SERMON XXIV.
EVIDENCE OF THE LAW OF GOD.
"And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?" — John viii. 46.
Jesus Christ had hitherto confuted the incredulity of the Jews by his works and by his miracles; at present he recalls them to the judgment of their own conscience and to the evidence of the truth, which, in spite of themselves, rendered testimony to his doctrine and to his ministry. Nevertheless, as they shut their eyes against the evidence of his miracles, in accusing him of operating them through the ministry of devils, so they likewise harden themselves against the evidence of his doctrine and of his mission, so clearly foretold in the Scriptures, by alleging pretended obscurities, which rendered them in their eyes, still doubtful and suspicious.
For, my brethren, however evident may be the truth, that is to say, the law of God, whether in our heart, where it is written in shining and ineffaceable characters, or in the rules which Jesus Christ hath left to us; we would always, either that our conscience see nothing in it but what our passions see, or that these rules be not so explicit but what we may always be able to find out some favourable interpretation and modification of them.
In effect, two pretexts are commonly opposed by the sinners of the world against the evidence of truths the most terrible of the law of God.
First. In order to calm themselves on a thousand abuses, authorized by the world, they tell us that they believe themselves to be in safety in that state; that their conscience reproaches them with nothing on that head; and that, could they be persuaded that they were in the path of error, they would instantly quit it. First pretext which is opposed to the evidence of the law of God: candour and tranquillity of conscience.
Secondly. They oppose that the gospel is not so clear and so explicit on certain points as we maintain it to be; that each interprets it in his own way, and makes it to say whatever he wishes; that what appears so positive to us, appears not so to all the world. Second pretext: the obscurity and uncertainty of the rules.
Now, I say that the law of God hath a two-fold mark of evidence, which shall overthrow these two pretexts, and shall condemn, at the day of judgment, all the vain excuses of sinners.
First. It is evident in the conscience of the sinner: first reflection. Secondly, it is evident in the simplicity of the rules: second reflection. — The evidence of the law of God in the conscience of men: first character of the law of God, which shall judge the false security and pretended candour of worldly souls. The evidence of the law of God in the simplicity of its rules: second character of the law of God, which shall judge the affected uncertainties and the false interpretations of sinners. And thus it is, O my God 1 that thy holy law shall judge the world, and that the criminal conscience shall one day be confounded before thy tribunal, both by the lights of his own conscience and by the perspicuity of thy heavenly maxims.
Part I. — It is rather surprising that the greatest part of worldly souls, in justification of the abuses of the world, and the danger of its maxims, allege to us the candour and the tranquillity of their conscience. Besides, that peace and security, in the false paths of iniquity, are rather their punishment than their excuse; and that, were it even true that the conscience should reproach them with nothing in manners regulated solely according to the false judgments of the world, that state would still be only so much the worse, and more hopeless of salvation. It appears that, of all tribunals, that of conscience is the last to which an unbelieving soul should appeal; and that nothing is less favourable to the errors of a sinner than the sinner himself.
I know that there are hardened souls, to whom no ray of grace or of light can carry conviction; who live without remorse and without anxiety in the horrors of an infamous licentiousness; in whom all conscience seems extinguished, and who carry the excess of their blindness, says St. Augustine, so far as even to glory in their blindness. But these are only dreadful examples of God's justice upon men; and if such have appeared upon the earth, they only prove how far his neglect and the power of his wrath may sometimes go.
Yes, my brethren, whether we affect boldly and openly to cast off the authority of the law, like the impious and the licentious; whether we endeavour to mollify and artificially to reconcile it with our passions, by favourable interpretations, like the greatest part of worldly souls and common sinners; our conscience renders a twofold testimony within us to this divine law: a testimony of truth to the equity and to the necessity of its maxims, and a testimony of severity to the exactitude of its rules.
I say in the first place, a testimony of truth to the equity of its maxims. For, my brethren, God is too wise not to love order; and he is, at the same time, too good not to wish our welfare. His law must consequently bear these two characters, — a character of equity, and a character of goodness: a character of equity, which regulates all the duties; a character of goodness which makes us to find our peace and our happiness here below, in duty and in regularity.
Thus, we feel, in the bottom of our hearts, that these rules are just and reasonable; that the law of God commands nothing but what is consistent with the real interests of man; that nothing is more consonant to the reasonable creature than gentleness, humanity, temperance, modesty, and all the virtues recommended in the Gospel; that the passions prohibited by the law are the sole source of all our troubles; that the more we deviate from the precept, and from the law, the more do we remove ourselves from peace and tranquillity of heart; and that the Lord, in forbidding us to yield ourselves up to impetuous and iniquitous passions, hath only forbidden us to yield ourselves up to our own tyrants, and that his only intention hath been to render us happy in rendering us believers.
Behold a testimony which the law of God finds in the bottom of our hearts. Hurried away by the delusion of the senses, we vainly cast off the yoke of the holy rules; we can never succeed in justifying, even to ourselves, our own irregularities; we always internally adopt the interests of the law against ourselves; we always find within us a justification of the rules against the passions. We cannot corrupt this internal witness of the truth, which pleads within us for virtue; we always feel a secret misunderstanding between our inclinations and our lights: the law of God, born in our heart, incessantly struggles there against the law of the flesh foreign to man; it maintains its truths there in spite of ourselves, if it cannot maintain its authority; it officiates as a censurer, if it cannot serve as a director: in a word, it renders us unhappy, if it cannot render us believers.
