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what Jesus Christ has obtained, and which was accomplished at his resurrection.

nature suggests this; but as now beginning to live, for so the truth assures us. Do not regard their souls as perished and annihilated, but as quickened and united to the sovereign source of life. And in this way, correct by the belief of these truths, those erroneous opinions which are so impressed upon our minds, and those feelings of dread which are so natural to us.

3. God created man with two principles of love; the love of God, and the love of self; but governed by this law, that the love of God should be infinite, having only the infinite God for its end; the love of self finite and subordinate to God.

Man, in that state, not only loved himself without sinning; but not to have loved himself, would have been criminal.

This sacrifice, therefore, having been perfected by the death of Jesus Christ, and consummated even in his body by the resurrection, in which the likeness of sinful flesh has been swallowed up in glory, Jesus Christ had done all on his part; it remained only that the sacrifice be accepted of God; and that, as the smoke arose and carried the odor to the throne of God, so Jesus Christ should be in this state of complete immolation, offered, carried up, and received at the throne of God itself; and this was accomplished in his ascension, in which, by his own strength, and by the strength of the Holy Spirit, supplied to him continually, he ascended up on high. He was borne up as the smoke of those victims who were typical of Jesus Christ, was car- But since sin entered into the world, man has ried up buoyant on the air, which is a type of the lost the former principle of love; and this love of Holy Spirit. And the Acts of the Apostles state self, having dwelt alone in this noble mind, made expressly, that he was received into heaven, to as-originally capable of an infinite love, has spread sure us that this holy sacrifice, offered on the earth, was accepted and received into the bosom of God. Such is the fact with regard to our Almighty Lord. Now, let us look at ourselves. When we enter into the church, which is the company of all There is the origin of self-love. It was natural faithful people, or to speak more particularly, of to Adam; and in his state of innocence it was quite God's elect, into which Jesus Christ, by a privilege justifiable; but in consequence of sin, it has become peculiar to the only Son of God, entered at the mo- criminal and unbounded. We see then both the ment of his incarnation, we are offered and sanc-source of this love, and the cause of its enormity tified. This sacrifice continues through life, and is and guilt. It is the same with the desire of domiperfected in death, in which the soul, quitting en- nion, with inactivity, and all other vices; and this tirely the vices and the corrupt affections of earth, idea may be easily transferred to the dread which whose contagion still, throughout life, ministered we have of death. This dread was natural and prosome infection, perfects her own immolation, and per in Adam, when innocent; because as his life is received into the bosom of God. was approved of God, it ought to be so by man; and death would have been dreadful, as terminating a life conformed to the will of God. But since man has sinned, his life has become corrupt, his body and soul mutually hostile to each other, and both hostile to God.

Let us not then sorrow for the death of the faithful, as the heathen who have no hope. We have not lost them at their death. We lost them, so to speak, from that moment when they were really given to God. From that time they were the Lord's. Their life was devoted to him; their actions to mankind regarded only the glory of God. Then in their death they have become entirely separated from sin, and in that moment they have been received of God, and their sacrifice received its completion and its crown.

They have performed their vows; they have done the work which God gave them to do; they have accomplished the work for which alone they were created. The will of God has been done in them, and their will has been absorbed in the will of God. That then which God has joined together, let not our will put asunder; let us destroy or subdue, by a right comprehension of the truth, that sentiment of our corrupted and fallen nature which presents to us only false impressions, and which disturbs by its delusions, the holy feelings that evangelical truth inspires.

forth inordinately in the void which the love of God left desolate; and hence man now loves himself, and all other things for his own sake, i. e. in an infinite degree.

But while this change has poisoned a life once so holy, the love of life has yet remained; and that dread of death, which has remained the same also, and which was justifiable in Adam, is not justifiable in us.

We see, then, the origin of the dread of death, and the cause of its guilt. Let the illumination of faith correct the error of nature.

