Sermons (Massillon)/Sermon 25
SERMON XXV.
IMMUTABILITY OF THE LAW OF GOD.
"And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?" — John viii. 46.
It is not enough to have defended the evidence of the law of God against the affected ignorance of the sinners who violate it; it is necessary likewise to establish its immutability against all the pretexts which seem to authorize the world to dispense itself from its holy rules.
Jesus Christ is not satisfied with announcing to the Pharisees, that the truth which they knew shall one day judge them: that in vain they concealed it from themselves; and that the guilt of the truth, known and contemned, would be for ever upon their head. It is through the evidence of the law that he at first recalls them to their own conscience; he afterward accuses them of having struck even at its immutability; of substituting human customs and traditions in place of the perpetuity of its rules; of accommodating them to times, to circumstances, and to interests; and declares to them that, even to the end of ages, a single iota shall not be changed in his law; that heaven and earth shall pass away, but that his law and his holy word shall for ever be the same.
And behold, my brethren, the abuses which still reign among us against the law of God. We have shown to you that, in spite of the doubts and the obscurities which our lusts have spread over our duties, the light of the law, always superior to our passions, dissipated, in spite of ourselves, these obscurities, and that we were never hearty in the transgressions which we tried to justify to ourselves. But it is little to be willing, like the Pharisees, to darken the evidence of the law: like them, we likewise strike at its immutability; and, as if the law of God could change with the manners of the age, the differences of conditions, the necessity of situations, we believe that we can accommodate it to these three different circumstances, and in them find pretexts, either to mollify its severity or altogether to violate its precepts.
First. In effect, the heart of men is changeable; every age sees new customs spring up among us; times and the customs always determine our manners. Now, the law of God is immutable in its duration, always the same in all times and in all places; and, by this first character of immutability, it alone ought to be the constant and perpetual rule of our manners. — First reflection.
Secondly. The heart of man is vain: whatever levels us with the rest of men, wounds our pride; we love distinctions and preferences; we believe that, in the elevation of rank and of birth, we find privileges against the law. Now, the law of God is immutable in its extent; it levels all stations and all conditions; it is the same for the great and for the people, for the prince and for the subject; and, by this second character of immutability, it ought to recall to the same duties that variety of stations and conditions which spreads so much inequality over the detail of manners and of the rules. — Second reflection.
Lastly. The heart of man connects every thing with itself; he persuades himself that his interests ought to be preferred to the law and to the interests of God himself; the slightest inconveniencies are reasons, in his eyes, against the rule. Now, the law of God is immutable in all situations of life; and, by this last character of immutability, there is neither perplexity, nor inconveniency, nor apparent necessity, which can dispense us from its precepts.— Last reflection. %
And behold the three pretexts, which the world opposes to the immutability of the law of God, overthrown: the pretext of manners and customs; the pretext of rank and of birth; the pretext of situations and inconveniencies. The law of God is immutable in its durations; therefore, the manners and the customs can never change it: the law of God is immutable in its extent; therefore, the difference of ranks and of conditions leaves it every where the same: the law of God is immutable in all situations; therefore, inconveniencies, perplexities, never justify the smallest transgression of it.
Part 1. — One of the most urgent and most usual reproaches which the first supporters of religion formerly made to the heathens, was the instability of their moral system, and the continual fluctuations of their doctrine. As the fulness of truth was not in vain philosophy, and as they drew not their lights, said Tertullian, from that sovereign reason which enlightens all minds, and which is the immutable teacher of the truth, but from the corruption of their heart and the vanity of their thoughts, they qualified good and evil according to their caprices, and, among them, vice and virtue were almost arbitrary names. Nevertheless, continues this father, the most inseparable character of truth is that of being always the same: good and evil take their immutability from that of God himself, whom they glorify or insult; his wisdom, his holiness, his righteousness, are the only eternal rules of our manners: and it belongs not to men, at their pleasure, to change what men have not established, and what is more ancient than men themselves.
