SERMON XIX.
ON THE VICES AND VIRTUES OF THE GREAT.
"And the devil showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them: and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me."— Matthew iv. 8, 9.
Human prosperities have always been one of the most dangerous wiles employed by the devil to entrap men. He knows that the love of fame and of distinction is so natural to us, that, in general, nothing is considered as too much for their attainment; and that the use of them is so seducing, and so apt to lead astray, that nothing is more rare than piety surrounded with pomp and power.
Nevertheless, it is God alone who raiseth up the great and the powerful; who placeth you above the rest, in order to be the fathers of the people, the comforters of the afflicted, the refuge of the helpless, the supports of the church, the protector of virtue, and the models of all believers.
Suffer then, my brethren, that, entering into the spirit of our gospel, I here lay before you the dangers, as well as the advantages of your state; and that I point out to you the obstacles and the facilities which the rank, to which, through Providence, you are born, presents to your discharge of the duties of a Christian life.
Great temptations, I confess, are attached to your station; but it has likewise as great resources. People of rank are born, it would seem, with more passions than the rest of men; yet have they also the opportunity of practising more virtues: their vices are followed with more consequences; but their piety becomes also more beneficial: in a word, they are much more culpable than the people, when they forget their God; but they have likewise more merit in remaining faithful to him.
My intention, therefore, at present, is to represent to you the extensive good, or the boundless evils, which always accompany your virtues or vices; to convince you of what influence the elevated rank to which you are born, is toward good, or toward evil; and, lastly, to render irregularity odious to you, by unfolding the inexplicable consequences which your passions drag after them; and piety amiable, through the unutterable benefits which always follow your good examples. It would matter little to point out the dangers of your station, were the advantages of it not likewise to be shown. The Christian pulpit declaims in general against the grandeurs and glory of the age; but it would be of little avail to be continually speaking of your complaints, were their remedies not held out to you at the same time. These are the two truths which I mean to unite in this Discourse, by laying before you the endless consequences of the vices of the great and powerful, and what inestimable benefits flow from their virtues.
Part I. — " A sore trial shall come upon the mighty, says the Spirit of God; for mercy will soon pardon the meanest; but mighty men shall be mightily tormented."'
It is not, my brethren, because he is mighty himself, that the Lord, as the Scriptures say, rejects the great and the mighty, or that rank and dignity are titles hateful in his eyes, to which his favours are denied, and which, of themselves, constitute our guilt. With the Lord there is no exception of persons: he is the Lord of the cedars of Lebanon, as well as of the humble hyssop of the valley: he causes his sun to rise over the highest mountains, as well as over the lowest and obscurest places: he hath formed the stars of heaven, as well as the worms which crawl upon the earth: the great are even more natural images of his greatness and glory, the ministers of his authority, the means through which his liberalities and generosity are poured out upon his people. And I come not here my brethren in the usual language, to pronounce anathemas against human grandeurs, and to make your station a crime, since that very station comes from God, and that the object in question is not so much to exaggerate the perils of it, as to point out the infinite ways of salvation attached to that rank to which, through the will of Providence, you have been born.
But, I say, that the sins of the great and powerful have two characters of enormity which render them infinitely more punishable before God than the sins of the commonalty of believers. First, the scandal; secondly, ingratitude.
The scandal. There is no crime to which the gospel leaves less hopes of forgiveness than that of being a stumbling-block to our brethren: " Woe unto the man," said Jesus Christ, (e who shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me; it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." First, because you destroy a soul which ought eternally to have enjoyed God. Secondly, because you occasion your brother to perish, for whom Jesus Christ hath died. Thirdly, because you become the minister of the devil's designs for the destruction of souls. Fourthly, because you are that man of sin, that antichrist, of whom the apostle speaks; for Jesus Christ hath saved man, and you destroy him; Jesus Christ hath raised up true worshippers to his Father, and you deprive him of them; Jesus Christ hath gained us by his blood, and you snatch his conquest from him; Jesus Christ is the physician of souls, and you are their corrupter; he is their way, and you are their snare; he is the shepherd who comes in search of his perishing sheep, and you are the ravenous wolf which slays and destroys those his Father had given him. Fifthly, because all other sins die, as I may say, with the sinner; but the fruit of his scandals will outlive him, and his crimes will not go down with him into the tomb of his fathers.
