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.