Thus, in vain do we sometimes give way to all the bitterness of hatred and of revenge; we immediately feel that this cruel pleasure is not made for the heart of man; that to hate, is, in fact, to punish ourselves; and, in returning to ourselves after the transports of passion, we find within us a principle of humanity which disavows their violence, and clearly points out to us, that gentleness and kindness were our first inclinations; and that, in commanding us to love our brethren, the law of God hath only done so, as to consult the right and most reasonable feelings of our heart, and to reconcile us with ourselves. Thou art more righteous than I, said Saul to David, in the time of his strongest hatred against him. That goodness, born in the heart of all men, forced from him that confession, and inwardly disavowed the injustice and the cruelty of his revenge.
In vain do we plunge ourselves into brutal and sensual gratifications, and madly range after whatever may satisfy the insatiable desires of pleasure: we quickly feel that debauchery leads us too far to be agreeable to nature: that whatever enslaves and tyrannizes over us, overturns the order of our first institution: and that the Gospel, in prohibiting the voluptuous passions, hath provided for the tranquillity of our heart, and for restoring to us all its elevation and nobility. How many hired servants of my father's, said the prodigal, still bound in the chains of vice, have bread enough, and to spare, and I consume my days in weariness and in shame! It was a remnant of reason and of nobility which still spake in the bottom of his heart.
Lastly. Investigate all the precepts of the law of God, and you will feel that they have a necessary connexion with the heart of man; that they are rules founded on a profound knowledge of what takes place within us; that they solely contain the remedies of our most secret evils, and the succours of our most righteous inclinations; and that none but He alone who knoweth the bottom of hearts, could be capable of laying down such maxims to men. The heathens themselves, in whom all truth was not yet extinguished, rendered this glory to the Christian morality; they were forced to admire the wisdom of its precepts, the necessity of its restraints, the sanctity of its counsels, the good sense and sublimity of all its rules; they were astonished to find, in the discourses of Jesus Christ, a more sublime philosophy than in the Roman or Grecian schools; and they could not comprehend how the Son of Mary should be better acquainted with the duties, the desires, and all the secret folds of the human heart, than Plato and all his disciples.
Will you tell us, after this, that nature is our first law, and that tendencies to pleasures, inherent in our being, can never be crimes? I have often said it; it is an impiety only of conversation; it is an ostentation of freethinking, of which vanity makes a boast, but which truth inwardly belies. Augustine in his errors had spared no pains to efface, from the bottom of his heart, those remains of faith and of conscience which still recalled him to the truth; he had eagerly sought, in the most impious opinions and in the most shocking errors, wherewithal to comfort himself against his crimes; his mind, flying the light which pursued him, wandered from impiety to impiety and from error to error: nevertheless, in spite of all his efforts and flights, the truth, always victorious in the bottom of his soul, proclaimed its triumph in spite of himself: he could succeed neither in seducing nor in quieting himself in his disorders: " I bore, O my God," says he, " a conscience racked, and still bleeding, as it were, from the grievous wounds which my passions incessantly made there: I was a burden to myself; I could no longer sustain my own heart; I turned myself on every side, and no where could it find ease; I knew not where to lay it, that I might be delivered from it, and that mine anxiety might be comforted."
Behold the testimony which a sinner, who, to all the keenness of the passions, added the impiety of opinions and the abuse of lights, renders of himself. And these examples are of every age: our own has beheld famous and avowed sinners who made an infamous boast of not believing in God, and who were looked upon as heroes in impiety and freethinking: we have seen them touched at last with repentance, like Augustine, and recalled from their errors; we have seen them, I say, make an open avowal, that they had never been able to succeed in effacing the rules and truth from their soul; that, amidst all their most shocking impieties and excesses, their heart, still Christian, inwardly belied their derisions and blasphemies; that before men they vaunted a strength of mind which forsook them in private; that that apparent unbelief concealed the most cruel remorses, and the most gloomy fears; and that they had never been firm and tranquil in guilt.
Yes, my brethren, guilt, always timorous, every where bears a witness of condemnation against itself. Every where you render homage, by your inward anxieties and remorses, to the sanctity of that law which you violate; every where a fund of weariness and of sorrow, inseparable from guilt, makes you to feel that regularity and innocence are the only happiness which was intended for you on the earth; you vainly display an affected intrepidity: the guilty conscience always betrays itself. Cruel terrors march every where before you: solitude disquiets, darkness alarms you; you fancy to see phantoms coming from every quarter to reproach you with the secret errors of your soul; unlucky dreams fill you with black and gloomy fancies; and guilt, after which you run with so much relish, pursues you afterward like a cruel vulture, and fixes itself upon you, to tear your heart, and to punish you for the pleasure it had formerly given you. — O my God! what resources hast thou not left in our heart to recall us to thee! and how powerful is the protection which the goodness and the righteousness of thy law finds in the bottom of our being! — First testimony which the conscience renders to the law of God, a testimony of truth to the sanctity of its maxims.