Achan was punished with so much rigour for having taken only a wedge of gold from among the spoils which were consecrated to the Lord: My God! what then shall be the punishment of him who deprives Jesus Christ of a soul which was his precious spoil, redeemed not with gold and silver, but with all the divine blood of the Lamb without stain? The golden calf was reduced into powder for having occasioned the prevarication of Israel: great God! and could all the splendour which surrounds the great and the powerful shelter them from thy wrath, when their exaltation becomes only a stumbling-block and a source of idolatry to the people? The brazen serpent itself, that sacred monument of God's mercies upon Judah, was broken to pieces for having been an occasion of scandal to the tribes: my God! and the sinner already so odious through his own crimes, shall he be spared when he becomes a snare and a stumbling-block to his brethren?
Now, my brethren, such is the first character which always accompanies your sins, you who are exalted through rank or birth, over the commonalty of believers: — the scandal. The obscure and vulgar live only for themselves. Mingled in the crowd, and concealed by the abjectness of their lot from the eyes of men, God alone is the secret witness of their ways, and the invisible spectator of their backslidings: if they fall, or if they remain steadfast, it is for the Lord alone, who sees and who judges them; the world, which is unacquainted even with their names, is equally uninstructedby their examples; their life is without consequence; they may depart from the right path, but they quit it alone; and if they accomplish not their own salvation, their ruin is, at least, confined to themselves, and has no influence over that of their brethren.
But persons of an exalted station, are like a public pageant, upon which all eyes are fixed; they are those houses built upon a summit, the sole situation of which renders them visible from afar; those flaming torches, the splendour of which at once betrays and exposes them to view. Such is the misfortune of greatness and of rank; you no longer live for yourself alone; to your destruction or to your salvation is attached the destruction or the salvation of almost all those around you: your manners form the manners of the people; your examples are the rules of the multitude; your actions are as well known as your titles; it is impossible for you to err unknown to the public, and the scandal of your faults is always the melancholy privilege of your rank.
I say, the scandal, first, of imitation. Men always willingly copy after evil, but more especially when held out by great examples; they then ground a kind of vanity upon their errors, because it is through these that they resemble you. The people consider it as giving them an air of consequence to tread in your steps. The city thinks it an honour to adopt all the vices of the court. Your manners form a poison which penetrates even into the provinces; which infects all stations, and gives a total change to the public manners; which decks out licentiousness with an air of nobility and spirit, and, in place of the simplicity of our ancient manners, substitutes the miserable novelty of your pleasures, of your luxury, of your profusions, and of your profane indecencies. Thus from you it is that obscene fashions, vanity of dress, those artifices which dishonour a visage where modesty alone ought to be painted, the rage of gaming, freedom of manners, licentiousness of conversations, unbridled passions, and all the corruption of our ages, pass to the people.
And from whence, think you, my brethren, comes that unbridled licentiousness which reigns among the people? Those who live far from you, in the most distant provinces, still preserve, at least, some remains of their ancient simplicity and the primitive innocence; they live in a happy ignorance of the greatest part of those abuses which are now, through your examples, become laws. But the nearer the countries approach to you, the more is the change of manners visible, the more is innocence adulterated, the more the abuses are common, and the greatest crime of the people is to be acquainted with your manners and your customs. After the chiefs of the tribes had entered into the tents of the daughters of Midian, all Judah went aside from the Lord, and few were to be found, who had kept free from the general guilt. Great God! how terrible shall one day be the trial of the great and powerful, since, besides their own endless passions, they shall be made accountable to thee for the public irregularities, the depravity of the manners, and the corruption of their age; and since even the sins of the people shall become their own special sins!
Secondly. A scandal of compliance. They endeavour to please, by imitating you; your inferiors, your creatures, your dependents, consider a resemblance to you as the high road to your favour: they copy your vices, because you hold them out to them as virtues; they enter into your fancies, in order to enter into your confidence; they outrival each other in copying, or in surpassing you, because, in your eyes, their greatest merit is in resembling you. Alas! how many weak souls, born with the principles of virtue, and who, far from you, would have nursed only those dispositions favourable to salvation, have had their innocence wrecked through the unfortunate necessity in which their fortune placed them of imitating you?
Thirdly. A scandal of impunity. You could never reprehend, in your dependents, those abuses and those excesses which you allow to yourself: you are under a necessity of suffering in them what you have no inclination to refuse to yourself: your eyes must be shut upon disorders which are authorized by your own manners; and you are forced to pardon those who resemble you, lest you condemn yourself. A woman of the world, wholly devoted to the art of pleasing, spreads through all her household an air of licentiousness and of worldliness; her house becomes a rock from whence innocence never departs uninjured; every one imitates at home what she displays abroad; and she must pass over these irregularities, because her own manners do not permit her to censure them. What excesses, in those houses kept open and appropriated to everlasting gaming, among that people, as I may say, of domestics, whom vanity has multiplied beyond all number! You know the truth of this, my brethren, and the dignity of the Christian pulpit does not forbid me from repeating it here. How dearly do these unfortunate wretches pay for your pleasures, who, out of your sight, and no check to restrain them, fill up the idle time which your pleasures leave to them, in every excess adapted to the meanness of their education and their abject nature, and which they think themselves authorized in doing by your examples! O my God, if he who neglects his people be worse in thy sight than an infidel, what then is the guilt of him who scandalizes them, and is the cause of their finding death and condemnation where they ought to have found the succours of salvation and the asylum of their innocence?