The dread of death is natural to man; but it was in his state of innocence, because death could not enter paradise, without finishing a life perfectly pure. It was right, then, to hate it, when it went to separate a holy soul from a holy body but then it is right to love it, when it separates a holy soul from an impure body. It was right to shrink from it when it would have broken up the peace between the soul and the body; but not when it terminates an otherwise irreconcilable dissension. In fact, Let us not then regard death as heathens, but as when it would have afflicted an innocent body; Christians, with hope, as St. Paul ordains; for this when it would have deprived the body of the power is the special privilege of believers. Think not of of knowing God; when it would have separated a corpse as a putrid carcass, as lying nature repre- from the soul a body submissive to its will, and cosents it to us; but count it, according to the appre-operating with it; when it would have terminated hensions of faith, as the sacred and eternal temple of the Spirit of God.

For we know that the bodies of the saints are preserved by the Holy Spirit unto the resurrection, which will be accomplished by that Spirit dwelling in them for that purpose. It was on this account that some reverenced relics of the dead; and for this same reason, formerly, the eucharist was placed in the mouth of the dead. But the church has given up this custom, because the eucharist being the bread of life, and of the living, ought not to be administered to the dead.

Do not consider the faithful, who have died in the grace of God as having ceased to live, though

all the blessings of which man knew himself capable, then it was right to abhor it. But, when it terminates an impure life; when it takes away from the body the liberty of sinning; when it rescues the soul from the might of a rebel, who counteracts all his efforts for salvation, it is very improper to retain towards it the same opinions.

We must not then give up this love of life which was given us by nature; for we have received it from God. But then, let it be a love for that same life which God gave, and not for a life directly contrary to it. And whilst we approve the love which Adam felt to the life of innocence, and which Jesus Christ also had for his life, let it be one business to

hate a life, the reverse of that which Jesus Christ oved, and to attain to that death which Jesus Christ experienced, and which happens to a body approved of God; but let us not dread a death, which, as it operates to punish a guilty body, and to cleanse a vitiated body, ought to inspire in us very different feelings, if we have but the principles, in however small a degree, of faith, hope, and charity.

It is one of the great principles of Christianity, that all which happened to Jesus Christ, should take place in the soul and body of each Christian: that as Jesus Christ has suffered during his mortal life, has died to this mortal life, has risen to a new life, has ascended to heaven, where he has sat down at the right hand of the Father; so ought both the body and soul to suffer, die, rise again, and ascend to heaven.

All these things are accomplished during this life in the soul, but not in the body. The soul suffers and dies to sin; the soul is raised to a new life; and then, at last, the soul quits the earth, and ascends to heaven in the holy paths of a heavenly life; as St. Paul says, Our conversation is in heaven.

But none of these things take place in the body during this present life; they will occur hereafter. For, in death, the body dies to its mortal life: at the judgment, it shall rise to new life; and after the judgment, it shall ascend to heaven, and dwell there for ever. So that the same train of events happens to the body as to the soul, only at different times: and these changes in the body do not take place till those of the soul are complete-that is, after death. So that death is the coronation of the beatification of the soul, and the dawn of blessedness to the body also.

that we build on this principle, that we have good ground to hope for the salvation of those whose death we mourn; then it is certain, that if we cannot check the tide of our grief and distress, we may at least derive from it this benefit, that if the death of the body is so dreadful, as to give rise to such emotions, that of the soul would have caused us agonies far less consolable. God has sent the former to those for whom we weep; but we hope that the latter he has averted. See then in the magnitude of our woes, the greatness of our blessings; and let the excess of our grief, be the measure of our joy.

5. Man is evidently too weak to judge accurately of the train of future events. Let our hope, then, be in God; and do not let us weary ourselves by rash and unjustifiable anticipations. Let us commit ourselves to God for the guidance of our way in this life, and let not discontent have dominion over us.

Saint Augustine teaches us that there is in each man, a Serpent, an Eve, and an Adam. Our senses and natural propensities are the Serpent; the excitable desire is the Eve; and reason is the Adam. Our nature tempts us perpetually; criminal desire is often excited; but sin is not completed till reason consents.

Leave then this Serpent and this Eve to distress us if they will; but let us pray to God so to strengthen our Adam by his grace, that he may abide victorious-that Jesus Christ may be his conqueror, and may dwell in us for ever.

CHAPTER XXIII.

DISEASE.

