Sermons (Massillon)/Sermon 18
SERMON XVIII.
ON FALSE TRUST.
"But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel." — Luke xxiv. 21.
In vain had Jesus Christ, during his mortal life, a thousand times declared to his disciples, that it was flattering themselves to count upon a reward which had not been merited by crosses and toils: this truth so little agreeable to nature, had never been willingly received; and all the times that the Saviour had tried to undeceive them on the opposite error, they heard not that word of the gospel, and it was not seen by them. Such is still at present the disposition of the two disciples to whom Jesus Christ condescends to appear in their way to Emmaus; they expected that their Master should deliver Israel from the yoke of nations, and should cause them to be seated on twelve earthly thrones, without any exertion being necessary on their part in order to mount them, without the1 Saviour himself having occasion to suffer, in order to triumph over his enemies.
Besides the mistake which led them to consider Jesus Christ as a temporal deliverer, I likewise observe another, which appears to me not less dangerous in them, but which at present is more common among us: it is that false trust by which they are persuaded, that, without co-operating toward it themselves, and in leaving to Jesus Christ the whole management of their deliverance, they shall receive the fulfilment of the magnificent promises, which, in his conversations with them upon the earth, he had so often reiterated. Now, my brethren, this false trust, which makes all to be expected by sinners from grace alone, without any co-operation on their part, and the reward of the holy to be hoped, although they labour not toward meriting it; this false trust, which always reckons upon the goodness of God whom it offends, which, without combating, promises itself to be crowned, and which always hopes against probability; this false trust, which is unwilling to purchase heaven, and yet expects it, is the most universal and most established error among Christians; and when Jesus Christ shall once more appear upon the earth, he will find many of his unbelieving disciples, who shall have occasion to say to him, " we trusted."
This, my brethren, is what induces me to occupy your time at present upon so important a matter, persuaded that a false trust is the source of condemnation to almost all sinners; that those who are afraid of perishing, never perish; and that I could not better fulfil my ministry, than by establishing in your hearts those salutary feelings of mistrust which lead to precautions and to remedies, and which, in disturbing the peace of sin, leave, in its place, the peace of Jesus Christ, which surpasseth all feeling. Thus, in order to give a proper extension to so useful a subject, I reduce it to two propositions. There is no disposition more foolish than that of the sinner who presumes, without labouring toward his amendment, is the first: there is none more injurious to God, is the second. The folly of a false trust: the insult of a false trust. Let us explain these two truths.
Part I. — I am not afraid of openly agreeing with you, my brethren, that the mercies of the Lord are always more abundant than our wickednesses, and that his goodness may furnish legitimate motives of trust to all sinners. The doctrine which I go to establish is sufficiently terrible, without adding to it new terrors by concealing part of those truths which may tend to soften it; and if caution be required in this matter, it is rather in not bringing forward all that might alarm the conscience, than in concealing what might tend to console it.
It is true, that every where the holy books give us magnificent and soothing ideas of the goodness of God. One while he is a mild and long-forbearing master, who awaits the penitence of the sinner; who covers the sins of men, in order to lead them to repentance; who is silent and quiet; who is slow to punish, and delays in order that he may be prevented; who threatens in order to be disarmed: another while he is a tender friend, who is never weary of knocking at the gate of the heart; who flatters, entreats, and solicits us'; and who, in order to draw us to himself, employs every thing which an ingenious love can invent, to recall a rebellious heart. Again, and lastly, for all would never be said, he is an indefatigable Shepherd, who goes even through the wildest mountains, in search of his strayed sheep; and, having at last found it, places it upon his shoulders, and is so transported with joy that even the celestial harmony are ordered to celebrate its happy return. It must surely be confessed, that the consolation of these images can receive no addition; and every sinner who, after this, despairs, or even gives way to despondency, is the most foolish of all men. But do not from thence conclude that the sinner who presumes is less foolish, or that the mercy of the Lord can be a legitimate foundation of trust to those who are continually desiring their conversion, and yet, without labouring toward that great work, promise every thing to themselves from a goodness which their very confidence insults. To convince you of this, before I enter into the main points of my subject, remark, I beg of you, that among that innumerable crowd of sinners, of every description, with which the world is filled, there is not one who hath not hopes of his conversion; not one who, before-hand, considers himself as a child of wrath, and doomed to perish; not one who doth not flatter himself that at last the Lord shall one day have pity upon him: the lewd, the ambitious, the worldly, the revengeful, the unjust, all hope, yet no one repents. Now, I mean, at present, to prove to you, that this disposition of false trust is, of all others in which the creature can be, the most foolish: follow, I beg of you, my reasons; they appear worthy of your attention.
