Quesnel: Moral Reflections on the Gospels Vol 1

CHAPTER X. 153
This delicacy and tenderness in ministers of the
gospel, and in a Christian; contests about small rights
or imaginary prerogatives ; and an excessive sense of
injuries, do but little agree with this maxim. This
is a solid consolation for tho§e who are oppressed
under the calumnies of false brethren.
" 26. Fear them not therefore : for there is no-
thing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid,
that shall not be known."
He who can make us suffer nothing but what
Christ has suffered, is not to be feared. Men cannot
make any thing die in us, but what died in him.
Had men always been feared, we should never have
had any martyrs. God sees every thing: this is the
comfort of good men, and the despair of the wicked.
When a man has once undertaken the ministry of
the word, he ought to consider more the designs of
God, as to the truths of the gospel, which he
would have made manifest, than the threats of men,
who set themselves in opposition thereto. It is of
small import for one man to be crushed by another;
but it is of the greatest importance that God's will
be done, and his truth known, honoured, and de-
fended by men.
" 27. What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye
in light : and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye
upon the house-tops."
A man ought to preach only that which he has
learned from God, in the secret exercise of prayer,
of meditation on the Scriptures, and of the study of
the holy fathers. In this lies the obligation of the
ministers of the gospel, who should be the disciples
of God, and of his word, before they become the
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