to taste any pure and unadulterated joy; that the world, a little searched into, is nothing; that they are astonished themselves how it can be loved when known; and that happy are they alone, here below, who can do without it and serve God. Some long for the opportunity of an honourable retreat; others are continually proposing to themselves more orderly and more Christian manners. All admit the happiness of the godly; all wish to become so; all bear testimony against themselves. They are the forced rather than the voluntary followers of pleasure. It is no longer inclination, it is habit, it is weakness, which retains them in the shackles of the world and of sin. They feel this; they lament it; they acknowledge it; and they give way to the current of so wretched a lot. Deceitful world! render happy, if in thy power, those who serve thee, and then will I forsake the law of the Lord to attach myself to the vanity of thy promises.
You yourself, my dear nearer, since the many years that you served the world, have you greatly forwarded your happiness? Put in a balance, on the one side, all the agreeable moments and days you have passed in it, and, on the other, all the sorrows and vexations you have there experienced, and see which scale will preponderate. In certain moments of pleasure, of excess, and of frenzy, you have, perhaps, said, " It is good for us to be here f but that was only a momentary intoxication, the illusion of which the following moment discovered to you, and plunged you into all your former anxieties. Even now, when speaking to you, question your own heart: are you at peace within? Is nothing wanting to your happiness? Do you fear, do you wish for nothing? Do you never feel that God is not with you? Would you wish to live and die such as you are? Are you satisfied with the world? Are you unfaithful to the Author of your being without remorse? There are twelve hours in the day: are they all equally agreeable to you? And have you, as yet, been able to succeed in fashioning a conscience so as to remain tranquil in guilt?
Even then, when you have plunged to the very bottom of the sea of iniquity to extinguish your remorses, and have succeeded, as you thought, in stifling that remnant of faith which still pleads in your heart for virtue, hath not the Lord commanded the serpent as he saith in his prophet Amos, to follow and sting you even in the abyss where you had fled for shelter? And, even there, have you not felt the secret gnawings of the ravenous worm? Is it not true that the days you have consecrated to God by some religious duty have been the happiest of your life; and that you have never lived, as I may say, but when your conscience has been pure, and that you have lived with God? No, says the prophet, with a holy pride, the God whom we worship is not a deceitful God, nor is he, like the gods which the world worships, unable to reward those who serve him; let the world themselves be the judges here.
Great God! what then is man, thus to wrestle his whole life against himself, to wish to be happy without thee, in spite of thee,