Fourthly. A scandal of employment and of necessity. How many unfortunate wretches perish in order to feed your pleasures and your iniquitous passions! For you alone the dangerous arts subsist: the theatres are erected solely for your criminal recreations; profane harmonies every where resound, and corrupt so many hearts only to flatter the corruption of yours; the works, fatal to innocence, are transmitted to posterity solely through the favour of your names and protection. It is you alone, my brethren, who give to the world lascivious poets, pernicious authors, and profane writers: it is to please you that these corrupters of the public manners perfect their talents, and seek their exaltation and fortune in a success, the only end of which is the destruction of souls: it is you alone who protect, reward, and produce them; who take from them, by honouring them with your familiarity, that mark of disgrace and infamy with which they had been stigmatized by the laws of the church and of the state, and which degraded them in the eyes of men.
Thus it is through you that the people participate in these debaucheries; that this poison infects the cities and provinces; that these public pleasures become the source of the public miseries and licentiousness; that so many unfortunate victims renounce their modesty to gratify your pleasures, and, seeking to improve the mediocrity of their fortune by the exercise of talents which your passions alone have rendered useful and recommendable, come upon criminal theatres to express passions for the gratification of yours; to perish in order to please; to sacrifice their innocence, in occasioning the loss of it to those who listen to them; to become public rocks, and the scandal of religion; to bring misery and dissension even into your families, and to punish you, woman of the world, for the support and credit which you give them by your presence and your applauses, by becoming the criminal object of the passion and of the ill-conduct of your children, and perhaps dividing with yourself the heart of your husband, and completely ruining his affairs and fortune.
Fifthly. A scandal of duration. It is little, my brethren, that the corruption of our age is almost wholly the work of the great and powerful; the ages to come will likewise be indebted to you, perhaps, for a part of their licentiousness and excesses. Those profane poems, which have seen the light solely through your means, shall still corrupt hearts in the following ages: those dangerous authors, whom you honour with your protection, shall pass into the hands of your posterity; and your crimes shall be multiplied with that dangerous venom which they contain, and which shall be communicated from age to age. Even your passions, immortalized in history, after having been a scandal in their time, will also become one in the following ages: the reading of your errors, preserved to posterity, shall raise up imitators after your death: instructions in guilt will be sought for in the narrative of your adventures; and your excesses shall not expire with you. The voluptuousness of Solomon still furnishes blasphemies and derisions to the impious, and motives of confidence to libertinism; the infamous passion of Potiphar's wife hath been preserved down to us, and her rank hath immortalized her weakness. Such is the destiny of the vices and of the passions of the great and powerful: they do not live for their own age alone; they live for the ages to come, and the duration of their scandal hath no other limits than that of their name.
You know this to be a truth, my brethren. Do they not, at present, continue to read, with new danger, those scandalous memoirs composed in the age of our fathers, which have transmitted down to us the excesses of the preceding courts, and immortalized the passions of the principal persons who figured in them? The irregularities of an obscure people, and of the rest of men who then lived, remain sunk in oblivion: their passions terminated with them; their vices, obscure as their names, have escaped history; and, with regard to us, they are as though they had never been; and the errors of those who are distinguished in their age by their rank and birth, are all that now remains to us of these past times. It is their passions that continually inflame new ones, even at this day, through the licentiousness of, and the open manner in which they are mentioned by the authors who hand them down to us; and the sole privilege of their condition is, that, while the vices of the lower orders of people sink with themselves, those of the great and the powerful spring up again, as I may say, from their ashes, pass from age to age, are engraven on the public monuments, and are never blotted out from the memory of men. What crimes, great God! which are the scandal of all ages, the rock of all stations, and which, even to the end, shall serve as an excitement to vice, as a pretext to the sinner, and as a lasting model of debauchery and licentiousness!
