do you, in delaying, but render your evils more incurable, and take away from the hope of your conversion every resource which might still be left to you?
You perhaps flatter yourself that there are no lasting passions, and that, sooner or later, time and disgust shall withdraw you from them.
To this I answer, first, that, in all probability, you shall indeed become tired of the objects which at present enslave you, but that your passions shall not be consequently ended. You will doubtless form new ties, but you will not form to yourself a new heart. There are no eternal passions, I confess, but corruption and licentiousness are almost always so; the passions which are terminated solely by disgust, always leave the heart open for the reception of some other, and it is commonly a new fire which expels and extinguishes the first. Call to your remembrance what has hitherto happened to you. You firmly thought that, were such an engagement once at an end, you should then be free, and wholly at liberty to return to your God; you fixed upon that happy moment as the term for your penitence: that engagement has been terminated; death, inconstancy, disgust, or some other accident, has broken it, and nevertheless you are not converted; new opportunities have offered, you have formed new ties, you have forgotten your former resolutions, and your last state is become worse than the first. The passions which are not extinguished by grace serve merely to light up and to prepare the heart for new ones.
I answer, secondly, when all your criminal engagements should even be ended, and that no particular object should interest your heart, if time and disgust alone have effected this, yet will not your conversion be more advanced. You will still hold to all, in no longer holding to any thing; you will find yourself in a certain vague state of indolence and of insensibility, more removed from the kingdom of God than even the ardour of mad passions; your heart, free from any particular passion, will be as if filled with a universal passion; if I may speak in this manner, with an immense void which will wholly occupy it. It will even be so much the more difficult for you to quit this state, as you will have nothing sufficiently striking to catch at. You will find yourself without vigour, taste, or inclination for salvation; it is a calm from which you will find it more difficult to extricate yourself than even from the tempest, for the same winds which cause the storm may sometimes drive us fortunately into port; but the greater the calm is, the more certainly it leads to destruction.
But, lastly, you say, We would willingly change and adopt the party of a more reasonable and more Christian life; we feel the utter emptiness of the world and of all its pleasures; we enter into amusements, and into a certain dissipation, without relish, and as if with regret; we would wish to renounce them, and seriously to labour toward our salvation; but this first step startles us. It is a matter of notoriety which engages us toward the public, and which we have many doubts of being able to support; we are of a rank
