Sermons (Massillon)/Sermon 23
SERMON XXIII.
DOUBTS UPON RELIGION.
"Howbeit we know this man, whence he is; but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is." — John vii. 27.
Such is the grand pretext opposed by the unbelief of the Jews to the doctrine and to the ministry of Jesus Christ; doubts upon the truth of his mission. We know who thou art, and whence thou comest, said they to him: but the Christ whom we expect, when he cometh, no man knoweth whence he is. It is far from clear, then, that thou art the Messiah promised to our fathers; perhaps it is an evil spirit which, through thee, operates these wonders before our eyes, and imposes upon the credulity of the vulgar; so many deceivers have already appeared in Judea, who, giving themselves out for the great Prophet who is to come, have seduced the people, and at last drawn down upon themselves the punishment due to their imposture. Keep us no longer in doubt: if thou be the Christ, tell us plainly, and in such a way as that room shall no longer be left either for doubt or for mistake.
I would not dare to say this here, my brethren, were the language of doubts upon faith not become so common now among us, that precaution is needless in undertaking to confute it: behold the almost universal pretext employed in the world to authorize a life altogether criminal. We every where meet with sinners who coolly tell us, that they would be converted were they well assured that all we tell them of religion were true; that perhaps there is nothing after this life; that they have doubts and difficulties upon our mysteries, to which they can find no satisfactory answer; that, after all, the whole appears very uncertain: and that, before engaging to follow all the rigid maxims of the gospel, it would be proper to be well assured that our toils shall not be lost.
Now, my intention, at present, is not to overthrow unbelief by the grand proofs which establish the truth of the Christian faith. Setting aside that elsewhere we have already established them, it is a subject far too extensive for a Discourse, and often beyond even the capacity of the majority of those who listen to us; it is frequently paying too much deference to the frivolous objections of those who give themselves out as free-thinkers in the world, to employ the gravity of our ministry in refuting and overthrowing them.
We must take a shorter and more easy way, therefore, at present. My design is not to enter into the foundation of the proofs which render testimony to the truth of faith; I mean only to expose the falsity of unbelief: I mean to prove, that the greatest part of those who call themselves unbelievers, are not so; that almost all those sinners who vaunt, and are continually alleging to us their doubts, as the only obstacle to their conversion, have actually none; and that, of all the pretexts employed as an excuse for not changing their life, that of doubts upon religion, now the most common, is the least true and the least sincere.
It appears surprising at first, that I should undertake to prove to those who believe to have doubts upon religion, and are continually objecting them to us, that they have actually none: nevertheless, with a proper knowledge of men, and, above all, with a proper attention to the character of those who make a boast of doubting, nothing is more easy than this conviction: I say, to their character, in which are always to be found licentiousness, ignorance, and vanity; and such are the three usual sources of their doubts: they give the credit of them to unbelief, which has scarcely a share in them.
First. It is licentiousness which proposes, without daring to believe them. First reflection.
Secondly. It is ignorance which adopts, without comprehending them. Second reflection.
Lastly. It is vanity which boasts, without being able to succeed in drawing any resource from them. Last reflection.
This is to say, that the greatest part of those who call themselves unbelievers, are licentious enough to wish to be so; too ignorant to be so in reality; and nevertheless, sufficiently vain to wish to appear so. Let us unfold these three reflections, now become so important among us; and let us overthrow licentiousness rather than unbelief, by laying it open to itself.
Part I. — It must at once be admitted, my brethren, and it is melancholy for us that we owe this confession to the truth, — it must be admitted, I say, that our age and those of our fathers have seen real unbelievers. In that depravity of manners in which we live, and amid all the scandals which have so long afflicted the church, it is not surprising that men have sometimes been found who have denied the existence of a God; and that faith, so weakened in all, should in some be at last wholly extinguished. As chosen and extraordinary souls appear in every age, whom the Lord filleth with his grace, his lights, and his most shining gifts, and upon whom he delighteth in liberally pouring forth all the riches of his mercy; so, likewise, are seen others in whom iniquity is, as I may say, consummate, and whom the Lord seems to have marked out, to display in them the most terrible judgments of his justice, and the most fatal effects of his neglect and wrath.
The church, where all these scandals are to increase even to the end, cannot therefore boast of being entirely purged from the scandal of unbelief: she hath, from time to time, her stars which enlighten, and her monsters who disfigure her; and, along with those great men, celebrated for their lights and for their sanctity, who in every age have served as her support and ornament, she hath also witnessed a list of impious men, whose names are still at present the horror of the universe, who have dared, in writings full of blasphemy and impiety, to attack the mysteries of God, to deny salvation and the promises made to our fathers, to overturn the foundation of faith, and to preach free-thinking among believers.
I do not pretend, therefore, to say, that among so many wretches who speak the language of unbelief among us, there may not perhaps be found some one sufficiently corrupted in mind and in heart, and so far abandoned by God, as actually, and in effect to be an unbeliever: I mean only to establish, that these men, grounded in impiety, are rare; and that, among all those who are continually vaunting their doubts and their unbelief, and make a deplorable ostentation of them, there is not perhaps a single one upon whose heart faith doth not still preserve its rights, and who doth not inwardly dread that God whom he apparently refuses to acknowledge. To overthrow, it is not always necessary to combat our pretended unbelievers; it would often be combating only phantoms; they require only to be displayed such as they are: the wretched declaration of unbelief quickly tumbles down, and nothing remains but their passions and their debaucheries.
