ternal monitor which incessantly recalls you to order and duty, why will you so obstinately withstand the happiness of your lot? Why make so many efforts to defend you from yourself, so many starts and flights to shun yourself? Reconcile, at last, your heart with your reason, your conscience with your manners, yourself with the law of God; bebold the only secret of attaining to that peace of heart which you seek. Turn yourself on every side, you must always come to that. Observance of the law is the true happiness of man; it is deceiving himself to look upon it as a yoke; that alone places the heart at liberty. Whatever favours our passions, sharpens our ills, increases our troubles, multiplies our bonds, and aggravates our slavery; the law of God alone, in repressing them, places us in order, quiets, cures, and delivers us. Such is the destiny of sinful man, to be incapable of happiness here below, but by overcoming his passions; to attain by violence alone to the true pleasures of the heart, and afterwards to that eternal peace prepared for those who shall have loved the law of God.

SERMON XXV.

ON THE IMMUTABILITY OF THE LAW OF GOD.

JOHN viii. 46.

And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?

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 authorise mankind to absolve themselves 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 it is in vain they conceal it from themselves; and that the guilt of knowing and contemning the truth, would be for ever upon their heads. It is through the evidence of the law that he at first recalls them to their own conscience; he afterwards accuses them of having aimed a blow even at its immutability; of substituting human customs and traditions in place of its eternal rules; of accommo

dating them to times, to circumstances, and to interests; and declares to them that, even to the end of the world, a single iota shall not be changed in his law; that heaven and earth shall pass away, but his law and his holy word shall for ever be the same.

Such, my brethren, are the abuses which still reign among us against the law of God. I have shewn you that, in spite of the doubts and obscurities which our lusts have spread over our duties, the light of the law, always superior to our passions, has dissipated, in spite of ourselves, those obscurities, and that we were never hearty in the transgressions which we tried to justify to ourselves. But it is little to wish, like the Pharisees, to darken the evidence of the law; like them, we also strike at its immutability; and, as if the law of God could change with the manners of the age, the difference of conditions, the necessity of situations, we believe that we can accommodate it to these three different circumstances, and find in them pretexts, either to mitigate its severity, or altogether to violate its precepts.

1st, The heart of man is indeed changeable; every age sees new customs spring up among us, and time and habit 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, in consequence of this first character of immutability, ought alone to be the constant and perpetual rule of our

manners.

2dly, The heart of man is full of vanity; whatever levels us with the rest of men, wounds our pride; we love distinction and preference; we believe that, in

the elevation of rank and birth, we find privileges against the law: now, the law of God is immutable in its operations; it levels all stations and all conditions; it is the same for the great and for the humble, for the prince and for the subject; and, by reason of this second character of immutability, it ought to unite in the same duties, that variety of stations and conditions which spreads so much inequality over our manners and rules.

Lastly, Man connects every thing with himself; he persuades himself that his interests ought to be preferred to the law and to the interests of God himself; the slightest inconveniences are sufficient in his eyes, to induce him to trespass against the divine rule : now, the law of God is immutable in all situations of life; and, by reason of this last character of immutability, there is neither perplexity, nor inconveniency, nor apparent necessity, which can absolve us from its precepts.

Thus are the three pretexts overthrown, which the world opposes to the immutability of the law of God, the pretext of manners and customs; the pretext of rank and birth; the pretext of situations and inconveniences. The law of God is immutable in its duration; therefore, manners and 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, inconveniences, and perplexities, can never justify the slightest transgression of it.

PART I. One of the most urgent and most usual subjects of reproach 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 is the immutable teacher of 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 immutable character 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 as they were to the pride, and to the variations of the human mind; it was vanity, and not truth, which made philosophers; their rules changed with every age; new times brought new laws: in a word, their doctrine did not change their manners; it was the change of manners which drew after it that of their doctrine.

But it is astonishing, that Christians, who have received from heaven the eternal and immutable law which regulates their manners, believe it to be equally