stant proof of love and fidelity; and the servant who improves his talent, must necessarily be recompensed in proportion to the profit he has known how to reap from it. It is just, on the contrary, that a lukewarm and unfaithful heart, who serves his God with negligence and disgust, should find the Almighty cold and disgusted toward him. The misery inseparable from coldness is therefore the privation of the grace of protection. If you become cold, the Almighty becomes so toward you; if you limit yourself with regard to him, to those essential duties which you cannot refuse him without guilt, he confines himself with regard to you, to those general succours which will not support you far. He retires from you in proportion as you retire from him; and the measure of fidelity with which you serve him, is the measure of protection you may expect to receive.
Nothing can be more equitable than this conduct; for you enter into judgment with your God. You neglect every opportunity where you might give him proofs of your fidelity: you dispute every thing with him, of which you think you could avoid the payment; you carefully watch lest you do any thing for him beyond what duty requires. It appears you say to him, what he formerly said to the unfaithful servant, Take that thine is, and go thy way. You reckon with God, as I may say. All your attention is engaged in prescribing limits to the right he has over your heart; and all his attention likewise, if I may be permitted to speak in this manner, is to put bounds to his mercies to your soul, and to pay your indifference with the same. Love is the price of love alone; and if you do not sufficiently feel all the terror and extent of this truth, allow me to explain to you its consequences.
The first is, that this state of lukewarmness and infidelity removing the soul from the grace of protection, leaves him, as I may say, empty of God, and in the hands, as it were, of his own weakness. He may, undoubtedly, with the common succours left him, still preserve the fidelity he owes to God. He has always enough to support him in well-doing; but his lukewarmness deprives him of the ability to apply them to any purpose; that is to say, that he is still aided by those succours which may enable him to go on, but no longer by those with which he may infallibly persevere; there is no peril, therefore, in this situation, but makes a dangerous impression upon him, and leads him to the brink of ruin.
I grant, that a happy natural disposition, some remains of modesty, and fear of God, a conscience still afraid of guilt, and a reputation to preserve, may for some time defend him against himself; but as these resources, drawn mostly from nature, cannot extend far; as the sensual objects, in the midst of which he lives, make every day new wounds in his heart, and grace, less abundant, repairs not the loss, — alas! his strength exhausts every moment, faith relaxes, and truth is obscured; the more he advances, the worse he becomes. Such souls feel perfectly, that they no longer retire from the world and its dangers, equally innocent as formerly; that they carry their weaknesses and compliance much
