SERMON XX.
ON THE INJUSTICE OF THE WORLD TOWARD THE GODLY.
"Give God the praise: we know that this man is a sinner." — John ix. 24.
What can the purest and most irreproachable virtue expect from the injustice of the worlds seeing it hath formerly found subjects for scandal and censure in the sanctity even of Jesus Christ? If, before their eyes, he work wonderful miracles; if, on this occasion, he restores sight to the blind, the Jews accuse him of being a sabbath-breaker; of working miracles through Beelzebub rather than in the name of the Lord, and of only wishing, through these impostures, to overturn and to destroy the law of Moses; that is to say, that they attack his intentions, in order to render suspicious and to criminate his works.
If he honour with his presence the table of the Pharisees, that he may have an opportunity of recalling and instructing them, he is looked upon as a sinner, and as a lover of good cheer: that is to say, that they make a crime to him of his works, when they find it convenient not to search into the integrity of his intentions.
Lastly. If he appear in the temple, armed with zeal and severity, to avenge the profanations which disgrace that holy place, the zeal with which he is inflamed for the glory of his Father is no longer in their mouth, but an unjust usurpation of an authority which belongs not to him: that is to say, that they exercise themselves in vague and unfounded reproaches, when they have nothing to say against his intentions or his works.
I say, and I say it with sorrow, that the piety of the godly doth not, at present, experience more indulgence amongst us, than the sanctity of Jesus Christ formerly met with in Judea. The pious are become objects of censure and derision to the public; and in an age where dissipation is become so general, where scandalous excesses of every kind furnish such ample matter to the malignity of conversations and censures, favour is liberally shown to all, excepting to virtue and innocence.
Yes, my brethren, if the conduct of the godly be apparently irreproachable, and furnish no materials for censure, you fix yourselves on their intentions which appear not; you accuse them of labouring toward their own purposes, and of having their own particular views and designs.
If their virtue seem to draw nearer to an equality with our own, and sometimes abate from its severity to attach us to God, by an ostensible conformity to our manners and customs; without searching into, or giving yourselves any concern about their intentions, you constitute as a crime in them, the most innocent complaisances, and concessions the most worthy of indulgence.
Lastly. If their virtue, inspired by a divine fire, no longer keep measures with the world, and leave nothing to be alleged against either their intentions or their works, then you exercise yourselves in vague discourses and unfounded reproaches against even their zeal and piety.
Now, suffer me, my brethren, for once to stand up against an abuse so disgraceful to religion, so injurious to that Being who forms the holy, so scandalous among Christians, so likely to draw down upon us those lasting curses which formerly turned the inheritance of the Lord into a deserted and forsaken land, and so worthy of the zeal of our ministry.
You attack the intentions, when you have nothing to say against the works of the godly; and that is a temerity. You exaggerate their weaknesses, and you make a crime to them of the slightest imperfections; and that is an inhumanity. You turn even their zeal and fervour into ridicule; and that is an impiety. And behold, my brethren, the three descriptions of the world's injustice toward the pious: — an injustice of temerity, which always suspects their intentions; an injustice of inhumanity, which gives no palliation to the slightest imperfections; an injustice of impiety, which, of their zeal and sanctity, makes a subject of contempt and derision. May these truths, O my God! render to virtue that honour and glory which are due to it, and force the world itself to respect the pious characters whom it is unworthy to possess!
Part I. — Nothing is more sublime, or more worthy of veneration on the earth, than true virtue: the world itself is forced to acknowledge this truth. The elevation of sentiment, the nobility of motive, the empire over the passions, the patience under adversity, the gentleness under injuries, the contempt of one's self under praise, the courage under difficulties, the austerity in pleasures, the fidelity in duties, the equality of temper in all events with which philosophy hath decked out its imaginary sage, find their reality only in the disciple of the gospel. The more our manners are even corrupted, the more our times are dissolute, the more doth a just soul, who, in the midst of the general corruption, know how to preserve his righteousness and his innocence, merit the public admiration; and if the Pagans themselves so highly respected Christians, in a time when all Christians were holy, with much greater reason are those Christians, who act up to the name of Christian, worthy of our veneration and respect, at this period, when sanctity is become so rare among believers.
How melancholy then for our ministry, that the corruption of manners should oblige us to do here what the first defenders of faith formerly did with so much dignity before the Pagan tribunals; that is to say, to make the apology of the servants of Jesus Christ; and that it should be necessary to teach Christians to honour those who profess themselves such! Yet true it is; for derision and censure against piety seem at present to be the most dominant language of the world. I confess, that the world ideally respects virtue; but it always despises those who make a profession of it: it acknowledges that nothing is more estimable than a solid and sincere piety; but it complains that such is no where to be found: and, by always separating virtue from those who practise it, it only makes a show of respecting the phantom of sanctity and righteousness, that it may be the better entitled to contemn and to censure the just.
Now the first object, on which the ordinary discourses of the world fall against virtue, is the probity of the intentions of the just. As what is apparent in their actions gives little hold, in general, to malignity and censure, they confine themselves to the intentions: they pretend, and above all at present, when, under a prince equally great as religious, virtue, formerly a stranger, and dreaded at court, is now become the surest path to favour and reward, — they pretend that it is there to which all who make a public profession of it, point their aim; that their only wish is to accomplish their ends; and that those who appear the most sanctified and disinterested, are superior to the rest only in art and cunning. If they excuse them from the meanness of such a motive, they give them others equally unworthy of the elevation of virtue and of Christian sincerity. Thus when a soul, touched for its errors, becomes contrite, it is not God, but the world, whom it seeks through a more cunning and concealed path; it is not grace which hath changed the heart, it is age which begins to efface its attractions, and to withdraw it from pleasures, only because pleasures begin to fly from it. If zeal attaches itself to works of piety, it is not that they are charitable, it is because they wish to become consequential. If they shut themselves up in solitude and in prayer, it is not their piety which dreads the dangers of the world, it is their singularity and ostentation which wish to attract its suffrages. Lastly, the merit of the most holy and the most virtuous actions is always disparaged in the mouth of the worldly, by the suspicions with which they endeavour to blacken the intentions.