In effect, when, in order to make the folly of false trust apparent, I should have only the uncertainty in which a sinner, who hath lost the sanctifying grace, is of his salvation, no other argument would be required to justify my first proposition. And when I speak of the uncertainty of his salvation, you easily comprehend that there is no question here of that uncertainty common to all believers, which occasions that no one can know whether he be worthy of love or of hatred; whether he shall persevere to the end, or fall, never more to recover himself: terrible subject of dread, even for the most righteous! I speak of a more shocking uncertainty, since it does not suppose, in the sinner in question, a doubtful state of righteousness and Christian fears, upon backslidings to come; but because it is founded upon a certain state of sin, and upon a repentance which nobody can guarantee to him.
Now, I say that it is the height of folly to presume in this state. For confess it, my dear hearer, inveterate sinner as you are, abiding, as you tranquilly do, in iniquitous passions, in the midst even of all the solemnities of religion, and of all the terrors of the holy word, upon the foolish hope of one day, at last, quitting this deplorable state; you cannot deny that it is at least doubtful whether you shall retrieve yourself, or, even to the end, remain in your sin. I even admit you to be full of good desires: but you are not ignorant that desires convert nobody, and that the greatest sinners are often those who most long for their conversion. Now, the doubt here only equal, would you be prudent in remaining careless? What! In the frightful uncertainty whether you shall die in your irregularity, or if God shall withdraw you from it; floating, as I may say, between heaven and hell; on the poise between these two destinies, you could be indifferent on the decision? Hope is the sweetest and most flattering choice; and for that reason you would incline to its side? Ah! my dear hearer, were there no other reason to be afraid than that of hoping, you would not be prudent to live in this profound calm.
But such is not even your case; things are far indeed from being equal; in this shocking doubt which every sinner may inwardly form, — ei Shall I expire in mine iniquity, in the sin in which I actually and have so long lived; or shall I not die in it?" — the first part is infinitely the most probable. For, first, your own powers are not sufficient to regain that sanctity you have lost; a foreign, supernatural, and heavenly aid is necessary, of which nobody can assure you; in place of which, you need only yourself to remain in your sin: there is nothing in your nature which can resuscitate the grace lost, no seed of salvation, no principle of spiritual life; and you bear in your heart a fatal source of corruption which may every day produce fresh fruits of death: it is more likely, therefore, that you shall die in your guilt than it is that you shall be converted. Secondly, not only is a foreign and divine aid necessary, but also an aid uncommon, rare, denied to almost all sinners; in short, a miracle for your conversion; for the conversion of the sinner is one of the greatest prodigies of grace, and you know yourself that such instances are extremely rare in the world; now and then some fortunate soul whom God writhdraweth from licentiousness. But these are remarkable exertions of the Divine mercy, and not in the common track. In place of which, you have only to let things pursue their natural course, and you shall die such as you are: God hath only to follow his ordinary laws, and your destruction is certain; the possibility of your salvation is founded solely on a singular effort of his power and mercy; the certitude of your condemnation is founded upon the commonest of all rules: in a word, that you perish, is the ordinary lot of sinners who resemble you; that you are converted, is a singularity of which there are few examples. Thirdly, in order to continue in your present state, you have only to follow your inclinations, to yield yourself up to yourself, and quietly to allow yourself to be carried down by the stream; to do this you have occasion for neither effort nor violence; but to return, ah! you must break through inclinations fortified by time; you must hate and resist yourself, tear yourself from the dearest objects, break asunder the tenderest ties, make the most heroical efforts, you who are incapable of the commonest ones. Now, I demand, if, in a matter to come, or in uncertain events, we ever augur in favour of those who have most obstacles to surmount, and most difficulties to struggle against? Doth not the most easy always appear the most probable? Soften as much as you please this truth in your mind; view it in the most favourable light; this proposition on your eternal destiny is the most incontestable of the Christian morality. It is beyond comparison more certain that I shall never be converted, and that I shall die in my sin, than that the Lord shall have pity upon me, and at last withdraw me from it: this is your situation; and, if you can still be indifferent, and flatter yourself in such a state, your security, my dear hearer, terrifies me.
But I go farther, and I entreat you to listen to me. The sinner who, without labouring to reclaim himself, assures himself of conversion, presumes not in a fearful uncertainty, and where every thing seems to conclude against him, but also in spite of the moral certainty, as we are taught by faith, that he is lost. Here are my proofs: first, you expect that God shall convert you; but how do you expect it? By continually placing new obstacles in the way of his grace; by rivetting your chains; by aggravating your yoke; by multiplying your crimes; by neglecting every opportunity of salvation, which, his solemnities, his mysteries, and even the terrors of his word offer to you; by always remaining in the same dangers; by changing nothing in your manners, your pleasures, your intimacies; in short, in every thing which continues to nourish in your heart that fatal passion from which you hope that grace shall deliver you. How! the foolish virgins are rejected, solely for having negligently and without fervour awaited the bridegroom; and you, faithless soul, who await him while completing the measure of your crimes, you dare to flatter yourself that you shall be more favourably treated?
