Your heart so grand, so exalted, and which nothing here below can satisfy, has been bestowed on you solely for pleasures which weary you, creatures which deceive you, honours which embarrass you, a world which tires or disgusts you? God alone, for whom you are made, and who hath made you what you are, should find nothing for himself in the principle of your being. Ah! you are unjust toward your own heart: you know not yourself, and you take your corruption for yourself. And, in effect, if not born for virtue, what then is the melancholy mystery of your lot? For what are you born? What chimera then are you among men? You are born then only for remorse and gloomy care? The Author of your being hath drawn you from nonentity, only to render you miserable? You are gifted then with a heart only to pursue a happiness which either is visionary or which flies from you, and to be a continual burden to yourself?
O man! open here thine eyes; fathom to the bottom the destiny of thy heart, and thou wilt acknowledge that these turbulent passions, which fill thee with such repugnances to virtue, are foreign to thy nature; that such is not the natural state of thy heart; that the Author of nature and of grace hath bestowed on thee a more sublime lot; that thou wert born for order, for righteousness, and for innocence; that thou hast corrupted a happy nature, by turning it toward iniquitous passions; and that, if not born for virtue, we know not what thou art, and thou becomest incomprehensible to thyself.
But you are mistaken, when you consider, as inclinations incompatible with piety, those warm propensities toward pleasure which are born with you. From the instant that grace shall have sanctified them, they will become dispositions favourable for salvation. The more you are animated in the pursuit of the world and its false pleasures, the more eager shall you be for the Lord, and for true riches: the more you have been found tender and feeling by creatures, the easier shall be the access of grace to your heart: in proportion as your nature is haughty, proud, and aspiring, the more shall you serve the Lord, without fear, without disguise, without meanness: the more your character now appears easy, light, and inconstant, the easier it will be for you to detach yourself from your criminal attachments, and to return to your God. Lastly, your passions themselves, if I may venture to speak in this manner, will become the means of facilitating your penitence. Whatever had been the occasion of your destruction, you will render it conducive toward your salvation; you will see and acknowledge, that to have received a tender, faithful, and generous heart, is to have been born for piety, and that a heart which creatures have been able to touch, holds out great and favourable dispositions toward grace.
Peruse what remains to us of the history of the just, and you will see that those who have, at the first, been dragged away by mad passions, who were born with every talent calculated for the world, with the warmest propensities toward pleasures, and the most
