Again, in order to render man happy, it ought to teach us that there is a God, whom we are under obligation to love; that our true felicity consists in being devoted to him, and our only misery, in being separated from him. It ought to show us that we are full of darkness, which prevents us from knowing and loving him; and that thus our duty obliging us to love God, and our concupiscence turning us from him, we are full of unrighteousness. It ought to discover to us the cause of our opposition to God, and our own happiness; the remedies against it, and the means of obtaining them. Let men consider all the religions in the world, with regard to these points, and see whether any one, except Christianity, can give satisfaction concerning them.

Shall it be the doctrine of those philosophers, who set before us no other good than what we may find in ourselves? Is this the sovereign good? Have these men discovered the remedy of our evils? Is the proper cure, for man's presumption, to equal him with God? And those who have levelled us with the beasts, and offer us earthly gratifications, as our only felicity, have they revealed the remedy for our lusts? Lift up your eyes to God,' say some; behold Him who 'has stamped you with his image, and has made you for his worship. You may make your

'selves like him; Wisdom, if you follow her di

'rections, will equal you to him.' While others cry out, Cast down your eyes to the ground, 'base worms as you are, and look at the beasts, your companions.'

What then is to be the fate of man! must he be equal to God, or to the beasts? How frightful a disparity is this? What then are we to be? What religion shall instruct us at once to correct our pride and our concupiscence? What religion shall disclose to us our happiness, and our duty; the infirmities which lead us from them, the cure for those infirmities, and the means of obtaining it? Let us hear the answer of the wisdom of God, as it speaks to us in the Christian religion.

It is in vain, O Men! to seek from yourselves the remedy for your miseries. All your knowledge can reach no further than this-that you can neither find happiness nor truth in yourselves. Philosophers have promised them to you, but they promised what they could not perform. They knew neither your real condition, nor your real good. How could they point out the remedy for your diseases, who did not even know what they were? Your greatest evils are pride, which alienates you from God; and concupiscence, which attaches you to earth; and all they did was to cherish either one or the other. If they likened you to God, it was only to gratify your pride, by making

and as for those who saw the extragavance of such pretensions, they only led you to a contrary precipice; by tempting you to believe that your nature was like that of the beasts, that you might be led to place all your happiness in the sensual delights of irrational creatures! This was not the way to convince you of your transgressions. Do not therefore expect truth or consolation from men: I am HE that has formed you, and alone can teach you what you are. You are not now in the state in which I created you. I made man holy, innocent, and perfect: I filled him with light and understanding: I made known to him my wonders and my glory. The eye of man then saw the majesty of God. He was not in this darkness which blinds him, or under this mortality, and these miseries, which distress him. But he could not enjoy that glory long without falling into presumption: he wanted to make himself the centre of his happiness, independent of my aid. He withdrew himself from my dominion, and as he pretended to an equality with me, from a desire to find his happiness in himself, I abandoned him to himself; and causing the creatures that were his subjects, to revolt against him, I made them his enemies. Man is therefore now become like unto the beasts, and removed so far from me, that he scarcely retains any feeble glimmer of the Author of his being, so much has all his knowledge been either lost

or confused. His senses now, being not the servants, but often the masters of his reason, have led him away in the pursuit of pleasure: all the creatures with which he is surrounded, either tempt or afflict him, and exercise a kind of sovereignty over him; either subduing him by their strength, or seducing him by their charms, which is the most imperious and fatal dominion of the two.

Such is the present state and condition of men! Still a feeble instinct remains of the felicity of their primitive nature; while they are plunged in the miseries of their own blindness and lust, which is now their second nature.

From the principles which I have here laid open, we may discern the cause of all those contrarieties, which have astonished and divided mankind.

Observe all those emotions of greatness and glory, which the sense of so many miseries is not able to extinguish; and consider, whether they can proceed from a less powerful cause than original nature.

Know then, proud mortal! what a paradox thou art to thyself. Let thy weak reason be

humbled; let thy frail nature be silent. Know that man infinitely surpasseth man; and learn from thy master thy real condition, to which thou art thyself a stranger.

For, in a word, had man never fallen into corruption, he would have continued stedfast in the enjoyment of truth and happiness; and had he never been any other than corrupt, he would have possessed no idea either of truth or happiness. But so great is our misery, (greater than if there had never been any thing noble in our condition,) that we retain an idea of happiness, though we are unable to attain it; we feel some faint notion of truth, while we possess nothing but falsehood; incapable both of absolute ignorance, and of certain knowledge. So manifest is it, that we have once been in a state of perfection, from which we are now unhappily fallen.

What then does this avidity on the one hand, and this impotence on the other, teach us, but that man was originally possessed of a real bliss, of which nothing now remains but the footsteps and empty traces, which he vainly endeavours to fill up with that which surrounds him; seeking in things absent, the relief which he does not obtain from such as are present, and which neither the present nor the absent