And, behold the first reason upon which I have established the general proposition, that the majority of those who make a boast of their doubts have actually none; it is, that their doubts are those of licentiousness, and not of unbelief. Why, my brethren? Because it is of licentiousness which hath formed their doubts, and not their doubts licentiousness; because that, in fact, it is to their passions and not to their doubts that they hold: lastly, because that, in general, they attack in religion only those truths inimical to their passions. Behold reflections which, in my opinion, are worthy of your attention; I shall lay them before you without ornament, and in the same order in which they presented themselves to my mind.
I say, in the first place, because their doubts have sprung from licentiousness and not licentiousness from their doubts. Yes, my brethren: not one of all those who affect to profess themselves unbelievers has ever been seen to begin by doubts upon the truths of faith, and afterward from doubts to fall into licentiousness: they begin with the passions; doubts come afterward: they first give way to the regularities of the age and to the excesses of debauchery; and when attained to a certain length, and they find it no longer possible to return upon their steps, they then say, in order to quiet themselves, that there is nothing after this life, or at least, they are well pleased to find people who say so. It is not, therefore, the little certainty they find in religion, which authorizes their conclusion that we ought to yield ourselves up to pleasure, and that self-denial is needless, since every thing dies with us: it is the yielding of themselves up to pleasure which creates doubts upon religion, and, by rendering self-denial next to impossible, leads them to conclude that consequently it is neeedless. Faith becomes suspected only when it begins to be troublesome; and to this day unbelief hath never made a voluptuary, but voluptuousness hath made almost all the unbelievers.
And a proof of what I say, you whom this Discourse regards, is, that while you have lived with modesty and innocence, you never doubted. Recollect those happy times when the passions had not yet corrupted your heart: the faith of your fathers had then nothing but what was august and respectable; reason bent without pain to the yoke of authority; you never thought of doubts or difficulties: from the moment your manners changed, your views upon religion have no longer been the same. It is not faith, therefore, which hath found new difficulties in your reason; it is the practice of duties which hath encountered new obstacles in your heart. And, should you tell us, that your first impressions, so favourable to faith, sprung solely from the prejudices of education and of childhood; we shall answer, that the second, so favourable to impiety, have sprung solely from the prejudices of the passions and of debauchery; and that, prejudices for prejudices, it appears to us, that it is still better to keep by those which are formed in innocence and lead us to virtue, than to those which are born in the infamy of the passions, and preach up only free-thinking and guilt.
Thus nothing is more humiliating for unbelief than recalling it to its origin; it bears a false name of learning and of light: and it is a child of iniquity and of darkness. It is not the strength of reason which has led our pretended unbelievers to scepticism; it is the weakness of a corrupted heart, which has been unable to surmount its infamous passions; it is even a mean cowardliness, which, unable to support and to view with a steady eye the terrors and the threatenings of religion, endeavours to shake off their thoughts by continually repeating, that they are childish terrors: it is a man who, afraid of the night, sings as he goes along, to prevent himself from thinking; debauchery always makes us cowardly and fearful; and it is nothing but an excess of fear of eternal punishments, which occasions a sinner to be continually preaching up and singing to us that they are doubtful; he trembles, and wishes to strengthen himself against himself; he cannot support, at the same time, the view of his crimes and that of the punishment which awaits them; that faith, so venerable, and of which he speaks with such contempt, nevertheless terrifies and disquiets him still more than those other sinners, who, without doubting its punishments, yet are frequently not less unfaithful to its precepts; it is a coward, who hides his fear under a false ostentation of bravery. No, my brethren, our pretended free-thinkers give themselves out as men of courage and firmness; examine them narrowly, and they are the weakest and most cowardly of men.
Besides, it is not surprising that licentiousness leads us to doubt of religion: the passions require the aid of unbelief; for they are too feeble and too unreasonable to maintain their own cause. Our lights, our feelings, our conscience, all struggle within us against them: we are under the necessity, therefore, of seeking a support for them, and of defending them against ourselves; for, it is a matter of satisfaction to justify to one's self whatever is pleasing. We would neither wish that passions which are dear to us should be criminal, nor that we should continually have to support the interests of our pleasures against those of our conscience: we wish tranquilly to enjoy our crimes, and to free ourselves from that troublesome monitor which continually espouses the cause of virtue against ourselves: while remorses contest the pleasure of our enjoyments, they must be very imperfectly tasted; it is paying too great a price for guilt, to purchase it at the expense of that quiet which is sought in it: we must either terminate our debaucheries, or try to quiet ourselves in them; and as it is impossible to enjoy peace of mind in them, and next to impossible to terminate them, the only refuge seems that of doubting the truths which disquiet us; and, in order to attain to tranquillity, every effort is used to inculcate the persuasion of unbelief.