Secondly. Grace is accorded only to tears, to solicitations, to eager desires; it requires to be long courted. Now, do you pray? At least, do you entreat? Do you imitate the importunity of the widow of the Gospel? Do you labour, like Cornelius, the Gentile, to attract that grace by charities and other Christian works? Do you say to the Lord, every day, with the prophet, ie Hide not thy face from me, O Lord, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit?" Ah! you say to him, " Lord, thou wilt draw me to thyself; in vain I resist thee; thou wilt, at last, break asunder my chains; however great be the corruption of my heart, thou wilt ultimately change it." Fool! what more likely to repeal a gift than the temerity which exacts it, and even in the very moment when most unworthy dares to claim it as a right! Fresh argument against you; grace is reserved for the lowly and the fearful, who dread being refused what is not owing to them: it is upon these souls that the Spirit of God relieth, and taketh delight in his working wonders; on the contrary, " he despiseth the presumptuous sinner, and knoweth him afar off."
Thirdly. The grace of conversion which you so confidently expect, is, as you know, the greatest of all gifts. Nevertheless, as you know still better, there is scarcely a sinner more unworthy of it than yourself; unworthy through the nature of your disorders, of which you alone know the infamy and the enormity; unworthy through the lights and inspirations you have a thousand times misused; unworthy through the favours of the mysteries and of the truths which you have always neglected; unworthy through the sequel, even of your natural inclinations, which heaven, at your birth, had formed so happy and so tractable to truth, and which you have turned into melancholy means of vice; unworthy through the iniquitous derisions which you have made of piety, and those impious desires, so injurious to the truth of God, which have a thousand times led you to wish that all we say of a future state were a fable; lastly, unworthy through that profound security in which you live, which, before God, is the worst of all your crimes. Now, I ask nothing here but equity; if only a single sinner were to be excluded from that grace of conversion which you expect, you would have every reason to dread that the exclusion fell upon you, and that you were to be that single child of curse, separated as an anathematized from all his brethren. But, if almost all be deprived of that blessing, ah! my dear hearer, ought you to reckon upon it as secure? And what have you but a superabundance of sins to distinguish you from others? If the hope of the presumptuous sinner perish in general with himself, can you suppose that your salvation shall be accomplished by the same way in which all others perish? I know that we ought never to despair; but humble confidence is very different from presumption: humble confidence, after having tried all, counts upon nothing, and you depend upon all without having ever tried any thing. Humble trust considers the mercy of the Lord only as the supplement of the defects of penitence, and you make it the refuge of your crimes; humble trust, with fear and trembling, awaits the pardon of those faults it hath lamented, and you coolly expect that those should be forgiven of which you never mean to repent. I know, and I again repeat, that we ought never to despair; but were it possible that despair could be legitimate, ah! it would be when hope is presumptuously encouraged.
But age will mellow the passions, says inwardly the sinner here: enticing opportunities will not always come in the way; circumstances more favourable for salvation will occur; and what is at present impossible, shall one day perhaps be done when a thousand actual impediments shall be removed. My God! in this manner doth the unfortunate soul deceive himself; and it is through an illusion so palpable that the demon seduces almost all men, the wisest as the most foolish, the most enlightened as the most credulous, the great as the common people. For, say, my dear hearer, when you promise yourself that one day the Lord shall at last have pity upon you, you no doubt promise yourself that he will change your heart; now, why do you depend upon this change, so necessary to your salvation, more in future than at present? In the first place, shall your disposition for penitence be then more favourable? Shall your heart find it easier to break asunder its chains? What! inclinations deeply rooted through time and years shall be more easily torn out? A torrent which has already hollowed out its bed, shall be more easy to turn aside? Are you in your senses when you say so? Ah! even now, it appears so difficult to repress your inordinate passions, though yet in your infancy, and consequently more tractable and easy to regulate! You delay your conversion only because it would cost you too much to conquer yourself on certain points: how! you are persuaded that it will cost you less in the end; that this fatal plant, then become a tree, shall be more pliable; that this wound, inveterate and of longer standing, shall be more easy to cure, and shall require less grievous remedies? You expect resources and facilities toward penitence from time; it is time, my brethren, which will deprive you of all those yet remaining.
