each has violated his natural and religious obligations, and particularly those to which his Christian profession engaged him. Let the passionate remember the injustice of their angry transports. Let the covetous remember the many obliquè ways they have taken to amass riches. Let the outrageous, the proud, the slanderous, the revengeful, remember the injuries they have done their neighbours. Let the worldly and voluptuous think of the many vain and rash desires they have had for earthly things. In one word, let each of us review his past conduct; let each weigh his actions in the balances of the sanctuary; and, acknowledging himself a transgressor, a disobedient and rebellious child, unworthy of the love of God, fall at the footstool of his mercy with profound humility. This is the act of repentance so pathetically expressed in the fifty-first psalm: Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin: for I acknowledge my transgressions; and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight. This is the repentance which the church, afraid of the anger of God, expresses in the sixty-fourth of Isaiah: We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities. This is the repentance which Jesus Christ proposes to us in the example of the prodigal son, in these tender words of confession, Father! I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. If our repentance brings us to the foot of God's tribunal, let it bring us there profoundly humbled; for God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble. Let it bring us there deeply affected; for a careless repentance is a treacherous repentance, betraying conscience by its fears, which are not only ineffectual, but even pernicious: just as the uncertain crises of diseases weaken instead of relieving nature.

repentance, however sincere, avails nothing without a propitiatory sacrifice for sin, let us add a holy and fervent VOL. I.

recourse to the blood of Jesus Christ, and to the satisfaction which he presented to God the Father on the cross. This is the faith which is so often recommended to us in Scripture, and to which the Gospel is not afraid of joining the promises of eternal life. If any man sin (says St. John), we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins. We are justified freely (says St. Paul) by God's grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood. Through this Redeemer, God will be reconciled to us; and we shall find grace in his sight, when we present ourselves before him in communion with this great Saviour; for there is no other name given among men whereby we can be saved; his blood alone cleanseth from all sin. What joy, my brethren! to wash in this mystical Jordan! how happy shall we be, if we can lay our hands on the head of this holy victim, that in charging him we may discharge ourselves of all our crimes. Come unto me (says he) all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

As this peace with God is not made in a moment, there must be great efforts to bring our hearts into a state proper for such a reconciliation. Having, then, as well as we are able, collected our own sins before our eyes, let us make some reflections on the horrors of them. And, 1. Let us well examine what we are by natrue, compared with the great God-A little handful of dust and ashes, a little earth kneaded together with blood, miserable little worms, a leaf carried away with the wind, a vapour which the sun exhales and dissipates. Are we not, in comparison of God, infinitely less than a drop of water to the ocean, or a grain of sand to the whole universe? We have a stature of five or six feet, a subsistence in the world of a few years, a life full of infirmities, a death perhaps sudden, but, however, so certain, that. neither reason nor observation can have the least doubt about it: and yet, altogether miserable as we are, misery and nothingness itself, we have dared, or rather we have incessantly presumed, to offend and insult the infinite majesty of our Creator and Lord! this vain shadow vaunts itself against the sun! this drop of water contends with the

ocean! and this ridiculous grain of sand proudly elevates itself against the Creator of the universe! Tell me, I intreat you, is there the least spark of reason in all this? Are we not always fools when we offend God? Is it possible to conceive a blindness equal to ours, when such mean vile creatures as we dare to violate the laws of the Lord of all?

2. Does not our blindness appear yet more strange, if to this we add the power of the God whom we offend? I affirm, it would be folly and stupidity to rebel against him in consideration only of his infinite Majesty, compared with our nothingness: yet if our offences could pass off with impunity, if our meanness could secure us from the strokes of his vengeance, our folly, however great, would only be considerable in itself, and not in its consequences; we should sin against the general dictates of right reason, but we should do nothing contrary to the particular voice of prudence. But it is far otherwise; for the God we offend is arbiter of the death and life of all mankind, the sole dispenser of adversity and prosperity; all creatures are under the laws of his providence, as a great army, which marches by his orders, and obeys all his commands; he has eternal prisons for the punishment of his adversaries; he has dreadful executioners of his justice, to whom he issues his orders, and into whose hands he delivers his criminals, to suffer such vengeance as he commands. All creatures follow his love and hatred; all love and smile on the objects of his favour, all frown at and destroy those who incur his displeasure. He plants, he plucks up; he builds, he destroys; he kills, he makes alive; he raises, he abases; he comforts, he afflicts: and all the destinies of all creatures, their goods and their evils, from the greatest to the smallest things, from the throne to the dunghill, from the loss of life to the fall of one of our hairs, all depend on his will. What wildness, then, so frequently and cruelly to offend an almighty God, a righteous avenging God, who will not justify the wicked, who will not held the sinner guiltless, and who has protested, the wicked shall not stand in the judgment!

