They make
no secret of it, any more than of what you have already learned;
with this difference only, that they conceal their carnal and
worldly policy under the garb of divine and Christian prudence; as
if the faith, and tradition, its ally, were not always one and the
same at all times and in all places; as if it were the part of the
rule to bend in conformity to the subject which it was meant to
regulate; and as if souls, to be purified from their pollutions, had
only to corrupt the law of the Lord, in place of the law of the
Lord, which is clean and pure, converting the soul which lieth in sin,
and bringing it into conformity with its salutary lessons!
"Go and see some of these worthy fathers, I beseech you, and I
am confident that you will soon discover, in the laxity of their moral
system, the explanation of their doctrine about grace. You will then
see the Christian virtues exhibited in such a strange aspect, so
completely stripped of the charity which is the life and soul of them,
you will see so many crimes palliated and irregularities tolerated
that you will no longer be surprised at their maintaining that 'all
men have always enough of grace' to lead a pious life, in the sense of
which they understand piety. Their morality being entirely Pagan,
nature is quite competent to its observance. When we maintain the
necessity of efficacious grace, we assign it another sort of virtue
for its object. Its office is not to cure one vice by means of
another; it is not merely to induce men to practise the external
duties of religion: it aims at a virtue higher than that propounded by
Pharisees, or the greatest sages of Heathenism.
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