so often have been, and still con- 
 tinue to be, the rock of your innocence : remove the stone which 
 shuts up the entry of grace to your soul ; after that, you shall be 
 entitled to demand of God the completion of this work in you. 
 Then, separated from those objects which nourished iniquitous 
 passions within you, you shall have it in your power to say to him, 
 It is thy part now, O my God ! to change my heart ; to thee I have 
 sacrificed every attachment which might still fetter it ; I have re- 
 moved all the rocks upon which my weakness might still have 
 split ; as much as in me lay, I have changed the outward man ; 
 thou alone, O Lord, canst change the heart ; it depends upon thee 
 now to complete what yet remains to be done, to break the invisi- 
 ble chains, to overcome all internal obstacles, and totally to tri- 
 umph over my corruption : I have removed the fatal stone which 
 prevented me from hearing thy voice ; let it now resound, even 
 through the abyss in which I am still buried ; command me to de- 
 part from that fatal tomb, that place of infection and putrescence, 
 but command me with that Almighty word which makes itself to 
 be heard even by the dead, and is to them a word of resurrection 
 and life ; give me in charge to thy disciples, to be unloosed from 
 those chains which hold captive all the powers of my soul ; and let 
 the ministry of thy church put the last seal to my resurrection and 
 my deliverance. 
 
 And behold, my brethren, the last mean held out in our Gospel. 
 Immediately, on the removal of the stone, our Saviour cries, with 
 a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth! Lazarus comes forth, still 
 bound hand and foot, and Jesus Christ remits him to his disciples 
 to be unloosed. 
 
 Observe here, that Jesus Christ doth not order his disciples to 
 unloose Lazarus till after he had entirely quitted the tomb. We 
 must manifest ourselves to the church, says a holy father, before 
 we can, through its ministry, receive the blessing of our deliver- 
 ance. Lazarus, come forth ! that is to say, continues that father, 
 how long wilt thou remain concealed and buried inwardly in thy con- 
 science ? How long wilt thou conceal thine iniquity within thy breast? 
 
 You undoubtedly are not ignorant, my brethren, that remission 
 of our sins is only granted through the ministry of the church, and 
 that it is necessary to lay open and to present our bonds to the piety 
 
486 on the resurrection Ser. 29. 
 
 of the ministers, who alone have authority to bind and to unbind 
 on the earth ; this is not upon what you require instruction. But, 
 I say, that, in order that the conversion be solid and durable, we 
 must, like Lazarus, show ourselves quite out of the tomb. An 
 ordinary confession is not the matter in question; a hardened sin- 
 ner ought to go back even to his infancy, even to the birth of his 
 passions, even to the youngest periods of his life, which have been 
 the commencement of his crimes. Neither doubts nor obscurities 
 must longer be left in the conscience, nor mists over the youthful 
 manners, under pretence that they have already been revealed ; a 
 general manifestation is required, and whatever may hitherto have 
 been done must be reckoned as nothing; every duty of religion, 
 performed during a disorderly and worldly life is even to be 
 ranked among our crimes ; the conscience must be considered as a 
 chaos, into which no light has, as yet, penetrated, and over which all 
 our fictitious and past penitence has spread only additional darkness. 
 
 For, alas ! my brethren, a contrite soul, after returning from the 
 errors of the world and the passions, ought to presume that, having 
 to that period lived in criminal habits and propensities, every time 
 the sacrament has been received in that state was only a profana- 
 tion and a crime. 
 
 In the first place, because, having never felt real contrition for 
 his errors, nor, consequently, any sincere desire to purge himself 
 of them, the remedies of the church far from having purified, 
 have only completed his foulness, and rendered his disease more 
 incurable. 
 
 Secondly, because he has never been known to himself; and, 
 consequently, could never make himself known to the tribunal of 
 his conscience. For, alas ! the world, in the midst of which this 
 soul has always lived, and in which he has ever thought and 
 judged like it; the world, I say, finding reasonable and wise only 
 its own maxims and manner of thinking, does it sufficiently know 
 the holiness of the Gospel, the obligations of faith, and the extent 
 of duties, to be qualified to enter into the detail of those transgres- 
 sions which faith condemns ? 
 
 Thirdly, and lastly, because that, even admitting he should 
 have known all his wretchedness, never having had any real sorrow 
 for it, he has never been qualified to make it known; for nothing 
 but heartfelt sorrow can explain itself as it ought, or truly repre- 
 sent those evils which it feels and abhors ; it must be a feeling 
 heart that can make itself to be understood on the wounds and 
 the sufferings of a heart itself. A sinner full of a profane passion 
 expresses it much more eloquently, and with more animation: 
 nothing is left unsaid of the foolish and deplorable sufferings he 
 endures ; he enters into all the windings of his heart, his jealousies, 
 his fears, and his hopes. As the mind of man, says the apostle, 
 alone knows what passes in man, so likewise it is only the heart 
 which can know what passeth in the heart. Contrition gives eyes 
 to see, and words to express every thing ; it has a language which 
 nothing can counterfeit: thus, in vain mav a worldly sJtd, still 
 
Ser. 29. of lazarus. 487 
 
 chained by the heart to all his disorders, come to accuse himself; 
 he cannot be understood. Without any absolute intention of con- 
 cealing his wounds, he never exposes all their horror, because he 
 neither feels nor is struck with them himself; his words always 
 relish of the insensibility of his heart ; and it is impossible that he 
 should expose, in all their ugliness, deformities which he knows 
 not, and which he still loves. He ought, therefore, to consider the 
 whole period of his past life as a period of darkness and blindness, 
 during which he has never viewed himself but with the eyes of 
 flesh and blood; never judged but through the opinions of passion 
 and self-love; never accused but in the language of error and 
 impenitence; never exhibited himself but in a false and imperfect 
 light. It is not enough to have removed the stone from the tomb ; 
 the criminal soul must come forth from it himself, that he may 
 exhibit himself, as I may say, in open day ; that he may manifest 
 his whole life ; and that, from his earliest years even to the blessed 
 hour of his deliverance, nothing be concealed from the eyes of the 
 ministers ready to unbind him. 
 
 But this step, you say, has difficulties which may be the occa- 
 sion of casting trouble, embarrassment, and discouragement through 
 the conscience, and of suspending the resolution of a change of 
 life. What ! my brethren, you involve yourselves in discussions 
 so arduous and so endless, for the purpose of clearing up your 
 temporal concerns ; and, in order to establish regularity and sere- 
 nity in your conscience, and to leave nothing doubtful in the affair 
 of your eternity, you would cry out from the moment that a few 
 cares and investigations are required? How often do you proclaim, 
 when a decisive step is in agitation which may determine the ruin 
 or preservation of our fortune, that nothing must be neglected, 
 nothing must be left to chance; that one's own eyes must look 
 into every thing; that every thing must be cleared up, every thing 
 fathomed even to the bottom, that you may have nothing after- 
 ward wherewith to reproach yourselves; and this maxim, so rea- 
 sonable when connected with fleeting and frivolous interests, should 
 be less so when applied to the grand and only real interest, that 
 of salvation ! 
 
 Ah ! my brethren, how poor are we in faith ! And what have 
 we, in this life, of more importance than the care of arranging that 
 awful account which we have to render to the eternal Judge, and to 
 the searcher of hearts and of thoughts? That is to say, the care 
 of regulating our conscience, of dispelling its darkness, of purifying 
 its stains, of clearing up its eternal interests, of confirming its 
 hopes, of strengthening ourselves as much as the present condition 
 permits, and making ourselves acquainted, as far as in our power, 
 with its situation and its dispositions; and not to make our ap- 
 pearance before God like fools, unknown to ourselves, uncertain of 
 what we are, and of what we must for ever be. Such are the 
 means of conversion marked out to us in the miracle of raising up 
 Lazarus : let us conclude the history of our Gospel, and see what 
 the motives are which determine Jesus Christ to operate it. 
 
488 ON THE RESURRECTION Ser. 29. 
 
 Reflection III. To enter at once into our subject, without 
 losing sight of the consequence of the Gospel, the first motive 
 which our Saviour seems to have, in the resurrection of Lazarus, 
 is that of drying up the tears, and rewarding the prayers and 
 the piety of his sisters. Lord, said they to him, he whom thou 
 lovest is sick : and behold the first motive which often determines 
 Jesus Christ to operate the conversion of a great sinner, the tears 
 and the prayers of those just souls who entreat it. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, whether it be that the Lord thereby wish to 
 render virtue more respectable to sinners, by according favours to 
 them only through the mediation of just souls; whether it be that 
 he intended more closely to knit together his members, and to 
 perfect them in unity and in charity, by rendering the ministry of 
 the one useful and requisite to the other; it is certain that it is 
 through the prayers of the good, and in their intercession, that 
 the source of the conversion of the greatest sinners springs up. 
 As all is done for the just in the church, says the apostle, so it 
 may be said that every thing is done through them ; and, as sin- 
 ners are only endured in it to exercise their virtue, or to animate 
 their vigilance, they are also recalled from their errors only to con- 
 sole their faith and to reward their groanings and prayers. 
 
 To love just souls is a beginning, then, of righteousness to the 
 greatest sinners: it is a presage of virtue to respect it in those 
 who practise it: it is a prospect of conversion to seek the society 
 of the good, to esteem their acquaintance, and to interest them in 
 our salvation ; and, even admitting that our heart still groan under 
 iniquitous bonds, and that attachment to the world and to plea- 
 sures still separate us from God, yet from the moment that we begin 
 to love his servants, we accomplish, as it were, the first step in his 
 service. It seems as if our heart already becomes tired of its pas- 
 sions, from the moment that we take pleasure in the society of 
 those who condemn them; and that a relish for virtue is on the 
 eve of springing up in us, from the moment that we take delight 
 in those whom virtue alone renders amiable. 
 
 Besides, the just, instructed by ourselves with regard to our 
 weaknesses, keep them continually present before the Lord : they 
 lament, before him, over those chains which still bind us to the 
 world and to its amusements ; they offer up to him some weak 
 desires of virtue, which we have entrusted to their charge, in order 
 to induce his goodness to grant more fervent and more efficacious 
 ones ; they carry, even to the foot of the throne, some feeble 
 essays toward good which they have noted in us, in order to obtain 
 for us the perfection and plenitude of his mercy. More affected 
 with our evils than for their own wants, they piously forget them- 
 selves, in order to snatch from destruction their brethren who are 
 on the point of perishing before their eyes : they alone love us for 
 ourselves, because they alone love in us but our salvation: the 
 world may furnish sycophants, flatterers, social companions in 
 dissipation, but virtue alone gives us friends. 
 
 A.nd it is here that you who now listen to me, who, perhaps like 
 
Ser. 29. of lazarus. 489 
 
 Mary, were formerly slaves of the world and the passions, and who, 
 latterly, touched with grace, like her, quit no more the feet of the 
 Lord ; it is here that you ought to remember that, in future, one 
 of the most important duties of your new life is, that of continually 
 demanding, like the sister of Lazarus, from Jesus Christ, the re- 
 surrection of your brethren, the conversion of those unfortunate 
 souls who have been accomplices in your criminal pleasures, and 
 who still, under the dominion of death and sin, sorrily drag on their 
 chains in the ways of the world and of error. You ought continu- 
 ally, in the bitterness of your heart, to be saying to Jesus Christ, 
 like the sister of Lazarus, Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick; those 
 souls to whom I have been a stumbling-block, and who have less 
 offended thee than I, are still, however, in the shadow of death and 
 in the corruption of sin ; and I enjoy a deliverance of which I was 
 more unworthy than they ! Ah ! Lord, the delight I feel in apper- 
 taining to thee shall never be perfect while I behold my brethren 
 thus miserably perishing before mine eyes : I shall but imperfectly 
 enjoy the fruit of thy mercies, while thou refusest them to souls to 
 whom I have myself been the fatal cause of their departure from 
 righteousness : and I shall never think that my crimes are fully 
 forgiven, while I see them existing in those sinners who have been 
 removed from thee only through my example and my passions. 
 
 Not, my brethren, that you ought to place your whole depend- 
 ence on the prayers of the good, or to expect from them alone a 
 change of heart and the gift of penitence. For this is a very gene- 
 ral illusion, and more especially among those who are high in the 
 world : they suppose that, by respecting virtue, by showing favour 
 to the good, and by interesting them to solicit our conversion from 
 God, our chains shall drop off of themselves without any effort on 
 our part ; they comfort themselves upon that remainder of faith 
 and religion which renders virtue in others still dear and respecta- 
 ble to us ; they give themselves credit for not having, as yet, reached 
 that point of freethinking and impiety, so common in the world, 
 which makes virtue the public butt of its censures and derision. 
 But, alas ! my brethren, it availed nothing to king Jehu that he had 
 publicly rendered honour to the holy man Jehonadab ; his vices 
 still subsisted with all that respect he had for the man of God. It 
 availed nothing to Herod that he had honoured the piety of John 
 the Baptist, and that he had even loved the holy freedom of his 
 discourses : the deference which he had for the precursor left him 
 still all the excess of his criminal passion. The honours which we 
 pay to virtue attract aids to our weakness; but they do not justify 
 our errors : the prayers of the good induce the Lord to pay more 
 attention to our wants ; but they do not render him more indulgent 
 to our crimes : they obtain for us victory over the passions which 
 we begin to detest ; but not over those which we still love and 
 which we still continue to cherish: in a word, they assist our good 
 desires ; but they do not authorize our impenitence. 
 
 The miracle of raising up Lazarus teaches just souls, then, to so- 
 licit the conversion of their brethren; but the conversion and deli- 
 
490 ON THE RESURRECTION Sei\ 29. 
 
 verance of their brethren likewise serve to animate their lukewarm- 
 ness and slothfulness. Second motive which Jesus Christ proposes : 
 he wishes by the novelty of that prodigy, to arouse the faith of his 
 disciples still dormant and languishing. 
 
 And such is the fruit which Jesus Christ continually expects 
 from the miracles of his grace : he operates before your eyes, you 
 who have long walked in his ways, sudden and surprising conver- 
 sions, in order by the fervour and the zeal of these newly risen from 
 the dead, to confound your lukewarmness and indolence. Yes, my 
 brethren, nothing is more calculated to cover us with confusion, 
 and to make us tremble over the infidelities which we still mingle 
 with a cold and languishing piety, than the sight of a soul buried, 
 but an instant ago, in the corruption of death and sin, and whose 
 errors had perhaps inflated the vanity of our zeal, and served as a 
 butt to the malignity of our censures; than the sight, I say, of such 
 a soul, vivified, a moment after, by grace, freed from his chains, 
 and boldly walking in the ways of God, more eager after mortifica- 
 tion than formerly after pleasure ; more removed from the world 
 and its amusements than apparently he was once attached ; scrup- 
 ling to himself the most innocent recreations; allowing himself almost 
 no bounds to the vivacity and transports of his penitence; and every 
 day making rapid advances in piety: while we, after many years of 
 piety, alas ! still languish on the beginning of that holy career ; 
 while we, after so many signal favours received, after so many 
 truths known, after so many sacraments and other duties of religion 
 attended, alas ! we still hold to the world and to ourselves by a 
 thousand ties ; we are yet but in the first rudiments of faith and of 
 a Christian life, and still more distant than at first from that zeal 
 and that fervour which constitute the whole value and the whole 
 security of a faithful piety. 
 
 My brethren, the dreadful prophecy of Jesus Christ is every day 
 fulfilled before our eyes. Publicans and sinners, persons of a scan- 
 dalous conduct according even to the world, and as distant from the 
 kingdom of God as the east is from the west, are converted, repent, 
 surprise the world with the sight of a retired and mortified life, and 
 shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob ; and, perhaps, 
 we, who are looked upon as children of the kingdom, we, whose 
 manners present nothing to the eyes of the world but what is or- 
 derly and laudable; we, who are held out as models of propriety 
 and piety ; we, whom the world canonizes, and which we glorified 
 with the reputation and the appearances of piety; alas! we shall 
 perhaps be rejected and confounded with unbelievers, for having 
 always laboured at our salvation with negligence, and having pre- 
 served a heart still altogether worldly, in the midst even of our 
 pious works. 
 
 Thus, my brethren, you whom this discourse regards, do not 
 judge of yourselves from the comparison which you inwardly make 
 with those souls whom the world and the passions hurry away. 
 We may be more righteous than the world, and yet not enough so 
 for Jesus Christ : for the world is so corrupted, the Gospel is so 
 
Ser. 29. of lazarus. 491 
 
 little known in it, faith is so weakened, the law and truth so little 
 observed, that what is virtue, with regard to it, may still be a great 
 iniquity in the sight of God. 
 
 Rather compare yourselves with those holy penitents who for- 
 merly edified the church by the prodigy of their austerities, and 
 whose life, even at this day, appears to us so incredible; with those 
 noble martyrs who gave up their body for the truth, and who, 
 amidst the most cruel torments, were transported with joy in con- 
 templating the holy promises ; with those primitive believers who 
 suffered death every day for Jesus Christ, and who, under persecu- 
 tion, loss of property, and of their children, thought themselves 
 still possessed of all, as they had neither lost faith nor the hope of 
 a better life : behold the models by whom you ought to measure 
 your piety, to find it still deficient, and all worldly. Unless you 
 resemble them, in vain do you not resemble the world ; you shall 
 perish like it ; it is not enough that you do not imitate the crimes 
 of the worldly, you must also have the virtues of the just. 
 
 Lastly. Not only the goodness of Jesus Christ wishes, in this 
 miracle, to furnish to his disciples and to the Jewish believers a 
 fresh motive for believing in him, but in it his justice likewise 
 supplies a fresh occasion of obstinacy and incredulity to the 
 unbelieving Israelites : last circumstance of our Gospel. They 
 take measures to destroy him ; they wish to put Lazarus himself 
 to death, that so striking a testimony of the power of Jesus Christ 
 may no longer continue among them. They had wept his death ; 
 scarcely is he recalled to life when he appears worthy only of their 
 fury and vengeance. And behold the sole fruit which the generality 
 of you commonly reap from the miracles of grace ; that is to say, 
 from the conversion and the spiritual resurrection of great 
 sinners. Before that the mercy of Jesus Christ had cast looks of 
 grace and salvation upon a criminal soul, and while delivered up 
 to the dominion of the passions, he was not only dead in sin, but 
 spread every where around the infection and the stench of his 
 disorders and scandals, you seemed touched for his errors and 
 shame; you deplored the misery of his lot: you mingled your 
 tears and regrets with the tears and regrets of his friends and rela- 
 tives, and the public irregularity of his conduct experienced from 
 you every sorrow and compassion of humanity ; but, scarcely hath 
 the grace of Jesus Christ, recalled him to life, scarcely, come forth 
 from the tomb and that abyss of corruption in which he was buried, 
 does he render glory to his deliverer by the holy ardours of a ten- 
 der and sincere piety, than you become the censurers even of his 
 piety : you had appeared touched for the excess of his vices, and 
 you publicly deride the excess of his pretended piety : you had 
 blamed his warm pursuits after pleasure, and you condemn the 
 fervour of his love for God. Be consistent, therefore, with your- 
 selves, and decide in favour either of the just or of the sinner. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, if the happiness of a soul, who before your 
 eyes, returns from his errors, excite not your envy ; if the contri- 
 tion of a sinner, who was formerly the companion perhaps of your 
 
492 ON THE RESURRECTION Ser. 29. 
 
 pleasures and excesses, leave you all your indifference with regard 
 to salvation, ah ! insult not at least his good fortune ; despise not 
 in him the gift of God ; take not even from the miracles of grace, 
 so proper to open your eyes, a fresh motive of blindness and un- 
 belief; and do not thus change the blessings of God to your 
 brethren, into a dreadful judgment of justice against you. 
 
 In reading the history of our Gospel, you are sometimes asto- 
 nished that the obstinacy and blindness of the Jews should be able 
 to resist the most striking miracles of Jesus Christ ; you do not 
 comprehend how the raising up of the dead, the curing of persons 
 born blind, and so many other wonders wrought before their eyes, 
 did not force them to acknowledge the truth of his ministry and 
 the sanctity of his doctrine : you say that much less would con- 
 vince you; that any one of all these miracles would suffice, and 
 that you would immediately yield to the truth. 
 
 But, my brethren, you condemn yourselves out of your own 
 mouth; for, (without refuting here that absurd manner of speaking, 
 by those grand and sublime proofs which religion furnishes against 
 impiety, and which we have elsewhere employed); candidly, is it 
 not a more arduous and more astonishing miracle, that a soul, 
 delivered up to sin, and to the most shameful passions, born with 
 every propensity to voluptuousness, pride, revenge, and ambition, 
 and more distant than any one, by the nature of his heart, from the 
 kingdom of God, and from all the maxims of Christian piety; that 
 all at once, that soul should renounce all his gratifications, break 
 asunder all his warmest attachments, repress his liveliest passions, 
 change his most rooted inclinations, forget injuries, attention to 
 the body and to fortune ; no longer have a relish but for prayer, 
 retirement, the practice of the most gloomy and repulsive duties, 
 and hold out to the eyes of the public, in a change, in a resurrection 
 so palpable, the spectacle of a life so different from the former, 
 that the world, that freethinking itself, shall be forced to render 
 glory to the truth of his change, and that they shall no longer 
 know him to be the same ; is it not, I say, a more arduous and 
 more astonishing miracle ? 
 
 Now, doth not the mercy of Jesus Christ operate such miracles 
 almost every day before your eyes ? Doth not his holy word, though 
 in a weak and languishing mouth, still raise up, every day, new 
 Lazaruses from the dead ? You behold them ; you know and you 
 appear astonished at them ; yet, nevertheless, do they touch you ? 
 Do these wonders which, with so much majesty, the finger of God 
 maketh to shine forth, recall you to truth and to the light ? Do 
 these changes, a thousand times more miraculous, than the raising 
 up of the dead, convince you ? Do they bring you nearer to Jesus 
 Christ, or restore to you that faith which you have lost. 
 
 Alas ! your whole care, like the Jews, is to stand out against, or 
 to weaken their truth. You deny that grace hath any part in the 
 glory of these wonders : you seek to trace their motives in causes 
 altogether worldly; you consider them as delusions and imposi- 
 tions; you attribute to the artifices of man the most shining 
 
Ser. 29. of lazarus. 493 
 
 operations of the Holy Spirit ; you insist that such a new life is 
 only a fresh snare to entrap the public credulity, and a new path 
 more securely to attain some worldly purpose. Thus, the works of 
 the almighty power of Jesus Christ harden you ; thus even the 
 wonders of his grace complete your blindness ; thus, you make 
 every thing conducive toward your destruction. Jesus Christ 
 becomes to you a stumbling-block, when he ought to have been a 
 source of life and salvation. The examples of sinners stain and 
 corrupt you : their penitence revolts and hardens you. 
 
 Great God ! suffer, then, in order that a life altogether criminal 
 at last be terminated, that I now raise my voice to thee out of the 
 depths in which I have, for so many years, languished. The im- 
 pure chains with which I am bound, attach me, by so many folds, 
 to the bottom of the gulf in which I drag on my gloomy days, 
 that, in spite of all my good desires, I still remain fettered, and 
 almost incapable of any effort toward disengaging myself and 
 returning to thee, O my God, whom I have forsaken. But, Lord 
 out of the depths even in which thou seest me, like another 
 Lazarus, fettered and buried, I have, at least, the voice of the heart 
 free to send up, even to the foot of the throne, my sorrows, my 
 lamentations, and my tears. 
 
 The voice of a repentant sinner is always agreeable, O Lord, to 
 thine ear ; it is that voice of Jacob which awakens all thy tender- 
 ness, even when it offers to thy sight but hands of Esau, and still 
 covered with blood and crimes. 
 
