soling our faith, while recounting the wonders of him who is its Author and Perfecter; and to reanimate our piety in exposing to you the glory and the divinity of our Mediator, who is its object and its sweetest hope.
It is even proper to renew, from time to time, these grand truths in the minds of the great and of the princes of the people, in order to strengthen them against those discourses of infidelity which they, in general, are only too much in the way of hearing; and it is expedient sometimes to raise up the veil which covers the sanctuary, that they may have a view of those hidden beauties which religion only holds out to their respect and their homages.
Now, the divinity of the Mediator can only be proved by his ministry; his titles can appear only in his functions; and, in order to know whether he be descended from heaven, and equal with the Most High, it requires only to relate the purposes for which he came upon the earth. He came, my brethren, to form a holy and a believing people; a believing people, who subject their reason to the sacred yoke of faith; a holy people, whose conversation is in heaven, and who are no longer responsible to the flesh, to live according to the flesh: such is the grand design of his temporal mission.
The lustre of his ministry is the firmest foundation of our faith: the spirit of his ministry, the sole rule of our morals. Now, if he was only a man commissioned of God, the lustre of his ministry would be the inevitable occasion of our superstition and idolatry; the spirit of his ministry would be the fatal snare to entrap our innocence. Thus, whether we consider the lustre or the spirit of his his ministry, the glory of his divinity remains equally and invincibly established.
O Jesus, sole Lord of all, accept this public homage of our confession and of our faith! While impiety blasphemes in secret, and under the shades of darkness, against thy glory, allow us the consolation of publishing it with the voice of all ages in the face of these altars; and form, in our heart, not only that faith which confesses and worships thee, but also that which follows and which imitates thee.
Part I. — God can manifest himself to men, only in order to teach them what he is, and what men owe to him; and religion is, properly speaking, but a divine light, which discovers God to man, and which regulates the duties of man toward God. Whether the Most High show himself to the earth, or whether he fill extraordinary men with his spirit, the end of all his proceedings can be only the knowledge and the sanctification of his name in the universe, and the establishment of a worship in which they render to him what is due to him alone.
Now, if the Lord Jesus, come in the fulness of time, was nothing more than an upright and innocent man, only chosen to be the messenger of God upon the earth, the principal end of his ministry would have been that of rendering the world idolatrous, and of