Lastly. A scandal of seduction. Your examples, in honouring vice, render virtue contemptible. The Christian life becomes so ridiculous, that those who profess it are almost ashamed of it before you. The exterior of piety has an ungracious and awkward appearance, which is concealed in your presence, as if it were a bent which dishonours the mind. How many souls touched by God, only resist his grace and his spirit through the dread of forfeiting with you that degree of confidence which a long society in pleasures hath given to them! How many souls, disgusted with the world, yet who have not the courage to declare themselves, and return to God, lest they expose themselves to your senseless derisions, still continue to copy your manners, upon which they have been fully undeceived by grace, and, through an unrighteous complaisance and respect for your rank, take a thousand steps from which their new faith and likewise their inclination are equally distant!
I speak not of the prejudices which you perpetuate in the world against virtue; of those lamentable discourses against the godly, which your authority confirms; which pass from you to the people, and keep up, in all stations, those ancient prepossessions against piety, and those continual derisions of the righteous, which deprive virtue of all its dignity, and harden sinners in vice.
And from thence, my brethren, how many righteous seduced! how many weak led astray! how many wavering souls retained in sin! how many impious and libertine souls strengthened! What an obstacle do you become to the fruit of our ministry! How many hearts, already prepared, oppose, to the force of the truth which we announce, only the long engagements which bind them to your manners and to your pleasures, and find within themselves only you who serve as a wall and a buckler against grace! My God! what a scourge for the age, what a misfortune for the people, is a grandee according to the world, who lives not in the fear of thee, who knows thee not, and who acts in contempt of thy laws and eternal ordinances! It is a present which thou sendest to men in thy wrath, and the most dreadful mark of thine indignation upon the cities and upon the kingdoms.
Yes, my brethren, behold what you are when you belong not to God. Such is the first character of your faults, — the scandal. Your lot decides in general that of the people: the excesses of the lower ranks are always the consequence of your excesses; and the transgressions of Jacob, said the prophet, that is to say, of the people and of the tribes, came only from Samaria, the seat of the great and of the mighty.
But, even granting that no new degree of enormity should be specially attached to the great by the scandal inseparable from their sins, ingratitude, which forms the second character of them, would be amply sufficient to attract, upon their heads, that neglect of God by which his bowels are for ever shut to compassion and clemency.
I say ingratitude: for God hath preferred you to so many unfortunate fellow-creatures who languish in obscurity and in want: he hath exalted you, and hath caused you to be born amid splendour and abundance; he hath chosen you above all the people, to load you with benefits; in you alone he hath assembled riches, honours, titles, distinctions, and all the advantages of the earth. It would seem that his providence watches only for you, while so many unfortunate millions eat the bread of tribulation and of sorrow. The earth seems to be produced for you alone; the sun to rise and to go down solely for you; even the rest of men seem born only for you; and to contribute to your grandeur and purposes. It would appear that the Lord is occupied solely with you, while he neglected so many obscure souls, whose days are days of sorrow and want, and for whom it would seem that there is no God upon earth. Yet, nevertheless, you turn against God all that you have received from his hands; your abundance serves for the indulgence of your passions; your exaltation facilitates your criminal pleasures, and his blessings become your crimes.
Yes, my brethren, while thousands of unfortunate fellow-creatures, upon whom his hand is, so heavy; while an obscure populace, for whom life has nothing but hardships and toil, invoke and bless him, raise up the hands to him in the simplicity of their heart, regard him as their father, and give him every mark of an unaffected piety, and of a sincere religion — you, whom he loads with his benefits; you for whom the entire world seems to be made, you acknowledge him not; you deign not to lift up your eyes to him; you never bestow even a moment's reflection whether there be or be not a God above you who interferes in the things of the earth; in place of thanksgivings you return him insults, and religion is only for the people.
Alas! you think it so mean and so ungenerous when those whose advancement was your work, neglect you, deny their obligations, and even employ that credit which they owe solely to you, in thwarting and ruining you. But, my brethren, they only act by you as you do toward your God. Is not your exaltation his work?
Is not his hand alone which hath separated your ancestors from the crowd, and hath placed him at the head of the people? Is it not through his providence alone that you are born of an illustrious blood, and that you enjoy, from your birth, what a whole life of care and toil could never have afforded you reason to expect? What had you in his eyes more than so many unfortunate fellow-creatures whom he leaveth in want? Ah! if he had paid regard only to the natural qualities of the soul, to probity, honesty, modesty, innocence, how many obscure souls, born with all these virtues, might have been preferred, and would now have been occupying your place! — If he had consulted only the use which you were one day to make of his benefits, how many unfortunate souls, had they been placed in your situation, would have been an example to the people, the protectors of virtue, and in their abundance would have glorified God, they who even in their indigence invoke and bless him; while you, on the contrary, are the cause of his name being blasphemed, and your example becomes a seduction for his people!
