of our greatest crimes? And, while yet dripping from a shipwreck can we too strenuously form the resolution of for ever shunning those rocks upon which we had so lately split?
Lastly, true penitence causes us to find every where matter of a thousand invisible sacrifices. It does not confine itself to certain essential privations; every thing which flatters the passions, every thing which nourishes the life of the senses, every superfluity which tends solely to the gratification of self-love, all these become the subject of its sacrifices; and, like a sharp and grievous sword, it every where makes divisions and separations painful to the heart, and cuts even to the quick, whatever in the smallest degree approached too near to the corruption of our propensities. The grace of compunction at once leads the contrite soul to this point; it renders him ingenuous in punishing himself, and arranges matters so well that every thing serves in expiation of his crimes; that duties, social intercourse, honours, prosperity, and the cares attendant upon his station, become opportunities of proving his merit; and that even his pleasures, through the circumspection and faith with which they are accompanied, become praiseworthy and virtuous actions.
Behold the divine secret of penitence! As it officiates here below toward the criminal soul, says Tertullian, as the justice of God; and as the justice of God shall one day punish guilt by the eternal privation of all creatures which the sinner hath abused, penitence anticipates that terrible judgment; it every where imposes on itself the most rigorous privations; and if the miserable condition of human life render the use of present things still requisite, it employs them much less to flatter than to punish the senses, by the sober and austere manner in which it applies them.
You have only to calculate thereupon the truth of your penitence. In vain do you appear to have left off the brutal gratification of the passions, if the same pomp and splendour are requisite toward satisfying that natural inclination which courts distinction through a vain magnificence; the same profusions, in consequence of not having the courage to deprive self-love of accustomed superfluities; the same pleasures of the world, in consequence of being unable to do without it; the same advantages on the part of fortune, in consequence of the continual desire of rising superior to others: in a word, if you can part with nothing, you exclude yourself from nothing; even admitting that all those attachments which you still preserve should not be absolute crimes, your heart is not penitent; your manners are apparently different, but all your passions are still the same; you are apparently changed, but you are not converted. How rare, my brethren, are true penitents! How common are vain and superficial conversions! And how many souls, changed in the eyes of the world, shall one day find themselves the same before God!
But it is not enough to have attained to that degree of self-denial which keeps us without the circle of attraction of the allurements of guilt; those laborious atonements must likewise be added,