Now, in this temerity, I find three hateful characters, which expose the absurdity and the injustice of it: it is a temerity of indiscretion, seeing you judge, you decide upon what you know not: it is a temerity of corruption, seeing we generally suppose in others only what we feel in ourselves: lastly, it is a temerity of contradiction, seeing you find unjust and foolish when directed against yourself, the very same suspicions which to you appear so well-founded against your brother. Lose not, I entreat of you, the consequence of these truths.
I say, first, a temerity of indiscretion. For, my brethren, to God alone is reserved the judgment of intentions and thoughts: He alone who sees the secrecy of hearts can judge them; nor will they be manifested till that terrible day when his light shall shine through and dispel every darkness. An impenetrable veil is spread here below, over the depth of the human heart; we must then wait till that veil shall be rent, before the shameful passion which it conceals, as the apostle says, can become manifest, and before the mystery of iniquity, which worketh in secret, can be revealed; till then, whatever passes in the heart of men, buried from our knowledge, is interdicted to the temerity of our judgments: even when what is visible in the conduct of our brethren appears unfavourable to them, charity obliges us to suppose that what we see not makes amends for and rectifies it; and it requires us to excuse the faults of the actions which offend us by the innocency of the intentions which are concealed from our knowledge. Now, if religion ought to render us indulgent, and even favourable to their vices, will it suffer us to be cruel and inexorable to their virtues?
Indeed, my brethren, what renders your temerity here more unjust, more black, and more cruel, is the nature of your suspicions. For, were your suspicions of the pious to be directed only toward some of those weaknesses inseparable from human nature, — for instance, too much sensibility of injury, too much attention to their interests, too much inflexibility in their opinions, — we would be entitled to reply to you, as we shall afterwards tell you, that you exact from the virtuous an exemption from error, and a degree of perfection which exist not in life. But you rest not there: you attack their probity and integrity of heart; you suspect them of atrocity, dissimulation, and hypocrisy; of making the most holy things subservient to their own views and passions; of being public impostors; of sporting with God and man; and all these through the ostensible appearances of virtue. What, my brethren! you would not dare, after the most notorious guilt, to pronounce such a sentence on a convicted criminal; you would rather consider his fault as one of those misfortunes which may happen to all men, and of which an evil moment may render us capable; and you decidedly give judgment against the virtuous; and you suspect in a pious character, from a holy and praiseworthy life, what you would not dare to suspect from the most scandalous and criminal conduct of a sinner? And you consider as a witticism, when directed against the servants of God, what would appear to you as a barbarity when against a man stained with a thousand crimes. Is virtue, then, the only crime unworthy of indulgence; or is it sufficient, to serve Jesus Christ, to become unworthy of all respect? Do the holy practices of piety, which surely ought rather to attract respect and estimation to your brother, become the only titles which confound him, in your mind, with the infamous and the wicked?
I allow that the hypocrite deserves the execration of both God and man; that the abuse which he makes of religion is the greatest of crimes; that derisions and satires are too mild to decry a vice which deserves detestation and horror from the human race; and that a profane theatre errs in throwing only ridicule upon a character so abominable, so shameful, and so afflicting to the church; for it ought to excite the tears and indignation rather than the laughter of believers.
But I say, that this eternal inveteracy against virtue; that the rash suspicions which always confound the pious man with the hypocrite; that that malignity which, in making the most pompous eulogiums on righteousness, finds no character amongst the upright who is entitled to them; I say, that such language, of which so little scruple is made by the world, saps religion, and tends toward rendering all virtue suspicious: I say, that you thereby furnish arms to the impious in an age when too many other scandals countenance and authorize impiety. You assist in making them believe that none, truly pious, exist on the earth; that even the saints, who have formerly edified the church, and whose memory we so warmly cherish, have held out to men only a false spectacle of virtue, of which, in reality, they had only the phantom and the appearances: and that the Gospel hath never formed but pharisees and hypocrites. Do you, my brethren, comprehend all the guilt of these foolish derisions? You think that you are only deriding false virtue, and you are blaspheming religion. I repeat it; in mistrusting the sincerity of the just whom you see, the freethinker concludes that all who have preceded them, and whom we see not, were equally insincere; that the martyrs themselves, who met death with such fortitude, and who rendered to truth the most shining and least suspicious testimony which can be given by man, were only madmen, who sought a human glory by a vain ostentation of courage and heroism; and lastly, that the venerable tradition of so many saints, who, from age to age, have honoured and edified the church is merely a tradition of knavery and deceit. And would to God that this were only a transport of zeal and exaggeration! These blasphemies, which strike us with such horror, and which ought to have been buried with Paganism, we have still the sorrow to hear repeated among us. And you who shudder at them, unknowingly put them, however, into the mouth of the freethinker; it is your continual sarcasms and censures upon piety which have rendered, in our days, impiety so general and so uncurbed.
I do not add, that, by these means, every thing in society becomes dubious and uncertain. There is no longer, then, either good faith, integrity, or fidelity among men. For, if we must no longer depend on the sincerity and virtue of the just; if their piety be only a mask to their passions, we assuredly will not place any confidence in the probity of sinners and worldly characters: all men are consequently only cheats and villains, of whom too much care cannot be taken, and with whom we ought to live as with enemies; and these so much the more to be dreaded, as, under a treacherous outside of friendship and humanity, they conceal the design of either deceiving or ruining us. None but a heart profoundly wicked and corrupted can suppose such iniquity and corruption in that of others.
