point. So many ages, so many fresh absurdities upon the immortality and the nature of the soul: here, it was an assemblage of atoms: there, a subtle fire; in another place, a minute and penetrating air; in another school, a portion of the Divinity. Some made it to die with the body; others* would have it to have existed before the body; some again made it to pass from one body to another; from man to the horse, from the condition of a reasonable being to that of animals without reason. There were some who taught, that the true happiness of man is in the senses; a greater number placed it in the reason; others again found it only in fame and glory j many in sloth and indolence. And what is the most deplorable here is, that the existence of God, his nature, the immortality of the soul, the destination and the happiness of men, all point so essential to his destiny, so decisive with regard to his eternal misery or happiness, were, nevertheless, become problems, every where destined merely to amuse the leisure of the schools and the vanity of the sophists; idle questions, in which they were never interested for the principle of truth, but solely for the glory of coming off conqueror. Great God! it is in this manner that thou sportest with human wisdom.
If from thence we entered into the Christian ages, who could enumerate that endless variety of sects which, in all times hath broken the unity, in order to follow strange doctrines? What were the abominations of the Gnostics, the extravagant follies of the Valentinians, the fanaticisms of Montanus, the contradictions of the Manicheans? Follow every age; as, in order to prove the just, it is necessary that there be heresies. You will find that in every age the church hath always been miserably rent with them.
Recall to your remembrance the sad dissensions of only the past age. Since the separation of our brethren, what a monstrous variety in their doctrine! What endless sects sprung from only one sect! What numberless particular assemblies in one same schism! — O faith! O gift of God! O divine torch, which comes to clear up darkness, how necessary art thou to man! O infallible rule, sent from heaven, and given in trust to the church of Jesus Christ, always the same in all ages, always independent of places, of times, of nations, and of interests, how requisite it is that thou served as a check upon the eternal fluctuations of the human mind! O pillar of fire, at the same time so obscure and so luminous, of what importance it is that thou always conducted the camp of the Lord, the tabernacle and the tents of Israel, through all the perils of the desert, the rocks, the temptations, and the dark and unknown paths of this life!
For you, my brethren, what instruction should we draw from this discourse, and what should I say to you in concluding? You say that you have faith; show your faith by your works. What shall it avail you to have believed, if your manners have belied your belief? The gospel is yet more the religion of the heart than of the mind. That faith which makes Christians is not a simple submission of the reason; it is a pious tenderness of the soul; it is a