Secondly. Shall grace be either more frequent in future, or more victorious? But, granting it even to be so, your cupidity, then more powerful, opposing greater impediments, the grace which would now triumph over your heart, and change you into a thorough penitent, will no longer then but slightly agitate you, and excite within you only weak and unavailing desires of repentance. But you have little reason to flatter yourself even with this hope: the more you irritate the goodness of God by delaying your conversion, the more will he withdraw himself from you: every moment diminishes m some measure his favours and his kindness. Recollect, that when you first began to deviate from his ways, not a day passed without his operating within you some movement of salvation, troubles, remorses, and desires of penitence. At present if you attend to it, these inspirations are more rare: it is only on certain occasions that your conscience is aroused; you are partly familiarized with your disorders. Ah! my dear hearer, you easily see that your insensibility will be only increased in the sequel: God will more and more retire from you, and will deliver you up to a reprobate feeling, and to that fatal tranquillity which is the consummation and the most dreadful punishment of iniquity. Now I ask, are you not absurd in thus marking out, for your conversion, a time in which you shall never have had fewer aids on the part of grace, and less facility on the part of your heart?
I might still add, that the more you delay, the more you accumulate debts; the more you enrich the treasure of iniquity, the more crimes you shall have to expiate, the more rigorous shall your reparation have to be, and consequently the more shall your penitence be difficult. Slight austerities, some retrenchments, some Christian charities, would perhaps suffice at present to acquit you before your Judge, and to appease his justice. But, in the sequel, when the abundance of your crimes shall have risen above your head, and time and years shall have blunted, if not totally destroyed, in your memory, the multitude and the flagrancy of your iniquities; ah! no reparation on your part shall then be sufficiently rigorous, no mortification sufficiently austere, no humiliation sufficiently profound, no pleasure, however innocent, which you must not deny yourself, no indulgence which will not be criminal: holy excesses of penitence will be necessary to compensate the duration and the enormity of your crimes; it will require you to quit all, to tear yourself from every thing, to sacrifice your fortune, interests, and conveniency, perhaps to condemn yourself to a perpetual retreat, for it is only through these means that the great sinners are recalled. Now, if slight rigours, which would at present be sufficient amends, appear so insupportable, and disgust you at the idea of a change, shall penitence be more alluring, when more toils, and steps a thousand times more bitter, present themselves in its train? My God! upon the affair of salvation alone it is that men are capable of such wilful mistakes. Ah! my brethren, of what avail are great lights, extent of genius, deep penetration, and solid judgment in the management of earthly matters, and of vain undertakings which shall perish with us, if we are children in the grand work of eternity?
And allow me to conclude this part of my Discourse with a final reason, which, I trust will serve to convince you. You consider the vain hope of a conversion as a feeling of grace and salvation, and as a proof that the Lord visiteth you, and that he hath not yet delivered you up to all the inveteracy of sin. But, my dear hearer, the Lord cannot visit you in his mercy without inspiring you with salutary troubles and fears on the state of your conscience: all the operations of grace begin with these; consequently, while you continue tranquil, it is evident that God treateth you according to all the rigour of his justice, and that he exerciseth upon you the most terrible of his chastisements; I mean to say, his neglect and the denial of his grace. Peace in sin, the security in which you live, is therefore the most infallible mark that God is no longer with you, and that this grace, which in the criminal soul always works trouble and anxiety, dread and distrust, is totally extinguished in yours. Thus you comfort yourself on what ought to excite your justest fears: the most deplorable signs of your reprobation form in your mind the most solid foundation of your hope: trust in sin is the most terrible chastisement with which God can punish the sinner, and you draw from it a prejudication of salvation and of penitence. Tremble, if any remains of faith be yet left you: this calm is the forerunner of a shipwreck: you are stamped with the mark of the reprobate; reckon not upon a mercy which treats you so much the more rigorously, as it permits you to hope and to depend upon it.
The error of the majority of sinners is that of imagining that the grace of conversion is one of those sudden miracles by which the whole face of things is changed in the twinkling of an eye; which plants, tears up, destroys, rears up at the first stoke, and in an instant creates the new man, as the earthly man was formerly drawn from nothing. The grossest of all mistakes, my dear hearer; conversion is in general a slow and tardy miracle, the fruit of cares, of troubles, of fears, and of bitter anxieties.
