give it the preference over all others, and even to neglect every other in order to devote yourself to it alone, has, nevertheless, absolutely discharged you from the trust, in order to take it wholly upon himself. Show us, then, this promise in some new Gospel, for you well know that it is no where to be found in that of Jesus Christ. " The sinner," says the prophet Isaiah, " hath nothing but foolish things wherewith to justify himself; and his heart worketh iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the Lord."
Lastly. This pretext is foolish in itself, for you say that you want grace: I have already replied that you deceive yourself; that, if candid, you will acknowledge that grace has never been wanting to you; that you have more than once felt its salutary impressions; that, had so obstinate a resistance not been opposed by your hardness of heart and impenitence, it would have triumphed over your passions; that God, who wishes all men to be saved, who out of nothing has drawn reasonable beings, solely to praise, to bless, and to glorify him; in a word, who has only made us for himself, has opened to you, my dear hearer, as well as to so many other sinners, a thousand ways of conversion, which would have infallibly recalled you ere now to the right path, had you not obstinately shut your ears against his voice. You want grace, you say: well, what do you thereby pretend? Would it be to have it understood that God, who is our Father, and of whom we are the children, who has an affection for us infinitely surpassing that of the tenderest mother for an only son, that a God so good leaves us, through want of assistance, in the actual impossibility of well-doing? But do you reflect that such language would be a blasphemy against the wisdom of God, and the justification of every crime? Are you then ignorant, that whatever be the blow given to our liberty by the fall of our first parent, it is still however left to us; that neither law nor duties would longer be imposed upon man, had he not the real and actual power of fulfilling them; that religion, far from being an aid and a consolation, would consequently be no longer but a vexation and a snare; that if, notwithstanding all the cares which God has for our salvation, we perish, it is always the fault of our own will, and not the default of grace; that we are individually the authors of our misery and destruction; that it has depended upon ourselves to have avoided them; and that a thousand sinners, with neither more grace nor succours than we, have broken their chains, and have rendered glory to God and to his mercies by a life altogether new?
But, granting that these truths were less certain, and that, in reality, you, my dear hearer, want grace, it would equally be true then that God hath altogether forsaken you; that you are marked with a character of reprobation, and that your state cannot be worse. For, to be without grace, is surely the most terrible of all situations, and the most certain presage of eternal condemnation. And it is that horrible thought, however, which comforts you, which justifies in your eyes your tranquillity in guilt, which makes you, without trouble or remorse, to delay your conversion, and which even serves