That is to say, that the great effort of licentiousness is that of leading us to the desire of unbelief; the horrible security of the unbeliever is coveted; total hardness of heart is considered as a happy state; it is unpleasant to have been born with a weaker and more fearful conscience; the lot of those apparently firm and unshaken in impiety, is envied: while they, in their turn, perhaps a prey to the most gloomy remorses, and vaunting a courage they are far from having, view our lot with envy; for, judging of us from the language we hold upon free-thinking, they take us for what we take them; that is to say, for what we are not, and for what both they and we would wish to be. And it is thus, O my God! that these false heroes of impiety live in a perpetual illusion, continually deceive themselves, and appear what they are not, only because they would wish to be it. They would willingly have religion to be but a dream: they say in their heart, " There is no God;" that is to say, this impious language is the desire of their heart; they would ardently wish no God; that that Being, so grand and so necessary, were a chimera; that they were the sole masters of their own destiny; that they were accountable only to themselves for the horrors of their life and the infamy of their passions; that all finished with them; and that, beyond the grave, there were no supreme and eternal Judge, the punisher of vice and the rewarder of virtue: they wish it; they destroy as much as they can, through the impious wishes of their heart, but they cannot efface from the foundation of their being, the idea of his power and the dread of his punishments.
In effect, it would be too vulgar for a man, vain and plunged in debauchery, inwardly to say to himself, I am still too weak, and too much abandoned to pleasure, to quit it, or to lead a more regular and Christian life. That pretext would still leave all his remorses. It is much sooner done to say to himself, It is needless to live otherwise, for there is nothing after this life. This pretext is far more convenient, for it puts an end to every thing; it is the most favourable to indolence, for it estranges us from the sacraments, and from all the other slaveries of religion. It is much shorter to say to himself, " There is nothing/5 and to live as if he were in effect persuaded of it; it is at once throwing off every yoke and all restraint; it puts an end to all the irksome measures which sinners of another description still guard with religion and with the conscience. This pretext of unbelief, by persuading us that we actually doubt, leaves us in a certain state of indolence on every thing regarding religion, which prevents us from searching into ourselves and from making too melancholy reflections on our passions. We meanly allow ourselves to be swept away by the fatal course, upon the general prepossession that we believe nothing; we have few remorses, for we think ourselves unbelievers, and because that supposition leaves us almost the same security as impiety: at least, it is a diversion which dulls and suspends the sensibility of the conscience; and, by operating so as to make us always take ourselves for what we are not, it induces us to live as if we actually were what we wish to be.
That is to say, that the greatest part of these pretended freethinkers, and of these debauched and licentious unbelievers, ought to be considered as weak and dissolute men, who, not having the force to live Christianly, nor even the hardiness to be atheists, remain in that state of estrangement from religion, as the most convenient to indolence; and, as they never try to quit it, they fancy that they actually hold to it; it is a kind of neutrality between faith and irreligion, contrived by indolence for its own ease; for it requires exertion to adopt a side; and, in order to remain neuter, nothing more is required than not to think, and to live by habit; thus they never fathom, nor take any resolution upon themselves. Hardened and avowed impiety hath something I know not what, which strikes with horror: religion on the other hand, presents objects which alarm and are by no means convenient to the passions. What is to be done in these two extremities, of which the one shocks reason and the other the senses? They rest wavering and undecided; in the mean time they enjoy the calm which is left by that state of indecision and indifference: they live without wishing to know what they are; for it is much more convenient to be nothing, and to live without thinking, or any knowledge of themselves. No, my brethren, I repeat it, these are not unbelievers, they are cowards, who have not the courage to espouse a side; who know only to live voluptuously, without rule, without morality, and often without decency; and who, without being atheists, live however without religion, for religion requires consistency, reason, elevation of mind, firmness, noble sentiments; and of all these they are incapable. Such, however, are the heroes of whom impiety boasts; behold the suffrages upon which it grounds its defence, and opposes to religion by insulting us; behold the partitans with whom it thinks itself invincible; and weak and wretched must its resources indeed be, since it is reduced to seek them in men of this description.
First reason, which proves that licentiousness springs not from doubts, but doubts from licentiousness. The second reason is only a fresh proof of the first; it is that actually, if they do not change their life, it is not to their doubts, but solely to their passions, that they hold.
For I ask nothing of you here but candour, you who continually allege your doubts upon our mysteries. When you sometimes think of quitting that sink of vice and debauchery in which you live, and when the passions, more tranquil, allow you to reflect, do you then oppose your uncertainties upon religion? Do you say to yourselves, (i But if I return, it will be necessary to believe things which seem incredible?" Is this the grand difficulty? Ah! you inwardly say, but if I return, it will be necessary to break off this connexion, to deny myself these excesses, to terminate these societies, to shun these places, to proceed to things which I shall never support and to adopt a manner of life to which all my inclinations are repugnant. These are what check you; these are the wall of separation which removes you from God. You speak so much to others of your doubts; how comes it that you never speak of them to yourselves? This is not a matter, therefore, of reason and of belief; it is a matter of the heart and of licentiousness; and the delay of your conversion springs not from your uncertainties upon faith, but from the sole doubt in which the violence and the empire of your passions leave you of ever being able to free yourselves from their subjection and infamy. Such, my brethren, are the true chains which bind our pretended unbelievers to their own wretchedness.
