itself, which you always allege, and to which you continually refer us. Are you, honestly speaking, at your ease, as you wish to persuade us, in this life, altogether of pleasures, of dissipation, of indolence, and of sensuality: in a word, in this worldly life, of which you constantly maintain the innocence, have you hitherto been able to succeed in persuading yourselves that it is the path which leads to salvation? Do you not feel that something more is required of you by the gospel than you perform? Would you wish to appear before God with nothing to offer to him but these pleasures, these amusements which you call innocent, and of which the principal groundwork of your life is composed? I put the question to you, in those moments when, more warmly affected perhaps by grace, you purpose seriously to think upon eternity, do you not place, in the plan which you then form of a new life, the privation of almost all the very things in which you are continually telling us that you see no harm? Do you not begin by promising to yourselves, that, solely occupied then with your salvation, you will renounce the excesses of gaming, the theatres, the vanities and indecencies of dress, the dissipation of public assemblies and pleasures; that you will devote more time to prayer, to retirement, to holy reading, and to the duties of religion? Now, what is it that you hereby acknowledge, unless it be, that, while you renounce not all these abuses, — that you devote not more time to all these pious duties, you think not seriously upon your salvation; you ought to have no pretension to it; you are in the path of death and perdition?
But, besides, you who carry so far the severity of your censures against the godly, recollect all the rigour of your maxims, and of your derisions upon their conduct; do you not blame, do you not continually censure those persons who wish to connect with a public profession of piety those abuses, those amusements, of which you are the daily apologists, and who wish to enjoy the reputation of virtue without losing any of the pleasures of the world? Do you not mock their piety as a piece of mere grimace? Here it is that you emphatically display all the austerity of the Christian life. Do you not say, that it is necessary either totally to renounce the world, or continue to live as the world lives; and that all these ambiguous virtues serve only to decry the true virtue? I agree with you in this; but I reply to you, Your conscience dictates to you that it is not safe to give yourself partially to God, and your conscience reproaches you nothing, as you say, in a life in which God enters not at all? You condemn those mistaken souls whom, at least, an apparent division between the world and Jesus Christ may comfort? And you justify to us your conduct, you who have nothing in its justification but the abuses of the world and the danger of its habits? Do you then believe that the path of salvation is more rugged for those who profess piety than for you; — that the world hath privileges thereon, which are forfeited from the moment that we mean to serve God? Be consistent, then, with yourselves, and either condemn no more a worldly virtue, or no
