SERMON IV.
THE UNCERTAINTY OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IN A STATE OF LUKEWARMNESS.
" And he arose out of the synagogue, and entered into Simon's house: and Simon's wife's mother was taken with a great fever; and they besought him for her." — Luke iv. 38.
Nothing more naturally represents the situation of a languid and lukewarm soul, than the state of infirmity in which the gospel here describes Peter's mother-in-law to have been. It may be said, that coldness and indolence in the ways of God, though otherwise accompanied with a life free from enormities, is a kind of secret and dangerous fever, which gradually undermines the powers of the soul, changes all its good dispositions, weakens its faculties, insensibly corrupts its inward parts, alters its propensities, spreads a universal bitterness through all its duties, disgusts it with every thing proper, with all holy and necessary nourishment; and finishes, at last, by a total extinction and an inevitable death.
This languor of the soul, in the path of salvation, is so much the more dangerous as it is less observed.
Our exemption from open irregularity gives us confidence. The external regularity of conduct, which attracts from men those praises due only to virtue, flatters us; and the secret comparison we make of our morals with the excesses of those avowed sinners whom the world and their passions govern, unites to blind us. We regard our situation as a state, less perfect indeed, but always certain of salvation; seeing our conscience can only reproach us with indolence and negligence in the discharge of our duties; too lenient a correction of our appetites; self-love, and some slight infidelities, which do not bring death to the soul. Nevertheless, since the holy writings represent the adulterous and the lukewarm soul as equally rejected by God; and as they pronounce the same anathema against those who despise the works of the Lord, and those who perform them with negligence, this state of coldness and languor in the ways of God must necessarily be very suspicious with regard to salvation, both from the present dispositions which it gives to the soul, and from those to which, sooner or later, it never fails to lead it.
I say, in the first place, from the present dispositions it gives to the soul; namely, a fund of indolence, self-love, disgust at virtue, infidelity, and deliberate disregard to every thing they believe not absolutely essential in their duties; dispositions that form a state very doubtful of salvation.
Secondly. From those to which, sooner or later, lukewarmness conducts us; namely, forgetfulness of God, and an open and shameful departure from every thing sacred.
From these I wish to establish two capital truths in this matter, which expose the danger of a lukewarm and infidel life; and which, from their importance, will furnish us with subject for two Discourses. The first, that it is very doubtful, whether, in this habitual state of coldness and languor, the lukewarm soul (as it believes) preserves the righteousness and sanctifying grace upon which it grounds its security.
The second, that were it even less doubtful, whether it had preserved or lost, before God, the sanctifying grace, at any rate it is certain of being unable long to preserve it.
The uncertainty of righteousness in a state of lukewarmness. This first truth will be the subject of the present Discourse.
The certainty of a departure from righteousness in that state, is the second truth, upon which, in the following one, I shall endeavour to instruct you.
Part I. — " If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us," says the apostle. The purest virtue below is never free, therefore, from blemish. Man, full of darkness and passions, since the entrance of sin into the world, cannot always be so attentive to regularity but that he must sometimes be deceived and err; nor so impressed with invisible good but he will allow himself to be sometimes caught by worldly and ostensible riches; because their impressions on the mind are lively and quick, and they always find in our hearts dispositions too favourable to their dangerous seductions.
The fidelity, which the law of God exacts from just souls, excludes not, therefore, a thousand imperfections, inseparable from our nature, and from which the most guarded and watchful piety cannot defend itself; but of these there are two descriptions. The first, which happen through our weakness, are less infidelities than surprises, where the weight of corruption preponderates over the inclination or choice; and which the Lord, says St. Augustine, permits to remain in the most faithful souls, in order to nourish their humility, excite their lamentations, reanimate their desires, their disgusts at their present exilement, and their longings for its termination. The second class are those which please us; which we justify to ourselves; which it appears impossible for us to renounce; which we look upon as necessary sweeteners of virtue; in which we see nothing criminal, because we perceive not the guilt; which form a part of the deliberate and general system of our morals and conduct, and constitute that state of indolence and coldness in the ways of God, which is the cause of condemnation to so many, born otherwise, perhaps, with principles of virtue, detestation of iniquity, a fund of religion and fear of God, and happy dispositions for salvation.