And this truth is more evident from this, that the majority of those who profess themselves unbelievers, live, nevertheless, in perpetual variations upon the point even of unbelief. In certain moments they are affected with the truths of religion: they feel themselves torn with the keenest remorses; they even apply to the servants of God most distinguished for their learning and piety, to hold converse with, and receive instruction from them: in others, they make game of these truths; they treat the servants of God with derision, and piety itself as a chimera: there is scarcely one of these sinners, even of those who make the greatest ostentation of their unbelief, whom the spectacle of an unexpected death, a fatal accident, a grievous loss, a reverse of fortune, hath not cast into gloomy reflections on his situation, and excited desires of a more Christian life: there is hardly one who, in these trying situations, seeks not consolation in the support of the godly, and takes not some step which leaves hopes of amendment. It is not to their companions in impiety and licentiousness that they then have recourse for consolation; it is not by those impious railleries upon our mysteries, and by that horrible philosophy, that they try to alleviate their sufferings: these are discourses of festivity and dissipation, and not of affliction and sorrow: it is the religion of the table, of pleasures, of riotings; it is not that of solemn adversity and sadness; the relish of impiety vanishes with that of pleasures. Now, if their unbelief were founded in real uncertainties upon religion, so long as these uncertainties existed, unbelief should be the same; but, as their doubts spring only from their passions, and as their passions are not always the same, nor equally violent and masters of their heart, so their doubts continually fluctuate like their passions; they increase, they diminish, they are eclipsed, they re-appear, they are mutable, exactly in the same degree as their passions. In a word they share the lot of the passions, for they are nothing but the passions themselves.
In effect, to leave nothing unsaid on this subject, and to make you thoroughly feel how much this vaunted profession of unbelief is despicable, observe this reply to every difficulty of the boasting sinner, reduce him to have nothing more to say, and yet still he does not yield: you have not thereby gained him; he retires within himself, as if he had still more overpowering reasons which he disdains to bring forward: he keeps firm, and opposes a mysterious and decisive air to all those proofs which he cannot resolve. You then pity his madness and obstinacy; you are mistaken; be touched only for his libertine life, and his want of candour; for, let a mortal disease strike him on quitting you; approach his bed of anguish, ah! you will find this pretended unbeliever convinced; his doubts cease, his uncertainties end, all that deplorable display of unbelief vanishes and tumbles in pieces; there is no longer even question of it: he has recourse to the God of his fathers, and trembles at the judgments he made a show of not believing. The minister of Jesus Christ, called in, has no occasion to enter into controversy to undeceive him on his impiety: the dying sinner anticipates his cares and his ministry: he is ashamed of his past blasphemies, and repents of them; he acknowledges their falsity and deception; he makes a public reparation of them to the majesty and to the truth of religion; he no longer demands proofs, he asks only consolations. Nevertheless, this disease hath not brought new lights upon faith; the blow which strikes his flesh hath not cleared up the doubts of his mind; ah! it is because it touches his heart, and terminates his riots; in a word, it is that his doubts were in his passions, and that whatever tends to extinguish his passions, tends, at the same time, to extinguish his doubts.
It happens, I confess, that sinners are sometimes found, who push their madness and impiety even to that last moment: who expire in vomiting forth, with their impious souls, blasphemies against the God who is to judge them, and whom they refuse to acknowledge. For, O my God! thou art terrible in thy judgments, and sometimes permittest that the atheist die in his impiety. But such examples are rare; and you well know, my brethren, that an entire age scarcely furnishes one of these shocking spectacles. But view, in that last moment, all the others who vaunted their unbelief; see a sinner on the bed of death, who had hitherto appeared the firmest in impiety, and the most resolute in denying all belief; he even anticipates the proposal of having recourse to the church remedies: he lifts up his hands to heaven, and gives striking and sincere marks of a religion which was never effaced from the bottom of his heart: he no longer rejects, as childish bugbears, the threatenings and chastisements of a future life; what do I say? — this sinner, formerly so firm, so stately in his pretended unbelief, so much above the vulgar fears, then becomes weaker, more fearful, and more credulous, than the lowest of the people; his fears are more excessive, his very religion more superstitious, his practices of worship more silly, and more extravagant than those of the vulgar; and, as one excess borders on its opposite excess, he is seen to pass in a moment from impiety to superstition; from the firmness of the philosopher to all the weakness of the ignorant and simple.
And here it is, that, with Tertullian, I would appeal to this dying sinner, and let him hold forth, in my stead, against unbelief; it is here that, to the honour of the religion of our fathers, I would wish no other testimony of the weakness and of the insincerity of the pretended atheist, than this expiring soul, who, surely, now can speak only the language of truth; it is here that I would assemble all unbelievers around his bed of death; and, to overthrow them by a testimony which could not be suspicious, would say to him, with Tertullian, " O soul! before thou quittest this earthly body, which thou art so soon to be freed from, suffer me to call upon thy testimony: speak, in this last moment, when vanity is no more, and thou owest all to the truth: say, if thou considerest the terrible God, into whose hands thou goest, as a chimerical being with whom weak and credulous minds are alarmed? Say, if all now disappearing from thine eyes, if, for thee, all creatures returning to nothing, God alone doth not appear to thee immortal, unchangeable, the being of all ages and of eternity, and who filleth the heavens and the earth? We now consent, we, whom thou hast always considered as superstitious and vulgar minds, we consent that thou judge between us and unbelief, to which thou hast ever been so partial. Though, with regard to faith, thou hast hitherto been as a stranger and the enemy of religion, religion refers its cause to thee, against those with whom the shocking tie of impiety had so closely united thee. If all die with thee, why does death appear so dreadful? Why these uplifted hands to heaven, if there be no God who may listen to thy prayers and be touched by thy groanings? If nothing thyself, why belie the nothingness of thy being, and why tremble upon the sequel of thy destiny? Whence come, in this last moment, these feelings of dread and of respect for the Supreme Being? Is it not, that they have ever been in thee, that thou hast imposed upon the public by a false ostentation of impiety, and that death only unfolds those dispositions of faith and of religion, which, though dormant, have never ceased during life?"