And behold the second character of that temerity of which we speak. Yes, my brethren, that fund of malignity, which sees guilt through the appearances even of virtue, and attributes criminal intentions to works of holiness, can proceed only from a black and corrupted heart. As the passions have poisoned your heart, you whom this discourse regards, — as you are capable yourself of every duplicity and meanness, — as you have nothing in your own breast right, noble, or sincere, — you easily suspect your brethren to be what you are; you cannot persuade yourself that there still exist simple, sincere, and generous hearts on the earth; you think that you every where see what you feel in yourself; you cannot comprehend how honour, fidelity, sincerity, and so many other virtues, always false in your own heart, should have more reality in the hearts of persons, even the most respectable for their rank and character; you resemble the courtiers of the king of the Ammonites, — having no other occupation than that of being incessantly on the watch to supplant and lay snares for each other, they had little difficulty in believing that David was not more upright in his intentions with regard to their master. You think, said they to that prince, that David means to honour the memory of your father, by sending comforters to you to condole with you on his death? They are not comforters, but spies, whom he sends to you: he is a villain, who, under the specious outside of an honourable and amicable embassy, seeks to discover the weaknesses of your kingdom, and to take measures to surprise you. Such is more especially the misfortune of courts: bred up, and living in deceit, they see only dissimulation equally in virtue as in vice; as it is a stage upon which every one acts a borrowed character, they conclude that the pious man merely acts the personage of virtue; uncommon or unprofitable sincerity seems always impossible.
A worthy heart, a heart upright, simple, and sincere, can hardly comprehend that there are impostors on the earth; he finds within himself the apology of other men, and, by what it would cost himself to be dishonest, he measures what it ought to cost others. Thus, my brethren, search into those who form these shameful and rash suspicions against the pious, and you will find that, in general, they are disorderly and corrupted characters, who seek to quiet themselves in their dissipations by the illusive supposition that their weaknesses are the weaknesses of all men; that those who are apparently the most virtuous are superior to themselves only in the art of concealment; and that, were they narrowly examined, we should find them in reality, made like other men: this idea is an iniquitous comfort to them in their debaucheries. They harden themselves in iniquity, by thus associating with themselves in it all whom the credulity of the people calls virtuous: they form and endeavour to establish in themselves a shocking idea of the human race, in order to be less shocked with what they are forced to entertain of themselves, and they try to persuade themselves that virtue no longer exists, in order that vice may appear to them more excusable; as if, O my God! the multitude of criminals could disarm thy wrath, or deprive thy justice of the right to punish guilt.
But, say you, one has seen so many hypocrites who have so long abused the world, whom it regarded as saints and the friends of God, and who, nevertheless, were only perverse and corrupted men.
I confess it with sorrow, my brethren: but, from that, what would you wish to conclude? That all the virtuous are similar to them? The conclusion is detestable; and what would become of mankind, were you, in this manner, to reason on the rest of men? We have seen many wives faithless, to their honour and to their duty; but do modesty and fidelity no longer exist in the sacred bond of marriage? Many magistrates have sold their honour and disgraced their function; but are justice and integrity consequently banished from every tribunal? History, hath preserved to us the remembrance of too many perfidious, dissembling, unfaithful, and dishonourable princes, equally faithless to their subjects, their allies, and their enemies; but are integrity, truth, and religion, for ever excluded from a throne? The past ages have seen many subjects, distinguished for their names, their offices, and the gifts of their sovereign, betray their prince and country, and keep up the most criminal intelligence with the enemy: would you find just the master whom you serve with so much zeal and courage, were he merely upon such grounds to suspect the truth of your fidelity? Why then is a suspicion, which excites the indignation of all other descriptions of men, only supportable when directed against the pious? Why is a conclusion, so ridiculous in every other case, only judicious when against virtue? Doth the perfidy of a single Judas give you grounds to conclude that all the other disciples were traitors and without faith? Doth the hypocrisy of Simon the magician prove, that the conversion of the other disciples who embraced faith was merely an artifice to accomplish their own purposes; and that, like him, they walked not uprightly in the path of the Lord? What can be more unjust or foolish, than of the guilt of an individual to constitute a general crime? It is difficult, I confess, but that vice may sometimes assume the garb of virtue; that the angel of darkness may not sometimes have the appearance of an angel of light; and that the passions, which generally strain every nerve to succeed, may not sometimes call in the appearances of piety to their aid, particularly under a reign when piety, held in honour, is almost a certain road to fortune and favour. But it is the height of folly to reflect upon all virtue for the impious use which some individuals may make even of piety; and to believe that some abuses, discovered in a holy and venerable profession, universally dishonour all who have embraced it. The truth, my brethren', is, that we hate all men who are not similar to ourselves; and that we are delighted to be enabled to condemn piety, because piety itself condemns us.
But one has so often been deceived, say you. I confess it: but in reply, I say, that, granting you are even deceived while refusing to suspect your brethren, and while rendering to a fictitious virtue that esteem and honour which are due to real virtue alone, what would be the consequence? By what would your credulity be followed, either sorrowful or disgraceful? You would have judged according to the rules of charity, which doth not easily believe in evil, and which delighteth in even the appearances of good; according to the rules of justice, which is incapable of every malignity or deed to others which it would not wish to have done to itself; according to the rules of prudence, which judges only from what is visible, and leaves to the Lord to judge of the intentions and thoughts; lastly, according to the rules of goodness and humanity, which always oblige us to presume in favour of our brethren. What would there be in such a mistake to alarm you? How noble for the mind when the deception proceeds from a motive of humanity and kindness! What honour do not such mistakes render to a good heart; for none but the virtuous and the sincere are capable of them! But you, alas! not being such, prefer that deception which degrades the virtuous and pious man from that estimation which is his due, to hazarding the chance of not covering the hypocrite with the shame he deserves.
But, besides, whence spring this zeal and inveteracy against the abuse, made by the hypocrite, of real virtue? Is the glory of God so warmly taken to heart by you, that you wish to avenge him on the impostors who dishonour him? What matters it to you, who neither serve nor love him, whether the Lord be served by a double or a sincere heart? What is there which can so strongly interest you for the integrity or the hypocrisy of his worshipper, — you who know not how he is even worshipped? Ah! were he the God of your heart, did you love him as your Lord and Father, were his glory dear to you, we might then indeed pardon, as an excess of zeal, the boldness with which you rise up against the outrage done to God and his worship by the simulated piety of the hypocrite. The just, who love and serve him, are surely more entitled to cry out against an abuse so injurious to sincere piety; but you, who live like the Pagans, who, sunk in debauchery, are without hope, and whose whole life is one continued guilt, ah! it belongs little to you to take the interest of God's glory against the fictitious piety which is the cause of so much disgrace and sorrow to the church; whether he be faithfully served, or merely through grimace is no affair of yours. Whence then comes a zeal so misplaced? Would you wish to know? It is not the Lord whom you wish to avenge, nor is it his glory which interests you; it is the good name of the pious which you wish to stain; it is not hypocrisy which irritates your feelings, it is piety which displeases you; you are not the censurer of vice, you are only the enemy of virtue; in a word, you hate in the hypocrite only the resemblance of the pious.