Now, it was not surprising that morality had nothing determinate, in the heathen schools, delivered up to the pride and to the variations of the human mind: it was vanity, and not the truth, which made philosophers; the rules changed with the ages; new times brought new laws: in a word, the tenets did not change the manners; it was the change of manners which drew after it that of the tenets.
But what is astonishing is, that Christians, who have received from heaven the eternal and immutable law which regulates their manners, believe it to be equally changeable as the morality of philosophers: that they persuade themselves that the rigorous duties which the Gospel at first prescribed to the primitive ages of the church, are mollified with the relaxation of manners, and are no longer made for the weakness and the corruption of our ages.
In effect, the Gospel, the law of Jesus Christ, is immutable in its duration: seeing every thing change around it, it alone changes not; the duties which it prescribes to us, founded upon the wants and upon the nature of man, are, like it, of all times and of all places. Every thing changes upon the earth, because every thing partakes of the mutability of its origin: empires and states have their rise and their fall; arts and sciences fall or spring up with the ages; customs continually change with the taste of the people, and with climates; from on high, in his immutability, God seems to sport with human affairs, by leaving them in an eternal revolution; the ages to come will destroy what we, with so much anxiety rear up; we destroy what our fathers had thought worthy of an eternal duration: and, in order to teach us in what estimation we ought to hold things here below, God permitteth that they have nothing determinate or solid but that very inconstancy which incessantly agitates them.
But, amid all the changes of manners and ages, the law of God always remains the immutable rule of ages and of manners. Heaven and earth shall pass away; but the holy words of the law shall never pass away: such as the first believers received them at the birth of faith, such have we them at present; such shall our descendants one day receive them; lastly, such shall the blessed in heaven eternally love and adore them. The fervour or the licentiousness of ages adds or diminishes nothing to their indulgence, or from their severity; the zeal or the complaisance of men renders them neither more austere nor more accommodating; the intolerant rigour, or the excessive relaxation of opinions and tenets leaves them all the wise sobriety of their rules; and they form that eternal gospel which the angel, in the Revelation, announces from on high in heaven, from the beginning, to every tongue and to every nation.
Nevertheless, my brethren, when in the manners of the primitive believers, we sometimes represent to you all the duties of the Gospel exactly fulfilled, — their freedom from the world, their absence from theatres and public pleasures, their assiduity in the temples, the modesty and the decency of their dress, their charity for their brethren, their indifference for all perishable things, their continual desire of going to be reunited to Jesus Christ; in a word, that simple, retired, and mortified life, sustained by fervent prayer, and by the consolation of the holy books, and such, in effect, as the gospel prescribes to all the disciples of faith; — when we bring forward to you, I say, these ancient models, in order to make you feel, by the difference between the primitive manners and yours, how distant you are from the kingdom of God: far from being alarmed at finding yourselves dissimilar to such a degree, that hardly could it be believed that you were disciples of the same Master and followers of the same law; you reproach us with continual recalling, even to weariness, these primitive times, of never speaking but of the primitive church, as if it were possible to regulate our manners, upon manners of which every trace hath long been done away, impracticable at present among us, and which the times and customs have universally abolished. You say, that men must be taken as they are; that it were to be wished that the primitive fervour had been kept up in the church; but that every thing becomes relaxed and weakened through time, and that, to pretend to bring us back to the life of the primitive ages, is not holding out means of salvation, but is merely preaching up that nobody can now pretend to it.
