Many take great pains to make a long discourse before the congregation, and when the multitude loudly testify their approbation, they fancy themselves equal to kings; but if they bring their discourse to an end without noise, this is worse to them than hell! This has been the ruin of the Church, that you will listen to no discourse that leads you to repentance, but only to one which can entertain you, and that, too, by the tones of the speaker’s voice and the arrangement of the words, as if you were so many singers and musicians.

And we are so faint hearted and miserable that we fall in with your desires, we who were bound to combat them. It is the same as if the father of a spoilt child, when he is ill, should give him everything that pleases him, but is not anxious about what will do him good.

I should be sorry to call such a man my father. How much better is it to suffer pain for a short time, and then to be made well forever, than to make some brief erjoyment the cause of some ever-during sorrow!

So it is with us who give ourselves trouble to bring together well-arranged and well sounding words in order to please, not to profit; to be admired, not to instruct; to produce gratification, not contrition.