Repentance ever avails in this life, never afterwards. 215 stition. We have no grudge against your welfare, nor do we make any concealment of the bounties divine; we render good-will for your hatred, and point out paths of salvation, in return for the torments and the sufferings, which have been inflicted on us. Believe, and live; you have been our persecutors in time: in eternity, be companions of our joy. morte. 15. Once gone forth from hence, there is no more place for repentance; no satisfaction can be accomplished; it is here that life is either lost or saved; it is here that eternal salvation is provided for, by the worship of God and the fruit of faith. Let a man be withheld, neither by his sins nor by his years, from coming to make good his salvation: while he remains in this world, no repentance is too late; the approach to God's indulgence is open, and an easy access is given to those who enquire for and admit the truth. You, if you should entreat for your offences, even in the very exit and close of your life below, if you should implore that God who is One and True, in the confession and faith of acknowledging Him, the pardon is given to you when you confess; the saving indulgence from God's pity is granted to you when you pietate. believe; nay in the very hour of death a transit is secured sub ipsâ to immortality. This grace Christ grants, this work of His mercy He puts in our possession, by subduing death in the trophy of the Cross, by redeeming the believer with the price of His blood, by reconciling man to God the Father, and giving life to one who is mortal by heavenly regeneration, Him, if it be possible, let us all follow; let us be enlisted under His Sacrament and Sign; He opens to us the path of life, He brings us back to Paradise, He will guide us into the kingdom of heaven. With Him we shall ever live, made by Him the sons of God; with Him we shall for ever rejoice, the creatures of His bloodshedding. We Christians will be partakers in glory with Christ, in the blessedness of God the Father, rejoicing with perpetual gladness, in the presence of God for ever, and for ever yielding Him thanks. For he cannot be other than for ever happy and thankful, who, after living under liability to death, is rendered secure of immortality. TREATISE IX. ON THE MORTALITY. [This Treatise was written at the same time with the foregoing, in order to encourage and console Christians under the visitation which forms the subject of it.] TREAT. IX. ALTHOUGH in most of you, dearest brethren, there is a stedfast mind, firm faith, and soul devout, which wavers not before the manifold instances of this present mortality, and like a bold and rooted rock, under the swelling storms of this world, and the fierce floods of time, repels, not suffers from, their blow, and is but proved, not overcome by temptations; yet since I observe amongst your number some, who either through weakness of spirit, or poverty of faith, or the satisfactions of the life below, or tenderness of sex, or (what is a greater thing) through wandering from truth, do less strongly stand, and put not forth the divine unconquerable energy of their breast, there must be no dissembling or hiding of the matter, but so far as my poor powers extend, we must in the fulness of vigour and in words collected from the lessons of the Lord, extinguish the cowardice of a softened temper, so that he who has begun to be the servant of God and Christ, may before God and Christ be found walking worthy. For he, dearest brethren, who fights for God, who, stationed in the heavenly camp, breathes things divine, ought to own himself to be what he is, in order that we may not be trembling or faultering amid the storms and tempests of this world; since the Lord foretold that these things would come; and with the instructive exhortation and doctrine of His warning voice, training and establishing the people of His Church, to all endurance of future things, hath prophesied and taught that wars and famines, and earthquakes and pestilences, would arise in every place. And lest any unprepared and sudden terror should disturb us at the access of adversity, He forewarned us that in the last times evil things should wax worse and worse. Lo, the things which were spoken are come to pass; and as those things are come to pass which were foretold, so those will follow which yet are promised; the Lord Himself giving assurance, and saying, When ye see all these things come to pass, know ye that the Luke 21, kingdom of God is nigh at hand. 31. 2. Dearest brethren, the kingdom of God has begun to be nigh at hand; reward of life, and joy of eternal salvation, and perpetual happiness, and possession of Paradise lately lost, already, while the world passes away, are coming nigh; already heavenly things are succeeding to earthly, and great to small, and eternal to transient. What place is here, for anxiety and solicitude? Who amid these things is tremulous and mournful, except in whom hope and faith are wanting? It is for him to be afraid of death, who hath not willingness to come to Christ; and for him to be unwilling to come to Christ, who does not believe that he has begun to reign with Christ. For it is written that the just lives by faith. If thou Hab. 2, art just, and livest by faith, if thou truly believest in God, why, as one who