But it also renders a testimony of severity to the exactitude of its rules. For a second illusion of the greatest part of wTorldly souls, who live exempted from great irregularities, but who otherwise live amidst all the pleasures, all the abuses, all the sensualities, and all the dissipations authorized by the world, is, that of wishing to persuade themselves that the gospel requires no more, and to persuade us that their conscience reproaches them with nothing, and that they believe themselves safe in that state. Now, I say, that here the worldly conscience is again not candid, and is deceived; and that, in spite of all those mollifications which they endeavour to justify to themselves, it renders, in the bottom of our hearts, a testimony of severity to the law of God.
In effect, order requires that all our passions be regulated by the bridle of the law. All our inclinations, corrupted in their source, have occasion for a rule to rectify and correct them: we confess this ourselves; we feel that our corruption pervades the smallest as well as the greatest things; that self-love infects all our proceedings; and that we every where find ourselves wTeak, and in continual opposition to order and duty; we feel, then, that the rule ought, in no instance, to be favourable to our inclinations; that we ought every where to find it severe, because it ought every where to be in opposition to us; that the law cannot be in unity with us; that whatever favours our inclinations, can never be the remedy intended to cure them; that whatever flatters our desires, can never be the bridle which is to restrain them: in a word, that whatever nourishes self-love, is not the law which is established for the sole purpose of destroying and annihilating it. Thus, by an inward feeling, inseparable from our being, we always discriminate ourselves from the law, our inclinations from its rules, our pleasures from its duties; and, in all dubious actions where we decide in favour of our inclinations, we perfectly feel that we are deviating from the law of God, always more rigid than ourselves.
And allow me here, my brethren, to appeal to your conscience itself, which you always allege, and to which you continually refer us. Are you, honestly speaking, at your ease, as you wish to persuade us, in this life, altogether of pleasures, of dissipation, of indolence, and of sensuality: in a word, in this worldly life, of which you constantly maintain the innocence, have you hitherto been able to succeed in persuading yourselves that it is the path which leads to salvation? Do you not feel that something more is required of you by the gospel than you perform? Would you wish to appear before God with nothing to offer to him but these pleasures, these amusements which you call innocent, and of which the principal groundwork of your life is composed? I put the question to you, in those moments when, more warmly affected perhaps by grace, you purpose seriously to think upon eternity, do you not place, in the plan which you then form of a new life, the privation of almost all the very things in which you are continually telling us that you see no harm? Do you not begin by promising to yourselves, that, solely occupied then with your salvation, you will renounce the excesses of gaming, the theatres, the vanities and indecencies of dress, the dissipation of public assemblies and pleasures; that you will devote more time to prayer, to retirement, to holy reading, and to the duties of religion? Now, what is it that you hereby acknowledge, unless it be, that, while you renounce not all these abuses, — that you devote not more time to all these pious duties, you think not seriously upon your salvation; you ought to have no pretension to it; you are in the path of death and perdition?
But, besides, you who carry so far the severity of your censures against the godly, recollect all the rigour of your maxims, and of your derisions upon their conduct; do you not blame, do you not continually censure those persons who wish to connect with a public profession of piety those abuses, those amusements, of which you are the daily apologists, and who wish to enjoy the reputation of virtue without losing any of the pleasures of the world? Do you not mock their piety as a piece of mere grimace? Here it is that you emphatically display all the austerity of the Christian life. Do you not say, that it is necessary either totally to renounce the world, or continue to live as the world lives; and that all these ambiguous virtues serve only to decry the true virtue? I agree with you in this; but I reply to you, Your conscience dictates to you that it is not safe to give yourself partially to God, and your conscience reproaches you nothing, as you say, in a life in which God enters not at all? You condemn those mistaken souls whom, at least, an apparent division between the world and Jesus Christ may comfort? And you justify to us your conduct, you who have nothing in its justification but the abuses of the world and the danger of its habits? Do you then believe that the path of salvation is more rugged for those who profess piety than for you; — that the world hath privileges thereon, which are forfeited from the moment that we mean to serve God? Be consistent, then, with yourselves, and either condemn no more a worldly virtue, or no longer justify the world itself; since whatever you blame in that virtue is only that portion of it which the world supplies.
And, in order to make you more sensibly feel how far you are from being candid on this head, you continually take a pride in repeating that we despair of human weakness; that in order to act up to all that we say in these Christian pulpits, it would be necessary to withdraw to the deserts, or to be angels rather than men: nevertheless, render glory to the force of truth. If a minister of the gospel were to deliver to you from this place a doctrine quite opposite to that which we teach; were he to announce to you the same maxims which you daily hold forth in the world; were he to preach to you in this place of the truth, that the gospel is not so severe as it is published; that we may love the world, and yet serve God; that there is no harm in gaming, in pleasures, in theatres, except what we ourselves occasion; that we must live like the world while we live in the world; that all that language of the cross, of penitence, mortification, and self-denial, is more calculated for cloisters than for the court, and for persons of a certain rank; and, lastly, that God is too good to consider as crimes a thousand things which are become habitual, and of which we wish you to make a matter of conscience; — were he, I say, to preach these maxims to you in this holy place, what would you think of him? What would you say to his new doctrine? What idea would you have of this new apostle? Would you consider him as a man come down from heaven to announce to you this new gospel? Would you believe him to be better instructed than we in the holy truths of salvation, and in the rules of the Christian life? You would laugh at his ignorance or his folly; you would perhaps be struck with horror at the profanation which he would make of his ministry.
