and incestuous deities, the God of heaven and earth reveals His
terrors to the conscience, and there loudly condemns both incest and
sacrilege.

Secondly, consider Felix as a prince; and you will find in this second
office a second cause of his fear. When we perceive the great men of
the earth devoid of every principle of religion, and even ridiculing
those very truths which are the objects of our faith, we feel that
faith to waver. They excite a certain suspicion in the mind that our
sentiments are only prejudices, which have become rooted in man,
brought up in the obscurity of humble life. Here is the apology of
religion. The Caligulas, the Neros, those potentates of the universe,
have trembled in their turn as well as the meanest of their subjects.
This independence of mind, so conspicuous among libertines, is
consequently an art,--not of disengaging themselves from prejudices,
but of shutting their eyes against the light, and of extinguishing the
purest sentiments of the heart. Felix, educated in a court fraught
with the maxims of the great instantly ridicules the apostle's
preaching. St. Paul, undismayed, attacks him, and finds a conscience
concealed in his bosom: the very dignity of Felix is constrained to
aid our apostle by adding weight to his ministry. He demolishes
the edifice of Felix's pride. He shows that if a great nation was
dependent on his pleasure, he himself was dependent on a Sovereign in
whose presence the kings of the earth are as nothing. He proves that
dignities are so very far from exempting men from the judgment of God
that, for this very reason, their account becomes the more weighty,
riches being a trust which Heaven has committed to the great: and
"where much is given, much is required." He makes him feel this awful
truth, that princes are responsible, not only for their own souls,
but also for those of their subjects; their good or bad example