increasing the patrimony of our fathers, and places no other bounds to our desires than those of the laws, which punish violence and manifest injustice. Can you assure us, that the rules of the conscience do not observe more narrowly, and, with regard to these matters, do not enter into discussions which the world is totally unacquainted with? The world has declared, that a gentle, effeminate, and idle life, is an innocent life; and that virtue is not so rigid and austere as we wish to make it. Before giving credit to this, merely upon its assertion, have you consulted whether the doctrine brought us by Jesus Christ from heaven, subscribed to the novelty and to the danger of these maxims?
What, my brethren! in the affair of your eternity, without examination or attention, you adopt common prejudices, merely because they are established? You blindly follow those who march before you, without examining where the path leads to which they keep? You even deign not to inquire at yourselves whether or not you are deceived? You are satisfied in knowing that you are not the only persons mistaken? What! in the business which must decide your eternal destiny, you do not even make use of your reason? You demand no other pledge of your safety than the general error? You have no doubt or suspicion? You think it unnecessary to inform yourselves? You have no mistrust? All is good, and, in your opinion, as it ought to be? You who are so nice, so difficult, so mistrustful, so full of precaution when your worldly interests are in question, in this grand affair alone you conduct yourselves by instinct, by fancy, by foreign impressions? You decide upon nothing, but indolently allow yourselves to be dragged away by the multitude, and the torrent of example? You who, in every other matter, would blush to think like the crowd; you who pique yourselves upon superiority of genius, and upon leaving to the common people, and to weak minds, all vulgar prejudices; you who carry to a ridiculous extreme, perhaps, your mode of thinking on every other point, upon salvation alone you think with the crowd, and it appears that reason is denied to you on this grand interest alone. What, my brethren! when you are asked, in the steps which you take to ensure success to your worldly expectations, the reasons which have induced you to prefer one party to another, you advance such solid and prudent motives; you justify your choice by prospects so certain and decisive; you appear to have so maturely considered them before adopting their execution; and when we demand of you whence it comes, that in the affair of your eternal salvation you prefer the abuses, the customs, the maxims of the world, to the examples of the saints, who certainly did not live like you, and to the rules of the gospel, which condemn all those who live as you do; you have nothing to answer but that you are not singular, and that you must live like the rest of the world? Great God! to what purpose are great abilities in the conduct of projects which will perish with us! We have reasons and arguments in support of vanity, and we are children with regard to the truth. We pique