But I demand of you, in the first place, my brethren, if the times and the years, which have so much adulterated the purity of Christianity, have adulterated that of the gospel? Are the rules become more pliable and more favourable to the passions, because men are become more sensual and more voluptuous? And hath the relaxation of manners softened the maxims of Jesus Christ? When he hath foretold in the gospel that, in the latter times, that is to say, in the ages in which we have the misfortune to live, faith should almost no longer be found upon the earth; that his name should hardly be known there, that his maxims should be destroyed, that the duties should be incompatible with the customs, and that the just themselves should allow themselves to be almost infected by the universal contagion, and to be dragged away by the torrent of example; hath he then added, that, in order to accommodate himself to the corruption of these latter times, he would relax something of the severity of his Gospel; that he would consent that customs, established by the ignorance and the licentiousness of the ages, should succeed to the rules and to the duties of his doctrine; that he would then exact of his disciples infinitely less than he exacted at the birth of faith; and that his kingdom, which, at first, was promised only to force, should then be granted to indolence and laziness? Hath he added this, I demand of you? On the contrary, he warns his disciples that then, in these latter times, it will more than ever be necessary to pray, to fast, to retire to the mountains, in order to shun the general corruption; he warns them that woe unto those who shall then remain exposed amid the world; that those alone shall be safe who shall divest themselves of all, and who shall fly from amid the cities: and he concludes by exhorting them once more to watch and to pray without ceasing, in order not to be included in the general condemnation.
And, in effect, my brethren, the more disorders augment, the more ought piety to be fervent and watchful: the more we are surrounded with dangers, the more doth prayer, retreat, and mortification become necessary to us. The licentiousness of the present manners add still new obligations to those of our fathers; and, far from the path of salvation having become more easy than in those former times, we shall perish with a moderate virtue, which, supported then by the common example, would perhaps have been sufficient to secure our salvation.
Besides, my brethren, I demand of you, in the second place, Do you really believe that the rigorous precepts of the gospel, those maxims of the cross, of violence, of self-denial, of contempt for the world, have been made only for the primitive ages of faith? Do you believe that Jesus Christ hath destined all the rigours of his doctrine for those chaste, innocent, charitable, and fervent men, who lived in these happy times of the church; those men who denied themselves every pleasure, those primitive heroes of religion, who, almost all, preserved, even to the end, the grace of regeneration which had made them Christians? What! my brethren, Jesus Christ would have rewarded their zeal and their fidelity only by aggravating their yoke, and he would have reserved all his indulgence for the corrupted men of our ages? Jesus Christ would have made strict laws of reserve, of modesty, of retirement, only for those primitive Christian women who renounced all to please him; who divided themselves only with the Lord and their husbands; who, shut up in the inclosures of their houses, brought up their children in faith and in piety? And he would exact less at present of those sensual, voluptuous, and worldly women, who continually wound our eyes by the indecency of their dress, and who corrupt the heart by the looseness of their manners, and by the snares which they lay for innocence? And where would here be that so much vaunted equity and wisdom of the Christian morality? More should then be exacted of him who owes less. The transgressions of the law should then dispense from its severity those who violate it. It would suffice to have passions, to be entitled to gratify them. The way of heaven would be rendered easy to sinners, while all its roughness would be kept for the just. And the more vices men should have, the less should they have occasion for virtues.
Again, allow me, my brethren, to add, in the last place, if the change of manners could change the rules, if customs could justify abuses, the eternal law of God should then accommodate itself to the inconstancy of the times, and to the ridiculous taste of men; a Gospel would then be necessary for every age and for every nation; for our customs were not established in the times of our fathers, and undoubtedly they shall not pass to our last descendants; they are not common to all the nations, who, like us, worship Jesus Christ. Therefore, these customs cannot either become our rule or change it, for the rule is of all times and of all places; therefore, new manners do not form a new Gospel, seeing we should anathematize even an angel who should come to announce to us a new one; and that the Gospel would be no longer but a human and little-to-be-trusted law for men, if it could change with men; therefore, the rules and duties are not to be judged by manners and customs, but the manners and customs are to be judged by the duties and rules; therefore, it is the law of God which ought to be the constant rule of the times, and not the variation of times to become even the rule of the law of God.
No longer tell us, then, my brethren, that the times are no longer the same; but the law of God, is it not? That you cannot reform manners universally established: but you are not charged with the reformation of the universe: change yourself; save your own soul with which you are intrusted: behold all that is exacted of you. Lastly, that the Christians of the primitive times had either more force or more grace than we; ah! they had more faith, more constancy, more love for Jesus Christ, more contempt for the world: behold all that distinguished them from us.
