delighted that religion were false; and who are less touched with that respectable load of proofs which overpowers a conceited reason and its truth, than with a senseless discourse which opposes it, in which there is generally nothing important but the boldness of the impiety and of the blasphemy. Lastly, I speak of many believers who turn over to the people the belief of so many wonderful actions which the history of religion has preserved to us; who seem to believe that whatever is above the power of man is likewise beyond the power of God; and who refuse credit to the miracles of a religion which is solely founded on them, and which is itself the greatest of all miracles.
Behold how we still snatched from God that glory which the birth of Jesus Christ had rendered to him. It had taught us to sacrifice our own lights to the incomprehensible mystery of his manifestation in our flesh, and no longer to live but by faith; it had fixed the uncertainties of the human mind, and recalled it from the errors and the abyss in which reason had plunged it, to the way of truth and life, and we abandon it: and even under the empire of faith we wish still to walk as formerly, under the standards, if I may venture to speak in this manner, of a weak reason: the mysteries of religion, which we cannot comprehend, shock us; we suspect, we reform all; we would have God to think like man. Without altogether losing our faith, we suffer it to be inwardly weakened; we allow it to remain inactive: and it is this relaxation of faith which has corrupted our manners, multiplied vices, inflamed all hearts with a love of things present; extinguished the love of riches to come; placed trouble, hatred, and dissension among believers, and effaced those original marks of innocence, of sanctity, and of charity, which at first had rendered Christianity so respectable even to those who refused submission to it. But not only doth the birth of Jesus Christ restore to God that glory of which men had wished to deprive him; it likewise restores to men that peace, of which they had never ceased to deprive themselves: " And on earth peace, good-will toward men."
Part II. — A universal peace reigned throughout the universe, when Jesus Christ, the "Prince of Peace," appeared on the earth. All the nations subject to the Roman empire peaceably supported the yoke of those haughty masters of the world. Rome herself, after civil dissensions, which had almost depopulated her walls, filled the islands and deserts with her proscribed, and bathed Europe and Asia with the blood of her citizens, breathed from the horror of these troubles, and reunited under the authority of a Caesar, experienced in slavery, a peace which she had never, during the enjoyment of her liberty, been able to accomplish.
The universe was then at rest; but that was but a deceitful calm. Man, the prey of his own violent and iniquitous passions, experienced within himself the most cruel dissension and war: far from God, delivered up to the agitations and frenzies of his own heart, combated by the multiplicity and the eternal contrariety of his
