rage to announce it, but join their efforts, with those who dwell in courts, to conceal and stifle it?
But this duty, my brethren, is, in certain respects, common to you as to us; yet, nevertheless, there are few persons in the world, even of those who set an example of piety, who do not, almost every day, render themselves culpable, toward their brethren, of the dissimulation of silence. They think that they render to truth all that they owe to it, when they do not declare against it; when they hear virtue continually decried by the worldly, the doctrine of the world maintained, its abuses and maxims justified, those of the Gospel opposed or weakened, the wicked often blaspheming what they know not, and setting themselves up as judges of that faith which shall judge them: that they listen to them, I say, without joining in their impiety, is true, but they do not boldly show their disapprobation, and content themselves with merely authorizing their blasphemies or their prejudices by their suffrage.
Now, I say that, being all individually intrusted with the interests of truth, to be silent when it is openly attacked in our presence, is to become, in a measure, its persecutor and adversary. But, I add, that you, above all whom God hath enlightened, you then fail in that love which you owe to your brethren, seeing your obligations with regard to them augment in proportion to the grace with which God hath favoured you; you also render yourselves culpable toward God of ingratitude; you do not make a proper return for the blessing of grace and of truth with which he hath favoured you in the midst of your extravagant passions. He hath illuminated your darkness; he hath recalled you to himself, while wandering in treacherous and iniquitous ways; he, no doubt, in thus shedding light through your heart, hath not had your benefit alone in view; he hath meant that it should operate as the instruction or as the reproach of your connexions, your friends, your subjects, or your masters; he hath intended to favour your age, your nation, your country, in favouring you; for his chosen are formed only for the salvation or the condemnation of sinners. His design has been to place in you a light which might shine amid the surrounding darkness, and be a salutary guide to your fellow-creatures; which might perpetuate truth among men, and render testimony to the righteousness and to the wisdom of his law, amidst all the prejudices and all the vain conclusions of a profane world.
Now, by opposing only a cowardly and timid silence to the maxims which attack the truth, you do not enter into the views of God's mercy upon your brethren; you render unavailing to his glory and to the aggrandizement of his kingdom, that talent of the truth which he had intrusted to you, and of which he will one day demand a particular and severe reckoning: I say, more particularly of you who had formerly, with so much eclat, supported the errors and profane maxims of the world, and who had at once been its firmest and most avowed apologist. He surely had a right to exact of you, that you should declare yourselves with the same courage in favour of truth; nevertheless, from a zealous partisan
