as if to tell him that they have too long witnessed his iniquitous passions: the earth shall crumble from under his feet, as if to eject from its bosom a monster which it could no longer bear: and the whole universe, says Solomon, shall arm against him to avenge the glory of the Lord whom he has insulted. Alas! we so dearly love to be lamented in our misfortunes: indifference alone irritates and wounds us: here not only shall all hearts be shut to our misfortunes, but all beholders shall insult our shame, and the only portion left to the sinner shall be his confusion, his despair, and his crimes. First circumstance of the confusion of the criminal soul, namely, the multitude of witnesses.
I take the second from the care and anxiety they had taken, whilst living on the earth, to disguise and conceal themselves from the eyes of men; for, my brethren, the world is a grand theatre, on which almost every one acts a borrowed part. As we are full of passions, and as all passions have always in them something mean and despicable, our whole attention is employed in concealing their meanness, and in endeavouring to give ourselves out for what we are not: iniquity is always treacherous and deceitful. Thus, your whole life, you, above all, who listen to me, and who considered the duplicity of your character as knowledge of the world and of the court, your whole life has been only one train of dissimulation and artifice; even your sincerest and most intimate friends have only in part known you; you were beyond the reach of the world, for you changed character, sentiment, and inclination, according to circumstances and the disposition of those to whom you wished to make yourselves agreeable. Through these means you had acquired the reputation of ability and wisdom; but there shall be seen, in its native colours, a mean and treacherous soul, destitute of probity and truth, and whose principal virtue had been the concealment of its baseness and meanness.
You, likewise, unfaithful soul, whom a sex more jealous of honour had rendered still more attentive to conceal your weaknesses from the eyes of men, you were so artful in saving yourself from a discovery, you took from so far, and so surely, your measures to deceive the eyes of the husband, the vigilance of a mother, and, perhaps, the probity of a confessor: you would not have survived the accident which had therein betrayed your precautions and artifices. Vain cares! you only covered your lewdnesses, says the prophet, with a spider's web, which on that great day the Son of Man shall dissipate with a single blast of his mouth. In the presence of all assembled nations, saith the Lord, I will gather around thee all thy lovers. They shall see that eternal train of artifices, disguises, and meannesses; that shameful traffic of protestations and oaths which you made instrumental to so many different passions, and, at the same time, to lull their credulity; they shall see them, and tracing, even to the source, those criminal favours which you had bestowed on them, they shall find them not in their pretended merit, as you had wished to make them believe, but in your own infamous character, in a heart naturally lewd; you, who pique yourselves on