These are the wonderful ways of Divine wisdom PRAYER, FOR THE SANCTIFIED USE OF AFFLICTION BY respecting the salvation of souls! And St. Augustine teaches us here, that God has adopted this arrangement to prevent a serious evil; for if the period of the act of the spiritual regeneration of the soul had been made the period of the death and resurrection of the body also, men would only have submitted to the obedience of the gospel from the love of life; but by the present arrangement, the power of faith is much more manifested, whilst the way to immortality is traced through the shades of death.

4. It were not right that we should not feel and mourn over the afflictions and misfortunes of life, like angels who have not the passions of our nature. It were not right either that we should sorrow without consolation like the heathens, who know not the hope of grace. But it is right that we should be afflicted and comforted as Christians, and that the consolations of grace should rise superior to the feelings of nature; so that grace should not only be in us, but victorious in us; so that, in hallowing our heavenly Father's name, his will should become ours; so that his grace should reign over our imperfect nature, and that our afflictions should be, as it were, the matter of a sacrifice which grace completes, and consumes to the glory of God: and that these individual sacrifices should honor and anticipate that universal sacrifice, in which our whole nature shall be perfected by the power of Jesus Christ.

And hence we derive benefit from our imperfections, since they serve as matter for such sacrifices. For it is the object of true Christians to profit by their own imperfections, in as much as all things work together for good to the elect.

And if we are careful, we shall find great profit and edification in considering this matter as it is in truth. For since it is true, that the death of the body is only the image of the death of the soul, and

*2 Corinthians xii. 9, 10.

O LORD, whose Spirit is in all things so good and gracious, and who art so merciful, that not only the prosperities, but even the humiliations of thy elect are the results of thy mercy: graciously enable me to act in the state to which thy righteous hand has reduced me, not as a heathen, but as a true Christian; that I may recognize thee as my Father and my God, in whatever state I am; since the change in my condition, makes no change in thine; since thou art always the same, though I am ever varia ble; and that thou art no less God, when thou mi nisterest affliction or punishment, than in the gifts of consolation and peace.

2. Thou has given me health to serve thee, and 1 have profanely misused it. Thou hast now sent disease to correct me. Suffer me not so to receive it as to anger thee by my impatience. I have abused my health, and thou has rightly punished me let me not abuse thy correction also. And since the corruption of my nature is such, that it renders thy favors hurtful to me, let thy Almighty grace, O God, make these thy chastenings profitable. If in the vigor of health, my heart was filled with the love of this world, destroy that vigor for my safety's sake, and unfit me for the enjoyment of this world, either by weakness of body, or by overcoming love, that I may rejoice in thee only.

3. O God, to whom at the end of my life, and at the end of this world, I must give an account of all that I have done; O God, who permittest this world to exist, only for the trial of thine elect, and the punishment of the wicked; O God, who leavest hardened sinners to the luxurious, but criminal enjoyments of this world; O God, who causest this body to die, and at the hour of death, separatest our souls from all that in this world they have loved, O God, who at the last moment of my life, breakest me off from all those things to which I am attached, and on which my heart has been fixed; O God, who wilt consume at the last day the heavens and the

world has stolen. Seize this treasure thyself, or rather resume it; for it belongs to thee as a tribute that I owe thee, as stamped by thine own image. Thou hast imprinted it at the moment of my baptism, which was my second birth; but it is all effaced. The image of the world is graven there so deeply, that thine is scarcely cognizable. Thou only couldst create my soul; thou only canst create it anew. Thou only couldst impress there thine image; thou only canst reform it, and refresh the lineaments of thy obliterated likeness; that is, Jesus Christ my Saviour, who is thine image, and the very character of thy subsistence.