Now, I say, that this state of relaxation and infidelity; this tranquil and continued negligence of every thing which perhaps appears not essential in our duties; this effeminate indulgence of aU our desires, so long as they offer not actual guilt to our sight; in a word, this life altogether according to our animal nature, our humours, temperaments, and self-love, so common with those who make a public profession of piety, so safe in appearance, so glorious even in the eyes of men, and to which the general error attaches the names of virtue and regularity; — I say, that this is a state extremely doubtful to attain salvation; that it derives its source from an irregular heart, where the Holy Spirit no longer reigns; and that all the rules of faith induce us to think, that a soul of this description is already, without being sensible of it, fallen from righteousness and grace: in the first place, because the desire of perfection essential to Christian piety is extinguished in his heart. Secondly, because the rules of faith, almost always very uncertain in the distinction of guilt from venial errors, with regard to other sinners, are infinitely more so with respect to the unfaithful and lukewarm heart. Thirdly, because, of all the external marks of a living and habitual charity, there is not in it the smallest appearance of one. Let us investigate these truths; for they are indeed worthy of our attention.
Every Christian soul is obliged to bend every effort toward the perfection of his state. I say obliged, for although the degree of perfection be not comprised in the precept, to endeavour at, to labour for perfection, is nevertheless a commandment, and a duty essential to every believer. Be ye perfect, says our Saviour, because the heavenly Father whom ye serve is perfect. I can perceive but one essential point, said St. Paul, namely, to forget whatever I have done to this period (and what, my brethren, was he to forget? His endless labours, continual sufferings, and apostolic courses: so many nations converted to faith; so many illustrious churches founded; so many revelations and prodigies?) — and, incessantly advancing, to direct my views to the attainment of what I have yet to perform. The desire of perfection, the continued efforts to attain it, the holy inquietudes in consequence of the innumerable obstacles which check our progress, do not therefore comprise only a simple advice, and a practice reserved for the cloister and the desert alone, — they form the essential state of a Christian, and the life according to faith on this earth.
For the life according to faith, which the just man leads, is only an uninterrupted desire that the kingdom of God may be accomplished in our hearts; a holy eagerness to form a perfect resemblance in us to Jesus Christ, and to increase even to the plenitude of the new man; a continual lamentation, excited by the internal sensibility of our own miseries, and by the load of corruption which oppresses the soul, and makes it to bear so many marks still of the worldly man; a daily struggle between the law of the spirit, which continually wishes to raise us above our sensual appetites, and the dominion of the flesh, which incessantly draws us back toward ourselves: such is the state of faith, and of Christian piety. Whoever you be, great or of humble rank, prince or subject, courtier or recluse, behold the perfection to which you are called; behold the ground-work and the spirit of your vocation. The austerities of an anchorite, the silence and solitude of the desert, the poverty of the cloister, are not demanded of you; but you are required to labour incessantly toward the repression of those internal desires which oppose themselves to the law of God; to mortify those rebellious inclinations which so unwillingly submit to order and duty; in a word, to advance, as much as possible, your perfect conformity with Jesus Christ. Behold the degree of perfection to which Christian grace calls you, and the essential duty of a just soul.
Now, from the moment you give way to every inclination, provided it extends not to the absolute infraction of the precept, from the moment you confine yourselves to the essentials of the law; that you establish a kind of system of coldness and negligence; that you say to yourselves, "We are unable to support a more exact or more exemplary life;" — from that moment you renounce the desire of perfection. You no longer propose to yourselves an unceasing advancement toward that point of piety and holiness to which the Almighty calls you, and toward which his grace never ceases to impel you in secret; you no longer grieve over those miseries and weaknesses so inimical to your progress; you no longer wish the kingdom of God to be established in your hearts; you abandon, therefore from that moment, the great work of righteousness, at which you are commanded to labour; you neglect the care of your soul; you enter not into the designs of grace; on the contrary, you check its holy impressions: you are no longer Christian: that is to say, that this disposition alone, this formal intention of limiting yourselves to the essentials, and of regarding all the rest as laudable excesses, and works of supererogation, is a state of sin and death, since it is an avowed contempt of that great commandment which requires us to be perfect, that is to say, to labour toward becoming so.
