standing all our self-blindness, cannot help already condemning us in secret, have we more indulgence to expect from the terrible and sovereign Judge of hearts than from our heart itself?
Thus, my brethren, study the law of God in your own conscience, and you will see that it is not more favourable than we to your passions: consult the lights of your heart, and you will feel that they perfectly accord with our maxims; listen to the voice of truth, which speaks within you, and you will admit that we only repeat what it is continually whispering to your heart. You have no occasion, says St. Augustine, to apply to able men, in order to have the greatest part of your doubts cleared up; go no farther than yourselves for explanations and answers; apply to yourselves for what you have to do; listen to the decisions of your heart; follow the first impulse of your conscience, and you will always determine for that choice most conformable to the law of God; the first impression of the heart is always for the strictness of the law against the softenings of self-love: your conscience will always go farther, and will be more strict than yourselves; and if you have occasion for our decisions, it will rather be in order to moderate the severity than to expose the false indulgence of it.
Behold the first manner in which the law of God shall one day judge us: that law, manifested in the conscience of the sinner, and, as if born with him, shall rise up against him; our heart, marked with the seal of truth, shall be the witness to depose for our condemnation; our lights shall be opposed to our actions, our remorses to our manners, our speeches to our thoughts, our inward sentiments to our public proceedings, and ourselves to ourselves. Thus we bear, each of us, our condemnation in our own heart. The Lord will not bring other proof than ourselves to determine the decision of our eternal reprobation; and the soul before the tribunal of God, says Tertullian, shall appear at the same time both the criminal condemned and the witness which shall testify against his crimes. He will have nothing to reply, continues this father. You knew the truth, will be said to him, and you iniquitously withheld it: you admitted of the happiness of the souls who seek only God, and you sought him not yourselves: you drew shocking pictures of the world, of its wearinesses, of its perfidies, and of its wickednesses, and you were always its slave and blind worshipper: you inwardly respected the religion of your fathers, and you made a deplorable vaunt of impiety: you secretly dreaded the judgments of God, and you affected not to believe in him. In the bottom of your heart you rendered justice to the piety of the godly; you proposed to resemble them at some future period; and you tore and persecuted them with your derisions and censures: in a word, your lights have ever been for God, and your actions for the world.
O my God! to what do men not carry their ingratitude and folly! Thou hast placed in us lights inseparable from our being, which, by disturbing the false peace of our passions and errors, continually recall us to order and to the truth; and, through an impo-