The days, saith Jesus Christ, which are to precede the utter destruction of this visible world and the coming of the Son of Man, shall be days of trouble and woe; nations shall rise against nations, and kings against kings; horrible signs shall be seen in the firmament long before the King of Glory himself shall appear; all nature shall announce, by its disorder, the approaching destruction and the coming of its God. Ah! my dear hearer, behold the image of the change of your heart, of the destruction of that world of passions within you, of the coming of the Son of Man into your soul. Long before that great event, internal wars shall take place; you shall feel your passions excited one against the other; blessed signs of salvation shall appear upon your person; all shall be shaken, all shall be disturbed; all within you shall announce the destruction of the carnal man, the coming of the Son of God, the end of your iniquities, the renovation of your soul, a new heaven and a new earth. Ah! when these blessed things shall come to pass, then lift up your head, and say that your redemption draweth nigh; then be confident, and adore the awful but consolatory preparations of a God who is on the eve of entering into your heart. But, while nothing is shaken within you, and no change appears in your soul; while your heart faileth not for fear, and your passions, still tranquil, remain undisturbed but by the obstacles which retard their gratification; ah! mistrust those who shall tell you that the Lord draweth nigh; that you will immediately find him in the sanctuary, I mean to say, in the participation of the sacrament, in those retired places to which you shall perhaps go to comfort him in the person of his afflicted members; who will be continually saying, " Lo, here is Christ fi believe them not; they are false prophets, saith Jesus Christ: no sign of his coming hath taken place within you; in vain you expect and presume; it is not in this manner that he will come; trouble and dread walk before him; and the soul who continues tranquil, and yet trusts, shall never be visited by him.
"Happy, therefore, is the man that feareth always:" he whose virtues do not entirely quiet him upon his eternal destiny, who trembles lest the imperfections mingled with his most laudable works not only destroy their whole merit before God, but even rank them among those which God shall punish on the day of his wrath. But what idea, will some one say to me, do you give us of the God we worship! An idea worthy of him, my brethren; and, in my second part, I shall prove to you, that false trust is injurious to him, and forms to itself the idea of a God, who is neither true, wise, just, nor even merciful.
Part II. — It is rather surprising, my brethren, that false trust should pretend to find even in religion motives which authorize it, and should mistake the most criminal of all dispositions, for a sentiment of salvation, and a fruit of faith and of grace. In effect, the sinner, who without wishing to quit his irregularities, promises himself a change, alleges, in justification of his presumption, first, the power of God, who ruleth over the hearts of men, who can change in an instant the will, and to whom it is equally easy to produce the child of promise from the sterility of old age, as from the fecundity of youth. Secondly, his justice, for having formed man of clay, that is to say, weak, and with almost unconquerable tendencies to pleasure, he ought to have some consideration for his weakness, and more readily pardon faults which are, as it were, unavoidable to him. Lastly, his mercy, always ready to receive the repentant sinner. Now, my brethren, it is easy to take from false trust pretexts so unworthy of piety, and show that the disposition of the presuming sinner insults God in all the above mentioned perfections. Allow me to explain my reasons, and continue to honour me with your attention.
In the first place, when you conceive a powerful God, master of hearts, and changing at his pleasure the rebellious wills of men, is it not true, that you at the same time conceive a power regulated by wisdom, that is to say, which doth nothing but in conformity with that order it hath established? Now, the presumptuous sinner attributes to God a blind power, which acts indiscriminately. For, though he can whatever he willeth, nevertheless, as he is infinitely wise, there is an order in his wills; he willeth not at random, and whatever he doth hath its eternal reasons in the depth of his divine wisdom. Now it is evident that this divine wisdom would not be sufficiently justified before men, if the grace of conversion were to be at last accorded to false trust. For say, in order to merit the greatest of all favours, it would then be sufficient to have a thousand times rejected it? The righteous man, who continually crucifies his flesh, who incessantly groans in order to obtain the precious gift of perseverance, would then have no better claim than a sinner, who without having ever placed himself in a situation to merit it, hath always promised it to himself? It would then be perfectly indifferent either to serve the Lord, and to walk uprightly before him, or to pursue the erroneous ways of the passions, since, at the end, the lot of each would be the same? Much more, it would then be a misfortune, a folly, a lost trouble, to have carried the yoke from youth, since nothing would be risked by delaying it? The maxims of debauchery, on the love of pleasures in the early stage of fife, and on deferring repentance to the years of decrepitude and debility, would then be the rules of wisdom and of religion? The wonders of grace would then serve but to tempt the fidelity of the just, but to authorize the impenitence of sinners, but to destroy the fruit of the sacrament, and to augment the ills of the church? Is this the God whom we worship? And would he be so wonderful in his gifts, according to the expression of the prophet, if he were to dispense them with so little either of order or of wisdom?