Have we not the same sources of grace as they, the same ministry, the same altar, the same victim? Do the mercies of the Lord not flow with the same abundance upon his church? Have we not still among us pure and holy souls, who renew the fervour and faith of the primitive times, and who are living proofs of the possibility of the duties, and of the mercies of the Lord upon his people? u Tell us no longer, then/5 says the Spirit of God, " that the former days were better than these; for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this." To follow Jesus Christ, sufferance must always be required. In all ages, it hath been necessary to bear his cross, not to conform to the corrupted age, and to live as strangers upon the earth: in all times, the holy have had the same passions as we to resist, the same abuses to shun, the same snares to dread, the same obstacles to surmount: and if there be any difference here, it is, that, in former times, it was not merely arbitrary customs which they had to shun, nor the derisions of the world which they had only to dread in declaring for Jesus Christ; it was the most cruel punishments to which they must expose themselves; it was the power of the Caesars, and the rage of tyrants, which they must despise; it was superstitions, become respectable through their antiquity, countenanced by the laws of the empire, and by the consent of almost all the people, which they had to shake off; it was, in a word, the whole universe which they had to arm against themselves. But the faith of these pious men was stronger than punishments, than the tyrants, than the Caesars, than the whole world: and our faith cannot hold out against the absurdity of customs or the puerility of derision; and the Gospel, which could formerly make martyrs, scarcely at present can it form a believer. The law of God is then immutable in its duration; always the same in all times and in all places; but it is likewise immutable in its extent, and the same for all stations and conditions. — This is my second reflection.
Part II. — The most essential character of the law of Jesus Christ, is that of uniting, under the same rules, the Jew and the Gentile, the Greek and the Barbarian, the great and the people, the prince and the subject; in it there is no longer exception of persons. The law of Moses, at least in its customs and in its ceremonies, was given only to a single people: but Jesus Christ is a universal legislator; his law, as his death, is for all men. He came, of all people to make only one people: of all stations and of all conditions to form only one body: it is the same spirit which animates it, the same laws which govern it; different functions may there be exercised, different places, more or less honourable, be occupied; but it is the same spring which rules all the members of it. All these hateful distinctions, which formerly divided men, are destroyed by the church; that holy law knows neither poor nor rich, neither noble nor base-born, neither master nor slave; it sees in men only the title of believer, which equals them all; it distinguishes them not by their names or by their offices, but by their virtues; and the greatest in its sight are those who are the most holy.
Nevertheless, a second illusion, pretty common against the immutability of the law of God, is the persuasion that it changes and becomes mollified in favour of rank and of birth; that its obligations are less rigid for persons born to elevation; and that the obstacles, which high places and the manners attached to grandeur throw in the way of the observance of the strict duties of the Gospel, and which render the practice of them almost impossible to the great, likewise render their transgressions more innocent. They figure to themselves that the abuses, permitted, in all times, by custom to the great, are likewise accorded to them by the law of God, and that there is another path of salvation for them than for the people. Thence, all the laws of the church violated; the times and the days consecrated to abstinence, confounded with the rest of days, are looked upon as privileges refused to the vulgar, and reserved solely for rank and birth: thence, to live only for the senses, to be attentive only to satisfy them, to refuse nothing to taste, to vanity, to curiosity, to idleness, to ambition, to make a god of one's self; the same prosperity, which facilitates all these excesses, excuses and justifies them.
But, my brethren, I have already said it, the Gospel is the law of all men: high and low, you have all promised, upon the sacred fonts, to observe it. The church, in receiving you into the number of her children, hath not proposed to the great other vows to make, and other rules to practise, than to the common people: you have all there made the same promises; all sworn, in the face of the altars, to observe the same Gospel. The church hath not then demanded of you, if, by your birth according to the flesh, you were great, or of the common people; but if, by your regeneration in Jesus Christ, you meant to be faithful, and to engage yourself to follow his law: upon the vow which you have made of it, she hath placed the holy Gospel upon your head, in order to mark that you submitted yourself to that sacred yoke.