In effect, did your censures proceed from a fund of religion and true zeal, ah! with grief alone would you recall the history of these impostors, who have sometimes succeeded in deceiving the world. What do I say? Far from alleging to us, with an air of triumph, these examples, you would lament over the scandals with which they have afflicted the church; far from applauding yourselves, when you renew their remembrance, you would wish that such melancholy events were for ever effaced from the memory of men. The law cursed him who should dare to uncover the shame and turpitude of those who had given him life; but it is the shame and dishonour of the church, your mother, which you expose with such pleasure to public derision. Do you carefully recall certain humiliating circumstances to the house from which you spring, and which have formerly disgraced the name and life of some one of your ancestors? Would you not wish for ever to efface these hateful vestiges of disgrace from the histories which hand them down to posterity? Do you not consider as enemies to your name those who ransack the past ages, in order to lay open these hateful particulars, and to revive them in the memory of men? Do you not in opposition to their malignity, loudly proclaim that maxim of equity, that faults are personal; and that it is unjust to attach the idea of dishonour to all who bear your name, merely because it has once been disgraced through the bad conduct of an individual?
Apply the rule to yourself: the church is your house: the just alone are your relations, your brethren, your predecessors, your ancestors: they alone compose that family of first-born, to whom you ought to be eternally united. The wicked shall one day be as though they had never been: the ties of nature, of blood, and of society, which now unite you to them, shall perish; an immeasurable and an eternal chaos shall separate them from the children of God; they shall no longer be your brethren, your forefathers, or your relatives; they shall be cast out, forgotten, effaced from the land of the living, unnecessary to the designs of God, cut off for ever from his kingdom, and no longer, by any tie, holding to the society of the just, who shall then be your only brethren, your ancestors, your people, your tribe. What do you then, when you uncover with such pleasure, the ignominy of some false just, who dishonour their history? It is your house, your name, your relations, your ancestors, whom you dishonour: you come to stain the splendour of so many glorious actions, which, in all ages, have rendered their memory immortal by the infidelity of an individual, who, bearing the name they bear, stain it by manners and a conduct totally dissimilar: upon yourselves then it is that you make the dishonour fall; unless you have already renounced the society of the holy, and prefer to associate your eternal lot with that of the wicked and the unfaithful.
But what is more particularly absurd in that temerity which is always so ready to judge and to blacken the intentions of the pious, is, that you thereby fall into the most ridiculous contradiction with yourselves: — last character of that temerity.
Yes, my brethren, you accuse them of cunningly working toward their own point, of having their own views in the most holy actions, and of only acting the personage of virtue. But doth it become you, the inhabitants of a court, to make this reproach? Your whole life is one continued disguise; you every where act a part which is not your own; you flatter those whom you love not; you crouch to others whom you despise; you act the assiduous servant to those from whom you have emolument to expect, though, in your heart, you look up with envy to their rank, and think them unworthy of their elevation; in a word, your whole life is an assumed character. Your heart, on every occasion, belies your conduct; every where your countenance is in contradiction to your sentiments; you are the hypocrites of the world, of ambition, of favour, and of fortune; and it well becomes you, after that, to accuse the just of the same tricks, and so loudly to ring their dissimulation and pretended hypocrisy: when you shall have nothing in the same way with which to reproach yourselves, then will we listen to the temerity of your censures; or rather, you shall have reason to be jealous for the glory of artifice and meanness, and to be dissatisfied, that the pious should dare to interfere with a science which so justly belongs, and is so especially adapted to you.
Besides, you so nervously clamour out against the world, when, too attentive to your actions, it maliciously interprets certain suspicious assiduities, certain animated looks; you so loudly proclaim then, that, if things go on thus, no person will in future be innocent; that no woman in the world will be considered as a person of regular conduct; that nothing is more easy than to give an air of guilt to the most innocent things; that it will be necessary totally to banish one's self from society, and to deny one's self every intercourse with mankind; you then so feelingly declaim against the malignity of men, who, on the most trivial grounds, accuse you of criminal intentions. But do the pious give juster foundation for the suspicions which you form against them? And, if it be permitted to you to hunt for guilt in them, though hidden under the appearances of virtue, why are you so enraged that the world should dare to suppose it in you, and should believe you criminal under the appearances of guilt?
Lastly. O worldly women! when we reproach you with your assiduity at theatres, and other places where innocence encounters so many dangers, or the indecency and immodesty of your dress, you reply that you have no bad intentions; that you wish injury to none; you would wish indecent and criminal manners to be passed over, for the sake of a pretended innocency of intention, which your whole exterior belies; and you cannot pass over to the pious, virtuous, and laudable manners, for the sake of an integrity of heart, to which every thing external bears ample testimony. You exact that they shall suppose your intentions pure, when your works are not so; and you think yourselves entitled to believe that the intentions of the pious are not innocent, when all their actions are visibly so. Cease, then, either to justify your own vices, or to censure their virtues.
It is thus, my brethren, that every thing poisons in our keeping, and that every thing removes us farther from God: the spectacle even of virtue becomes to us a pretext for vice; and the examples themselves of piety are rocks to our innocence. It would seem, O my God! that the world doth not sufficiently furnish us with opportunities for our ruin: that the examples of sinners are not sufficient to authorize our errors; for we seek a support for them even in the virtues of the just.
But you will tell us, that the world is not so far wrong in censuring those who profess themselves people of piety; that such are every day seen, who, if possible, are more animated than other men in the pursuit of a worldly fortune, more eager after pleasures, more delicate in submitting to injury, more proud in elevation, and more attached to their own interests. This is the second injustice of the world toward the pious: not only does it maliciously interpret their intentions, which is a temerity, but it also scrutinizes their slightest imperfections, which is an inhumanity.
