give to the world lascivious poets, pernicious authors, and profane writers: it is to please you that these corrupters of the public manners perfect their talents, and seek their exaltation and fortune in a fuccefs, the only end of which is the deftruction of fouls; it is you alone who protect, re-. ward, and produce them; who take from them, by honouring them with your familiarity, that mark of disgrace and infamy with which they had been ftigmatifed by the Jaws of the church and of the ftate, and which degraded them in the eyes of men.

Thus it is through you that the people participate in thefe debaucheries; that this poifon infects the cities and provinces; that thefe public pleasures become the fource of the public miseries and licentiousness; that so many unfortunate victims renounce their modesty to gratify your pleasures, and, feeking to improve the mediocrity of their fortune by the exercise of talents which your paffions alone have rendered ufeful and recommendable, come upon criminal theatres to express paffions for the gratification of yours; to perifh in order to pleafe; to facrifice their innocence, in occafioning the loss of it to those who liften to them; to become public rocks, and the scandal of religion; to bring mifery and diffentation even into your families, and to punish you, woman of the world, for the fupport and the credit which you give them by your prefence and your applauses, by becoming the criminal object of the paffion and of the ill-conduct of your children, and perhaps dividing with yourself the heart of your husband, and completely ruining his affairs and fortune.

5thly, A fcandal of duration. It is little, my brethren, that the corruption of our ages is almost wholly the work of the great and powerful; the ages to come will likewife be in

debted

debted to you, perhaps, for a part of their licentiousness and exceffes. Those profane poems, which have seen the light folely through your means, shall still corrupt hearts in the following ages: thofe dangerous authors, whom you honour with your protection, fhall pafs into the hands of your pofterity; and your crimes fhall be multiplied with that dangerous venom which they contain, and which shall be communicated from age to age. Even your paffions, immortalised in history, after having been a scandal in their time, will also become one in the following ages: the reading of your errors preserved to pofterity, fhall raise up imitators after your death inftructions in guilt will be fought for in the narrative of your adventures; and your exceffes shall not expire with you. The voluptuoufnefs of Solomon ftill furnish blafphemies and derifions to the pious, and motives of confidence to libertinism; the infamous paffion of Potiphar's wife hath been preferved down to us, and her rank hath immortalised her weakness. Such is the deftiny of the vices and of the paffions of the great and powerful: they do not live for their own age alone, they live for. the ages to come, and the duration of their fcandal hath no other limits than that of their name.

You know this to be a truth, my brethren; Do they not at prefent, continue to read, with new danger, those scandalous memoirs compofed in the age of our fathers, which have tranfmitted down to us the exceffes of the preceding courts, and immortalised the paffions of the principal perfons who figured in them? The irregularities of an obfcure people, and of the rest of men who then lived, remain funk in oblivion; their paffions terminated with them; their vices, obfcure as their names, have efcaped hiftory; and, with regard to us, they are as though they had never been and the errors of those who were diftinguished in

their age by their rank and birth, are all that now remains to us of these past times; it is their paffions that continually inflame new ones, even at this day, through the licentiousness of, and the open manner in which they are men. tioned by the authors who hand them down to us; and the fole privilege of their condition is, that, while the vices of the lower orders of people fink with themselves, those of the great and the powerful spring up again, as I may say, from their afhes, pafs from age to age, are engraven on the public monuments, and are never blotted out from the memory of men. What crimes, great God! which are the scandal of all ages, the rock of all stations, and which even to the end, shall serve as an excitement to vice, as a pretext to the finner, and as a lasting model of debauchery and licentiousness !

Lastly, a scandal of feduction. Your examples, in honouring vice, render virtue contemptible: the Chriftian life becomes fo ridiculous, that those who profess it are almost ashamed of it before you; the exterior of piety has an ungracious and aukward appearance, which is concealed in your prefence, as if it were a bent which dishonours the mind. How many fouls, touched by God, only resist his grace and his fpirit through the dread of forfeiting with you that degree of confidence which a long fociety in pleasures hath given to them! How many fouls, difgufted with the world, yet who have not the courage to declare themselves and return to God, left they expose themselves to your fenfelefs derifions; ftill continue to copy your manners, upon which they have been fully undeceived by grace, and, through an unrighteous complaifance and refpect for your rank, take a thousand steps from which their new faith and likewife their inclination are equally diftant!

1 speak

I fpeak' not of the prejudices which you perpetuate in the world against virtue; of thofe lamentable discourses against the godly which your authority confirms; which pass from you to the people, and keep up, in all stations, those ancient prepoffeffions againft piety, and those continual derifions of the righteous, which deprive virtue of all its dignity, and hardens finners in vice.

And from thence, my brethren, how many righteous feduced! How many weak led aftray! How many waver. ing fouls retained in fin! How many impious and libertine fouls ftrengthened! What an obftacle do you become to the fruit of our miniftry! How many hearts, already prepared, oppose, to the force of the truth which we announce, only the long engagements which bind them to your manners and to your pleasures, and find within them. felves only you who serve as a wall and a buckler against grace! My God! what a fcourge for the age, what a miffortune for the people, is a grandee according to the world, who lives not in the fear of thee, who knows thee not, and who acts in contempt of thy laws and eternal ordinances! It is a prefent which thou fendeft to men in thy wrath, and the moft dreadful mark of thine indignation upon the cities and upon the kingdoms.

Yes, my brethren, behold what you are when you be long not to God. Such is the first character of your faults, the scandal. Your lot decides in general that of the people: the exceffes of the lower ranks are always the confequence of your exceffes; and the trangreffions of Jacob, faid the prophet, that is to say, of the people and of the tribes, came only from Samaria, the feat of the great and of the mighty.

But,

But, even granting that no new degree of enormity fhould be specially attached to the great by the scandal infeparable from their fins, ingratitude, which forms the fecond character of them, would be amply fufficient to attract, upon their heads, that neglect of God by which his bowels. are ever shut to compaffion and clemency.

you to

I fay ingratitude for God hath preferred you to so many unfortunate fellow-creatures who languish in obscurity and in want; he hath exalted you, and hath caufed be born amid splendour and abundance; he hath chosen you above all the people to load you with benefits; in you alone he hath affembled riches, honours, titles, diftinctions, and all the advantages of the earth; it would feem that his providence watches only for you, while fo many unfortunate millions eat the bread of tribulation and of forrow; the earth feems to be produced for you alone; the fun to rife and go down folely for you; even the rest of men seem born only for you, and to contribute to your grandeur and purposes; it would appear that the Lord is occupied folely with you, while he neglecteth so many obfcure fouls whofe days are days of forrow and want, and for whom it would seem that there is no God upon the earth; yet, nevertheless, you turn against God all that you have received from his hands; your abundance ferves for the indulgence of your paffions; your exaltation facilitates your criminal pleasures, and his bleffings become your crimes.

Yes, my brethren, while thousands of unfortunate fellow-creatures, upon whom his hand is so heavy; while an obfcure populace, for whom life has nothing but hardships and toil, invoke and bless him, raise up their hands to him in the fimplicity of their heart, regard him as their father, and give him every mark of an unaffected piety, and of a

fincere