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the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world*? Did they so much as suspect it to be their duty openly to oppose so many blasphemies, and to suffer, not to say the severest punishment, but even the smallest affront for the truth? So far from doing this, they held the truth in unrighteousness, and laid it down as a maxim, that in matters of religion, we must follow the people. The people, whom they so much despised, was their rule in a matter the most important of all, and in which their superior lights seemed the most necessary.

What hast thou then availed, O philosophy? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? as St. Paul said, Hath he not destroyed the wisdom of the wise, and brought to nothing the understanding of the prudent?

Thus hath God shewn by experience, that the overthrow of idolatry could not be. the work of human reason alone. Far from committing to it the cure of such a malady, God completed its confusion by the mystery of the cross, and at the same time carried home the remedy to the source of the evil.

Idolatry, if we rightly understand it, took its rise from that profound attachment which we have to ourselves. This it was that had made us contrive gods like unto

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ourselves; gods, who in reality were but men, subject to like passions, weaknesses, and vices so that, under the name of Deities, it was really their own thoughts, pleasures, and fancies, that the Gentiles. worshipped.

JESUS CHRIST leads us into other paths. His poverty, his ignominy, and his cross, rendered him an object shocking to our senses. We must, if I may so say, go out of ourselves, renounce all, crucify all, to follow him. Man snatched from himself, and from all that his corruption made him love, becomes capable of adoring God and his eternal truth, whose rules alone he henceforth resolves to follow.

Then perish and vanish away all idols, both those that were worshipped upon the altars, and those that every one served in his heart. These had set up the others. Men worshipped Venus, because they yielded themselves up to the dominion of love, and were charmed with its power. Bacchus, the most wanton of all the gods, had altars, because people abandoned themselves, and sacrificed, so to speak, to the delight of their senses, more pleasing, and intoxicating than wine. JESUS CHRIST, by the mystery of his cross, comes to imprint upon their hearts the love of sufferings, instead of pleasures. The idols that were worshipped without were scattered, because: those that were worshipped within subsisted no more. The pure in spirit, saith CHRIST himself, are rendered capable of seeing God; and man, far from making God like

to himself, strives rather, as far as his weakness can permit, to become like unto God*,

The mystery of CHRIST JESUS hath shown us how the Deity could, without diminution of its glory, be united to our na ture, and clothe itself with our infirmities. The Word is made flesh: he who had the form and nature of God, without losing what he was, took upon him the form of a servantt. Unalterable in himself, he unites, he assumes to himself, a foreign nature. O men! ye were for gods that should be, to say the truth, but men, and vicious men too: this was no small blindness. But here is a new object of adoration for you! God and man together; but a man, who hath lost nothing of what he was, by taking upon him what we are. The Deity remains immutable; and without a possibility of debasing itself, exalts what it unites with it.

But further, what is it that God hath taken of us? Our vices and sins? God forbid: he took nothing of man, but what he made in man; and it is certain, that he had made in him neither sin nor vice. He had made his nature, his nature he took upon him. It may be said that he had made mortality with the infirmity that attends it, because, although it might not be in the first design, it was the just punishment of sin, and in that quality was the work of the divine justice. So, therefore, God did not disdain to take it upon him; and, by taking Phil. ii. 6, 7.

Matt. v. 3.

upon him the punishment of sin without sin itself, he shewed that he was not punished as a guilty person, but as the righteous one, who atoned for the sins of others.

So that, instead of the vices, which men feigned in their Gods, all the virtues appeared in this God-man; and that they might shine forth in the severest trials, they appeared amidst the most horrid torments. Let us seek no other visible God after this: he only is worthy to pull down all idols; and the victory he was to gain over them is fastened to his cross.

But

That is to say, it is fastened to an apparent folly. For the Jews, as St. Paul goes on, require a sign, whereby God moving all nature, as he did at the departure out of Egypt, may set them visibly above their enemies; and the Greeks, or the Gentiles, seek after wisdom, and laboured discourses, like those of their Plato and Socrates. we, continues the apostle, preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and not a sign; and unto the Gentiles foolishness, and not wisdom: but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men*. Behold the finishing stroke that was to be given to our conceited ignorance. The wisdom to which we are called, is so sublime, that it appears folly to our wisdom;

* 1 Cor. i. 22, 23, 24, 25.

and its rules are so exalted, that the whole

seems an error.

But if that divine wisdom is impenetrable to us in itself, it declares itself by its effects. Virtue goes out from the cross, and all the idols are shaken. We see them fall to the ground, though supported by the whole Roman power. It is not the wise, it is not the noble, it is not the mighty, that have wrought so great a miracle. The work of God hath been continually carried on, and what he had begun by the humiliation of JESUS CHRIST, he hath finished by the humiliation of his disciples. For ye see your calling, brethren, thus St. Paul concludes his admirable discourse, you see those whom God hath called amongst you, and of whom he hath composed this church, victorious over the world; how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world, to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world, to confound the things which are mighty: and base things of the world, and things which are despised hath God chosen; yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are; that no flesh should glory in his presence*. The apostles and their disciples, the outcasts of the world, and mere nothing itself, to behold them with human eyes, have prevailed over all the emperors, and the whole em

* 1 Cor. i. 26, 27, 28, 29.

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