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;
