right, noble, or sincere, — you easily suspect your brethren to be what you are; you cannot persuade yourself that there still exist simple, sincere, and generous hearts on the earth; you think that you every where see what you feel in yourself; you cannot comprehend how honour, fidelity, sincerity, and so many other virtues, always false in your own heart, should have more reality in the hearts of persons, even the most respectable for their rank and character; you resemble the courtiers of the king of the Ammonites, — having no other occupation than that of being incessantly on the watch to supplant and lay snares for each other, they had little difficulty in believing that David was not more upright in his intentions with regard to their master. You think, said they to that prince, that David means to honour the memory of your father, by sending comforters to you to condole with you on his death? They are not comforters, but spies, whom he sends to you: he is a villain, who, under the specious outside of an honourable and amicable embassy, seeks to discover the weaknesses of your kingdom, and to take measures to surprise you. Such is more especially the misfortune of courts: bred up, and living in deceit, they see only dissimulation equally in virtue as in vice; as it is a stage upon which every one acts a borrowed character, they conclude that the pious man merely acts the personage of virtue; uncommon or unprofitable sincerity seems always impossible.
A worthy heart, a heart upright, simple, and sincere, can hardly comprehend that there are impostors on the earth; he finds within himself the apology of other men, and, by what it would cost himself to be dishonest, he measures what it ought to cost others. Thus, my brethren, search into those who form these shameful and rash suspicions against the pious, and you will find that, in general, they are disorderly and corrupted characters, who seek to quiet themselves in their dissipations by the illusive supposition that their weaknesses are the weaknesses of all men; that those who are apparently the most virtuous are superior to themselves only in the art of concealment; and that, were they narrowly examined, we should find them in reality, made like other men: this idea is an iniquitous comfort to them in their debaucheries. They harden themselves in iniquity, by thus associating with themselves in it all whom the credulity of the people calls virtuous: they form and endeavour to establish in themselves a shocking idea of the human race, in order to be less shocked with what they are forced to entertain of themselves, and they try to persuade themselves that virtue no longer exists, in order that vice may appear to them more excusable; as if, O my God! the multitude of criminals could disarm thy wrath, or deprive thy justice of the right to punish guilt.
But, say you, one has seen so many hypocrites who have so long abused the world, whom it regarded as saints and the friends of God, and who, nevertheless, were only perverse and corrupted men.
I confess it with sorrow, my brethren: but, from that, what would you wish to conclude? That all the virtuous are similar to them? The conclusion is detestable; and what would become of mankind,