Part II. — It may truly be said, that the world is a more rigid and severer critic upon the pious than the gospel itself; that it exacts a greater degree of perfection from them, and that their weaknesses find less indulgence before the tribunal of men than they shall one day experience before the tribunal of God himself.
Now, I say that this attention to exaggerate the slightest errors of the pious, (second injustice into which the world falls with regard to them,) is an inhumanity, considering the weakness of man, the difficulty of virtue, and, lastly, the maxims of the world itself. I entreat your attention here, my brethren.
Inhumanity, considering the weakness of man. Yet, my brethren, it is an illusion to suppose that there are perfect virtues among men; it is not the condition of this mortal life; almost every one bears with him in piety, his faults, his humours, and his peculiar weaknesses; grace corrects, but does not overturn nature; the Spirit of God, which creates in us a new man, leaves still many remains of the old: conversion terminates our vices, but does not extinguish our passions; in a word, it forms the Christian within us, but it still leaves us men. The most righteous, consequently, still preserve many remains of the sinner: David, that model of penitence, still blended with his virtues a too great indulgence for his children, a secret pride at the number of his people and the prosperity of his reign; the mother of Zebedee's children, in spite of faith, through which she was so strongly attached to Jesus Christ, lost nothing of her anxiety for the elevation of her children, or of her concern toward procuring for them the first stations in an earthly kingdom; the apostles themselves disputed rank and precedency with each other: never shall we be divested of all these little weaknesses till we are delivered from this body of death, which is the fountain from which they spring. The most shining virtue here below, always, therefore, hath its spots and its flaws, which are not to be too narrowly examined: and the just must always in some points resemble the rest of men. All, then, that can be exacted from human weakness, is, that the virtues rise superior to the vices, the good to the evil; that the essential be regulated, and that we incessantly labour toward regulating the rest.
And surely, my brethren, overflowing with passions, as we are in the wretched condition of this life; loaded with a body of sin, which oppresses the soul; slaves to our senses and to the flesh; bearing within us an eternal opposition to the law of God; the continual prey of a thousand desires which combat against our soul; the everlasting sport of our inconstancy and the natural instability of our heart; finding nothing within us but what is repugnant to duty; eagerly pursuing whatever removes us from God; disgusted with every thing which brings us nearer to him; loving only what tends to our ruin; hating only what tends to our salvation; weak in good; always ripe for evil; and, in a word, finding in virtue the rock of virtue itself, is it to be wondered at, that men, surrounded, filled with so many miseries, should sometimes allow some of them to be visible; that men so corrupted, should not be always equally holy? And were you, in any measure, equitable, would you not rather find it worthy of admiration that some virtue still remained, than worthy of censure that they still preserve some vices?
Besides, God hath his reasons for still leaving to the most pious, certain sensible weaknesses which strike and offend you. In the first place, he thereby wisheth to humble them, and to render their virtue more secure by concealing it even from themselves. — Secondly, he wisheth to animate their vigilance, for he leaveth not Amorites in the land of Canaan, that is to say, passions in the heart of his servants, but, lest, freed from all their enemies, they should lull themselves in idleness and in a dangerous security. — Thirdly, he wisheth to excite in them a continual desire for the eternal land, and to render the exilement of this life more bitter, through a proper sense of those miseries from which they can never, here below, obtain a complete deliverance. Fourthly, perhaps not to discourage sinners by the sight of too perfect a virtue, which might probably induce them to cease every exertion, under the idea of never being able to attain it. Fifthly, in order to preserve to the just a continual subject of prayer and penitence, by leaving them a continual source of sin. Sixthly, to prevent those excessive honours which the world would render to virtue were it pure and sparkling, and lest it should find its recompense, in other words, its rock, in the vain applauses of men. What shall I lastly say? it perhaps is still more to lull and to blindfold the enemies of piety; by the weakness of the pious to strengthen you, who listen to me, in the foolish opinion that there is no real virtue on the earth; to authorize you in your disorders, by the supposition that they are similar to yourselves; and to render unavailing to you all the pious examples of the just. You triumph in the weaknesses of the pious; yet are there weaknesses perhaps punishments from God on you, and means employed by his justice to nourish your unjust prepossessions against virtue, and completely to harden you in guilt. God is terrible in his judgments; and the consummation of iniquity, is, in general, the sequel of iniquity itself.
But, secondly, were your censures on those weaknesses, which may still remain to the pious, not rendered barbarous and inhuman, when the natural weakness of man is considered, the difficulty alone of virtue would amply render them so.
For, candidly, my brethren, doth it appear so easy to you to live according to God, and to walk in the straight path of salvation, that you should become so implacable against the pious, from the moment that they err but for an instant? Is it so easy continually to renounce one^s self, to be ever guarded against one's own heart, to overcome its antipathies, to repress its likings, to lower its pride, and to fix its inconstancy? Is it so easy a matter to restrain the sallies of the mind, to moderate its judgments, to disavow its suspicions, to soften its keenness, and to smother its malignity? Is it so easy to be the eternal enemy of one's own body, to conquer its indolence, to mortify its tastes and to crucify its desires? Is it so natural to pardon injuries, to bear with contempt, to love, and even to load with benefits those who do evil to us, to sacrifice one's fortune in order not to fail to his conscience, to deny one's self pleasures to which all our inclinations lead us, to resist example, and singly to maintain the cause of virtue against the multitude which condemns it? Do all these appear, in fact, so easy to you, that you deem those, who for an instant depart from them, unworthy of the least indulgence? How feelingly do you expatiate every day on the difficulties of a Christian life, when we propose to you these holy rules! Is it so very astonishing, that, in a long march through rough and dangerous ways, a man should sometimes stumble, or even fall, through fatigue and weakness?
Inhuman that we are! And nevertheless, the slightest imperfection in the pious destroys, in our mind, all their most estimable qualities: far from excusing their weaknesses, in consideration of their virtue, it is their virtue itself which renders us doubly cruel and inexorable to their weaknesses. To be just is sufficient, it would appear, to forfeit every claim to indulgence: to their vices we are clear-sighted; to their virtues we are blind; a moment of weakness effaces from our remembrance a whole life of fidelity and innocence.