 Ah! thine holy ears, O Lord, have now been sufficiently turned 
 away from my licentious and blasphemous words ; let them now 
 be attentive to the voice of my supplications ; and let the singu- 
 larity of the words which T now address to thee, O my God ! at- 
 tract a more favourable attention to my prayer. 
 
 I come not here, great God ! to excuse my disorders in thy sight, 
 by alleging to thee the occasions which have seduced me, the ex- 
 amples which have led me astray, the misfortune of my engage- 
 ments, and the nature of my heart and of my weakness ; cover 
 thine eyes, O Lord, upon the horrors of my past life , the only pos- 
 sibility of excusing them is, not to behold or to know them. Alas ! 
 if I am unable myself to support even their view ; if my crimes 
 dread and fly from mine own eyes, and if my terrors and my weak- 
 ness render it absolutely necessary to turn my sight from them, 
 how, O Lord, should they be able to sustain the sanctity of thy 
 looks, if thou search into them with that eye of severity which finds 
 stains in the purest and most laudable life ? 
 
 But thou, O Lord, art not a God like unto man, to whom it is 
 always so difficult to pardon and to forget the injuries of an ene- 
 my : goodness and mercy dwell in thine eternal bosom ; clemency 
 is the first attribute of thy supreme being ; and thou hast no ene- 
 mies but those who refuse to place their trust in the abundant 
 riches of thy mercy. 
 
 Yes, Lord ! be the hour what it may when a criminal soul 
 casts himself upon thy mercy ; whether in the morning of life or in 
 
494 ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. Ser. 30. 
 
 the decline of age ; whether after the errors of youthful manners, 
 or after an entire life of dissipation and licentiousness, thou 
 wouldst, O my God ! that their hope in thee be not extinguished ; 
 and thou assurest us that the highest point of our crimes is but the 
 lowest degree of thy mercy. 
 
 But, likewise, great God ! if thou listen to my desires ; if, once 
 more, thou restore to me that life and that light which I have lost; 
 if thou break asunder my chains of death which still fetter me; if 
 thou stretch out thine hand to withdraw me from the gulf in which 
 I am plunged, ah I never, O Lord, shall I cease to proclaim thine 
 eternal mercies. I will forget the whole world, that I may be oc- 
 cupied only with the wonders of thy grace toward my soul. I will 
 every moment of my life render glory to the God who shall have 
 delivered me : my mouth, for ever shut against vain things, shall 
 with difficulty be able to express all the transports of my love and 
 of my gratitude ; and thy creature, who still groans under the do- 
 minion of the world and of sin, then restored to his true Lord, shall, 
 henceforth and for evermore, bless his deliverer. 
 
 SERMON XXX. 
 
 ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 
 
 " Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud, with power and great 
 glory." Luke xxi. 27. 
 
 Such will be that last spectacle which shall terminate the eter- 
 nal revolutions which the aspect of this world is continually offer- 
 ing to our eyes, and which either amuse us through their novelty, 
 or seduce us by their charms. Such will be the coming of the Son 
 of Man, the day of his revelation, the accomplishment of his king- 
 dom, and the complete redemption of his mystical body. Such 
 the day of the manifestation of consciences, that day of misery 
 and despair to one portion of men, and of peace, consolation, and 
 ineffable delight to the other : the sweet expectation of the just, 
 the dread of the wicked ; the day which is to determine the destiny 
 of all men. 
 
 It was the image, ever present to their minds, of that terrible 
 day, which rendered the first believers patient under persecution, 
 delighted under sufferance, and illustrious under injury and reproach. 
 It is that which has since supported the faith of martyrs, animated 
 the constancy of virgins, and smoothed to the anchorite all the hor- 
 rors of a desert: it is that which still, at this day, peoples those re- 
 ligious solitudes erected, by the piety of our ancestors, as asylums 
 against the contagion of the age. 
 
Ser.30. on the day of judgment. 495 
 
 Even you, my brethren^ when the awful solemnity of that grand 
 event hath sometimes intruded on your thoughts, have been un- 
 able to check feelings of compunction and dread. But these have 
 been only transitory fears ; more smiling and more agreeable ideas 
 have speedily effaced them, and recalled to you your former calm. 
 Alas ! in the happy days of the church, it would have been consi- 
 dered as renouncing faith not to have longed for the day of the 
 Lord. The only consolation of those first disciples of faith was in 
 looking forward to it, and the apostles were obliged even to mode- 
 rate, on that point, the holy eagerness of believers ; and, at pre- 
 sent, the church finds itself under the necessity of employing the 
 whole terror of our ministry, in order to recall its remembrance to 
 Christians, and the whole fruit of our discourses is confined to mak- 
 ing it dreaded. 
 
 I mean not, however, to display to you here the whole history of 
 that awful event. I wish to confine myself to one of its circum- 
 stances, which has always appeared to me as the most proper to 
 make an impression on the heart: it is the manifestation of 
 consciences. 
 
 Now, behold my whole design. On this earth the sinner never 
 knows himself such as he is, and is only half-known to men ; he 
 lives, in general, unknown to himself, through his blindness, and to 
 others through his dissimulation and cunning. In that grand day 
 he will know himself, and will be known. The sinner laid open to 
 himself, the sinner laid open to all creatures ! Behold the subject 
 upon which I have resolved to make some simple, and, I trust, edi- 
 fying reflections. 
 
 Part I. "All things are reserved for a future day," says the 
 sage Ecclesiastes, * and no man knoweth them here below, for all 
 things come alike to all : there is one event to the righteous and to 
 the wicked ; to the good, and to the clean and to the unclean : to 
 him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not : as is the good, 
 so is the sinner." 
 
 What idea, indeed, should we have of Providence in the govern- 
 ment of the universe, were we to judge of its wisdom and justice 
 only from the diverse lots which it provides on this earth for men ? 
 What ! the good and the evil should be dispensed on the earth, 
 without choice, respect, or discrimination ? The just man should 
 almost always groan under affliction and want, whilst the wicked 
 should live surrounded with glory, pleasures, and affluence, and, 
 after fortunes so different, and manners so dissimilar, both should 
 alike sink into an eternal oblivion ; and that just and avenging God, 
 whom they should afterward meet, would not deign either to weigh 
 their deeds, or to distinguish their merits ? Thou, O Lord, art just, 
 and will render to each according to his works. 
 
 This grand point of Christian faith, so consistent even with na- 
 tural equity, supposed, I say, that, in that terrible day, when, in 
 the face of the universe, the sinner shall appear before that awful 
 tribunal accompanied by his works, the manifestation of consciences 
 
496 ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. $ei\ 30. 
 
 will be the most horrible punishment of the unfaithful soul. A 
 rigorous examination shall, in the first place, make him known to 
 himself; and behold all the circumstances of that awful discussion. 
 
 I ought, in the first place, to make you observe all the titles with 
 which he will be invested who shall examine you, and which an- 
 nounce all the rigour with which he shall weigh in the balance your 
 deeds and your thoughts. It will be a rigid legislator, jealous of 
 the sanctity of his law, and who will judge you only by it j all the 
 softenings, all the vain interpretations, which custom or a false 
 knowledge had invented, shall vanish ; the lustre of the law will 
 dissipate them ; the resources with which they had flattered the 
 sinner, will sink into nothing ; and the incensed legislator will ex- 
 amine almost more rigorously the false interpretations which had 
 changed its purity, than the manifest transgressions which had vio- 
 lated it. It will be a judge charged with the interest of his Fathers 
 glory against the sinner, established to decide between God and 
 man; and that day will be the day of his zeal for the honour of the 
 Divinity, against those who shall not have rendered to him that 
 honour which is his due : a Saviour, who will show you his wounds 
 to reproach your ingratitude ; all that he hath done for you will rise 
 up against you : his blood, the price of your salvation, will loudly 
 demand your destruction ; and his despised kindnesses will be num- 
 bered among your heaviest crimes : the Searcher of hearts, to whose 
 eyes the most hidden counsels and the most secret thoughts will all 
 be laid open : lastly? a God of terrible majesty, before whom the 
 heavens shall dissolve, the elements be confounded, and all nature 
 overturned, and whose scrutiny, with all the terror of his presence, 
 the sinner shall singly be forced to support. 
 
 Now, behold the circumstances of that awful examination. First, 
 it will be the same for all men ; and, as St. Matthew says, before 
 him shall be gathered all nations. The difference of ages, countries, 
 conditions, birth, and temperament, shall no longer be regarded ; 
 and as the Gospel, on which you will be judged, is the law of all 
 times and conditions, and holds out the same rules to the prince 
 and to the subject, to the great and to the lowly, to the anchorite 
 and to the man immersed in the affairs of the world, to the believer 
 who lived in the fervour of the primitive times, and to him who hath 
 the misfortune to live in the relaxation of the present age, no dis- 
 tinction will be made in the manner of proceeding on the examina- 
 tion of the guilty ; vain excuses on rank and birth, on the dangers 
 of his station, on the manners of his age, on the weakness of tem- 
 perament, will then be no longer listened to from you ; and, with 
 respect to modesty, chastity, ambition, forgiveness of injuries, re- 
 nouncement of one's self, mortification of the senses, the just Judge 
 will demand an exact account, equally from the Greek as from the 
 Barbarian, from the poor as from the powerful, from the man of 
 the world as from the solitary, from the prince as from the humblest 
 subject ; lastly, from the Christian of these latter times as from the 
 first disciples of the Gospel. 
 
 Vain judgments of the earth, how shall you then be confounded ! 
 
Ser. 30. on the day op judgment. 497 
 
 and how little shall we then estimate nobility of blood, the glory 
 of ancestry, the blaze of reputation, the distinction of talents, and 
 all the pompous titles with which men endeavour, on this earth, to 
 puff out their meanness, and to found so many vain distinctions 
 and privileges, when we shall see, amidst that crowd of guilty, the 
 sovereign confounded with the slave, the great with the meanest of 
 the people, the learned promiscuously blended with the ignorant 
 and mean, the gods of war, these invincible and far-famed cha- 
 racters who had filled the universe with their name, at the side of 
 the husbandman and the labourer ! Thou alone, O my God ! hast 
 glory, power, and immortality ; and, all the titles of vanity being 
 destroyed and annihilated with the world which had invented them, 
 each will appear before thee accompanied solely by his works ! 
 
 Secondly. That examination will be universal, that is to say, it 
 will comprehend all the different ages and circumstances of your 
 life : the weaknesses of childhood, which have escaped your remem- 
 brance; the transports of youth, of which almost every moment has 
 been a crime ; the ambition and the anxieties of a riper age ; the 
 obstinacy and the chagrins of an old age, still perhaps voluptuous. 
 What astonishment, when repassing over the diverse parts which 
 you have acted on the earth, you shall find yourself every where pro- 
 fane, dissolute, voluptuous, without virtue, without penitence, 
 without good works ; having passed through a diversity of situa- 
 tions merely in order to amass a more abundant treasure of wrath ; 
 and having lived in these diverse states as if to a certainty all were 
 to die with you ! 
 
 The variety of events which succeed each other here below, and 
 divide our life, fix our attention only on the present, and do not 
 permit us to recollect it in the whole, or fully to see what we really 
 are. We never regard ourselves but in that point of view in which 
 our present situation holds us out ; the last situation is always the one 
 which leads us to judge of ourselves ; a sentiment of salvation, with 
 which God sometimes indulges us, calms us on an insensibility of 
 many years ; a day passed in exercises of piety, makes us forget a 
 life of crimes ; the declaration of our faults at the tribunal of peni- 
 tence, effaces them from our remembrance, and they become to us 
 as though they had never been : in a word, of all the different states 
 of our conscience we never see but the present. But, in the pre- 
 sence of the terrible Judge, the whole will be visible at once ; the 
 history will be entirely laid open. From the very first feeling 
 formed by your heart, even to its last sigh, all shall be collected 
 before your eyes ; all the iniquities, dispersed through the different 
 stages of your life, will then confront you ; not an action, not a 
 desire, not a word, not a thought, will there be omitted ; for, if our 
 hairs be numbered, judge of our deeds. We shall see spring up 
 the whole course of our years, which though as if annihilated to 
 us, yet lived in the eyes of God ; and there we shall find, not those 
 perishable histories in which our vain actions were to be trans- 
 mitted to posterity, not those flattering recitals of our military ex- 
 ploits, of those brilliant events which had filled so many volumes, 
 
 K K 
 
498 ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. Sei*. 30. 
 
 and exhausted so much praise, not those public records in which 
 are set down the nobility of our birth, the antiquity of our origin, 
 the fame of our ancestors, the dignities which have rendered 
 them illustrious, the lustre which we have added to their name, 
 and all the history, as I may say, of human illusion and weak- 
 ness; that immortality so vaunted, which it promised to us, 
 shall be buried in the ruins and in the wrecks of the uni- 
 verse ; but there we shall see the most shocking and exact his- 
 tory of our heart, of our mind, of our imagination ; that is to say, 
 that internal and invisible part of our life, equally unknown to our- 
 selves as to the rest of men. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, besides the exterior history of our manners, 
 which will be all recalled, what will most astonish us is, the secret 
 history of our heart, which will then be wholly laid open to our 
 eyes ; of that heart which we have never sounded, never known; of 
 that heart which continually eluded our search, and, under spe- 
 cious names, disguised from us the shame of its passions ; of that 
 heart whose elevation, probity, magnanimity, disinterestedness, and 
 natural goodness we have so much vaunted, which the public error 
 and adulation had beheld as such, and which had occasioned our 
 being exalted above other men. So many shameful desires, which 
 were scarcely formed before we endeavoured to conceal them from 
 ourselves ; so many absurd projects of fortune and elevation, sweet 
 delusions, up to which our seduced heart continually gave itself ; 
 so many secret and mean jealousies which were the invisible prin- 
 ciple of all our conduct, yet, nevertheless, which we dissembled 
 through pride ; so many criminal dispositions which had a thou- 
 sand times induced us ardently to wish that either the pleasures of 
 the senses were eternal, or that, at least, they should remain un- 
 punished ; so many hatreds and animosities, which unknown to 
 ourselves, had corrupted our heart ; so many defiled and vicious in- 
 tentions, with regard to which we were so ingenious in flattering 
 ourselves ; so many projects of iniquity to which opportunity had 
 alone been wanting, and which we reckoned as nothing because 
 they had never departed from our heart : in a word, that vicissitude 
 of passions which in succession had possession of our heart : behold 
 what shall all be displayed before our eyes. We shall see, says a 
 holy father, come out, as from an ambuscade, numberless crimes of 
 which we could never believe ourselves capable. We shall be 
 shown to ourselves ; we shall be made to enter into our own heart, 
 where we had never resided : a sudden light shall clear up that 
 abyss : that mystery of iniquity shall be revealed ; and we shall see 
 that which of all we knew least, that was ourselves. 
 
 To the examination of the evils we have committed will succeed 
 that of the good which we have failed to do. The endless omissions 
 of which our life has been full, and for which we had never felt even 
 remorse, will be recalled ; so many circumstances where our cha- 
 racter engaged us to render glory to the truth, and where we have 
 betrayed it through vile motives of interest, or mean compliances ; 
 so many opportunities of doing good, provided for us by the good- 
 
Ser. 30. on the day of judgment. 499 
 
 ness of God, and which we have almost always neglected ; so much 
 culpable and voluntary ignorance, in consequence of having dreaded 
 the light, and even fled from those who could have instructed us ; 
 so many events so calculated to open our eyes, and which have 
 served only to increase our blindness ; so much good, which, 
 through our talents or our example, we might have done, and 
 which we have prevented by our vices; so many souls whose in- 
 nocence might have been preserved by our bounty, and whom we 
 have left to perish by refusing to abate from our profusions ; so 
 many crimes which might have been prevented in our inferiors or 
 equals by prudent remonstrances and useful advice, and which in- 
 dolence, meanness, and perhaps more culpable views, have made 
 us suppress ; so many days and moments which might have been 
 placed to advantage for Heaven, and which we have spent in inu- 
 tility and an unworthy effeminacy. And what in this is more 
 dreadful, is that, in our own eyes, that was the most innocent part 
 of our life, offering nothing to our remembrance, as we think, but 
 a great void. 
 
 What endless regret, then, to the unfaithful soul, to see such a list 
 of days sacrified to inutility, to that world which is no more ; while 
 a single moment, consecrated to a God faithful to his promises, 
 might have merited the felicity of the holy! to see so many 
 meannesses, so many objections for the sake of riches, and a miser- 
 able fortune which could last only for a moment ; while a single 
 self-denial, suffered for the sake of Jesus Christ, would have se- 
 cured to him an immortal crown ! What regret, when he now 
 finds that not half the cares and anxieties were required for his sal- 
 vation which he has undergone to accomplish his destruction ; and 
 that a single day of that long life, wholly devoted to the world, had 
 sufficed for eternity ! 
 
 To that examination will succeed, in the fourth place, that of mer- 
 cies which you have abused ; so many holy inspirations either re- 
 jected or only half prosecuted ; so many watchful attentions of 
 Providence to your soul rendered unavailing ; so many truths, de- 
 clared through our ministry, which, in many believers, have oper- 
 ated penitence and salvation, but have always been sterile in your 
 heart ; so many afflictions and disappointments, which the Lord had 
 provided for you, in order to recall you to him, and of which you 
 have always made so unworthy a use ; even so many natural gifts 
 which once were blossoms of virtue, and which you have turned 
 into agents of vice : ah ! if the unprofitable servant be cast into 
 outer darkness for having only hidden his talent, with what indul- 
 gence can you flatter yourself, you who have received so many, and 
 who have always employed them against the glory of that Master 
 who had intrusted them to you ? 
 
 Here, indeed, it is that the reckoning will be terrible. Jesus 
 Christ will demand from you the price of his blood. You some- 
 times complain that God doth not enough for you ; that he hath 
 brought you into the world weak, and of a temperament of which 
 you are not the master ; and that he bestoweth not the necessary 
 
 k k 2 
 
500 ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. Ser. 30. 
 
 grace to enable you to resist the many opportunities which drag 
 you away. Ah ! you will then see that your whole life has been a 
 continued abuse of his mercies ; you will see that, among so many 
 infidel nations which know him not, you have been privileged, en- 
 lightened, called to faith, nourished in the doctrine of truth and 
 the virtue of the sacrament, incessantly supported by his inspira- 
 tions and his grace; you will be shocked to see all that God 
 hath done for you, and the little that you have done for him ; and 
 your complaints will quickly be changed into an utter confusion, 
 destitute of every resource but in the horrors of your own despair. 
 
 Hitherto the just Judge hath examined you only on those crimes 
 which are especially your own ; but what will it be when he shall 
 enter into a reckoning with you on the sins of others, of which you 
 have been either the occasion or the cause, and which will, con- 
 sequently, be charged to your account! What a new sink ! All 
 the souls to whom you have been a subject of scandal and ruin will 
 be presented to you ; all the souls whom your discourses, your 
 counsels, your example, your solicitations, your immodesties, have 
 precipitated, with yourself, into eternal destruction ; all the souls 
 whose weakness you have either seduced, or whose innocence you 
 have corrupted, whose faith you have perverted, whose virtue you 
 have shaken, whose freethinking you have authorized, or whose 
 impiety you have strengthened by your persuasions, or by the ex- 
 ample of your life. Jesus Christ, to whom they belonged, and 
 who had purchased them with his blood, will demand them at your 
 hands, as a dear heritage, as a precious conquest, which you have 
 unjustly ravished from him; and if the Lord marked Cain with 
 the sign of reprobation in demanding account from him of the 
 blood of his brother, judge with what sign you shall be marked 
 when you shall be brought to a reckoning for his soul. 
 
 But this is not all. Were you a public character, and high in 
 authority, what abuses authorized ! What iniquities glanced over ! 
 What duties sacrificed, either to your own interests or to the pas- 
 sions and interests of others ! What respect of persons, in oppo- 
 sition to equity and conscience ! What iniquitous undertakings 
 counselled ! What wars, perhaps, what confusions, what public 
 evils, of which you have either been the author or the infamous 
 agent ! You will see that your ambition or your counsels have 
 been as the fatal source of an infinity of miseries, of the calamities 
 of your age, of those evils which are perpetuated, and pass from 
 father to son : and you will be surprised to find that your iniquities 
 have survived yourself, and that, even long after death, you were 
 still culpable, before God, of an infinity of crimes and disorders 
 which took place on the earth. And now it is, my brethren, that 
 the danger of public stations shall be known, the precipices which 
 surround the throne itself, the rocks of authority, and with what 
 reason the Gospel denominated happy those who live in the ob- 
 scurity of a private station ; with what it was that religion wished 
 to inspire us with so much horror at ambition, so much indiffer- 
 ence toward the grandeurs of the earth, so much contempt for all 
 
Ser. 30. on the day of judgment. 501 
 
 that is exalted only in the eyes of men, and so frequently recom- 
 mended to us to love only what we ought for ever to love. 
 
 But, exempted perhaps from all these vices which we have just 
 been mentioning, and attached, for a long time past, to the duties 
 of a Christian life, you presume that this terrible examination will 
 either not regard you, or, at any rate, that you will appear there 
 with more confidence than the criminal soul. Undoubtedly, my 
 dear hearer, that will be the day of triumph and glory for the just; 
 the day which will justify these pretended excesses of retreat, mor- 
 tification, modesty, and delicacy of conscience, which had furnished 
 to the world so many subjects of censure and profane derision. 
 The just shall, no doubt, appear before that awful tribunal with 
 more confidence than the sinner; but he will also appear there, 
 and even his righteousness shall be judged : your virtues, your holy 
 works, will be submitted to that rigorous examination. The world, 
 which often refuses the praises due to the truest virtue, too often 
 likewise grants them to the sole appearances of virtue : there are 
 even so many just who deceive themselves, and who are indebted, 
 for that name and that reputation, merely to the public error. 
 Thus, it is not only Tyre and Sidon that I shall visit in the day of 
 my wrath, saith the Lord; that is to say, those sinners whom their 
 crimes seemed to confound with the unbelievers and the inhabitants 
 of Tyre and Sidon : I shall carry the light of my judgments even to 
 Jerusalem ; that is to say, I will examine, I will search into, I will 
 fathom the motives of those holy works which seem to equal you 
 with the most faithful of the holy Jerusalem. 
 
 I will trace, even to the source, the motive of that conversion 
 which made so much noise in the world; and it shall be seen 
 whether I find not its origin in some secret disgust, in the de- 
 clension of youth and fortune, in private views of favour and 
 preferment, rather than in the detestation of sin and love of 
 righteousness. 
 
 I will balance those liberalities poured out on the bosom of the 
 poor, those compassionate visits, that zeal for pious undertakings, 
 that protection granted to my servants with complaisance, a de- 
 sire of esteem, ostentation, and worldly views which have infected 
 them : and, in my sight, they shall perhaps appear to be rather 
 the fruits of pride than the consequences of grace and the work of 
 my Spirit. 
 
 I will recall that train of prayer and other holy practices of which 
 you had made a kind of habit, which no longer roused within you 
 any feeling of faith and compunction ; and you shall know whether 
 lukewarmness, negligence, the little fruit which attended them, and 
 the little disposition within you previous to them, have not, before 
 me, constituted so many infidelities, for which you shall be judged 
 without mercy. 
 
 I will search into that removal from the world and from plea- 
 sures, that singularity of conduct, that affectation of modesty and 
 regularity ; and perhaps I shall find them more the consequence 
 of humour, temperament, and indolence, than of faith ; and that, 
 
502 ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. Ser. 30. 
 
 in a life more regular and more retired, in the opinion of men, you 
 shall still have preserved all your self-love, your attachment to 
 the flesh, all the niceties of sensuality ; and, in a word, all the sins 
 of the most worldly souls. 
 
