Have you still hopes of a happy death, when He who alone can give you that grace assures you expressly that you shall die in your sin? What deplorable blindness! You are not sure that you shall have time enough to repent on your death-bed, and you are sure that, although you may have time enough, you have not the grace of God in your power, the grace which you require to do true penance. You are not sure that your will shall then be ready to hate and detest what it now so foolishly loves; and you are certain that the divine will shall be quite contrary to yours; yet you hope, and confiding in your hope, you continue in sin!
Nay, a presumptuous one. O holy Apostle St. Paul! not without reason hast thou wondered at the Patriarch Abraham, who, although commanded by God to slay his only son, still hoped to become the father of a numerous people by that same son! " Who against hope believed in hope, that he might be made the father of many nations.”[1] But great as was the confidence of that holy man, thou must acknowledge that sinners have a still greater; for they hope not only against hope, but in God against God and His infallible word. Abraham believed that God would work a miracle rather than break His promise; they believe that God will rather break His word than not perform a miracle for them in giving them a most extraordinary, wonderful grace of repentance at the last moment. But hope as you wish! If you are not disappointed, all the better for you! At all events God denies you this hope, “because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation,”[2] because you have allowed the time of grace to pass by. Experience itself denies you this hope, as I shall show in the
Second Part.
If there were any reasonable hope of a death-bed repentance, there must be many instances of persons thus converted. If we had no threat from the infallible word of God Himself that He will abandon the sinner at the end of a wicked life; if we did not know how God acts now and then with such a dying sinner, for His decrees are inscrutable, and He can give His grace when and to whom He pleases, and He does sometimes give it to those who least deserve it; yet if He had either promised the last grace to the dying sinner after an ill-spent life, or was wont to give that grace, then after such a long lapse of time, during which there have been so many dying sinners, there must be