And what, my brethren, these maxims announced before the altars would appear to you as blasphemy or madness; and, promulgated in your daily conversations, would they become rules of reason and of wisdom? In the mouth of a minister of the gospel you would look upon them as the speeches of a madman; and, in your mouth, should they appear more solid and more weighty? You would laugh, or rather you would be struck with horror, at a preacher who should announce them to you; and you wish to persuade us that you speak seriously, and that you are consistent with yourselves, when with so much confidence you hold them forth to us.
Ah! my brethren, how treacherous we are to God! and how terrible will he be when he shall come to avenge upon the lights of our own heart the honour of his holy law! Our apparent obstinacy for the abuses of the world, of which we maintain the innocence, is a secret persuasion that the world and its abuses are a path of perdition: we publicly justify what we condemn in private: we are the hypocrites of the world and of its pleasures; and, through a most deplorable destiny, our life passes away in dissembling with ourselves, and in obstinately determining to perish in spite of ourselves. And surely, says the apostle John, if our heart, notwithstanding all our self-blindness, cannot help already condemning us in secret, have we more indulgence to expect from the terrible and sovereign Judge of hearts than from our heart itself?
Thus, my brethren, study the law of God in your own conscience, and you will see that it is not more favourable than we to your passions: consult the lights of your heart, and you will feel that they perfectly accord with our maxims; listen to the voice of truth, which speaks within you, and you will admit that we only repeat what it is continually whispering to your heart. You have no occasion, says St. Augustine, to apply to able men, in order to have the greatest part of your doubts cleared up; go no farther than yourselves for explanations and answers; apply to yourselves for what you have to do; listen to the decisions of your heart; follow the first impulse of your conscience, and you will always determine for that choice most conformable to the law of God; the first impression of the heart is always for the strictness of the law against the softenings of self-love: your conscience will always go farther, and will be more strict than yourselves; and if you have occasion for our decisions, it will rather be in order to moderate the severity than to expose the false indulgence of it.
Behold the first manner in which the law of God shall one day judge us: that law, manifested in the conscience of the sinner, and, as if born with him, shall rise up against him; our heart, marked with the seal of truth, shall be the witness to depose for our condemnation; our lights shall be opposed to our actions, our remorses to our manners, our speeches to our thoughts, our inward sentiments to our public proceedings, and ourselves to ourselves. Thus we bear, each of us, our condemnation in our own heart. The Lord will not bring other proof than ourselves to determine the decision of our eternal reprobation; and the soul before the tribunal of God, says Tertullian, shall appear at the same time both the criminal condemned and the witness which shall testify against his crimes. He will have nothing to reply, continues this father. You knew the truth, will be said to him, and you iniquitously withheld it: you admitted of the happiness of the souls who seek only God, and you sought him not yourselves: you drew shocking pictures of the world, of its wearinesses, of its perfidies, and of its wickednesses, and you were always its slave and blind worshipper: you inwardly respected the religion of your fathers, and you made a deplorable vaunt of impiety: you secretly dreaded the judgments of God, and you affected not to believe in him. In the bottom of your heart you rendered justice to the piety of the godly; you proposed to resemble them at some future period; and you tore and persecuted them with your derisions and censures: in a word, your lights have ever been for God, and your actions for the world.
O my God! to what do men not carry their ingratitude and folly! Thou hast placed in us lights inseparable from our being, which, by disturbing the false peace of our passions and errors, continually recall us to order and to the truth; and, through an imposition of vanity, we make a boast of being tranquil in our errors; we glory in a peace which thy mercy is still willing to disturb; and, far from publishing the riches of thy grace upon our soul, which leaves us still open to the truth, we vaunt an obstinacy and a blindness which, sooner or later, shall be realized, and shall at last be the just punishment of an ingratitude and of a deceit so injurious to thy grace. — First character of the evidence of the law of God: it is evident in the conscience of the sinner; but it is likewise so in the simplicity of its rules.
Part II. — Since man is the work of God, man can no longer live but conformably to the will of his author; and since God hath of man made his work, and his most perfect work, he could never leave him to live by chance upon the earth without manifesting to him his will; that is to say, without pointing out to him what he owed to his Creator, to his fellow-creatures, and to himself. Therefore, in creating him, he imprinted in his being a living light, incessantly visible to his heart, which regulated all his duties. But all flesh having perverted its way, and the abundance of iniquity which had prevailed over the earth, (unable, it is true, to efface that light entirely from the heart of men,) no longer permitting them to reflect or to consult it, and apparently no longer even maintaining itself in them, unless to render them more inexcusable; God, whose mercies seem to become more abundant in proportion as the wickedness of men increases, caused to be engraven, on tables of stone, that law which nature, that is to say, which himself, had engraven on our hearts: he placed before our eyes the law which we bear within us, in order to recall us to ourselves. Nevertheless, the people, who were its first depositaries, having again disfigured it by interpretations which adulterated its purity, Jesus Christ, the wisdom and the light of God, came at last upon the earth to restore it to its original beauty; to purge it from the alterations of the synagogue; to dissipate the obscurities which a false learning and human traditions had spread through it; to lay open all its sublimity; to apply its rules to our wants; and, in leaving to us his Gospel, no longer to leave an excuse, either to the ignorance or to the wickedness of those who violate its precepts.