In effect, if the empire which God hath over hearts could serve as a resource for a presumptuous sinner, upon that footing the conversion of all men would be certain, even of those infidels who know not the Lord, of those barbarous nations who have never heard his name. Doth God not rule over the hearts of all men? Who hath ever withstood his will? Is he not able to make his light shine through the profoundest darkness, to change into lambs the fiercest lions, and to turn his enemies into the most intrepid confessors of his name? Is the heart of an Indian, or of a savage, a more arduous conquest to him than that of a presumptuous sinner? Is not every thing alike easy to him? He hath only to say, and it is done. — Yet, nevertheless, would you thereupon be willing that your eternal destiny should run the same hazard as that of a savage, who, in the heart of his forests, almost inaccessible to the preaching of the Gospel, worships absurd and monstrous divinities? God may raise up in his favour, evangelical ministers, who, along with the lights of faith, shall bring grace and salvation to his soul. You say that it requires one of those miraculous efforts of the Almighty power to overcome all the difficulties which apparently render the conversion of that unfortunate creature impossible: on the contrary, that you, surrounded with the aids of sacrament, with the light of the doctrine and of instruction, are surely in a situation much more likely to secure your salvation, and consequently, that you have infinitely more ground to promise it to yourself. Ah! my dear hearer, you deceive yourself, and I assure you, that, to me, the salvation of that infidel appears less hopeless than yours. He has never abused favours, which he has never received; and hitherto you have unworthily rejected all those which have been offered to you: he has never resisted that truth which he has never known, and you iniquitously withstand it: the first impulse of grace will triumph over his heart, and the strongest impressions are ineffectual against the inflexibility of yours: a single ray of light will disclose to him errors and truths till then unknown, and all the lights of faith are unable to disturb the tranquillity of your passions: he holds out to the mercy of God only the misfortune of his birth, only sins almost involuntary, only wretchedness rather than crimes, all of them proper motives to affect him, and you hold out to him affected acts of ingratitude and vile perseverance in obstinacy, all subjects calculated to remove him for ever from you. Ah! it is easy for the Lord to bear upon the wings across the seas apostolical men; his angels, when he pleaseth, know to transport his prophets from the land in which he is worshipped, even into Babylon, in order to visit a just man exposed to the fury of lions; but if any thing were difficult to him, it would be that of conquering a rebellious heart, of recalling a soul born in the kingdom of light, surrounded with all the succours of faith, penetrated with all the feelings of grace, aided by all the examples of piety, and, nevertheless, always firm in its errors. It is an illusion, therefore, in his power to search for vain motives of security; God could operate so many other prodigies in favour of a thousand sinners whom he forsaketh, although they be not so unworthy as you of his grace. It is a dangerous maxim to regulate his will upon his power.
The second error which authorizes false trust, has its foundation in the unjust idea formed of the divine justice. They persuade themselves that, man being born with violent inclinations for pleasure, our errors are more worthy of the pity than of the anger of the Lord; and that our weakness alone solicits his favour, in place of arming his indignation against us.
But, in the first place, it might be said to you, that the corruption of your nature comes not from the Creator; that it is the work of man, and the punishment of his sin; that the Lord had created man righteous; and consequently, that this unfortunate tendency, of which you complain, is an irregularity which God must punish whenever you fall under it; how then can you suppose that it shall serve you as an excuse? It is in consequence of it that you are a child of wrath and an outcast vessel: how do you pretend to draw reasons from thence, in order to enter into contestation even with God, and to challenge his j ustice? It is, in a word, in consequence of it that you are unworthy of all favours:^how dare you to hold it out as a reason for demanding them?
Secondly. It might be said to you, that whatever be the weakness of our will, man is always master of his desires; that he hath been left under the charge of his own resolution; that his passions have no more empire over him than what he himself chooses to allow them; and that water, as well as fire, hath been placed in our way, in order to allow a perfect freedom of choice to our own will. Ah! I could herein attest your own conscience, and demand of you, above all, of you, my dear hearer, if, in spite of your weakness, whenever you have forsaken the law of God, you have not felt that it wholly depended upon yourself to have continued faithful? If piercing lights have not discovered to you all the horror of your transgression; if secret remorses have not turned you away from it; if you have not then hesitated between pleasure and duty; if, after a thousand internal deliberations, and those secret vicissitudes, where one while grace, and the other while cupidity gained the victory, you have not at last declared for guilt, as if still trembling, and ^almost unable to harden yourself against yourself? I might go even farther, and demand of you, if, considering the happy inclinations of modesty and of reserve, the dispositions with which God had favoured you at your birth, the innocency of virtue would not have been more natural, more pleasing, and more easy to you than the licentiousness of vice; demand of you, if you have not suffered more by being unfaithful to your God, than it would have cost you to have been righteous; if you have not been obliged to encroach more upon yourself, to do more violence to your heart, to bear with more vexations, to force your way through more intricate and more arduous paths? Ah! what then can the justice of God find in your dissipations which doth not furnish to him fresh matter of severity and anger against you?