Now, my brethren, all the duties of the Gospel are reduced to two points. Some are proposed in order to resist and to weaken that fund of corruption which we bear from our birth; the others in order to perfect that first grace of the Christian which we have received in baptism; that is to say, the one in order to destroy in us the old Adam, the other in order to make Jesus Christ to grow there. Violence, self-denial, and mortification regard the first: prayer, retirement, vigilance, contempt for the world, desire of invisible riches, are comprised in the second: behold the whole Gospel. Now, I demand of you, what is there in these two descriptions of duties from which rank or birth can dispense you?
Ought you to pray less than the other believers? Have you fewer favours to ask than they, fewer obstacles to overcome, fewer snares to avoid, fewer desires to resist? Alas! the more you are exalted, the more do dangers augment, the more do occasions of sin spring up under your feet, the more is the world beloved, the more doth every thing favour your passions, the more doth every thing militate against your good desires; it is in a situation so terrible for salvation that you find privileges which render it more mild and more commodious. The more, therefore, that you are exalted, the more doth mortification become necessary to you; for, the more that pleasures corrupt your heart, the more is vigilance necessary, because the dangers are more frequent; the more ought faith to be lively, because every thing around you weakens and extinguishes it; the more ought prayer to be continual, because the grace, in order to support you, ought to be more powerful; humility of heart more heroical, because the attachment to things here below is more unavoidable: lastly, the more you are exalted, the more doth salvation become difficult to you; this is the only privilege you can expect from elevation. Also, thou often warnest us, great God, that thy kingdom is only for the poor and the lowly: thou speakest not of the difficulty of salvation for the great and the powerful, but in terms which would seem to deprive them of all hope of pretending to it, if we knew not that thou wishest the salvation of all men, and that thy grace is still more powerful for our sanctification than prosperity for our corruption.
And surely, my brethren, if grandeur and elevation were to render our condition more fortunate and more favourable with regard to salvation, in vain would the doctrine of Jesus Christ teach us to dread grandeurs and human prosperities; in vain would it be said to us, that blessed are they who weep, and who suffer here below; that woe unto those who laugh now, for they shall mourn and weep; and unto those who are rich, for they have received their consolation; and that, to receive our reward in this world, through the transitory riches and honours which we there receive, is almost a certain sign that we are not to receive it in the other. On the contrary, grandeur and prosperity would become a state worthy of envy, even according to the rules of faith: against the maxim of Jesus Christ, it would be necessary to call those happy who are immersed in pleasures and in opulence; since, besides the comforts of a smiling fortune, they would likewise find there a way of salvation more mild and more easy than in an obscure state; those who suffer, and who weep here below, would then be the most miserable of all men; since to all the bitterness of their condition, would likewise be added those of a Gospel, more rigorous and more austere for them than for the persons born in abundance. What new Gospel would it then be necessary to announce to you, if such were the rules of the morality of Jesus Christ!
But I say not even enough. Granting that prosperity should not exact more rigid precautions, in consequence of the dangers which surround it, it would exact, at least, more rigorous reparations, through the crimes and excesses which are inseparable from it. Alas! my brethren, is it not among you that the passions no longer know any bounds; that the jealousies are more keen, the hatreds more lasting, revenge more honourable, evil speaking more cruel, ambition more boundless, and voluptuousness more shameful? Is it not among the great that the most shocking debauchery even refines upon the common crimes; that dissipations become an art; and that, in order to prevent those disgusts inseparable from licentiousness, resources are sought in guilt against guilt itself? What indulgence, then, can you promise yourselves on the part of religion? If the most righteous be responsible for the whole law, should the greatest sinners be discharged from it? Measure your duties upon your crimes, and not upon your rank; judge of yourselves by the insults which you have offered to God, and not by the vain homages which are paid to you by men; number the days and the years of your crimes which shall be the eternal titles of your condemnation, and not the years and the ages of the antiquity of your race, which are only vain titles written upon the ashes of your tombs; examine what you owe to God, and not what men owe to you. If the world were to judge you, you might promise yourselves distinctions and preferences; but the world shall itself be judged; and he, who will judge it and you also, shall distinguish men only by their vices or by their virtues. He will not demand the names, he will demand only the deeds: calculate thereupon the distinctions which you ought to expect.
