which hurries away the rest of men, watchfulness and vigour should not sometimes fail them for an instant, and that they should not sometimes feel a momentary influence of the fatal vortex? You are their seducers; and you pretend to be displeased because they allow themselves to be seduced? No longer, therefore, reproach to them your scandals, which weaken their faith, and which they shall one day reproach to you before the tribunal of Jesus Christ; and triumph no more over their weaknesses, which are your own work, and for which they shall afterward demand vengeance against you.
I have also said, that even your maxims cannot be excused from severity and extravagance with respect to the pious. Judge from what I shall now repeat. You are continually saying that such an individual, with all his devotion, fails not, however to prosecute his own designs; that another is very attentive in paying court to his superiors; again, that a third has a piety so delicate and sensible, that the merest trifle wounds and shocks it; that such an individual pardons nothing; that the other is not sorry to be thought still agreeable and amusing; that a third has a very commodious piety, and lives a very easy and agreeable life; lastly, that another is full of caprice and fancies, and that none of her household can put up with her temper: such are your daily discourses; nor do your satires stop there, for you boldly decide from thence that a devotion, blended with so many faults, can never lead them to salvation: behold your maxims. Yet, nevertheless, when we announce to you, from this seat, that a worldly, idle, sensual, dissipated, and almost wholly profane life, such as you lead, can never be a way to salvation, you say that you cannot see any harm in it; you accuse us of severity, and of exaggerating the rule and duties of your station; you do not believe that more is required for salvation. But my brethren, to which side here do severity and injustice belong? You condemn the pious, because to their piety they add some particulars which resemble you; because they mingle some of your faults with an infinity of virtues and good works, which amply repair the errors: and you believe yourselves in the path of salvation, you who have only their faults, without even the piety which purifies them? O man! who then art thou that thus pretendest to save those whom the Lord condemneth, and to condemn those whom he justifieth?
Nor is this all; and you shall immediately see how little, on this point, you are consonant with yourselves. In effect, when the pious live in total retirement; when no longer keeping any measures with the world, they conceal themselves from the eyes of the public; when they resign certain places of emolument and distinction, and divest themselves of all their employments and dignities, for the sole purpose of attending to their salvation; when they lead a life of tears, prayer, mortification, and silence, (and happily our age hath furnished such examples,) what have you then said? That they carried matters too far; that violent counsels had been given them; that their zeal was not according to knowledge; that, were all to imitate them, public duties would be neglected; that those