will be with Christ, and secure of the promise of the Lord, dost thou not embrace that call to Christ which is given thee, and for that thou art delivered from the devil, make thyself joyful in the deliverance? Symeon of a surety, that just man, who was truly just, who kept the commandments of God in fulness of faith; when it had been divinely told him, that he should not die before he had seen Christ, and the infant Christ had come with His Mother into the Temple, acknowledged in spirit that Christ was now born, concerning whom the prophecy had been Vid. supr. viii. 2. In like manner S. Ambrose; "None are witnesses to [Christ's] heavenly words more than we, whom the end of the world has found. For how many battles and rumours of battles have we not heard of! &c. What general famine, what 4. TREAT. made to him, and having seen whom, he knew that he was IX. soon to die. Rejoicing therefore in the nearness now of 29. death, and secure of being presently called away, he took the Child into his hands, and blessing God, cried out and said, Luke 2, Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation;-proving surely and bearing testimony, that then for the servants of God is peace, then free, then tranquil rest, when rescued from these turmoils of earth, we gain the port of rest and of eternal security; when we put away this death, and come to immortality. 3. That is peace for us; that is a faithful tranquillity; that is rooted and firm and perpetual security. Meanwhile in this world what is it, but the waging of a daily warfare against the Devil? Against his darts and weapons, in what successive conflicts do we engage! Our contest is with avarice, with unchastity, with anger, with ambition; with carnal vices, with worldly allurements, we have an abiding and weary wrestling. The mind of man, on all sides besieged and compassed with the assaults of the Devil, scarcely in each point fronts the enemy, scarcely holds against him. So soon as Avarice has been laid prostrate, Lust uprises; when Lust is crushed, Ambition follows; if Ambition has been set at nought, Anger embitters, Pride inflates, Drunkenness entices, Envy destroys harmony, and Jealousy severs Friendship. You are forced to utter curses, which the divine law forbids; you are compelled to take oaths, which it suffers not. So many persecutions does the mind daily undergo, with so many perils is the breast beset, and it delights to tarry long here amid the Devil's weapons, when rather it should be our longing and our desire, by death coming to our aid more speedily, to hasten to Christ, according to His John 16, own instruction and word; Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. Who does not desire to be freed from sorrow? Who does not hasten to attain to joy? And when our sorrow is turned into joy, the Lord Himself does further declare and John 16, say, I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man shall take from you. Since therefore to see 20. 22. Faith enables us to rejoice in dying. 219 Christ is to rejoice, and our joy cannot be, unless when we see Christ, what blindness of mind, or what madness is it, to love the straits and pains and tears of the world, and not rather make haste unto that joy, which can never be taken from us? 4. This, dearest brethren, so is, because there is lack of faith; because none believes that those things are true, which God, who is faithful, promises, whose word in them that believe is eternal and immoveable. If any worthy and honourable man were to engage himself to you by any promise, you would surely place reliance in his engagement, and would have no thought of being betrayed and deceived by one, whom you knew to be unswerving in his words and dealings; and now, when it is God that speaketh with you, do you, in unbelief of heart, distrustfully waver? God engages to you immortality and eternity, when you depart out of this world; and do you doubt? This is altogether not to know God; this is to offend with the sin of unbelief, against Christ who is the Lord and Master of believers; it is after being placed in the Church, to be without faith within the House of faith. What profit it is to depart out of this world, Christ Himself reveals, who is the Teacher of salvation and beneficence to us; who when His Disciples became sad, because He said that He should presently depart, spoke unto them and said, If ye loved Me, ye would rejoice, because I John 14, go unto the Father; teaching, that is, and manifesting, that 28. when those we love and cherish depart out of this world, we ought rather to rejoice than grieve. In remembrance of which thing, the blessed Apostle Paul sets it down in his Epistle, and says, To me to live is Christ, and to die gain; Phil. 1, accounting it the greatest gain, to be no longer holden of the 21. chains of this life; no more exposed to all sins and vices of the flesh; redeemed from poignant tribulations, and delivered from the poisoned jaws of the Devil, to pass at the call of Christ into the joy of everlasting salvation. 5. Some however there are, who are moved in thought, because the influences of this disease have made their attack on ourselves, as much as on the heathen; as if the end of a Christian's faith was this, to enjoy in happiness the world and life, unliable to contact of evil; not as one, who, enduring |