Nevertheless, when we come to instruct you with regard to Christian perfection, you look upon it as to be found only in cloisters and solitudes, and scarcely will you deign to give the smallest attention to our instructions. You deceive yourselves, my brethren. The individuals who adopt retirement, certainly employ austerities, fastings, and watchings, as means to succeed in that mortification of the passions to which we are all equally invited. They engage themselves to a perfection of means, which I confess our state will not admit of; but the perfection of the end to which these means conduct, namely, the command and regulation of the affections, proper contempt of the world, detachment from ourselves, submission of the senses and the flesh to the Spirit, and renovation of the heart, are the perfection of all states, the engagement of all Christians, and the covenant of our baptism. To renounce this perfection, therefore, by limiting ourselves from choice, or in consequence of our rank in the world, to an effeminate, sensual, and worldly life, exempt only from striking enormities, is to renounce the Christian calling, and change the grace of faith, which has made us members of Jesus Christ, into a shameful and unworthy indolence: — first reason.
But were this state even not so dubious for salvation, with respect to the desire of that perfection essential to a Christian life, and which is extinguished in a lukewarm and unfaithful soul, it would become so by the imbecility which it occasions, and in which it places itself, of distinguishing in its conduct the infidelities which may extend to guilt, from those which may be termed simple errors. For though it is true that all sins are not sins which bring death, as St. John observes, and that Christian morality acknowledges errors, which only grieve the Holy Spirit within us, and others which extinguish it altogether in the soul; nevertheless, the rules which it furnishes to distinguish these, can neither be always certain nor general at the moment they are applied; some circumstances relative to ourselves continually change their nature. I speak not here of those manifest and absolute transgressions of the precepts marked in the law, which leave no hesitation respecting the enormity of the offence. I speak of a thousand doubtful and daily transgressions; of hatred, jealousy, evil speaking, sensuality, vanity, idleness, duplicity, negligence in the practice of our duties, and ambition; in all which it is extremely difficult to define how far the precept may be violated: now, I say, that it is by the disposition alone of the heart that the measure and guilt of these faults can be decided; that the rules there, are always uncertain and changeable; and that frequently what is only weakness or surprise in the just, is guilt and corruption not only in the sinner, but likewise in the lukewarm and unfaithful soul. This is proved by the following examples taken from the holy writings.
Saul, in disobedience to the order of the Lord, spared the king of the Amalekites and the most precious spoils of that infidel prince. The crime does not appear considerable; but, as it proceeded from a fund of pride, of relaxation in the ways of God, and a vain complaisance in his victory, this action is the commencement of his reprobation, and the Spirit of God withdraws itself from him. Joshua, on the contrary, too credulous, spares the Gibeonites, whom the Lord had commanded him to exterminate; he went not before the ark to consult him, previous to his alliance with these impostors. But this infidelity being an act of precipitancy and surprise, rather than a disobedience, and proceeding from a heart still faithful, religious, and submissive to God, it appears slight in his eyes, and the pardon almost immediately follows the crime. Now, if this principle be incontrovertible, upon what do you depend when you regard your daily and habitual infidelities as slight? Are you acquainted with all the corruption of your heart, from which they proceed? God knows it, who is the searcher and judge; and his eyes are very different from those of men. But if it be permitted to judge before the time, say, if this fund of indolence and infidelity which is in you; of voluntary perseverance in a state displeasing to God; of deliberate contempt for all the duties which you consider as not essential; of attention and care, as I may say, to labour only for the Lord when he opens before you the gates of punishment and destruction; — say, if all these can constitute in his sight a state worthy of a Christian heart; and if faults, which proceed from so corrupted a principle, can in reality be slight, or worthy of indulgences.
