which chance, which circumstances, which perhaps a just resentment hath forced from him; and the licentiousness of thy discourses toward others knows neither the bounds of politeness nor of that decency which the world itself prescribes.
But, granting that you have nothing to reproach yourself on the part of moderation toward your brother, what do you gain by hating him? Do you thereby efface the fatal impressions which his discourses may have left on the minds of men? On the contrary, you inflict a fresh wound upon your heart; you give yourself a stab which carries death to your soul: you wrench the sword from his hands, if I may speak in this manner, in order to plunge it into yourself. By the innocency of your manners, and the integrity of your conduct, you make the injustice of his discourses evident; destroy by a life free from reproach, the prejudices to which he may have given rise against you; make the meanness and the iniquity of his calumnies revert upon himself, by the practice of those virtues exactly opposite to the faults which he imputes to you: such is the just and legal manner of revenging yourself. Triumph over his malice by your manners and by your silence: you will heap living coals upon his head; you will gain the public on your side, you will leave nothing to your enemy but the infamy of his passion and of his impositions. But hating him is the revenge of the weak, and the sad consolation of the guilty; in a word, it is the only refuge of those who can find none in virtue and in innocence.
But let us now quit all these reasonings, and come to the essential point. You are commanded to love those who despitefully use and calumniate you; to pray for them, to entreat their conversion to God, that he change their rancorous heart, that he inspire them with sentiments of peace and of charity, and that he place them among the number of his holy. You are commanded to consider them as already citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, with whom you shall form only one voice in singing the immortal praises of grace. You are commanded to look upon injuries as blessings, as the punishment of your hidden crimes, for which you have so often merited to be covered with confusion before men; as the price of the kingdom of God, which is promised to those alone who with piety bear with persecution and calumny.
For, after all, it must come to this. Self-love alone would make us love those who love us, who praise us, who publish our virtues, false or true; such was the whole virtue of the Pagans; for, said Jesus Christ, if ye love those that love you, what reward have ye; do not even the publicans so? But religion goes farther: it requires us to love those who hate and persecute us: it fixes at that price the mercies of God upon us, and declares to us that no forgiveness is to be expected for ourselves, if we grant it not to our brethren.
And, candidly, would you have God to forget the crimes and the horrors of your whole life, to be insensible to his own glory, which you have so often insulted, while you cannot prevail upon yourself to forget a word; while you are so warm, so delicate, and so pas-
