duties, and all your doubts shall vanish. Thus we continually see, that when touched with grace, a soul begins to adopt solid measures for eternity, his eyes are opened upon a thousand truths, which, till then, he had concealed from himself: in proportion as his passions diminish, his lights increase; he is astonished by what means he could so long have shut his eyes upon truths which now appear to him so evident and so incontestable; and far from a sacred guide having then occasion to contest, and to maintain against him the interests of the law of God, his prudence is required to conceal, as I may say, from that contrite soul, the whole extent and all the terrors of the holy truths; to quiet him on the horror of past irregularities, and to moderate the fears into which he is thrown by the novelty and the surprise of his lights. It is not, then, the rules which are cleared up, it is the soul which frees itself from, and quits its blindness: it is not the law of God which becomes more evident, it is the eyes of the heart which are opened to its lustre; in a word, it is not the Gospel, but the sinner who is changed.
And a fresh proof of what I advance is, that, upon those points of the law where no particular passion or interest blinds us, we are equitable and clear-sighted. A miser, who hides from himself the rules of faith upon the insatiable love of riches, clearly sees the maxims which condemn ambition or luxury. A voluptuary, who tries to justify to himself the weakness of his inclinations, gives no quarter to the mean desires and to the sordid attachments of avarice. A man, mad for exaltation and, fortune, and who considers the eternal exertions which he is under the necessity of making in order to succeed, as weighty and serious cares, and alone worthy his birth and his name, sees all the unworthiness of a life of amusement and pleasure, and clearly comprehends that a man, born with a name, degrades and dishonours himself by laziness and indolence. A woman, seized with the rage of gaming, yet otherwise regular, is inveterate against the slightest faults which attack the conduct, and continually justifies the innocence of, excessive gaming, by contrasting it with irregularities of another description, from which she finds herself free. Another on the contrary, intoxicated with her person and with her beauty, totally engrossed by her deplorable passions, considers that obstinate perseverance in an eternal gaming as a kind of disease and derangement of the mind, and, in the shame of her own engagements sees nothing but an innocent weakness and involuntary inclinations, the destiny of which we find in our hearts.
Review all the passions, and you will see that, in proportion as we are exempted from some one we see, we condemn it in others: we know the rules which forbid it; we go even to the rigour against others, upon the observance of duties which interest not our own weaknesses, and we carry our severity beyond even the rule itself. The Pharisees, so instructed in, and so severe upon the guilt of the adulteress, and upon the punishments attached by the law to the infamy of that infidelity, saw not their own pride, their
