Page:Sermons by John-Baptist Massillon.djvu/294

 pleasures, your  pains  and  time  should  be  lost:  your  uncertainties are efforts  which  you  make  to  defend  yourself  against  a  remnant of faith,  which  still  inwardly  enlightens  you,  rather  than  a  proof that you  have  already  lost  it. Seek no  longer,  then,  to  convince yourself; rather  endeavour  to  oppose  no  more  that  internal  conviction which  enlightens  and  condemns  you. Follow the  dictates of your  own  heart;  be  reconciled  to  yourself;  allow  a  conscience to speak,  which  never  fails  to  plead  within  you  for  faith,  against your own  excesses;  in  a  word,  hearken  to  yourself,  and  you  will be a  believer.

But it  is  admitted,  you  will  say,  that  if  nothing  more  were  to  be required  than  to  believe,  that  would  easily  be  subscribed  to. This is the  second  pretext  of  the  sinners  who  delay;  it  is  the  want  of grace,  and  they  await  it:  conversion  is  not  the  work  of  man,  and it belongs  to  God  alone  to  change  the  heart.

Now, I  say,  that  this  pretext,  so  vulgar,  so  often  repeated  in the  world,  and  so  continually  in  the  mouth  of  almost  all  those who live  in  guilt;  if  we  consider  the  sinner  who  alleges  it,  it  is  unjust; if  we  view  it  on  the  part  of  God,  on  whom  he  lays  the  blame, it is  rash  and  ungrateful;  if  we  examine  it  in  itself,  it  is  foolish  and unwarrantable.

In the  first  place,  if  we  consider  the  sinner  who  alleges  it,  it  is unjust;  for  you  complain  that  God  hath  not  yet  touched  you,  that you feel  no  relish  for  devotion,  and  that  you  must  wait  the  coming of that  relish  before  you  can  think  of  changing  your  life. But, full of passions  as  you  are,  can  you  reasonably  expect  or  exact  of  God that he  shall  ever  make  you  to  feel  a  decided  inclination  for  piety? Would you  that  your  heart,  still  plunged  in  debauchery,  feel  the pure delights  and  the  chaste  attractions  of  virtue? You are  similar to a  man  who,  nourishing  himself  with  gall  and  wormwood,  should afterward complain  that  every  thing  feels  bitter  to  his  palate. You say, that  if  God  wish  you  to  serve  him,  in  his  power  alone  it  is  to give  you  a  relish  for  his  service;  you,  who  every  day  defile  your heart by  the  meanest  excesses;  you  who  every  moment  place  a fresh  chaos  between  God  and  you;  you,  in  a  word,  who,  by  new debaucheries, finally  extinguish  in  your  soul  even  those  sentiments of natural  virtue,  those  happy  impressions  of  innocence  and  of  regularity born  with  you,  which  might  have  been  the  means  of  recalling you to  virtue  and  to  righteousness. O man! art thou  then  unjust only when  there  is  question  of  accusing  the  wisdom  and  the  justice of thy  God?

But I  say  farther,  that  were  God  even  to  operate  in  your  heart that relish  for,  and  those  feelings  of,  salvation,  which  you  await, dissolute and  corrupted  as  you  are,  would  you  even  feel  the  operation of  his  grace? Were he  to  call  upon  you,  plunged  as  you  now are in  the  pleasures  of  a  life  altogether  worldly,  would  you  even hear his  voice? Were he  to  touch  your  heart,  would  that  feeling of grace  have  any  consequence  for  your  conversion,  extinguished as it  would  immediately  be  by  the  ardour  and  the  frenzy  of  profane passions? And, after  all,  this  God  of  longanimity  and  of  patience