turn, ah! you must break through inclinations fortified by time; you must hate and resist yourself, tear yourself from the dearest objects, break asunder the tenderest ties, make the most heroical efforts, you who are incapable of the commonest ones. Now, I demand, if, in a matter to come, or in uncertain events, we ever augur in favour of those who have most obstacles to surmount, and most difficulties to struggle against? Doth not the most easy always appear the most probable? Soften as much as you please this truth in your mind; view it in the most favourable light; this proposition on your eternal destiny is the most incontestable of the Christian morality. It is beyond comparison more certain that I shall never be converted, and that I shall die in my sin, than that the Lord shall have pity upon me, and at last withdraw me from it: this is your situation; and, if you can still be indifferent, and flatter yourself in such a state, your security, my dear hearer, terrifies me.
But I go farther, and I entreat you to listen to me. The sinner who, without labouring to reclaim himself, assures himself of conversion, presumes not in a fearful uncertainty, and where every thing seems to conclude against him, but also in spite of the moral certainty, as we are taught by faith, that he is lost. Here are my proofs: first, you expect that God shall convert you; but how do you expect it? By continually placing new obstacles in the way of his grace; by rivetting your chains; by aggravating your yoke; by multiplying your crimes; by neglecting every opportunity of salvation, which, his solemnities, his mysteries, and even the terrors of his word offer to you; by always remaining in the same dangers; by changing nothing in your manners, your pleasures, your intimacies; in short, in every thing which continues to nourish in your heart that fatal passion from which you hope that grace shall deliver you. How! the foolish virgins are rejected, solely for having negligently and without fervour awaited the bridegroom; and you, faithless soul, who await him while completing the measure of your crimes, you dare to flatter yourself that you shall be more favourably treated?
Secondly. Grace is accorded only to tears, to solicitations, to eager desires; it requires to be long courted. Now, do you pray? At least, do you entreat? Do you imitate the importunity of the widow of the Gospel? Do you labour, like Cornelius, the Gentile, to attract that grace by charities and other Christian works? Do you say to the Lord, every day, with the prophet, ie Hide not thy face from me, O Lord, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit?" Ah! you say to him, " Lord, thou wilt draw me to thyself; in vain I resist thee; thou wilt, at last, break asunder my chains; however great be the corruption of my heart, thou wilt ultimately change it." Fool! what more likely to repeal a gift than the temerity which exacts it, and even in the very moment when most unworthy dares to claim it as a right! Fresh argument against you; grace is reserved for the lowly and the fearful, who dread being refused what is not owing to them: it is upon these
