tions; that is to say, would detach you from the world, your vices, passions, the infamy of your excesses, and make you lead a chaste, regular and Christian life, alone worthy of reason. These are what the world calls violent and overstrained resolutions. But likewise, under pretence of shunning pretended excesses, would you refuse to adopt the most necessary resolutions? Make a beginning at any rate; the first transports soon begin to abate; and it is much more easy to moderate the excesses of piety than to animate its coldness and indolence. Dread nothing from the excessive fervour and transports of your zeal; you can never, in that respect, go too far. An indolent and sensual heart, such as yours, nursed in pleasures and effeminacy, and void of all taste for whatever pertains to the service of God, does not promise any very great indiscretions in the steps of a Christian life. You know not yourselves; you have never experienced what obstacles all your inclinations will cast in the way of your simplest exertions in piety. Take measures only against coldness and discouragement, which are the only rocks you have to dread. What blindness! In the fear of doing too much for God, we do nothing at all; the dread of bestowing too much attention on our salvation, prevents us from labouring toward it; and we lose ourselves for ever, lest we should too surely attain salvation: we dread chimerical excesses of piety, and we are not afraid of a departure from, and an actual contempt of piety itself. Does the fear of doing too much for fortune and rank check your exertions or cool the ardour of your ambition? Is it not that very hope which supports and animates them? Nothing is too much for the world, but all is excess for God: we fear, and we reproach ourselves, lest we never do enough for an earthly establishment; and we check ourselves, in the dread of doing too much for an eternal fortune.
But I go farther, and say, that it is a criminal ingratitude toward God to reject the thought of death, merely because it disquiets and alarms you; for that impression of dread and terror is a special grace with which you are favoured by God. Alas! how many impious characters exist, who despise it, who claim a miserable merit, in beholding with firmness its approach, and who regard it as the annihilation of their being! How many sages and philosophers in Christianity, who, without renouncing faith, limit all their reflections, all the superiority of their talents, to the tranquil view of its arrival; and who, during life, exert the powers of their reason only in preparing for that last moment; a constancy and serenity of mind equally absurd as the most vulgar terrors; a purpose the most imprudent to which reason can be applied. It is, therefore, a special grace bestowed on you by God, when he permits that thought to have such an energy and ascendancy in your soul; in all probability it is the way by which he wishes to recall you to himself; should you ever quit your erroneous and iniquitous courses, it will be through its influence: your salvation seems to depend on that remedy.
Tremble, my dear hearer, lest your heart should fortify itself
