trated a little into their obscurity, that is to say, it hath a little better conjectured upon them than the preceding ages; but what are its discoveries when compared to what we are still ignorant of?
Descend upon the earth, and tell us, if thou knowest, what it is that keeps the winds bound up; what regulates the course of the thunders and of the tempests; what is the fatal boundary which places its mark, and says to the rushing waves, " Here you shall go, and no farther;" and how the prodigy so regular of its movements is formed? Explain to us the surprising effects of plants, of metals, of the elements; find out in what manner gold is purified in the bowels of the earth; unravel, if thou canst, the infinite skill employed in the formation of the very insects which crawl before us; give us an explanation of the various instincts of animals — turn on every side; nature in all her parts offers nothing to thee but enigmas. O man! thou knowest nothing of the objects, even under thine eyes, and thou wouldst pretend to fathom the eternal depths of faith! Nature is a mystery to thee, and thou wouldst have a religion which had none! Thou art ignorant of the secrets of man, and thou wouldst pretend to know the secrets of God! Thou knowest not thyself, and thou wouldst pretend to fathom what is so much above thee! The universe, which God hath yielded up to thy curiosity and to thy disputes, is an abyss in which thou art lost; and thou wouldst that the mysteries of faith, which he hath solely exposed to thy docility and to thy respect, should have nothing which surpasses thy feeble lights! — O, blindness! Were every thing, excepting religion, clear and evident, thou then, with some show of reason, mightest mistrust its obscurities; but, since every thing around thee is a labyrinth in which thou art bewildered, ought not the secret of God, as Augustine formerly said, to render thee more respectful and more attentive, far from being more incredulous?
The necessity of faith is therefore founded, in the first place, upon the weakness of reason; but it is likewise founded upon its profound depravity. And, in effect, what was more natural to man than to confess his God, the author of his being and of his felicity, his end and his principle; than to adore his wisdom, his power, his goodness, and all those divine perfections of which he hath engraved upon his work such profound and evident marks? These lights were born with us. Nevertheless, review all those ages of darkness and of superstition which preceded the gospel, and see how far man had degraded his Creator, and to what he had likened his God. There was nothing so vile in the created world but his impiety erected into gods, and man was the noblest divinity which was worshipped by man.
If, from religion, you pass to the morality, all the principles of natural equity were effaced, and man no longer bore, written in his heart, the work of that law which nature has engraven on it. Plato, even that man so wise, and who, according to St. Augustine, had so nearly approached to the truth, nevertheless abolishes the holy institution of marriage; and, permitting a brutal confusion