 I will search, even to the bottom, that pretended zeal for my 
 glory which made you so deeply lament over the scandals of which 
 you were a spectator, which led you to condemn them with such 
 confidence and pride, and to blaze out, with such warmth, against 
 the irregularities and weaknesses of your brethren ; and, perhaps, 
 shall that zeal be no longer in my sight but a natural severity of 
 temper, a malignity of disposition, an inclination toward censure 
 and upbraiding, an indiscreet warmth, a vain, ostentatious zeal ; 
 far from finding you full of zeal for my glory, and for the salvation 
 of your brethren, you shall no longer appear before me, but un- 
 just, obstinate, malicious, and rash. 
 
 I will demand an account from you of those splendid talents 
 which, it would appear, you employed only for my glory and for 
 the instruction of believers ; and which had drawn upon you the 
 blessings of the just and the acclamations even of the worldly ; 
 and, perhaps, that continual attention to, and gratification of your 
 own pride, the desire of surpassing others, and your sensibility of 
 human applause, will prove the prominent features of your works 
 to be only the works of man and the fruits of pride ; and that I 
 shall curse those labours which had sprung from so impure a 
 source. 
 
 Great God ! what works, upon which I had so firmly depended, 
 shall then be found dead in thine eyes ! How terrible shall be 
 that discrimination ! And, of all the actions which we have per- 
 formed even for heaven, how few wilt thou acknowledge as thine, 
 and which thou wilt deem worthy of reward ! 
 
 Do not from thence conclude, my brethren, that it is then need- 
 less to labour for salvation, seeing that just Judge shall seek only 
 the condemnation of men. Only their condemnation ! My bre- 
 thren, he is come solely to save them, and his mercies will far 
 surpass even his justice. But behold the conclusion which you 
 ought rather to draw. Those righteous souls whom you so fre- 
 quently accuse of excess, of scrupulosity in the practice of the du- 
 ties of a Christian life, as though they carried things too far ; these 
 souls, exposed to the light of God, shall appear lukewarm, sensual, 
 imperfect, and perhaps criminal : and you, who live in the dangers 
 and pleasures of the world ; you, who devote to religion and your 
 salvation only the most idle moments of your life ; you, who scarcely 
 mingle a single work of piety with an entire year of dissipa- 
 tion and inutility, in what situation shall you then be, my dear 
 hearer ? If those who shall have only laudable works to present 
 shall yet be in danger of rejection, what shall be your destiny, 
 you, who have only a life entirely worldly to offer ? If the tree 
 full of blossoms be treated with such rigour, what shall become of 
 the withered and barren tree ? And, if the just be even with dif- 
 ficulty saved, I speak not of the sinner, for he is already judged, 
 
Ser. 30. on the day of judgment. 503 
 
 but the worldly soul, who lives without either vice or virtue, how 
 shall he dare to appear. 
 
 You, after all, say, my dear hearer, that your conscience does not 
 reproach you with great crimes ; that, if not good, neither are you 
 bad, and that your only sin is indolence and sloth. Ah ! you shall 
 then know yourself before the tribunal of Jesus Christ. You shall 
 see whether the testimony of your conscience, which reproached 
 you not with crimes, and left you scarcely any thing culpable to 
 confess, were not a terrible blindness, up to which the justice of 
 God had always delivered you. From the dread in which you shall 
 see the just, you shall find what ought to be your own fears, and whe- 
 ther the confidence in which you have always lived sprung from the 
 peace of a good conscience, or from the false security of a worldly one. 
 
 O rny God ! cries St. Augustine, could I but see at this moment 
 the state of my soul as thou shalt lay it open to me ! Could I 
 despoil myself of those prejudices which blind me, mistrust those 
 examples which confirm me, those customs which quiet me, those 
 talents which dazzle me, those praises which seduce me, that rank 
 and those titles which deceive me, and those complaisances of a sacred 
 guide, which form all my security : could I but despoil myself of that 
 self-love which is the source of all my errors, and behold myself alone 
 at thy feet, in thy light; O my God ! what horror would I not feel 
 for myself ! and what measures would I not take in humbling myself 
 before thee, to prevent the public shame of that awful day, when 
 the counsels of hearts and the secrecy of thoughts, shall be mani- 
 fested ! For, my brethren, not only shall the sinner be shown to 
 himself, but he shall likewise be shown to all creatures. 
 
 Part II. That mixture of good and wicked, inevitable on this 
 earth, gives birth to two disorders : in the first place, through fa- 
 vour of that mixture, concealed vice escapes that public ignominy 
 which is its due : virtue, not known, receives not the applause it 
 merits. In the second place, the sinner, high in honours, fre- 
 quently fills the most distinguished offices, while the good and 
 pious man lives in humiliation, and crawls like a slave at his feet. 
 Now, on that terrible day, a double manifestation shall be made, 
 which will repair that twofold disorder : in the first place, the sin- 
 ful will be marked out from the just by the public exposition of 
 their conscience; in the second place, they will be discerned by a 
 separation from them, and the difference of their stations before the 
 throne of glory. 
 
 In order fully to comprehend all the shame and confusion with 
 which the criminal soul shall then be covered, when shown to all 
 creatures, and all his vices, the most secret, exposed to the light, it 
 requires only to pay attention, first, to the number and character 
 of the spectators who shall witness his shame ; secondly, to the 
 care he had taken to conceal his weaknesses and debaucheries from 
 the eyes of men, while on the earth ; thirdly, and lastly, to his per- 
 sonal qualities, which will render his confusion still more deep and 
 overwhelming. 
 
504 ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. Ser. SO. 
 
 Here figure to yourselves, then, my brethren, the criminal soul 
 before the tribunal of Christ, surrounded by angels and men ; the 
 just, the sinful, his relations, his subjects, his masters, his friends, 
 his enemies, all their eyes fixed on him, present at the terrible scru- 
 tiny which the just Judge will make into his actions, his desires, 
 and his thoughts ; forced, in spite of themselves, to assist at his 
 judgment, and to witness the justice of the sentence which the Son 
 of Man shall pronounce against him. All the resources which, on 
 this earth, might soften the most humiliating confusion, shall fail, 
 on that day, to the unfaithful soul. 
 
 First resource. On this earth, when guilty of a fault which has 
 sunk us into contempt, the whole has turned on a certain number 
 of witnesses confined to our nation, or to the place of our birth ; 
 we may have removed ourselves from them, in the course of time, 
 to avoid continually reading, in their eyes, the remembrance and 
 reproach of our past shame ; we may have changed our place of 
 dwelling, to go elsewhere among strangers, to recover a reputation 
 which we had already lost : but on that grand day, all men assem- 
 bled shall be acquainted with the secret history of your manners 
 and of your conscience : you shall no longer have it in your power 
 to hide yourself far from the looks of the spectators, to seek new 
 countries, and, like Cain, to fly into the desert. Each shall be 
 fixed immoveable in the place, marked out for him, bearing on his 
 forehead the sentence of his condemnation and the history of his 
 whole life, obliged to sustain the eyes of the universe and the whole 
 shame of his weaknesses. There shall no longer, then, be any 
 hidden spot wherein to conceal himself from the public regard ; 
 the light of God, the sole glory of the Son of Man, which fill the 
 heavens and the earth ; and in all that immensity of space around 
 you, you will, in every part, discover from afar only watchful eyes 
 fixed on you. 
 
 Second resource. On the earth, when our shame is even public, 
 and when degraded in the minds of men, in consequence of some 
 striking fault, yet there are always some friends grounded in our 
 favour, whose esteem and society recompense us, in some measure, 
 for the public contempt, and whose kindnesses assist us in sustain- 
 ing the inveteracy of the general censure : but, on this occasion, the 
 presence of our friends will be the object by far the most insup- 
 portable to our shame. If sinners, like ourselves, they will cast up 
 to us our common pleasures and our example, which, perhaps, have 
 been the first rock upon which their innocence split : if just, as 
 they had believed us to be children of light, ah ! they will reproach 
 to us their good opinion abused and their friendship seduced. You 
 loved the just, shall they say to us, and you hated righteousness ; 
 you protected virtue, yet, in your heart, you placed vice on the 
 throne : in us you sought that probity, that fidelity, and that secu- 
 rity which you found not in your worldly friends, but you sought 
 not the Lord who formed all these virtues in our heart: ah! did 
 not the author of all our gifts deserve to be more loved, more sought 
 after than we ! 
 
Ser. 30. on the day of judgment. 505 
 
 And behold the third resource, which shall fail, to the confusion 
 of the criminal soul ; for, should no friends be found on this earth 
 to interest themselves in our misfortunes, there are always, at least, 
 indifferent persons whom our faults "do not wound or excite against 
 us : but, on that terrible day, we shall have no indifferent specta- 
 tors. The just, so feeling on this earth to the calamities of their 
 brethren, so ingenious in excusing their faults, and so ready in co- 
 vering them with the veil of charity, in order, at least, to soften, if 
 they cannot find an apparent excuse for them in the eyes of men, 
 the just, then despoiled, like the Son of Man, of that indulgence 
 and pity which they had exercised toward their brethren on the 
 earth, shall hiss at the sinner, says the prophet, shall insult him, 
 and shall demand his punishment from the Lord to avenge his 
 glory; they shall enter into the zeal and interests of his justice; 
 and becoming judges themselves, they shall mock him, says the 
 prophet, and say, " Lo, this is the man that made not God his 
 strength; but trusted in the abundance of his riches, and strength- 
 ened himself in his wickedness. Behold, now, that foolish man, 
 who believed himself the only sage on the earth, and who consider- 
 ed the life of the just as a folly; who made to himself in the favour 
 of the great, in the vanity of titles and dignities, in the extent of 
 his lands and possessions, in the good opinion and applause of men, 
 supports of dirt, which were to perish with him. Where now are 
 your gods, your rock in whom you trusted ? Let them rise up and 
 help you, and be your protection !" 
 
 Nor shall sinners be more indulgent to his misery; they will 
 feel for him all that horror which they shall be forced to feel for 
 themselves ; the fellowship of misfortune, which ought to unite, 
 will be only an eternal hatred which shall divide them ; only a 
 cruel inveteracy which shall fill their hearts with nothing but 
 sentiments of cruelty and fury against their brethren; and they 
 will hate in others the same crimes from which all their miseries 
 spring. In a word, the men most distant from us, the most savage 
 nations, to whom the name of Jesus Christ hath never been an- 
 nounced, come then, but too late, to the knowledge of the truth, 
 shall rise up against you, and reproach to you, that, if the miracles 
 which God had in vain operated amongst you had been wrought 
 before their eyes, that if they, like you, had been enlightened 
 by the Gospel, and sustained by the succours of faith, they would 
 have done penance in sackcloth and ashes, and put to advantage, 
 for their salvation, those favours which you have abused for your 
 destruction. 
 
 Such shall be the confusion of the reprobate soul. Accursed 
 before God, he will find himself at the same time the outcast of 
 heaven and of earth, the shame and curse of all creatures : even the 
 inanimate, which he had forced to be subservient to his passions, 
 and which groaned, says St. Paul, in the expectation of deliverance 
 from that shameful servitude, shall, in their way, rise up against 
 him. The sun, of which he had abused the light, shall be darkened, 
 as if it were not to shine on his crimes : the stars shall disappear, 
 
506 ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. Ser. SO. 
 
 as if to tell him that they have too long witnessed his iniquitous 
 passions : the earth shall crumble from under his feet, as if to eject 
 from its bosom a monster which it could no longer bear : and the 
 whole universe, says Solomon, shall arm against him to avenge the 
 glory of the Lord whom he has insulted. Alas ! we so dearly love 
 to be lamented in our misfortunes : indifference alone irritates and 
 wounds us : here not only shall all hearts be shut to our misfor- 
 tunes, but all beholders shall insult our shame, and the only portion 
 left to the sinner shall be his confusion, his despair, and his crimes. 
 First circumstance of the confusion of the criminal soul, namely, 
 the multitude of witnesses. 
 
 I take the second from the care and anxiety they had taken, 
 whilst living on the earth, to disguise and conceal themselves from 
 the eyes of men ; for, my brethren, the world is a grand theatre, on 
 which almost every one acts a borrowed part. As we are full of 
 passions, and as all passions have always in them something mean 
 and despicable, our whole attention is employed in concealing their 
 meanness, and in endeavouring to give ourselves out for what we 
 are not : iniquity is always treacherous and deceitful. Thus, your 
 whole life, you, above all, who listen to me, and who considered the 
 duplicity of your character as knowledge of the world and of the 
 court, your whole life has been only one train of dissimulation and 
 artifice ; even your sincerest and most intimate friends have only 
 in part known you ; you were beyond the reach of the world, for 
 you changed character, sentiment, and inclination, according to cir- 
 cumstances and the disposition of those to whom you wished to 
 make yourselves agreeable. Through these means you had ac- 
 quired the reputation of ability and wisdom ; but there shall be 
 seen, in its native colours, a mean and treacherous soul, destitute 
 of probity and truth, and whose principal virtue had been the con- 
 cealment of its baseness and meanness. 
 
 You, likewise, unfaithful soul, whom a sex more jealous of honour 
 had rendered still more attentive to conceal your weaknesses from 
 the eyes of men, you were so artful in saving yourself from a disco- 
 very, you took from so far, and so surely, your measures to deceive 
 the eyes of the husband, the vigilance of a mother, and, perhaps, 
 the probity of a confessor : you would not have survived the acci- 
 dent which had therein betrayed your precautions and artifices. 
 Vain cares ! you only covered your lewdnesses, says the prophet, 
 with a spider's web, which on that great day the Son of Man shall 
 dissipate with a single blast of his mouth. In the presence of all 
 assembled nations, saith the Lord, I will gather around thee all thy 
 lovers. They shall see that eternal train of artifices, disguises, and 
 meannesses ; that shameful traffic of protestations and oaths which 
 you made instrumental to so many different passions, and, at the 
 same time, to lull their credulity; they shall see them, and tracing, 
 even to the source, those criminal favours which you had bestowed 
 on them, they shall find them not in their pretended merit, as you 
 had wished to make them believe, but in your own infamous cha- 
 racter, in a heart naturally lewd ; you, who pique yourselves on 
 
Ser. 30. on the day of judgment. 507 
 
 having a heart so noble, so sincere, and so incapable of being 
 touched but by merit alone. And all this shall take place before 
 the eyes of the universe ; of those friends whom an appearance of 
 regularity had preserved to you; of your relations who were igno- 
 rant of the disgrace with which you covered them ; of that husband 
 who had so much depended on your affection and fidelity. 
 
 O my God ! is there an abyss sufficiently profound in the earth 
 in which the unfaithful soul would not then wish to hide himself ? 
 For, in the world, men never see but the outside and the scandal 
 of our vices ; and, besides, our confusion is shared and countenanc- 
 ed by those who are continually culpable of the same faults. But, 
 before the tribunal of Jesus Christ, your weaknesses shall be seen 
 in your heart ; that is to say, their birth, their progress, their most 
 private motives, and a thousand shameful and personal circum- 
 stances, which, even more than the crimes themselves shall cover 
 you with shame : it will be a confusion in which none shall bear a 
 share, and, consequently, will be entirely your own. 
 
 Lastly, the final circumstance, which shall render the shame of 
 the sinner overwhelming, is his personal qualities. 
 
 You passed in the world for a faithful, sincere, and generous 
 friend : it will be seen that you were vile, perfidious, interested, 
 without faith, honour, probity, conscience, or character. You gave 
 yourself out for a towering mind, above all the vulgar prejudices : 
 and you shall unfold the most humiliating meannesses and circum- 
 stances, at which the vilest soul would almost expire with shame. 
 In the world you were regarded as a man of integrity, and of an 
 approved probity in the administration of your charge ; that repu- 
 tation had perhaps attracted fresh honours, and acquired to you the 
 public confidence ; you, nevertheless, abused the credulity of men ; 
 those pompous shows of equity concealed an unjust and servile 
 soul, and a thousand times had your fidelity been in secret betrayed, 
 and your conscience corrupted, by views of fortune and motives of 
 interest; you were apparently adorned with sanctity and righte- 
 ousness ; you had always assumed the semblance of the just ; you 
 were believed to be the friend of God, and the faithful observer of 
 his law ; yet your heart was not upright before the Lord : under 
 the cloak of religion you covered a defiled conscience and ignomi- 
 nious concealments ; you walked in the way of holy things more 
 securely to attain your purposes. Ah ! on that day of revelation, 
 you go to undeceive the whole universe; those who had seen you 
 on the earth, astonished at your unexpected lot, shall search among 
 the reprobate to discover the upright man ; the hope of the hypo- 
 crite shall then be overthrown : you unjustly had enjoyed the 
 esteem of men ; you shall be known and God avenged. Lastly, 
 yet shall I dare to say it, and here reveal the shame of my bre- 
 thren ? You were perhaps the dispenser of holy things, high in 
 honour in the temple of God ; the charge of faith, of doctrine, and 
 of piety was intrusted to you ; you appeared every day in the sanc- 
 tuary, clothed in the formidable tokens of your dignity, offering up 
 pure gifts and sacrifices without stain ; you were intrusted with the 
 
508 ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. Ser. 30. 
 
 secrecies of consciences ; you sustained the weak in faith ; you 
 spoke of wisdom among the instructed ; and, under all that religion 
 hath most august or most holy, you perhaps concealed whatever 
 the earth has most execrable. You were an impostor, a man of 
 sin, seated in the temple of God ; you instructed others, and you 
 taught not yourself; you inspired horror against idols, and your 
 days were only numbered by your sacrileges. Ah ! the mystery 
 of iniquity shall then be revealed ; and you shall at last be known 
 for what you have always been, the curse of heaven and the shame 
 of the earth. 
 
 Behold, my brethren, all the confusion with which the criminal 
 soul shall be overwhelmed. And it will not be a transitory confu- 
 sion. In the world we have only the first shame of a fault to 
 undergo : the noise of it gradually dies away; new adventures at 
 last take place of ours ; and the remembrance of our disgrace fades 
 away, and disappears with the rumour which had published it. 
 But, at the great day, shame shall eternally remain upon the crimi- 
 nal soul ; there shall no longer be any fresh events to obliterate 
 his crimes and his confusion ; nothing shall more change : all shall 
 be fixed and eternal : that which he shall have appeared before the 
 tribunal of Jesus Christ, that will he for ever appear : even the na- 
 ture of his torments shall incessantly publish the nature of his 
 crimes; and his shame shall every day be renewed in his punish- 
 ment. My brethren, reflections here are needless ; and, if some 
 remains of faith still exist within you, it is for you to sound your own 
 consciences, and, from this moment to adopt such measures, as may 
 enable you to sustain the manifestation of that great day. 
 
 But, after having shown to you the public confusion with which 
 the sinner shall be covered, why may I not expose to you here 
 what shall be the glory and the consolation of the truly just man, 
 when the secrecies of his conscience shall be laid open to the uni- 
 verse ; when the whole mystery of his heart shall be unfolded ; of 
 that heart, of which all the loveliness concealed from the eyes of 
 men was known only to God; of that heart in which he had always 
 supposed stains and defilements, and of which his humility had 
 concealed from himself all the holiness and innocency: of that 
 heart in which God alone had always dwelt, and which he had 
 taken pleasure in adorning and enriching with his gifts and grace ! 
 What new wonders shall that divine sanctuary, hitherto so impene- 
 trable, then offer to the eyes of the beholders, when the veil shall 
 be removed from it ! What fervent desires ! What secret victories ! 
 What heroical sacrifices ! What pure prayers ! What tender la- 
 mentations! What faith ! What grandeur ! What elevation above 
 all those vain objects which form all the desires and hopes of men ! 
 Then it shall indeed be seen, that nothing was so great, or so wor- 
 thy of admiration in the world, as a truly just man ; as those souls 
 who were considered as useless, because they were so to our pas- 
 sions; and whose obscure and retired life was so much despised. 
 It shall be seen that the heart of the faithful soul possessed more 
 lustre and grandeur than all those great events which take place 
 
Ser. 30. on the day of judgment. 509 
 
 on the earth, was alone worthy of being written down in the eter- 
 nal books, and offers to the eyes of God a sight more worthy of 
 angels and men than all the victories and conquests which here 
 below fill the vanity of histories, to which pompous monuments 
 are erected in order to eternize their remembrance, and which, 
 then, shall no longer be considered but as puerile squabbles, or 
 the fruit of pride and the human passions. First disorder repaired 
 on that great day: vice concealed here below from public shame, 
 and virtue from the applauses it merits. 
 
 The second disorder which the mixture of the good and of the 
 bad gives birth to in the world, is the inequality of conditions, and 
 the unjust exchange of their lots. It is with the present age as 
 with the image of which Daniel explained the mystery : the just, 
 like the clay which we trample under our feet, or, like iron harden- 
 ed in the fire of tribulation, in general occupy, here below, only 
 the meanest and most contemptible stations ; while, on the contrary, 
 the sinful and the worldly, typified by the gold and silver, vain 
 objects of their passions, almost always find themselves placed at 
 the head of affairs, and in the most eminent places. Now, this is 
 a disorder ; and, although the good be thereby exercised, and the 
 wicked hardened ; although this confusion of good and evil enter 
 into the order of Providence, and that, by ways and means impene- 
 trable to man, God makes use of them to lead the just and the 
 sinner to his purposes ; yet it is necessary that the Son of Man 
 gather together all things, and that it shall at last be discerned be- 
 tween the righteous and the wicked ; between him that serveth 
 God and him that serveth him not. Now, behold the grand spec- 
 tacle of that last day: order shall be re-established ; the good sepa- 
 rated from the wicked : the sheep set on his right hand, and the 
 goats on the left. 
 
 Separation, first, altogether new. It will not be demanded from 
 you, in order to determine what rank you ought to hold in this 
 awful scene, what were your names, your birth, your titles, or your 
 dignities; these were but a vapour, which had no reality but in the 
 public illusion ; you will be examined only to prove whether you 
 be an unclean animal or an innocent sheep: the prince shall not be 
 separated from the subject: the noble from the peasant; the poor 
 from the powerful; the conqueror from the vanquished: but the 
 chaff from the good grain ; the vessels of honour from the vessels 
 of shame; the goats from the sheep. 
 
 The Son of Man shall be seen from on high, casting his regards 
 over all the mingled nations and people assembled at his feet ; re- 
 calling, in that view, the history of the universe, that is to say, of 
 the passions or of the virtues of men ; he shall be seen gathering 
 together his chosen from the four quarters ; choosing them from 
 among every tongue, every station, and every nation ; reuniting 
 the children of Israel dispersed through the universe; unfolding 
 the secret history of a holy and new people ; bringing forth to view 
 heroes of faith till then unknown in the world : no more distin- 
 guishing ages by the victories of conquerors, by the establishment 
 
510 ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. Ser. 30. 
 
 or the fall of empires, by the politeness or the barbarity of the 
 times, by the great characters who have blazed in every age ; but 
 by the diverse triumphs of grace, by the hidden victories of the 
 just over their passions, by ^the establishment of his reign in a 
 heart, by the heroical fortitude of a persecuted believer. You shall 
 see him change the face of all things, create a new heaven and a 
 new earth, and reduce that infinite variety of people, titles, condi- 
 tions, and dignities, to a people holy and a people reprobate, to 
 the goats and the sheep. 
 
 Separation, secondly, cruel. The father shall be separated from 
 his child; friend from friend; brother from brother: the one shall 
 be taken, the other left. Death, which deprives us of the dearest 
 friends, and whose loss occasions to us so many sighs and tears, 
 leaves us, at least, a consolation in the hope of being one day re- 
 united to them. Here, the separation is eternal ; no hope of re- 
 union shall more exist ; we shall no more have relatives, father, 
 child, friend ; no other ties than everlasting flames, which shall for 
 ever unite us to the reprobate. 
 