Paul, my brethren, that miraculous man, to whom the secrets of heaven had been revealed; Paul, who no longer lived for himself, but in whom Jesus Christ alone lived; Paul, who earnestly longed every moment for the dissolution of his earthly body that he might be clothed with immortality; this apostle, always ready to sacrifice his life for his Master, and a willing victim to faith; this elected instrument of our Lord and Saviour, whose conscience could reproach him with nothing, knew not, however, whether he merited the love or hatred of his Lord; whether he still possessed in his heart, or had forfeited, the invisible treasure of charity; and in these melancholy doubts, the testimony of his conscience was insufficient to calm his dread and uncertainty. David, that king so penitent, whose delights were centred in the constant meditation of the law of God, and whom the Holy Spirit calls a king after God's own heart; — David trembles, however, lest the iniquity of his crimes be not sufficiently known to him; lest the corruption of his heart conceals not from him their enormity. He figures to himself unknown gulfs in his conscience, which cause him to shed torrents of tears; to prostrate himself before t^ie majesty and holiness of his God, and supplicate his assistance toward his purification from secret infidelities, by making him sensible of them. And you, who watch not, nor search your hearts; you who, devoted to lukewarm and sensual habits, with deliberate coolness allow yourselves every day a thousand infidelities, upon the iniquity of which you are utterly ignorant what judgment the Almighty may form: you, who every moment experience these suspicious ebullitions of passion, where, in spite of all your self-indulgence, you find it so difficult to prove that the will has not accompanied the gratification, and that you have not overstepped that critical and dangerous line which distinguishes actual guilt from involuntary error: you, in whom almost every action is suspicious; who every moment may be demanding at your own heart, a Have I not gone too far }" who, in your own conscience, feel movements and regrets which you will never quiet: you, who, in spite of so many just subjects of dread, believe the state of your conscience to be perfectly known to you; that the decisions of your own self-love, with regard to your infidelities, are the decisions of the Almighty; and that the Lord, whom you serve with so much coldness and negligence, does not yield you up to your own blindness, and punish your crimes, by making you mistake them: you can possibly believe that you still preserve your righteousness, and the grace of sanctification, and can quiet yourselves upon your visible and habitual guilt, by a pretended invisible exercise of righteousness, of which you can produce neither mark nor proof?
O man! how little art thou acquainted with the illusions of the human heart, and the terrible judgments of God upon those souls which resemble thee! Thou sayest to thyself, I am rich, I am loaded with the good things of this world; (with this our Saviour formerly reproached a cold and unbelieving soul;) and thou perceivest not, continued he, (for blindness and presumption are the distinguishing character of coldness,) that in my sight, thou art poor, miserable, blind, and lost to every thing. It is the destiny, therefore, of a lukewarm and unfaithful soul, to live in error and illusion; to believe himself just and acceptable to God, while, alas! before him, he is lost, without knowing it, to both grace and righteousness.
And one reflection, which I beg you to make here, is, that the confidence of such souls is so much the more illusive and ill-founded, as there exists not a soul less capable of judging of his own heart than the lukewarm and unfaithful one. For the avowed sinner cannot conceal his crimes from himself; and he is sensible that he must assuredly be dead to the Lord. The just man, although ignorant whether he merits the love or hatred of his Master, enjoys, nevertheless, a conscience free from reproach. But the cold and unfaithful soul is involved in a state of continual and inexplicable mystery to itself; for this lukewarmness in the ways of God, enfeebling in us the lights of faith, and strengthening our passions, increases our darkness. Every infidelity is like an additional cloud, overspreading the mind and heart, which darkens to our sight the truths of salvation. In this manner the heart is gradually enveloped, the conscience becomes embarrassed, the lights of the mind are weakened; you are no longer that spiritual Christian, capable of a proper judgment. Insensibly you adopt maxims in secret, which, as you think, diminish your guilt; the blindness increases in the same proportion as the lukewarmness.