He chooseth you, however, and rejecteth them; he humble th them and exalteth you; for them he is a hard and severe master, and for you a liberal and bountiful father. What more could he have done to engage you to serve and to be faithful to him? What more powerful attraction, or more likely to secure the homages of hearts than benefits? "Thine, O Lord," said David, at the height of all his prosperity, "is the greatness, and the power, and the glory: both riches and honour come from thee; and in thine hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all. It is just, then O my God, to glorify thee in thy gifts; to measure what I owe thee upon what thou hast done for me; and to render mine exaltation, my greatness, and all that I am, subservient to thy glory."
Yet, nevertheless, my brethren, the more he hath done for you, the more do you raise yourselves up against him. It is the rich and the powerful who live without other God in this world than their iniquitous pleasures. It is you alone who dispute* the slightest homages to him; who believe yourselves to be dispensed from whatever is irksome or severe in his law; who fancy yourselves born for the sole purpose of enjoying yourselves, of applying his benefits to the gratification of your passions, and who remit to the common people the care of serving him, of returning him thanks, and of religiously observing the ordinances of his holy law.
Thus frequently the people worship, and you insult him; the people appease, and you provoke him; the people invoke, and you neglect him; the people zealously serve him, and you look down upon his servants; the people are continually raising up their hands to him3 and you doubt whether he even exists, you who alone feel the effects of his liberality and of his power; his chastisements form worshippers to him, and his benefits are followed with only derisions and insults.
I say his benefits: for, with regard to you, he hath not confined them to the mere external advantages of fortune. He hath likewise produced you with more favourable dispositions to virtue than the simple people; a heart more noble, and more exalted; happier inclinations; sentiments more worthy of the grandeur of faith; more understanding, elevation of mind, knowledge, instruction, and relish for good. You have received from nature, milder passions, more cultivated manners, and all the other incidental advantages of high birth; that politeness which softens the temper; that dignity which restrains the sallies of the disposition; that humanity which renders you more open to the impressions of grace. How many benefits do you then abuse, when you live not according to God! What a monster is a man of high rank, loaded with honours and prosperity, who never lifts his eyes to heaven to worship the hand which bestows them!
And whence, think you, come the public calamities, the scourges with which the cities and provinces are afflicted? It is solely in punishment of your iniquitous abuse of abundance, that God sometimes striketh the land with barrenness. His justice irritated that you turned his own benefits against himself, withdraws them from your passions, curses the land, permits wars and dissensions, crumbles your fortunes into dust, extinguishes your families, withers the root of your posterity, makes your titles and possessions to pass into the hands of strangers, and holds you out as striking examples of the inconstancy of human affairs and the anticipated monuments of his wrath against hearts equally ungrateful and insensible to the paternal cares of his providence.
Such, my brethren, are the two characters inseparable from your sins, — the scandal and the ingratitude. Behold what you are when you depart from God; and this is what you have never perhaps paid attention to. From the moment that you are guilty, you cannot be indifferently so. The passions are the same in the people and among the powerful; but very different is the guilt; and a single one of your crimes often leads to more miseries, and hath, before God, more extended and more terrible consequences, than a whole life of iniquity in an obscure and vulgar soul. But your virtues have also the same advantage and the same lot: and this is what remains for me to prove in the last part of this Discourse.
Part II. — If scandal and ingratitude be the inseparable, consequences of the vices and passions of persons of high rank, their virtues have also two particular characters, which render them far more acceptable to God than those of common believers: firstly, the example; secondly, the authority. And this, my brethren, is a truth highly consoling to you, who are placed by Providence in an exalted station, and well calculated to animate you to serve God, and to render virtue lovely to you. For it is an illusion to consider the rank to which you are born as an obstacle to salvation, and to the duties imposed upon us by religion. The rocks are more dangerous there, I confess, than in an obscure lot, — the temptation stronger and more frequent; and, while pointing out the advantages, with regard to salvation, of high rank, I pretend not to conceal those dangers which Jesus Christ himself hath pointed out to us in the gospel, as being attached to it.
I mean only to establish this truth, — that you may do more for God than the common people; that infinitely more advantages accrue to religion from the piety of a single person of distinction, than from that of almost a whole people of believers; and that you are so much the more culpable when you neglect God, in proportion to the glory that he would draw from your fidelity, and that your virtues have more extended consequences for the edification of believers.
