God; disgusted with every thing which brings us nearer to him; loving only what tends to our ruin; hating only what tends to our salvation; weak in good; always ripe for evil; and, in a word, finding in virtue the rock of virtue itself, is it to be wondered at, that men, surrounded, filled with so many miseries, should sometimes allow some of them to be visible; that men so corrupted, should not be always equally holy? And were you, in any measure, equitable, would you not rather find it worthy of admiration that some virtue still remained, than worthy of censure that they still preserve some vices?
Besides, God hath his reasons for still leaving to the most pious, certain sensible weaknesses which strike and offend you. In the first place, he thereby wisheth to humble them, and to render their virtue more secure by concealing it even from themselves. — Secondly, he wisheth to animate their vigilance, for he leaveth not Amorites in the land of Canaan, that is to say, passions in the heart of his servants, but, lest, freed from all their enemies, they should lull themselves in idleness and in a dangerous security. — Thirdly, he wisheth to excite in them a continual desire for the eternal land, and to render the exilement of this life more bitter, through a proper sense of those miseries from which they can never, here below, obtain a complete deliverance. Fourthly, perhaps not to discourage sinners by the sight of too perfect a virtue, which might probably induce them to cease every exertion, under the idea of never being able to attain it. Fifthly, in order to preserve to the just a continual subject of prayer and penitence, by leaving them a continual source of sin. Sixthly, to prevent those excessive honours which the world would render to virtue were it pure and sparkling, and lest it should find its recompense, in other words, its rock, in the vain applauses of men. What shall I lastly say? it perhaps is still more to lull and to blindfold the enemies of piety; by the weakness of the pious to strengthen you, who listen to me, in the foolish opinion that there is no real virtue on the earth; to authorize you in your disorders, by the supposition that they are similar to yourselves; and to render unavailing to you all the pious examples of the just. You triumph in the weaknesses of the pious; yet are there weaknesses perhaps punishments from God on you, and means employed by his justice to nourish your unjust prepossessions against virtue, and completely to harden you in guilt. God is terrible in his judgments; and the consummation of iniquity, is, in general, the sequel of iniquity itself.
But, secondly, were your censures on those weaknesses, which may still remain to the pious, not rendered barbarous and inhuman, when the natural weakness of man is considered, the difficulty alone of virtue would amply render them so.
For, candidly, my brethren, doth it appear so easy to you to live according to God, and to walk in the straight path of salvation, that you should become so implacable against the pious, from the moment that they err but for an instant? Is it so easy continually to renounce one^s self, to be ever guarded against one's own heart,