The more you admit of this relaxation, in a more altered light do your duties and rules appear. What formerly appeared essential, no longer appears but a vain scruple. The omissions, which, in the period of fervour for duty and religion, would have excited in you the warmest compunctions, are now no longer regarded even as faults. The principles, the judgment, the light of the mind, are all changed.
Now, in this situation, who has told you, that, in the judgment which you form on the nature of your infidelities and your daily departure from virtue, you do not deceive yourselves? Who has told you, that the errors which you think so slight are in reality so; and that the distant boundaries which you prescribe to guilt, and within which every thing to you appears venial, are really the limits of the law? Alas! the most enlightened guides know not how to distinguish clearly in a cold and unbelieving conscience. These are what I may call the evils of that langour in which we know nothing; where the wisest of us can say nothing with certainty; and of which the secret cause is always an enigma. You are sensible yourselves, that, in this state of relaxation, you experience in your hearts certain doubts and embarrassments which you can never sufficiently clear up; that in your consciences there always remains something secret and inexplicable, which you never wish to search into, or above half expose. These are not exaggerations, it is the real state and bottom of your soul, which you feel a reserve to lay open. You are sensible, that, even when prostrating yourselves before the Almighty, the confession of your guilt never entirely corresponds with the most intimate dispositions of your heart; that it never paints your internal situation such as in reality it is; and, in a word, that there always exists in your heart something more criminal than what in any statement of it you can bring yourselves to avow. And, indeed, how can you be certain, that in those continual self-gratifications; in that effeminacy of manners which composes your life; in that attention to every thing which may flatter the senses, or remove disquiet from you; to sacrifice to indolence and laziness, all which appears not essential in your duties; how can you be certain, I say, that your self-love is not arrived at that fatal point which serves to give it dominion over your heart, and for ever banish from it Christian charity? Who is able to inform you, in those frequent and voluntary infidelities, where, comforted by their pretended insignificancy, you oppose the internal grace which endeavours to turn you from them; you continually act contrary to your own reason and judgment: whether this internal contempt of the voice of God, this formal and daily abuse of your own lights and grace from God, be not an outrage upon the Divine goodness; a criminal contempt of his gifts; a wickedness in your deviations from virtue which leaves no excuse; and a deliberate preference to your passions and yourselves over Jesus Christ, which can alone proceed from a heart where the love of all order and righteousness is extinguished? Who can tell you, if, in these recollections where your listless mind has a thousand times dwelt upon objects or events dangerous to modesty, your indolence in combating them has not been criminal; and if the efforts which you afterward made, were not an artifice of self-love, in order to disguise their criminality, and quiet you on the indulgence you had already yielded to your crimes? Who would dare to determine, if, in these secret antipathies and animosities, which you give yourselves but little trouble to restrain, (and that always more for the sake of appearances than through piety,) you have never exceeded that slippery line beyond which dwell hatred and death to the soul? If, in that excess of sensibility, which in general accompanies all your afflictions, infirmities, losses, and disgraces, those which you call feelings attached and inevitable to nature, are not irregularities of the heart, and a revolt against the decrees of Providence? If, in all those attentions and eagernesses with which we see you occupied, to manage either the interests of your worldly affairs, or the preservation of a vain beauty, there is not either as much forwardness as may amount to the crime of illegal ambition, or complaisance for yourself, and desire of pleasing, as may sully your heart with the guilt of sensuality? Great God! thou hast well discerned, as thy servant Job formerly remarked, the fatal limits which separate life from death, and light from darkness, in the heart. These are the gulfs and abysses over which mankind, little instructed in them, must tremble; and of which Thou reservest the manifestation till the terrible day of thy vengeance shall arrive. — Second reason, drawn from the uncertainty of the rules, which leaves the state of a lukewarm soul very suspicious, and even renders it incapable of knowing itself.
But a final reason, which to me appears still more decisive, and more dreadful to the lukewarm soul, is, there not being an appearance from which we can presume that it still preserves the sanctifying grace; on the contrary, every thing induces us to suppose it forfeited; that is to say, that, of all the symptoms of a habitual and living charity, there is not a vestige of one in it.
