troubles, and eternal changes; the becoming masters of our own hearts, and being dependent on none but ourselves: our having none but God to account with; our no longer fatiguing ourselves in vain, by running after phantoms, which continually elude our grasp; — alas! the lot of a just soul would always be worthy of envy; whatever might be the bitter circumstances accompanying virtue, they would still be a thousand times more supportable than the pleasures of the world; and to mourn with the people of God, would be infinitely preferable to participating in the insipid and childish pleasures of the children of the age.
Secondly. If virtue does not protect us from the afflictions and disgraces inevitable upon this earth, it at least softens their asperity: it makes our heart submissive to God; it makes us kiss the hand which is raised up against us; it discovers, in the blows with which the Lord afflicts us, either a cure for our passions, or the just punishment of our crimes. And were virtue to have only the privilege of diminishing our griefs, by diminishing our attachments; of rendering us less feeling to our losses, by gradually detaching us from all the objects which we may one day lose; of preparing our souls for affliction, by keeping it continually submissive to God; were virtue to possess this consolation alone, alas! ought we to lament and complain of any bitterness which attends it? What more can be desired in this miserable life, where almost all our days are distinguished, by new afflictions and adversities; where every thing escapes our grasp; where our relations, friends, and protectors are every moment snatched from us, and continually falling around us; where our fortune has no settlement, but changes its appearance every day; alas! what more can be desired than a situation which consoles us on these events; supports us in these storms; calms us in these agitations; and which, in the eternal changes which take place here below, leaves us at least always the same?
Thirdly. Those reluctances and disgusts which revolt us so strongly against virtue, in reality consist only in repressing the passions which render us unhappy, and are the source of all our pains. They are remedies a little grievous to be sure, but they serve to cure evils which are infinitely more so. It is a constraint which fatigues us, but which, in fatiguing, delivers us from a slavery which weighed us down; it is a bitterness which mortifies the passions, but which, in mortifying, weakens and calms them; it is a sword which pierces the heart to the quick, but which makes the corrupted and defiled matter to flow from it; insomuch, that, in the very moment of the wound's greatest agony, we experience the comfort and certainty of a cure. These are maxims which revolt our nature and inclinations; but which, in revolting, recall them to order and rule. Thus, the bitterness and the thorns of virtue have always at least a present utility, which recompenses their harshness: in disgusting, they purify us; in probing, they cure us; in paining, they calm us. These are not like the disgusts of the world, of which nothing remains to us but the bitterness of
