know what they are; for it is much more convenient to be nothing, and to live without thinking, or any knowledge of themselves. No, my brethren, I repeat it, these are not unbelievers, they are cowards, who have not the courage to espouse a side; who know only to live voluptuously, without rule, without morality, and often without decency; and who, without being atheists, live however without religion, for religion requires consistency, reason, elevation of mind, firmness, noble sentiments; and of all these they are incapable. Such, however, are the heroes of whom impiety boasts; behold the suffrages upon which it grounds its defence, and opposes to religion by insulting us; behold the partitans with whom it thinks itself invincible; and weak and wretched must its resources indeed be, since it is reduced to seek them in men of this description.
First reason, which proves that licentiousness springs not from doubts, but doubts from licentiousness. The second reason is only a fresh proof of the first; it is that actually, if they do not change their life, it is not to their doubts, but solely to their passions, that they hold.
For I ask nothing of you here but candour, you who continually allege your doubts upon our mysteries. When you sometimes think of quitting that sink of vice and debauchery in which you live, and when the passions, more tranquil, allow you to reflect, do you then oppose your uncertainties upon religion? Do you say to yourselves, (i But if I return, it will be necessary to believe things which seem incredible?" Is this the grand difficulty? Ah! you inwardly say, but if I return, it will be necessary to break off this connexion, to deny myself these excesses, to terminate these societies, to shun these places, to proceed to things which I shall never support and to adopt a manner of life to which all my inclinations are repugnant. These are what check you; these are the wall of separation which removes you from God. You speak so much to others of your doubts; how comes it that you never speak of them to yourselves? This is not a matter, therefore, of reason and of belief; it is a matter of the heart and of licentiousness; and the delay of your conversion springs not from your uncertainties upon faith, but from the sole doubt in which the violence and the empire of your passions leave you of ever being able to free yourselves from their subjection and infamy. Such, my brethren, are the true chains which bind our pretended unbelievers to their own wretchedness.
And this truth is more evident from this, that the majority of those who profess themselves unbelievers, live, nevertheless, in perpetual variations upon the point even of unbelief. In certain moments they are affected with the truths of religion: they feel themselves torn with the keenest remorses; they even apply to the servants of God most distinguished for their learning and piety, to hold converse with, and receive instruction from them: in others, they make game of these truths; they treat the servants of God with derision, and piety itself as a chimera: there is scarcely one of these sinners, even of those who make the greatest ostentation
