away by the torrent of example; hath he then added, that, in order to accommodate himself to the corruption of these latter times, he would relax something of the severity of his Gospel; that he would consent that customs, established by the ignorance and the licentiousness of the ages, should succeed to the rules and to the duties of his doctrine; that he would then exact of his disciples infinitely less than he exacted at the birth of faith; and that his kingdom, which, at first, was promised only to force, should then be granted to indolence and laziness? Hath he added this, I demand of you? On the contrary, he warns his disciples that then, in these latter times, it will more than ever be necessary to pray, to fast, to retire to the mountains, in order to shun the general corruption; he warns them that woe unto those who shall then remain exposed amid the world; that those alone shall be safe who shall divest themselves of all, and who shall fly from amid the cities: and he concludes by exhorting them once more to watch and to pray without ceasing, in order not to be included in the general condemnation.
And, in effect, my brethren, the more disorders augment, the more ought piety to be fervent and watchful: the more we are surrounded with dangers, the more doth prayer, retreat, and mortification become necessary to us. The licentiousness of the present manners add still new obligations to those of our fathers; and, far from the path of salvation having become more easy than in those former times, we shall perish with a moderate virtue, which, supported then by the common example, would perhaps have been sufficient to secure our salvation.
Besides, my brethren, I demand of you, in the second place, Do you really believe that the rigorous precepts of the gospel, those maxims of the cross, of violence, of self-denial, of contempt for the world, have been made only for the primitive ages of faith? Do you believe that Jesus Christ hath destined all the rigours of his doctrine for those chaste, innocent, charitable, and fervent men, who lived in these happy times of the church; those men who denied themselves every pleasure, those primitive heroes of religion, who, almost all, preserved, even to the end, the grace of regeneration which had made them Christians? What! my brethren, Jesus Christ would have rewarded their zeal and their fidelity only by aggravating their yoke, and he would have reserved all his indulgence for the corrupted men of our ages? Jesus Christ would have made strict laws of reserve, of modesty, of retirement, only for those primitive Christian women who renounced all to please him; who divided themselves only with the Lord and their husbands; who, shut up in the inclosures of their houses, brought up their children in faith and in piety? And he would exact less at present of those sensual, voluptuous, and worldly women, who continually wound our eyes by the indecency of their dress, and who corrupt the heart by the looseness of their manners, and by the snares which they lay for innocence? And where would here be that so much vaunted equity and wisdom of the Christian
