errors always find in us ready apologies; we respect his passions equally as his authority, and his prejudices always become our own. Lastly, we catch the infection, and imbibe the errors of all with whom we live; we transform ourselves, as I may say, into other selves; our grand study is to find out their weaknesses, that we may appropriate and apply them to our own purposes: we have, in fact, no language of our own; we always speak the language of others; our discourses are merely a repetition of their prejudicies; and this infamous debasement of truth we call knowledge of the world, a prudence which knows its own interest, the grand art of pleasing and of succeeding in the world. O ye sons of men! how "long will ye love vanity, and seek after leasing?"
Yes, my brethren, by that we perpetuate error among men; we authorize every deceit; we justify every false maxim; we give an air of innocence to every vice; we maintain the reign of the world, and of its doctrine, against that of Jesus Christ; we corrupt society, of which truth ought to be the first tie; we pervert those duties and mutual offices of civil life, established to animate us to virtue, into snares, and inevitable occasions of a departure from righteousness; we change friendship, which ought to be a grand resource to us against our errors and irregularities, into a commerce of dissimulation and mutual deception; by that, in a word, we render truth hateful and ridiculous by rendering it rare among men; and, when I say we, I mean more especially the souls who belong to God, and who are intrusted with the interests of truth upon the earth. Yes, my brethren, I would that faithful souls had a language peculiar to them amid the world; that other maxims, other sentiments were found in them than in the rest of men; and while all others speak the language of the passions, that they alone speak the language of truth, I would that, while the world hath its Balaams, who, by their discourses and counsels, authorize irregularity and licentiousness, piety had its Phineases, who durst boldly adopt the interests of the law of God, and of the sanctity of its maxims; that, while the world hath its impious philosophers and false sages, who think that it does them honour, openly to proclaim that we ought to live only for the present, and that the end of man is, in no respect, different from that of the beast, piety had its Solomons, who, undeceived by their own experience, durst publicly avow, that, excepting the fear of the Lord and the observance of his commandments, all else is vanity and vexation of spirit: that while the world hath its charms and enchantments, which seduce kings and the people by their delusions and flatteries, piety had its Moseses and Aarons, who had the courage to confound, by the sole force of truth, their imposition and artifice; in a word, that, while the world had its priests and its scribes, who, like those of the Gospel, weaken the truth, piety had its magi, who dread not to announce it in the presence even of those to whom it cannot but be displeasing.
Not that I condemn the modifications of a sage prudence, which apparently gives up something to the prejudices of men, only that
