It is true, that every where the holy books give us magnificent and soothing ideas of the goodness of God. One while he is a mild and long-forbearing master, who awaits the penitence of the sinner; who covers the sins of men, in order to lead them to repentance; who is silent and quiet; who is slow to punish, and delays in order that he may be prevented; who threatens in order to be disarmed: another while he is a tender friend, who is never weary of knocking at the gate of the heart; who flatters, entreats, and solicits us'; and who, in order to draw us to himself, employs every thing which an ingenious love can invent, to recall a rebellious heart. Again, and lastly, for all would never be said, he is an indefatigable Shepherd, who goes even through the wildest mountains, in search of his strayed sheep; and, having at last found it, places it upon his shoulders, and is so transported with joy that even the celestial harmony are ordered to celebrate its happy return. It must surely be confessed, that the consolation of these images can receive no addition; and every sinner who, after this, despairs, or even gives way to despondency, is the most foolish of all men. But do not from thence conclude that the sinner who presumes is less foolish, or that the mercy of the Lord can be a legitimate foundation of trust to those who are continually desiring their conversion, and yet, without labouring toward that great work, promise every thing to themselves from a goodness which their very confidence insults. To convince you of this, before I enter into the main points of my subject, remark, I beg of you, that among that innumerable crowd of sinners, of every description, with which the world is filled, there is not one who hath not hopes of his conversion; not one who, before-hand, considers himself as a child of wrath, and doomed to perish; not one who doth not flatter himself that at last the Lord shall one day have pity upon him: the lewd, the ambitious, the worldly, the revengeful, the unjust, all hope, yet no one repents. Now, I mean, at present, to prove to you, that this disposition of false trust is, of all others in which the creature can be, the most foolish: follow, I beg of you, my reasons; they appear worthy of your attention.
In effect, when, in order to make the folly of false trust apparent, I should have only the uncertainty in which a sinner, who hath lost the sanctifying grace, is of his salvation, no other argument would be required to justify my first proposition. And when I speak of the uncertainty of his salvation, you easily comprehend that there is no question here of that uncertainty common to all believers, which occasions that no one can know whether he be worthy of love or of hatred; whether he shall persevere to the end, or fall, never more to recover himself: terrible subject of dread, even for the most righteous! I speak of a more shocking uncertainty, since it does not suppose, in the sinner in question, a doubtful state of righteousness and Christian fears, upon backslidings to come; but because it is founded upon a certain state of sin, and upon a repentance which nobody can guarantee to him.
Now, I say that it is the height of folly to presume in this state.
