lived, remain sunk in oblivion: their passions terminated with them; their vices, obscure as their names, have escaped history; and, with regard to us, they are as though they had never been; and the errors of those who are distinguished in their age by their rank and birth, are all that now remains to us of these past times. It is their passions that continually inflame new ones, even at this day, through the licentiousness of, and the open manner in which they are mentioned by the authors who hand them down to us; and the sole privilege of their condition is, that, while the vices of the lower orders of people sink with themselves, those of the great and the powerful spring up again, as I may say, from their ashes, pass from age to age, are engraven on the public monuments, and are never blotted out from the memory of men. What crimes, great God! which are the scandal of all ages, the rock of all stations, and which, even to the end, shall serve as an excitement to vice, as a pretext to the sinner, and as a lasting model of debauchery and licentiousness!
Lastly. A scandal of seduction. Your examples, in honouring vice, render virtue contemptible. The Christian life becomes so ridiculous, that those who profess it are almost ashamed of it before you. The exterior of piety has an ungracious and awkward appearance, which is concealed in your presence, as if it were a bent which dishonours the mind. How many souls touched by God, only resist his grace and his spirit through the dread of forfeiting with you that degree of confidence which a long society in pleasures hath given to them! How many souls, disgusted with the world, yet who have not the courage to declare themselves, and return to God, lest they expose themselves to your senseless derisions, still continue to copy your manners, upon which they have been fully undeceived by grace, and, through an unrighteous complaisance and respect for your rank, take a thousand steps from which their new faith and likewise their inclination are equally distant!
I speak not of the prejudices which you perpetuate in the world against virtue; of those lamentable discourses against the godly, which your authority confirms; which pass from you to the people, and keep up, in all stations, those ancient prepossessions against piety, and those continual derisions of the righteous, which deprive virtue of all its dignity, and harden sinners in vice.
And from thence, my brethren, how many righteous seduced! how many weak led astray! how many wavering souls retained in sin! how many impious and libertine souls strengthened! What an obstacle do you become to the fruit of our ministry! How many hearts, already prepared, oppose, to the force of the truth which we announce, only the long engagements which bind them to your manners and to your pleasures, and find within themselves only you who serve as a wall and a buckler against grace! My God! what a scourge for the age, what a misfortune for the people, is a grandee according to the world, who lives not in the fear of thee, who knows thee not, and who acts in contempt of thy laws and eternal ordinances! It is a present which thou sendest to men in
