amuse himself in looking upon the lancet, and admiring its workmanship? Would you not persuade him to forbear that idle curiosity, and tell him that it is his business to be let blood; that what he was to mind now, was to have his vein opened; and the rest was little or nothing to the purpose. It is the same with those who, instead of attending to that which is most essential in a sermon, to that whence they could extract the so necessary nourishment of their souls, stop at the rind, and attend to nothing more than to the plan and division of the discourse, to the strength and beauty of the language — in a word, to that which is only an idle ornament and a vain artifice of eloquence. Such men as these may justly be compared to a sieve and a sarse which retain only the chaff and bran, and let all the grain and flour pass through them. Holy Scripture tells us, that when Esdras (2 Esd. viii ) read the law of God to the people of Israel, all the people were so moved, that reflecting upon their past lives, they wept most bitterly, comparing their actions with the law of God, which ought to have been their rule, and which was delivered to them for that end. Insomuch that the Levites felt it extremely difficult to suppress their sighing. It is after this manner we ought to hear sermons, with a wholesome and profitable confusion for our faults; comparing our lives with the doctrine we hear preached; examining the difference there is between what we are, and what we ought to be; considering, in fine, how far we are from the perfection proposed to us to practise.
There is a third point which will confirm still more and more the preceding one, and which being presupposed will also serve as an excellent precaution against the spirit of curiosity, and will dispose us better to derive advantage from what we hear. It is, and the whole world ought to believe it, that exhortations are not made to unfold to us any new extraordinary duties, but only to revive in us the memory of the more common and ordinary duties, and thereby to inspire us with more fervour to put them in practice. In effect, it is particularly upon this account that St. Ignatius (Part iii. Const, cap. i.) required so frequent exhortations amongst us; for in the third part of the Constitutions, after he had established the rules set down in the summary; " Let there be," says he, " some one appointed, who every week or at least every fortnight, may remind us of these Rules, and other such like instructions; lest, through the weakness of our nature, we may forget them, and at last come to