But what renders your injustice toward the pious still more cruel, is, that it is your own examples, your irregularities, and even your censures, which stagger, weaken, and force them sometimes to imitate you; it is the corruption of your manners which becomes the continual and the most dangerous snare to their innocence; it is those foolish derisions with which you continually assault virtue, that force them reluctantly to shelter themselves under the appearances of guilt. And how can you suppose it possible that the piety of the most righteous should always preserve itself pure, in the midst of the present manners, in a perverse world, whose customs are abuses, and its communications crimes; where the passions are the only bond of society, and where the wisest and most virtuous are those who retrenched from guilt only its scandal and publicity? How can you suppose it possible, that, amidst these eternal derisions which ridicule the pious, which make them almost ashamed of virtue, and often oblige them to counterfeit vice; that, in the midst of so many disorders, authorized by the public manners, by senseless applauses, by examples rendered respectable by rank and dignity, by the ridicule cast on those who dare to hesitate at them, and lastly, by the weakness even of their own heart; how do you think it possible that the pious should be always enabled to stem such a torrent, and that, obliged continually to fortify themselves against so rapid and so impetuous a course, which hurries away the rest of men, watchfulness and vigour should not sometimes fail them for an instant, and that they should not sometimes feel a momentary influence of the fatal vortex? You are their seducers; and you pretend to be displeased because they allow themselves to be seduced? No longer, therefore, reproach to them your scandals, which weaken their faith, and which they shall one day reproach to you before the tribunal of Jesus Christ; and triumph no more over their weaknesses, which are your own work, and for which they shall afterward demand vengeance against you.
I have also said, that even your maxims cannot be excused from severity and extravagance with respect to the pious. Judge from what I shall now repeat. You are continually saying that such an individual, with all his devotion, fails not, however to prosecute his own designs; that another is very attentive in paying court to his superiors; again, that a third has a piety so delicate and sensible, that the merest trifle wounds and shocks it; that such an individual pardons nothing; that the other is not sorry to be thought still agreeable and amusing; that a third has a very commodious piety, and lives a very easy and agreeable life; lastly, that another is full of caprice and fancies, and that none of her household can put up with her temper: such are your daily discourses; nor do your satires stop there, for you boldly decide from thence that a devotion, blended with so many faults, can never lead them to salvation: behold your maxims. Yet, nevertheless, when we announce to you, from this seat, that a worldly, idle, sensual, dissipated, and almost wholly profane life, such as you lead, can never be a way to salvation, you say that you cannot see any harm in it; you accuse us of severity, and of exaggerating the rule and duties of your station; you do not believe that more is required for salvation. But my brethren, to which side here do severity and injustice belong? You condemn the pious, because to their piety they add some particulars which resemble you; because they mingle some of your faults with an infinity of virtues and good works, which amply repair the errors: and you believe yourselves in the path of salvation, you who have only their faults, without even the piety which purifies them? O man! who then art thou that thus pretendest to save those whom the Lord condemneth, and to condemn those whom he justifieth?
Nor is this all; and you shall immediately see how little, on this point, you are consonant with yourselves. In effect, when the pious live in total retirement; when no longer keeping any measures with the world, they conceal themselves from the eyes of the public; when they resign certain places of emolument and distinction, and divest themselves of all their employments and dignities, for the sole purpose of attending to their salvation; when they lead a life of tears, prayer, mortification, and silence, (and happily our age hath furnished such examples,) what have you then said? That they carried matters too far; that violent counsels had been given them; that their zeal was not according to knowledge; that, were all to imitate them, public duties would be neglected; that those services, incumbent on every citizen to his country and state, would no longer be given; that such an extreme of singularity is not required; and that real devotion proves itself, by living together and fulfilling the duties of the station in which God hath placed us: such are your maxims. But, on the other hand, when the virtuous unite with piety the duties of their station and the innocent interests of their fortune; when they still keep up a certain degree of intercourse and society with the world, and show themselves in places from which their rank does not allow them to banish themselves; when they still partake in certain public pleasures, which their station renders inevitable; in a word, when they are prudent in good, and simple in evil, — ah! you then proclaim that they are made like other men; that it appears very easy to you, at that price, to serve God; that you see nothing in their devotion to frighten you; and that if nothing more were required, you would soon be yourself a great saint. In vain may piety assume every appearance; it is sufficient that it is piety, to displease and to merit your censures. Be consistent with yourselves; you would have the pious to resemble yourselves, yet you condemn them from the moment that you can trace a resemblance.
The obstinacy and injustice of the Jews, in our gospel, are renewed in you. When John the Baptist appeared in the desert, clothed in goats' skins, neither eating nor drinking, and holding out to Judea an austerity of virtue which none of the preceding just or prophets had ever equalled, they considered, says Jesus Christ, the austerity of his manners as the illusion of a false spirit, which seduced and urged him on to these excesses, merely that, in a worldly vanity, he might find the recompense of his penance. On the contrary, the Son of Man afterward came, continues the Saviour, eating and drinking; exhibiting to them, in his conduct, the model of a virtue more consonant with human weakness, and serving as an example to all, by leading a simple and ordinary life which all may imitate: is he more sheltered from their censures? Ah! they declaim against him, as being a man of pleasure and a lover of good cheer; and the bendings of his virtue are no longer, in their opinion, but a relaxation which stains and dishonours it. The most dissimilar virtues are successful only in attracting the same reproaches. Ah! my brethren, how much to be pitied would the pious be, were they to be judged before the tribunal of men! But they know that that world, which sits in judgment on them, is itself already judged.
