illusion and darkness: it is, in a word, that the Lord, by terrible and secret judgments, strikes them with blindness, and punishes the corruption of their heart by permitting them to be ignorant of it. A gross fall from virtue, if I may venture to say so, would to them be a mark of the goodness and mercy of God. They would then at least open their eyes; naked and manifest guilt would then carry trouble, vexation, and uneasiness through their conscience; the disease at last discovered, would perhaps induce them to have recourse to the remedy; in place of which, this life, apparently regular, composes and calms them, renders useless the example of fervent Christians, persuades them that this great fervour is unnecessary; that it is much more the effect of temperament than of grace; that it is an emotion of zeal, rather than of duty; and makes them listen to, as vain exaggerations, all that we say with regard to a lukewarm and infidel life. — Second reflection.
In a word, the last reflection to be made on this great truth, is, that such is the nature of our heart, always to remain much below what it at first proposed. A thousand times we have formed pious resolutions; we have projected to carry to a certain point the detail of our duties and conduct, but the execution has always much diminished from the ardour of our projects, and has rested at a degree much below the one to which we wished to raise ourselves. Thus, the lukewarm Christian, proposing to himself no higher point of virtue than to shun guilt, looking precisely to precept, that is to say, to that rigorous and precise point of the law, immediately below which is prevarication and death, he infallibly rests below, and never reaches that essential point which he had proposed to himself. It is, therefore, an incontestable maxim, that we must undertake much to execute little, and look very high to attain at least the middle. Now, this maxim, so sure with regard even to the most just, is much more so with respect to the lukewarm and infidel soul; for coldness more strongly binding all his ties, and augmenting the weight of his corruption and misery, it is principally him who ought to take his grand flight, in order to attain at least the lowest degree; and, in his counsels with himself, propose perfection, if he wishes to rest even at the observance of precept. Above all, it is to him we may truly say, that by settling in his mind only to shun guilt, loaded as he is with the weight of his coldness and infidelities, he will always alight at a place very distant from the one he expected to reach; and the line of guilt being immediately below this commodious and sensual virtue, the very same efforts he made, as he thought, to shun it, will only serve to conduct him to it. These are reasons, drawn entirely from the weakness the strengthened passions leave to the lukewarm and infidel soul, and which inevitably lead it to ruin.
The only reason, however, you allege to us for persevering in this dangerous state, is, that you are weak, and totally unable to support a more retired, limited, mortified, and perfect manner of life. But surely, it is because you are weak, that is to say, full of disgust for virtue, of love for the world, and of subjection to your