 Separation, thirdly, ignominious. We are so touchy on a pre- 
 ference, when neglected, or left blended with the crowd on any 
 splendid occasion ; we are so peevish, and so irritated, when, in 
 the distribution of favours, we see novices carrying off the palm 
 and the principal offices ; our services forgotten, and those whom 
 we had always seen far below us, now exalted and placed over our 
 heads. But, on that grand day, it is that preference shall be ac- 
 companied with circumstances the most humiliating and the most 
 galling to the criminal soul. In that universal silence, in that 
 dreadful expectation, in which each one shall be for the decision of 
 his destiny, you shall see the Son of Man advancing in the heavens, 
 with crowns in one hand, and the rod of wrath in the other, to 
 carry off, from your side, a just soul whose innocence you, per- 
 haps, had blackened by rash discourses, or whose virtues you had 
 insulted by impious pleasantries; a believer who was, perhaps, 
 born your subject ; a Lazarus, who in vain, perhaps, had impor- 
 tuned you with the recital of his wants and poverty ; a rival whom 
 you had always beheld with an eye of scorn, and upon whose ruins 
 your intrigues and artifices had perhaps exalted you. You shall 
 see the Son of Man place a crown of immortality on his head, 
 seat him at his right hand, while you, like the proud Haman, re- 
 jected, humbled, and degraded, shall no longer, have before your 
 eyes but the preparation of your punishment. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, every galling and overwhelming circumstance 
 shall attend that preference. A savage converted to faith shall be 
 ranked among the sheep, while a Christian inheritor of the pro- 
 mises shall be left among the goats. The layman shall ascend, 
 like the eagle over his prey, while the minister of Jesus Christ shall 
 grovel on the earth, covered with shame and reproach. The man 
 of the world shall pass to the right hand, while the recluse passes 
 to the left. The wise, the learned, the critic of the age, shall be 
 driven to the side of the unclean ; and the idiot, who knew not 
 
Ser. 30. on the day of judgment. 511 
 
 how to answer even the common salutations, shall be placed on a 
 throne of glory and light. Rabab, a sinful woman, shall mount up 
 to the heavenly Sion along with the true Israelites ; while the sister 
 of Moses, and the spouse of Jesus Christ, shall be driven from the 
 camp and the tents of Israel, and shall appear covered with a 
 shameful leprosy. Thou art determined, O my God ! that nothing 
 shall be wanting toward the despair of the criminal soul. It is not 
 sufficient that he shall be overwhelmed under the weight of his own 
 misery; thou shalt create for him a new punishment in the felicity 
 of the just, who, preferred to him, shall be seen conducted by 
 angels into the bosom of immortality. 
 
 What change of scene, my brethren, in the universe ! It is then 
 that, all scandals being plucked out from the kingdom of Jesus 
 Christ, and the just wholly separated from the sinful, they shall 
 form a holy nation, a chosen race, and the church of the first born, 
 whose names were written down in heaven. It is then that the 
 commerce of the wicked, inevitable on this earth, shall no longer 
 occasion their faith to lament, or their innocence to tremble. It is 
 then that their lot, no longer connected with the unfaithful or the 
 hypocrite, shall no more constrain them to be witnesses of their 
 crimes, and sometimes even the involuntary agents of their pas- 
 sions. It is then that all the bonds of society, of authority, or de- 
 pendence, which attached them on this earth to the impious and 
 to the worldly, being broken asunder, they shall no longer say with 
 the prophet, u Lord, why lengthenest thou out here our banishment 
 and our sojourning ? How long shall the land mourn, and the 
 herbs of every field wither for the wickedness of them that dwell 
 therein?" Lastly, then it is that their tears shall be changed into 
 joy, and their sighs into thanksgivings; they shall pass to the 
 right hand as the sheep, while the rest shall be reserved for the 
 goats and the impious. 
 
 The disposition of the universe thus laid out ; all nations of the 
 earth thus divided ; each one fixed in the place allotted to him ; 
 surprise, terror, despair, and confusion marked in the countenance 
 of one part ; on that of the other, joy, serenity, and confidence : 
 the eyes of the just raised on high toward the Son of Man, from 
 whom they await their deliverance ; those of the impious fright- 
 fully fixed on the earth, and almost piercing the abyss with their 
 looks, as if already to mark out the place which is destined for 
 them : the King of glory, says the Gospel, placed in the middle of 
 two nations, shall come forward : and, turning toward those who 
 who shall be at his right hand, with an aspect full of sweetness and 
 majesty, and sufficient of itself to console them for all their past 
 sufferings, he will say to them, u Come, ye blessed of my Father, 
 inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the 
 world. The sinful had always considered you as the outcast, and 
 the most useless portion of the earth ; let them now learn that the 
 world itself existed only for you, that all was created for you, and 
 all hath finished from the moment that your number was com- 
 pleted. Quit, then, an earth were you had always been travellers 
 
512 ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. Ser. 30. 
 
 and strangers ; follow me into the immortal ways of my glory and 
 felicity, as you have followed me in those of my humiliation and 
 sufferings. Your toils have endured but for an instant ; the hap- 
 piness you go to enjoy shall be without end." 
 
 Then, turning to the left hand, vengeance and fury in his eyes, 
 here and there casting the most dreadful looks, like avenging 
 thunderbolts, on that crowd of guilty ; with a voice, says a prophet, 
 which shall burst upon the bowels of the abyss to swallow them 
 up, he shall say, not as upon the cross, * Father, forgive them, 
 for they know not what they do," but, " Depart from me, ye 
 cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. 
 You were the chosen of the earth, you are the accursed of my 
 Father ; your pleasures have been fleeting and transitory, your 
 anguish shall be eternal." The just, then, mounting with the Son 
 of Man, shall begin to sing this heavenly song, Thou art rich in 
 mercy, Lord, and thou hast crowned thy gifts in recompensing our 
 good actions. Then shall the impious curse the Author of their 
 being and the fatal day which brought them forth ; or, rather, they 
 shall enter into wrath against themselves, as the authors of their 
 misery and destruction. The abyss shall open ; the heavens shall 
 bow down; the reprobate, says the Gospel, shall go into everlast- 
 ing punishment, and the just into life eternal. Behold a lot which 
 shall change no more. 
 
 After a relation so awful, and so proper to make an impression 
 on the most hardened hearts, I cannot conclude, without address- 
 ing to you the same words which Moses formerly addressed to the 
 Israelites after having laid before them the dreadful threatenings, 
 and the soothing promises, contained in the Book of the Law : 
 " Children of Israel, behold I set before you this day a blessing and 
 a curse : a blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the Lord your 
 God which I command you this day ; and a curse, if ye will not 
 obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside, out 
 of the way which I cammand you this day, to go after other gods 
 which ye have not known." 
 
 Behold, my brethren, what I say to you in concluding a sub- 
 ject so terrible. It now belongs to you to choose and to declare 
 yourselves : the right hand and the left are before you, the pro- 
 mises and the threatenings, the blessings and the curses. Your 
 destiny turns on this awful alternative : you either shall be on the 
 side of Satan and his angels, or you shall be chosen with Jesus 
 Christ and his saints. Here there is no middle way; I have 
 pointed out the path which leads us to life, and that which leads to 
 perdition. In which of these two do you now walk ? And on which 
 side do you believe that you should find yourselves, were you, at 
 this moment, to appear before the awful tribunal ? We die as we 
 have lived : tremble lest your destiny of this day be your everlast- 
 ing destiny. Quit, and from this moment, the ways of the sinful ; 
 begin now to live like the just, if you wish, on that last day, to be 
 placed at the right hand, and to mount, along with them, into the 
 abode of a blessed immortality. 
 
Ser. 31. THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. 51.3 
 
 SERMON XXXI. 
 
 THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. 
 
 " Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted." Matthew v. 4. 
 
 Sire, If the world were to speak to you in the place of Jesus 
 Christ, it undoubtedly would not say, " Blessed are they who mourn." 
 Happy, would it say, the prince who has never fought but to 
 conquer, and whose mind has always been superior either to the 
 danger or to the victory : who, during the course of a long and a 
 prosperous reign, has enjoyed, and still continues to enjoy, at his 
 ease, the fruits of his glory, the love of his people, the esteem of 
 his enemies, the advantage of his conquests, the splendour of his 
 actions, the wisdom of his laws, and the august prospect of a 
 numerous posterity ; and who has nothing left now to desire but 
 the continuance of what he possesses. 
 
 In this manner would the world speak : but, Sire, Jesus Christ 
 does not speak like the world. 
 
 Happy, says he to you, not him who is the admiration of his 
 age ; but he who makes his study of the age to come, and lives in 
 the contempt of himself and of all the things of the earth ; for to 
 him is the kingdom of heaven. Not him whose reign and actions 
 history will immortalize in the remembrance of men ; but he whose 
 tears shall have effaced the history of his sins from the remembrance 
 even of God ; for he shall be for ever consoled. Not him who, 
 by new conquests, shall have extended the bounds of his empire ; 
 but he who has succeeded in confining his desires and his passions 
 within the limits of the law of God ; for he shall inherit a kingdom 
 more durable than the empire of the universe. Not him who, 
 exalted by the voice of nations above all preceding princes, tran- 
 quilly enjoys his greatness and his fame; but he who finding 
 nothing even on the throne worthy of his heart, seeks no perfect 
 happiness on this earth but in virtue and in righteousness; for he 
 shall be filled. Not him to whom men have given the pompous 
 titles of great and invincible ; but he to whom the wretched shall 
 give, before the tribunal of Jesus Christ, the title of father and 
 of merciful ; for he shall be treated with mercy. Lastly, happy 
 not him who, always disposer of the lot of his enemies, has more 
 than once given peace to the earth ; but he who has been able to 
 give it to himself, and to banish from his heart all the vices and 
 disorderly inclinations which disturb its tranquillity; for he shall 
 be called a child of God. 
 
 Such, Sire, are those whom Jesus Christ calls happy : and the 
 Gospel acknowledges no other happiness on the earth than virtue 
 and innocence. 
 
 Great God! it is not, then, that long train of unexampled pros- 
 perities, with which thou hast favoured the glory of his reign, that 
 
 L L 
 
514 THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. Ser. 31. 
 
 can render him the happiest of kings. He is thereby great : but 
 he is not thereby happy. His felicity has commenced with his 
 piety. Whatever does not sanctify man, can never make the hap- 
 piness of man. Whatever does not place thee, O my God ! in a 
 heart, places only vanities which leave it empty, or real evils which 
 fill it with disquiet ; and a pure conscience is the only resource of 
 real enjoyments. 
 
 It is to this truth that the church, on the occasion of this solem- 
 nity, confines its whole fruit. As the common error, that the life 
 of the saints has been gloomy and disagreeable, is one of the prin- 
 cipal artifices employed by the world in order to prevent us from 
 imitating them, the church, in renewing their memory on this day, 
 gives us to remember, at the same time, that not only they now 
 enjoy an immortal felicity in heaven, but also that they have been 
 the only happy of the earth, and that he who carries iniquity in his 
 bosom always carries terror and anxiety : and that the lot of the 
 godly is a thousand times more tranquil and more satisfactory, even 
 in this world, than that of sinners. 
 
 But in what does the happiness of the just in this life consist ? 
 It consists, first, in the manifestation of truth concealed from the 
 sages of the world. Secondly, in the relish of charity denied to the 
 lovers of the world. In the lights of faith which soften all the 
 sufferings of the believing soul, and which render those of the 
 sinner still more bitter : this is my first point. In the comforts of 
 grace which calm all the passions, and which, denied to a corrupted 
 heart, leave it a prey to itself, is the last. Let us examine these 
 two truths, so calculated to render virtue amiable and the example 
 of the saints beneficial. 
 
 Part I. Our sorrows proceed, in general, from our errors ; and 
 we are unhappy only because we are inadequate judges of what is 
 really good and evil. The just, who are children of light, are, there- 
 fore, much happier than sinners, because they are more enligntened. 
 The same lights which correct their judgments alleviate their 
 suffering ; and faith, which shows the world to them such as it is, 
 changes, into sources of consolation for them, the very same events 
 in which souls, delivered up to the passions, find the principle of 
 all their disquiets. 
 
 And, in order to make you sensible of a truth so honourable to 
 virtue, observe, I pray you my brethren, that, whether a contrite 
 soul recall the past, and those times of error which preceded his 
 penitence; whether he pay attention to what passes before his 
 eyes in the world; or, lastly, whether he look forward to the 
 future, every thing consoles, every thing strengthens him in the cause 
 of virtue which he has adopted, every thing unites in rendering his 
 condition infinitely more pleasing than that of a soul who lives in 
 dissipation, and who finds, in these three situations, only bitter- 
 ness and inward terrors. 
 
 For, in the first place, however the sinner may be delivered up 
 to all fervency of his heart, he is not so violently hurried away, by 
 
Ser. 31. THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. 515 
 
 present gratifications, but that he sometimes gives a look back to 
 those years of iniquity which he amasses behind him. Those days 
 of darkness, which he has consecrated to debauchery, have not so 
 completely perished, but that, in certain moments, they obtrude 
 themselves upon his remembrance. Gloomy and troublesome 
 images force themselves upon his soul, and, from time to time, 
 arouse him from his lethargy by holding out, as if collected into 
 one point, that shocking mass of crimes which make less impres- 
 sion, during their commission, because he only sees them in suc- 
 cession. At one glance of his eye he sees favours always con- 
 temned, inspirations always rejected, a vile perversion of a disposi- 
 tion naturally good and originally formed, it appears, for virtue ; 
 weaknesses at which he now blushes, phantoms and horrors against 
 which he would wish for ever to shut his eyes. 
 
 Such is what the sinner leaves behind him. He is miserable if 
 he looks back to the past. His whole happiness is, as it were, shut 
 up in the present moment; and, to be happy, he must never think, 
 but allow himself, like the dumb creation, to be led away by the 
 attraction of the present objects; and, to preserve his tranquillity, 
 he must either extinguish or brutify his reason. And thence those 
 maxims so unworthy of humanity, and so circulated in the world, 
 that too much reason is a sorry advantage ; that reflection spoils 
 all the pleasures of life ; and that, to be happy, the less we think 
 the better. O man ! was it for thy misery, then, that Heaven had 
 given thee that reason by which thou art enlightened, or to assist 
 thee in search of the truth, which alone can render thee happy ? 
 Could that divine light which embellishes thy being, be a punish- 
 ment rather than a gift of the Creator ? And should it so gloriously 
 distinguish thee from the beast, only that thy condition may be 
 more wretched ? 
 
 Yes, my brethren, such is the lot of an unbelieving soul. In- 
 toxication, delirium of passion, and the extinction of all reason, 
 alone can render him happy ; and, as that situation is merely 
 momentary, the instant the mind becomes calm and regains itself, 
 the charm ceases, happiness takes wing, and man finds himself 
 alone with his conscience and his crimes. 
 
 But how different, O my God, is the lot of a soul who walks 
 in thy ways, and how much to be pitied is the world which 
 knows thee not ? In effect, the sweetest thoughts of a righteous 
 soul are those by which the past is recalled. He there encounters, 
 it is true, that portion of his life which had been engrossed by the 
 world and the passions : and the remembrance, I confess, fills him 
 with shame before the sanctity of his God, and forces from him 
 tears of compunction and sorrow. But what consolation in his 
 tears and in his grief ! 
 
 For, my brethren, a contrite soul can never retrace the whole 
 train of his past errors, without discovering all the proceedings of 
 God's mercy upon him : the singular ways by which his wisdom 
 hath gradually, and, as it were, step by step, couducted him to the 
 blessed moment of his conversion : so many unexpected favourable 
 
 l l 2 
 
516 THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. Sei\ 31. 
 
 circumstances, so many accidents of disgrace, of loss, of death, of 
 treachery, and of affliction ; all provided by a watchful Providence 
 to facilitate the means of breaking asunder his chains : those spe- 
 cial attentions of God, even when in the paths of iniquity: those 
 disgusts, even in the midst of his pleasures, provided for him by his 
 goodness : those inward calls which incessantly whispered to him, 
 Return to virtue and to duty : that internal monitor, which, go 
 where he would, never left him, and unceasingly repeated to him, 
 as formerly to St. Augustine, Fool ! how long wilt thou hunt after 
 pleasures which can never make thee happy ? When, by termi- 
 nating thy crimes, wilt thou terminate thy troubles ? What more 
 is yet required to open thine eyes upon the world, than thine own 
 experience itself, of thy weariness and unhappiness while serving it ? 
 Try if, in belonging to me, thou shalt not be more happy, and if I 
 suffice not to fill the soul which possesses me. 
 
 Such is what the past offers to a contrite soul. It there sees the 
 accomplices of its former pleasures still delivered up, by God^s 
 justice, to the errors of the world and of the passions, and it alone 
 chosen, separated, and called to the knowledge of the truth. 
 
 With what peace and consolation does that reflection fill the be- 
 lieving soul ! " How infinite, O my God," cries he, with the pro- 
 phet, ft are thy mercies ! Thou hast covered me in my mothers 
 womb : thou hast compassed my path, and my lying down, and all 
 my ways have been known to thee. What have I done for thee 
 more than so many other sinners whose eyes thou deignest not to 
 open, and to manifest the severity of thy judgments and of thy jus- 
 tice ? How marvellous, O God ! are all thy works, and that my 
 soul knoweth right well P First advantage of righteous souls ; the 
 remembrance even of their past infidelities consoles them. 
 
 But, secondly, if they find sources of solid consolation in review- 
 ing the past, their piety is not less comforted while viewing the 
 present occurrences of the world. And here, my brethren, you will 
 presently see how essentially requisite is virtue to the happiness of 
 life, and how that very world, which gives birth to all the passions, 
 and, consequently, to all the disquietudes of sinners, becomes the 
 sweetest and most consolatory exercise of the faith of the just. 
 
 What, indeed, is the world even to the worldly themselves, who 
 love it, who seem intoxicated with its delights, and who cannot do 
 without it ? The world ? It is an eternal servitude, where no one 
 lives for himself, and where, in order to be happy, we must bring 
 ourselves to hug our chains, and to love our slavery. The world ? 
 It is a daily revolution of events, which successively arouse, in the 
 hearts of its partisans, the most violent and the most melancholy 
 passions, cruel antipathies, hateful perplexities, torturing fears, de- 
 vouring jealousies, and corroding cares. The world ? It is a land 
 of curse, where even its pleasures are productive of only bitter- 
 nesss and thorns. Gaming fatigues and exhausts by its frenzies 
 and by its caprices : conversation becomes wearisome through the 
 contrariety of tempers and the opposition of sentiments ; passions 
 and criminal attachments are followed with their disgusts, their 
 
Ser. 31. THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. 517 
 
 disappointments, and their unpleasant reports : theatres, no longer 
 having as spectators but souls grossly dissolute and incapable of being 
 roused but by the most shocking excesses of debauchery, become 
 insipid while moving only those delicate passions, which only serve 
 to show guilt from afar, and to lay snares for innocence. Lastly, 
 the world is a place where hope itself, considered as a passion so 
 sweet and so pleasing, renders all men unhappy ; where those who 
 have nothing more to hope, believe themselves still more miserable ; 
 where every thing that pleases soon ceases to please : and where 
 inanity or listless insipidity is almost the best and the most sup- 
 portable lot to be expected. Such is the world, my brethren ; nor 
 is this that obscure world, to which neither the great pleasures, nor 
 the charms of prosperity, of favour, and affluence are known : it is 
 the world in its most brilliant point of view ; it is the world of the 
 court; it is you yourselves who now listen to me. Such is the 
 world ; nor is this one of those fanciful paintings of which the reality 
 is no where to be found. I paint the world after your own heart, 
 that is to say, such as you know it to be, and such as you yourselves 
 continually experience it. 
 
 Such, nevertheless, is the place in which all sinners seek their 
 happiness. That is their country. There they would willingly 
 eternize themselves. Such is that world which they prefer to the 
 eternal inheritance, and to all the promises of faith. Great God ! 
 how just art thou in punishing man through his passions themselves, 
 and to permit that, wishing to seek his happiness elsewhere than in 
 thee, who alone art the true peace of his heart, he forms for himself 
 a ridiculous felicity of his fears, his disgusts, his wearinesses, and 
 his disquietudes ! 
 
 But that which is so fortunate here for virtue, is, that the same 
 world, so tiresome and so insupportable to sinners who seek their 
 happiness in it, becomes a source of the most soothing reflections 
 to the righteous, who consider it as an exilement and a foreign 
 land. 
 
 For, in the first place, the inconstancy of the world, so dreaded 
 by those delivered up to it, supplies a thousand motives of conso- 
 lation to the believing soul. Nothing appears to him either con- 
 stant or durable upon the earth ; neither the most flourishing for- 
 tunes, nor the warmest friendships, nor the most brilliant reputa- 
 tions, nor the most envied favour. He sees a sovereign wisdom 
 through all, which delights, it would appear, in making a sport of 
 men, by alternately exalting them on the ruins of each other ; by 
 hurling down those at the top of the wheel, in order to elevate those 
 who, only a moment before, were groveling at the bottom : by in- 
 troducing every day, on the theatre of life, new heroes to eclipse 
 all those who formerly played on it so brilliant a part ; by inces- 
 santly giving new scenes to the universe. He sees men passing 
 their whole life in ferments, projects, and plots; ever on the watch 
 to surprise each other, or to avoid being surprised ; always eager 
 and active to profit of the retreat, the disgrace, or the death of a 
 rival ; and of these grand lessons, so fitted to inculcate contempt 
 
518 THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. Ser. 31. 
 
 of the world; make only fresh motives of ambition and cupidity ; 
 always engrossed either by their fears or by their hopes ; always 
 uneasy either for the present or for the future; never tranquil, all 
 struggling for quiet, yet every moment removing themselves far- 
 ther and farther from it. 
 
 O man ! why art thou so ingenious in rendering thyself miserable ? 
 Such is, then, the reflection of the believing soul. That happiness 
 thou seekest is more easily attained. It is necessary neither to tra- 
 verse seas nor to conquer kingdoms. Depart not from thyself, and 
 thou wilt be happy. 
 
 How sweet do the sorrows of virtue then appear to the godly 
 man, when he compares them with the cruel chagrins and the end- 
 less agitations of sinners ! How transported to have at last found 
 a place of rest and of safety, while he sees the lovers of the world 
 still sadly tossed about, at the mercy of the passions and of human 
 hopes ! Thus the Israelites, formerly escaped from the danger of 
 the Red Sea, seeing from afar Pharaoh and all the nobility of Egypt 
 still at the mercy of the waters, felt all the luxury of their own 
 safety, thought the barren paths of the desert delightful, and were 
 insensible to every hardship of their journey ; and comparing their 
 lot with that of the Egyptians, far from giving vent to a complaint 
 or a murmur, they sung with Moses that divine hymn of praise and 
 of thanksgiving, in which are celebrated, with such magnificence, 
 the wonders and the tender mercies of the Lord. 
 
 Secondly. The injustice of the world, so humbling to those who 
 love it, when they see themselves forgotten, neglected, and sacri- 
 ficed to unworthy rivals, is also a fund of soothing reflections to a 
 soul who despises it and fears only the Lord. For, what resource 
 is left to a sinner who, after having sacrificed his ease, his con- 
 science, his wealth, his youth, and his health, to the world and to 
 his masters ; after having submitted in silence to every circumstance 
 the most mortifying to the mind, sees at once, and without know- 
 ing why, the gates of favour and advancement for ever shut against 
 him ; sees places snatched from him to which he was entitled by 
 his services, and of which he thought himself already certain; 
 threatened, should he dare to murmur, with the loss of those he 
 still enjoys ; forced to crouch to more fortunate rivals, and to be at 
 the beck of those whom, only a little before, he had deemed un- 
 worthy of even receiving his orders ? Shall he retire far from the 
 world, to evaporate, in continual invectives against it, the spleen 
 and the rancour of his heart, and thus revenge himself of the in- 
 justice of men ? But of what avail will be his retirement? It will 
 afford only more leisure for retrospection, and fewer relaxations 
 from chagrin. Shall he try to console himself with similar exam- 
 ples ? But our misfortunes never, as we think, resemble those of 
 others ; and, besides, what consolation can it be to have our sor- 
 rows renewed by seeing their image reflected from others ? Shall 
 he entrench himself in strength of mind, and in a vain philosophy ? 
 But, in solitude, reason soon descends from its pride ; we may be 
 philosophers for the public, but we are only men with ourselves. 
 
