with the gods, they had ascended to heaven in order to assume their station among the other stars, which, according to them, were so many divinities who enlighten us, and for the purpose of there enjoying that immortality to which their divine birth entitled them: if so very vulgar a fiction had of itself been able to render men so long idolatrous, what impression must the reality of that fable not have made upon the people! And if the universe had worshipped impostors, who were falsely said to have mounted up to heaven, would it not have been excusable to worship a miraculous man, whom men, with their own eyes, had seen exalted above the stars? But observe, my brethren, that the occasion of error finishes not with Jesus Christ; it is announced to us that, at the end of ages, he will again appear in the heavens, surrounded with power and majesty, and accompanied with all the heavenly host; all assembled nations shall, with trembling, await at his feet the decision of their eternal destiny: he will sovereignly pronounce their decisive sentence. The Abrahams, the Moseses, the Davids, the Elijahs, the John the Baptists, and all that ages have produced of great and most wonderful, shall be submitted to his judgment and to his empire; he will himself be exalted above all power, all dominion, and all which is termed great in heaven and in the earth: he will erect his throne above the clouds, and sit on the right hand of the Most High: he will appear Master, not only of life and death, but the immortal King of ages, the Prince of eternity, the chief of a holy people, the supreme Arbiter of all the created. What then is this man to whom the Lord hath delegated such power? And the dead themselves who shall appear in judgment before him, shall they be condemned for having worshipped him, when they shall see him clothed with such glory, majesty, and power.
And one reflection, which I beg you to make in finishing this part of my Discourse, is, that, if only one extraordinary and divine trait were to be found here in the course of a long life, we might be inclined to believe that it sometimes pleaseth the Lord to allow his glory and his power to shine forth in his servants. Thus Enoch was carried up, Moses appeared transfigured on the holy mountain, Elijah was raised up to heaven in a fiery chariot, John the Baptist was foretold. But, besides that these were individual circumstances, and that the language of those miraculous men and of their disciples, with respect to the Divinity and to themselves, left no room for superstition and mistake; here, it is an assemblage of wonders, which all, or even taken separately, would have been sufficient to deceive the credulity of men; here, all the different traits, dispersed among all these extraordinary men, who had been considered almost as gods upon the earth, are collected together in Jesus Christ, but in a manner a thousand times more glorious and more divine. He prophecies, but more loftily, and with more striking characters, than John the Baptist: he appears transfigured in the holy mount, but surrounded with more glory than Moses: he ascends to heaven, but with more marks of power and majesty