Nevertheless, the second pretext which is opposed in the world to the evidence of the law of God, is the pretended ambiguity of its rules; they accuse us of making the Gospel to say whatever we wish; they contest, they find answers, they spread obscurities through all, and they darken the law in such a manner that the world itself insists on having the Gospel on its side.
Now I say, that, besides the evidence of the conscience, the law of God is also evident in the simplicity of its rules, and consequently that the sinners, who wish thus to justify their iniquitous ways, shall one day be overthrown, both by the testimony of their own heart and by the evidence of the holy rules.
Yes, my brethren, the law of God, says the prophet, is pure, enlightening the eyes even of those who would wish to conceal it from themselves. In effect, Jesus Christ, in coming himself to give to us a law of life and of truth for the regulation of our manners and our duties, and in which the evidence could not be too great, could never undoubtedly have meant to leave obscurities in it capable of deluding us, and of favouring passions which he expressly came to overthrow. Human laws may be liable to these inconveniences; the mind of man, which hath invented them, being unable to foresee all, it hath also been unable to obviate all the difficulties which might one day arise in the minds of other men, on the strength of its expressions, and even on the nature of its rules. But the Spirit of God, author of the holy rules held out in the Gospel, hath foreseen all the doubts which the human mind could oppose to his law; he hath read, in the hearts of all men to come, the obscurities which their corruption might shed over the nature of his rules: consequently, he hath concerted them in a manner so divine and so intelligible, so simple and so sublime, that the most ignorant, equally as the most learned, can never misconstrue his intentions, and be ignorant of the ways of eternal life.
It is true, that sacred obscurities conceal it in the incomprehensible mysteries of faith; but the rules of the manners are explicit and precise; the duties are there evident; and nothing can be more clear, or less equivocal, than the precepts of Jesus Christ. Not but that doubts and difficulties may spring up in the detail of the obligations; that the assemblage of a thousand different circumstances may not in such a manner darken the rule, but that it may sometimes escape the most learned; and that, upon all the infinite duties of stations and conditions, all be so decided in the Gospel that mistakes cannot often take place.
But I say, (and I entreat of you to pursue these reflections, which to me appear of the utmost consequence, and to comprise all the rules of the manners,) in the first place, that if, upon the detail of duties, the letter of the law be sometimes dubious, the spirit of it is almost never so: that it is easily seen to which side the Gospel inclines, and to what the analogy and ruling spirit of its maxims lead us: I say, that they mutually clear up each other; that they all go to the same end; that they are like so many rays, which, uniting in one centre, form so grand a lustre that it is impossible longer to mistake them; that there are principal rules which serve to elucidate every particular difficulty; and, lastly, that if the law appear sometimes equivocal to us, the intention of the legislator, by which we ought to interpret it, never leaves room for either doubt or mistake.
Thus, you would wish to know, you who live at the court, where ambition is, as it were, the virtue of persons of your rank; you would wish to know if it be a crime ardently to long for the honours and the prosperities of the earth, to be never satisfied with your station, continually to wish advancement, and to connect with that single desire, all your views, all your proceedings, all your cares, the whole foundation of your life. In answer to this, you are there told, that your heart ought to be where your treasure is; that is to say, in the desire and in the hope of eternal riches; and that the Christian is not of this world. Decide thereupon the difficulty yourselves.
You demand, if continual gaming, amusing, theatres, and so many other pleasures, so innocent in the eyes of the world, ought to be banished from the Christian life. You are there told, that blessed are they who weep now; but woe unto those who laugh, and who receive their consolation in this world. Follow the spirit of this rule, and see to what it leads.
You inquire, if, having to live in the world, you ought to live like the world; if we would wish to condemn almost all men who live like you; and if, in order to serve God, it be necessary to affect singularities which excite the ridicule of other men. You are there told, that we are not to conform to this corrupted age; that it is impossible to please men and to be the servant of Jesus Christ; and that the multitude is always the party of the reprobate. You have now to say whether the answer be explicit.
You doubt, if, having pardoned your enemy, you be also obliged to see him, to serve him, to assist him with your wealth and credit; and if it be not more equitable to reserve your favours and preferences for your friends. You are there told, do good to those who have wished evil to you; speak well of those who calumniate you; love those who hate you. Enter into the spirit of this pre cept, and say if it doth not shed a light over your doubt, which instantly clears it up, and dissipates it.
Lastly, propose as many doubts as you please, upon duties, and it will be easy for you to decide them by the spirit of the law, if the letter say nothing of them; for the letter kills me, says the apostle: that is to say, to stop there, to look upon as duty only what is literally marked, to stop at the rude limits, and to enter no farther into the principle and into the spirit which vivifies it, is to be a Jew, and to be willing to be self-deceived. No longer tell us, then, my brethren, when we condemn so many abuses, which you, without scruple, allow yourselves, " But the Gospel says nothing of them." Ah! the Gospel says every thing to those who wish to understand it: the Gospel leaves nothing undecided to whoever loves the law of God: the Gospel is competent to all, to whoever searches it only for instruction; and it goes on much the farther, and says so much the more, as that, without stopping to regulate a particular detail, it regulates the passions themselves; that, without detailing all the actions, it goes to repress those inclinations which are the sources of them; and that, without confining itself to certain external circumstances of the manners, it proposes to us, as rules of duty, only self-denial, hatred of the world, love of sufferance, contempt for whatever takes place, and the whole extent of its crucifying maxims. — First reflection.
