and then we complain we cannot help it. Nolo sinas cogitationem crescere, "Suffer not your thoughts to grow up" for they usually come aprw, euкóπws, άлраyμатεúтws, as St. Basil says, "suddenly, and easily, and without business;" but take heed that you nurse them not; but if you chance to stumble, mend your pace; and if you nod, let it awaken you; for he only can be a good man that raises himself up at the first trip, that strangles his sin in the birth: "Good men rise up again, even before they fall," saith St. Chrysostom. Now, I pray, consider that when sin is but in the thought, it is easily suppressed, and, if it be stopped there, it can go no further; and what great mountain of labour is it then to abstain from our sin? Is not the adultery of the eye easily cured by shutting the eye-lid! and cannot the thoughts of the heart be turned aside by doing business, by going into company, by reading, or by sleeping? A man may divert his thoughts by shaking of his head, by thinking any thing else, by thinking nothing. Da mihi Christianum, saith St. Austin, et intelligit quod dico: "Every man that loves God understands this, and more than this, to be true." Now if things be thus, and that we may be safe in that which is supposed to be the hardest of all, we must needs condemn ourselves, and lay our faces in the dust, when we give up ourselves to any sin; we cannot be justified by saying we could not help it. For as it was decreed by the fathers of the second Aurasian council: "This we believe according to the catholic faith; all that have received baptismal grace; all that are baptized by the aid and co-operation of Christ, must

3 Τοιαῦται τῶν ἁγίων ψυχαί, πρὶν ἔπεσον, ἀνίστανται.

and can, if they will labour faithfully, perform and fulfil those things which belong unto salvation."1

6. And lastly if sin hath gotten the power of any one of us, consider in what degree the sin hath prevailed: if but a little, the battle will be more easy, and the victory more certain; but then be sure to do it thoroughly, because there is not much to be done: but if sin hath prevailed greatly, then indeed you have very much to do; therefore begin betimes, and defer not this work till old age shall make it extremely difficult, or death shall make it impossible. If thou beest cast behind; if thou hast neglected the duties of thy vigorous age, thou shalt never overtake that strength; the hinder wheel, though bigger than the former, and measures more ground at every revolution, yet shall never overtake it; and all the second counsels of thy old age, though undertaken with greater resolution, and acted with the strengths of fear and need, and pursued with more pertinacious purposes than the early repentances of young men, yet shall never overtake those advantages which you lost when you gave your youth to folly, and the causes of a sad repentance.*

However, if you find it so hard a thing to get from the power of one master-sin; if an old adulterer does dote, if an old drunkard be further from remedy than a young sinner, if covetousness grows with old age, if ambition be still more hydropic and grows more thirsty for every draught of honour,

Hoc etiam secundum fidem catholicam credimus, &c. 2 "Nam quamvis prope te, quamvis temone sub uno Vertentem sese, frustra sectabere canthum,

Cum rota posterior curras, et in axe secundo."

Pers. v. 70.

then

you may easily resolve that old age, or your last sickness is not so likely to be prosperous in the mortification of your long prevailing sins. Do not all men desire to end their days in religion, to die in the arms of the church, to expire under the conduct of a religious man? When ye are sick or dying, then nothing but prayers and sad complaints, and the groans of tremulous repentance, and the faint labours of an almost impossible mortification: then the despised priest is sent for; he is a good man, and his words are oracles, and religion is truth, and sin is a load, and the sinner is a fool; then we watch for a word of comfort from his mouth, as the fearful prisoner for his fate from the judge's answer. That which is true then, is true now; and, therefore, to prevent so intolerable a danger, mortify your sin betime, for else you will hardly mortify it at all. Remember that the snail outwent the eagle, and won the goal, because she set out betimes.

To sum up all: every good man is a new creature, and Christianity is not so much a divine institution, as a divine frame and temper of spirit; which if we heartily pray for, and endeavour to obtain, we shall find it as hard and as uneasy to sin against God, as now we think it impossible to abstain from our most pleasing sins. For as it is in the spermatic virtue of the heavens, which diffuses itself universally on all sublunary bodies, and subtilely insinuating itself into the most dull and inactive element, produces gold and pearls, life and motion, and brisk activities in all things, that can receive the influence and heavenly blessing,-so it is in the Holy Spirit of God, and the word of God, and the grace of God, which St. John calls the

seed of God; it is a law of righteousness, and it is a law of the Spirit of life, and changes nature into grace, and dulness into zeal, and fear into love, and sinful habits into innocence, and passes on from grace to grace, till we arrive at the full measures of the stature of Christ, and into the perfect liberty of the sons of God; so that we shall no more say, 'The evil that I would not, that I do:' but we shall hate what God hates; and the evil that is forbidden, we shall not do; not because we are strong of ourselves, but because Christ is our strength, and he is in us; and Christ's strength shall be perfected in our weakness, and his grace will be sufficient for us; and he will of his own good pleasure work in us, not only to will, but also to do, velle et perficere, saith the apostle, to will and to do it thoroughly' and fully, being sanctified throughout, to the glory of his holy name, and the eternal salvation of our souls, through Jesus Christ our Lord; to whom, with the Father, &c.

256

SERMON VII.

FIDES FORMATA; OR, FAITH WORKING BY LOVE.

JAMES, 11. 24.

You see, then, how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.

THAT we are 'justified by faith,' St. Paul tells us;' that we are also justified by works,' we are told in my text; and both may be true. But that this justification is wrought by faith without works, to him that worketh not but believeth,' saith St. Paul: that this is not wrought without works, St. James is as express for his negative as St. Paul was for his affirmative; and how both these should be true, is something harder to unriddle. But "he that affirms must prove ;" and therefore St. Paul proves his doctrine by the example of Abraham, to whom faith was imputed for righteousness; and therefore, not by works. And what can be answered to this? Nothing but this, that St. James uses the very same argument to prove that our justification is by works also; For our father Abraham was justified by works, when he offered up his son Isaac.' Now

1 Rom. iii. 28. iv. 5. v. 1. x. 10. Gal. ii. 16.

2 Affirmanti incumbit probatio.

3 James ii. 19.