tice of their quarrel, and are the cause that the only remedy destined to strike at the root of the evil, answers no other purpose than that of decorating it with the appearances of godliness, and of rendering it more incurable.

Great God! Thou alone canst close the wounds which a proud sensibility hath made in my heart, by nourishing unreasonable and iniquitous hatreds which have corrupted it in thy fight. Enable me to forget fleeting and momentary injuries, in order that thou may forget the crimes of my whole life. Is it for me, O my God! to be so feeling and fo inexorable to the flightest insults, I who have fuch ne ceffity for thy mercy and indulgence? Are the injuries of which I complain to be compared with those with which I have a thousand times difhonoured thy fupreme grandeur ? Muft the worm of the earth be irritated and inflamed at the fmalleft marks of disdain, while thy fovereign majesty hath fo long, and with so much goodness, endured his rebellions and his offences?

Who am I, to be fo keen upon the interefts of my glory; I who dare not in thy prefence caft mine eyes upon my fecret ignominy; I who would deserve to be the reproach of men, and the outcaft of my people; I who have nothing praise-worthy, according even to the world, but the good fortune of having concealed from it my infamies and my weakneffes; I to whom the most biting reproaches would ftill be too gentle, and would treat me with too much indulgence; I, in a word, who have no falvation now to hope, if thou forget not thine own glory, which I have so often infulted ?

4

But no, great God! thy glory is in pardoning the finner, and mine fhall be in forgiving my brother. Accept, O

Lord,

Lord, this facrifice which I make to thee of my refentments. Eftimate not its value by the puerility and the flightness of the injuries which I forget, but by that pride which had magnified them, and had rendered me so feeling to them. And, seeing thou haft promised to forgive us our trefpaffes whenever we shall have forgiven the trespasses of our brethren, fulfil, O Lord, thy promises. It is in this hope that I prefume to reckon upon thine eternal mercies.

SERMON

And behold a woman in the city, which was a finner, when She knew that Jefus fat at meat in the Pharifee's house, brought an alabafter-box of ointment, and food at his ́ feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kiffed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

FROM fuch abundant tears, fo fincere a confusion, and a proceeding fo humiliating and uncommon, it may easily be comprehended how great muft once have been the influence of the paffions over the heart of this finner, and what grace now operateth within her. Palestine had long beheld her as the shame and the reproach of the city; the Pharifee's household views her to-day as the glory of grace, and a model of penitence: What a change, and what a spectacle!

This foul, fettered, but a moment ago, with the most fhameful and the most indiffoluble chains, finds nothing now capable of ftopping her; and, without hesitation, fhe flies to feek, at the feet of Jefus Christ, her salvation and deliverance: this foul hitherto plunged in the fenfes, and

living totally for voluptuoufnefs, in, a moment facrifices their livelieft charms, and their dearest ties: this foul, lastly, impatient till then of every yoke, and whofe heart had never acknowledged other rule than the caprice of its inclinations, commences her penitence by the most humiliating proceedings, and the most melancholy subjections. How admirable, O my God! are the works of thy grace! And how near to its cure is the most hopeless wretchedness, when once it becomes the object of thine infinite mercies! and how rapid and shortened are the ways by which thou conducteft thy chosen!

But whence comes it, my brethren, that such grand examples make so trifling an impeffion upon us? From two prejudices, apparently the most opposite to each other, yet, nevertheless, which proceed from the same principle, and lead to the fame error.

The firft is, that we figure to ourselves that converfion of the heart required by God as merely a ceffation of guilt, the abstaining from certain exceffive irregularities, which even decency itself holds out as improper. And as we are at last brought to that, either by age, new fituations, or even our own inclinations which time alone has changed, we never think of going farther; we believe that all is completed, and we listen to the history of the most affecting converfions, held out to us by the church, as to leffons, which no longer, in any degree, regard us.

The fecond goes to another extreme: we represent Chriftian penitence to ourselves, as a horrible fituation, and the defpair of human weakness; a flate without comfort or confolation, and attended by a thousand duties, every one more disgusting than another to the heart; and repulfed,

through

through the error of that gloomy image, the example of a change find us little difpofed to be affected, because they always find us difcouraged."

Now, the converfion of our finner confutes these two prejudices fo dangerous for falvation. ftly, Her penitence not only terminates her errors, it likewise expiates. and makes reparation for them. 2dly, Her penitence begins, it is true, her tears and her forrow; but it is likewife the commencement to her of new pleasures. Whatever fhe had defpoiled Jefus Chrift of in her errors, the restores to him in her penitence: behold their reparation! but with Jefus Chrift she finds, in her penitence, that peace and those comforts which she had never experienced in her errors: behold their confolations! The reparations, and the confolations of her penitence, are the whole hiftory of her converfion, and the subject of this discourse.

PART I. The office of penitence, fays St. Auguftin, is that of establishing order wherever fin hath introduced corruption. It is falfe, if it be not univerfal; for order folely results from a perfect fubordination of all defires and emotions which spring up in our hearts; every thing must be in its place, in order that that divine harmony, which fin had difturbed, may be reftored; and, while the fmalleft particular there remains deranged, in vain do you labour to repair the reft; you only rear up an edifice, which, being improperly arranged, is continually giving way `in fome of its parts, and confusion and disorder prevail through

the whole.

Now, behold the important inftruction held out to us in the converfion of this finner! Her fin comprised several diforders: ftly, An iniquitous ufe of her heart, which

had