it may more surely recall them to rule and duty. I know that truth loves neither rash nor indiscreet defenders; that the passions of men require a certain deference and management; that they are in the situation of sick persons, to whom it is often necessary to disguise and render palateable their medicines, and to cure them without their privity. I know that all deferences paid to the passions, when their tendency is to establish the truth, are not weakeners, but auxiliaries of it; and that the grand rule of the zeal of truth, is prudence and charity. But such is not the intention when they weaken it by nattering and servile adulations: they seek to please, and not to edify; they substitue themselves in the place of truth; and their sole wish is to attract those suffrages which are due to it alone. And let it not be said that it is more through sourness and ostentation, than through charity, that the just claim a merit in disdaining to betray truth. The world, which is always involved in deceit, of which the commerce and mutual ties revolve only upon dissimulation and artifice, which considers these even as an honourable science, and which is totally unacquainted with this noble rectitude of heart, cannot suppose it in others; it is its profound corruption which is the cause of its suspecting the sincerity and the courage of the upright: it is a mode of acting which appears ridiculous, because it is new to it; and, as it finds in it so marked a singularity, it loves better to suppose that it is rather the consequence of pride, or folly, than of virtue.
From thence it is that the truth is not only disguised, but is likewise openly betrayed. Last dissimulation of the priests of our Gospel, — a dissimulation of falsehood. They are not satisfied with quoting the prophecies in obscure and mollified terms: but, seeing that the magi did not return to Jerusalem, as they had intended, they add, no doubt in order to calm Herod, that, ashamed of not having been able to find that new King of whom they came in search, they have not had the courage to return: that they are strangers little versed in the knowledge of the law and of the prophets; and that the light of Heaven, which they pretended to follow, was nothing but a vulgar illusion, and a superstitious prejudice of a rude and credulous nation. And such must indeed have been their language to Herod, since they themselves act according to it, and do not run to Bethlehem to seek the new-born King, in order, it appears, to complete the persuasion of Herod, that there was more credulity than truth in the superstitious research of these magi.
And behold to what we at last come: in consequence of a servile compliance with the passions of men, and of continually wishing to please them at the expense of truth, we at last openly abandon it; we cowardly and downrightly sacrifice it to our interest, our fortune, and our reputation; we betray our conscience, our duty, and our understanding; and, consequently, from the moment that truth becomes irksome to us, or renders us displeasing, we disavow it; and deliver it up to oppression and iniquity; like Peter, we deny that we have ever been seen as its disciple. In this manner we
