to attain a situation answerable to your wishes or expectations; come, and see if your God will be more faithful to you; if only bitterness and disgusts are to be found in his service; if he promises more than he bestows; if he is an ungrateful, changeable, or capricious master; if his yoke is a cruel servitude, or a sweet liberty; if the duties which he exacts from us are the punishment of his slaves, or the consolation of his children; and if he deceives those who serve him. My God! how little wouldst thou be worthy of our hearts, wert thou not more amiable, more faithful, and more worthy of being served, than this miserable world!
But, in order to serve him as he wishes to be served, we must esteem the glory and the happiness of his service; we must prefer this happiness to all others, and labour in it with sincerity, without reserve, and with a ripe and watchful circumspection: for if it is a common fault to want fervour in the business of our eternal salvation, and to become disgusted with it, it is likewise a much more general one to fail of prudence, and to mistake our path toward it.
Part II. — An enterprise, where the dangers are daily, and mistakes common; where, amongst so many different routes which appear safe, there is, however, only one true and unerring, and the success of which must, nevertheless, decide our eternal destiny; — an enterprise of this nature surely requires uncommon exertions; and never had we occasion, in the conduct of any other, for so much circumspection and prudence. Now, that such is the enterprise of salvation, it would be needless to waste time in proving here, and equally so for you to doubt. The only object of importance, then, to establish, is, the rules and the marks of this prudence which is to guide us in so dangerous and so essential an affair.
The first rule is, not to determine ourselves by chance amongst that multiplicity of ways which mankind pursue; carefully to examine all, independent of usages and customs which may authorise them; in the affair of our salvation, to give nothing to opinion or example. The second is, when we have finally determined to leave nothing to the uncertainty of events, and always to prefer safety to danger.
Such are the common rules of prudence adopted by the children of the age, in the pursuit of their pretensions and their temporal expectations. Eternal salvation is the only affair in which they are neglected. In the first place, no person examines if his ways are sure: nor does he ever require any other pledge of his safety than the crowd which he sees marching before him. Secondly, in the doubts which spring up during our proceedings, the party the most dangerous to salvation, having always self-love in its favour, is always preferred: two important and common errors in the affair of eternal salvation, which it is necessary to combat here. The first rule is, not to determine by chance, and in the affair of