Thus, we see not that Jesus Christ, in the Gospel, proposed to the princes of the people, and to the grandees of Jerusalem, other maxims than to the citizens of Judea, and to his disciples, all taken from the lowest ranks of the people; he speaks in the capital of Judea, and before all that Palestine held the most illustrious, as he speaks upon the borders of the sea, or upon the mountains, to that obscure populace which followed him; his maxims are not changed with the rank of those who listened to him. The cross, violence, contempt of the world, self-denial, abstinence from pleasures: behold what he announces at Jerusalem, the seat of kings, as at Nazareth, the most obscure place of Judea; to that young man who was so rich, as to the children of Zebedee, whose only inheritance was their nets; to the sisters of Lazarus, of a distinguished rank in Palestine, as to the woman of Samaria, of a more obscure condition. His enemies themselves confessed that this was his peculiar character, and were forced to render him this justice, that he taught the way of God in truth, and that he had no respect of rank or of persons.
What do I say? Even after his death the Gospel seemed a doctrine sent down from heaven, only because that, announcing to the great and to the powerful, sorrowful and crucifying maxims, apparently so incompatible with their station, they, nevertheless, submitted to the yoke of Jesus Christ, and embraced a law which, amid all their prosperity and abundance, permitted to them no more pleasures and comforts here below than to the common and simple people. And, in effect, why should the first defenders of faith have regarded the conversions of Caesars, and of the powerful of the age, as a proof of the truth and of the divinity of the Gospel? What would there be so surprising, that the rich and the powerful had embraced a doctrine which would distinguish them from the people by a greater indulgence; which, while it would prescribe tears, fasting, self-denial, to others, would relax in favour of the great, and would consent that profusions, pleasures, sensualities, gaming, public places, all so rigorously forbidden to common believers, become an innocent occupation for them; and that what is a road to perdition for others, should for them alone be a road of salvation? It would then be the wisdom of the age which would have established the Gospel, and not the folly of the cross; it would be the artifices and the deferences of men, and not the arm of the Almighty; it would be flesh and blood, and not the power of God; and the conversion of the universe would have nothing more wonderful, than the establishment of superstitions and of sects.
And candidly, my brethren, if the Gospel had distinctions to make, and condescensions to grant; if the law of God could relax something of its severity, would it be in favour of those who are born to rank and to abundance? What! Would it preserve all its rigour for the poor and the unfortunate? Would it condemn to tears, to fastings, to penitence, to poverty, those unfortunate souls whose days are mingled with almost nothing but sufferance and sorrow, and whose only comfort is that of eating with temperance the bread earned with the sweat of their brow? And would it discharge from their rigorous duties the grandees of the earth? And would it exact nothing painful of those whose days are only diversified by the variety of their pleasures? And would it reserve all its indulgence for those soft and voluptuous souls, who live only for the senses, who believe they are upon the earth for the sole purpose of enjoying an iniquitous felicity, and who know no other god than themselves?
Great God! It is the blindness which thy justice sheds over human prosperities; after having corrupted the heart, they likewise extinguish all the lights of faith. It rarely happens but that the great, so enlightened upon the interests of the earth, upon the ways to fortune and to glory, upon the secret springs which give motion to courts and empires, live in a profound ignorance of the ways of salvation. They have been so much accustomed to preferences by the world, that they are persuaded they ought likewise to find them in religion. Because men do them credit for the smallest steps taken in their favour, they believe, O my God! that thou regardest them with the same eyes as men; and, that, in fulfilling some weak duties of piety, in taking some small steps for thee, they go even beyond what they owe to thee; as if their smallest religious works acquired a new merit from their rank: in place of which, they acquire it, in thy sight, only from that faith and from that charity which animate them.
It is thus that the law of God, immutable in its extent, is the same for all stations, for the great and for the people. But it is likewise immutable in all the situations of fife; and it is neither a difficult conjecture, nor perplexity, nor apparent danger, nor pretext of public good, in which to violate, or even to soften it, becomes a legitimate and necessary modification. This was to have been my last reflection; but I abridge and go on.
