church was as yet under oppression and obscurity; and the enemies of faith, even the prophets of the idols, in viewing their good order, their innocence, and their majesty, with what difficulty did they refuse to them their admiration and their homage! Alas! and at present the rapid moments which you consecrate here to religion, and which ought to sanctify the remainder of the day, often become themselves the greatest guilt of it.
Lastly, niy brethren, to all these inward dispositions of prayer of adoration, and of gratitude, which the sanctity of our temples exacts of you, there is likewise to be added the external modesty, and the decency of ornaments and of dress — last disposition of the blessed in the heavenly temple: but on this part I shall be very brief.
And, in effect, should any instruction on our part be necessary to you on this point, O, worldly women? for it is you whom this part of my discourse principally regards. To what purpose all that display, I say not only of ostentation and of vanity, but of immodesty and of impudence, with which you make your appearance in this house of tears and of prayer? Do you come here to dispute with Jesus the looks and the homages of those who worship him? Do you come to insult the mysteries which operate the salvation of believers, by seeking to corrupt their heart at the feet even of the altars, where these mysteries take place for them? Are you determined that innocence shall in no place of the earth, not even in the temple, that asylum of religion and piety, be protected from your profane and lascivious nakedness? Doth the world not sufficiently furnish you with impure theatres, with assemblies of dissipation, where you may make a boast of being a stumbling block to your brethren? Even your houses, open to dissipation and to riot, do they not suffice for you to figure with an indecency which would formerly have been suited only to houses of debauchery and of guilt; and which is the cause that, not respecting yourselves, that respect is lost for you, of which the national politeness hath always been so jealous? For modesty alone is estimable, as St. Paul formerly reproached to believers. Must the holy temple be also stained by your immodesties? Ah! when you appear before your earthly sovereign, you mark, by the dignity and by the propriety of your deportment, the respect which you know to be due to his presence; and before the Sovereign of heaven and of the earth, you make your appearance, not only without precaution, but even without decency or modesty; and you display under his eyes an effrontery which wounds even the eyes of the wise and respectable! You come to disturb the attention of the believers who had expected to have found here a place of peace and of silence, and an asylum against all the objects of vanity; to disturb even the deep meditation and the holy gravity of the ministers, and to sully, by the indecency of your dress, the purity of their looks attentive to the holy things.
Thus the apostle desired, that the Christian woman should be covered with a veil in the temple, on account of the angels; that
