cannot bear to part with. This is not the season to exercise the great and shining virtues; these would support pride, and are therefore contrary to the design of God; they afford a certain strength and assurance, which would only be a means of making us lose ground. It is a simple and uniform conduct, in which there is nothing seemingly extraordinary, that God now requires. Spectators see nothing great in it, and the person himself is sensible of nothing but the operations of a weak relapsed nature; but he would a thousand times rather fast all his life on bread and water, and practise the greatest austerities, than suffer what now passes within him. Not that he has any ardour for austerities: no, that ardour is vanished; but he finds, in the compliance which God demands from him in small matters, more of renunciation and death to self, than in the greatest sacrifices. Nevertheless, God does not leave the soul at rest, until he has rendered it pliable and ductile, by turning and bending it on all sides. Sometimes it must speak with too much freedom, then be silent: sometimes be praised, then blamed, then forgotten, then accused again; sometimes elevated, then debased: it must suffer itself to be condemned without saying a word in its own justification, at other times it must condemn itself. It must acquiesce in finding itself weak, disquieted, wavering about trifles, and betraying all the froward tempers of a child, shock its friends by its want of sensibility, and become causelessly jealous and suspicious; nay, even reveal its most vile jealousies, to those very persons against whom it has conceived them; it must patiently and ingenuously converse, though in opposition to the taste of its company and its own disposition, without any advantage accruing from it; it must appear designing and unfaithful; finally, it must

sometimes find itself languishing, forsaken of God, dissipated, and at such a distance from all holy tempers, that it is tempted to fall into despair. These are examples of such deprivations as I at present recollect: but there are many more which God suits to the necessities of each person, and his own designs.

Let not any one say, that these are vain enthusiastic imaginations. Can they doubt God's immediate operation on the soul? or that he does not so act as to destroy the life of self? Can they doubt that God, after having mortified the grosser passions, does not attack all the subtle windings of self love, especially in souls generously and without reserve devoted to the spirit of grace? The more he would purify them, the more severe are their inward trials. The world can neither see nor understand these trials: but the world is blind, its wisdom is foolishness, it cannot agree with the spirit of truth; for, as the Apostle says, "the things of God knoweth no man, but the spirit of God." At first, they are not accustomed to this inward work, which deprives the soul of every thing. They are very willing to be silent, to suffer all, to leave themselves to the directions of providence, as a man suffers himself to be carried by the stream: but they are afraid of hearkening to the internal voice that calls them to the sacrifice God has prepared. They are like young Samuel, who, not being accustomed to divine communications, thought, when God called, it was the voice of Eli. Eli said to him, my son, it is a dream, lie down again, nobody called thee. Just so, they know not but it may be some imagination which might lead them astray. Oft times the high priest, that is to say our spiritual guide, tells us it is a dream, and that we ought to lie quiet: but God

leaves us not so, he awakens us till we listen to what he has to say. If our internal voice, though attended with ever so wonderful circumstances, should direct us any thing contrary to the opinion of the church, we might with reason doubt it: but when God has wrought us up to a certain degree of detachment, and that afterwards we are convinced he requires of us certain innocent things for this only purpose, that we may become more pure and dead to self; can there be any delusion in following these motions? especially as I not followed without good advice. our own wisdom, and self love to these motions, sufficiently proves that they are from God, as it is evident that what prevents our obeying them, is some selfish sensibility. The more we fear to do these things, the more necessary they are: for our fear is owing to delicacy, an untractable humour, or an attachment to earthly views and satisfactions; but all these sentiments of the natural life must be extinguished.

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Thus, all pretence for delay is removed by the innocence of the matters in question, and our inward conviction that they will conduce to the destruction of self.

A readiness and compliance in these motions, is of all other things the most advantageous to the soul. Those who have magnanimity enough not to hesitate, soon make an incredible progress. Others reason, and never fail to find some pretence to dispense with their following these motions: they would and they would not: they wait for certainties: they seek such advice concerning their state, as may free them from doing what they fear to do, and at every step they look behind them: they languish in irresolution, and insensibly drive from them the spirit of God. At first

they grieve him by their hesitations, then provoke him by actual resistance, and lastly, extinguish him by reiterated disobedience. This resistance of grace is always under the cover of divers pretences, which they find to authorize it: but insensibly they lose the unction of the holy one, and the simplicity of faith; and notwithstanding all their endeavours to deceive themselves, they are not at peace: they have something at the bottom of their hearts which incessantly reproaches them with their neglect of God. But, as the consequence of their neglect is God's withdrawing from them his sacred checks and inspiratious, so the soul every day becomes more hardened. It no longer tastes peace, nor does it seek the true kind: on the contrary, it is every day more alienated from it, by seeking it where it is not. It is like a dislocated bone, which, though always painful while it is out of its proper place, yet does not endeavour to regain it, but on the contrary, fixes itself in its wrong situation.

O how a soul is to be pitied, when it begins to reject the secret invitations of God, who requires that it should die to all! At first it is but an atom, but this atom becomes a mountain, and soon forms an impenetrable barrier between God and it. They become deaf to the calls of God, and are afraid to hear him: they wish they could say to him that they have not heard him : nay, they do say it, but he knows the contrary. They perplex themselves with doubts of all that was formerly most clear to them; and the graces which served before to render them most simple and ductile in the hands of God, begin now to appear like illusions. They now seek outwardly for the authority of guides to appease their inward tumult, and they fail not to find it; for there are

many who, though wise and pious, have but little experience. In this state, all the remedies they use, only serve to strengthen the disease. They are like a wounded deer who carries in his haunches the arrow with which he is shot; the more he ranges the forest to free himself from it, the more he forces it into his body. Alas, "who is he that hath hardened himself against God and prospered?" God who is himself the true peace, can he suffer that heart to be at rest, which opposes his designs? Then, they are like persons sick of unknown distempers; every physician employs his art to heal them, but all in vain. You see them dejected, sorrowful and languishing, neither food nor medicines can afford them any relief: they decay daily. Can we be surprised, that having forsaken the true road, they go, every step, farther from it, incessantly straying more and more?

But you will perhaps say, the beginning of all these misfortunes was but a trifle. True, but then the consequences are fatal. Upon a slight and distant view there is nothing which, according to their imagination, they would not willingly sacrifice to God: but when God takes them at their word and accepts their offer, they feel a thousand repugnancies which they did not so much as suspect. Their courage fails them, and they find a thousand excuses ready to flatter their weak inconstant hearts: at first they stop, and doubt whether they ought to proceed: then compromise the matter, and do only half of that which God requires: they mix with the divine operation, a certain self motion, and dare not so contradict nature, as to extinguish all remains of life in the corrupt recesses of the heart. God, jealous of such a soul, withdraws his love. soul begins to shut its eyes, that it may not see more

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