you laugh at those who bear it in their heart, and who ground their whole hope and expectation in it! You worship him as your Judge; and you contemn and load with ridicule those who dread him, and who anxiously labour to render him favourable to their interests! You believe him to be sincere and faithful in his word; and you look upon, as weak minds, those who place their trust in him, and who sacrifice every thing to the grandeur and to the certainty of his promises! O man, so astonishing, so full of contradictions, so little in unison with thyself, would the infidel exclaim, how great and how holy must the God of the Christians therefore be, seeing that, among all those who know him, he hath no enemies but such as are of thy description!
Let us, therefore, respect virtue, my brethren; let us honour, in his servants, the gifts of God, and the wonders of his grace. Let us merit, by our deference and our esteem for piety, the blessing of piety itself. Let us regard the worthy and pious as the souls who alone continue to draw down the favours of Heaven upon the earth, as resources established to reconcile us one day with God, as blessed signs, which prove to us that the Lord still looketh upon men with pity, and continueth his mercies upon his church. Let us encourage by our praises, if we cannot strengthen by our example, the souls who return to him: let us applaud their change, if we think it impossible, as yet to change ourselves; let us glory in defending them, if our passions will not, as yet, permit us to imitate them. Let us reverence and esteem virtue? Let us have no friends but the friends of God. Let us count upon the fidelity of men only in proportion as they are faithful to their Master and Creator. Let us confide our sorrows and our sufferings only to those who can present them to him, who alone can console them: let us believe to be in our real interests only those who are in the interests of our salvation. Let us smooth the way to our conversion: let us, by our respect for the just, prepare the world to behold us one day, without surprise, just ourselves. Let us not, by our derisions and censures, raise up an invincible stumbling-block of human respect, which shall for ever prevent us from declaring ourselves disciples of that piety which we have so loudly and so publicly decried. Let us render glory to the truth; and, in order that it may deliver us, let us religiously receive it, like the magi, from the moment that it is manifested to us: let us not dissemble it, like the priests, when we owe it to our brethren; let us not declare against it, like Herod, when we can no longer dissemble it to ourselves, in order that, after having walked in the ways of truth upon the earth, we may all together one day be sanctified in truth, and perfected in charity.
