here, it is a place of exile, and a foreign country, where tears and sighs become the only consolation of the faithful. Surely, then, it is unreasonable to expect delights in a place where every thing recalls the remembrance of our miseries; where every thing presents new dangers to us; where we live surrounded by rocks; where we are a prey to a thousand enemies; where every step endangers our destruction; where all our days are marked by some new infidelity; where, delivered up to ourselves, and without the assistance of Heaven, we do nothing but evil; where we spread the corruption of our heart over the small portion, even of good, which grace enables us to accomplish; — it is unreasonable, I say, to seek felicity and human consolations in a residence so melancholy and disagreeable to the children of God. The days of our mourning and sadness are in this world; those of peace and joy will come afterward. If, by abandoning God, we could acquire real happiness, our inconstancy would seem at least to have an excuse; but, as I have already said, the world has its disgusts as well as virtue; by changing our master, we only change our punishment; in diversifying our passions we only diversify our sorrows. The world has more smiling aspects, I confess, than virtue; but every where the reality is only trouble and vexation of spirit; and since cares are inevitable in this life, and we must encounter disgusts, either on the part of the world or of virtue, can we hesitate for a moment? Is it not preferable to suffer meritoriously than to suffer in vain, and be able to place our sufferings only amongst the number of our crimes? First truth: — Disgusts are inevitable in this life.
Reflection II. — But I say, in the second place, that those of piety are not so bitter as we represent them to ourselves.
For, my brethren, although we agree that the kingdom of God suffers violence; that Jesus Christ is come, in order to make separations and retrenchments which cost much to our nature; that the period of the present life is the time of the birth of the new man, and always followed by pain and sorrows; and that, in order to reconcile us to God, we must begin by waging a cruel war against ourselves; yet it does not follow, that the lot of a soul who serves the Lord, is to be pitied, and that the disgusts which accompany virtue are so bitter as the world represents. Virtue has only the prejudices of the senses and of the passions against it; it has nothing melancholy but the first glance; and its bitterness is not such as to render it a condition which we ought to fly from as insupportable and wretched.
For, in the first place, we are sheltered in it from the disgusts of the world and the passions; and were virtue to possess only the single advantage of placing us safe from the tempests of the passions; from frenzies, jealousies, suspicions, and bitterness of heart; from the void of a worldly life; when, by turning to God, we should gain only our freedom from the yoke of the world; our being placed above the reach of its hopes, of its revolutions,
