of the ministers, who alone have authority to bind and to unbind on the earth; this is not upon what you require instruction. But, I say, that, in order that the conversion be solid and durable, we must, like Lazarus, show ourselves quite out of the tomb. An ordinary confession is not the matter in question; a hardened sinner ought to go back even to his infancy, even to the birth of his passions, even to the youngest periods of his life, which have been the commencement of his crimes. Neither doubts nor obscurities must longer be left in the conscience, nor mists over the youthful manners, under pretence that they have already been revealed; a general manifestation is required, and whatever may hitherto have been done must be reckoned as nothing; every duty of religion, performed during a disorderly and worldly life is even to be ranked among our crimes; the conscience must be considered as a chaos, into which no light has, as yet, penetrated, and over which all our fictitious and past penitence has spread only additional darkness.
For, alas! my brethren, a contrite soul, after returning from the errors of the world and the passions, ought to presume that, having to that period lived in criminal habits and propensities, every time the sacrament has been received in that state was only a profanation and a crime.
In the first place, because, having never felt real contrition for his errors, nor, consequently, any sincere desire to purge himself of them, the remedies of the church far from having purified, have only completed his foulness, and rendered his disease more incurable.
Secondly, because he has never been known to himself; and, consequently, could never make himself known to the tribunal of his conscience. For, alas! the world, in the midst of which this soul has always lived, and in which he has ever thought and judged like it; the world, I say, finding reasonable and wise only its own maxims and manner of thinking, does it sufficiently know the holiness of the Gospel, the obligations of faith, and the extent of duties, to be qualified to enter into the detail of those transgressions which faith condemns?
Thirdly, and lastly, because that, even admitting he should have known all his wretchedness, never having had any real sorrow for it, he has never been qualified to make it known; for nothing but heartfelt sorrow can explain itself as it ought, or truly represent those evils which it feels and abhors; it must be a feeling heart that can make itself to be understood on the wounds and the sufferings of a heart itself. A sinner full of a profane passion expresses it much more eloquently, and with more animation: nothing is left unsaid of the foolish and deplorable sufferings he endures; he enters into all the windings of his heart, his jealousies, his fears, and his hopes. As the mind of man, says the apostle, alone knows what passes in man, so likewise it is only the heart which can know what passeth in the heart. Contrition gives eyes to see, and words to express every thing; it has a language which nothing can counterfeit: thus, in vain may a worldly soul, still
