to extinguish in its birth, that light which comes to illuminate the whole world.
The sole mention of the cruelty of that impious prince strikes us with horror; and it does not appear that so barbarous an example can ever find imitators among us: nevertheless, the world is full of these kinds of public and avowed persecutors of the truth: and, if the church be no longer afflicted with the barbarity of tyrants, and with the effusion of her children's blood, she is still every day persecuted by the public derisions which the worldly make of virtue, and by the ruin of those faithful souls, whom she, with grief, so often beholds sinking under the dread of their derisions and censures.
Yes, my brethren, those discourses which you so readily allow yourselves against the piety of the servants of God, of those souls who, by their fervent homages, recompense his glory for your crimes and insults; those derisions of their zeal and of their holy intoxication for their God: those biting sarcasms which rebound from their person upon virtue itself, and are the most dangerous temptation of their penitence; that severity, on their account, which forgives them nothing, and changes even their virtues into vices; that language of blasphemy and of mockery, which throws an air of ridicule over the seriousness of their compunction; which gives appellations of irony and contempt to the most respectable, practices of their piety; which shakes their faith, checks their holy resolutions, disheartens their weakness, makes them, as it were, ashamed of virtue, and often is the cause of their returning to vice: — behold what, with the saints, I call an open and declared persecution of the truth. You persecute in your brother, says St. Augustine, that which the tyrants themselves have never persecuted: they have deprived him only of life; your scheme is to deprive him of innocence and virtue: their persecution extended only to the body: you carry yours even to the destruction of his soul.
What, my brethren! is it not enough that you do not yourselves serve the God for whom you are created? (This is what the first defenders of faith, the Tertullians and the Cyprians, formerly said to the Pagan persecutors of the faithful; and must it be that we, alas! have the same complaints to make against Christians?) Is it not enough? Must you also persecute those who serve him? You are then determined neither to adore him yourselves, nor to suffer that others do it? You every day forgive so many extravagancies to the followers of the world, so many unreasonable passions; you excuse them; — what do I say? you applaud them in the inordinate desires of their heart; in their most shameful passions you find constancy, fidelity, and dignity: you give honourable names to their most infamous vices; and it is a just and faithful soul alone, a servant of the true God, who has no indulgence to expect from you, and is certain of drawing upon himself your contempt and censures? But, my brethren, theatrical and other amusements are publicly licensed, and