I say, in the second place, that it is not the obscurity of the law, but our passions, still dear, which give rise to all our doubts upon the duties; that the worldly souls are those who find most difficulty and most obscurity in the rules of the manners; that nothing appears clear to those who would wish that nothing were so; that every thing appears doubtful to those who have an interest in its being so. I say, with St. Augustine, that it is a willing spirit alone which gives understanding of the precepts; that unless the rules and duties are loved, they can never be thoroughly known; that we enter into the truth only through charity; and that the sincere desire of salvation is the grand solver of all difficulties: I say, that faithful and fervent souls have almost never any thing to oppose to the law of God; and that their doubts are rather pious alarms upon holy actions, than pretexts and difficulties to authorize profane ones.
Men have learned to doubt upon the rules of the manners, only since they have wished to connect them with their iniquitous passions. Alas! all was almost decided for the first believers. In those happy ages, we see not that the first pastors of the church had many difficulties to resolve upon the detail of the duties. Those immense volumes, which decide their doubts by endless resolutions, have appeared only with the corruption of manners: in proportion as believers have had more passions to satisfy, they have had more doubts to propose; it hath been necessary to multiply volumes upon volumes, in order to resolve difficulties which cupidity alone formed, — difficulties already all resolved in the Gospel, and upon which the first ages of faith would have been scandalized that they had dared to form even a doubt. Our ages, still more dissolute than those which preceded us, have still beheld these enormous collections of cases and resolutions increasing and multiplying to infinity: all the most incontestable rules of the morality of Jesus Christ are there become almost problems; there is no duty upon which corruption hath not had difficulties to propose, and to which a false learning hath not found mollifications: every thing has there been agitated, contested, and put in doubt: the mind of man hath there been seen quibbling with the spirit of God, and substituting human doctrines in place of that doctrine which Jesus Christ hath brought to us from heaven; and although we pretend not universally to blame all those pious and able men, who have left to us these laborious masses of decisions, it had been to be wished that the church had never called in such aids; and we cannot help looking upon them as remedies which are themselves become diseases, and as the sad fruits of the necessity of the times, of the depravity of manners, and of the decay of truth among men.
Doubts upon the duties arise, therefore, from the corruption of our hearts, much more than from the obscurities of the rules.
The light of the law, says St. Augustine, resembles that of the sun; but vainly doth it shine, glitter, enlighten, the blind are unaffected by it: now every sinner is that blind person; the light is near to him, surrounds him, penetrates him, enters from every quarter into his soul; but he is always himself far from the light. Purify your heart, continues that holy father; remove from it the fatal bandage of the passions; then shall you clearly see all your duties, and all your doubts shall vanish. Thus we continually see, that when touched with grace, a soul begins to adopt solid measures for eternity, his eyes are opened upon a thousand truths, which, till then, he had concealed from himself: in proportion as his passions diminish, his lights increase; he is astonished by what means he could so long have shut his eyes upon truths which now appear to him so evident and so incontestable; and far from a sacred guide having then occasion to contest, and to maintain against him the interests of the law of God, his prudence is required to conceal, as I may say, from that contrite soul, the whole extent and all the terrors of the holy truths; to quiet him on the horror of past irregularities, and to moderate the fears into which he is thrown by the novelty and the surprise of his lights. It is not, then, the rules which are cleared up, it is the soul which frees itself from, and quits its blindness: it is not the law of God which becomes more evident, it is the eyes of the heart which are opened to its lustre; in a word, it is not the Gospel, but the sinner who is changed.
And a fresh proof of what I advance is, that, upon those points of the law where no particular passion or interest blinds us, we are equitable and clear-sighted. A miser, who hides from himself the rules of faith upon the insatiable love of riches, clearly sees the maxims which condemn ambition or luxury. A voluptuary, who tries to justify to himself the weakness of his inclinations, gives no quarter to the mean desires and to the sordid attachments of avarice. A man, mad for exaltation and, fortune, and who considers the eternal exertions which he is under the necessity of making in order to succeed, as weighty and serious cares, and alone worthy his birth and his name, sees all the unworthiness of a life of amusement and pleasure, and clearly comprehends that a man, born with a name, degrades and dishonours himself by laziness and indolence. A woman, seized with the rage of gaming, yet otherwise regular, is inveterate against the slightest faults which attack the conduct, and continually justifies the innocence of, excessive gaming, by contrasting it with irregularities of another description, from which she finds herself free. Another on the contrary, intoxicated with her person and with her beauty, totally engrossed by her deplorable passions, considers that obstinate perseverance in an eternal gaming as a kind of disease and derangement of the mind, and, in the shame of her own engagements sees nothing but an innocent weakness and involuntary inclinations, the destiny of which we find in our hearts.
Review all the passions, and you will see that, in proportion as we are exempted from some one we see, we condemn it in others: we know the rules which forbid it; we go even to the rigour against others, upon the observance of duties which interest not our own weaknesses, and we carry our severity beyond even the rule itself. The Pharisees, so instructed in, and so severe upon the guilt of the adulteress, and upon the punishments attached by the law to the infamy of that infidelity, saw not their own pride, their hypocrisy, their implacable hatred, and their secret envy against Jesus Christ. Obscurities are only in our own heart; and we never begin to doubt upon our duties but when we begin to love those maxims which oppose them. — Second reflection.
