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 unwarrantable 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 brethren. 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 the reputation 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 circumstances 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.