3. To this reflection another may be added, which will much contribute to discover the enormity of our sins. Consider how much we are indebted to God, not only for

his patience hitherto, but for that almost infinite number of mercies which he has afforded us, and particularly for calling us to the profession of the Gospel. I own, our actions would be very punishable by the law of God; for God has given it to us; he has naturally engraven it on our hearts; and it is our duty to follow and obey it: but must it not be acknowledged, that we are infinitely more worthy of punishment, when to the voice of his law he has added that of his divine patience, waiting long for our repentance? What has prevented the Lord's executing his great vengeance on us? Why were we not destroyed the first moment we offended him? What, then, shall we say, when this patience shall reckon the days, months, and years of its exercise towards us? What shall we have to answer when it shall accuse us, that instead of employing these days, months, and years to our conversion and sanctification, we have made no other use of them than to increase the number of our sins? But what wil become of us, when, after the voice of the law, and the complaints of patience, we shall find the favours and mercies of God rise up against us one after another and all together join in a thousand reproaches of our ingratitude? It would be enough for each crime to appear in its own turpitude; it would be enough for all our sins together to appear in that horror which their number gives them: but what must we say when there are a thousand sins in one; I mean, when each sin is infinite in its nature? Besides our rebellions against the supreme autho. rity of God, besides our extreme obstinacy and hardness against his patience, each sin is a particular outrage against all the favours we have received of God: and, as his favours have been infinite, so cach of our sins has contained an infinite number of outrages against the Lord.

4. These three reflections may be followed by a fourth, on the indispensable necessity of a lively and profound repentance to reconcile us to God. Let us not flatter ourselves; the God we adore can never renounce his holiness: the love of good, and hatred of evil, are as natural and essential as his omnipotence and infinity: yet must God renounce his holiness, if he receive us into his favour without our renouncing sin. He would have communion with sin, if he had communion with impenitent sinners.

It is then as impossible to unite ourselves to God without repentance, as it is to unite life and death, light and darkness; as impossible as for God to deny himself, or to cease to be. Neither let us flatter ourselves about the quality of this repentance; for it is not a cold and careless repentance; it is not that which consists in words only; it is not that which passes lightly through the mind, and which hardly touches the heart; God requires a penitence which pervades all the powers of the soul; which penetrates to the bottom of them all; which produces sighs, tears, and regrets; which is accompanied with a lively grief, a bitter sadness, not only for having exposed ourselves to punishment, but also for having offended the Lord,, and so drawn down upon ourselves his just indignation. In one word, an habitual and powerful repentance, which breaks the mind and rends the heart, keeps us a long time in that state, and empowers us sincerely to return to righteousness and holiness.

To incline you more effectually to this repentance, let us (I beseech you) lift up our eyes to the mercy of God, and to the blood of covenant, which Jesus Christ hath shed for us. Let us not imagine, while we feel remorse for sin, that there is no balm in Gilead, no consolation in God: doubtless there is; and, were we such as we ought, we might come with boldness to the throne of grace, and be assured of obtaining mercy, and of finding gace to help in time of need. Come now, says God by the prophet, let us reason together; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. And again, Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die, saith the Lord God, and not that he should return from his ways and live? This is the perpetual language of the Gospel; this is the voice of the blood of Christ; these promises declare the remission of our sins, and the blood of Jesus Christ purifies our consciences from dead works. Let us, then, go with faith and hope to the propitiatory, which God in all ages ordained. Let us go with humility to the grace, which calls us. Let us be reconciled to a God, who only seeks to do us good. We have lived long enough under disgrace; let us try to recover his peace, and with his peace the tranquillity and joy which we have lost. Is it any pleasure to those, whe