Yes, my brethren, every thing becomes reason and necessity against our duties, that is to say, against the law of God; situations the least dangerous, conjectures the least embarrassing, furnish us with pretexts to violate it with safety, and persuade us that the law of God would be unjust, and would exact too much of men, if, on these occasions, it were not to use indulgence with regard to us.
Thus, the law of God commands us to render to each that which is his due; to retrench, in order to pay those debts incurred through our excesses, and not to permit that our unfortunate creditors suffer by our senseless profusions. Nevertheless, the general persuasion is, that, in a grand place, it is necessary to support the eclat of a public dignity: that the honour of the master requires that mean and sorry externals disgrace not the elevated post which he hath confided to us; that we are responsible to the sovereign, to the state, and to ourselves, before being so to individuals; and that public property is then superior to the particular rule.
Thus, the law of God enjoins us to tear out the eye which giveth offence, and to cast it from us; to separate ourselves from an object which, in all times, hath been the rock of our innocence, and near to which we can never be in safety. Nevertheless, the noise which a rupture would make, the suspicions which it might awaken in the public mind, the ties of society, of relationship, of friendship, which seem to render the separation impossible without eclat, persuade us that it is not then commanded, and that a danger, become as if necessary, becomes a security to us.
Thus, the law of God commands us to render glory to the truth; not to betray our conscience by iniquitously withholding it; that is to say, not to dissemble it, through human interests, from those to whom our duty obliges us to announce it. Nevertheless we persuade ourselves that truths, which would be unavailing, ought to be suppressed; and that a liberty, of which the only fruit would be that of risking our fortune, and of rendering ourselves hated, without rendering those better to whom we owe the truth, would rather be an indiscretion than a law of charity and of justice.
Thus, the law of God prescribes to us to have in view, in public cares, only the utility of the people, for whom alone the authority is intrusted to us; to consider ourselves as charged with the interests of the multitude, as the avengers of injustice, the refuge against oppression and poverty. Nevertheless, we believe ourselves to be situated in conjunctures in which it is necessary to shut our eyes upon iniquity, to support abuses which we know to be untenable; to sacrifice conscience and duty to the necessity of the times, and, without scruple, to violate the clearest rules, because the inconveniencies, which would arise from their observance, seem to render their transgression necessary. Lastly, human pretexts, interests, and inconveniencies, always make the balance to turn to their side; and duty, and the law of God, always yield to conjunctures and to the necessity of the times.
Now, my brethren, I do not tell you, in the first place, that the interest of salvation is the greatest of all interests; that fortune, life, reputation, the whole world itself, put in comparison with your soul, ought to be reckoned as nothing; and that though heaven and the earth should change, that the whole world should perish, and every evil should burst upon our head, these inconveniencies should always be infinitely less than the transgression of the law of God.
Secondly. I do not tell you that the law hath always, at least, security in its favour against the pretext, because the obligation of the law is clear and precise, in place of which, the pretext, which introduces the exception, is always doubtful; and, that, consequently, to prefer the pretext to the law, is to leave a safe way, and to make choice of another, for which no person can be answerable to you.
Lastly. I do not tell you that, the Gospel having been only given to us in order to detach us from the world and from ourselves, and to make us die to all our terrestrial affections, it is deceiving ourselves to consider, as inconveniencies, certain consequences of that divine law, fatal either to our fortune, to our glory, or to our ease, and to persuade ourselves that it is then permitted to us to have recourse to expedients which mollify it, and conciliate its severity with the interests of our self-love. Jesus Christ hath never meant to prescribe to us easy and commodious duties, and which take nothing from the passions; he came to bring the sword and separation to hearts, to divide man from his relations, from his friends, from himself; to hold out to us a way rugged and difficult to keep. Thus, what we call inconveniencies and unheard-of extremities, are, at bottom, only the spirit of the law, the most natural consequences of the rules, and the end that Jesus Christ hath intended in prescribing them to us.
