amid all the scandals which have so long afflicted the church, it is not surprising that men have sometimes been found who have denied the existence of a God; and that faith, so weakened in all, should in some be at last wholly extinguished. As chosen and extraordinary souls appear in every age, whom the Lord filleth with his grace, his lights, and his most shining gifts, and upon whom he delighteth in liberally pouring forth all the riches of his mercy; so, likewise, are seen others in whom iniquity is, as I may say, consummate, and whom the Lord seems to have marked out, to display in them the most terrible judgments of his justice, and the most fatal effects of his neglect and wrath.
The church, where all these scandals are to increase even to the end, cannot therefore boast of being entirely purged from the scandal of unbelief: she hath, from time to time, her stars which enlighten, and her monsters who disfigure her; and, along with those great men, celebrated for their lights and for their sanctity, who in every age have served as her support and ornament, she hath also witnessed a list of impious men, whose names are still at present the horror of the universe, who have dared, in writings full of blasphemy and impiety, to attack the mysteries of God, to deny salvation and the promises made to our fathers, to overturn the foundation of faith, and to preach free-thinking among believers.
I do not pretend, therefore, to say, that among so many wretches who speak the language of unbelief among us, there may not perhaps be found some one sufficiently corrupted in mind and in heart, and so far abandoned by God, as actually, and in effect to be an unbeliever: I mean only to establish, that these men, grounded in impiety, are rare; and that, among all those who are continually vaunting their doubts and their unbelief, and make a deplorable ostentation of them, there is not perhaps a single one upon whose heart faith doth not still preserve its rights, and who doth not inwardly dread that God whom he apparently refuses to acknowledge. To overthrow, it is not always necessary to combat our pretended unbelievers; it would often be combating only phantoms; they require only to be displayed such as they are: the wretched declaration of unbelief quickly tumbles down, and nothing remains but their passions and their debaucheries.
And, behold the first reason upon which I have established the general proposition, that the majority of those who make a boast of their doubts have actually none; it is, that their doubts are those of licentiousness, and not of unbelief. Why, my brethren? Because it is of licentiousness which hath formed their doubts, and not their doubts licentiousness; because that, in fact, it is to their passions and not to their doubts that they hold: lastly, because that, in general, they attack in religion only those truths inimical to their passions. Behold reflections which, in my opinion, are worthy of your attention; I shall lay them before you without ornament, and in the same order in which they presented themselves to my mind.
I say, in the first place, because their doubts have sprung from licentiousness and not licentiousness from their doubts. Yes, my
