tuous, more penitent? Alas! it is not external agitations which check you; it is the disorder within; it is the tumultuous ardour of the passions. It is not from the cares of fortune, and the embarrassments of events and business, says a holy father, that confusion and trouble proceed; it is from the irregular desires of the soul: a heart in which God reigns, is tranquil every where. Your cares for the world are only incompatible with salvation because the affections which attach you to it are criminal. It is not your stations, but your inclinations, which become rocks of destruction to you. Now, from these inclinations you will never be able to free yourselves with the same facility as from your cares and embarrassments; they will afterwards be even more lively, more unconquerable than ever: besides this fund of weakness which they draw from your corruption, they will have that force and strength acquired by habit through time and years. You think, that, in attaining rest, every thing will be accomplished; and you will feel, that your passions, more lively in proportion as they no longer find external resources to employ them, will turn all their violence against yourselves; and you will then be surprised to find, in your own hearts, the same obstacles which at present you believe to be only in what surrounds you. This leprosy, if I may venture to speak in this manner, is not attached to your clothes, to your places, to the walls of your palaces, so that, by quitting them, you may rid yourselves of it; it has gained root in your flesh. It is not by renouncing your cares, therefore, that you must labour toward curing yourselves; it is by purifying yourselves that you must sanctify your cares. Every thing is pure to those who are pure, otherwise your wound will follow you, even into the leisure of your solitude; like that king of Judea mentioned in the book of Kings, who in vain abdicated his throne, delivered up all the insignia, as well as the cares of royalty, into the hands of his son, and withdrew himself into the heart of his palace: he carried with him the leprosy with which the Lord had struck him, and beheld that shameful disease pursue him even into his retreat. External cares find neither their innocency nor their malignity, but in our own hearts; and it is ourselves alone who render the occupations of the world dangerous, as it is ourselves alone who render those of heaven insipid and disgusting.
And behold, my brethren, the last reason why we show so little fervour and animation in the affair of our eternal salvation, — is because we fulfil the duties necessary to accomplish it without pleasure, and, as it were, against our will. The slightest obligations of piety appear hard to us; whatever we do for heaven tires us, exhausts us, displeases us: prayer confines our mind too much; retirement wearies us; holy reading, from the first, fatigues the attention; the intercourse of the upright is languid, and has nothing sprightly or amusing in it; in a word, we find something, I know not what, of melancholy in virtue, which occasions us to fulfil its