Ser. 31. THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. 519 
 
 Shall he fly, as a resource, to voluptuousness, and to other infamous 
 pleasures ? But, in changing the passion, the heart only changes 
 the punishment. Shall he seek, in indolence and inactivity, a 
 happiness he has never been able to find in all the fervency of hopes 
 and pretensions ? A criminal conscience may become indifferent, 
 but it is not thereby more tranquil. One may cease to feel misfor- 
 tune and digrace, but infidelities and crimes must always be felt. 
 No, my brethren, the unhappy sinner is so without resource. Every 
 comfort is for ever fled from the worldly soul from the moment that 
 he is deserted by the world. 
 
 But the righteous man learns to despise the world even in the 
 contempt which the world has for him. The injustice of men, with 
 respect to him, only puts him in mind that he serves a more equi- 
 table Master, who can neither be influenced nor prejudiced ; who 
 sees nothing in us but what, in reality, there is ; who determines 
 our destinies upon our hearts alone, and with whom we have no- 
 thing but our own conscience to dread: consequently, that they are 
 happy who serve him ; that his ingratitude is not to be feared ; that 
 every thing done for him is faithfully recorded ; that, far from con- 
 cealing or neglecting our sufferings and our services, he gives us 
 credit even for our good wishes ; and that nothing is lost with him 
 but what is not done solely for him. 
 
 Now, in these lights of faith, what a fresh fund of consolation for 
 a believing soul ! How little is the world, in this point of view, 
 with all its scorns and ill usage, capable of affecting him ! Then it 
 is that, throwing himself into the bosom of God, and viewing, with 
 Christian eyes, the nothingness and vanity of all human things, he 
 feels in a moment all his inquietudes, inseparable from nature, 
 changed into the sweetest peace ; a ray of light shines in his soul, 
 and re-establishes serenity ; a trait of consolation penetrates his 
 heart, and every sorrow is alleviated. Ah ! my brethren, how sweet 
 to serve him, who alone can render happy those who serve him ! 
 Why, O blessed condition of virtue, art thou not better known to 
 men ! And wherefore art thou held out as a disagreeable and sor- 
 rowful lot, thou who alone canst console the miseries and alleviate 
 all the sufferings of his banishment ? 
 
 Lastly, the judgments of the world, source of so many chagrins 
 for the worldly, complete still more the consolation of the believ- 
 ing soul. For the torture of the lovers of the world is that of 
 being continually exposed to the judgments, that is to say, to the 
 censures, to the derisions, to the malignity of each other. In vain 
 do we despise the men : we wish to be esteemed even by those we 
 despise. In vain are we exalted above others: the more we are 
 exalted, we are only the more exposed to the criticisms and to the 
 observations of the multitude, and we much more poignantly feel 
 the censures of those from whom homages alone were to have been 
 expected. In vain may the suffrage of the public be in our favour; 
 contempt is so much the more stinging as it is unusual and rare. 
 In vain may we retaliate with censures yet mo^e biting and keen; 
 resentment and revenge always suppose a sense of guilt; and, be- 
 
520 THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. Ser. 31. 
 
 sides, the chagrin of having encountered scorn is so much more 
 lively than any pleasure that can accrue from retorting it. Lastly, 
 from the moment that you live solely for the world, and that your 
 pleasures or your vexations depend wholly on it, the judgments of 
 the world can never be indifferent to you. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is in the midst of all these vexations that hap- 
 piness must be at least professed. Every thing attributed to you, 
 either by truth or vanity, is called in question: your birth, your 
 talents, your reputation, your services, your success, your prudence, 
 and even your honour. If you go to wreck, your incapacity ac- 
 counts for it : if successful, the honour is given to chance, or to 
 your inferiors : if you enjoy the good opinion of the public, the 
 judgment of the more knowing is appealed to from the popular 
 error : if possessed of the art of pleasing, it is immediately said 
 that you have made a thorough use of your talents, and that you 
 have been only too agreeable: if your conduct be superior to any 
 attack, the most poignant ridicule is directed against your temper. 
 Lastly, be whom ye may, high or low, prince or subject, the most 
 desirable situation for your vanity is that of being unacquainted 
 with the world's opinion of you. Such is the life of the world. 
 The same passions which bind us together, disunite us: envy and 
 detraction blacken our noblest qualities: and our gratifications find 
 censurers in those who copy them. 
 
 But a believing soul is sheltered from all these uneasinesses. As 
 he courts not the esteem of men, neither does he fear their scorn; 
 as he has no intention of laying himself out to please, neither is he 
 surprised to find that he has not done it. God, who sees him, is 
 the only Judge he fears, and who, at the same time, consoles him 
 for the judgments of men. His glory is the testimony of his own 
 conscience. His reputation he seeks in the fulfilment of his duty. 
 He considers the suffrages of the world as the rock of virtue or as 
 the reward of vice; and, without even paying attention to its judg- 
 ments, he is satisfied with giving it good examples. But what do 
 I say, my brethren? The world itself, all worldly as it is, so full of 
 censures, malignity, and contempt for its own worshippers, is forced 
 to respect the virtue of those who hate and despise it. It appears 
 that virtue imprints on the person of a real righteous man, a 
 dignity, a something, I know not what, of divine, which attracts 
 the veneration and almost the worship of worldly souls ; it appears 
 that this intimate union with Jesus Christ occasions his being 
 irradiated, as I may say, like the three disciples on the holy mount, 
 with a part of that celestial splendour which the Father shed 
 around his well-beloved Son, and by which all liberty ceases of 
 refusing homage. It is an inalienable right which virtue has 
 over the heart of men; and, by a deplorable caprice, the world 
 despises the passions it inspires, and respects the virtue it strives 
 against. Not that the esteem of the world, so worthy itself of 
 being despised, can be any great consolation to the believing soul. 
 But this consolation is, that he sees the world condemned even by 
 the world, its pleasures decried even by those who hunt after them, 
 
Ser. 31. THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. 521 
 
 sinners become the apologists of virtue, and the life of the world 
 to pass sorrowfully away in doing what they condemn, and flying 
 from what they approve. 
 
 Such is the manner in which the present age becomes a source 
 of consolatory reflections to a Christian soul; but, in the thought 
 of futurity, he also finds consolations which are changed into 
 inward and continual terrors for sinners : last advantage drawn 
 by the just from the lights of faith. The magnificence of its pro- 
 mises sustains and consoles them: they await the blessed hope, 
 and that happy moment when they shall be associated with the 
 church of heaven, reunited to their brethren whom they had left 
 on the earth, received eternal citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, 
 incorporated in that immortal assembly of the elect, where charity 
 will be the law that shall unite them; truth, the flame that shall 
 enlighten them ; and eternity the measure of their felicity. 
 
 These thoughts are so much the more consoling to the godly, 
 as they are founded on the truth of God himself. They know that, 
 in sacrificing the present, they sacrifice nothing ; that in the twink- 
 ling of an eye, all shall have passed away; that whatever must 
 have an end cannot long endure; that this moment of tribulation 
 ought to be reckoned as nothing, when put in competition with 
 that eternal weight of glory which he prepareth for us ; and that 
 the rapid passage of present things scarcely deserves that we should 
 be at the pains of numbering the years and the ages, 
 
 I know that faith may subsist with criminal manners ; and that 
 the sanctifying grace is often lost without losing a sincere submis- 
 sion to the truths revealed to us by the Spirit of God. But the 
 certitude of faith, so consoling to the righteous soul, is no longer 
 for the sinner who still believes but an inexhaustible fund of inward 
 anxieties and cruel terrors. For, the more that sinners like you, 
 who bear upon your conscience the sink of a whole life of irregula- 
 rity, are convinced of the truths of faith, the more inevitable must 
 the punishments and the misery appear with which it threatens 
 such sinners. All the truths offered to your faith, in the holy doc- 
 trine, excite fresh alarms in your breast. Those divine lights, 
 which are the source of all consolation to believing souls, become, 
 within you, only avenging lights, which disquiet, agonize, and judge 
 you ; which, like a mirror, hold up continually to your sight what 
 you would wish never to see ; which enlighten you, in spite of 
 yourselves, on what you would wish to be for ever ignorant. Your 
 faith itself constitutes your punishment before-hand. Your reli- 
 gion is, here below, if I may venture to say so, your hell : and the 
 more you are convinced of the truth, the more unhappy do you 
 live. O God ! how great is thy goodness toward man, in having 
 rendered virtue necessary even to his quiet, and in thus attract- 
 ing him to thee, by making it impossible for him to be happy with- 
 out thee ! 
 
 And here, my dear hearer, allow me to recall you to yourself. 
 When the lot of a criminal soul should not be so fearful for the age 
 to come, see if, even in this world, it appears much to be envied : 
 
522 THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. Sei\ 31. 
 
 his afflictions are without resource, his evils without consolation, 
 even his pleasures without enjoyment; his anxieties upon the pre- 
 sent, endless : his reflections on the past and on the future, gloomy 
 and sad ; his faith is the source of all his anguish ; his lights of all 
 his despair. What a situation! What a miserable lot! What 
 shocking changes are operated by one act of guilt, both internally 
 and externally, on man ! How dearly does he purchase eternal 
 misery! And, is it not true that the way of the world and of the 
 passions is still infinitely more arduous and painful than that of the 
 Gospel ; and that there is more toil and vexation of spirit in gain- 
 ing the kingdom of hell, if it be proper to speak in this manner, 
 than in gaining the kingdom of heaven ? O innocence of heart, 
 what blessings dost thou not bring with thee to man ! O man, 
 what losest thou not, when thou losest thine innocence of heart ! 
 Thou losest all the consolations of faith, the sweetest occupation of 
 the piety of the righteous; but thou also deprivest thyself of all the 
 comforts of grace by which the lot of the godly is rendered so truly 
 enviable here below. 
 
 Part II. When comforts and consolations, says St. Augustine, 
 are promised to worldly souls in the observance of the law of God, 
 they consider our promises as a pious mode of speaking, employed 
 to give credit and consequence to virtue ; and, as a heart which 
 has never tasted of these chaste delights is also incapable of com- 
 prehending them, we are obliged, continues that holy father, to 
 reply to them, " How wouldst thou that we convince thee ?" We 
 cannot say unto thee, * O taste and see that the Lord is good P? 
 seeing a diseased and vitiated heart can have no relish for the things 
 in heaven. Give us a heart that loves, and it will feel the truth of 
 every thing we say. 
 
 My design, therefore, here, is not so much to enlarge upon all 
 the inward operations of grace in the heart of the just, as to con- 
 trast the happy situation in which it places them, here below, with 
 the melancholy lot of sinners, and, by this comparison, to over- 
 whelm vice and to encourage virtue. Now, I say, that grace pro- 
 vides two kinds of consolations here below to the godly: the one 
 internal and secret, the other external and sensible ; both of them 
 so essential to happiness in this life, that no earthly gratification 
 can ever compensate for them. 
 
 The first internal benefit accruing to the believing soul from 
 grace, is the establishment of a solid peace in his heart, and a re- 
 conciliation with himself. For, my brethren, we all bear within 
 us natural principles of equity, of modesty, and of rectitude. We 
 come into the world, as the apostle says, with the precepts of the 
 law written in the heart. If virtue be not our first bent, we at least, 
 feel that it is our first duty. In vain does passion sometimes un- 
 dertake secretly to persuade us that we are born for pleasure; and 
 that, after all, tendencies implanted by nature, and which every one 
 finds within himself, can never be crimes. This foreign persua- 
 sion is ineffectual in quieting the criminal soul. It is a desire, for 
 
Ser. 31. THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. 523 
 
 we would heartily wish to be lawful whatever pleases us ; but it is 
 not a real conviction. It is a sayings for it appears honourable to 
 be above all vulgar prejudices ; but it is not a feeling. Thus, we 
 always carry within us an incorruptible judge, who incessantly 
 adopts the cause of virtue against our dearest inclinations; who 
 blends with our most headstrong passions the troublesome ideas of 
 duty; and who renders us unhappy even amidst all our pleasures 
 and abundance. 
 
 Such is the state of an impure and a sullied conscience. The 
 sinner is the secret and constant accuser of himself; go where he 
 will, he carries a torment within which the hand of man cannot 
 allay. Unhappy in being unable to conquer his lawless tendencies : 
 more unhappy still in being unable to stifle his incessant remorses. 
 Enticed by his weakness, and withheld by his lights, the permis- 
 sion of every crime is a conflict with himself : he reproaches him- 
 self for the iniquitous gratification, even in the moment of its en- 
 joyment. What shall he do? Shall he combat his lights in order 
 to appease his conscience ? Shall he suspect his faith to sin in 
 tranquillity? But unbelief is still a more horrible state than even 
 guilt. To live without God, without worship, without principle, 
 and without hope ! to believe that the most abominable transgres- 
 sions and the purest virtues are merely names ! to consider all men 
 as only the vile and fantastical puppets of a low theatre, and merely 
 intended for the amusement of the spectators ! to consider himself 
 as the offspring of chance, and the eternal possession of nonentity ! 
 these thoughts have something, I know not what, of gloomy and 
 horrible, that the soul cannot look upon without horror; and it is 
 true that unbelief is rather the despair of the sinner than the refuge 
 of the sin. What, then, shall he do ? Continually obliged to fly 
 himself, lest he find himself alone with his conscience, he ranges 
 from object to object, from passion to passion, from precipice to 
 precipice. He thinks to compensate the emptiness and the insuf- 
 ficiency of pleasures by their variety; there is none which he does 
 not try. But, in vain is his heart successively offered to all the 
 created; all the objects of his passions reply to him, says St. Au- 
 gustine, (i Deceive not thyself in loving us; we are not that happi- 
 ness of which thou art in search ; we cannot render thee happy : 
 raise thyself above the created, and, mounting to heaven, see if He 
 who hath formed us be not greater and more worthy of being loved 
 than we." Such is the lot of the sinner. 
 
 Not that the heart of the just enjoys a tranquillity so unalterable 
 but that they, in their turn, experience troubles, disgusts, and anx- 
 ieties here below. But these are passing clouds, which shade, as 
 I may say, only the surface of their soul. A profound calm always 
 reigns within, that serenity of conscience, that simplicity of heart, 
 that equality of mind, that lively confidence, that mild resignation, 
 that calm of the passions, that universal peace, which begins, even 
 from this life, the felicity of innocent souls. Vain creatures, what 
 control have ye over a heart which ye have not made, and which is 
 not made for you ? First consolation of grace, namely, peace of heart. 
 
524 THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. Ser. 31. 
 
 The second is love, which mitigates to the just all the rigours of 
 the law, and, according to the promise of Jesus Christ, changes his 
 yoke, so insupportable to sinners, into a sweet and consoling yoke 
 for them. For a believing soul loves his God still more fervently, 
 more tenderly, and more truly, than he had ever loved the world. 
 Every thing, therefore, even the most rigorous, that he undertakes 
 for him, is either no longer a trial to his heart, or becomes its 
 sweetest care. For the attribute of the holy love, when master of 
 the heart, is either to mitigate the sufferings it occasions, or to 
 change them even into holy pleasures. Thus a soul enamoured of 
 God, if I may dare to speak in this manner, pardons with joy, suf- 
 fers with confidence, mortifies itself with pleasure, flies from the 
 world with delight, prays with consolation, and fulfils every duty 
 with a holy satisfaction. The more his love increases, the more 
 does his yoke become easy. The more he loves, the happier he 
 is : for it is the height of happiness to love what is become essen- 
 tial and necessary to us. 
 
 But the sinner, the more he loves the world, the more unhappy 
 he is : for the more he loves the world, the more do his passions 
 multiply, the more do his desires inflame, the more do his schemes 
 get perplexed, and the more do his anxieties become sharpened. 
 His love is the cause of all his evils: its vivacity is the source of 
 all his sufferings; because the world, which is the cause of them, 
 is incapable of furnishing him with their cure. The more he loves 
 the world, the more is his pride stung by a preference ; the more 
 does his haughtiness feel an injury, the more does he sink under a 
 disconcerted project ; the more does a disappointed desire afflict 
 him, the more does an unexpected loss weigh him down. The more 
 he loves the world, the more do pleasures become necessary to 
 him; and, as no one can fill the immensity of his heart, the 
 more insupportable does his weariness become : for weariness is 
 the inseparable attendant of every pleasure; and, with all its 
 amusements, the world, ever since it was a world, complains of its 
 lassitude. 
 
 And think not that, to accredit virtue, I here affect to exaggerate 
 the misery of worldly souls. I know that the world seems to have 
 its happiness ; and that, amid all that whirlwind of cares, motions, 
 fears, anxieties, a small number of fortunate individuals is seen, 
 whose happiness is envied, and who seem, in appearance to enjoy 
 a smiling and tranquil lot. But investigate these vain outsides of 
 happiness and gladness, and you will find real sorrows, distracted 
 hearts, and agitated consciences. Draw near to these men who, in 
 your eyes, appear the happy of the earth, and you will be surprised 
 to find them gloomy, anxious, and sinking under the weight of a 
 criminal conscience. Hear them in those serious and tranquil mo- 
 ments, when the passions, more cooled, allow some influence to 
 reason. They all confess that they are any thing but happy; that 
 the blaze of their fortune shines only at a distance, and appears 
 worthy of envy only to those who know it not. They confess that, 
 amidst all their pleasures and prosperity, they have never been able 
 
Ser. 31. THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. 525 
 
 to taste any pure and unadulterated joy; that the world, a little 
 searched into, is nothing ; that they are astonished themselves how 
 it can be loved when known ; and that happy are they alone, here 
 below, who can do without it and serve God. Some long for the 
 opportunity of an honourable retreat ; others are continually pro- 
 posing to themselves more orderly and more Christian manners. 
 All admit the happiness of the godly ; all wish to become so ; all 
 bear testimony against themselves. They are the forced rather 
 than the voluntary followers of pleasure. It is no longer inclina- 
 tion, it is habit, it is weakness, which retains them in the shackles 
 of the world and of sin. They feel this; they lament it; they ac- 
 knowledge it ; and they give way to the current of so wretched a 
 lot. Deceitful world ! render happy, if in thy power, those who 
 serve thee, and then will I forsake the law of the Lord to attach 
 myself to the vanity of thy promises. 
 
 You yourself, my dear nearer, since the many years that you 
 served the world, have you greatly forwarded your happiness? 
 Put in a balance, on the one side, all the agreeable moments and 
 days you have passed in it, and, on the other, all the sorrows 
 and vexations you have there experienced, and see which scale 
 will preponderate. In certain moments of pleasure, of excess, 
 and of frenzy, you have, perhaps, said, " It is good for us to be 
 here f but that was only a momentary intoxication, the illusion 
 of which the following moment discovered to you, and plunged 
 you into all your former anxieties. Even now, when speaking 
 to you, question your own heart : are you at peace within ? Is 
 nothing wanting to your happiness ? Do you fear, do you wish 
 for nothing ? Do you never feel that God is not with you ? Would 
 you wish to live and die such as you are ? Are you satisfied with 
 the world ? Are you unfaithful to the Author of your being with- 
 out remorse ? There are twelve hours in the day : are they all 
 equally agreeable to you ? And have you, as yet, been able to suc- 
 ceed in fashioning a conscience so as to remain tranquil in guilt ? 
 
 Even then, when you have plunged to the very bottom of the 
 sea of iniquity to extinguish your remorses, and have succeeded, 
 as you thought, in stifling that remnant of faith which still pleads 
 in your heart for virtue, hath not the Lord commanded the serpent 
 as he saith in his prophet Amos, to follow and sting you even in 
 the abyss where you had fled for shelter ? And, even there, have 
 you not felt the secret gnawings of the ravenous worm ? Is it 
 not true that the days you have consecrated to God by some 
 religious duty have been the happiest of your life ; and that you 
 have never lived, as I may say, but when your conscience has been 
 pure, and that you have lived with God? No, says the prophet, 
 with a holy pride, the God whom we worship is not a deceitful 
 God, nor is he, like the gods which the world worships, unable 
 to reward those who serve him ; let the world themselves be the 
 judges here. 
 
 Great God ! what then is man, thus to wrestle his whole life 
 against himself, to wish to be happy without thee, in spite of thee, 
 
526 THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. Ser. 31. 
 
 in declaring himself against thee ; to feel his wretchedness, and yet 
 to love it ; to know his true happiness, and yet to fly from it ? 
 What is man, O my God ! and who shall fathom his ways, and the 
 eternal contradiction of his errors ? 
 
 Would I could finish what I had at first intended, and prove to 
 you, my brethren, that the lot of the godly is still more worthy of 
 all our wishes ; for this reason, that, when the internal consolations 
 happen even to fail them, yet they have the external aids of piety 
 to strenghen and to assist them : the support of the sacrament, 
 which, to the reluctant sinner, is no longer but a melancholy 
 tribute to decency, equally tiresome and embarrassing ; the ex- 
 ample of the holy, and the history of their wonders, from which 
 the sinner averts his eyes, lest he see in them his own condemna- 
 tion : the holy thanksgivings and prayers of the church, which, to 
 the sinner, become a melancholy fatigue : and, lastly, the conso- 
 lation of the divine writings, in which he no longer finds but 
 menaces and anathemas. 
 
 What invigorating refreshment, in effect, my brethren, to the 
 mind of a believer, when, after quitting the vain conversations of 
 the world, where the only subjects have been the exaltation of a 
 family, the magnificence of a building, the individuals who act a 
 brilliant part on the theatre of the universe, public calamities, the 
 faults of those at the head of affairs, the events of war, and the 
 errors with which the government is continually accused : lastly, 
 where, earthly, they have spoken only of the earth ; what a re- 
 freshment, after quitting these, when, in order to breathe a little 
 from the fatigue of these vain conversations, a believing soul takes 
 up the book of the law, and finds, every where in it, that it matters 
 little to man to have gained the whole world, if he thereby lose 
 his soul ; that the most vaunted conquest shall sink into oblivion 
 with the vanity of the conquerors ; that the heavens and the earth 
 shall pass away; that the kingdoms of the earth and all their 
 glory shall waste away like a garment : but that God alone will 
 endure for ever ; and, consequently, that to him alone we ought to 
 attach ourselves ! The foolish have repeated vain things to me, O 
 my God ! says then this soul with the prophet ; but, O how dif- 
 ferent from thy law ! 
 
 And, certainly, my brethren, what soothing promises in these 
 holy books ! What powerful inducements to virtue ! What happy 
 precautions against vice ! What instructive events ! what sub- 
 lime ideas of the greatness of God, and of the wretchedness of 
 man ! What animated paintings of the deformity of sin, and the 
 false happiness of sinners! We have no need of thine assistance, 
 wrote Jonathan and all the Jewish people to the Spartans ; for, 
 having the holy books in our hands to comfort us, we have no oc- 
 casion for the aid of men. And who, think you, my brethren, were 
 these men who spake in this manner ? They were the unfortunate 
 remains of Antiochus's cruelty, wandering in the mountains of 
 Judea, despoiled of their property and fortunes, driven from Je- 
 rusalem and the temple, where the abomination of idols had taken 
 
Ser. 31. THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. 527 
 
 place of the worship of the holy God ; and, scarcely emerged from 
 so afflicting a situation, they are in need of nothing, for they have 
 the holy books in their hands. And, in an extremity so new, sur- 
 rounded on all hands by nations of enemies, having no longer, in 
 the midst of their army, either the ark of Israel or the holy taber- 
 nacle ; their tears still flowing for the recent death of the invincible 
 Judas, who was alike the safeguard of the people and the terror of 
 the uncircumcised ; having seen their wives and children mur- 
 dered before their eyes ; they themselves on the point every day 
 of sinking under the treachery of their false brethren or the am- 
 buscades of their enemies; the book of the law is alone sufficient 
 to comfort and to defend them ; and they think themselves in a 
 situation to disclaim that assistance which an ancient treaty and 
 alliance entitled them to demand. 
 
