brethren: not one of all those who affect to profess themselves unbelievers has ever been seen to begin by doubts upon the truths of faith, and afterward from doubts to fall into licentiousness: they begin with the passions; doubts come afterward: they first give way to the regularities of the age and to the excesses of debauchery; and when attained to a certain length, and they find it no longer possible to return upon their steps, they then say, in order to quiet themselves, that there is nothing after this life, or at least, they are well pleased to find people who say so. It is not, therefore, the little certainty they find in religion, which authorizes their conclusion that we ought to yield ourselves up to pleasure, and that self-denial is needless, since every thing dies with us: it is the yielding of themselves up to pleasure which creates doubts upon religion, and, by rendering self-denial next to impossible, leads them to conclude that consequently it is neeedless. Faith becomes suspected only when it begins to be troublesome; and to this day unbelief hath never made a voluptuary, but voluptuousness hath made almost all the unbelievers.
And a proof of what I say, you whom this Discourse regards, is, that while you have lived with modesty and innocence, you never doubted. Recollect those happy times when the passions had not yet corrupted your heart: the faith of your fathers had then nothing but what was august and respectable; reason bent without pain to the yoke of authority; you never thought of doubts or difficulties: from the moment your manners changed, your views upon religion have no longer been the same. It is not faith, therefore, which hath found new difficulties in your reason; it is the practice of duties which hath encountered new obstacles in your heart. And, should you tell us, that your first impressions, so favourable to faith, sprung solely from the prejudices of education and of childhood; we shall answer, that the second, so favourable to impiety, have sprung solely from the prejudices of the passions and of debauchery; and that, prejudices for prejudices, it appears to us, that it is still better to keep by those which are formed in innocence and lead us to virtue, than to those which are born in the infamy of the passions, and preach up only free-thinking and guilt.
Thus nothing is more humiliating for unbelief than recalling it to its origin; it bears a false name of learning and of light: and it is a child of iniquity and of darkness. It is not the strength of reason which has led our pretended unbelievers to scepticism; it is the weakness of a corrupted heart, which has been unable to surmount its infamous passions; it is even a mean cowardliness, which, unable to support and to view with a steady eye the terrors and the threatenings of religion, endeavours to shake off their thoughts by continually repeating, that they are childish terrors: it is a man who, afraid of the night, sings as he goes along, to prevent himself from thinking; debauchery always makes us cowardly and fearful; and it is nothing but an excess of fear of eternal punishments, which occasions a sinner to be continually preaching up and singing to us that they are doubtful; he trembles, and wishes to strengthen him-
