against these salutary terrors; lest God should withdraw from you this mean of salvation, and harden you against all the terrors of religion. A favour, not only despised but even regarded as a punishment, is soon followed with the indignation, or at least the indifference, of the benefactor. Should that unfortunately be ever the case, then will the image of death leave you all your tranquillity: you will fly to an entertainment the moment you have quitted the solemnity of a funeral; with the same eyes will you behold a hideous carcass, or the criminal object of your passion; then will you be even pleased with yourself for having soared above all these vulgar fears, and even applaud yourself for a change so terrible toward your salvation. Profit, then, toward the regulation of your manners, by that sensibility, while it is yet left to you by God. Let your mind dwell on all the objects proper to recall that image, while yet it has influence to disturb the false peace of your passions. Visit the tomb of your ancestors, in the presence of their ashes, to meditate on the vanity of all earthly things. Go and ask, what now, in these dark habitations of death, remains to them of all their pleasures, dignities, and splendour? Open yourself these gloomy dwellings, and, reflecting on what they had formerly been in the eyes of men, see what they now are; spectres, whose presence you with difficulty can support; loathsome masses of worms and putrefaction: such are they in the eyes of men; but what are they in the sight of God? Descend, in idea, into these dwellings of horror and infection, and choose beforehand your own place; figure yourself, in that last hour, extended on the bed of anguish, struggling with death, your limbs benumbed and already seized with a mortal coldness, your tongue already bound in the chains of death; your eyes fixed, covered with a cloud of confusion, and before which all things begin to disappear: your relations and friends around you, offering up ineffectual wishes for your recovery, and augmenting your fears and regrets, by the tenderness of their sighs and the abundance of their tears: reflect upon that sight, so instructive, so interesting; you then, in the dismal struggles of that last combat, proving that you are still in life only by the convulsions which announce your death; the whole life annihilated to you; despoiled for ever of all your dignities and titles; accompanied solely by your works, and ready to appear in the presence of God. This is not a prediction; it is the history of all those who die every day to your knowledge, and it is the anticipation of your own. Think upon that terrible moment; the day, perhaps, is not far removed, yet, however distant it may be, you will at last reach it, and the interval will seem to you only an instant; and the only consolation you then can have, shall be, to have made the study of, and preparation for death, the employment of your life.
Lastly. As my final argument: — trace to their source these excessive terrors, which render the image and thoughts of death so terrible, and you will undoubtedly find them originating from the disorders of a criminal conscience: it is not death which you
