change our heart into a cowardly and grovelling one, to which any profitable falsehood costs nothing; into an artificial and pliable heart, which assumes every form, and never possesses any determinate one; into a weak and flattering heart, which has not the courage to refuse its suffrage to any thing but the unprofitable and the unfortunate virtue; into a corrupted and interested heart, which makes subservient to its purposes, religion, truth, justice, and all that is most sacred among men; in a word, a heart capable of every thing except that of being true, noble, and sincere. And think not that sinners of this description are so very rare in the world. We shun only the notoriety and shame of these faults; secret and secure basenesses find few scrupulous hearts; we often love only the reputation and glory of truth.
It is only proper to take care that, in pretending to defend the truth, we are not defending the mere illusions of our own mind. Pride, ignorance, and self-conceit, every day furnish defenders to error, equally intrepid and obstinate as any of whom faith can boast. The only truth worthy of our love, of our zeal, and of our courage, is that held out to us by the church; for it alone we ought to endure everything; beyond that, we are no longer but the martyrs of our own obstinacy and vanity.
O my God! pour then through my soul that humble and generous love of the truth, with which thy chosen are filled in heaven, and which is the only characteristic mark of the just upon the earth. Let my life be only such as to render glory to thine eternal truths; let me honour them through the sanctity of my manners; let me defend them through zeal for thy interests alone, and enable me continually to oppose them to error and vanity: annihilate in my heart those human fears, that prudence of the flesh which dreads to lay open to persons their errors and their vices. Suffer not that I be a feeble reed which bends to every blast, nor that I ever blush to bear the truth imprinted on my forehead, as the most illustrious title with which thy creature can glorify himself, and as the most glorious mark of thy mercies upon my soul. In effect, it is not sufficient to be the witness and depository of it, it is also necessary to be its defender: character contrasted with that of Herod, who is, in our Gospel at present, its enemy and persecutor. Last instruction with which our Gospel furnishes us, — the truth persecuted.
Part III. — If it is a crime to withstand the truth when it shines upon us, iniquitously to withhold it when we owe it to others; it is the fulness of iniquity, and the most distinguished character of reprobation, to persecute and combat it. Nevertheless, nothing is more common in the world than this persecution of truth; and the impious Herod, who, on the present occasion, sets himself up against it, has more imitators than is supposed.
For, in the first place, he persecutes it through that repugnancy which he visibly shows to the truth, and which induces all Jerusalem to follow his example; and this is what I call a persecution of
