still operateth in your heart; he still poureth out within you the riches of his goodness and of his mercy. Ah! it is not his grace which fails you, but you receive it into a heart so full of corruption and wretchedness, that it is ineffectual; it excites no feeling there of contrition; it is a spark which, falling into a sink of filth and of nastiness, is extinguished the moment it falls.
Reflect, then, my dear hearer, and comprehend all the injustice of your pretexts. You complain that God is wanting to you, and that you wait his grace to be converted; but is there a sinner in whose mouth that complaint would be more unjust than from your lips? Recall here the whole course of your life; follow it from the earliest period down to this day. The Lord had anticipated you from your birth with his blessings; he had placed in you a happy disposition, a noble spirit, and all the inclinations most favourable to virtue; he had even provided for you, in the bosom of a family, domestic succours and pious and godly examples. The mercies of the Lord went still farther; he hath preserved you from a thousand dangers; through his goodness you have outlived occasions where your friends, and perhaps the accomplices of your debaucheries, have fallen a sacrifice to the scourge of war. To recall you to him, he hath spared neither afflictions, disgusts, nor disgraces; he hath torn from you the criminal objects of your passions, even at the moment when your heart was most strongly attached to them; he hath so mercifully conducted your destiny, that a thousand obstacles have continually thwarted your passions, that you have never been able to arrive at the accomplishment of all your criminal wishes, and that something has always been wanting to your iniquitous happiness; he has formed for you serious engagements and duties, which, in spite of yourself, have imposed the obligation of a prudent and regular life in the eyes of men; he has not permitted your conscience to become hardened in iniquity, and you have never been able to succeed in calming your remorses, or in living tranquilly in guilt; not a day hath past in which you have not felt the emptiness of the world and the horror of your situation; amidst all your pleasures and excesses, conscience hath awoke, and you have never succeeded in lulling your secret disquiets but by promising to yourself a future change. A just and a merciful God urges and pursues you every where: ever since you have forsaken him, he has fixed himself to you, said a prophet, like a worm which burrows in the vestment, continually to gnaw your heart, and to render the importunity of his biting a wholesome remedy to your soul. Even while I am now speaking to you, he worketh within you, filleth my mouth with these holy truths, and placeth me here to proclaim them to you, for the sole purpose of recalling perhaps you alone. What, then, is your whole life but one continued succession of favours? Who are you yourself but a child of dilection and the work of God^s mercies? Unjust that thou art! And thou darest, after this, to complain that his grace is wanting; thou, on whom alone on the earth the Lord seemeth to cast his regards; thou, in whose heart he so continually operateth, as
