Page:Sermons by John-Baptist Massillon.djvu/48

22 expiated them: you are not converted; this great stroke, this grand change of the heart, which regenerates man, has not yet been felt by you. Nevertheless, this situation, so truly dangerous, does not alarm you: sins, which have never been washed away by sincere repentance, and consequently never obliterated from the book of life, appear in your eyes as no longer existing; and you will tranquilly leave this world in a state of impenitence, so much the more dangerous, as you will die without being sensible of your danger. What I say here, is not merely a rash expression, or an emotion of zeal; nothing is more real, or more exactly true: it is the situation of almost all men, even the wisest and most esteemed of the world.

The morality of the younger stages in life is always lax, if not licentious. Age, disgust, and establishment for life, fix the heart, and withdraw it from debauchery: but where are those who are converted? Where are those who expiate their crimes by tears of sorrow and true repentance? Where are those who, having begun as sinners, end as penitents? Show me, in your manner of living, the smallest trace of penitence. Are your graspings at wealth and power, your anxieties to attain the favour of the great, (and by these means an increase of employments and influence,)—are these proofs of it? Would you wish to reckon even your crimes as virtues?—that the sufferings of your ambition, pride, and avarice, should discharge you from an obligation which they themselves have imposed? You are penitent to the world, but are you so to Jesus Christ? The infirmities with which God afflicts you; the enemies he raised up against you; the disgraces and losses with which he tries you; do you receive them all as you ought, with humble submission to his will, and, far from finding in them occasions of penitence, do you not turn them into the objects of new crimes? It is the duty of an innocent soul to receive with submission the chastisements of the Almighty; to discharge, with courage, the painful duties of the station allotted to him, and to be faithful to the laws of the gospel; but do sinners owe nothing beyond this? And yet they pretend to salvation; but upon what claim? To say that you are innocent before God, your own conscience will bear testimony against you. To endeavour to persuade yourselves that you are penitent, you dare not; and you would condemn yourselves through your own mouths. Upon what, then, dost thou depend, O, man! who thus livest so tranquil?

And what renders it still more dreadful is, that, acting in this manner, you only follow the torrent: your morals are the morals of almost all men. You may, perhaps, be acquainted with some still more guilty (for I suppose you to have still remaining some sentiments of religion, and regard for your salvation); but do you know any real penitents? I am afraid we must search the deserts and solitudes for them. You can scarcely particularize, among persons of rank and usage of the world, a small number whose morals and mode of life, more austere and more guarded than the generality, attract the attention, and very likely the censure of the