For, my brethren, the first character of charity is to fill us with that spirit of adoption in children, which leads us to love God as our heavenly Father, to love his law, and the justice of his commandments, and to dread the forfeiture of his love more than all the evils with which he threatens us.
Now, the attention alone with which a lukewarm soul examines whether an offence be venial, or extends farther; of disputing with God every article he may refuse him, without actual guilt; of studying the law, only for the purpose of knowing to what degree it may be violated; of unceasingly preferring the interests of his own cupidity to those of grace; and always justifying those things which flatter the passions, in opposition to the rules which check or forbid them; this attention, I say, can only proceed from a heart destitute of faith and charity; from a heart in which the Spirit of God, that spirit of love and kindness, apparently no longer reigns. For no children but the prodigal are capable of quibbling in this manner with their father and protector; of exercising to the utmost length of severity any claims they may have, and of seizing all they may think themselves entitled to.
Now, in order to give this reflection all its weight, — that disposition, which deliberately allows itself every infidelity which will not, it believes, be followed by eternal punishment, is the disposition of a slave and hireling; that is to say, that, could they promise themselves the same impunity and indulgence from the Almighty, for the transgression of the essential points of the law, they would violate them with the same indifference as they violate the least; for were cruel and avowed revenge, calumny of the blackest nature, and criminal attachments, to be attended in futurity with no worse consequences than slight and momentary resentments, accidental and careless evil-speaking, or too much self-love, they would feel no more horror in the commission of the former than the last-mentioned crimes; that is to say, that when faithful to the commandments, it is not from a love of righteousness, but the dread of that punishment which would attend their infraction; it is not to order and to the law that they submit themselves, it is to their chastisement; it is not the Lord they have in view, it is themselves; for, while his glory alone is interested, and no serious consequences may be expected to follow our infidelities, from their apparent slightness, we are not afraid of displeasing him; we even justify to ourselves in secret these kinds of transgressions, by saying, that notwithstanding they offend, and are displeasing to the Lord, yet they bring not death nor eternal punishment to the soul. We are not affected by what regards only him, his glory goes for nothing in the distinction we make between actions allowed or forbidden; our interest alone regulates our fidelity, and nothing can warm our coldness but the dread of everlasting punishment. We are even delighted at the impunity of those trivial transgressions; of being able to gratify our inclinations, without any greater misfortune attending, than the displeasure of the Almighty. We love this wretched liberty, which seems to leave us the right of being unpunished, though unfaithful. We are the apologists of it; we carry it even farther than in reality it goes; we wish all to be venial; gaming, dress, sensual pleasures, passion, animosities, public spectacles; — what shall I say? We would wish this freedom to be universal; that nothing which gratifies our appetites should be punished; that the Almighty were neither just, nor the avenger of iniquity; and that we might yeild ourselves up to the gratification of every passion, and violate the sanctity of his law, without any dread of the severity of his justice. Provided a lukewarm soul will descend to an examination of itself, it will feel, that this is truly the principle of its heart, and its real disposition.
