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 troublesome 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 pleasure which nature has given us. Behold the philosophy of the voluptuary; 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-
