SERMON XIV.
FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES.
" Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies." — Matt. v. 43.
It is commonly believed that a degree of indulgence and caution had been used by the legislator of the Jews, in publishing the law on forgiveness of injuries, that obliged to accommodate it, in some respect to the weakness of a carnal people, and otherwise persuaded that of all virtues, that of loving an enemy was the most difficult to the heart of man, he was satisfied with regulating and prescribing bounds for revenge. It was only in order to prevent great excesses, says St. Augustine, that he meant to give authority to smaller ones. That law, like all the others, had its sanctity, its goodness, its justice; but it was rather an establishment of polity than a rule of piety. It was calculated to maintain the internal tranquillity of the state; but it neither touched the heart nor struck at the root of hatreds and revenge. The only effect proposed, was either to restrain the aggressor, by threatening him with the same punishment with which he had grieved his brother, or to put a check upon the irritation of the offended, by letting him see, that, if he exceeded in the satisfaction required, he exposed himself to undergo all the surplus of his revenge.
Philosophers, in their morality, had also placed the forgiveness of injuries among the number of virtues; but that was a pretext of vanity rather than a rule of discipline. It is because revenge seemed to them to carry along with it something, I know not what, of mean and passionate, which would have disfigured the portrait and the tranquillity of their ideal sage, that it appeared disgraceful to them to be unable to rise superior to an injury. The forgiveness of their enemies was solely founded, therefore, upon the contempt in which they held them. They avenged themselves by disdaining revenge; and pride readily gave up the pleasure of hurting those who have injured us, for the pleasure which was found in despising them.
But the law of the gospel, upon loving our enemies, neither flatters pride, nor spares self-love. In the forgiveness of injuries, nothing ought to indemnify the Christian but the consolation of imitating Jesus Christ, and of obeying him; but the claims which, in an enemy, prove to him a brother; but the hope of meeting, before the eternal Judge, with the same indulgence which he shall have used toward men. Nothing ought to limit him in his charity, but charity itself, which hath no bounds, which excepts neither places, times, nor persons, which ought never to be extinguished. And, should the religion of Christians have no other proof against unbelief than the sublime elevation of this maxim, it would always have this pre-eminence in sanctity, and conse-
