ambitious, the voluptuous, the indolent, the revengeful, — none are happy, each complains, no one is in his place, every condition has its inconveniences, and sorrows are attached to every station in life. The world is the habitation of the discontented; and the disgusts which accompany virtue, are much more a consequence of the condition of this mortal life, than any imperfection in virtue itself.
Besides, the Almighty has his reasons for leaving the most upright souls below in a state in some respects, always violent and disagreeable to nature: by that, he wishes to disgust us with this miserable life; to make us long for our deliverance, and for that immortal country where nothing shall more be wanting to our happiness.
I feel within me (says the apostle) a fatal law in opposition to the law of God; the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now, if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man; but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? — Behold the most natural effect which the disgusts attached to virtue ought to inspire in a Christian heart: hatred of ourselves; contempt of our present life; a desire for eternal riches; an eager anxiety to go and enjoy God, and to be delivered from all the miseries inseparable from this mortal life.
Besides, were virtue always to be accompanied with sensible consolations; did it continually form for man a happy and tranquil state in this world, it would become a temporal recompense; in devoting ourselves to God, we should no longer seek the good of faith, but the consolations of self-love; we would seek ourselves, while pretending to seek God; we would propose to ourselves in virtue, that conscious tranquillity, in which it places the heart, by delivering it from those violent and restless passions which tear it continually, rather than the observance of the rules and the duties which the law of God imposes on us. The Lord would then have only mercenary and interested worshippers, who would come, not to carry his yoke, but to repose themselves under the shadow of his voice; workmen, who would offer themselves, not so much to labour in his vineyard, and to support the fatigues of the day, and the oppression of the heat, as in order to taste in tranquillity the fruits; servants, who, far from improving their talent for the benefit of their master, would turn it to their own utility, and employ it only for their own advantage.
The upright live by faith: now faith hopes, but enjoys not in this world; all is yet to come for Christians; their country, their riches, their pleasures, their inheritance, their kingdoms; the present is not for them. Here, it is the time of tribulation and affliction;
