not long alarm us; and to the misery of a departure from virtue, you will add the misery of ignorance and security.
Such is the inevitable lot of a lukewarm and unfaithful life: passions which we have too much indulged. " Young lions," says a prophet, which " have been nourished without precaution, at length grow up, and devour the careless hand which has even assisted to strengthen and render them formidable." The passions, arrived to a certain point, gain a complete ascendancy: in vain you then try to regain yourself. The time is past; you have fostered the profane fire in your heart, it must at last break out; you have nourished the venom within you, it must now spread and gain upon you, and the time is past for any application to medicine; you should have taken it in time. At the commencement the disease was not irremediable; you have allowed it to strengthen, you have irritated it by every thing which could inflame and render it incurable; it must now be conqueror, and you the victim of your own indiscretion and indulgence.
Do you not likewise say, my brethren, that you have the best intentions in the world; that you wish you could act much better than you do; and though you have the sincerest desires for salvation, yet a thousand conjunctures happen in life, where we forget all our good intentions, and must be saints to resist their impressions? This is exactly what we tell you; that in spite of all your pretended good intentions, if you do not fly, struggle, watch, pray, and continually take the command over yourself, a thousand occasions will occur where you will no longer be master of your own weakness. This is what we tell you, that nothing but a mortified and watchful life can place us beyond the reach of temptation and danger; that it is ridiculous to suppose we shall continue faithful in those moments when violently attacked, when we bear a heart weakened, wavering, and already on the verge of falling; that none but the house built upon a rock can resist the winds and the tempest; and, in a word, that we must be holy, and firmly established in virtue, to live free from guilt.
And when I say that we must be holy, — alas! my brethren, the most faithful and fervent Christians, with every inclination mortified as far as the frailty of our nature will permit; imaginations purified by prayer, and minds nourished in virtue and meditation on the law of God, frequently find themselves in such terrible situations that their hearts sink within them; their imaginations become troubled and deranged; they see themselves in those melancholy agitations where they float for a long time between victory and death; and like a vessel struggling against the waves, in the midst of an enraged ocean, they can only look for safety from the Almighty commander of winds and tempests. And you, with a heart already half seduced, with inclinations at least bordering upon guilt, would wish your weakness to be proof against all attacks, and the most powerful temptations to find you always tranquil and inaccessible? You would wish, with your lukewarm, sensual, and worldly morals, that on these occasions your soul should be gifted
