Page:Sermons by John-Baptist Massillon.djvu/55

Ser. 2. it, and accuse it of injustice, ingratitude, and caprice, who speak warmly of its abuses and errors; but in decrying, they continue to love, to follow it; they cannot bring themselves to do without it; in complaining of its injustice, they are only piqued at it, they are not undeceived; they feel its hard treatment, but they are unacquainted with its dangers; they censure, but where are those who hate it? And now my brethren, you may judge if many can have a claim to salvation.

In the second place, you have renounced the flesh at your baptism; that is to say, you are engaged not to live according to the sensual appetites; to regard even indolence and effeminacy as crimes; not to flatter the corrupt desires of the flesh; but to chastise, crush, and crucify it. This is not an acquired perfection; it is a vow: it is the first of all duties; the character of a true Christian and inseparable from faith. In a word you have anathematized Satan and all his works. And what are his works? That which composes almost the thread and end of your life; pomp, pleasure, luxury, and dissipation; lying, of which he is the father; pride, of which he is the model; jealousy and contention, of which he is the artisan. But I ask you, where are those who have not withdrawn the anathema they had pronounced against Satan? Now, consequently, (to mention it as we go along,) behold many of the questions answered.

You continually demand of us, if theatres, and other public places of amusement, be innocent recreations for Christians? In return, I have only one question to ask you: Are they the works of Satan or of Jesus Christ? for there can be no medium in religion. I mean not to say, but that many recreations and amusements may be termed indifferent. But the most indifferent pleasures which religion allows, and, which the weakness of our nature renders even necessary, belong, in one sense, to Jesus Christ, by the facility with which they ought to enable us to apply ourselves to more holy and more serious duties. Every thing we do, every thing we rejoice or weep at, ought to be of such a nature as to have a connexion with Jesus Christ, and to be done for his glory. Now, upon this principle, the most incontestable, and most universally allowed in Christian morality, you have only to decide whether you can connect the glory of Jesus Christ with the pleasures of a theatre. Can our Saviour have any part in such a species of recreation? And before you enter them, can you, with confidence, declare to him, that, in so doing, you only propose his glory, and to enjoy the satisfaction of pleasing him! What! the theatres, such as they are at present, still more criminal by the public licentiousness of those unfortunate creatures who appear on them, than by the impure and passionate scenes they represent, the theatres are works of Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ would animate a mouth, from whence are to proceed sounds lascivious, and calculated to corrupt the heart? But these blasphemies strike me with horror. Jesus Christ would preside in assemblies of sin, where every thing we hear weakens his doctrines; where the poison