of days, are looked upon as privileges refused to the vulgar, and reserved solely for rank and birth: thence, to live only for the senses, to be attentive only to satisfy them, to refuse nothing to taste, to vanity, to curiosity, to idleness, to ambition, to make a god of one's self; the same prosperity, which facilitates all these excesses, excuses and justifies them.
But, my brethren, I have already said it, the Gospel is the law of all men: high and low, you have all promised, upon the sacred fonts, to observe it. The church, in receiving you into the number of her children, hath not proposed to the great other vows to make, and other rules to practise, than to the common people: you have all there made the same promises; all sworn, in the face of the altars, to observe the same Gospel. The church hath not then demanded of you, if, by your birth according to the flesh, you were great, or of the common people; but if, by your regeneration in Jesus Christ, you meant to be faithful, and to engage yourself to follow his law: upon the vow which you have made of it, she hath placed the holy Gospel upon your head, in order to mark that you submitted yourself to that sacred yoke.
Now, my brethren, all the duties of the Gospel are reduced to two points. Some are proposed in order to resist and to weaken that fund of corruption which we bear from our birth; the others in order to perfect that first grace of the Christian which we have received in baptism; that is to say, the one in order to destroy in us the old Adam, the other in order to make Jesus Christ to grow there. Violence, self-denial, and mortification regard the first: prayer, retirement, vigilance, contempt for the world, desire of invisible riches, are comprised in the second: behold the whole Gospel. Now, I demand of you, what is there in these two descriptions of duties from which rank or birth can dispense you?
Ought you to pray less than the other believers? Have you fewer favours to ask than they, fewer obstacles to overcome, fewer snares to avoid, fewer desires to resist? Alas! the more you are exalted, the more do dangers augment, the more do occasions of sin spring up under your feet, the more is the world beloved, the more doth every thing favour your passions, the more doth every thing militate against your good desires; it is in a situation so terrible for salvation that you find privileges which render it more mild and more commodious. The more, therefore, that you are exalted, the more doth mortification become necessary to you; for, the more that pleasures corrupt your heart, the more is vigilance necessary, because the dangers are more frequent; the more ought faith to be lively, because every thing around you weakens and extinguishes it; the more ought prayer to be continual, because the grace, in order to support you, ought to be more powerful; humility of heart more heroical, because the attachment to things here below is more unavoidable: lastly, the more you are exalted, the more doth salvation become difficult to you; this is the only privilege you can expect from elevation. Also, thou often warnest us, great God, that thy kingdom is only for the poor and the lowly:
