they overturned their worship. How beautiful, my brethren, to see the religion of our fathers alone maintaining itself from the first, surviving all sects; and, notwithstanding the diverse fortunes of those who have professed it, alone passing from father to son, and braving every exertion to efface it from the heart of men! It is not the arm of flesh which hath preserved it. Ah! the people of God hath, almost always, been weak, oppressed, and persecuted. No: it is not, says the prophet, by their own sword that our fathers got the land in possession; but thy right hand, O Lord, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, because thou hadst a favour unto them. One while slaves, another fugitives, another tributaries of various nations; they a thousand times saw Chaldea, Assyria, Babylon, the most formidable powers of the earth, the whole universe, conspire their ruin and the total extinction of their worship; but this people, so weak, oppressed in Egypt, wandering in the desert, and afterward carried in captivity into a foreign land, no power hath ever been able to exterminate, while so many others, more powerful, have followed the destiny of human things; and its worship hath always subsisted with itself, in spite of all the efforts made by almost every age to destroy it.
Now, whence comes it, that a worship so contradicted, so arduous in its observances, so rigorous in its punishments upon transgressors, and even so liable to be established or to be overthrown, through the mere inconstancy and ignorance of the people who was its first depositary; whence comes it that it alone hath been perpetuated amid so many revolutions, while the superstitions supported by all the power of empires and of kingdoms, have sunk into their original oblivion? Ah! is it not God, and not man, who hath done all these things? Is it not the arm of the Almighty which hath preserved his work? And since every thing invented by the human mind has perished, is it not to be inferred that what hath always endured was alone the work of the divine wisdom?
Lastly, if, to its antiquity, and to its perpetuity, you add its uniformity, no pretext for resistance will be left to reason. For, my brethren, every thing changes upon the earth, because every thing follows the mutability of its origin. Occasions, the difference of ages, the diverse humours of climates, and the necessity of the times, have introduced a thousand changes in all the human laws. Faith alone hath never changed. Such as our fathers received it, such have we it at present, and such shall our descendants one day receive it. It hath been unfolded through the course of ages, and likewise, I confess, through the necessity of securing it from the errors which have been attempted to be introduced into it; but every thing which once appeared to belong to it, hath always appeared as appertaining to it. There is little wonder in the duration of a religion, when accommodations are made to times and to conjunctures, and when they may add or diminish according to the fancy of the ages, and of those who govern; but never to relax, in spite of the change of manners and of times; to see every thing change around, and yet be always the same, is the grand privilege