earth, and all the creatures that are therein, to show to all the world that nothing subsists but thyself, and that nothing but thyself is worthy of love, because thou only dost endure; O God, who wilt destroy all these vain idols, and all these fatal objects of our affections; I praise thee, and I will bless thee, O my God, all the days of my life, that it hath pleased thee to anticipate in my favor, the event of that awful day, by destroying already, as it respects me, all these things, through the weakness to which thou hast reduced me. I praise thee, O my God, and I will bless thee all the days of my life, that it hath pleased thee to reduce me to a state of inability to enjoy the sweets of health, and the pleasures 5. O, my God, how happy is a heart that can love of the world; and that thou hast in a manner de- so lovely an object, with an honorable and a benestroyed for my profit, those deceitful idols which ficial love! I feel that I cannot love the world thou wilt hereafter effectually destroy, to the confu- without displeasing thee, without injuring and dission of the wicked in the day of thine anger. Grant, honoring myself; and yet the world is still the obLord, that I may henceforth judge myself accord-ject of my delight. O, my God, how happy is the ing to this destruction, which thou has wrought in soul who finds his delight in thee, since he may my behalf; that thou mayest not judge me after abandon himself to thy love, not only without scruthat entire destruction which thou wilt make of my ple, but with commendation. How firm and lastnatural life and of the whole world. For seeing, ing is his happiness, since his hope cannot be disapO Lord, that at the instant of my death, I shall find pointed, because thou wilt never be destroyed, and myself separated from this world, stripped of all neither life nor death shall separate him from the things, and alone in thy presence, to answer to thy object of his desires; and that the same moment justice for all the thoughts of my heart: grant that which overwhelms the wicked and their idols in I may consider myself in this disease, as in a kind one common ruin, shall unite the just with thee in of death, separated from the world, stripped of all one common glory; and that as the one shall pethe objects of my affection, and alone in thy pre- rish with the perishable objects to which they were sence, to implore from thy compassion the conver- attached; the others, shall subsist eternally in the sion of my heart; and that hence I may have great eternal and self-existent object to which they were comfort from the thought, that thou visitest me now so strictly united. Blessed are they, who, with perwith a species of death, as the result of thy mercy, fect freedom, and an invincible bias of their will, before thou appointest me really and finally to love perfectly and freely, that which they are incesdeath as the result of thy justice. Grant, then, O santly constrained to love. my God, that since thou hast anticipated my death, I may anticipate the rigor of thy sentence; and that I may examine myself before thy judgment, to find mercy in thy presence.

4. Grant, O my God, that I may adore in silence, he order of thy providence, in the guidance of my ife; that thy rod may comfort me; and that, if I have lived in the bitterness of my own sins during my prosperity, I may now taste the heavenly sweetness of thy grace, during the salutary evils with which thou hast chastened me. But I confess, O my God, that my heart is so hardened, and so full of the thoughts, and cares, and anxieties, and attachments of the world, that neither sickness, nor health, neither sermons, nor books, nor thy holy Scriptures, nor thy gospel, nor its holiest mysteries, nor alms, nor fastings, nor mortifications, nor the sacraments, nor thy death, nor all my efforts, nor those of the whole world put together, can effect any thing whatever, even to begin my conversion, if thou dost not accompany all these things by the extraordinary assistance of thy grace. For this, O my God, I address myself to thee, the Almighty, to ask from thee a gift, that all thy creatures together could not be stow. I should not have the daring to direct my cry to thee, if any other being could answer it. But, O my God, since the conversion of my heart, for which I now entreat, is a work which surpasses all the efforts of nature; I can apply to none but to the Author and Almighty master of nature, and of my heart. To whom should I cry, Lord, to whom should I have recourse but to thee? Nothing short of God can fulfil my desire. It is God himself that I need, and that I seek; and to thee only, O my God, do I address myself, that I may obtain thee. Open my heart, Lord. Enter this rebel place, where sin has reigned. Sin holds it in subjection. Enter as into the house of a strong man; but first bind the strong and mighty enemy who ruled it, and then take possession of the treasures which are there. O Lord, regain those affections which the

6. Perfect, O my God, the holy emotions that thou hast given me. Be their end, as thou art their beginning. Crown thine own gifts; for thine I admit them to be. Yes, O my God, far from assuming that my prayers have any merit, which could constrain thee to answer them, I most humbly confess, that having given to the creature that heart, which thou didst form for thyself only, and not for the world, nor for myself, I could look for no blessing but to thy mercy; since I have nothing in me which could deserve it; and that all the natural emotions of my heart, inclining towards the creatures or myself, can only anger thee. I thank, thee, then, O my God, for the holy emotions that thou hast given me, and even for that disposition which thou hast also given me to feel thankful.

