CHAPTER XXIII

OF CHRISTIAN CONDUCT. THAT GOD IS PLEASED WITH THOSE WHO LEAD A LIFE OF VIRTUE: AND THAT WE MUST EXTECT A JUDGMENT AND FUTURE RETRIBUTION

COMPARE our religion with your own. Is there not with us genuine concord, and unwearied love of others? If we reprove a fault, is not our object to admonish, not to destroy; our correction, for safety, not for cruelty? Do we not exercise, not only sincere faith towards God, but fidelity in the relations of social life? Do we not pity the unfortunate? Is not ours a life of simplicity, which disdains to cover evil beneath the mask of fraud and hypocrisy? Do we not acknowledge the true God, and His undivided sovereignty? This is real godliness: this is religion sincere and truly undefiled: this is the life of wisdom; and they who have it are travellers (as it were) on a noble road which leads to eternal life. For he who has entered on such a course, and keeps his soul pure from the pollutions of the body, does not wholly die: rather may he be said to complete the service appointed him by God, than to die. Again, he who confesses allegiance to God is not easily overborne by insolence or rage, but nobly stands under the pressure of necessity; and the trial of his constancy is as it were a passport to the favour of God. For we cannot doubt that the Deity is pleased with excellence in human conduct. For it would be absurd indeed if the powerful and the humble alike acknowledge gratitude to those from whose services they receive benefit, and repay them by services in return, and yet that He who is supreme and sovereign of all, nay, who is Good itself, should be negligent in this respect. Rather does He follow us throughout the course of our lives, is near us in every act of goodness, accepts, and at once rewards our virtue and obedience; though He defers the full recompense to that future period, when the actions of our lives shall pass under His review, and when those who are clear in that account shall receive the reward of everlasting life, while the wicked shall be visited with the penalties due to their crimes.