Lastly. It might be added, that, if you are born weak, yet the goodness of God hath environed your soul with a thousand aids; that it is that well-beloved vine which he hath fostered with the tenderest care, which he hath fenced with a deep moat, and fortified with an inaccessible tower; I mean to say, that your soul hath been as if defended from its birth by the succours of the sacrament, by the lights of the doctrine, by the force of examples, by continual inspirations of grace, and perhaps by the special aids likewise of a holy and a Christian education provided for you b,y the Lord, and which so many others have wanted. Ingrate! wherein could you be able to justify your weakness before the Lord, and to interest his justice itself to use indulgence toward you? Ah! what do your transgressions present to him but the abuses of his grace, and means of salvation perverted, through the licentiousness of your will, into occasions of sin?
But let us leave all these reasons, and tell me, that weakness of which you complain, and for which you pretend that God will have consideration, is it not your own handwork, and the fruit of your own special irregularities? Recollect here, those happy days when your innocence had not been wrecked; were your passions then so difficult to be overcome? Did modesty, temperance, fidelity, piety, then appear to you as impracticable virtues? Did you find it impossible to resist occasions? Were your tendencies to pleasure so violent that you were not then their master? Ah! whence comes it then that they now tyrannize with such dominion over your heart? Is it not, that having, through a fatal negligence, allowed them to usurp the command, they have ever since been too powerful to be conquered? Have you not forged, with your own hands, these chains? Look around you, and see if so many just, who bear (and from their earliest youth) the yoke, are even tempted in situations in which you are always certain to perish. Ah! why then should you complain of a weakness which you have brought upon yourself? Why should you count, that what must irritate the Lord against you shall serve to appease him? What doth he see, when he sees the weakness of your inclinations? He sees the fruit of your crimes, the consequences of a licentious and sensual life. Is it here that you dare to appeal to justice itself, to that justice before which the righteous themselves entreat not to be judged? My God! upon what shall the sinner not flatter himself, since, in the most terrible of thy perfections, he finds reasons of confidence?
The only rational and legitimate conclusion which it is permitted to you to draw from your own weakness, and from these inclinations for the world, and for pleasures, which, in spite of your resolutions, hurry you away, is, that you have more occasion to watch, to lament, and to pray, than others; that, with more studious care, you ought to shun the dangers and the attractions of the senses and of the flesh. But then it is that you believe yourself invincible, when we exhort you to fly all profane conversations, suspicious intercourses, doubtful pleasures, lascivious spectacles, and assemblies of sin. Ah! you then defend yourself upon the ground that your innocence is in no degree injured there: you resign to weak souls all the precautions of flight and of circumspection: you tell us that every one must feel and know himself, and that those who are weak enough to be injured there, should in prudence keep away from them. But how can you expect that God shall have consideration for a weakness for which you have so little yourself? You are weak when there is question of excusing your crimes to him; you are no longer so, when, upon that ground, it is necessary to adopt painful measures in order to continue faithful to him.
But you will say, that if every thing be to be dreaded from his justice, at least his mercies are infinite; when his goodness should find nothing in us proper to touch him, would it not find motives sufficiently pressing in itself? This would be the third illusion of false trust which I should have to overthrow; but, besides that I have elsewhere sufficiently mentioned it, it is almost time to conclude. I mean, therefore, my dear hearer, to ask you only one question: When you say that the goodness of God is infinite, what do you pretend to say? That he never punishes guilt? You would not dare to mean so. That he never abandons the sinner? The Sauls, the Antiochuses, the Pharaohs, have taught you the contrary. That the immodest, the worldly, the revengeful, the ambitious, shall be alike saved as the just? You know that nothing unclean shall enter heaven. That he hath not created man to render him eternally miserable? But wherefore hath he prepared a hell? That he hath already given you a thousand marks of his goodness? But that is what ought to overwhelm your ingratitude on the past, and to make you to dread every thing for the future. That he is not so terrible as it is said? But nothing is told of his justice but what he has told you himself. That he would be under the necessity of damning almost all men were all that we say true? But the gospel declares to you, in express terms, that few shall be saved: that he punisheth not but at the worst? But every rejected grace may be the term of his mercies. That it costs him nothing to forgive? But hath he not the interests of his glory to attend to? That little is required to disarm him? But a change must take place, and the changing of the heart is the greatest of all his works. That that lively trust which you have in his goodness can come only from him? But whatever leads not to him, by leading to repentance, can never come from him. What then do you mean to say? That he will not reject the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart? And behold, my dear hearer, what I have all along been preaching to you. Turn to the Lord, and then place your trust in him; whatever your crimes may be, his mercy is always open to the repentant sinner; throw yourself unreservedly upon his goodness for the permanence of your conversion, for perseverance in his service, for victory over the numerous obstacles which the enemy to salvation will continually be throwing in the way of your holy desires: the grace which he doth, in inspiring the feelings of a sincere penitence, is always a blessed presage of those which he prepareth: never mistrust his mercy; there is nothing but what may be expected from him, when it is the sorrow of having offended him which entreats it; never allow yourself to be cast down by the remembrance of your past iniquities; whatever can be weeped can be pardoned: lock up in the bosom of his mercy the whole duration of the days which you have employed in offending him; they will be as though they had never been: from the moment that you shall begin to serve him, you will begin to increase before him; a thousand years are only a day in his eyes, from the moment that your crimes are terminated by a sincere change: he is the God of sinners, the Benefactor of the ungrateful, the Father of prodigal children, the Shepherd of strayed sheep, the friend of Samaritans; in a word, all the consolations of faith seem to be for the repentant sinner.