7. Touch my heart with repentance for its faults; for without this inward grief, the outward evils with which thou hast smitten my body, will be but a new occasion of sin. Make me to know that the diseases of my body are only the chastening, and the emblem of the diseases of my soul. But grant, Lord, also, that they may be the remedy, by making me consider, amidst these pains that I do feel, the evil which I did not previously perceive in my soul, though totally diseased and covered with putrifying sores. For, O Lord, the greatest of its evils is that insensibility, and that extreme weakness which has deprived it of all consciousness of its own miseries. Make me then to feel them deeply; and let the remainder of my life be a continued penitence, to bewail the sins which I have committed.

8. O Lord, though my life past has been exempt from gross crimes, from the temptations to which thou hast preserved me; it has been very hateful in thy sight, from my continual negligence, my misuse of thy holy sacraments, my contempt of thy word, and of thy holy influence, by the listlessness and uselessness of my actions and thoughts, by the total loss of that time which thou hast given me for thy worship, to seek, in all my ways, the means of

pleasing thee, and to repent of the sins, which I daily commit; sins from which, even the most righteous are not exempt; so that even their life had need be a continual penitence, or they run the risk of falling from their steadfastness. In this way, O my God, I have ever been rebellious against thee. 9. Yes, Lord, up to this hour I have been ever deaf to thy inspirations; I have despised thy oracles; I have judged contrary to what thou judgest; I have contradicted those holy precepts which thou didst bring into the world, from the bosom of thy eternal Father, and by which thou wilt judge the world. Thou sayest, Blessed are they that mourn, and wo to them that are comforted; and I have said, Wretched are those that mourn, and blessed are those who are comforted. I have said, Happy are they who enjoy a fortunate lot, a splendid reputation, and robust health. And why have I thought them happy, except that all these advantages furnished them an ample facility for enjoying the creature, that is, for offending thee. Yes, Lord, I confess that I have esteemed health a blessing, not because it was a ready means of serving thee usefully, by devoting more care and watchfulness to thy service, and by the ready assistance of my neighbor; but that, by its aid, I could abandon myself, with less restraint to the abounding delights of life, and taste more freely its deadly pleasures. Graciously, O Lord, reform my corrupted reason, and conform my principles to thine. Grant that I may count myself happy in affliction, and that in this inability for external action, my thoughts may be so purified, as no longer to be repugnant to thine; and that in this way, I may find thee within me, when from my weakness I cannot go forth to seek thee. For, Lord, thy kingdom is within thy believing people; and I shall find it within myself, if I discover there thy Spirit, and thy precepts.

10. But, Lord, what shall I do to constrain thee to pour forth thy Spirit upon this wretched earth? All that I am is hateful in thy sight; and I find nothing in me which can please thee. I see nothing there, Lord, except my griefs which bear some faint resemblance to thine. Consider then the ills that I suffer, and those which threaten me. Look with an eye of pity on the wounds which thy hand hath made. Omy Saviour, who didst love thy sufferings even in death; O my God, who didst become man, only to suffer more than any man, for man's salvation; O God, who didst become incarnate after the sin of men, and who didst take a body only to suffer in it all that our sins deserved; O God, who lovest so much the suffering bodies of men, that thou didst choose for thyself the most afflicted body that ever was in the world; graciously accept my body, not for its own sake, nor for any thing in it for all deserves thine indignation-but for the miseries which it endures, which only can be worthy of thy love. Kindly regard my sufferings, O Lord, and let my distresses invite thee to visit me. But to complete the sanctification of thy dwelling, grant, O my Saviour, that if my body is admitted to the common privilege with thine, that it suffers for my offences, my soul also may have this in common with thy soul, that it may be in bitterness for them also; and that thus, I may suffer with thee, and like thee, both in my body and my soul, for the sins which I have committed.

11. Graciously, O Lord, impart thy consolations during my sufferings, that I may suffer as a Christian. I ask not exemption from distress; for this is the reward of the saints: but I pray not to be given up to the agonies of suffering nature, without the consolations of thy Spirit; for this is the curse of Jews and heathens. I ask not a fulness of consolation, without any suffering; for that is the life of glory. I ask not a full cup of sorrow, without alle

viation, for that is the present state of Judaism. But I ask, Lord, to feel, at the same time, both the pangs of nature for my sins, and the consolations of thy Spirit through grace; for this is true Christianity. Let me not experience pain, without consolation; but let me feel pains and consolations at the same time, so that ultimately I may experience consolalation only, free from all suffering. For formerly, Lord, before the advent of thy Son, thou didst leave the world to languish without comfort under natural sufferings: now thou dost console and temper the sufferings of thy saints, by the grace of thine only Son; and hereafter thou wilt crown thy saints with a beatitude, perfectly pure, in thy Son's eternal glory. These are the marvellous degrees through which thou dost carry thy works. Thou hast withdrawn me from the first; cause me to pass through the second; that I may reach the third. This, Lord, is the mercy that I ask.