The first is the example. A soul from among the people who fears God, glorifies him only in his own heart: he is a child of light, who walks, as I may say, amid darkness: he pays his own homage, but he attracts no others to him. Shut up in the obscurity of his fortune, he lives under the eyes of God alone; he wishes that his name be glorified, and, by these desires, he renders to him that glory which he cannot do by his examples: his virtues tend to his own salvation; but they are as lost for the salvation of his brethren: he is here below as a treasure hidden in the earth, which the vineyard of Jesus Christ beareth unwittingly, and of which he maketh no use.
But for you, my brethren, who live exposed to the view of the public, and whose eyes are always upon you, your virtuous examples become equally shining as your names: you spread the good savour of Jesus Christ wherever that of your rank and titles is spread: you make the name of the Lord to be glorified wherever your own is known. The same elevation which makes you to be known upon the earth, likewise informs all men what you do for heaven. The wonders of grace are every where seen in your national advantages: the people, the cities, the provinces, who are continually hearing your names repeated, feel awakened with them, that idea of virtue which your examples have attached to them. You honour piety in the opinion of the public: you preach it to those whom you know not: you become, says the prophet, like a signal of virtue raised up amid the people: a whole kingdom has its eyes upon you, and speaks of your examples, and even abroad your piety becomes equally known as your birth.
Now, amid this general estimation, what attraction to virtue for the people! First, the great models are more striking, and, when countenanced by the great, piety becomes as it were fashionable with the people. Secondly, that idea of weakness commonly attached to virtue is dissipated from the moment that you ennoble it, as I may say, with your names, and that they can produce your examples in honour of it. Thirdly, the rest of men no longer blush at modesty and frugality, when they see, in your instance, that modesty is perfectly compatible with greatness; and that to shun luxury and profusion is so far from being a subject of shame to any rank whatever, that, on the contrary, it adds lustre and dignity to the highest rank and birth. Fourthly, how many weak souls, who would blush at virtue, are confirmed by your example, are no longer afraid of acting as you act, and who even pride themselves in following your steps! Fifthly, how many souls, still too attached to worldly interests, would dread lest piety should be an obstacle to their advancement, and perhaps find, in this temptation, an effectual bar to all their penitential desires, if they were not taught, in seeing you, that piety is useful to all, and that, while attracting the favours of heaven, they do not prevent those of the earth! Sixthly, your inferiors, your creatures, and all who depend upon you, view virtue in a much more amiable light, since it is become a certain way of pleasing you, and that their progress in your confidence and esteem depends upon their advancement in piety.
Lastly. What an honour to religion, when, in your persons, she proves that she is still capable of forming righteous men, who despise honours, dignities, and riches; who live amidst prosperity without being dazzled with it; who enjoy the first places without losing sight of eternal riches; who possess all, as though possessing nothing; who are greater than the whole world, and consider as dirt all the advantages of the earth, whenever they become an obstacle to promises held out by faith in heaven! What confusion for the wicked to feel, in seeing you treading the paths of salvation amidst every human prosperity, that virtue is not an adoption of despair! that they vainly endeavour to persuade themselves, that recourse is had to God only when forsaken by the world, since you fail not, though loaded with all the favours of the world, to love the shame of Jesus Christ! What consolation, even for our ministry, to be enabled to employ your examples in these Christian pulpits, in overthrowing the sinners of a more obscure lot; to cite your virtues to make them blush at their vices; to cover with shame all their vain excuses, by proving your fidelity to the law of God; that their dangers are not greater than yours; that the objects of their passions are less seductive; that more charms and more illusions are not held out by the world to them than to you; that if grace can raise up faithful hearts even in the palaces of kings, it must be equally able to form them under the roof of the citizen and of the magistrate, and, consequently, that salvation is open to all, and that our station becomes a favourable pretext to our passions, only when the corruption of our hearts is the true reason which authorizes them.
Yes, my brethren, I repeat, that, in serving God, you give a new force to our ministry; more weight to the truths announced by us to the people; more confidence to our zeal; more dignity to the word of Jesus Christ; more credit to our censures; more consolation to our toils; and, in viewing you, the world is convinced of truths which it hath disputed with us. What benefits, then, accrue from your examples! You accredit piety, and honour religion in the mind of the people; you animate the righteous of every station; you console the servants of God; you spread throughout a whole kingdom a savour of life that overthrows vice and countenances virtue; you support the rules of the gospel against the maxims of the world; you are cited in the cities and in the most distant provinces to encourage the weak, and to aggrandize the kingdom of Jesus Christ; fathers teach your names to their children, to animate them to virtue; and, without knowing it, you become the model of the people, the conversation of the lower orders, the edification of families, the example of every station and of every class. Scarcely had the heads of the tribes in the desert, and the most distinguished women, brought to Moses their most precious ornaments for the construction of the tabernacle, when all the people, incited by their example, presented themselves in crowds to offer their gifts and presents; and Moses was even under the necessity of placing bounds to their pious alacrity, and of moderating the excess of their liberalities.
