longer justify the world itself; since whatever you blame in that virtue is only that portion of it which the world supplies.
And, in order to make you more sensibly feel how far you are from being candid on this head, you continually take a pride in repeating that we despair of human weakness; that in order to act up to all that we say in these Christian pulpits, it would be necessary to withdraw to the deserts, or to be angels rather than men: nevertheless, render glory to the force of truth. If a minister of the gospel were to deliver to you from this place a doctrine quite opposite to that which we teach; were he to announce to you the same maxims which you daily hold forth in the world; were he to preach to you in this place of the truth, that the gospel is not so severe as it is published; that we may love the world, and yet serve God; that there is no harm in gaming, in pleasures, in theatres, except what we ourselves occasion; that we must live like the world while we live in the world; that all that language of the cross, of penitence, mortification, and self-denial, is more calculated for cloisters than for the court, and for persons of a certain rank; and, lastly, that God is too good to consider as crimes a thousand things which are become habitual, and of which we wish you to make a matter of conscience; — were he, I say, to preach these maxims to you in this holy place, what would you think of him? What would you say to his new doctrine? What idea would you have of this new apostle? Would you consider him as a man come down from heaven to announce to you this new gospel? Would you believe him to be better instructed than we in the holy truths of salvation, and in the rules of the Christian life? You would laugh at his ignorance or his folly; you would perhaps be struck with horror at the profanation which he would make of his ministry.
And what, my brethren, these maxims announced before the altars would appear to you as blasphemy or madness; and, promulgated in your daily conversations, would they become rules of reason and of wisdom? In the mouth of a minister of the gospel you would look upon them as the speeches of a madman; and, in your mouth, should they appear more solid and more weighty? You would laugh, or rather you would be struck with horror, at a preacher who should announce them to you; and you wish to persuade us that you speak seriously, and that you are consistent with yourselves, when with so much confidence you hold them forth to us.
Ah! my brethren, how treacherous we are to God! and how terrible will he be when he shall come to avenge upon the lights of our own heart the honour of his holy law! Our apparent obstinacy for the abuses of the world, of which we maintain the innocence, is a secret persuasion that the world and its abuses are a path of perdition: we publicly justify what we condemn in private: we are the hypocrites of the world and of its pleasures; and, through a most deplorable destiny, our life passes away in dissembling with ourselves, and in obstinately determining to perish in spite of ourselves. And surely, says the apostle John, if our heart, notwith-
