self? Would you be the first sinner surprised in his deplorable passions? Do not almost all around you die in that melancholy state? Do the ministers, called in to the assistance of the dying, find many sinners on the bed of death, who, for a length of time, have quitted their former habits in order to prepare themselves for that last moment? What do we find there but souls still bound with a thousand chains, which death alone shall break asunder; — but inexplicable consciences, if I may venture to say so, and still enveloped in the chaos of a life wholly dissolute? What indeed do we expect on these occasions, but unavailing regrets on that dreadful surprisal, and vain protestations of the different measures they would have adopted had they been able to have foreseen it? What are the usual offices of our ministry in these last moments? To enlighten consciences which ought then to need only consolation; to assist them in recalling crimes which we should then have only to exhort them to forget; to make the dying sinner sensible of his debaucheries, we who should then have to support and to animate him with the remembrance of his virtues; in a word, to open the dark concealments of his heart, we who should then have to open only the bosom of Abraham, and the treasures of an immortal glory, for the soul on the point of disengaging itself from the body. Such are the melancholy offices which we shall one day perhaps have to render to you; you, in your turn, will call upon us, and, in place of a soothing conversation with you on the advantages which a holy death promises to the believer, we shall then be solely employed in receiving the narration of the crimes of your life.
But, should your passions not extend even to that last hour, the more you delay, the deeper do you allow the roots of guilt to become, the more do your chains form new folds round your heart, the more does that leaven of corruption which you carry within you spread itself, ferment, and corrupt all the capacity of your soul. Judge of this by the progress which the passion has hitherto made in your heart. At first it was only timid liberties, and, to quiet yourself in which, you still sought some shadow of innocence; afterward it was only dubious actions, in which it was still difficult to distinguish guilt from a venial trespass; licentiousness closely followed, but striking excesses were still rare; you reproached yourself in the very moment of commission; you were unable to bear them long upon a conscience still alarmed at its state: the backslidings are insensibly multiplied; licentiousness is become a fixed and habitual state; conscience has no longer but feebly cried out against the empire of the passion; guilt is become necessary to you; it has no longer excited remorse; you have swallowed it like water, which passes unfelt, and without tickling the palate by any particular flavour. The more you advance, the more does the venom gain; the weaker does any residue of strength, which modesty, reason, and grace had placed in you, become, the more what was yet wholesome in your soul becomes infected and defiled. What folly, then, to allow wounds to become old and corrupted, under pretence that they will afterward be more easily cured! And what
