world, a society apart, a sole depository of the knowledge of a God, and of the promise of a Mediator; always opposed to all the religions which have arisen in the universe; always contradicted, and always the same; and I say that its authority bears along with it such shining characters of truth, that it is impossible, without folly, to refuse submission to it.
In the first place, in matters of religion, antiquity is a character which reason respects; and, we may say, that a prepossession is already formed in favour of that belief, consecrated by the religion of the first men, and by the simplicity of the primitive times. Not but what falsehood is often decked out with the same titles, and that old errors exist among men, which seem to contest the antiquity of their origin with the truth; but it is not difficult, to whoever wishes to trace their history, to go back even to their origin. Novelty is always the constant and most inseparable character of error; and the reproach of the prophet may alike be made to them all: "They sacrifice to new gods that come newly up, whom their fathers feared not."
In effect, if there be a true religion upon the earth, it must be the most ancient of all; for, if there be a true religion upon the earth, it must be the first and the most essential duty of man toward the God who wishes to be honoured by it. This duty must therefore be equally ancient as man; and, as it is attached to his nature, it must, as I may say, be born with him. And this, my brethren, is the first character by which the religion of Christians is at once distinguished from superstitions and sects. It is the most ancient religion in the world. The first men, before an impious worship was carved out of divinities of wood and of stone, worshipped the same God whom we adore, raised up altars, and offered sacrifices to him, expected from his liberality the reward of their virtue, and from his justice, the punishment of their disobedience. The history of the birth of this religion, is the history of the birth of the world itself. The divine books which have preserved it down to us, contain the first monuments of the origin of things. They are themselves more ancient than all those fabulous productions of the human mind which afterward so miserably amused the credulity of the following ages; and, as error ever springs from the truth, and is only a faulty imitation of it, all the fables of Paganism are founded on some of the principal features of that divine history; insomuch, that it may be affirmed that every thing, even to error itself, renders homage to the antiquity and to the authority of our holy Scriptures.
Now, my brethren, is there not already something respectable in this character alone? The other religions, which have vaunted a more ancient origin, have produced nothing in support of their antiquity, but fabulous legends, which sunk into nothing of themselves. They have disfigured the history of the world by a chaos of innumerable and imaginary ages, of which no event hath been left to posterity, and which the history of the world hath never known. The authors of these gross fictions did not write till many
