lenient a correction of our appetites; self-love, and some slight infidelities, which do not bring death to the soul. Nevertheless, since the holy writings represent the adulterous and the lukewarm soul as equally rejected by God; and as they pronounce the same anathema against those who despise the works of the Lord, and those who perform them with negligence, this state of coldness and languor in the ways of God must necessarily be very suspicious with regard to salvation, both from the present dispositions which it gives to the soul, and from those to which, sooner or later, it never fails to lead it.
I say, in the first place, from the present dispositions it gives to the soul; namely, a fund of indolence, self-love, disgust at virtue, infidelity, and deliberate disregard to every thing they believe not absolutely essential in their duties; dispositions that form a state very doubtful of salvation.
Secondly. From those to which, sooner or later, lukewarmness conducts us; namely, forgetfulness of God, and an open and shameful departure from every thing sacred.
From these I wish to establish two capital truths in this matter, which expose the danger of a lukewarm and infidel life; and which, from their importance, will furnish us with subject for two Discourses. The first, that it is very doubtful, whether, in this habitual state of coldness and languor, the lukewarm soul (as it believes) preserves the righteousness and sanctifying grace upon which it grounds its security.
The second, that were it even less doubtful, whether it had preserved or lost, before God, the sanctifying grace, at any rate it is certain of being unable long to preserve it.
The uncertainty of righteousness in a state of lukewarmness. This first truth will be the subject of the present Discourse.
The certainty of a departure from righteousness in that state, is the second truth, upon which, in the following one, I shall endeavour to instruct you.
Part I. — " If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us," says the apostle. The purest virtue below is never free, therefore, from blemish. Man, full of darkness and passions, since the entrance of sin into the world, cannot always be so attentive to regularity but that he must sometimes be deceived and err; nor so impressed with invisible good but he will allow himself to be sometimes caught by worldly and ostensible riches; because their impressions on the mind are lively and quick, and they always find in our hearts dispositions too favourable to their dangerous seductions.
The fidelity, which the law of God exacts from just souls, excludes not, therefore, a thousand imperfections, inseparable from our nature, and from which the most guarded and watchful piety cannot defend itself; but of these there are two descriptions. The first, which happen through our weakness, are less infidelities than surprises, where the weight of corruption preponderates over the