Ah! my brethren, what good, once more, may your examples do among the people! Public dissipations discredited from the moment that you cease to countenance them; indecent fashions proscribed whenever you neglect them; dangerous customs antiquated as soon as you forsake them; the source of almost all disorders dried up from the moment that you live according to God. And how many souls thereby saved — what evils prevented — what crimes checked — what misfortunes hindered! What gain for religion is a single person of rank, who lives according to faith! What a present doth God make to the earth, to a kingdom, to a people, when he bestoweth grandees who live in his fear! And, should the interest even of your own soul be insufficient to render virtue amiable to you, should not the interest of so many souls, to whom, by living according to God, you are an occasion of salvation, induce you to prefer the fear and the love of his law, to all the vain pleasures of the earth? Is the heart capable of tasting a more exquisite pleasure than that of being a source of salvation and of benediction to our brethren?
And what is yet more fortunate here for you, is, that you do not live for your own age alone. I have already observed that your examples will pass to the following ages: the virtues of the simple believers perish, as I may say, with them, but your virtues will be recorded in history with your names. You will become a pious model for our posterity, equally as you have been so for the people of your own times. Connected, through your rank and your employments, with the principal events of our age, you will be transmitted with them to the ages to come. Succeeding courts will still find the history of your piety and of your manners blended with the public history of our days. You will do credit to piety even in the ages to follow. The memory of your virtues, preserved in our annals, will still serve as an instruction to those of your descendants who shall read them; and it shall one day be said of you, as of those men full of glory and of righteousness, mentioned by Scripture, that your piety has not finished with you; that your bodies, indeed, are buried in peace, but that your name liveth for evermore, that your seed standeth for ever, and that your name shall not be blotted out.
Nor is this all: the example renders your virtues a public good, which is their first character; but authority, which is their second, finishes and sustains the endless good which your examples have begun. And, in speaking of the authority, why can I not here unfold all the immensity of the fruitful consequences of the piety of the great, which this idea excites in my mind?
First. The protection of virtue. Timid virtue is often oppressed because it wants either boldness to show itself, or protection to defend it; obscure virtue is often despised, because nothing exalts it to the eyes of the senses, and the world is delighted to turn into a crime against piety the obscurity of those who practise it. But, so soon as you adopt its cause, ah! virtue no longer wants protection: you become the interpreters of the godly with the prince, and the channels by which they find continual access to the throne; you bring righteous characters into office, who become public examples; you bring to light servants of God, men of learning and of virtue, who would have remained in the dust, and who, through favour of your support, appear to the public, employ their talents, contribute to the edification of believers, to the instruction of the people, to the consummation of the holy, teach the rules of virtue to those who know them not, will teach them to our descendants, and will hand down, to all ages to come, with the pious monuments of their own zeal, the immortal fruits of that protection with which you have honoured virtue, and of your love for the righteous.
What shall I say? — You strengthen the zeal of the godly in holy undertakings; and your protection animates and enables them to conquer all the obstacles which the demon constantly throws in the way of works which are to glorify God and to contribute to the salvation of souls. What noble foundations and pious designs, now carried into execution, would have failed, if the authority of a righteous man in office had not removed the impediments which rendered their accomplishment apparently impossible!
What more shall I say? — By your examples you render virtue respectable to those who love it not, and they are no longer ashamed of being a Christian from the moment that they therein resemble you. You divest impiety of that air of confidence and of ostentation with which it dares to show itself, and free-thinking ceases to be fashionable as soon as you declare against it. You maintain the religion of our fathers among the people; you preserve faith to the following ages; and often it requires only a single person of rank in a kingdom, firm in faith, to stop the progress of error and innovation, and to preserve to a whole people the faith of their ancestors. The single Esther saved the people and the law of God in a great empire; Matthias individually stood out against foreign altars, and prevented superstitions from prevailing in the midst of Judah. Oh! my brethren, how grand when you belong to Jesus Christ! and with what superior lustre and dignity do your rank and your birth appear in the vast fruits of your piety, than in the luxury of your passions, and in all the vain pomp of human magnificence!