And what in this severity, with which you condemn the slightest imperfections of the pious, is more deplorable, is, that, if a notorious and infamous sinner, after a whole life of iniquity and crimes, but give, on the bed of death, some weak proof of repentance; if he but pronounce the name of that God whom he has never known, and has always blasphemed; if he at last consent, after many delays and repugnances, to receive the last offices of the church, which he formerly held in contempt; ah! you rank him among the saints; you maintain that he has died the death of a Christian; that he has attained to the state of repentance; and that he has entreated forgiveness and mercy from God; upon these grounds you hope every thing for his salvation, and you no longer entertain a doubt but that the Lord hath shown him mercy: some reluctant marks of religion, which have been extorted from him, are sufficient, in your idea, to secure to him the kingdom of God, into which nothing defiled shall ever enter; are sufficient, I say, in spite of the excesses and abominations of his whole life; and an entire life of virtue is not sufficient, in your opinion, to render it certain to a faithful soul, from the moment that he mingles the smallest infidelity with his past conduct: you save the wicked on the most frivolous and equivocal appearances of piety, and you condemn the just on the slightest and most excusable proofs of humanity and weakness.
I might add, my brethren, that, consulting only your own interests, the imperfections of the pious ought to find you more indulgent and favourable.
For they alone, my brethren, spare you: they alone conceal your vices, smooth your faults, excuse your errors, and with pleasure dwell upon whatever may be praiseworthy in your virtue; while the world, your equals, your rivals, and your pretended friends, perhaps lessen your talents and services, speak with contempt of all your good qualities, ridicule your defects, number your misfortunes amongst your faults, exaggerate these very faults, and impoison your most innocent words and actions; the virtuous alone excuse you, justify your heart, and are the eulogists of your virtues, or the prudent dissemblers of your vices; they alone break up those conversations in which your reputation is attacked; they alone refuse to join with the public against you; and for them alone you are destitute of humanity, and to them alone you cannot pardon even the virtues which render them estimable. Ah! my brethren, return them at least what they lend to you; spare your protectors and apologists, and by decrying them, do not debilitate the only favourable testimony which is left for you among men.
But I speak too gently; not only the pious refuse to join with the malignity of the public against you, but they alone are your true friends; they alone are touched with your misfortunes, affected by your wanderings, and interested in your salvation; they carry you in their heart; while excusing your passions and irregularities before men, they silently lament over them before God; they raise up their hands for you to heaven; they supplicate your conversion; they entreat the forgiveness of your crimes; and you cannot bring yourselves to render justice even to their piety and innocence? Ah! they may make against you the same complaint to the Lord, that the prophet Jeremiah formerly made against the Jews of his time, unjust censurers of his piety and conduct; * Give heed to me, O Lord/3 said that man of God, " and hearken to the voice of them that contend with me. Shall evil be recompensed for good? For they have digged a pit for my soul; remember that I stood before thee to speak good for them, and to turn away thy wrath from them." You are surely sensible, my brethren, of all the injustice of your conduct with regard to what I have been mentioning; but what would it be, if, in completing what I had at first intended, I were to show you, that not only you give corrupted motives to the good works of the pious, which is a temerity; not only you exaggerate their slightest weaknesses, which is an inhumanity; but, likewise, when you have nothing to say against the probity of their intentions, and when their imperfections give no handle to your censures, that you fly to your last hold, that of casting an air of ridicule over their virtue itself; which is an impiety.
Yes, my brethren, an impiety. You make a sport, a comic scene of religion; you still introduce it, like the Pagans formerly, on an infamous theatre; and there you expose its holy mysteries, and all that is most sacred and most respectable on the earth, to the laughter of the spectators. You may apologize for your passions, through the weakness of temperament and human frailty; but your derisions of virtue can find no excuse but in the impious contempt of virtue itself; nevertheless, this irreligious and blasphemous mode of speaking is now regarded as a pleasantry, as a sally of wit, and as a language from which vanity appropriates to itself peculiar honour.
But, my brethren, you thereby persecute virtue, and render it useless to yourselves; you dishonour virtue, and render it useless to others; you try virtue, and render it insupportable to itself.
You persecute virtue, and render it useless to yourselves. Yes, my dear hearer, the example of the pious was a mean of salvation provided for you by the goodness of God; now, his justice, incensed at your derisions on his mercies to his servants, for ever withdraws them from you, and punishes your contempt of piety, by denying to you the gift of piety itself. The kings of the earth take signal vengeance on those who dare to injure their statues, for these are to be considered as public and sacred monuments representing themselves. But the just, here below, are the living statues of the great King, the real images of a holy God; in them he hath expressed the majesty of his purest and most resplendent features; and he for ever curseth those sacrilegious and corrupted hearts who dare to make them a subject of derision and insult.
Besides, even granting that the Lord should not deny to you the gift of piety in punishment of your derisions, they still form an invincible human barrier which will for ever exclude you from its cause. For I demand, if, when tired of the world, of your disorders, of yourself, you wish to return to God, and to save that soul which you now labour to destroy, how shall you dare to declare for piety, you who have so often made it the butt of your public and profane pleasantries? How shall you ever boast of the duties of religion, you who are every day heard to say, that, to become devout, is, in other words, to say that the senses are lost; that such an individual had a thousand good qualities which rendered his society agreeable to all, but that devotion has now altered him to such a degree, that he is fully as insupportable as he was formerly pleasing; that he affects to make himself ridiculous; that we must renounce common sense before we can erect, it would appear, the standard of piety; that, may God preserve you from such madness; that you endeavour to be an honest man, but, God be praised you are no devotee? What language! — that is to say, that God be praised you are already marked with the stamp of the reprobate; that with confidence you can say to yourself, " I shall never alter, but shall die exactly such as I am." What impiety! And yet it is among Christians that such discourses are every day ostentatiously, and with apparent satisfaction, repeated.
Ah! my brethren, permit my sorrow to vent itself here in one reflection. The patriarchs, those men so venerable, so powerful, even according to the world, never had communication with the kings and nations of the different countries, where they were conducted by the order of the Lord, but in the following religious terms: " I fear the Lord." They claimed no respect from the grandeur of their race, whose origin was almost coeval with the world itself, from the lustre of their ancestors, from the splendour of the blood of Abraham, that man, the conqueror of kings, the model of all sages of the earth, and the only hero of whom the world could then boast. " We fear the Lord." Behold their most pompous title, their most august nobility, the only character by which they wished to be distinguished from other men: such was the magnificent sign which appeared at the head of their tents and flocks, which shone on their standards, and every where bore with them the glory of their name, and that of the God of their fathers. And we, my brethren, we shun the reputation of a man just and fearing God, as a title of reproach and shame; we pompously dwell upon the vain distinctions of rank and birth; wherever we go, the frivolous mark of our names and dignities precedes and announces us; and we hide the glorious sign of the God of our fathers; we even glorify ourselves in not being among the number of those who fear and adore him. O God! leave, then, to these foolish men a glory so hideous; confound their folly and impiety, by permitting them to the end to glorify themselves in their confusion and ignominy.
