services, incumbent on every citizen to his country and state, would no longer be given; that such an extreme of singularity is not required; and that real devotion proves itself, by living together and fulfilling the duties of the station in which God hath placed us: such are your maxims. But, on the other hand, when the virtuous unite with piety the duties of their station and the innocent interests of their fortune; when they still keep up a certain degree of intercourse and society with the world, and show themselves in places from which their rank does not allow them to banish themselves; when they still partake in certain public pleasures, which their station renders inevitable; in a word, when they are prudent in good, and simple in evil, — ah! you then proclaim that they are made like other men; that it appears very easy to you, at that price, to serve God; that you see nothing in their devotion to frighten you; and that if nothing more were required, you would soon be yourself a great saint. In vain may piety assume every appearance; it is sufficient that it is piety, to displease and to merit your censures. Be consistent with yourselves; you would have the pious to resemble yourselves, yet you condemn them from the moment that you can trace a resemblance.
The obstinacy and injustice of the Jews, in our gospel, are renewed in you. When John the Baptist appeared in the desert, clothed in goats' skins, neither eating nor drinking, and holding out to Judea an austerity of virtue which none of the preceding just or prophets had ever equalled, they considered, says Jesus Christ, the austerity of his manners as the illusion of a false spirit, which seduced and urged him on to these excesses, merely that, in a worldly vanity, he might find the recompense of his penance. On the contrary, the Son of Man afterward came, continues the Saviour, eating and drinking; exhibiting to them, in his conduct, the model of a virtue more consonant with human weakness, and serving as an example to all, by leading a simple and ordinary life which all may imitate: is he more sheltered from their censures? Ah! they declaim against him, as being a man of pleasure and a lover of good cheer; and the bendings of his virtue are no longer, in their opinion, but a relaxation which stains and dishonours it. The most dissimilar virtues are successful only in attracting the same reproaches. Ah! my brethren, how much to be pitied would the pious be, were they to be judged before the tribunal of men! But they know that that world, which sits in judgment on them, is itself already judged.
And what in this severity, with which you condemn the slightest imperfections of the pious, is more deplorable, is, that, if a notorious and infamous sinner, after a whole life of iniquity and crimes, but give, on the bed of death, some weak proof of repentance; if he but pronounce the name of that God whom he has never known, and has always blasphemed; if he at last consent, after many delays and repugnances, to receive the last offices of the church, which he formerly held in contempt; ah! you rank him among the saints; you maintain that he has died the death of a Christian;