12. Suffer me not to be so far alienated from thee, as to be able to contemplate thy soul, sorrowful even unto death, and thy body laid low by death for my sins, without rejoicing to suffer also both in my body and my mind. For there is nothing more disgraceful, and yet nothing more usual among Christians, than that while thou didst sweat blood for the expiation of our offences, we should be living luxuriously at ease; and that Christians, who make a profession of being devoted to thee; that those who, in their baptism, have renounced the world to follow thee; that those who have vowed solemnly, before the church, to live and die for thee; that those who profess to believe that the world persecuted and crucified thee; that those who believe that thou didst give thyself up to the wrath of God, and to the cruelty of men, to redeem them from all iniquity; that those, I say, who believe all these truths, who consider thy body as the sacrifice offered for their salvation; who consider the indulgences, and the sins of this world, as the only cause of thy sufferings, and the world itself as thy executioner; that they should seek to indulge their own bodies with these same delights, and in this same world; and that they who could not without horror, see a man caress and cherish the murderer of his own father, who had surrendered himself to secure his life, should live as I have done; should live joyously amidst that world, which I know unquestionably to have been the murderer of him whom I recognize as my Father and my God, who gave himself up for my salvation, and who has borne in his own body the punishment of my transgressions. It is right, O Lord, that thou hast interrupted a joyousness so criminal as that in which I have indulged amidst the shadows of death.

13. Take from me then, O Lord, the grief that self-love may feel on account of my own sufferings, and on account of those human events which do not fall out precisely according to the wishes of my heart, and which do not make for thy glory. But awaken within me a sorrow assimilated to thine own. Let my sufferings mollify thine anger. Make them the means of my safety and my conversion. Let me wish no more for health and life, but to employ and expend them for thee, with thee, and in thee. I do not ask of thee health or sickness, life or death; but merely that thou wouldst dispose of my health or sickness, of my life or death, for thy glory, for my salvation, and for the benefit of thy church, and of thy saints, among whom I would hope, by thy grace, to be found. Thou only knowest what is needful for me: thou art the sovereign Lord; do with me what thou wilt. Give or take; only conform my will to thine; and grant, that in humble and entire submission, I may accept the ordinances of thy eternal providence, and that I may regard with equal reverence, whatever comes from thee.

14. Grant, O my God, that in uniform equanimity these two contending parties, it became necessary of mind, I may receive whatever happens; since to abandon the one, in order to enter the other; we know not what we should ask, and since I can- to renounce the maxims of the one, in order to fol not wish for one thing more than another without low those of the other; each one must disencum presumption, and without setting up myself as a ber himself of the sentiments of the one, in order judge, and making myself responsible for those con- to put on the sentiments of the other; and finally, sequences, which thy wisdom has determined pro- must be prepared to quit, to renounce, and to abjure perly to conceal from me. O Lord, I know that I the world where he had his former birth, and to know but one thing; and that is, that it is good to devote himself entirely to the church in which he follow thee, and evil to offend thee. After that, I receives his second birth. And thus a wide distincknow not what is better or worse in any thing. Ition, was habitually drawn between the one and know not which is more profitable for me, sickness or health, wealth or poverty, nor any other of the things of this world. This were a discovery beyond the power of men or angels, and which is veiled in the secrets of thy providence, which I adore, and which I do not desire to fathom.