In effect, I tell you, in the third place, you believe that the Gospel is not so express as we pretend, upon the greater part of the rules which we wish to prescribe to you; that we carry its severity to excess, and that we make it to say whatever we please. Hear it then itself, my brethren; we consent that, of all the duties prescribed to you by it, you shall think yourselves obliged to observe only those which are marked there in terms so precise and clear that it is impossible to mistake or misconstrue them: more is not required of you, and we free you from all the rest. Hear it then: u And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. Whosoever he be of you, that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. The kingdom of heaven sufTereth violence, and the violent take it by force. Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Woe unto you that are full, for ye shall hunger; woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep. Blessed are they that weep now, for ye shall laugh. He that loveth his father, his wife, his children, yea, and his life also, better than me, is not worthy of me. I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice; and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy."
Do I speak here, my brethren? Do I come to deceive you by an excess of severity, to add to the Gospel, and to bring you only my own thoughts? Weak creature that I am, I have occasion myself for indulgence; and if I took, in the weakness of my own heart, the doctrine which I announce to you, alas! I would speak to you only the language of man: I would tell you that God is too good to punish inclinations which are born, it would appear, with us; that, to love God, it is not necessary to hate one*s self; that, when rich, we ought to enjoy our wealth, and allow ourselves every gratification. Behold the language which I would hold; for man, delivered up to himself, can speak only this language of flesh and blood. But would you believe me, as I have already demanded; would you respect my ministry; would you look upon me as an angel from heaven, who should come to announce to you this new Gospel?
That of Jesus Christ speaks another language to you. I have related to you only his own divine words; these are the duties which he prescribes to you in clear and express terms. We consent that you confine your whole piety to these limits, and that you leave all the rest as doubtful, or, at least commanded in terms less clear, and more susceptible of favourable interpretations. Reckon not among your duties but these holy and incontestable rules; we exact nothing more: limit yourselves to performing what they prescribe to you; and you will see that you shall do more than we even demand of you; and that the most common and most familiar maxims of the Gospel go infinitely farther than all our discourses.— Third reflection.
I also say to you, in the fourth place, that if almost all be contested in the world upon the most incontestable duties of Christian piety, it is because the Gospel is a book unknown to the greatest part of believers; it is that, through a deplorable abuse, a whole life is passed in acquiring vain learning, equally useless to man, to his happiness, and to his eternity; and the book of the law is never read, in which is contained the knowledge of salvation, the truth which is to deliver us, the light which is to conduct us, the titles of our hopes, the testimony of our immortality, the consolations of our exilement, and the aids of our pilgrimage: it is that, on entering into the world, care is taken to present to us those books in which are explained the rules of that profession to which we are allotted, and, that the book of the law, in which the rules of the profession of the Christian are contained, that profession which shall survive all others, alone necessary, and the only one which shall accompany us into eternity; that book, I say is left in neglect, and enters not into the plan of studies which ought to occupy our earlier years: lastly, it is that fabulous and lascivious histories childishly amuse our leisure; and that the history of God^s wonders and mercies upon men, filled with events so grand, so weighty, so interesting, which ought to be the sole occupation, and the whole consolation of our life, does not appear to us worthy even of our curiosity.
I am not surprised, after this, if we have continual occasion to maintain the Gospel against the abuses and the prejudices of the world; if we are listened to with the same surprise, when we announce the commonest truths of the Christian morality, as though we announced the belief and the mysteries of those savage and far distant nations, whose countries and manners are hardly known. And if the doctrine of Jesus Christ find the same opposition at present in minds, that it experienced at the birth of faith, it is, that there are Christians to whom the book of the Gospel is almost equally unknown as it then was to the heathens; who scarcely know whether Jesus Christ be come to bring laws to men, and who cannot, for a single moment, support without weariness, the reading of that divine book, the rules of which are so sublime, the promises so consoling, and of which the pagans themselves, who embraced faith, so much admired the beauty and the divine philosophy. Thus, my brethren, read the holy books, and read them with that spirit of faith, of submission, of trust, which the church exacts, and you will soon be as well acquainted with your duties, and with the rules of the manners, as the doctors themselves who teach you.
And, indeed, my brethren, whence comes it, I beg of you, that the first believers carried so far the purity of manners and the holiness of Christianity? Were other maxims announced to them than those which we announce to you? Was another gospel preached to them, more clear and more explicit than that which we preach to you? Nevertheless, they were idolatrous and dissolute nations, who had brought to the truths of faith all the prejudices of the superstitions and of the most infamous voluptuousnesses authorized even by their worship. Did the Gospel contain the smallest obscurities favourable to the passions, it surely ought to have been those first disciples of faith who should have made the mistake. Nevertheless, whence comes it they never proposed to the apostles and to their successors the same difficulties which you continually oppose to us, in support of the abuses of the world and of the interests of the passions? Whence comes it, that, with more inclinations and more prejudices than we for pleasures, those blessed believers at once comprehended how far, in order to obey the Gospel, it was necessary to deny them to themselves?
Ah! it was that, night and day, they had the book of the law in their hands; it was that patience, and the consolation of the Scriptures, were the sweetest occupation of their faith; it was that the letters of the holy apostles, and the relation of the life, and of the maxims of Jesus Christ, were the sole bond and the daily conversations of these infant churches: in a word, it is that, to whoever reads the gospel, whatever regards the duties is quickly decided. — Fourth reflection.
