ture. The same fancy which unites the manners, is often, a moment 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 second; 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 frivolous riches, while this is the cause of ruin to your soul, and deprives 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 animosity and your rancour? In hating him, you say that you console 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 rendering 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 consoling one's self! And are you not worthy of pity, to seek a resource in your evils, which answers no purpose but that of eternising, by hatred, a transitory injury?
But let us cease this human language, and speak that of the gospel, 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 instruments 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
