to death, uncertain of the eternity of my
future state."
Who would desire to have for a friend a man who talks in this fashion? Who
would choose him out from others to tell him of his affairs? Who would
have
recourse to him in affliction? And indeed to what use in life could one
put
him?
In truth, it is the glory of religion to have for enemies men so
unreasonable; and their opposition to it is so little dangerous that it
serves, on the contrary, to establish its truths. For the Christian faith
goes mainly to establish these two facts: the corruption of nature, and
redemption by Jesus Christ. Now I contend that, if these men do not serve
to
prove the truth of the redemption by the holiness of their behaviour, they
at least serve admirably to show the corruption of nature by sentiments so
unnatural.
Nothing is so important to man as his own state, nothing is so formidable
to
him as eternity; and thus it is not natural that there should be men
indifferent to the loss of their existence, and to the perils of
everlasting
suffering. They are quite different with regard to all other things. They
are afraid of mere trifles; they foresee them; they feel them. And this
same
man who spends so many days and nights in rage and despair for the loss of
office, or for some imaginary insult to his honour, is the very one who
knows without anxiety and without emotion that he will lose all by death.
It
is a monstrous thing to see in the same heart and at the same time this
sensibility to trifles and this strange insensibility to the greatest
objects. It is an incomprehensible encha
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