timid in good; she bears, even with a holy insensibility, the reproaches of the Pharisee, who recounts, in the presence of all the guests, the infamy of her past manners. For the world, typified by that Pharisee, feels a gratification in the mean pleasure of recalling the former errors of those whom grace hath touched: far from reaping any edification from their present good conduct, it is continually dwelling upon their past irregularity; it tries to weaken the merit of what they now do, by renewing upon every occasion the remembrance of what they have done; it would appear that the errors which they lament authorize those which we love, and in which we still continue to live; and that it is more allowable for us to be sinners, since real and sincere penitents repent of having been so. It is thus, O my God! that every thing worketh out our destruction, and that, instead of blessing and praising the riches of thy mercy when thou withdrawest worldly and dissolute souls from the ways of perdition, and instead of being excited by these grand examples, to have recourse to thy clemency, always so ready to receive the repentant sinner, insensible and blind to his penitence, we are occupied only in recalling his errors, as if we were entitled from thence to say to ourselves, that we have nothing to dread in debauchery; that one day or other we shall likewise become contrite; and that the sincerest penitents having once been perhaps still more deeply involved than we in mad passions, we need not despair of one day or other being able to quit them as well as they! O inexplicable blindness of man, that finds inducements to debauchery even in the examples of penitence I
Such were the reparations of our sinner But, if it be an error to represent to ourselves a change of life as the simple cessation of our former debaucheries, without adding to that those expiations which wash them out; it is likewise another not less dangerous, the considering these expiations as involving you in a situation, gloomy, wretched, and hopeless. Thus, after having mentioned to you the reparations of her penitence, it is proper that I now lay before you the consolations.
Part II. — Come unto me, says Jesus Christ, all ye who are weary of the ways of iniquity; take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls; for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
This promise, addressed to all criminal souls, who are always miserable in debauchery, is completely fulfilled in the instance of the sinner of our gospel. In effect, every thing which had formerly been to her, in her dissipations, an inexhaustible fund of disgust, becomes now, in her penitence, a fruitful source of consolation; and with Jesus Christ she is happy,, through the same means which, during her guilt had occasioned all her miseries.
Yes, my brethren, an iniquitous love had been her first guilt, and the first source of all her distresses: the first consolation of her penitence is a holy dilection for Jesus Christ, and the wide difference between that divine and new love, and the profane love