Secondly. The rewards of virtue. You render it honourable by giving it that preference which is its due, in the choice of places dependent upon you, and in intrusting with employments only those whose piety entitles them to the public confidence; by placing dependence upon the fidelity of your inferiors only in proportion as they are faithful to God, and, in men, looking principally for rectitude of heart and innocence of manners, without which all other talents no longer form but an equivocal merit, either injurious to themselves, or useless to the public.
And from thence, what new weal to the public! What happiness for a kingdom in which the godly occupy the first places; where employments are the rewards of virtue; where the public affairs are intrusted only to those who have more the public interest in view than their own, and who consider as nothing the gain of the whole world if they thereby lose their soul!
What advantage for the people when they find their fathers in their judges, — the protectors of their helplessness in the arbiters of their lot, — the consolers of their sufferings in the interpreters of their interests! What abuses prevented! — what tears wiped away! — what crimes avoided!— what harmony in families! — what consolation for the unfortunate! What a compliment even to virtue, when the people are rejoiced to see it in office, and when the world, all worldly as it is, is, however, well pleased to have the godly for its defenders and judges! What an attraction to virtue, when it is seen to have the promise, not only of the life that now is, but of that also which is to come!
And say not, my brethren, that, in rewarding virtue, sinners are not corrected, but only hypocrites multiplied, I know how far men may be carried by a thirst of advancement, and what abuses they are capable of making of religion in order to accomplish their ends: but, at least, you force vice to hide itself; you divets it of that notoriety and security which spread and communicate it; you preserve the externals of religion among the people; you multiply the examples of piety among believers, and if licentiousness be not in reality diminished, at least the scandals are more rare!
Lastly. The holy liberalities of virtue. But I feel that my subject leads me away, and it is time to conclude. Yes, my brethren, what an additional fund of comfort for the people in the Christian and charitable use of your riches! You shelter innocence; you open asylums of penitence for guilt; you render virtue lovely to the unfortunate by the resources which they find in yours; you secure to husbands the fidelity of their wives, — to fathers the salvation of their children, — to pastors the safety of their flock; peace to families, comfort to the afflicted, innocence to the deserted widow, an aid to the orphan, good order to the public, and, to all, the support of their virtue, or the cure of their vices.
And here, my brethren, could you but comprehend the wide-extended fruits of your virtue, and the inexplicable advantages accruing from it to the church, — what scandals avoided! — what crimes prevented! — what public scourges checked! — how many weak preserved! — how many righteous sustained! — how many sinners recalled! — how many souls withdrawn from the precipice! — how much you contribute to the aggrandizement of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, to the honour of religion, to the consummation of the holy, and to the salvation of all believers! — how many of the chosen of every tongue and of every tribe shall one day, in heaven, place at your feet their crown of immortality, as if publicly to acknowledge their obligation to you! — what consolation to be able to say to yourself, that, in serving God, you will attract other servants to him, and that your piety becomes a blessing upon the people! No, my brethren, if there be any thing nattering in rank, it is not those vain distinctions attached to it by custom; it is the power of becoming, by serving God, the source of public blessings, the support of religion, the consolation of the church, and the chief instruments employed by God for the accomplishment of his merciful designs upon men.
Ah! what then do you not lose when you do not live according to God! What do we ourselves not lose when you are wanting to us! Of how many advantages do you deprive believers! Of what consolations do you not deprive yourselves! What joy in heaven for the conversion of a single great sinner in the age! How highly criminal when you live not according to God! You can neither be saved nor condemned alone. You resemble either that dragon of the Revelation, who, being cast out from heaven into the earth, drags after him in his fall so many of the stars; or that mysterious serpent spoken of by Jesus Christ, who, being exalted upon the earth, haply attracts all after him. You are established for the ruin or for the salvation of many; public scourges or comforts. May you, my brethren, know your true interests; may you feel what you are in the designs of God, how much you have it in your power to do for his glory, how much he expecteth of you, how much the church, and even we ourselves, expect of you! Ah! you have so high an idea of your rank and of your stations with relation to the world!
But, my brethren, permit me to say it to you, you are yet unacquainted with all their greatness; you see but the humblest part of what you are; you are still greater with relation to piety, and the privileges of your virtue are much more illustrious and more marked than those of your titles. May you, my brethren, act up to your lot! And thou, O my God! touch, during these days of salvation, through the force of that truth with which thou fillest our mouths, the great and the powerful; draw to thyself those hearts upon whose conquest depends that of the rest of believers; have compassion upon thy people by sanctifying those whom thy providence hath placed at their head; save Israel, in saving those who rule it; give to thy church great examples, who perpetuate virtue from age to age; and who assist, even to the end, in forming that immortal assembly of the righteous which shall bless thy name for ever and ever!