amusing and lulling their consciences, than the effects of piety and real contrition.
We impose greatly upon ourselves, my brethren, with regard to our consciences reproaching us with nothing criminal; for we see not, that it is even that tranquillity which constitutes the danger, and perhaps the guilt likewise of it. We believe ourselves in security in our state, because it perhaps offers to our sight more innocence and regularity than that of disorderly souls; and indeed, we wish not to conceive how a life purely natural should not be a life of grace and of faith; or that a state of habitual idleness and sensual gratification, should be a state of sin and death in a Christian life.
Thus, my dear hearer, you whom this discourse regards, reanimate yourself without ceasing in the spirit of your vocation; according to the advice of the apostle, raise yourself every day by prayer, by mortification of the senses, by vigilance over your passions, and by a continual retrospection to, and investigation of, your own heart, — that first grace, which operates to draw you from the errors and wanderings of the world, and fits you to enter into the paths of God. Depend upon it, that piety has nothing sure or consoling but fidelity; that, in relaxing from it, you only augment your troubles, because you multiply your bonds; that, in retrenching from your duty, zeal, fervour, and exactitude, you likewise retrench all its sweets and pleasures; that, in depriving your state of fidelity, you deprive it of security; and that, in limiting yourself simply to shun iniquity, you lose the most precious fruits of virtue.
And after all, since you have already sacrificed the essential, why will you still attach yourselves to the frivolous parts? After having accomplished the most laborious and painful exertions toward salvation, must you perish for not finishing the slightest and most easy? When Naaman, little convinced, because the prophet, for the cure of his leprosy, had only ordered him to bathe in the waters of Jordan, retired full of contempt for the man of God, and believing it impossible that his recovery could be accomplished by so simple a remedy, the people who accompanied him made him sensible of his error, by saying to him, " But, master, had the prophet bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it? How much rather, then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean? "
And now, my brethren, attend to what I have to say, while I finish this Discourse. You have abandoned the world, and the idols which you formerly worshipped in it; you are come from afar into the paths of God; you have had so many passions to overcome, and obstacles to surmount, so many things to sacrifice, and difficult exertions to make, there remains only one step more to accomplish, which is a faithful and constant vigilance over yourselves. If a sacrifice of the criminal passions were not already made, and you were required to do it, you would not, I believe hesitate a moment; cost what it might, you would make it: and, in the mean while,
