cept, and from the law, the more do we remove ourselves from peace and tranquillity of heart; and that the Lord, in forbidding us to yield ourselves up to impetuous and iniquitous passions, hath only forbidden us to yield ourselves up to our own tyrants, and that his only intention hath been to render us happy in rendering us believers.
Behold a testimony which the law of God finds in the bottom of our hearts. Hurried away by the delusion of the senses, we vainly cast off the yoke of the holy rules; we can never succeed in justifying, even to ourselves, our own irregularities; we always internally adopt the interests of the law against ourselves; we always find within us a justification of the rules against the passions. We cannot corrupt this internal witness of the truth, which pleads within us for virtue; we always feel a secret misunderstanding between our inclinations and our lights: the law of God, born in our heart, incessantly struggles there against the law of the flesh foreign to man; it maintains its truths there in spite of ourselves, if it cannot maintain its authority; it officiates as a censurer, if it cannot serve as a director: in a word, it renders us unhappy, if it cannot render us believers.
Thus, in vain do we sometimes give way to all the bitterness of hatred and of revenge; we immediately feel that this cruel pleasure is not made for the heart of man; that to hate, is, in fact, to punish ourselves; and, in returning to ourselves after the transports of passion, we find within us a principle of humanity which disavows their violence, and clearly points out to us, that gentleness and kindness were our first inclinations; and that, in commanding us to love our brethren, the law of God hath only done so, as to consult the right and most reasonable feelings of our heart, and to reconcile us with ourselves. Thou art more righteous than I, said Saul to David, in the time of his strongest hatred against him. That goodness, born in the heart of all men, forced from him that confession, and inwardly disavowed the injustice and the cruelty of his revenge.
In vain do we plunge ourselves into brutal and sensual gratifications, and madly range after whatever may satisfy the insatiable desires of pleasure: we quickly feel that debauchery leads us too far to be agreeable to nature: that whatever enslaves and tyrannizes over us, overturns the order of our first institution: and that the Gospel, in prohibiting the voluptuous passions, hath provided for the tranquillity of our heart, and for restoring to us all its elevation and nobility. How many hired servants of my father's, said the prodigal, still bound in the chains of vice, have bread enough, and to spare, and I consume my days in weariness and in shame! It was a remnant of reason and of nobility which still spake in the bottom of his heart.
Lastly. Investigate all the precepts of the law of God, and you will feel that they have a necessary connexion with the heart of man; that they are rules founded on a profound knowledge of what takes place within us; that they solely contain the remedies of our
