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tiousness of your past manners; is it not just that God should supply that, by the punishment, and the inward afflictions of the mind? Would you pretend to pass in an instant from the pleasures of the world to those of grace; from the viands of Egypt to the milk and honey of the land of promise, without the Lord having first made you undergo the barrenness and the fatigues of the desert? and, in a word, would you wish that he should not chastise the delights, if I may venture to say so, of guilt, but by those of virtue?

2dly, You have long refused yourself to God, in spite of the most lively inspirations of his grace, which recalled you to the truth and to the light; you have long suffered him to knock at the gate of your heart before you opened it to him; you have disputed, struggled against, wavered, and deferred, before you gave yourself up to him; is it not therefore just that He leave you to solicit for some time before He give himself to you with all the consolations of his grace! The delay and procrastination of the Lord are the just punishment of your own.

But, even admitting these reasons to be less weighty, how do you know if the Lord thereby mean not to render this state of exile, and this separation in which we live from him more hateful to you, and to increase the fervency of your longings for that immortal country, where truth, seen in open day, will always appear lovely, because we shall see it such as it is? How do you know if he mean not thereby to inspire you with fresh remorse for your past crimes, by making you sensible, every moment, of the opposition and feelings of disgust which they have left in your heart to the truth and to righteousness? Lastly, How do you know, if the Lord mean

not, by these sensations of disgust, to perfect the purification of what may as yet be too human in your piety? If he mean not to establish your virtue upon that truth which is always the same, and not upon inclination and fancy, which incessantly change; upon rules which are eternal, and not upon consolations which are transitory; upon faith which never fails to sacrifice visible for the invisible riches, and not upon feeling, which leaves to the world almost the same empire that grace hath over your heart? The piety of fancy goes only a short way, if not sustained and confirmed by the truth. It is dangerous to let our fidelity depend upon the feeling dispositions of an heart which is never an instant the same, and upon which every object makes new impressions. The duties which only please when they console, do not please long; and that virtue which is founded only on fancy, can never sustain itself, because it rests only upon ourselves.

For, after all, if you seek only the Lord in your prayers, provided the way by which He leads you conduct to Him, it ought to matter little to you whether it be by the road of difficulties, or of consolations; for, being the surest, it ought always to appear preferable to all others. If you pray only to attract more aid from heaven in relief of your wants, or in support of your weakness, faith teaching you that prayer, even when accompanied with those sensations of disgust and weariness, obtains the same favours, produces the same effects, and is equally acceptable to God, as that in which sensible consolations are found; and indeed that it may become even more agreeable to the Lord, through your acceptance of the difficulties which you there encounter; faith teaching you this, you ought to be equally faithful to prayer as if

it held out the most sensible attractions, otherwise it would not be God whom you sought, but yourselves; it would not be eternal riches, but vain and fleeting consolations; it would not be the remedies of faith, but the supports of your self-love.

Thus, be ye whom you may who now listen to me, imitate I beseech you the woman of Canaan ; be faithful to prayer, and in the fulfilment of this duty you will find all the rest sustained and rendered easy. If you are a sinner, pray it was through prayer alone that the publican and the sinful woman of the gospel obtained feelings of compunction, and the grace of a thorough penitence; and prayer is the only source and the only path of righteousness. If righteous, still pray; perseverance in faith and piety is promised only to prayer; and by that it was that Job, that David, and that Tobias, persevered to the end. If you live amid sinners, and your duty does not permit you to withdraw yourself from the sight of their irregularities and examples; pray: the greater the dangers, the more necessary does prayer become; as the three children in the flames, and Jonah in the belly of a monster, found safety only through prayer. If the ties of your birth, or of your station, attach you to the courts of kings; pray: Esther, in the court of Ahasuerus, Daniel in that of Darius, and the prophets in the palaces of the kings of Israel, were indebted to prayer alone, for their life and salvation. If you live in retirement, pray: solitude itself becomes a source of danger, if a continual intercourse with God does not defend us against ourselves; as Judith, in the solitude of her house, and the widow Anna in the temple, and the Anthonies in the desert, found the fruit and the security of their retreat in prayer alone. If established in the Vol. I.

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church for the instruction of the people; pray: all the power and all the success of your ministry must depend upon your prayers; as the apostles converted the universe, only because they had appropriated nothing to themselves but prayer and the preaching of the gospel. Lastly, Be ye whom you may, I again repeat it, in prosperity or in indigence, in joy or in affliction, in trouble or in peace, in a state of hope or of despondency, in the paths of vice or in the ways of righteousness, whether advanced in virtue, or still in the first steps of penitence; pray prayer is the safety of all stations, the consolation of all sorrows, the duty of all conditions, the soul of piety, the support of faith, the great foundation of religion, and all religion itself. Shed then upon us O God! that spirit of grace and of prayer which was to be the distinguishing mark of Thy church, and the portion of a new people; and purify our hearts and our lips, that we may be enabled to offer up to thee a pure homage, fervent sighs, and prayers worthy of the eternal riches which thou hast so often promised to those who shall have well entreated them.

SERMON XIV.

FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES.

MATTHEW v. 43.

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy: But I say unto you, love your enemies..

It is commonly believed that a degreee of indulgence and caution had been used by the legislator of the Jews, in publishing the law with regard to forgiveness of injuries; that, being obliged to accommodate it, in some respect, to the weakness of a carnal people, and otherwise persuaded that, of all virtues, the love of ones enemy was the most difficult to the heart of man, he was satisfied with regulating and prescribing bounds for revenge. It was only in order to prevent great excesses, says St. Augustin, that he meant to give authority to lesser ones. That law, like all the others, had its sanctity, its goodness and its justice; but it was rather an

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