charms have attracted the general attention! What tyranny is that of custom! It must, however, be submitted to, in spite of deranged affairs, a remonstrating husband, tradesmen who murmur, and who dearly sell the remissions perhaps required. I say nothing of the cares of ambition: what a life is that passed in designs, projects, fears, hopes, alarms, jealousies, subjection, and meannesses! I speak not of a profane connexion: what terrors lest the mystery be laid open, — what eyes to shun,— what spies to deceive, — what mortifying repulses to undergo from the very person for whom they have perhaps sacrificed their honour and their liberty, and of whom they dare not even complain! To all these, add those cruel moments when passion, less unruly, allows us leisure to inspect ourselves, and to feel the whole infamy of our situation; those moments in which the heart, born for more solid joys, wearies of its own idols, and finds ample punishment in its disgusts and in its own inconstancy. World profane! If such be the felicity thou vauntest so much, distinguish thy worshippers, and, by crowning them with such a happiness, punish them for the faith which they have so credulously given to thy promises.
Behold what our sinner casts at the feet of Jesus Christ! Her bonds, her troubles, her slavery; in appearance, the instruments of her pleasures, — in truth, the source of all her afflictions. Now, granting that this were the only consolation of virtue, is it not a sufficiently grand one, that of deliverance from the keenest anxieties of the passions? To have your happiness no longer dependent upon the inconstancy, the perfidy, and the injustice of creatures; to have placed yourself beyond the reach of events; to possess in your own heart all that is wanting toward your happiness, or to suffice, as I may say, to yourself? What do you lose in sacrificing gloomy and anxious cares, in order to find peace and inward joy; and to lose all for Jesus Christ, is it not, as the apostle says, to have gained all? Thy faith hath made thee whole, said the Saviour to the woman; go in peace. Behold the treasure which she receives in return for the passions sacrificed to him; behold the reward and the consolation of her tears and of her repentance, — that peace of mind, which she had never as yet been able to find, and which the world had never bestowed. Fools! says a prophet; misery to you, then, who drag on the load of your passions, as the ox in labouring drags on the chains of the yoke which galls him, and who rush on to your destruction, by the way even of anguish, subjection, and constraint.
Lastly, by her sin she had been degraded in the eyes of men: they beheld with contempt the shame and the infamy of her conduct; she lived degraded from every right which a good reputation and a life free from reproach bestow; and the Pharisee is even astonished that Jesus Christ should condescend to suffer her at his feet.
For the world, which authorizes whatever leads to dissipation, never fails to cover dissipation itself with infamy: it approves, it justifies the maxims, the habits, and the pleasures which corrupt the heart; and yet it insists, that innocency and regularity of manners be
