seek, in the weakness of our own heart, the excuse of our peevishness and of our murmurings; another, in the excess or in the nature 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 impossible 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 salvation. These are the pretexts we have now to overthrow, by opposing 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 narrowly 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 preserve 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 commanded 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 tribulations 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
