rare among us, but the simplicity of faith is not perhaps the less so. We would feel a horror at quitting the belief of our fathers; but we wish to refine upon our sincerity. We do not permit ourselves to doubt upon the main part of the mysteries; but obedience is philosophically given, by imposing our own yoke, by weighing the holy truths, receiving some as reasonable, reasoning upon others, and measuring them by our own feeble lights; and our age, more than any other, is full of these half believers, who, under the pretext of taking away from religion all that credulity or prejudice may have added to it, deprive faith of the whole merit of submission.
Now, my brethren, sanctity ought only to be spoken of with a religious circumspection. Faith is a virtue almost equally delicate as modesty: a single doubt, a single word injures it; a breath, as I may say, tarnishes it. Yet nevertheless, what license do they not allow themselves in modern conversations on all that is most respectable in the faith of our fathers? Alas! the terrible name of the Lord could not be even pronounced under the law by the mouth of man; and at present, all that is most sacred and most august in religion is become a common subject of conversation; there every thing is talked over, and freely decided upon. Vain and superficial men, whose only knowledge of religion consists of a little more temerity than the illiterate and the common people; producing, as their whole stock of learning, some common-place and hackneyed doubts, which they have picked up, but never had formed themselves; doubts which have so often been cleared up, that they seem now to exist no longer but to glorify the truth; men who, amid the most dissolute manners, have never devoted an hour of serious attention to the truth of religion, — act the philosopher, and boldly decide upon points which a whole life of study, accompanied with learning and piety, could scarcely clear up.
Even persons of a sect, in whom ignorance on certain points would be meritorious, and who, though knowing, good-breeding and decency require that they should affect to be ignorant; persons who are better acquainted with the world than with Jesus Christ; who even know not of religion what is necessary to regulate their manners, — pretend doubts, wish to have them explained, are afraid of believing too much, have suspicions upon the whole, yet have none upon their own miserable situation and the visible impropriety of their life. O God! it is thus that thou deliverest up sinners to the vanity of their own fancies, and permittest that those who pretend to penetrate into thine adorable secrecies know not themselves. Faith is therefore glorious to man: this has just been shown to you: it now remains for me to prove that it is necessary to him.
Part III. — Of all the characters of faith, the necessity of it is the one which renders the unbeliever most inexcusable. All the other motives which are employed to lead him to the truth, are foreign, as I may say, to him; this one is drawn from his