But if you continue to promise yourself, that, at last, the time will come, when you shall seriously think upon your salvation without doing it still; ah! remember, my dear hearer, that it is in that very way that almost all sinners have perished, and that it is the high-road to death in sin. Remember, that the sinner who often vainly desires is never converted. Even the more you feel within you these unproductive impulses of salvation, depend upon it that the more is your measure filled, and that every rejected grace draws you a degree nearer to hardness of heart: comfort yourself not upon desires which hasten your ruin, and which, in all times, have been the lot of the reprobate; and say often to the Lord, with the prophet, How long, O my God! shall I amuse the secret anxieties of my soul with vain projects of penitence? How long shall I see my days flowing rapidly on in promising to my heart, in order to quiet it in its disorders, a sorrow and a repentance which are more and more distant from me? How long shall the enemy, taking advantage of my weakness, employ so gross an error to seduce me? Ah! dissipate this illusion which leads me astray; regard these feeble desires of salvation as the cries of a conscience which cannot be happy without thee; accept these timid beginnings of penitence; favourably attend to them now, O my God! when to me it seems that thy grace renders them more lively and more sincere; and complete, by thy inward operation, what is yet wanting to the fulness and to the sincerity of this offer; and perfect, in receiving, my desires, in order that they be worthy of the reward which thou promisest to those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
Hear, said the Lord in his prophet, to the unfaithful soul, you who live in ease and in pleasures, and who nevertheless hope in me, sterility and widowhood shall at once burst upon your heads; sterility, that is to say, that you shall no longer be fit to bear the fruits of penitence; cultivation and watering shall be in vain; the power of my word, the virtue of my sacraments, the grace of my mysteries, all care shall be unavailing, and you shall no longer be but a withered tree alloted to the fire: widowhood, that is to say, I will for ever forsake you; I will leave you single; I will deliver you up to your inclinations, and to the false peace of your passions; I will no longer be your God, your protector, your spouse; I will for ever forsake you.
But may I here finish my ministry, my brethren, with the words formerly made use of by Jesus Christ, in finishing his mission to an ungrateful people? You have refused to believe in me, said he to them a few days before his death; you have shut your eyes against the light; you have had ears, yet you heard not; I go, and you shall die in you blindness. If you were still blind, and if you had never known the truth, your sin would be more excuseable; but at present, you see, I have announced to you the truths which my Father had taught me, and therefore your sin is without excuse: your obstinacy is consummate; you have rejected that salvation which shall be offered to you no more, and the guilt of the truth despised must for ever be upon your head.
Great God! should this then be the price of my toils, and the whole fruit of my ministry? Could the unworthiness of the instrument, which thou hast employed to announce thy word, have destroyed its efficacy, and placed a fatal impediment to the progress of the gospel? No, my dear brethren, the virtue of the word of the cross is not attached to that of the minister who announces it. In the hands of the Lord, clay can give sight to the blind; and, when he pleaseth, the walls of Jericho fall at the sound of the weakest trumpets. I trust then in the Lord for you, my brethren, that having received his word with gladness, as Paul formerly said to the believers of Corinth, that, having received it, not as the word of man, but as the word of God, it shall fructify in you; and that, on the awful day of judgment, when account shall be demanded from me of my ministry, and from you of the fruit which you have reaped from it, I shall be your defence and your Justification, and you my glory and my crown. So do I ardently wish it.