intrusion, and that, all else forgotten, the mind, formed for more serious matters, feasts with avidity on chimerical adventures. It is from thence that you always come out occupied and delighted with the lascivious maxims promulgated by a criminal theatre. You dwell with transports on those parts which have made the most dangerous impressions upon the heart; you come filled with their remembrance even to the foot of the altar. These images, so fatal to innocence, can no longer be effaced; while, on quitting the word, the only portion retained by your memory is perhaps the defects of him who hath announced it to you.
My brethren, God no longer punisheth in a grievous manner the contempt of his word. He, no doubt, might still transport his Gospel amidst those barbarous nations who have never heard his name, and abandon anew his heritage; he might draw from out of their deserts ferocious and infidel nations, and deliver up to them our temples and our habitations, as he formerly delivered up those churches so celebrated, which the Tertullians, the Cyprians, the Augustines had illustrated, and where now not a trace of Christianity remains but in the insults which Jesus Christ there receives, and in the shackles with which believers are there loaded: he might do it; but he avengeth himself more secretly, and perhaps more terribly. He leaveth to you still the spectacle and all the outward ceremony of the preaching of the Gospel, but he turneth the whole fruit of it upon the simple and ignorant inhabitants of the country; the terrors of faith are no longer but for them. He no longer withdraweth his prophets from cities; but he taketh away from them, if I may venture to say so, the power and the influence of their ministry: he striketh these holy clouds with dryness and unfruitfulness: he raiseth up to you such as render truth flowery and beautiful, but who do not render it amiable; who please, but who do not convert you: he permitteth the holy terrors of his doctrine to be weakened in our mouths: he no longer draweth forth, from the treasures of his mercy, grand characters like those raised up in the ages of our forefathers, who renewed cities and kingdoms, who led the great and the people, and who changed the palaces of kings into houses of penitence: he permitteth that we, weak men, succeed to these apostolic men.
What more shall I add? We assemble here, like Paul formerly in Athens, idle and curious spectators, whose only view is that of hearing something new; while those who perform the functions of their ministry among your vassals, see with consolations at their feet, like Esdras formerly, simple Israelites, who are unable to retain their tears in hearing only the words of the law. We amuse the leisure and the idleness of princes and the great of the earth, while, in the country, holy ministers bring forth Jesus Christ, and reap an abundant harvest: in a word, we preach, and they convert. It is thus, O my God, that in secret thou exercisest severe and terrible judgments.
But, my brethren, why may not we say here to you, what Paul and Barnabas formerly said to the unbelieving Jews? " It was
