level with them. Secondly, we perhaps tempt even their fidelity and their innocence, by giving the most animated descriptions of those pleasures from which they fly: like the wife of Job, we blame their simplicity and weakness: we exaggerate to them the inconveniencies of virtue and the difficulties of perseverance: we shake them by the example of unfaithful souls, who, after putting their hand to the plough, have cast a look behind, and abandoned their labour: — what shall I say? We perhaps attack even the immoveable groundwork of faith, and we insinuate the inutility of self-denials it proposes, from the uncertainty of its promises. Thirdly, we harass, by our authority, the zeal and the piety of those persons who are dependent upon us: we exact duties of them, either incompatible with their innocence, or dangerous to their virtue: we place them in situations either painful or trying to their faith: we interdict them from practices and observances, either necessary for their support in piety, or profitable toward their progress in it: in a word, we become domestic tempters with respect to them, being neither capable of tasting good ourselves, nor of suffering it in others, and performing toward these souls, the office of the demon, who only watches in order to destroy. Lastly, we render ourselves culpable of this persecution of seduction, by making our talents instrumental to the destruction of the reign of Jesus Christ: the talents of the body in inspiring iniquitous passions; in placing ourselves in hearts where God alone ought to be; in corrupting the souls for whom Jesus Christ gave his blood; the talents of the mind in inducing to vice: in embellishing it with all the charms most calculated to hide its infamy and horror; in presenting the poison under the most alluring and seductive form; and in rendering it immortal by lascivious works, through the means of which, a miserable author shall, to the end of ages, preach up vice, corrupt hearts, and inspire his brethren with every deplorable passion which had enslaved himself during life; shall see his punishment and his torments increased in proportion as the impious fire he has lighted up shall spread upon the earth; shall have the shocking consolation of declaring himself, even after death, against his God, of gaining souls from him whom he had redeemed, of still insulting his holiness and majesty, of perpetuating his own rebellion and disorders even beyond the tomb, and of making, even to the fulfilment of time, the crimes of all men his own crimes. Woe, saith the Lord, to all those who rise up against my name and glory, and who lay snares for my people! I will take vengeance of them on the day of my judgment: I will demand of them the blood of their brethren whom they have seduced, and whom they have caused to perish: and I will multiply upon them, and make them for ever to feel, the most dreadful evils, in return for that glory which they have ravished from me.
But a last description of persecution, still more fatal to truth, is that which I call a persecution of power and violence. Herod, having gained nothing by his artifices, at last throws off the mask, openly declares himself the persecutor of Jesus Christ, and wishes
