The next Christian virtue which flows from the first, is hope, founded upon the promises which the New Testament makes to those who render themselves miserable in this life.  It nourishes their enthusiasm, it makes them “forget the things that are on earth, and reach forward unto the things” which are in another world.  It renders them useless here below, and makes them firmly believe that God will recompense in heaven, the pains they have taken to make themselves miserable on earth.  How can a man, occupied with such expectations of heavenly happiness, concern himself at all with, or for, the actual and present happiness of those around him, while he is indifferent as to his own?  And how can he help this, when he believes that “friendship with the world is enmity with God?”

The third virtue is charity.  We have elsewhere said, that if universal love or charity means only general benevolence, and a desire to makes others happy, and to do them good, all this is commanded by reason and the ancient revelation; but if by this precept it is commanded to love those who hate, oppress or insult us, we do not at all scruple to assert, that the thing is impossible, and unnatural.  For, though we can abstain from hurting our enemy; or even can do him good, we cannot really love him.  Love is a movement of the heart, which is governed and directed by the laws of our nature, to those whom we think worthy of it, and to those only.

Charity, considered as general benevolence of disposition, is virtuous and necessary.  It is nothing more than a feeling which interests us in favour of our fellow beings.  But how is this feeling consistent with the peculiar doctrines of the gospel?  According to its maxims, it is a crime to offer God a heart, whoso affections are shared by terrestrial objects.  And besides, does not experience show, that devotees obliged by principle to hate themselves, are little disposed to give better treatment to others?

We should not be surprised that maxims, originating with enthusiasm, should aim at, and have the effect of, driving man out of himself.  In the delirium of its enthusiasm, this religion forbids a man to love himself.  It commands him to hate all pleasures but those of religion, and to cherish a long face.  It attributes to him as meritorious, all the voluntary evils he inflicts upon himself.  From thence originate those austerites, those penances, destructive to health; those cruel privations by which the inhabitants of the monastic cell kill themselves by inches, in order to merit the joys of heaven.  Now, how can good sense admit that God delights in seeing his creatures torment themselves?