Lastly, I say, even admitting that some obscurities should be found there, doth not the law of God find all its evidence in instruction and in the ministry? The Christian pulpits announce to you the purity of the holy maxims; the pastors publicly preach them; men, full of zeal and of knowledge, convey them down to posterity, in works worthy of the better times of the church: never had the piety of believers more aids; no age ever was more enlightened, or better knew the spirit of faith and the whole extent of duties. We no longer live in those ages of ignorance, in which the rules subsisted only in the abuses which had adulterated them; in which the ministry was often an occasion of error and of scandal for believers, and in which the priest was considered as more enlightened, whenever he was more superstitious than his people.
It would seem, O my God! that in order to render us more inexcusable, in proportion as the wickedness of men increases on the one side, the knowledge of the truth, which is to condemn them, augments on the other; in proportion as the manners become corrupted, the rules become more evident; in proportion as faith becomes languid, it is cleared up and purified; like those fires, which, in expiring give a momentary flash, and never display their lustre with such brilliancy as when on the eve of being extinguished.
Not that there are not still among us many blind guides and prophets who announce their own dreams. But the snare is to be dreaded only by those who are willing to be deceived. When sincerely inclined to seek the Lord, we soon find the hand which knows to lead us to him. It is not, then, properly speaking, the false guides who lead us astray, it is ourselves who seek them, because we wish to err with them: they are not the first authors of our ruin, they are only the encouragers of it: they do not lead us into the path of perdition, they only leave us there; and we are already determined to perish before we apply for their suffrage. In effect, we sensibly feel ourselves the danger and the imprudence of the choice we make: even the more we find the oracle complying, the more we mistrust his lights; the more he respects our passions, the less we respect his ministry; he is frequently made the subject even of our derisions; we turn into ridicule that very indulgence which we have sought; we vaunt the having found a protector so convenient for the human weaknesses; and, through a blindness which, cannot be mentioned without tears, the soul and eternal salvation are confided to a man who is believed unworthy, not only of respect, but even of attention and decency; like those Israelites, who, a moment after having bowed the knee to the golden calf, and expected from it their salvation and their deliverance, broke it in pieces with disgrace, and reduced it to ashes.
But, after all, when the ignorance or the weakening of ministers should even be an oceasion of error, the examples of the holy undeceive you. You see what, from the beginning, hath been the path of those who have obtained the promises, and whose memory and holy toils we still honour upon the earth: you see that none of them hath accomplished his salvation by that way which the world vaunts as being so safe and so innocent: you see that all the holy have repented, crucified the flesh, despised the world with its pleasures and maxims: you see that those ages, so opposite to each other for their manners and customs, have never made any change in the manners of the just; that the holy of the first times were the same as those of the last; that the countries, even the most dissimilar for their disposition and behaviour, have produced holy men, all resembling each other; that those of the most distant climates, and the most different from our own, resemble those of our own nation; that, in every tongue and in every tribe, they have all been the same; lastly, that their situations have been different; that some have wrought out their salvation in obscurity, others in elevation; some in poverty, others in abundance; some in the dissipation of dignities and of public cares, others in silence and in the calm of solitude; in a word, some in the cottage, others on the throne; but that the cross, violence, and self-denial hath been the common path of all.
What then art thou, to pretend to reach heaven by other ways? And thou flatterest thyself that, in that crowd of illustrious servants of the living God, thou alone shalt be privileged. My God! with what lustre hast thou not surrounded the truth, in order to render man inexcusable! His conscience shows it to him; thy holy law guards it for him; the voice of the church makes it to resound in his ears; the example of the holy incessantly places it before his eyes; every thing rises up against guilt; all take the interests of thy holy law against his false peace; from every quarter proceed rays of light which go to bear the truth even to the bottom of his soul: no place, no situation can protect him from those divine sparks emitted from thy bosom, which every where pursue him, and which, in enlightening, rack him: the truth, which ought to deliver him, renders him unhappy; and, unwilling to love its light, he is forced, beforehand, to feel its just severity.
What then, my dear hearer, prevents the truth from triumphing in your heart? Wherefore do you change, into an inexhaustible source of cruel remorses, lights which ought to be, within you, the whole consolation of your sorrows? Since, by a consequence of the riches of God's mercy upon your soul, you cannot succeed, like so many impious and hardened hearts, to stifle that internal monitor which incessantly recalls you to order and duty, why will you obstinately withstand the happiness of your lot 2 Why so many efforts to defend you from yourself, so many starts and flights to shun yourself? At last, reconcile your hearts with your lights, your conscience with your manners, yourself with the law of God: behold the only secret of attaining to that peace of heart which you seek. Turn yourself on every side, you must always come to that. Observance of the law is the true happiness of man; it is deceiving himself to look upon it as a yoke; it alone places the heart at liberty. Whatever favours our passions, sharpens our ills, increases our troubles, multiplies our bonds, and aggravates our slavery; the law of God alone, in repressing them, places us in order, — quiets, cures, and delivers us. Such is the destiny of sinful man, to be incapable of happiness here below but by overcoming his passions; to attain by violence alone to the true pleasures of the heart, and afterward to that eternal peace prepared for those who shall have loved the law of the Lord.