15. Grant then, O Lord, that such as I am, I may be conformed to thy will; and that, diseased as I am, I may glorify thee in my sufferings. Without these, I cannot reach thy glory; and even thou, my Saviour, wouldst not attain to glory but by this means. It was by the scars of thy sufferings, that thy disciples knew thee; and it is by their sufferings that thou wilt recognize those who are thy disciples. Recognize me, O Lord, amidst the evils that I suffer, both in body and mind, for the sins that I have committed; and because nothing is acceptable to God, that is not offered by thee, unite my will to thine, and my agonies to those which thou hast endured. Let mine become thine. Unite me to thyself; and fill me with thyself, and with thy Holy Spirit. Dwell in my heart and soul, to endure within me my sufferings, and to continue to endure in me, all that remains yet unsuffered of thy passion, which thou completest in all thy members, even to the entire perfection of thy mystical body; that being thus at length full of thee, it may be no more I that live and suffer, but that it may be thou who livest and sufferest in me, O my Saviour; and that thus, having some little part in thy sufferings, thou mayest fill me abundantly with the glory which they have purchased; in which thou livest with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, world without end. Amen.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A COMPARISON OF ANCIENT AND MODERN CHRISTIANS.

In the infancy of the Christian church, we see no Christians but those who were thoroughly instructed in all matters necessary to salvation; but in these days, we see on every side an ignorance so gross, that it agonizes all those who have a tender regard for the interests of the church. Then, no one entered the church, but after serious difficulties, and long cherished wishes; now, we find ourselves associated with it, without care or difficulty. Formerly, no one was admitted but after a most rigid examination; now, every one is admitted before he is capable of being examined. Formerly, no one was admitted but after repentance of his former life, and a renunciation of the world, the flesh, and the devil; now, they enter the church before they are in a state to do any of these things. In fact, formerly it was necessary to come out from the world, in order to be received into the church; whilst, in these days, we enter the church almost at the same time that we enter the world. Then there was distinctly recognized by those earlier proceedings, an essential difference between the world and the church. They were regarded as two things, in direct opposition, as two irreconcilable enemies; of which the one persecutes the other perpetually, and of which, that which seems the weakest, will one day triumph over the strongest; and between

the other. But now, we find ourselves almost at the same moment introduced into both; and, at the same time, we are born into the world, and born anew into the church. So that, dawning reason now no longer perceives the broad line of distinction between these two opposing worlds, but matures and strengthens, at the same time, under the combined influence of both. The sacraments are partaken of, in conjunction with the pleasures of the world; and hence, instead of there being an essential distinction between the one and the other, they are now so mingled and confounded, that the distinction is almost entirely lost.

Hence it arises, that whilst then Christians were all well instructed; now, there are many in a fearful state of ignorance; then, those who had been initiated into Christianity by baptism, and who had renounced the vices of the world, to embrace the piety of the church, rarely declined again to the world which they had left; whilst now, we commonly see the vices of the world in the hearts of Christians. The church of the saints is all defiled with the intermingling of the wicked; and her children that she has conceived, and born from their infancy at her sides, are they who carry into her very heart, that is even to the participation of her holiest mysteries-her deadliest foes-the spirit of the world-the spirit of ambition, of revenge, of impurity, and of lust; and the love which she bears for her children, compels her to admit into her very bowels, the bitterest of her persecu tors.

But we must not impute to the church the evils that have followed so fatal a change; for when she saw that the delay of baptism, left a large proportion of infants still under the curse of original sin, she wished to deliver them from this perdition, by hastening the succor which she can give; and this good mother sees, with bitter regret, that the benefit which she thus holds out to infants, becomes the occasion of the ruin of adults.

The true meaning of the church is, that those whom she thus withdraws at so tender an age, from the contagion of the world, should subsequently become separate from its opinions. She anticipates the agency of reason, to prevent those vices into which corrupted reason might entice them; and that, before their natural mind could act, she might fill them with her better spirit, so that they might live in ignorance of the world, and in a state so much further removed from vice, in as much as they have never known it. This is evident in the baptismal service; for she does not confer baptism

*It is quite evident by the tenor of the whole passage, that M. Pascal means here only a formal initiation by baptism, and not a spiritual birth—a real regeneration. At the same time, the error which his words appear in some degree to countenance, was held by the unenlightened part of the Romish church; and it is still held by some members of the church of Eng land, who do not understand either her doctrines or her services; whilst some men among us, like M. Pascal, give an improper countenance to the error, by the adoption of the inexplicable notion of baptismal re generation.

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