this remembrance exact of us? Ah! my brethren, an ardent desire of repairing, by our homages, the impiety of so many shocking communions which crucify Jesus Christ afresh. So many impure, revengeful, worldly, and extortioning sinners, of every people and of every nation, receive him into profane mouths: we ought to feel the insults which Jesus Christ thereby suffers; to humble ourselves before him, seeing that his most signal blessing is become the occasion of the greatest crimes; to tremble for ourselves; to admire his goodness, which, for the profit of a small number of chosen, hath graciously been willing to submit to the indignities of that endless number of sinners, of all ages and of all times, who have, and still continue to dishonour him; to avert, by the tears of our heart and a thousand inward lamentations, the scourges which unworthy communions never fail to draw down upon the earth. For, if the apostle formerly lamented that general plagues, epidemical diseases, and sudden deaths, were only a consequence of the profanation of the sacrament; ah! thy finger has long been upon us, Lord; the cup of thy wrath is poured out upon our cities and provinces: thou armest kings against kings, and nations against nations; nothing is now spoken of but battles and the rumours of war; our fields are stricken with sterility; our families are consumed by the sword of the enemy, and the father is deprived of the only prop and consolation of his old age: we groan under burdens, which, though keeping the enemy of the state from our walls, yet leave us a prey to famine and want; the arts are now almost of no avail to the people; commerce languishes, and industry can hardly supply the common necessaries of life; yet what are even the public calamities, when compared with the private miseries known to thee alone? We have seen our citizens mowed down by hunger and death, and our cities turned into frightful deserts; the enemy of thy name takes advantage of our dissensions, and usurps thine inheritance.
Whence proceed these scourges, great God! so continued and so terrible? Where are formed those clouds of wrath and indignation which have so long been pouring out their torrents upon us? Is it not to punish the sacrilegious that thou art armed? Do not the outrages which are every day committed against thy body, at the feet of the altars, draw down upon us these marks of thy wrath? O strike us then, Lord, and avenge thy glory; stop not the arm of thy angel who hovers over us; let the houses where the traces of a profane blood are still imprinted not be spared: thine anger is just. But no; give us not the water of gall because we have sinned against thee: give peace in our days; listen to the cries of the righteous who entreat it of thee: "Lord," say they with the prophet, " we looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble." Terminate the profanations which are ever the attendants of war; cease to punish sacrileges by multiplying them on the earth; once more restore majesty to so many temples profaned, worship and dignity to so many churches despoiled, peace to our cities, abundance to our families, consolation