Now, I ask you, is this the situation of a soul in which the sanctifying charity and grace are still preserved; that is to say, a soul which loves its Maker more than the world, more than all created beings, more than all pleasures or riches, more than itself; — of a soul which can feel no joy bat in his possession; which dreads only his loss, and knows no misfortune but that of his displeasure? Does the charity you flatter yourselves still to preserve, seek, in this manner, its proper interest? Does it regard as nothing, the displeasure of him it loves, provided its infidelities remain unpunished? Does it think of disputing, like you every day, to what degree it may safely offend him, in order to take its measures accordingly, and then allow itself every transgression to which impunity is attached? Does it see nothing amiable in its God, or capable of attaching the heart, but his chastisements? Were he not even an Almighty and an avenging God, would it be less affected by his infinite mercies, his truth, holiness, wisdom, fatherly tenderness, and protection? Ah! lukewarm and infidel soul! thou lovest him no longer: thou lovest, thou livest only for thyself. The small remains of fidelity, which still keep thee from sin, are nothing but a fund of sloth, timidity, and self-love. Thou wishest to live in peace with thyself: thou dreadest the embarrassments of a passion, and the remorse of a sullied conscience; iniquity has become a fatigue, and that alone displeases thee with it. Thou lovest thine own ease; and that is thy sole religion. Indolence is the only barrier which stops thee, and all thy virtue is limited to thyself. Assuredly thou wouldst wish to know whether this infidelity be a venial transgression, or if it extends farther. Thou acknowledgest, that it displeases God, (for that point admits of no doubt,) yet is that not sufficient to turn thee from it? Thou wouldst wish to know, whether it so far displeases him as to provoke his everlasting wrath? Ah! thou seest very well, that this investigation tends to nothing by thyself; that thy disposition leads thee to think guilt nothing, as an offence and a displeasure to God, — a powerful reason, however, why it should be detestable to thee; that thou no longer servest the Lord in truth and in charity; that thy pretended virtue is only a natural timidity, which dares not expose itself to the terrible threatenings of the law; that thou art nothing but a vile and wretched slave, to restrain whom, it is necessary to keep scourges continually in thy sight; that thou resemblest that unfaithful servant, who secreted his talent, because he knew that his master was severe, and, but for that reason, would have wasted it in dissipation; and that, in the preparation of the heart, to which alone the Almighty looketh, thou hatest his law: thou lovest every thing it forbids; thou art no longer in charity; thou art a child of death and perdition.
The second character of charity is to be timorous, and to magnify to ourselves our smallest deviations; not that charity deceives or conceals from us the truth, but, disengaging the soul from the senses, it purifies our view of faith, and renders it more quick-sighted in spiritual affairs; and besides, whatever is, in the smallest degree, displeasing to the only object of our love, appears serious and considerable to the soul which loves. Thus charity is always humble, timid, and distrustful of itself; unceasingly agitated by its pious perplexities, which leave it in suspense respecting its real state; always alarmed by those delicacies of grace, which make it tremble at every action; which make a kind of martyrdom of love, from the uncertainty in which they leave it; and by which, however, it is purified. These are not the vain and puerile scruples which we blame in weak minds. They are those pious fears of charity and of grace inseparable from every faithful and religious soul. It works its salvation with fear and trembling; and even frequently regards as crimes actions which are often virtues in the sight of God; and which, at most, can only be regarded as simple Weaknesses.
These are the holy perplexities of charity, which derive their source even from the lights of faith. This path has, in all ages, been the path of the just.
Yet, nevertheless, it is that pretended charity, of which, in the midst of a vicious life, and of all your infidelities, you believe yourselves still possessed, that makes them appear slight to you: it is that charity itself, which you suppose not to have lost, that comforts and encourages you; that dimimishes your faults in your own sight, and fixes you in a state of peace and security: in a word, that not only banishes from your heart all those pious alarms inseparable from real piety, but makes you regard them as weaknesses, and even the excesses of piety. Now tell me, I beg of you, is not that an inconsistency? Does charity contradict itself in that manner? Or can you place much dependence on a love which so nearly resembles hatred?
The last character of charity is to be active and diligent in the ways of God. We find how much the apostle dwells on its activity and fecundity in the heart of a Christian. It operates wherever it is; it cannot, say the saints, be idle: it is a celestial fire, which no power can hinder from showing itself, and from acting: it may sometimes indeed be overwhelmed, and greatly weakened, by the multitude of our weaknesses, but, while not entirely extinguished, there always proceed from it, as I may say, some sparks of sighs, wishes, lamentations, efforts, and deeds. The Holy Sacrament reanimates it; prayer arouses it; pious reading, affliction, disgrace, bodily infirmity, all rekindle it, when not utterly extinguished. It is mentioned in the second book of the Maccabees, that the sacred fire, which the Jews had concealed during their captivity, was found at their return apparently extinct. But as the surface alone was obscured, and the sacred fire still internally preserved all its virtue, scarcely was it exposed to the rays of the sun, when they saw it instantaneously rekindle, and present to their sight a brightness altogether new, and an activity altogether astonishing.