 I am not surprised, after this, that, in the consolation of the 
 Scriptures, the first disciples of the Gospel should forget all the 
 rage of persecution; and that, unable to bring themselves to lose 
 sight of that divine book during life, they should desire it to be 
 inclosed in their tomb after death, as if to guarantee to their ashes 
 that immortality it had always promised to them ; and likewise, as 
 it would appear, to present it to Jesus Christ on the day of revela- 
 tion, as the sacred claim by which they were entitled to heavenly 
 riches, and to all the promises made to the righteous. 
 
 Such are the consolations of believing souls upon the earth. 
 How terrible, then, my brethren, to live far from God under the 
 tyranny of sin: always at war with one^s self; destitute of every 
 real joy of the heart; without relish often for pleasures alike as for 
 virtue; odious to men through the meanness of our passions; in- 
 supportable to ourselves through the capriciousness of our desires; 
 hated of God through the horrors of our conscience; deprived of 
 the comforts of the sacrament, seeing our crimes permit us not to 
 approach it : deprived of all consolation from the holy books, see- 
 ing we find in them only threatenings and anathemas ; without the 
 resource of prayer, seeing the practice of it is forbidden, or at least 
 the habit of it lost by a life wholly dissolute. What then is the 
 sinner but the outcast of heaven and of the earth ! 
 
 Thus, know ye, my brethren, what shall be the regrets of the 
 reprobate on that great day, when to each one shall be rendered 
 according to his works? You probably think that they will regret 
 their past felicity, and shall say, " Our days of prosperity have 
 slipped away like a shadow, and that world, in which we had spent 
 so many sweet moments, is now no more: the duration of our 
 pleasures has been like that of a dream: our happiness is flown, 
 but, alas! our punishments are to begin." You are mistaken; 
 this will not be their language. Hear how they speak in the 
 Book of Wisdom, and such, as we are ussured by the Spirit of 
 God, they shall one day speak : u We never tasted pure delight in 
 guilt; we have erred from the ways of truth, and the Sun of 
 righteousness hath never risen upon us : alas ! and yet that was 
 only the beginning of our misfortunes and sufferings ; we wearied 
 
528 THE HAPPINESS OF THE JUST. Ser. 31. 
 
 ourselves in the way of wickedness and destruction ; our passions 
 have always been a thousand times more intolerable to us than 
 could ever have been the most austere virtues: and we have suf- 
 fered more in working our own destruction, than would have been 
 necessary to secure our salvation, and to be entitled to mount up 
 now with the chosen into the realms of immortality. Fools that 
 we are ! by a sorrowful and unhappy life to have purchased mise- 
 ries which must endure for ever ! " 
 
 Would you then, my dear hearer, live happy on the earth, live 
 Christianly. Piety is universally beneficial. Innocence of heart 
 is the source of true pleasures. Turn to every side; there is no 
 rest, says the Spirit of God, for the wicked. Try every pleasure; 
 they will never eradicate that disease of the mind, that fund of 
 lassitude and gloom, which, go where you will, continually accom- 
 panies you. Cease, then, to consider the lot of the godly as a 
 disagreeable and sorrowful lot ; judge not their happiness from ap- 
 pearances which deceive you. You see their countenance bedewed 
 with tears; but you see not the invisible hand which wipes them 
 away; you see their body groaning under the yoke of penitence; 
 but you see not the unction of grace which softens it: you see 
 sorrowful and austere maimers; but you see not a conscience al- 
 ways cheerful and tranquil. They are like the ark in the desert: it 
 appeared covered only with the skins of animals : the exterior is 
 mean or unattractive ; it is the condition of that melancholy desert. 
 But, could you penetrate into the heart, into that divine sanctuary, 
 what new wonders would rise to your eyes ! You would find it 
 clothed in pure gold : you would there see the glory of God with 
 which it is filled: you would there admire the fragrance of the per- 
 fumes, and the fervour of the prayers which are continually mount- 
 ing upwards to the Lord; the sacred fire which is never extinguished 
 on that altar; that silence, that peace, that majesty which reigns 
 there; and the Lord himself, who hath chosen it for his abode, and 
 who hath delighted in it. 
 
 Let their lot inspire you with a holy emulation. It depends 
 wholly on yourself to be similar to them. They perhaps have 
 formerly been the accomplices of your pleasures; why could you 
 not become the imitators of their penitence? Establish, at last, a 
 solid peace in your heart; begin to be weary of yourself. Hitherto 
 you have only half lived; for it is not living to live at enmity with 
 one's self. Return to your God, who calls and who expects you : 
 banish iniquity from your soul, and you will banish the source of 
 all its sorrows; you will enjoy the peace of innocence; you will 
 live happy upon the earth; and that temporal happiness will be 
 only the commencement of a felicity which shall never fade nor be 
 done away. 
 
Ser. 32. on the dispositions, &c. 529 
 
 SERMON XXXII. 
 
 ON THE DISPOSITIONS FOR THE COMMUNION. 
 
 "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." Luke iii. 4. 
 
 Behold what the church is continually repeating to us during 
 this holy time, in order to prepare us for the birth of Jesus 
 Christ: Prepare, says she to all her children, prepare the way of 
 the Lord, who descends from heaven to visit and redeem his peo- 
 ple; make his paths straight; let the hollows be filled up, and the 
 mountains levelled; let the crooked ways become straight, and the 
 rugged even. Or, to express the same meaning without metaphor, 
 Prepare yourselves, says she to us, to gather the fruit of that grand 
 mystery which we are going to celebrate, by humiliation of heart, 
 meekness, and charity, rectitude of intention, uniformity of living, 
 renunciation of your own wisdom and your own righteousness; 
 mortifying the flesh and humbling the spirit. 
 
 Allow me to hold the same language to you, Christians, my bre- 
 thren, who, on this solemn occasion, come to purify yourselves in 
 the penitential tribunals, in order to give a new birth to Jesus 
 Christ in your hearts, on receiving him at the sacred table, pre- 
 pare the way of the Lord. The deed you are going to perform is 
 the most holy act of religion, and the source of the most special 
 favours : undertake it not, therefore, without all the cares and all 
 the precautions which it requires : do not expose yourselves, through 
 your own fault, to lose the inestimable advantages which ought to 
 accrue to you from it. 
 
 The communion ought to give birth to Jesus Christ in our 
 hearts: but where would be the difference between the righteous 
 man and the sinner, between the soul who discerns the body of the 
 Lord, and him who treats it as common food, were he equally to 
 have birth in the heart of all who receive him? Deceive not your- 
 selves, then, my brethren; there is a way of receiving Jesus 
 Christ, by which his presence is rendered useless to us; and would 
 to God, that, in thus receiving him, we deprived ourselves only of 
 those favours which follow a holy communion ! Ah ! my brethren, 
 unless the communion gives birth to Jesus Christ in our hearts, 
 it brings death to him there ; if it does not render us participators 
 of his Spirit and of his grace, it is the sentence of our condemna- 
 tion: if it be not a fruit of life to our soul, it is a fruit of death. 
 Terrible alternative, which ought to excite our fears, but which 
 ought not entirely to keep us away from the sacred table. The 
 bread which is there distributed is the true nourishment of our 
 souls, the strength of the strong, the support of the weak, the con- 
 solation of the afflicted, the pledge of a blessed immortality. How 
 dangerous would it then be to abstain from it ? but infinitely more 
 
 M M 
 
530 on the dispositions Ser. 32. 
 
 so would it be to eat it without preparation. On that account I 
 again repeat to you, my dearest brethren, with the church, u Pre- 
 pare the way of the Lord t" let your preparations for receiving him 
 be of long standing: banish from your hearts whatever may offend 
 him : instruct yourselves in the dispositions which he exacts of 
 those who receive him: use every effort to acquire them: there is 
 no other mean of avoiding the risk of an unworthy communion, 
 and of attracting Jesus Christ into your souls. 
 
 This is an important matter, which demands all your attention. 
 On one side, there is question of making you shun the horrible 
 crime of profaning the body and the adorable blood of Jesus 
 Christ; on the other, of instructing you how to reap from the 
 communion all the grace which it is capable of bringing forth in 
 our hearts. What, then, are those preparations so essential toward 
 a profitable and worthy communion? I reduce them to four, which 
 shall be the subject and the division of this Discourse. 
 
 Reflection I. The eucharist is a hidden manna: it is the 
 food of the strong, a sensible and permanent testimony of the love 
 of Jesus Christ, the continuation and the fulfilment of his sacrifice. 
 Now, it is necessary to know how to discern this hidden manna 
 from common food, lest it be taken unworthily: first preparation. 
 It is the food of the strong : we ought, therefore, to examine our- 
 selves before we venture to make use of it: second preparation. 
 The testimony of the love of Jesus Christ; it can be received, 
 therefore, only in remembrance of him, that is to say, in feeling 
 aroused in his presence every tender and exquisite sensation which 
 can be excited by the remembrance of a dear and beloved object : 
 third preparation. It is the fulfilment of his sacrifice; every time, 
 therefore, that we participate in it, we show his death, and we 
 ought to bring there a spirit of the cross and of martyrdom : fourth 
 preparation. A respectful faith which enables us to discern, a 
 prudent faith which makes us examine, an ardent faith which 
 enables us to love, an exalted faith which makes us to immolate. 
 This is the summary of the apostles' doctrine, in relating to us the 
 institution of the eucharist, and likewise that of all the saints with 
 regard to the use of that adorable sacrament. 
 
 First preparation, a respectful faith which makes us to discern. 
 Think not, my brethren, that I mean here to speak of that faith 
 which distinguishes us from unbelievers. Where is the merit of 
 believing when the prejudices of childhood have accustomed reason 
 to it, and when belief is, as it were born with us ? Exertion would 
 even be necessary to cast off its yoke ; and, to pass from faith to 
 error, a greater effort is perhaps required than to return from error 
 to truth. I speak of that lively faith which pierces through the 
 clouds which surround the throne of the Lamb; which sees him 
 not mystically, and, as it were, through a glass, but face to face, if 
 I may venture to say so, such as he is : of that faith which, in 
 spite of the veil with which the true Moses covers himself on this 
 holy mountain, fails not, however, to perceive all his glory, and to 
 
Ser. 32. for the communion. 531 
 
 feel the inability of supporting his presence : of that faith which, 
 without rashly examining into his majesty, is, nevertheless, over- 
 powered with its lustre ; which sees the celestial legions covering 
 themselves with their wings, and the pillars of the firmament 
 shaking before this King of terrible majesty; of that faith to which 
 the senses could add nothing, and which is blessed, not because 
 it believes without seeing, but because it almost sees in believing. 
 I speak of that respectful faith which is seized with a religious 
 trembling at the sole presence of the sanctuary, which approaches 
 the altar as Moses did the burning bush, and the Israelites the 
 thundering mountain; of that faith which feels the whole weight 
 of God's presence, and, in fear, cries out, like Peter, " Depart from 
 me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." I speak of that faith of 
 which the respect approaches almost to a dread, and which it is 
 even necessary to comfort; which, from the farthest spot that it 
 discovers Jesus Christ upon the altar, feels an eclat of majesty 
 which strikes and agitates it, and overpowers it with the dread of 
 having ventured to come there without his order. 
 
 Behold, my brethren, what that discernment of faith is which 
 the apostle demands of you. Great God ! but doth any faith like 
 this still remain on the earth ? Ah ! in vain dost thou still mani- 
 fest thy presence to the world ; it knows thee no better than for- 
 merly : thy disciples themselves often know thee but according to 
 the flesh ; and, by being constantly with thee, their eyes become 
 habituated, and almost no longer discern thee. When thou shalt 
 show thyself in the heavens upon a bright cloud, men shall be 
 consumed with terror, and the impious shall seek to hide themselves 
 in the deepest caverns, and entreat the mountains to cover their 
 heads : ah ! art thou not the same in the sanctuary as upon a 
 cloud of glory ? Are the heavens not opened above thee? When 
 the priest pronounces the awful words, do not the heavenly spirits 
 come down from heaven to officiate as thy servants, and to 
 surround thee with their homages ? Dost thou not judge men upon 
 that mysterious tribunal, and cast looks of discernment upon that 
 multitude of worshippers which fills thy temples ? Dost not thou 
 separate the goats from the sheep ? Dost thou not there pro- 
 nounce sentences of life and death ? In one hand dost thou not 
 hold thy wrath, and in the other crowns ? Dost thou not separate 
 me there, and stamp, with an invisible hand, upon my forehead, the 
 mark of my election or of my eternal reprobation ? Alas ! and, 
 while thou art perhaps condemning me, I have the presumption to 
 draw near ; while thou art casting me off from before thee, I boldly 
 present myself there ; while thou perhaps layest open the abyss to 
 mark out my place, I impudently come to take it at thy table ; while 
 thou perhaps art ranging me with the children of wrath, I come to 
 seat myself among the children of thy love ; thy body, which 
 giveth life, to me is a body of death ; the Lamb without stain, 
 which breaks the seven seals of the book of death, is the last seal 
 which fills up and closes that of mine iniquities ; and thou, who 
 shouldst be my Saviour, becomest my guilt. 
 
 M M 2 
 
532 on the dispositions Ser. 32. 
 
 Ah J my brethren, God could not be seen in former times with- 
 out instant death being the consequence. A whole people of Beth- 
 shemites was exterminated for having only too curiously examined 
 the ark : the angel of the Lord covers Heliodorus with wounds, be- 
 cause he had dared to enter into the sanctuary of Jerusalem : the 
 Israelites in the desert were not permitted even to approach the 
 holy mountain from whence the Lord gave out his law ; the thun- 
 ders of heaven defended its access; terror and death every where 
 preceded the face of the God of Abraham. What ! because whirl- 
 winds of fire no longer burst forth to punish the intruders and the 
 profaners of our sanctuaries, respect and dread no longer accom- 
 pany us there! Weak men, over whom the senses have such 
 dominion, and who are never religious but when the God whom 
 they worship is clothed in terror ! for, say, were we to discern the 
 body of the Lord, did the faith of his presence make those grand 
 impressions upon us, which it would undoubtedly do were we 
 openly to see him, ah ! would we tranquilly and almost unfeelingly 
 come to seat ourselves at this table ? Should a few moments em- 
 ployed in reciting, with a languid heart and an absent mind, some 
 slight formula, prepare us for an action so awful ? Should a com- 
 munion be the business of an idle morning, perhaps gained from 
 a customary slumber or the vain cares of dress ? Ah ! the thoughts 
 of it should long previously occupy and affect us ; time should 
 even be necessary to strengthen us, if I may venture to say so, 
 against our feelings of respect, and against the idea of his majesty : 
 the days previous to this sacred festival should be days of retire- 
 ment, of silence, of prayer, and of mortification : every day which 
 brings us nearer to that blessed term, should witness the increase 
 of our anxieties, our fears, our joy. The thoughts of it should be 
 mingled with all our affairs, all our conversations, all our meals, all 
 our relaxations, and even with our sleep itself : our mind, filled 
 with faith, should feel its inability to pay attention to any thing- 
 else ; we should no longer perceive but Jesus Christ : that image 
 alone should fix all our attention. Behold what is meant by dis- 
 cerning the body of the Lord. 
 
 I know that a worldly soul experiences inward agitations at the 
 approach of a solemnity in which decency, and perhaps the law, 
 require his presence at the altar. But, O my God ! thou who 
 fathomest these troubled hearts, are such those religious terrors of 
 faith which should accompany a humble creature to thy altar ? 
 Ah ! it is a sadness which operates death ; these are inquietudes 
 which spring from the embarrassments of a conscience which 
 requires to be cleared. They are gloomy and sad, like the young 
 man of the Gospel Avhom thou orderedst to follow thee : they dread 
 these blessed days as fatal days : they look upon as dark and 
 gloomy mysteries, all the solemnities of Christians ; the delights 
 of thy feast become a fatigue to them ; they only partake of it like 
 the blind and the lame of the Gospel : that is to say, that the laws 
 of thy church must drag these faithless souls, as if by force, from 
 the public places, from the pleasures of the age, and from the 
 
Ser. 32. for the communion. 533 
 
 highway of perdition, and bring them, in spite of themselves, into 
 the hall of thy feast: they delay, as much as possible, this reli- 
 gious duty : the sole thought of it impoisons all their pleasures. 
 Thou seest these unbelieving souls dragging on the load of a waver- 
 ing conscience ; long hesitating between their duties and their pas- 
 sions ; softening at last, by the choice of an indulgent confessor, 
 the bitterness of this step ; appearing before thee, O God ! who 
 becomest their nourishment in this mystery of love, with as much 
 reluctance as if they went to face an enemy ; and, perhaps, in the 
 course of a whole year, experiencing no other circumstance to 
 grieve them than that of receiving a God who gives himself to 
 them. Ah ! Lord, therefore thou invisibly rejectest these guilty 
 victims who oblige themselves to be dragged by force to the altar, 
 thou who wiliest none but voluntary sacrifices : therefore thou re- 
 luctantly givest thyself to these ungrateful hearts who unwillingly 
 receive thee; and, wert thou still capable of being troubled in the 
 spirit, as thou permittedst to be visible over the tomb of Lazarus, 
 ah ! we should once more see thee groaning when thou enteredst 
 those profane mouths which, in thy sight, are only open sepulchres, 
 as they have long been troubled before they could prevail upon 
 themselves to appear here to pay thee that homage. 
 
 Let us acknowledge, then, my dearest brethren, that the faith 
 which makes us to discern the body of Jesus Christ is very rare. 
 We believe, but with a superficial faith, which only skims the 
 surface, as I may say, without entering into the efficacy and the 
 mysteries of this sacrament: we believe, but with an indolent faith, 
 which grounds its whole merit in submitting without opposition : 
 we believe, but with an inconstant faith, which professes to believe, 
 but denies it in works : we believe, but with a human faith, which 
 is the gift rather of our fathers according to the flesh, than of the 
 Father of Light : we believe, but with a popular faith, which 
 leaves us only weak and puerile ideas : we believe, but with a su- 
 perstitious faith, which tends to nothing but vain and external 
 homages : we believe, but with a faith merely of custom, which 
 feels nothing: we believe, but with an insipid faith, which no 
 longer discerns : we believe, but with a convenient faith, which is 
 never followed with any effects : we believe, but with an ignorant 
 faith, which fails either in respect through familiarity, or in love 
 through its backwardness : we believe, but with a faith which en- 
 chains the mind, and leaves the heart to wander : lastly, we believe, 
 but with a tranquil and vulgar faith, in which there is nothing 
 either animated, grand, sublime, or worthy of the God which it 
 discovers to us. Ah ! to discern thy body, Lord, through faith, it 
 is to perfer this heavenly bread to all the luxuries of Egypt ; it is to 
 render it the only consolation of our exilement, the tenderest 
 soother of our sufferings, the sacred remedy of all our evils, the 
 continual desires of our souls ; it is, through it, to find serenity 
 under all the frowns of fortune, peace in all our troubles, and 
 equanimity under all the stings of adversity ; it is to find in it an 
 asylum against our disgraces, a buckler to repel the flaming darts 
 of Satan, a renovated ardour against the unavoidable lukewarm- 
 
534 ox the dispositions Ser. 32. 
 
 nesses of piety. To discern thy body, Lord, it is to devote more 
 cares, more attention, and more circumspection toward worthily 
 receiving thee, than to all the other actions of life. To discern thy 
 body, Lord, it is to respect the temples in which thou art worship- 
 ped, the ministers who serve thee, and our bodies which receive 
 thee. Let every man examine himself, let him thereupon listen to 
 the testimony of his own conscience ; and this is the second prepa- 
 ration, a prudent faith, which makes us to prove ourselves ; let a 
 man examine himself. 
 
 Reflection II. I know that we are unacquainted with our 
 own heart ; that the mind of man is not always informed of what 
 takes place in man ; that the passions seduce, examples harden, 
 and prejudices drag us away; that our inclinations are always vic- 
 torious over our lights ; that the heart is never in the wrong ; that, 
 to examine one's self, is frequently only to harden one's self in 
 error. Such is man, O my God ! delivered up to his own under- 
 standing : he is continually deceived, and nothing appears to his 
 eyes but under fictitious colours ; he but imperfectly knows thee ; 
 he hardly knows himself; he comprehends nothing in all that sur- 
 rounds him ; he takes darkness for light ; he wanders from error to 
 error; he quits not his errors when he returns to himself : the 
 lights alone of thy faith can direct his judgment, open the eyes 
 of his soul, become the reason of his heart, teach him to know 
 himself, lay open the folds of self-love, expose all the artifices of 
 the passions, and exalt him to that spiritual man, who conceives 
 and judges of all. By the rules of faith, then, my brethren, must 
 we examine ourselves ; all human doctrines, the compromises of 
 custom, the examples of the multitude, our own understanding, all 
 are deceitful guides ;if ever it was of importance not to be deceived, 
 it surely is in a conjuncture where sacrilege is the consequence of 
 mistake. 
 
 But upon what shall we examine ourselves ? Upon what ! Upon 
 the holiness of this sacrament, and upon our own corruption. It 
 is the body of Jesus Christ, it is the bread of angels, it is the Lamb 
 without stain, who admits none around his altar but those who 
 cither have not defiled their garments or who have purified them 
 in the blood of penitence. And what art thou, forward soul, whom 
 I see approaching with so much confidence ? Bringest thou there 
 thy modesty, thy innocence? Hast thou always possessed the 
 vessel of thy body in honour and in holiness? Hath thy heart not 
 been dragged through the filth of a thousand passions ? In the 
 sight of God, is not thy soul that blackened brand of which the 
 prophet speaks, which impure flames had blasted and consumed 
 from thine earliest years, and which is no longer but a shocking 
 vestige of their fury ? Art thou not totally covered with shameful 
 wounds ? Is there a spot upon thy body free from the mark of 
 some crime ? Where wilt thou place the body of the Lamb ? 
 What ! it shall rest upon thy tongue ; that pure and immaculate 
 body upon a tomb which had never exhaled but infection and 
 stench ; that body immolated with so much gentleness upon the 
 
Ser. 32. for the communion. 435 
 
 instrument of all thy vengeances and bitterness; that crucified 
 body on the seat of all thy sensualities and debaucheries. What! 
 he shall descend to thy heart ? But will he therein find where to 
 repose his head ? Hast thou not changed that holy temple into a 
 den of thieves ? What ! thou art going to place him among so 
 many impure pleasures, profane attachments, ambitious projects, 
 emotions of hatred, of jealousy, and of pride; it is amidst all these 
 monsters that thou hast prepared his dwelling-place ? Ah ! thou 
 deliverest up to his enemies, thou once more puttest him into the 
 hands of his executioners. 
 
