But who can here supply the brevity of the historian, and report the whole of what the apostle said to Felix on these important points?  It seems to me that I hear him enforcing those important truths he has left us in his works, and placing in the fullest luster those divine maxims interspersed in our Scriptures.  “He reasoned of righteousness.”  There he maintained the right of the widow and the orphan.  There he demonstrated that kings and magistrates are established to maintain the rights of the people, and not to indulge their own caprice; that the design of the supreme authority is to make the whole happy by the vigilance of one, and not to gratify one at the expense of all; that it is meanness of mind to oppress the wretched, who have no defense but cries and tears; and that nothing is so unworthy of an enlightened man as that ferocity with which some are inspired by dignity, and which obstructs their respect for human nature, when undisguised by worldly pomp; that nothing is so noble as goodness and grandeur, associated in the same character; that this is the highest felicity; that in some sort it transforms the soul into the image of God; who, from the high abodes of majesty in which He dwells, surrounded with angels and cherubim, deigns to look down on this mean world which we inhabit, and “Leaves not Himself without witness, doing good to all.”

“He reasoned of temperance.”  There he would paint the licentious effects of voluptuousness.  There he would demonstrate how opposite is this propensity to the spirit of the gospel; which everywhere enjoins retirement, mortification, and self-denial.  He would show how it degrades the finest characters who have suffered it to predominate.  Intemperance renders the mind incapable of reflection.  It debases the courage.  It debilitates the mind.  It softens the soul.  He would demonstrate the meanness of a man called to preside over a great people, who exposes his foibles to public view; not having resolution to conceal, much less to vanquish them.  With Drusilla, he would make human motives supply the defects of divine; with Felix, he would make divine motives supply the defects of human.  He would make this shameless woman feel that nothing on earth is more odious than a woman destitute of honor, that modesty is an attribute of the sex; that an attachment, uncemented by virtue, can not long subsist; that those who receive illicit favors are the first, according to the fine remark of a sacred historian, to detest the indulgence:  “The hatred wherewith ‘Ammon, the son of David,’ hated his sister, after the gratification of his brutal passion, was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her” (II Sam. xiii., 15).  He would make Felix perceive that, however the depravity of the age might seem to tolerate a criminal intercourse with persons of the other sex, with God, who has called us all to equal purity, the crime was not less heinous.