Behold, my brethren, a faithful representation of the coldness of a truly just soul; and which likewise, would be your case, had the multitude of your infidelities done no more than cover and relax, as I may say, without extinguishing, the sacred fire of charity within you: — behold, I say, what ought to be your situation, when you approach the Holy Sacrament, or listen to the word of God. When Jesus Christ, the sun of righteousness, darts upon you some rays of his grace and light, and inspires you with holy desires, your heart ought then to be seen rekindled, and your fervour renewed: you ought then to appear all fire and animation in the practice of your duty, and astonish even the most confident witnesses of your former life by the renovation of your morals and zeal.
Alas! nothing, however, reanimates you* Even the Holy Sacrament leaves you all your coldness. The words of the gospel, which you listen to, fall upon your heart like corn upon a sterile land, where it immediately dies. The sentiments of salvation which grace operates within you, are never followed with any effect in the melioration of your morals. You continually drag on in the same indolence and languor. You depart from the holy altar equally cold, equally insensible, as you approached it. We see not in you those renewals of zeal, piety, and fervour, so common in just souls, and of which the motives are to be found in their deviations from duty. What you were yesterday, you are to-day; the same infidelities, the same weaknesses, you advance not a single step in the road to salvation; all the fire of heaven could scarcely rekindle in the bottom of your heart this pretended charity upon which you depend so much. Ah! my dear hearer, how much I dread that it is extinct, and that you are dead in the sight of the Lord! I wish not to anticipate the secret judgments of God upon the consciences; but I must tell you, that your state is very far from being safe; I even tell you, that, if we are to judge by the rules of faith, you are in disgrace with, and hated of the Lord; I tell you likewise, that a coldness so durable and constant cannot subsist with a principle of heavenly and eternal life, which always, from time to time at least, betrays external movements and signs, raises, animates itself, and takes wing, as if to disengage itself from the shackles which weigh it down; and that a charity so mute, so indolent, and so constantly insensible, exists no more.
But the great danger of this state, my brethren, is, that a lukewarm soul is so without scruple; it feels that it might carry its fervour and fidelity to a much greater length, but it looks upon that zeal, and that exactitude, as a perfection and a grace reserved only for certain souls, and not as a general duty. In this manner they fix themselves in that degree of coldness into which they are fallen. They have not made, nor scarcely attempted, the smallest progress in virtue, since the first ardours of conversion. It would appear, that having exhausted all their fervour against the criminal passions with which they had at first to combat, they imagine that nothing now remains but to enjoy in peace the fruits of their victory. A thousand damages which still remain from their first shipwreck, they think no more of repairing. So far from endeavouring to repress a thousand weaknesses and corrupted inclinations left them by their first irregularities, they love and cherish them. The Holy Sacrament no longer reanimates or invigorates their faith; it only amuses it. Conversion is no longer the end they propose, they believe it already done: and, alas! their confessions, even to the Almighty, are more for the purpose of 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, when simple purifications are only demanded of you; nay, when you are required, as I may say, almost the same things which you do, but only to be practised with more fervour, fidelity, faith, and vigilance, are you excusable in declining them? Why will you render useless all your former efforts, by the refusal of a thing so easy? Why should you have renounced the world, and all its criminal pleasures, only to find in piety the same rock, which by flying from sin you thought to have escaped? And would it not be lamentable, if, after having sacrificed to God the principal parts, you should lose yourselves, by wishing still to dispute with him a thousand little sacrifices, much less painful to the heart and to nature?
Finish, then, in us, O my God! that which thy grace has already begun: triumph over our languors and our weaknesses, since thou hast already triumphed over our crimes: give us a heart fervent and faithful, since thou hast already deprived us of a criminal and corrupted one: inspire us with that willing submission which the just possess,^since thou hast extinguished in us that pride and obstinacy which occasion so many sinners. Leave not, O my God! thy work unfinished; and, since thou hast already made us enter into the holy career of salvation, render us worthy of the holy crown promised to those who shall have legally fought for it.
Now to God, &c. Amen.