 You have examined yourselves, say you to me. Before drawing 
 near, you have made your confession. Ah ! my brethren, and, 
 with the same mouth from which you have so lately vented all your 
 iniquities, you go to receive Jesus Christ? And, the heart still 
 reeking with a thousand ill-extinguished passions, and which to- 
 morrow shall see in all their wonted vigour, you dare to approach 
 the altar with your present, and to participate in the holy myste- 
 ries ? And, the imagination still stained with the ideas of those 
 recent excesses which you have just been recounting to the priest, 
 you go to eat of the pure bread of the chosen ? What ! on your 
 departure from the tribunal, the communion, in your eyes, supplies 
 the place, and answers the purposes of penitence ? From guilt you 
 rush headlong to the altar ? In place of dissolving in tears with 
 the penitent, you come to rejoice with the righteous ? In place of 
 nourishing yourself with the bread of tribulation, you run to a de- 
 licious feast ? In place of lingering at the gate of the temple, like 
 the publican, you confidently draw near to the holy of holies ? In 
 former times, a penitent came not to the table of the Lord but after 
 whole years of humiliation, of abstinence, of prayer, and of austerity, 
 and they purified themselves in tears, in grief, and in the public 
 exercises of a painful discipline ; they became new men ; a heart- 
 felt regret was the only vestige of their former life ; no traces of 
 their past crimes were to be recognized but in the grace of peni- 
 tence, and of the macerations which, at last, had expiated them ; 
 and the eucharist was that heavenly bread which no man, a sinner, 
 then ate but with the sweat of his brow. And, at present, to 
 have confessed crimes is believed to have already punished them ; 
 that an absolution, which is only given under the supposition of a 
 humbled and contrite heart, actually creates and renders it so; that 
 all the purity required of those who receive thebody of Jesus Christ 
 is, that they have laid open all the virulence and infection of their 
 sores. Unworthy communicants, my brethren ! you eat and you 
 drink your damnation ! In vain may we comfort you : can man jus- 
 tify when God condemns ? 
 
 Besides, it is pure and without leaven; it requires to be exempted 
 from leaven to eat of it. Now, have those worldly persons, whom 
 the cirumstances of a solemnity determine to approach the holy 
 table, quitted the old leaven in presenting themselves at the altar ? 
 Do they not bring along with them every passion still living in its 
 roots ? Judge thereof from the consequences. On their departure 
 
536 on the dispositions Ser. 32. 
 
 from thence they find themselves exactly the same ; hatreds are not 
 extinguished, the empire of voluptuousness is not weakened, ani- 
 mation in the pursuit of pleasures is not blunted, inclination for the 
 world is not less violent; in a word, cupidity has lost nothing of its 
 rights. We see no greater precautions than before against dangers 
 already encountered ; the society of the world again resumes its 
 influence ; conversations are renewed ; the passions awaken ; every 
 thing resumes its former train, and, in addition to their former 
 state, they have now to add the profanation of this awful mystery. 
 How is this ? It is that a simple confession is no examination of 
 one's self. 
 
 Again, it is the food of the strong. A weak, sickly, and waver- 
 ing soul, who turns with every wind ; who gives way to the first 
 obstacle ; who founders upon the first rock ; who escapes every mo- 
 ment from the guidance of grace; who has a long experience of his 
 own fragility ; who never brings to the altar but promises a hundred 
 times violated, but momentary sensations of devotion, which the 
 very first pleasure stifles ; who, from his earliest years, has been in 
 the alternate practice of weaknesses and holy things, and who has 
 seen a constant succession of crimes to repentance, and of the sacra- 
 ment to relapses: is a soul of this description a strong soul? Is it 
 not its duty to examine itself, to increase, to strengthen, and to exer- 
 cise itself in charity ? Scarcely in a state to digest milk, ought it to 
 load itself with solid food, and such as can serve the purposes of 
 nourishment only to the perfect man ? 
 
 It is written in the law, that, if the sin-offering be placed in an 
 earthen vessel, the vessel shall immediately be broken ; but if in a 
 brazen vessel, it shall be both scoured and rinsed in water. Would 
 these circumstances, so carefully and minutely marked, be worthy 
 of the Holy Spirit, did they not contain instructions and mysteries? 
 Doth not a weak soul, who receives the true victim, resemble that 
 earthen vessel which falls in pieces, as I may say, being unable to 
 endure the violence of this sacred fire ? On the contrary, the firm 
 soul, like the brass, is purified, loses in it all its stains, and comes 
 out from it more beautiful and brilliant than before. What is the 
 consequence, according to Jesus Christ, of putting new wine into 
 old bottles ; do they not burst, and allow the wine to be lost upon 
 the ground ? What is the application of this parable ? You put 
 the mystical wine, that wine whose strength operates a holy intox- 
 ication in pure souls, into a decayed and worn-out heart, which 
 long-established passions have almost consumed. Ah ! I am not 
 surprised that it is unable to endure its strength, that the blood of 
 Jesus Christ cannot tarry there, and that, on the first occasion, you 
 shed and trample it under foot ; it required to have gradually accus- 
 tomed your heart to it, to have prepared it by retirement, by prayer, 
 by daily conquests over yourself; and, through the means of these 
 continued and salutary trials, to have strengthened and rendered it 
 capable of receiving Jesus Christ. 
 
 It is the passover of Christians : now, Jesus Christ celebrates his 
 passover with his disciples alone. 
 
Ser. 32. for the communion. 537 
 
 Now, what is it to be his disciples ? It is to renounce one's self, 
 to carry his cross, to follow him. Are you mortified in your desires, 
 patient under your afflictions ? Do you walk in the ways in which 
 Jesus Christ hath walked before you ? To be his disciples is mu- 
 tually to love each other. And how often have you come to eat 
 of this bread of union ? How often have you made your appearance 
 at this banquet of charity, your heart inwardly loaded with gall 
 and bitterness against your brother ? How often have you come 
 to offer up your present at the altar, without having reconciled 
 yourself with him ? 
 
 Lastly. It is a God so pure, that the stars are dimmed in his 
 presence : so holy, that, after the fall of the angel, heaven was rent 
 and the abyss opened that he might place an eternal chaos between 
 sin and him ; so jealous, that a single wandering desire injures and 
 offends him. Thus, my brethren, it is necessary that you examine 
 yourselves upon your own inclinations. Are not those desires of 
 the age of which the apostle speaks, still nourished within you ? 
 Render glory to God, and, in his presence, search your hearts to 
 the bottom. I go to eat of the body of Jesus Christ, and to convert 
 it into my own substance ; but when he shall have entered into my 
 soul, he who knows and discerns its intentions and most secret in- 
 clinations, will he find nothing there unworthy of the sanctity of 
 his presence ? He will immediately proceed to the spring and to the 
 causes of my wanderings ; he will examine whether their source be 
 dried up, or their course only suspended; he will perceive what are 
 still the dominant inclinations of my soul, and what is the weight 
 which still turns the balance of my heart: alas! will he be enabled 
 to say, as formerly when entering into the house of Zaccheus, 
 " This day is salvation come to this house ?" Have I sincerely 
 cast off that passion so fatal to my innocence ; that bitterness of 
 heart, of which I have so lately expressed my detestation at the 
 feet of the priest ; that idolizing of riches, which leads me to grasp 
 at even iniquitous profits ; that madness of gaming, by which my 
 health, my affairs, and my salvation are injured; that vexatious 
 and variable temper, which the slightest contradiction inflames ; 
 that vanity which leads me to soar above the rank in which my 
 ancestors had left me ; that envy which, with malignant eyes, has 
 always viewed the reputation and the prosperity of my equals ; that 
 proud and censorious air, which judges upon all, and never judges 
 itself; that supreme influence over me of effeminacy and voluptu- 
 ousness, which are, as it were, interwoven with the foundation and 
 principle of my being ? Has the avowal, which I come from mak- 
 ing, of my weaknesses, to the minister of Jesus Christ, rooted 
 them out from my heart ? Am I a new creature ? He alone who 
 is regenerated can aspire to this heavenly bread which I am going 
 to eat : in thine eyes am I so, O my God ? Do I not bear the 
 name of living, though still, in effect, dead ? Will the Mighty, 
 entering into my soul, possess it in peace, and will he not find 
 there seven unclean spirits who shall chase him from it? Instruct 
 me, Lord, and suffer not that thy Christ, that thy Holy, descend 
 
538 on the dispositions Ser. 32. 
 
 into corruption. Such, my brethren, is the way to examine 
 ourselves. The Lord had formerly forbidden the Jews to offer up 
 honey and leaven in the sacrifices : see if, in approaching the altar, 
 you bring not with you the leaven of your crimes, and the honey 
 of voluptuousness : that is to say, both that relish for the world 
 and for pleasure, and that effeminate and sensual character, enemy 
 of the cross, and incompatible with salvation. Approach not, if 
 you do not feel yourself sufficiently pure : this holy body, says the 
 prophet, would not purge your iniquity, it would only increase it ; 
 your religion would be vain, your heart idolatrous, your sacrifice a 
 sacrilege. 
 
 Examine, therefore, yourself, and afterward eat of the heavenly 
 bread. But we are not to stop at the simply discerning and exa- 
 mining. Hitherto, you have only removed the obstacles ; but you 
 have not settled the last preparations : you have lopped off what- 
 ever might repel Jesus Christ from your soul ; but you have not 
 acquired what might attract him to it : you have arranged so as not 
 to receive him unworthily ; but you have not so as to receive him 
 with fruit. It is not sufficient to be free from guilt ; it is necessary 
 to be clothed with righteousness and sanctity : it is little not to 
 betray him like Judas ; it is necessary to love him with the other 
 disciples : it is little, in a word, to be no longer profane, worldly, 
 voluptuous, effeminate, proud, and revengeful ; it is necessary to be 
 sedate, meek, humble, firm, chaste, believing, Christian. " As oft 
 as ye do this, do it in remembrance of me :" this is the third dispo- 
 sition to communicate in remembrance of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Reflection III. What is it to communicate in remembrance 
 of Jesus Christ? It is, in the first place, internally to describe all 
 that passed in the heart of Jesus Christ in instituting this adorable 
 sacrament. " With desire/ 5 said he to his disciples, " I have de- 
 sired to eat this passover with you before I suffer/ 5 He sighed 
 for that blessed moment ; he never lost sight of it ; in the remem- 
 brance of it he was comforted for all the bitterness of his passion. 
 What did he thereby mean to teach us ? Ah ! that we ought to 
 bring to this divine table a heart inflamed, penetrated, consumed ; 
 an eager, earnest, and impatient heart; a hunger and a thirst after 
 Jesus Christ ; an inclination roused by love : in a word, what I 
 have termed a burning desire which impels us to love. This 
 bread, said a father, requires a famished heart. Ah ! Lord, says 
 then the believing soul, with St. Augustine, who will give me that 
 thou mayest enter into my heart to take possession of it ; wholly 
 to fill it ; to reign there alone ; to dwell there with me even to the 
 consummation of ages ; to be mine all ; there to constitute my 
 purest delights ; to shed through it a thousand inward consola- 
 tions ; to satiate, to gladden it, to make me forget my miseries, 
 mine anxieties, my vain pleasures, all mankind, the whole universe, 
 and to leave me wholly to thee, to enjoy thy presence, thy con- 
 versation, and all the delights which thou preparest for those who 
 love thee ? Perhaps, Lord the tenement of my soul is not yet 
 
Ser. 32. for the communion. 539 
 
 sufficiently embellished to receive thee ; but come and be thyself 
 all its ornament. Perhaps thou perceivest stains which repel thee 
 from it ; but thy divine touch will purify them all. Perhaps thou 
 discoverest invincible enemies still there ; but art not thou the 
 Mighty ? Thy sole presence will disperse them, and peace alone 
 will reign there when once thou shalt be in possession of it. Per- 
 haps it has wrinkles which render it forbidding; but thou wilt re- 
 new its youth like that of the eagle. Perhaps it is still stained with 
 the blemishes of its former infidelities ; but thy blood will wash 
 them entirely out. Come, Lord, and tarry not ; every blessing 
 will attend me with thee: despised, persecuted, afflicted, despoiled, 
 calumniated, I will consider as nothing my sorrows from the mo- 
 ment that thou shalt come to alleviate them : honoured, favoured, 
 exalted, surrounded with abundance, these vain prosperities will 
 cease to interest me, will appear as nothing from the moment thou 
 shalt have made me to taste how sweet thou art. Such are the 
 desires which ought to lead us to the altar. 
 
 But, alas ! many bring there only a criminal disgust and repug- 
 nance : occasions are required to induce them to determine upon 
 it ; of themselves they would never have thought of it. But, what 
 do I say, occasions ? Thunders and anathemas are required. Good 
 God ! that the church should be reduced, through the lukewarm- 
 ness of Christians, to make a law to them of participating in thy 
 body and in thy blood ! That penalties and threatenings should be 
 required to lead them to thy altar, and to oblige them to seat 
 themselves at thy table ! That the Christian's only felicity on 
 earth should be a painful precept to him ! That the most glorious 
 privilege with which men can be favoured by thee should be an 
 irksome restraint to them ! Others approach it with a heavy heart, 
 a palled appetite, a soul wholly of ice : people who live in the com- 
 merce of pleasures and of the sacrament ; who participate at the 
 table of Satan and at that of Jesus Christ ; who have stated days 
 for the Lord, and days allotted for the age; people to whom a com- 
 munion costs only a day of restraint and reservation ; who, on 
 that day, neither gamble, show themselves, see company, nor speak 
 evil. But this exertion goes no farther ; all devotion ceases with 
 the solemnity ; it is a deed of ceremony ; after this short suspen- 
 sion they are at ease with themselves ; they tranquilly return to 
 their former ways, for that was a point agreed upon with themselves; 
 they smoothly continue to live in this mixture of holy and of pro- 
 fane ; the sacrament calms us upon pleasures ; pleasures to be more 
 tranquil on the side of the conscience lead us to the sacrament ; and 
 they are almost good in order to be worldly without scruple. Thus 
 they bring to the altar a taste cloyed with the amusements and the 
 delights of the age, with the embarrassments of affairs, with the 
 tumult of the passions : they feel not the ineffable sweets of this 
 heavenly food; they retrace, even at the foot of the throne of grace 
 the images of those pleasures they have so lately left : interests 
 which occupy us, projects which puzzle us, ideas which force us from 
 the altar to drag us back to the world, make much deeper impres- 
 
540 on the dispositions Ser. 32. 
 
 sions upon the heart than the presence of Jesus Christ. But is it 
 not, Lord, against those monsters of Christians that thy prophet, 
 incensed, formerly said to thee, " Ah ! Lord, let thy table become a 
 snare before them ; and that which should have been for their wel- 
 fare, let it become a trap ?"' 
 
 In the second place, to communicate in remembrance of Jesus 
 Christ, is to wish to awaken, through the presence of this sacred 
 pledge, every impression which his memory can make upon a heart 
 which loves him. The firmest bonds are loosened by absence : 
 Jesus Christ well foresaw, that, ascending up to heaven, his disci- 
 ples would insensibly forget his kindnesses and his divine instruc- 
 tions. Alas ! Moses remains only forty days upon the mountain, 
 and already the Israelites cease to remember the miracles that he 
 had wrought to deliver them from Egypt. We wot not, said they 
 among themselves, what is become of this Moses, the man that 
 brought us out of the land of Egypt ; let us make gods who shall 
 go before and defend us against our enemies. Jesus Christ, to 
 guard against these inconstancies of the human heart, wished, in 
 ascending to the heavenly Sion, to leave us a pledge of his pre- 
 sence : it is there that he wishes we should come to console our- 
 selves for his sensible absence ; it is there that we ought to find a 
 more lively remembrance of his wonders, of his doctrine, of his 
 kindnesses, of his divine person; it is there that, under mysterious 
 signs, we come to see him born at Bethlehem, brought up at Na- 
 zareth, holding discourses with men, and traversing the cities of 
 Judea, working signs and miracles which no one before him had 
 ever done, calling as followers rude disciples, in order to make 
 them masters of the world, confounding the hypocrisy of the Pha- 
 risees, announcing salvation to men, leaving marks every where of 
 his power and goodness, entering in triumph into Jerusalem, led 
 to Mount Calvary, expiring upon a cross, conqueror of death and 
 of hell, leading with him into heaven those who were captives, as 
 the trophies of his victory, and forming afterwards his church with 
 the overflowing of his Spirit and the abundance of his gifts ; in a 
 word, we shall there find him in all his mysteries. 
 
 You envy, said St. Chrysostom, the lot of a woman who touches 
 his garments, of a single one who bathes his feet with her tears, of 
 the woman of Galilee who had the happiness to follow and to serve 
 him in the course of his ministry, of his disciples with whom he fa- 
 miliarly conversed, of the people of those times who listened to the 
 words of grace and of salvation which proceeded from his mouth ; 
 you call blessed those who saw him ; many prophets and kings 
 have vainly wished it ; but you, my brethren, come to the altars, 
 and you shall see him ; you shall touch him, you shall give him 
 a holy kiss, you shall bathe him with your tears, and your bowels 
 shall bear him even like those of Mary. Alas ! our fathers went 
 into the holy land to worship the traces of his feet, and the places 
 that he had consecrated with his presence. Here, they were told, 
 he proposed the parable of the good shepherd and the lost sheep ; 
 here he reconciled an adulteress ; here he comforted a sinful wo- 
 
Ser. 32. for the communion. 541 
 
 man ; here lie sanctified the marriage and the feast with his pre- 
 sence ; here he multiplied the loaves to fill a famished multitude ; 
 here he checked his disciples who wanted to bring fire from heaven 
 upon a criminal city; here he deigned to hold converse with a wo- 
 man of Samaria; here he suffered the children around him, and 
 rebuked those who wanted to drive them away; here he restored 
 sight to the blind, made the lame to walk, delivered those pos- 
 sessed of devils, made the dumb to speak, and the deaf to hear. 
 At these words our fathers felt themselves transported with a holy 
 joy; they shed tears of tenderness and of religion upon that blessed 
 land ; this sight, these images, carried them back to the times, 
 to the actions, to the mysteries of Jesus Christ, inspired them 
 with fresh ardour, and consoled their faith ; sinners found there 
 a sweet trust, the weak a new force, and the righteous new 
 desires. 
 
 Ah, Christians ! it is not necessary that you cross the seas ; sal- 
 vation is at your hand ; the word which we preach to you will be, 
 if you wish it, upon your mouth and in your heart ; open the eyes 
 of faith, behold these altars ; they are not places consecrated for- 
 merly with the presence, it is Jesus Christ himself : approach in 
 remembrance of him ; come to rekindle all that your heart hath 
 ever felt of tender, affecting, and lively, for this divine Saviour. Let 
 the remembrance of his meekness, which would not permit him to 
 break the reed already bruised, nor to extinguish the yet glimmer- 
 ing lamp, quiet your transports and impatiencies : let the remem- 
 brance of his toils and of his troublesome life overwhelm you for 
 your effeminacy ; let the remembrance of his modesty and of his 
 humility, which made him fly when they wanted to make him king, 
 cure you of your vanities, of your schemes, of your frivolous pre- 
 tensions : let the remembrance of his fast for forty days reproach 
 you for your sensualities : let the remembrance of his zeal against 
 the profaners of the temple teach you with what respect, and with 
 what holy dread, you ought to enter there : let the remembrance 
 of the simplicity and frugality of his manners condemn the vain 
 superfluities and the excesses of yours : let the remembrance of his 
 retirement and of his prayers warn you to fly the world, to retire 
 sometimes into the secrecy of your house, to pass, at least, some 
 portion of the day, in the indispensable practice of prayer ; let the 
 remembrance of his tender compassion for a famished people give 
 you bowels of compassion for the unfortunate : let the remem- 
 brance of his holy discourses teach you to converse innocently, 
 holily, and profitably with men : in a word, let the remembrance 
 of all his virtues, there more lively, more present to the heart and 
 to the mind, correct you of all your weaknesses. This is what is 
 called to communicate in remembrance of him. 
 
 But, to bring continually to the altar the same weaknesses ; to 
 familiarize ourselves in such a manner with the body of Jesus Christ, 
 that it no longer awakens in us a new sentiment, but leaves us al- 
 ways such as we are; to nourish ourselves with a divine food, yet 
 not to increase ; frequently to approach this burning furnace with- 
 
542 on the dispositions Ser. 32. 
 
 out any additional heat to your lukewarmness ; to appear there 
 with faults a hundred times detested, yet still dear, with habits of 
 imperfection, which, though light in themselves, are no longer so, 
 however, through the attachment and the bent which render them 
 inevitable to us, and through the circumstance of the sacrament 
 which there is the risk of profaning ; to make profession of piety, 
 of estrangement from the world, to be almost every day in the 
 commerce of holy things, and to have determined, as it were, upon 
 a limited point of virtue, beyond which never to rise, and, after ten 
 years' exercise of piety, to be no farther advanced than at first ; on 
 the contrary, to have rather relaxed from the first fervour ; to be 
 continually applying to this divine remedy, yet to feel no altera- 
 tion for the better in the disease ; to heap sacrament upon sacra- 
 ment, if I may dare to say so, yet never to empty the heart in 
 order to make room for this heavenly food ; to nourish envies, ani- 
 mosities, secret attachments, a fund of sensuality, of vain desires to 
 please, to be courted, to be prosperous ; to permit, in conversation, 
 the habit of witticisms and every freedom of speech upon others, 
 of endless nothings, of sentiments wholly profane, of quibbles 
 which wound sincerity, of concealments by which falsehood be- 
 comes familiar, of hastiness and bursts of passion ; to be jealous to 
 an extreme wherever self is concerned ; to rise indignant at the 
 smallest appearance of neglect, and to be incapable of digesting a 
 single disobliging gesture ; and yet, with all this, to feed upon the 
 bread of angels : O my God ! how much less than this ought to 
 make us tremble! 
 
 But, is it to eat of this bread unworthily, to eat it with so many 
 imperfections and weaknesses? Who knows this, O Lord, but 
 thee? All we know is, that it is not communicating in remem- 
 brance of thee; that many righteous shall appear in thy sight, at 
 the great day, as a soiled cloth; that many, who had even prophe- 
 sied in thy name, shall be rejected; and that every thing is to be 
 dreaded in this state. Peter is not admitted to thy supper till 
 after thou hast washed his feet ; nevertheless thou assurest us that 
 he was altogether pure. Magdalene is sent away, and thou sayest 
 to her, "Woman, touch me not/' because a too sensible affection 
 was the cause of her eagerness ; and, nevertheless, her love had 
 been great, and she had washed thy sacred feet and her own sins 
 with her tears. And we, Lord, full of wants, empty of sincere 
 fruits of penitence, made up wholly of effeminacy and sensualities, 
 lukewarm, and without desire, fixed in a certain state of languish- 
 ing and imperfect piety, more sustained by habitude and the en- 
 gagements of a holy profession than by thy grace or by a lively 
 and solid faith, alas ! we make thy body our ordinary food. What 
 inexplicable gulfs, Lord! What a train of crimes, perhaps, not 
 known, unrepented of, multiplied to infinity, and which are as the 
 shoot upon which a thousand new profanations are afterward 
 grafted ! What gulfs, once more ! And what terrible secrets shall 
 thy light make manifest to us at the great day ! In thy sight, 
 O my God, what am I ! I can neither offend nor please thee by 
 
Ser. 32. for the communion. 543 
 
 halves; my condition admits not of those middle states of virtue 
 which hold, as it were a mid-way between innocence and guilt ; if 
 not a saint, I am a monster ; if not a vessel of honour, I am a ves- 
 sel of shame; if not an angel of light, there is no room to hesitate, 
 I am an angel of darkness; and, if not a living temple of thy Spirit, 
 I must be its profaner. Good God ! what powerful motives for 
 vigilance, for self-examination, for circumspection, for approaching 
 thine altars with trembling; for humility, tears, and compunction, 
 while waiting the manifestation of thine adorable judgments! But 
 still, my brethren, it is not enough to communicate in remembrance 
 of Jesus Christ; and in order to retrace his life, it is likewise ne- 
 cessary, and this is the last disposition, to renew the remembrance 
 of his death, and to show him whenever we eat of his body and 
 drink of his blood; and this is what I call a noble faith which leads 
 us to sacrifice. 
 
