court, and the city; interest the public in their quarrel, and establish 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 sacraments, 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 confessing 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 animosity 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 decorating 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 infamies and my weaknesses; I to whom the most biting reproaches would still be too gentle, and would treat me with too much indulgence; 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 sacrifice which I make to thee of my resentments. Estimate not its value by the puerility and the slightness of the injuries which I
