tainty of the truths of faith, the godly would always be the wifeft and the fafeft. Your ftate, therefore, is rather the vague determination of an agitated heart, which dreads to break its chains, than a real and actual suspicion of faith, and a fear left, in facrificing to it all your iniquitous plea fures, your pains and the time should be loft: your uncertainties are efforts, which you make to defend yourself against a remnant of faith which fill inwardly enlightens you, rather than a proof that you had already loft it. Seek no longer then to convince yourself; rather endeavour to oppose no more that internal conviction which enlightens and condemns you. Follow the dictates of your own heart; be reconciled to yourfelf; allow a confcience to speak, which never fails to plead within you for faith, against your own exceffes; in a word, hearken to yourself, and you will be a believer.

But it is admitted, you will fay, that if nothing more were to be required than to believe, that would eafily be fubfcribed to. This is the fecond pretext of the finners' who delay; it is the want of grace, and they await it: converfion is not the work of man, and it belongs to God alone to change the heart.

Now, I fay that this pretext, fo often repeated in the world, and fo continually in the mouth of almost all those' who live in guilt; if we confider the finner who alledges' it, it is unjuft; if we view on the part of God, on whom he lays the blame, it is rafh and ungrateful; if we examine it in itself, it is foolish and unwarrantable.

In the first place, if we confider the finner who alledged it, it is unjust; for you complain that God hath not yet' touched you, that you feel no relish for devotion, and that

relifh before you can think of changing your life. But, full of paffions as you are, can you reafonably expect or exact of God that he shall ever make you to feel a decided inclination for piety? Would you that your heart, still plunged in debauchery, feel the pure delights and the chalte attractions of virtue? You are fimilar to a man who, nourishing himself with gall and wormwood, fhould afterwards complain that every thing feels bitter to his palate. You fay that if God with you to serve him, in his power alone it is to give you a relifh for his fervice: You who every day defile your heart by the meanest exceffes; you who every moment place a fresh chaos betwixt God and you ; you, in a word, who, by new debaucheries, finally extinguilh in your foul even thofe fentiments of natural virtue, thofe happy impreffions of innocence and of regularity born with you, which might have been the means of recalling you to virtue and to righteoufnefs. O man art thou then unjust only when there is queftion of accusing the wifdom and the juftice of thy God?

But I fay farther, that were God even to operate in your heart that relish for, and those feelings of falvation which you await, diffolute and corrupted as you are, would you even feel the operation of his grace? Were he to call upon you, plunged as you are in pleasures of a life altogether worldly, would you even hear his voice? Were he to touch your heart, would that feeling of grace have any confequence for your converfion, extinguished as it would immediately be by the ardour and the frenzy of profane paffions? And, after all, this God of longanimity and of patience ftill operateth in your heart; he ftill poureth out within you the riches of his goodness and of his mercy. Ah! it is not his grace which fails but you, it into a heart fo full of corruption and wretchedness, that

you

receive

VOL. II.

it

it is ineffectual, it excites no feeling there of contrition; it is a spark which, falling into a fink of filth and of nastinefs, is extinguished the moment it falls.

Reflect then, my dear hearer, and comprehend all the injuftice of your pretexts. You complain that God is wanting to you, and that you await his grace to be converted; but is there a finner in whose mouth that complaint would be more unjuft than from your lips? The Lord had anticipated you from your birth with his bleffings; he had placed in you an happy difpofition, a noble fpirit, and all the inclinations moft favourable to virtue; he had even provided for you, in the bofom of a family, domestic fuccours, and pious and godly examples. The - mercies of the Lord went ftill farther; he hath preserved

you from a thousand dangers; through his goodness you have outlived occafions where your friends, and perhaps the accomplices of your debaucheries, have fallen a facrifice to the fcourge of war. To recal you to him, he hath fpared neither afflictions, disgusts, nor difgraces; he hath torn from you the criminal objects of your paffions, even at the moment when your heart was most strongly attached to them; he hath fo mercifully conducted your destiny, that a thousand obftacles have continually thwarted your paffions, that you have never been able to arrive at the accomplishment of all your criminal wishes, and that fomething has always been wanting to your iniquitous happiness; he hath formed for you ferious engagements and duties, which, in spite of yourself, have impofed the obligation of a prudent and regular life in the eyes of men; he hath not permitted your confcience to become hardened in iniquity, and you have never been able to fucceed in calming your remorfes, or in living tranquilly in guilt; not a day hath paft in which you have not felt the emptiness of the

world

world and the horror of your fituation; amidst all your pleasures and exceffes, confcience hath awoke, and you have never fucceeded in lulling your fecret difquiets but by promifing to yourself a future change. A just and merciful God urges and purfues you every where, ever fince you have forfaken him; he hath affixed himself to you, faid a prophet, like a worm which burrows in the vestment continually to gnaw your heart, and to render the importunity of his biting, a wholesome importunity to his foul. Even while I am now speaking to you, he worketh within you, filleth my mouth with thefe holy truths and placeth me here to proclaim them to you, for the fole purpose of recalling perhaps you alone. What then is your whole life but one continued fucceffion of favours? Who are you yourself but a child of dilection, and the work of God's mercies? Unjuft that thou art! And thou dareft after this, to complain that his grace is wanting, thou, on whom alone on the earth the Lord feemeth to caft his regards; thou, in whose heart he fo continually operateth, as though of all men, he had only thee to fave; thou, in a word whofe every moment is a fresh grace, and whose greatest guilt thall one day be, that of having received too many, and of having conftantly abused them.

But to finish your overthrow, upon what grounds do you say that you want grace? You doubtless fay fo, becaufe you feel that in your prefent ftate converfion would require too many facrifices; but you then believe that, with grace, you are converted without any facrifice on your part, without any felf-denial, and almoft without being fenfible of it yourself? You believe, then, that to have grace is to have no more paffions to conquer, no more charms to break, no more temptations to overcome; that it is to be regenerated through penitence, without tears,

fince it is it which delivers Inquire at them if grace

pain, or forrow? Ah! I affure you that on this footing you will never poffefs that chimerical grace; for converfion must always require many facrifices; be the grace what it may, you will always be required to make heroical efforts, to reprefs your paffions, to tear yourself from the most be Joved objects, and to facrifice every thing which may cap tivate you. Look around, and fee if no facrifices are required of those who are daily returning to their God; yet they are favoured with grace, them and changes their heart, render every thing eafy and fmooth; if it leave nothing more for felf-love to undergo. Afk at them if they have not had a thousand struggles to fuftain, a thousand obstacles to overcome, a thousand paffions to moderate; and you will know if to have grace to be converted without any exertion on your part. Converfion is therefore a painful facrifice, a laborious baptifm, a grievous delivery, a victo ry which supposes combats and fatigues. Grace, I confefs, foftens them all; but it by no means operates so as to leave nothing more to overcome; and if, in order to change your life, you await a grace of that nature, I declare to you that fuch never exifted, and that fo abfurdly to await your falvation and deliverance, is to be abfolutely bent upon perishing.

But if the pretext of the default of grace be unjust on the fide of the finner who alledges it, it is not lefs rafh and ungrateful with regard to God, on whom he pretends to fix the blame.

For you say that God is the mafter, and that, when he fhall want you, he will perfectly know how to find you that is to say, that you have only to leave him folely to act, and that, without giving yourfelf any trouble with refpe&t

to