will be the most horrible punishment of the unfaithful soul. A rigorous examination shall, in the first place, make him known to himself; and behold all the circumstances of that awful discussion.
I ought, in the first place, to make you observe all the titles with which he will be invested who shall examine you, and which announce all the rigour with which he shall weigh in the balance your deeds and your thoughts. It will be a rigid legislator, jealous of the sanctity of his law, and who will judge you only by it j all the softenings, all the vain interpretations, which custom or a false knowledge had invented, shall vanish; the lustre of the law will dissipate them; the resources with which they had flattered the sinner, will sink into nothing; and the incensed legislator will examine almost more rigorously the false interpretations which had changed its purity, than the manifest transgressions which had violated it. It will be a judge charged with the interest of his Fathers glory against the sinner, established to decide between God and man; and that day will be the day of his zeal for the honour of the Divinity, against those who shall not have rendered to him that honour which is his due: a Saviour, who will show you his wounds to reproach your ingratitude; all that he hath done for you will rise up against you: his blood, the price of your salvation, will loudly demand your destruction; and his despised kindnesses will be numbered among your heaviest crimes: the Searcher of hearts, to whose eyes the most hidden counsels and the most secret thoughts will all be laid open: lastly? a God of terrible majesty, before whom the heavens shall dissolve, the elements be confounded, and all nature overturned, and whose scrutiny, with all the terror of his presence, the sinner shall singly be forced to support.
Now, behold the circumstances of that awful examination. First, it will be the same for all men; and, as St. Matthew says, before him shall be gathered all nations. The difference of ages, countries, conditions, birth, and temperament, shall no longer be regarded; and as the Gospel, on which you will be judged, is the law of all times and conditions, and holds out the same rules to the prince and to the subject, to the great and to the lowly, to the anchorite and to the man immersed in the affairs of the world, to the believer who lived in the fervour of the primitive times, and to him who hath the misfortune to live in the relaxation of the present age, no distinction will be made in the manner of proceeding on the examination of the guilty; vain excuses on rank and birth, on the dangers of his station, on the manners of his age, on the weakness of temperament, will then be no longer listened to from you; and, with respect to modesty, chastity, ambition, forgiveness of injuries, renouncement of one's self, mortification of the senses, the just Judge will demand an exact account, equally from the Greek as from the Barbarian, from the poor as from the powerful, from the man of the world as from the solitary, from the prince as from the humblest subject; lastly, from the Christian of these latter times as from the first disciples of the Gospel.
Vain judgments of the earth, how shall you then be confounded!