Yes, my brethren, could the passions be destroyed, all unbelievers would soon be recalled; and a final reason, which fully proves it, is that, if they seem to rise up against the incomprehensibility of our mysteries, it is solely for the purpose of combating what touches them, and of attacking the truths which interest the passions; that is to say, the truth of a future state, and the eternity of future punishments; this is always the favourite conclusion and fruit of their doubts.
In effect, if religion, without adding maxims and truths which restrain the passions, proposed only mysteries which exceed reason, we may boldly say, that unbelievers would be rare; almost no one is interested in those abstruse truths or errors, which it is indifferent to believe or to deny. You will find few real votaries of truth who become partisans and zealots in support of merely speculative and unimportant points, because they believe them to be true. The abstruse truths of mathematics have found, in our days, some zealous and estimable followers, who have devoted themselves to the elucidation of what is held as most impenetrable in the infinite secrets and profound obscurities of that science; but these are rare and singular men; the infection was little to be dreaded, nor, in truth, has it spread; they are admired, but few would wish to follow their example. If religion proposed only truths equally abstruse, equally indifferent to the felicity of the senses, equally uninteresting to the passions and to self-love, the atheists would be still more rare than the mathematicians. The truths of religion are objected to, merely because they threaten us; no objections are made to the others, because their truth or their falsity is alike indifferent.
And tell us not that it is not through self-interest, but the sole love of truth, that the unbeliever rejects mysteries which reason rejects. This, I well know, is the boast of the pretended unbeliever, and he would wish us to think so; but of what consequence is the truth to men, who, so far from either seeking, loving, or knowing it, wish even to conceal it from themselves? What matters to them a truth beyond their reach, and to which they have never devoted a single serious moment; which, having nothing flattering to the passions, can never be interesting to these men of flesh and blood, plunged in a voluptuous life? Their object is to gratify their irregular desires, and yet have nothing to dread after this life; this is the only truth which interests them; give up that point, and the obscurity of all the other mysteries will not occupy even a thought; let them but tranquilly enjoy their crimes, and they will agree to every thing.
Thus the majority of atheists, who have left in writing the wretched fruits of their impiety, have always striven to prove there was nothing above us; that all died with the body, and that future punishments or rewards were fables; to attract followers it was necessary to secure the suffrage of the passions. If ever they attacked the other points of religion, it was only to come to the main conclusion, that there is nothing after this life; that vices or virtues are names invented by policy to restrain the people; and that the passions are only natural and innocent inclinations, which every one may follow, because every one finds them in himself.
Behold why the impious, in the Book of Wisdom, the Sadducees themselves, in the Gospel, who may be considered as the fathers and predecessors of our unbelievers, never took any pains to refute the truth of the miracles related in the books of Moses, and which God formerly wrought in favour of his people, nor the promise of the Mediator made to their fathers: they attacked only the resurrection of the dead, and the immortality of the soul: that point decided every thing for them. " Man dies like the beast," said they in the Book of Wisdom; " we know not if their nature be different, but their end and their lot are the same: trouble us no more, therefore, with a futurity which is not: let us enjoy life; let us refuse ourselves no gratification: time is short; let us hasten to live, for we shall die to-morrow, and because all shall die with us." No, my brethren, unbelief hath always originated in the passions. The yoke of faith is never rejected but in order to shake off the yoke of duties; and religion would never have an enemy, were it not the enemy of licentiousness and vice.
But, if the doubts of our unbelievers are not real, in consequence
of being formed solely by licentiousness, they are also false, because it is ignorance which adopts without comprehending them, and vanity which makes a boast without being able to make a resource of them: this is what now remains to me to unfold.
Part II. — The same answer might be made to the majority of those who are continually vaunting their doubts upon religion, and find nothing but contradictions in what faith obliges us to believe, that Tertullian formerly made to the heathens, upon all the reproaches they invented against the mysteries, and the doctrine of Jesus Christ. They condemn, said he, what they do not understand: they blame what they have never examined, and what they know only by hearsay; they blaspheme what they are ignorant of, and they are ignorant of it because they hate it too much to give themselves the trouble of searching into and knowing it. Now, continues this father, nothing is more indecent and foolish than boldly to decide upon what they know not; and all that religion would require of these frivolous and dissolute men, who so warmly rise up against it, is, not to condemn before they are well acquainted with it.
Such, my brethren, is the situation of almost all who give themselves out in the world as unbelievers; they have investigated neither the difficulties nor the respectable proofs of religion; they know not even enough to doubt of them. They hate it; for how is it possible to love our condemnation? And upon that hatred are founded their doubts and their only arguments to oppose it.