 Reflection IV. As oft as you shall eat of the body and drink 
 of the blood of the Lord, you will show his death until the king- 
 dom of God shall come. How is this ? Literally speaking, his death 
 is shown, because this mystery was a prelude to his passion; be- 
 cause Judas there determined to betray him ; because Jesus Christ, 
 eager to undergo that baptism of blood with which he was to be 
 baptized, anticipated its fulfilment, and sacrificed himself before- 
 hand by the mystical separation of his body and of his blood; be- 
 cause the eucharist is the permanent sacrifice of the church, the 
 fruit and the fulness of that of the cross: lastly, because Jesus 
 Christ is there as in a state of death; he hath a mouth, and speaks 
 not; eyes, and uses them not; feet, and walks not. But, my 
 brethren, in that sense the impious, equal with the just man, 
 shows the death of the Lord as oft as he eats of his body: it is a 
 mystery and not a merit ; it is the nature of the sacrament, and 
 not the privilege of him who receives it : it is a consequence of its 
 institution, and not a disposition for approaching it. Now, the 
 design of the apostle here is to prevent the abuses, to instruct be- 
 lievers how to eat worthily of the body of the Lord, to explain to 
 them, in the mysteries contained in this sacrament, the dispositions 
 which it requires. There is a way, therefore, of showing the death 
 of the Lord, which should be wholly in our hearts, which disposes 
 and prepares us, which fits the situation of our soul to the nature 
 of this mystery, which makes us to bear upon our body the morti- 
 fication of Jesus Christ, which immolates and crucifies us with him. 
 Let us resume the reasons we have touched upon, and change the 
 letter into spirit. 
 
 First. The death of the Lord is shown, because this mystery was 
 a prelude to his passion. In former times the eucharist was a pre- 
 lude to martyrdom. From the moment that the rage of the tyrant 
 was declared, and the persecution began, all the believers ran to 
 provide themselves with this bread of life; they carried this pre- 
 cious trust into their houses: death seemed less terrible to them 
 when they had before their eye the beloved pledge of their immor- 
 
544 ox the dispositions Ser. 32. 
 
 tality; they even desired it; and the ineffable consolations which 
 the presence of Jesus Christ, hidden under mystical veils, already 
 shed through their soul, made them to long for that torrent of de- 
 light with which he will overflow his chosen when they shall be- 
 hold him face to face. Were they dragged to prison, and, like 
 felons, loaded with irons, they of whom the world was unworthy? 
 they carefully concealed the divine eucharist in their bosom ; 
 they feasted upon it in the hope of martyrdom; they grew fat upon 
 this heavenly food, like pure victims, that their sacrifice might be 
 more pleasing to the Lord. Chaste virgins, fervent believers, holy 
 ministers, partook altogether of the blessed bread; and what de- 
 light even in their chains! What serenity of mind in these dark 
 and gloomy abodes ! What songs of thanksgivings in these horrible 
 places where the eye encountered nothing but the sad images of 
 death and preparations for the most cruel tortures. How often did 
 they say to Jesus Christ, present with them in this adorable sacra- 
 ment, Ah ! we fear no ill, Lord, since thou art with us : though 
 hosts surround us, yet we will not be afraid: our enemies may de- 
 stroy our bodies, but thou wilt restore them to us glorious and im- 
 mortal; for who can destroy those whom the Father hath bestowed 
 upon thee? Blessed chains which thou deignest to sustain ! Holy 
 prisons which thou consecratest with thy presence ! Beloved dun- 
 geons in which thou fillest our souls with so many lights ! Precious 
 death which is to unite us with thee, and to withdraw the veil 
 which conceals thee from our sight ! Thence what fortitude under 
 their tortures ! Filled with the body of Jesus Christ, washed in 
 his blood, they quitted their prisons, says a holy father, like lions 
 out of their den, still raging and thirsting for death and carnage : 
 they flew upon the scaffolds, and, with a holy pride, launched 
 here and there looks of confidence and magnanimity which appal- 
 led the most ferocious tyrants, and even disarmed their execution- 
 ers: they showed then the death of the Lord in preparing them- 
 selves for martyrdom by the communion. 
 
 The tranquillity of our ages and the religion of the Caesars, leave 
 us no longer the same hope ; death is no longer the reward of 
 faith, and the eucharist makes no more martyrs : but have we not 
 domestic persecutors ? Has our faith only tyrants to dread ? And 
 is there not a martyrdom of love as well as of blood ? In ap- 
 proaching the altars, then, my brethern, a believing soul sighs for 
 the dissolution of this mortal body ; for, could he love this life, 
 and show the death of Jesus Christ, and renew, in these mystical 
 signs, his quitting the world to go to his Father ? He complains 
 of the length of his exilement ; he bears, to the foot of the 
 sanctuary, a spirit of death and of martyrdom, " Ah ! Lord, since 
 thou art dead and crucified to the world, why detain me here ? 
 What can I find upon the earth worthy of my heart, seeing thou 
 art no longer there ? The mystery itself, which should console me 
 through thy presence, recalls to me thy death ; these covers which 
 veil thee are an artifice of thy love ; and thou half concealest thyself, 
 only to inspire my heart with the desire of fully beholding thee. 
 
Ser. 32. for the communion. 545 
 
 Vain things, what offer ye to me but an empty shadow of the God 
 whom I seek ! What answer do ye make when my softened heart 
 bends toward you to soothe its anxieties ? Return, say you, to him 
 who hath made us ; we groan in awaiting his coming to deliver us 
 from this servitude, which makes us subservient to the passions 
 and to the errors of men : seek him not among us ; thou wilt not 
 find him ; he is risen ; he is no longer here : if he appear, it is only 
 to die again : recall the desires and the affections which thou meant 
 to place upon us, and turn them toward heaven ; the Bridegroom 
 hath been carried away, the earth is no longer for a Christian now 
 but a vale of mourning and tears. Such is what they answer to me. 
 What, then, detains me here, Lord ? What are the ties and the 
 charms which can attach me to the world ? Restless in pleasures, 
 impatient in absence, tired of the conversations and the commerce 
 of men ; afraid of solitude ; without relish for the world, without 
 relish for virtue ; doing the evil I would not, and leaving undone 
 the good that I would, what keeps me here ? What delays the 
 dissolution of this body of sin ? What prevents me from soaring 
 with the wings of the dove upon the holy mountain ? I feel that I 
 should then be happy ; I could then feast at all times upon this 
 delicious bread. I taste no real delight but at the feet of thy altars : 
 these are, indeed, the happiest moments of my life : but they are 
 so short, and I must so soon return to the insipidities and disgusts 
 of the world ; I am under the necessity of being so long absent 
 from thee : no, Lord, there is no perfect happiness on the earth, 
 and death is a gain to whoever knows to love thee. 
 
 Are these our sentiments, my brethren, when we draw near to 
 the altars? Where are now the Christians, who, like the first 
 believers, await the blessed hope, and hasten, by their sighs, the 
 end of their banishment, and the coming of Jesus Christ ? This is 
 a refinement of piety of which they have no idea : it is merely a 
 language of the speculatist: it is, however, the groundwork of 
 religion, and the first step of faith. The necessity of dying is 
 considered as a cruel punishment ; the sole idea of death, with 
 which our fathers were so comforted, makes us to shudder : the 
 end of life is the term of our pleasures, in place of being that of our 
 sufferings ; the attention paid to the body are endless ; our pre- 
 cautions extend even to absurdity ; or, if it sometimes happen that 
 this last moment is desired, it is in consequence of being wearied 
 of life and its chagrins : it is a disgrace, a habitual infirmity prey- 
 ing upon us, a revolution in our worldly matters which leaves no 
 more pleasures to be expected here below, the disappointment of 
 an establishment, a death, an accident, or lastly, a disgust and a 
 wish of self-love ; we tire of being unfortunate, but we are not 
 eager to go to be reunited with Jesus Christ ; and, with all this, 
 they come to eat of the Lord's Supper, to renew the remembrance 
 of his passion and to show his death until he shall come : what an 
 outrage ! 
 
 Secondly. His death is shown in this mystery, because Judas 
 there finally determined upon delivering him up. Now, what does 
 
 N N 
 
546 on the dispositions Ser. 32. 
 
 this remembrance exact of us ? Ah ! my brethren, an ardent de- 
 sire of repairing, by our homages, the impiety of so many shocking 
 communions which crucify Jesus Christ afresh. So many impure, 
 revengeful, worldly, and extortioning sinners, of every people and 
 of every nation, receive him into profane mouths : we ought to feel 
 the insults which Jesus Christ thereby suffers ; to humble our- 
 selves before him, seeing that his most signal blessing is become 
 the occasion of the greatest crimes ; to tremble for ourselves ; to ad- 
 mire his goodness, which, for the profit of a small number of 
 chosen, hath graciously been willing to submit to the indignities 
 of that endless number of sinners, of all ages and of all times, who 
 have, and still continue to dishonour him; to avert, by the tears of 
 our heart and a thousand inward lamentations, the scourges which 
 unworthy communions never fail to draw down upon the earth. 
 For, if the apostle formerly lamented that general plagues, epi- 
 demical diseases, and sudden deaths, were only a consequence of the 
 profanation of the sacrament ; ah ! thy finger has long been upon 
 us, Lord ; the cup of thy wrath is poured out upon our cities and 
 provinces : thou armest kings against kings, and nations against 
 nations; nothing is now spoken of but battles and the rumours of 
 war; our fields are stricken with sterility; our families are con- 
 sumed by the sword of the enemy, and the father is deprived of the 
 only prop and consolation of his old age : we groan under burdens, 
 which, though keeping the enemy of the state from our walls, yet 
 leave us a prey to famine and want ; the arts are now almost of no 
 avail to the people ; commerce languishes, and industry can hardly 
 supply the common necessaries of life; yet what are even the 
 public calamities, when compared with the private miseries known 
 to thee alone ? We have seen our citizens mowed down by 
 hunger and death, and our cities turned into frightful deserts ; the 
 enemy of thy name takes advantage of our dissensions, and usurps 
 thine inheritance. 
 
 Whence proceed these scourges, great God ! so continued and 
 so terrible ? Where are formed those clouds of wrath and indig- 
 nation which have so long been pouring out their torrents upon 
 us? Is it not to punish the sacrilegious that thou art armed? 
 Do not the outrages which are every day committed against thy 
 body, at the feet of the altars, draw down upon us these marks 
 of thy wrath? O strike us then, Lord, and avenge thy glory; 
 stop not the arm of thy angel who hovers over us ; let the houses 
 where the traces of a profane blood are still imprinted not be spared : 
 thine anger is just. But no ; give us not the water of gall because we 
 have sinned against thee: give peace in our days ; listen to the cries 
 of the righteous who entreat it of thee: "Lord," say they with the 
 prophet, " we looked for peace, but no good came ; and for a time of 
 health, and behold trouble." Terminate the profanations which are 
 ever the attendants of war ; cease to punish sacrileges by multiply- 
 ing them on the earth ; once more restore majesty to so many 
 temples profaned, worship and dignity to so many churches de- 
 spoiled, peace to our cities, abundance to our families, consolation 
 
Ser. 32. for the communion. 547 
 
 and gladness of heart to Israel; let the child be restored to his 
 father and the husband to the desolate wife ; and, if our evils touch 
 thee not, O pay attention to the miseries of thy church. 
 
 Thirdly. The death of the Lord is shown in this mystery, for 
 Jesus Christ sacrifices himself in it, by the mystical separation of 
 his body and of his blood. What follows from thence ? That we 
 must be at the foot of the altar as if we were at the foot of the cross : 
 that we must enter into the dispositions of the disciples and of the 
 women of Jerusalem who received the dying sigh of Jesus, and 
 were present at the consummation of his sacrifice. Now, what ha- 
 tred had they not against a world which had crucified their Master? 
 What measures did they think it necessary to keep with his mur- 
 derers ? Were they afraid of declaring themselves the disciples of 
 him who had so openly declared himself their Saviour, and that at 
 the price of his blood ? Did they not say to the heavenly Father, 
 Ah ! strike us, Lord, who are the guilty, and spare the innocent. 
 What horror at their past faults, which had attached so good a 
 Master to the cross ! What a lively impression in their heart of 
 his sufferings ! Thus, my brethren, still to keep measures with the 
 age, to be afraid of declaring openly for piety, to be ashamed of 
 the cross of Jesus Christ, to calculate your works of devotion in 
 such a way that an air and a savour of the world may still pervade 
 the whole : not boldly to confess Jesus Christ ; to be afraid of ab- 
 staining from a theatre where he is insulted, from an assembly 
 where he is offended, from a proceeding by which innocence must 
 suffer, from I know not what train of life which the world makes 
 a necessity to you, from certain maxims which wound the Gospel, 
 and which custom has established as laws ; to pretend to keep up 
 all those conciliatory measures with the world, and yet to come to 
 eat the passover with the disciples of Jesus Christ ; to preserve a 
 correspondence with his enemies, and yet to seat yourselves at his 
 table ; to esteem the maxims which crucify him, and yet to wish to 
 be the spectators and the faithful companions of his cross; ah! it 
 is a contradiction. 
 
 He hath overcome the world ; he hath fixed it to his cross : 
 along with himself he hath given death to its maxims and errors : 
 consequently, to show his death in the communion is to renew the 
 memory of his victory. And, if the world lives and still reigns in 
 your heart, my brother, do you not annihilate the fruit of his death ? 
 Do you not contest with Jesus Christ the honour of his triumph ? 
 And, in place of showing his death, do you not come to renew it 
 with his enemies. 
 
 Besides, in the fourth place, his death is shown in this mystery, 
 for it is the consummation of the sacrifice of the cross, and he ap- 
 plies the fruit of it to us. Now, what gives us a right to the fruit 
 of the cross, and, consequently, to the communion ? Sufferance, 
 mortification, and a penitent and inward life. For, say, living in 
 delights, shall you dare to nourish a body, like yours, enervated by 
 pleasures, flattered, caressed ; shall you dare, I say, to nourish it 
 with a crucified body? Shall you dare to incorporate Jesus 
 
548 on the dispositions Ser. 32. 
 
 Christ, dying and crowned with thorns, with delicate and sensual 
 members ? Would this connexion not be horrible ? Will you 
 dare, by converting his body into your own substance, to transform 
 it into an effeminate and voluptuous body ? Ah ! it would be the 
 perfection of iniquity. To be nourished with the body of Jesus 
 Christ, your members must become his members, his body must 
 take the figure of your body. Now, his body is a crucified body ; 
 his members are suffering members ; and, if you live without suf- 
 fering ; if you bear not upon your body the mortification of Jesus 
 Christ ; if, perhaps, you have never practised a single instance of self- 
 denial; if your days are passed in a tranquil effeminacy ; if afflictions 
 excite impatience ; if you feel hurt at every thing which opposes 
 your humour; if you prescribe to yourself no works of mortification ; 
 if those sent to you by heaven are unwillingly and unthankfully 
 received ; how will you that you unite your body to that of Jesus 
 Christ ? This is never reflected upon, my brethren, and neverthe- 
 less, a soft and sensual life can be a presage only of an unworthy 
 communion. 
 
 Lastly. The death of the Lord is shown in this mystery, for he 
 is there himself as in a state of death. He hath a mouth and 
 speaketh not ; eyes, and useth them not; feet, and walketh not. 
 View then, my brother, and act according to this model; behold 
 how you ought to show his death in partaking of his body: you 
 must bring there eyes instructed to be closed for the earth; a 
 tongue accustomed to silence, or to sayings of God, as St. Paul 
 says ; feet and hands immoveable for the works of sin ; senses 
 either extinguished or mortified : in a word, to bring there a uni- 
 versal death over your body. The state of Jesus Christ in the 
 eucharist is the state of the Christian on earth ; a state of retreat, 
 of silence, of patience, of humiliation, of divorce from the senses. 
 For, what is Jesus Christ in the eucharist ? He is in the world 
 as if not there : he is in the midst of men, but invisible ; he hears 
 their vain discourses, their chimerical plans, their frivolous expec- 
 tations, but he enters not into them ; he sees their solicitudes, their 
 agitations, and their enterprises, and he allows them to act ; divine 
 honours are paid to him, and he is insulted ; and, ever the same, 
 he seems insensible alike to the insults as to the homages : he 
 looks on while families, empires, and ages are renewed ; manners 
 are changed ; the taste of men and of ages are incessantly fluctu- 
 ating; he sees customs sink into decay and then revive; the figure 
 of this world in an eternal revolution ; his inheritance divided ; 
 wars, seditions, and unexpected revolutions ; the whole universe 
 shaken ; and he is tranquil upon its ruins ; and nothing withdraws 
 him from his close and ineffable study of his Father ; and nothing 
 interrupts the divine quiet of his sanctuary, where he is always 
 living for the purpose of interceding for us. Once more, consider 
 and act according to this model : let us bring to the sacred table 
 eyes long since closed upon every thing which may hurt our soul ; 
 a tongue surrounded with a guard of circumspection and of mo- 
 desty; eats chaste and impenetrable to the hissings of the serpent, 
 
Ser. 32. for the communion. 549 
 
 and to the luxury of those sounds and voices so calculated to 
 soften the heart ; a soul alike insensible to scorn or to praise ; a 
 soul beyond the reach of the things of this earth, and proof against 
 all the revolutions of life ; the same in good or in bad fortune ; 
 viewing, with indifferent eyes, every occurrence here below, esteem- 
 ing the good or the evil which occur to him as a matter that does 
 not regard him ; and, through all the agitations of the earth, the 
 tumult of the senses, the contradiction of tongues, the vain enter- 
 prises of men, always watchful to guard over his peace of heart, 
 to move continually with a steady pace toward eternity, never 
 to lose sight of his God, and to have his conversations always 
 in heaven. 
 
 Not that I would exclude from the altar all those who have not 
 yet attained to this state of death : alas ! it is the business of a 
 whole life ; and the body of Jesus Christ is an aid established to 
 fortify and to assist us in this undertaking. But our inclina- 
 tion ought to bend to it, lest we approach the altar unworthi- 
 ly ; we must be at open war with the senses, with our own corrup- 
 tion, with our own weaknesses, and be continually gaining the 
 advantage in some article ; Christian self-denial must be prac- 
 tised; the daily victories, which the impressions of the world 
 and of the senses gain over us must be expiated by retirement, 
 by silence, by tears, and by prayer; we must rise with fresh 
 vigour from every backsliding. But I mean you to understand 
 that a communion is not the concern of a day, or of a solemnity ; 
 that our whole life ought to be a preparation for the eucharist; 
 that all our actions should be as steps which lead us up to the 
 altar ; that the life of too many in the world, even of those who are 
 not in debauchery, who restrict themselves upon nothing, who live 
 according to the senses, who are warm only on the interests of the 
 earth, is a life which shows not the death of the Lord, and which, 
 consequently, excludes you from this mystery. I mean you to 
 comprehend, that the eucharist is a festival, if I dare to say so, of 
 mourning and death ; that delights, pleasures, and vain decora- 
 tions disfigure this sacred table, and occasion your being rejected 
 equally as him who appears there without the wedding garment; 
 that the meats of the earth and the bread of heaven cannot be eaten 
 at the same time ; and that, on the morrow after the Israelites had 
 eaten of the old corn of the Land of Canaan, the manna ceased, 
 neither had they any more of that heavenly food. I mean you to 
 comprehend, that this sacrament is the fruit and not the mark of 
 penitence ; that those communions, determined by a solemnity, 
 gave rise to more profaners than true worshippers ; that the body 
 of Jesus Christ cannot be eaten without living by his spirit; 
 that the plenitude of the Holy Spirit must even rest upon a 
 soul, as upon Mary, before Jesus Christ can enter into it, as it 
 were, to assume once more the human nature. I mean you to com- 
 prehend, that the reading of the holy books, and the salutary ri- 
 gours of penitence, should prepare an abode in our hearts for Jesus 
 Christ, to the end that we might be like holy arks, and that this 
 
550 on the dispositions Ser. 32. 
 
 heavenly manna may rest there amidst the tables of the law, and 
 the rod of Aaron. I mean you to understand, that nothing should 
 alarm you more, you who live in the dangers of the age and who 
 love them, than all the communions of which you have partaken 
 without preparation. I mean you to understand, that the bread of 
 life becomes a poison to the majority of believers ; that the altars 
 witness almost more crimes than the theatre ; that Jesus Christ is 
 more insulted in his sanctuary than in the assemblies of sinners; and 
 that the solemnities are no longer but mysteries of mourning for 
 him, and days set apart to dishonour him. I mean you, in a word to 
 understand that, in order to approach it worthily, a respectful faith 
 is required which enables us to discern ; a prudent faith, which 
 leads us to examine ourselves; a lively faith, which causes us 
 to love ; a noble faith which induces us to sacrifice ourselves : 
 without these, it is rendering one's self guilty of the body and of 
 the blood of the Lord ; it is eating and drinking their own con- 
 demnation. 
 
 Ah, Lord ! how little have I hitherto known the innocence and 
 the extreme purity which thou requirest of those who come to eat 
 of this heavenly food ! The Centurion, that man of so fervent, so 
 humble, and so enlightened a faith; that man so rich in good works, 
 who loved thy people, who raised up edifices to thy name, and ap- 
 propriated them to public prayers, and to the interpretation of thy 
 Scriptures ; that man does not think himself worthy even to re- 
 ceive thee in his house. Even the purest of virgins, when informed 
 by the angel that thou wert to descend into her womb, is terrified 
 at it; she contemplates her own nothingness; and, if the power of 
 speech still remains to her, it is to ask, How can this be ? And 
 who am I, Lord, to dare to seat myself at thy table with so little 
 precaution ; I, who come to appear empty before thee ; who have 
 nothing to offer to thee but the refuse of a heart so long engross- 
 ed by the world ; who bring to thine altars only feeble aspira- 
 tions after holiness and unsubdued attachments to the world, 
 but unavailing lights, but sentiments which evaporate in vain 
 wishes ? 
 
 Ah, Lord ! the fruits of a holy communion are so abundant, 
 so sensible ; the soul quits it so overflowed with thy blessings and 
 thy grace, that, when I had no other proof of the unworthiness of 
 my communions than their inefficacy, I ought to tremble and be 
 humbled. When thy body is eaten worthily, we abide in thee, 
 and thou abidest in us ; that is to say, that thy precious blood, 
 which still flows in our veins, leaves us thy inclinations, thy traits, 
 thy resemblance, and that we are another thee ; noble and heavenly 
 inclinatious should alone be seen in us, and sentiments worthy of 
 the blood we have received : and, nevertheless, I still find my affec- 
 tions drawn to the earth. When thy body is eaten worthily, thou 
 tellest us that we live for thee, and eternally: and I have still con- 
 tinued to cherish worldly pursuits and schemes of ambition. What 
 then must I do, Lord ? Must I retire from thy table ? What ! 
 this fruit of life should be forbidden me ? What ! the bread of 
 
Ser.32. for the communion. 551 
 
 consolation should no longer be broken for me ? No, Lord, thou 
 dost not mean to exclude me from it, but only that I be prepared 
 for it ; thou refusest me not the bread of children, but thou wouldst 
 that my unworthiness force thee not to give me a serpent in place 
 of it. Prepare, then, thyself in mine heart an abode worthy of 
 thee ; make the rough and crooked ways of it smooth, and let the 
 heights be levelled; purify my desires; correct my inclinations, 
 or rather create within me new ones. Thou alone canst be thy 
 precursor, and prepare the way for thee in souls. Fill us, then 
 Lord, with thy spirit, to the end that we may eat of thy body wor- 
 thily, and live eternally for thee. 
 Now, to God, &c. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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