might promise yourselves distinctions and preferences; but the world shall itself be judged; and he, who will judge it and you also, shall distinguish men only by their vices or by their virtues. He will not demand the names, he will demand only the deeds: calculate thereupon the distinctions which you ought to expect.
Thus, we see not that Jesus Christ, in the Gospel, proposed to the princes of the people, and to the grandees of Jerusalem, other maxims than to the citizens of Judea, and to his disciples, all taken from the lowest ranks of the people; he speaks in the capital of Judea, and before all that Palestine held the most illustrious, as he speaks upon the borders of the sea, or upon the mountains, to that obscure populace which followed him; his maxims are not changed with the rank of those who listened to him. The cross, violence, contempt of the world, self-denial, abstinence from pleasures: behold what he announces at Jerusalem, the seat of kings, as at Nazareth, the most obscure place of Judea; to that young man who was so rich, as to the children of Zebedee, whose only inheritance was their nets; to the sisters of Lazarus, of a distinguished rank in Palestine, as to the woman of Samaria, of a more obscure condition. His enemies themselves confessed that this was his peculiar character, and were forced to render him this justice, that he taught the way of God in truth, and that he had no respect of rank or of persons.
What do I say? Even after his death the Gospel seemed a doctrine sent down from heaven, only because that, announcing to the great and to the powerful, sorrowful and crucifying maxims, apparently so incompatible with their station, they, nevertheless, submitted to the yoke of Jesus Christ, and embraced a law which, amid all their prosperity and abundance, permitted to them no more pleasures and comforts here below than to the common and simple people. And, in effect, why should the first defenders of faith have regarded the conversions of Caesars, and of the powerful of the age, as a proof of the truth and of the divinity of the Gospel? What would there be so surprising, that the rich and the powerful had embraced a doctrine which would distinguish them from the people by a greater indulgence; which, while it would prescribe tears, fasting, self-denial, to others, would relax in favour of the great, and would consent that profusions, pleasures, sensualities, gaming, public places, all so rigorously forbidden to common believers, become an innocent occupation for them; and that what is a road to perdition for others, should for them alone be a road of salvation? It would then be the wisdom of the age which would have established the Gospel, and not the folly of the cross; it would be the artifices and the deferences of men, and not the arm of the Almighty; it would be flesh and blood, and not the power of God; and the conversion of the universe would have nothing more wonderful, than the establishment of superstitions and of sects.
And candidly, my brethren, if the Gospel had distinctions to make, and condescensions to grant; if the law of God could relax
