- ness of spirit, which shrinks from evil, and the causes of
evil; such a sense of God's presence, and such persuasion of his justice, as gives sin the appearance of evil, and therefore excites every effort to combat and escape it.
Hardness of heart, therefore, is a thoughtless neglect of the Divine law: such an acquiescence in the pleasures of sense, and such delight in the pride of life, as leaves no place in the mind for meditation on higher things; such an indifference about the last event of human actions, as never looks forward to a future state, but suffers the passions to operate with their full force, without any other end, than the gratification of the present world.
To men of hearts thus hardened, providence is seldom wholly inattentive; they are often called to the remembrance of their Creator, both by blessings and afflictions; by recoveries from sickness, by deliverances from danger, by loss of friends, and by miscarriage of transactions. As these calls are neglected, the hardness is increased, and there is danger, lest he whom they have refused to hear, should call them no more.
This state of dereliction is the highest degree of misery; and, since it is so much to be dreaded, all approaches to it are diligently to be avoided. It is, therefore, necessary to inquire,
Thirdly: How, or by what causes, the heart is hardened.
The most dangerous hardness of heart is that which proceeds from some enormous wickedness, of which the criminal dreads the recollection, because he cannot prevail upon himself to repair the injury; or because he dreads the irruption of those images, by which guilt must always be accompanied; and, finding a temporal ease in negligence and forgetfulness, by degrees confirms himself in stubborn impenitence.
This is the most dreadful and deplorable state of the heart; but this I hope is not very common. That which frequently occurs, though very dangerous, is not desperate; since it consists, not in the perversion of the will, but in
