Both defects are common enough still, and are likely to remain so. Paying respect to _persons_, _dignities_, and _positions_ is a frequent form of meanness, especially in the manner here condemned, of courting the rich and slighting the poor. It is a Christian duty to respect the rank or the office of those whom God has placed in a position superior to ourselves, and it is also a Christian duty to reverence those who by God's grace are leading lives of virtue and holiness; but it is unchristian partiality to honour a man merely for his wealth, or to dishonour him merely for his poverty. And secondly, we are all of us prone to plead, both before the world and our own consciences, the particulars in which we do _not_ offend as a set-off against those in which we _do_. To detect ourselves thus balancing a transgression here, against many observances there, ought at once to startle us into the conviction that the whole principle of our lives must be faulty. Our aim is, not to love God, or to obey Him, but to get to heaven, or at least to escape hell, _on the cheapest terms_.
[58] _L'Antechrist_, pp. xi.-xiii., 49-54.
[59] This text caused St. Augustine much perplexity. He sent a long discussion of it to Jerome, asking for his opinion. Augustine's solution is that the whole law hangs on the love of God, and that every transgression is a breach of love (_Ep._ CLXVII. iv. 16).