In effect, when I glance my eye over all that the Christian ages have had of great men, elevated geniuses, profound and enlightened scholars, who, after an entire life of study and indefatigable application, have, with a humble docility, submitted to the mysteries of faith; have found the proofs of religion so strong, that the proudest and most untractable reason might, in their opinion, without derogation, comply; have defended it against the blasphemies of the pagans; have silenced the vain philosophy of the sages of the age, and made the folly of the cross to triumph over all the wisdom and erudition of Rome and Athens; it strikes me, that, in order to renew the attack against mysteries so long and so universally established; that, in order to be heard in appeal, if I may venture to say so, from the submission of so many ages, from the writings of so many great men, from so many victories achieved by faith, from the consent of the universe; in a word, from a prescription so long and so well strengthened, it would require either new proofs that had never yet been controverted, or new difficulties that had never yet been started, or new methods which discovered a weak side in religion, as yet never found out. It seems to me, that, singly to rise up against so many testimonies, so many prodigies, so many ages, so many divine monuments, so many famous personages, so many works which time hath consecrated, and which, like pure gold, have quitted the ordeal of unbelief only more resplendent and immortal; in a word, so many surprising, and, till then, unheard of events, which establish the faith of Christians, it would require very decisive and very evident reasons, very rare and new lights, to pretend even to doubt, much less to oppose it. Would not that man be deservedly considered as out of his senses, who should go to defy a whole army, merely to make an ostentation of a vain defiance, and to pride himself upon a burlesque bravery?
Nevertheless, when you examine the majority of those who call themselves unbelievers, who are continually clamouring against the popular prejudices, who vaunt their doubts, and defy us to satisfy or to answer them; you find that their only knowledge consists of some hackneyed and vulgar doubts, which, in all times, have been, and still continue to be, argued in the world; that they know nothing but a certain jargon of licentiousness which goes from hand to hand, which they receive without examination, and repeat without understanding: you find that their whole skill and study of religion are reduced to some licentious sayings, which, if I may descend so low, are the proper language of the streets; to certain maxims which, through mere repetition, begin to relish of proverbial meanness. You will find no foundation, no principle, no sequence of doctrine, no knowledge even of the religion which they attack; they are men immersed in pleasure, and who would be very sorry to have a spare moment to devote to the investigation of wearisome truths which they are indifferent whether they know or not; men of a light and superficial character, and wholly unfitted for a moment's serious meditation or investigation; let me again repeat, men drowned in voluptuousness, and in whom even that portion of penetration and understanding, accorded by nature, hath been debased and extinguished by debauchery.
Such are the formidable supports of unbelief against the knowledge of God: behold the frivolous, dissipated, and ignorant characters who dare to tax, with credulity and ignorance, all that the Christian ages have had, and still have, of learned, able, and celebrated personages; they know the language of doubts; but they have learned it by rote, for they have never formed them; they only repeat what they have heard: it is a tradition of ignorance and impiety: they have no doubts; they only preserve, for those to come, the language of irreligion and doubts; they are not unbelievers, they are only the echoes of unbelief; in a word, they know how to express a doubt, but they are too ignorant to doubt themselves.
And a proof of what I advance is, that, in all other doubts, we hesitate only in order to be instructed; every thing is examined which can elucidate the concealed truth. But here the doubt is merely for doubting's sake; a proof that we are equally uninterested in the doubt as in the truth which conceals it from us; they would be very sorry were they under the necessity of clearing up either the falsity or the truth of uncertainties which they pretend to have on our mysteries. Yes, my brethren, were the punishment of doubters to be that of an indispensable obligation to seek the truth, no one would doubt; no one would purchase, at such a price, the pleasure of calling himself an unbeliever; few indeed would be capable of it; decisive proof that they do not doubt, and that they are as little attached to their doubts, as to religion (for their knowledge in both is much about the same); but only that they have lost those first feelings of discretion and of faith which left us still some vestige of respect for the religion of our fathers. Thus, it is doing too much honour to men, so worthy both of pity and contempt, to suppose that they have taken a side, that they have embraced a system; you honour them too much by ranking them among the impious followers of a Socinus, by ennobling them with the shocking titles of deists or atheists: alas! they are nothing; they are of no system; at least, they neither know themselves what they are, nor can they tell us what that system is; and, strange as it may appear, they have found out the secret of forming a state more despicable, more mean, and more unworthy of reason, than even that of impiety; and it is even doing them credit to call them by the shocking title of unbeliever, which had hitherto been considered as the shame of humanity and the highest reproach of man.
And, to conclude this article with a reflection which confirms the same truth, and is very humiliating for our pretended unbelievers, I observe, that they who affect to treat us as weak and credulous minds, who vaunt their reason, who accuse us of grounding a religion upon the popular prejudices, and of believing solely because our predecessors have believed; they, I say, are unbelievers, and doubt upon the sole and deplorable authority of a debauchee, whom they have often heard to say that futurity is a bugbear, and made use of as a scarecrow to frighten only children and the common people; such is their only knowledge and their only use of reason. They are impious, as they accuse us of being believers without examination, and through credulousness, but through a credulity which can find no excuse but in madness and folly; the authority of a single impious discourse, pronounced in a bold and decisive tone, hath subjugated their reason, and ranked them in the lists of impiety. They call us credulous, in yielding to the authority of the prophets, of the apostles, of men inspired by God, of the shining miracles wrought to establish the truth of our mysteries, and to that venerable tradition of holy pastors, who, from age to age, have transmitted to us the charge of doctrine and of truth, that is to say, to the greatest authority that hath ever been on the earth; and they think themselves less credulous, and it appears to them more worthy of reason, to submit to the authority of a freethinker, who, in a moment of debauchery, pronounces, with a firm tone, that there is no God, yet most likely inwardly belies his own words! — Ah! my brethren, how much does man degrade and render himself contemptible when he arrogates a false glory from being no longer in the belief of a God!
