more delicate in submitting to injury, more proud in elevation, and more attached to their own interests. This is the second injustice of the world toward the pious: not only does it maliciously interpret their intentions, which is a temerity, but it also scrutinizes their slightest imperfections, which is an inhumanity.
Part II. — It may truly be said, that the world is a more rigid and severer critic upon the pious than the gospel itself; that it exacts a greater degree of perfection from them, and that their weaknesses find less indulgence before the tribunal of men than they shall one day experience before the tribunal of God himself.
Now, I say that this attention to exaggerate the slightest errors of the pious, (second injustice into which the world falls with regard to them,) is an inhumanity, considering the weakness of man, the difficulty of virtue, and, lastly, the maxims of the world itself. I entreat your attention here, my brethren.
Inhumanity, considering the weakness of man. Yet, my brethren, it is an illusion to suppose that there are perfect virtues among men; it is not the condition of this mortal life; almost every one bears with him in piety, his faults, his humours, and his peculiar weaknesses; grace corrects, but does not overturn nature; the Spirit of God, which creates in us a new man, leaves still many remains of the old: conversion terminates our vices, but does not extinguish our passions; in a word, it forms the Christian within us, but it still leaves us men. The most righteous, consequently, still preserve many remains of the sinner: David, that model of penitence, still blended with his virtues a too great indulgence for his children, a secret pride at the number of his people and the prosperity of his reign; the mother of Zebedee's children, in spite of faith, through which she was so strongly attached to Jesus Christ, lost nothing of her anxiety for the elevation of her children, or of her concern toward procuring for them the first stations in an earthly kingdom; the apostles themselves disputed rank and precedency with each other: never shall we be divested of all these little weaknesses till we are delivered from this body of death, which is the fountain from which they spring. The most shining virtue here below, always, therefore, hath its spots and its flaws, which are not to be too narrowly examined: and the just must always in some points resemble the rest of men. All, then, that can be exacted from human weakness, is, that the virtues rise superior to the vices, the good to the evil; that the essential be regulated, and that we incessantly labour toward regulating the rest.
And surely, my brethren, overflowing with passions, as we are in the wretched condition of this life; loaded with a body of sin, which oppresses the soul; slaves to our senses and to the flesh; bearing within us an eternal opposition to the law of God; the continual prey of a thousand desires which combat against our soul; the everlasting sport of our inconstancy and the natural instability of our heart; finding nothing within us but what is repugnant to duty; eagerly pursuing whatever removes us from
