Trait 26.

TRAIT 26.

His love never degenerated into cowardice, but reproved and consoled, as occasion required.

THE charity of the true minister bears no resemblance to that phantom of a virtue, that mean complaisance, that unmanly pliancy, that unchristian cowardice, or that affected generosity, which the ministers of this day delight to honour with the name of charity. According to these insufficient judges, to be charitable is only to give some trifling alms out of our abundant superfluities, to tolerate the most dangerous errors, without daring to lift up the standard of truth, and to behold the overflowings of vice, without attempting to oppose the threatening torrent. Such would be the mistaken charity of a surgeon, who, to spare the mortifying arm of his friend, should suffer the gangrene to spread over his whole body. Such was the charity of the high priest Eli toward Hophni and Phinehas; an impious charity, which permitted him to behold their shameful debaucheries with too favourable an eye; a fatal charity, which opened that abyss of evil which finally swallowed them up, and into which they dragged with them their father, their children, the people of Israel, and the Church, over which they had been appointed to preside.

The good pastor, conscious that he shall save a soul from death, if he can but prevail with a sinner to forsake his evil way, uses every effort to accomplish so important a work. And among other probable means, which he employs on the occasion, he tries the force of severe reprehension, rebuking the wicked with a holy authority; and, if it be necessary, returning to the charge with a spark of that glowing zeal with which his Master was influenced, when he forced from the temple those infamous buyers and sellers who had profaned it with their carnal merchandise. Thus St. Paul, on receiving information that scandalous errors had been discovered in the conduct of a member of the Corinthian Church, immediately wrote to that Church in the following severe and solemn manner: “It is reported that there is fornication among you. And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump,” and that the plague in any single member of a society is sufficient to infect the whole company? “Purge out therefore the old leaven, and put away from among yourselves that wicked person. If any that is called a brother be a fornicator, keep not company with such a one, no not to eat. Be not deceived: fornicators shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Flee fornication, therefore, and avoid the company of fornicators. For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s. Farther, I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already concerning the lascivious person that is among you, to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus,” 1 Corinthians 5:6.

When the true minister has passed the severest censures upon sinners, and beholds those censures attended with the desired effect, he turns to the persons he lately rebuked with testimonies of that unbounded charity that “beareth all things, and hopeth all things.” More ready, if possible, to relieve the dejected than to humble the presumptuous, after having manifested the courage of a lion he puts on the gentleness of a lamb, consoling and encouraging the penitent offender, and never ceasing to intercede for him, till his pardon is obtained both from God and man. Thus St. Paul, who had so sharply rebuked the Corinthians in his first epistle, gave them abundant consolation in his second, and exhorted them to receive with kindness the person whom he had before enjoined them to excommunicate. It is easy to recognize the tenderness of Christ in the following language of this benevolent apostle: “I wrote unto you my first epistle out of much affliction and anguish of heart, with many tears, not that ye should be grieved, but that ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you,” 2 Corinthians 2:4. “Great is my glorying of you: I am filled with comfort, I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation. God, that comforteth them that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus, my messenger, when he told us your earnest desire, your mourning, and your fervent mind toward me. For though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent, though I did repent. Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance. For ye were made sorry after a godly manner. For behold, what carefulness it wrought in you! What clearing of yourselves! What holy indignation! What fear! What vehement desire! What zeal! What revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter. Moreover, we were comforted in your comfort. Yea, and exceedingly the more joyed we for the joy of Titus, because his spirit was refreshed by you all. And his inward affection is more abundant toward you, while he remembereth the obedience of you all, and how you received him, together with my reproof, with fear and