Thus, why is it, think you, that our pretended unbelievers are so desirous of seeing real atheists confirmed in impiety; that they seek and entice them even from foreign countries, like a Spinosa, if the fact be, that he was called into France to be heard and consulted? It is because our unbelievers are not firm in unbelief, nor can they find any who are so; and, in order to harden themselves, they would gladly see some one actually confirmed in that detestable cause; they seek, in precedent, resources, and defences against their own conscience; and, not daring of themselves to become impious, they expect from an example what their reason and even their heart refuses; and, in so doing, they surely fall into a credulity much more childish and absurd than that with which they reproach believers. A Spinosa, that monster, who, after embracing various religions, ended with none, was most anxious to find out some professed freethinker who might confirm him in the cause of irreligion and atheism: he formed to himself that impenetrable chaos of impiety, that work of confusion and darkness in which the sole desire of not believing in God can support the weariness and disgust of those who read it; in which, excepting the impiety, all is unintelligible, and which would, from its birth, have sunk into oblivion, had it not, to the shame of humanity, attacked the Supreme Being: that impious wretch, I say, lived concealed, retired, tranquil: his dark productions were his only occupation, and, to harden himself he needed only himself. But those who so eagerly sought him, who longed to consult and see him, those frivolous and dissolute men were fools who wished to become impious; and who, not finding sufficient authority to remain believers in the testimony of all ages, of all nations, and of all the great men who have honoured religion, sought, in the single testimony of an obscure individual, of a deserter from every religion, of a monster obliged to hide himself from the eyes of men, a deplorable and monstrous authority which might confirm them in impiety, and defend them from their own conscience. Great God! let the impious here hide their faces; let them cease to make an ostentation of an unbelief which is the fruit of their depravity and ignorance, and no longer speak, but with blushes, of the submission of believers: it is all a language of deceit; they give to vanity what we give to truth.
I say vanity; and this is the grand and final reason which more clearly exposes all the falsity and weakness of unbelief. Yes, my brethren, all our pretended unbelievers are bullies, who give themselves out for what they are not: they consider unbelief as conveying the idea of something above the common; they are continually boasting that they believe nothing, and, by dint of boasting, they at last persuade themselves of it: like certain mushroom characters among us, who, though touching the obscurity and vulgarity of their ancestors, have the deplorable vanity of wishing to be thought of an illustrious birth, and descended from the greatest names; by dint of blazoning and repeating it, they attain almost to the belief of it themselves. It is the same with our pretended unbelievers; they still touch, as I may say, that faith which they have received at their birth, which still flows with their blood, and is not yet effaced from their heart: but they think it a vulgarity and meanness, at which they blush; by dint of saying and boasting that they believe nothing, they are convinced that they really do not believe, and have consequently a much higher opinion of themselves.
First. Because that deplorable profession of unbelief supposes an uncommon understanding, strength, and superiority of mind, and a singularity which is pleasing and flattering; on the contrary, that the passions infer only licentiousness and debauchery, of which all men are capable, though they are not so of that wonderful superiority attributed to itself by impiety.
Secondly. Because faith is so weakened in our age, that we find few in the world who pique themselves upon wit and a little more knowledge or erudition than others, who do not allow themselves doubts and difficulties upon the most august and most sacred parts of religion. It would be a disgrace, therefore, in their company to appear religious and believers: they are men high in the public esteem, and any resemblance to them is flattering; in adopting their language, their talents and reputation are thought likewise to be adopted; and not to dare to follow or to copy them would, it seems, be making a public avowal of weakness and mediocrity: miserable and childish vanity! Besides, because they have heard say, that certain characters, distinguished in their age, did not believe, and as the memory of their talents and great actions has been preserved only with that of their irreligion, they vaunt these grand examples; after such illustrious models, it appears dignified to believe nothing; their names are constantly in their mouths: it is a false embroidery, where a laughable vanity and littleness of mind alone are conspicuous, since nothing can be more miserable or mean than to give ourselves out for what we are not, or to assume the personage of another.
Thirdly, and lastly. Because the language of impiety is in general the consequence of licentious society. We wish to appear the same as our companions in debauchery; for it would be a shame to be dissolute, and yet seem to believe, in the very presence of our accomplices in riot. It is a sorry cause, that of a debauchee who still believes: impiety and licentiousness are the only colour for debauchery; without these he would only be a novice in profligacy: the dread of punishments and of a hell is left to those yet unexercised in guilt; that remnant of religion seems to savour too much of childhood and the college. But when attained to a certain length in debauchery, ah! these vulgar weaknesses must all be soared above; their opinion of themselves is raised in proportion as they can persuade others that they are now above all these fears; they even mock those who appear still to dread: like the wife of Job, they say, with a tone of irony and impiety, " Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Art thou so simpie as to believe all these tales with which thy childhood hath been alarmed? Thou seest not that all these are merely the visions of a weak mind, and that the more knowing, who preach them up so much, believe not a word of them themselves!"
