sheds a universal bitterness through the heart, which renders the invisible and eternal riches insipid and disgusting to us. Thus, you never come to prayer but with an insurmountable disgust. Ah! it is a proof that your heart is diseased; that a secret fever, and perhaps unknown to yourself, causes it to languish, saps and disgusts it; that it is engrossed by a foreign love. Mount to the source of your disgusts toward God, and every thing connected with him, and see if they shall not be found in the iniquitous attachments of your heart; see if you are not still a slave to yourself, to the vain cares of dress, to frivolous friendships, to dangerous animosities, to secret envies, to desires of rank, to every thing around you. These are the source of the evil: apply the remedy to it; take something every day upon yourself; labour seriously toward purifying your heart; you will then taste the comforts and the consolations of prayer; then the world no longer engrossing your affections, you will find your God more worthy of being loved: we soon ardently love the only object of our love.
And, after all, render glory here to the truth. Is it not true, that the days in which you have been more guarded upon yourself, — the days in which you have made some sacrifices, to the Lord, of your inclinations, of your indolence, of your temper, of your aversions; is it not true, that, in these days, you have addressed your prayers to the Lord with more peace, more consolation, and more delight? We encounter, with double pleasure, the eyes of a master to whom we have lately given some striking proof of fidelity; on the contrary, we are in pain before him when we feel that he has cause of a thousand just reproaches against us: we are then anxious and under restraint; we endeavour to hide ourselves from his view, like the first sinner: we no longer address him with that overflowing heart, and that confidence, which a conscience pure and void of offence inspires; and the moments when we are under the necessity of supporting his divine presence are anxiously counted.
Thus, when Jesus Christ commands us to pray, he begins with ordering us to watch. He thereby means us to understand that vigilance is the only preparation to prayer; that to love to pray, it is necessary to watch; and that fondness for, and consolation in prayer, are granted only to the recollection and to the sacrifices of vigilance. I know, that, if you do not pray, you can never watch over yourself and live holily; but I likewise know, that, if you exert not that vigilance which causes to live holily, you can never pray with comfort and with consolation. Prayer, it is true, obtains for us the grace of vigilance; but it is yet more true, that vigilance alone can draw down upon us the gift and the usage of the prayer.
And, from thence, it is easy to conclude, that a life of the world, even granting it to be the most innocent, that is to say, a life of pleasure, continual gaming, dissipation, and theatrical amusement, which you call so innocent, when attended with no other harm than that of disqualifying you for prayer; when this worldly life, which you so strongly justify, should contain nothing more criminal than that of disgusting you at prayer, of drying up your heart, of un-