That young man of the Gospel regarded, as an inconveniency, the being unable to go to pay the last duties to his father, and to gather in what he had succeeded to, if he followed Jesus Christ; and it was precisely that sacrifice which Jesus Christ exacted of him. Those men invited to the feast looked upon as an inconveniency, the one to forsake his country-house, the other his trade, the last to delay his marriage; and it was in order to break asunder all these ties, which bound them still too much to the earth, that the father of the family invited them to come and seat themselves at the feast. Esther, at first, considered as an inconveniency to go to appear before Ahasuerus, contrary to the law of the empire, and to declare herself a daughter of Abraham, and protectress of the children of Israel; and, nevertheless, as the wise Mordecai represented to her, the Lord had raised her to that point of glory and prosperity only for that important occasion. Whatever is a constraint to us, appears a reason against the law; and we take for inconveniencies the obligations themselves.
Besides, my brethren, is it not certain that the principal merit of our duties is derived from the obstacles which never fail to oppose their practice; that the most essential character of the law of Jesus Christ is that of exciting against it all the reasons of flesh and blood; and virtue would resemble vice, if outwardly and inwardly it found in us only facilities and conveniencies? The righteous, my brethren, have never been peaceable observers of the holy rules. Abel found inconveniencies in the jealousy of his own brother; Noah, in the unbelief of his own citizens; Abraham in the disputes of his servants; Joseph in the dangers to which he was exposed through his love of modesty and the rage of a faithless woman; Daniel in the customs of a profane court; the pious Esdras in the manners of the age; the noble Eleazar in the snares of a specious temperament: lastly, follow the history of the just, and you will see that, in all ages, all those who have walked in the precepts and in the ordinances of the law, have experienced inconveniencies in which righteousness itself seemed to authorize the transgression of the rules; have encountered obstacles in their way where the lights of human reason seemed to decide in favour of the pretext against the law: in a word, where virtue seemed to condemn virtue itself: and that, consequently, it is not new for the law of God to meet with obstacles; but that it is new to pretend to find in these obstacles legitimate excuses for dispensing ourselves from the law of God.
And the decisive argument which confirms this truth is, that our passions alone form the inconveniencies which authorize us in seeking mollifications to our duties and to the law of God; and that views of fortune, of glory, of favour, engage us in certain proceedings, justify them in our eyes, in spite of the evidence of rules which condemn them, only because we love our glory and our fortune more than the rules themselves.
Let us die to the world and to ourselves, my brethren; let us restore to our heart the sentiments of love and of preference, which it owes to its Lord: then every thing shall appear possible; difficulties shall, in an instant, be done away; and what we call inconveniencies either shall no longer be reckoned as any thing, or we shall consider them as inseparable proofs of virtue, and not as the excuses of vice. How easy is it to find pretexts when we love them! Arguments are never wanting to the passions. Self-love is always ready in placing, at least, appearances on its side; it always changes our weaknesses into duties, and our inclinations soon become legitimate claims; and what in this is most deplorable, says St. Augustine, is, that we call in even religion itself in aid of our passions; that we draw motives from piety, in order to violate piety itself; and that we have recourse to holy pretexts to authorize iniquitous desires.
It is thus, O my God! that almost our whole life is passed in seducing ourselves; that we employ the lights of our reason only in darkening those of faith; that we consume the few days we have to pass upon the earth, only in seeking authorities for our passions, in imagining situations in which we believe ourselves to be enabled to disobey thee with impunity; that is to say, that all our cares, all our reflections, all the superiority of our views, of our lights, of our talents, all the wisdom of our measures and of our counsels, are limited to the accomplishment of our ruin, and to conceal from ourselves our eternal destruction.
Let us shun this evil, my brethren; let us reckon no way safe for us but that of the rules and of the law; and let us remember that there shall be more sinners condemned through the pretexts which seem to authorize the transgressions of the law, than through the avowed crimes which violate it. It is thus that the law of God, after having been the rule of our manners upon the earth, shall be their eternal consolation in heaven.