thereby proclaim the insufficiency and the inutility of the external and pharisaical worship of the synagogue; it was likewise required, that to him they should sacrifice their reason, as to their wisdom and to their eternal truth, and thus be undeceived with regard to the vain researches and the conceited knowledge of philosophers.
Now, the sole birth of a Man-God, the ineffable union of our nature with a divine person, disconcerts all human reason; and this incomprehensible mystery held out to men as their whole knowledge, their whole truth, their whole philosophy, their whole religion, at once makes them feel that the truth, which they hitherto had in vain sought, must be sought, not by vain efforts, but by the sacrifice of reason and of our feeble lights.
But, alas! where among us are believers who make a thorough sacrifice of their reason to faith; and who, rejecting their own lights, humble their eyes, in a respectful and sile/it adoration, before the majestic impenetrability of religion? I speak not of those impious, still to be found among us, who deny a God. Ah! we must leave them to the horror and the indignation of the whole universe which knows a Divinity, and which worships him; or rather leave them to the horror of their own conscience, which inwardly invokes and calls upon him in spite of themselves, while outwardly they are glorifying themselves in professing not to know him.
I speak of the majority of believers, who have an idea of the Divinity, almost equally false and equally human, as had formerly the pagan philosophers; who consider him as nothing in all the accidents of life; who live as if chance, or the caprice of men, determined all things here below; and who acknowledge good luck and bad luck as two sole divinities which govern the world, and which preside over every thing relative to the earth. I speak of those men of little faith, who, far from adoring the secrecies of futurity in the profound and impenetrable councils of Providence, go to search for them in ridiculous and childish prophecies; attribute to man a knowledge which God hath solely reserved to himself; with a senseless belief await, from the dreams of a false prophet, events and revolutions which are to decide the destiny of nations and empires; found thereupon vain hopes for themselves, and renew either the folly of pagan augurs and soothsayers, or the impiety of the pythoness of Saul, and of the oracles of Delphi and Dodona. I speak of those who wish to penetrate into the eternal ways of God on our lots; and who, being unable, by the sole powers of reason, to solve the insurmountable difficulties of the mysteries of grace with regard to the salvation of men, far from crying out with the apostle, " O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God V* are tempted to believe, either that God doth not interfere in our salvation; or, if he do, that it is needless for us to interfere in it ourselves. I speak of those dissolute characters in the world, who always find plausible and convincing, though, in fact, weak and foolish in the extreme, whatever unbelief opposes to faith; who are staggered by the first frivolous doubt proposed by the impious; who appear as if they would be