Nor is this all. By these deplorable derisions not, only do you render virtue useless to yourselves, but you likewise render it odious and useless to others; that is to say, not only do you bar against yourselves every path which leads to God, but you likewise shut it against an infinity of souls, whom grace still urges in secret to relinquish their crimes, and to live in a Christian manner; who dare not declare themselves, lest they should be exposed to the lash of your satire and profane railleries; who, in a new life, dread only the ridicule which you cast upon virtue; who, in secret, oppose only that single obstacle to the voice of Heaven which calls upon them; and tremblingly hesitate, in the grand affair of eternity, between the judgments of God and your senseless and impious derisions.
That is to say, that you thereby blast the fruit of that Gospel which we announce, and render our ministry unavailing; you deprive religion of its terrors and majesty, and spread through the whole exterior of piety a ridicule which falls upon religion itself. You perpetuate in the world, and support among men, those prejudices against virtue, and that universal illusion employed by Satan to deceive them, which is that of treating piety as perverse and a folly; you authorize the blasphemies of freethinkers and of the wicked; you accustom sinners to arrogate to themselves an ostentatious glory from vice and irregularity, and to consider debauchery as fashionable and genteel when contrasted with the ridicule of virtue. What, indeed, may I not say? Through your means piety becomes the fable of the world, the sport of the wicked, the shame of sinners, the scandal of the weak, and the rock even of the just; through you vice is held in honour, virtue is debased, truth is weakened, faith is extinguished, religion is annihilated, and corruption universally spreads; and, as foretold by the prophet, desolation perseveres even to the consummation and to the end.
Let me likewise add, that, through you, virtue becomes insupportable to itself: your derisions become a rock to the piety even of the just: you shake their faith; you discourage their zeal; you suspend their good desires; you stifle in their heart the liveliest impressions of grace; you stop them in a thousand deeds of fervour and virtue, which they dare not expose to the impiety of your censures; in spite of themselves, you force them to conform to your habits and maxims, which they detest; to abate from their retirement, their mortifications, and their prayers; and to consecrate to these duties only those concealed moments which may escape your knowledge and railleries. Through these means, you deprive the church of their edifying example; you deprive the weak of those succours which they would otherwise find there; sinners of that shame with which their presence would cover them; the just of that consolation which would animate them; and religion of a sight which would do it honour.
Alas! my brethren, in former ages tyrants never derided Christians, but in reproaching to them their pretended superstitions: they ridiculed the public honours which they saw them render to Jesus Christ, a person crucified, and the preference which was given to him by Christians over Jupiter and all the gods of the empire, whose worship was become respectable through the pomp and magnificence of their temples and altars, the antiquity of the laws, and the majesty of the Caesars: but, on the other hand, they bestowed loud and public praises on their manners; they admired their modesty, frugality, charity, patience, innocent and mortified life, and their absence from theatres, or every other place of public amusement; they could not, without veneration, regard the wise, retired, modest, humble, and benevolent manners of those simple and faithful believers. You, on the contrary, more senseless, find no fault with them for adoring Jesus Christ, and for placing their confidence and hope of salvation in the mystery of the cross; but you find it ridiculous that they should deny themselves every public pleasure; that they should live in the practice of retirement, mortification, and prayer; but you find them worthy of your derision and censure, because they are humble, simple, chaste, and modest: and the Christian life, which found admirers and panegyrists even among tyrants, experiences from you only mockery and profane railleries.
What folly, my brethren! to find worthy of laughter in the world, which is itself but a mass of trifles and absurdities, only those who know its frivolity, and whose only thoughts are bent on placing themselves secure from the wrath to come! What folly, to despise in men the very qualities which render them displeasing to God, respectable to angels, and useful to their fellow-creatures! What folly, to be convinced that an eternal happiness or misery awaits us, yet to find ridiculous only those who are interested in so important an affair!
Let us hold virtue in respect, my brethren; it alone, on the earth, merits our admiration and praise. If we find ourselves still too weak to fulfil its duties, let us at least be equitable, and esteem its lustre and innocence; if we cannot live the life of the just, let us wish to attain it, let us envy their lot; if we cannot as yet imitate their example, let us consider every derision on virtue not only as a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, but as an outrage on humanity, which virtue alone honours and dignifies; far from reproaching the godly with those virtues which render them dissimilar to us, let us reproach ourselves with the vices which prevent us from resembling them; in a word, let us, by a true and sincere respect for piety, deserve to obtain one day the gift of piety itself.
And you, my brethren, who serve the Lord, remember, that the interests of virtue are in your hands; that the weaknesses, the stains with which you blend it, become, as I may say, stains on religion itself; consider how much the world expects from you, and what engagements you contract toward the public, when you espouse the cause of piety; consider with what dignity, what fidelity, what respectability, you ought to support the character and personage of a servant of Jesus Christ. Yes, my brethren, let us, with majesty, support the interests of piety against the sneers of those who despise it; let us purchase the right of being insensible to their censures by giving no foundation for them; let us force the world to respect what it cannot love; let us not of the holy profession of piety make a sordid gain, a vile worldly interest, a life of ill-nature and caprice, a claim to effeminacy and idleness, a singularity from which we arrogate honour, a prejudice, a spirit of intolerance which flatters us, and a spirit of division which separates us from our fellow-creatures; let us make it the price of eternity, the path to heaven, the rule of our duties, and the reparation of our crimes; a spirit of modesty which makes us unassuming, a compunction which humbles us, a gentleness which draws us to our brethren, a charity which makes us bear with them, an indulgence which attracts their regard, a spirit of peace which ties us to them; and, lastly, a union of hearts, of desires, of affections, of good and evil on the earth, which shall be the forerunner and hope of that eternal union which charity is to consummate in heaven.