O my God! how mean and despicable is the impious man, who seems so proudly to contemn thee! He is a coward, who outwardly insults, yet inwardly fears thee; he is a vain boaster, who makes a show of unbelief, but tells not what passes within; he is an impostor, who, wishing to deceive us, cannot succeed in deceiving himself; he is a fool, who, without a single inducement, adopts all the horror of impiety; he is a madman, who, unable to attain irreligion, or to extinguish the terrors of his conscience, extinguishes in himself all modesty and decency, and endeavours to make an impious merit of it in the eyes of men; who madly sacrifices, to the deplorable vanity of being thought an unbeliever, his religion which he still preserves, his God whom he dreads, his conscince which he feels, his eternal salvation which he hopes. What a desertion of God, and what a sink of madness and folly!
And could you, my brethren, (and in this wish I comprise the whole fruit of this Discourse,) who still feel a reverence for the religion of our fathers, but be sensible of the contemptibility of those men who give themselves out as freethinkers, and whom you often so much esteem, you would then comprehend how much the profession of unbelief, now so fashionable among us, is, of all other characters, the most frivolous, cowardly, and worthy of laughter: you would then know, that every thing mean and shameful, even according to the world, is concealed under this ostentation of impiety, which the corruption of our manners hath now rendered so common even to both sexes.
First, of licentiousness. They reach the avowal of impiety only when the heart is profoundly corrupted; when they actually live in private in the most shameful debauchery; and, were they known for what they are, they would for ever be dishonoured even in the eyes of men.
Secondly, of meanness. They act the philosopher and the wit; while, in secret, they are the most sneaking, the most dissolute, the most abandoned, and weakest of sinners, the veriest slaves of every passion, unworthy of modesty, and even of reason.
Thirdly, of deceit and imposition. They act a borrowed character; they give themselves out for what they are not; and, while so loudly exclaiming against the godly, and treating them as impostors and hypocrites, they are themselves the very cheat they decry, and the hypocrite of impiety and freethinking.
Fourthly, of ostentation and wretched vanity. They act the hero, while inwardly trembling; for, on the first signal of death, they betray more cowardice than even the commonest of the people; they make a show of openly insulting that God whom they still inwardly dread and even hope to render favourable one day to themselves; a character of childishness and buffoonery, which the world itself hath always considered as the lowest, the vilest, and the most risible of all characters.
Fifthly, of temerity. Without erudition or knowledge, they dare to set up as deciders upon what they are totally ignorant of; to condemn the greatest characters of every age; and to decide upon important points to which they have never given, and, indeed, to which they are incapable of giving, a single moment of serious attention; an indecency of character which can accord only with men who have nothing more to lose on the side of honour.
Sixthly, of folly. They pride themselves in appearing without religion: that is to say, without character, morals, probity, fear of God and of man, and capable of every thing excepting virtue and innocence.
Seventhly, of superstition. We have seen these pretended freethinkers, who refuse to consult the oracles of the holy prophets, consulting conjurors; admitting in men that knowledge of futurity which they refuse to God; giving in to every childish credulity, while rising up against the majesty of faith; expecting their aggrandizement and fortune from a deceitful oracle, and unwilling to hope their salvation from the oracles of our holy books; and, in a word, ridiculously believing in demons, while they make a boast of disbelieving a God.
Lastly, what, in my opinion, is most deplorable in these characters, is, that they are in a situation which precludes almost every hope of salvation. For an actual unbeliever, if such there be, may in a moment be stricken of God, and overwhelmed, as it were, under the weight of that glory and majesty which he unknowingly had blasphemed: the eyes of this unfortunate wretch may still be opened by the Lord in his mercy; he may make his light to shine through his darkness, and reveal that truth which he resists only because he knows it not: he has still resources, such as perhaps rectitude, consistency, principles (of error and illusion, I confess, but still they are principles): he will be equally warm for his God when known, as he was his enemy when unknown. But the unbelievers, of whom I speak, have scarcely a way left of returning to God; they insult the Lord whom they know; they blaspheme that religion which they still preserve in their heart: they resist the impressions of conscience, which still inwardly espouse the cause of faith against themselves; in vain does the light of God shine upon their heart, it serves only to render more inexcusable the treachery of their impiety. Were they, saith Jesus Christ, absolutely blind, they would be worthy of pity, and their sin would be less: but at present they see, and consequently the guilt of their irreligion is blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, which dwelleth for ever upon their head.
Let us repair, then, my brethren, by our respect for the religion of our fathers; by a continual gratitude toward the Lord, who hath permitted us to be born in the way of salvation, into which so many nations have not as yet been deemed worthy to enter, — let us repair, I say, the scandal of unbelief so common in this age, so countenanced among us, and which, become more bold through the number and quality of its partisans, no longer hides its head, but openly shows itself, and braves, as it were, the religion of the prince and the zeal of the pastors. Let us have in horror those impious and despicable men, who pride themselves in turning into ridicule the majesty of the religion they profess: let us fly them as monsters unworthy to live, not only among believers, but even among those connected together by honour, probity, and reason; far from applauding their impious discourses, let us cover them with shame by that contempt which they merit. It is so low and so mean, even according to the world, to dishonour that religion in which one lives; it is so beautiful, and there is so much real dignity in making a pride of respecting and of defending it, even with an air of authority and of indignation, against the silly speeches which attack it. By despising unbelief, let us deprive it of the deplorable glory it seeks. From the moment they are despised, unbelievers will be rare among us; and the same vanity which forms their doubts will soon annihilate or conceal them, when it shall be a disgrace among us to appear impious, and a glory to be a believer. It is thus that this scandal shall be done away, and that altogether we shall glorify the Lord in the same faith, and in the expectation of the eternal promises. Amen.