come home till the day appointed, Prov. vii. 5, &c. Is it necessary, think you, my brethren, to alter many of these descriptive expressions to give a likeness of the manners of our times? Are not modern dissipations described in the perpetual motion of this strange woman, whose feet abide not in her house, who is now without in the country, then in the streets, and at every corner? What are some curious, elegant and fashionable dresses, but the attire of a harlot? Are not the continual artifices, and accumulated dissimulations, which some people use to conceal future designs, or to cover past crimes, are not these features of this subtle woman? What are those pains taken to form certain parties of pleasure but features of this woman, who saith, I have peace offerings with me, I have this day paid my vows, come, let us solace ourselves with loves? What are certain moments expected with impatience, managed with industry and employed with avidity, but features of this woman, who saith to fools among the youths, the good man is not at home, nor will he come home till the day appointed? I stop.-If the unchaste woman in the text, had been guilty of adultery, she had defiled the most sacred and inviolable of all connections. She had kindled discord in the family of him, who was the object of her criminal regard. She had given an example of impurity and perfidy to her children and her domestics, to the world and to the church. She had affronted in the most cruel and fatal manner the man, to whom she owed the tenderest attachment, and the most profound respect. She had covered her parents with disgrace, and provoked such as knew her debauchery to inquire from which of her ancestors she had received such impure and tainted blood. She had divided her heart and her bed with the most implacable enemy of her family. She had hazarded the legitimacy of her children, and confounded the lawful heir with a spurious offspring. Are any tears too bitter to expiate such an odious complication of crimes? Is any quantity too great to shed to wash away such guilt as this? But we will not take pains to blacken the reputation of this penitent: we may suppose her unchaste, as the evangelist leads us to do, without supposing her an adulteress or a prostitute. She might have fallen once, and only once. Her sin, however, even in this case must have become a perpetual source of sorrow, thousands and thousands of sad reflections reflections must have pierced her heart. Was this the only fruit of my education? Is this all I have learned from the many lessons, that have been given me from my cradle, and which seem so proper to guard me for ever against the rocks where my feeble virtue has been shipwrecked? I have renounced the decency of my sex, the appurtenances of which always have been timidity, scrupulosity, delicacy and modesty. I have committed one of those crimes, which, whether it be justice or cruelty, mankind never forgive. I have given myself up to the unkindness and contempt of him, to whom I have shamefully sacrificed my honour. I have fixed daggers in the hearts of my parents, I have caused that to be attributed to their negligence, which was occasioned only by my own depravity and folly. I have banished myself for ever from the company of prudent persons. How can I bear their looks? Where can I find a night dark enough to conceal me from their sight? Thus might our mourner think; but to refer all her grief to motives of this kind would be to insult her repentance. She hath other motives more worthy of a penitent. This heart, the heart that my God demanded with so much condescension and love, I have denied him, and given up to voluptuousness. This body, which should have been a temple of the holy Ghost, is become the den of an impure passion. The time and pains I should have employed in the work of my salvation, I have spent in robbing Jesus Christ of his conquests. I have disputed with my Saviour the souls be redeemed with his blood, and what he came to save. I have endeavoured to sink in perdition. I am become the cause of the remorse of my accomplice in sin, he considers me with horror, he reproaches me with the very temptations, to which he exposed me, and when our eyes meet in a religious assembly, or in the performance of a ceremony of devotion, he tacitly tells me, that I made him unworthy to be there. shall be his executioner on his death bed, perhaps I shall be so through all eternity. I have exposed myself to a thousand dangers, from which nothing but the grace of God hath protected me, to a thousand perils and dreadful consequences, the sad and horrible examples of which stain all history. Such are the causes of the tears of this penitent. She stood at the feet of Jesus Christ weeping, and washed his feet with tears. This is the first character of true repentence, it consists in part in keen remorse. Repentance Repentance must be wise in its application. Our sinner did not go to the foot of mount Sinai to seek for absolution under pretence of her own righteousness, and to demand justification as a reward due to her works. She was afraid, as she had reason to be, that the language of that dreadful mountain proceeding from the mouth of divine justice would pierce her through. Nor did she endeavour to ward off the blows of justice by covering herself with superstitious practices. She did not say wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousand of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Micah vi. 7. She did not even require priests and Levites to offer propitiatory sacrifices for her. She discerned the sophisms of error, and acknowledged the Redeemer of mankind under the veils of infirmity and poverty, that covered him. She knew, that the blood of bulls and of goats could not purify the conscience. She knew that Jesus sitting at table with the pharisee was the only offering, the only victim of worth sufficient to satisfy the justice of an offended God. She knew that he was made unto sinners wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: that his name was the only one among men whereby they might be saved. It was to Jesus Christ that she had recourse, bedewing with tears the feet of him, who was about to shed his blood for her, and receiving by an anticipated faith the benefit of the death, that he was going to suffer, she renounced dependance on every kind of satisfaction except his. The third character of the repentance of this sinner is love. It shall seem, Jesus Christ would have us consider all her actions as evidences of love, rather than as marks of repentance. She hath loved much. These things are not incompatible. Though perfect love casteth out fear, yet it doth not cast out grief, for the pardon of sin received by an elect soul, far from diminishing the regret which it feels for committing it, contributes to augment it. The morew love God, the greater the pain felt for offending him. Yea, this love that makes the happiness of angels, this love that inflames seraphims, this love that supports the believer under the most cruel torments, this love is the greatest punishment of of a penitent. To have offended the God we love, a God rendered amiable by infinite perfections, a God so tender, so compassionate as to pardon the very sins we lament; this love excites in a soul such emotions of repentance as we should labour in vain to express, unless your hearts, in concert with our mouths, feel in proportion as we describe. Courage is the fourth character of the repentance, or, if you will, the love of this woman. She doth not say, What will they say of me? Ah, my brethren, how often hath this single consideration, What will they say of me? been an obstacle to repentance! How many penitents have been discouraged, if not prevented by it! To say all in one word, how many souls hath it plunged into perdition! Persons affected by this, though urged by their consciences to renounce the world and its pleasures, have not been able to get over a fear of the opinions of mankind concerning their conversion. Is any one persuaded of the necessity of living retired? This consideration, What will be said of me? terrifies him. It will be said, that I choose to be singular, that I affect to distinguish myself from other men, that I am an enemy to social pleasure. Doth any one desire to be exact in the performance of divine worship? This one consideration, What will they say of me? terrifies. They will say, I affect to set myself off for a religious and pious person, I want to impose on the church by a specious outside; they will say, I am a weak man full of fancies and phantoms. Our penitent breaks through every worldly consideration. She goes, "saith a modern author, into a strange house, without being invited, to disturb the pleasure of a festival by an ill-timed sorrow, to cast herself at the feet of the Saviour, without fearing what would be said, either of her past life, or of her present boldness, to make by this extraordinary action a kind of public confession of her dissoluteness and to suffer, for the first punishment of her sins, and for a proof of her conversion, such insults as the pride of the pharisees, and her own ruined reputation would certainly draw upon her*." We have seen the behaviour of the penitent; now let us observe the judgment of the pharisee, If this man were a prophet, he would have known who, and what manner of woman that is that toucheth him, for she is a woman of bad fame. o II. The -K 2 i * Flechier, panegyrique de la Magdeleine, II. The evangelist expressly tells us, that the pharisee who thus judged, was the person at whose table Jesus Christ was eating. Whether he were a disciple of Jesus Christ, as is very probable, and as his calling Christ master seems to import, or whether he had invited him for other reasons, are questions of little importance and we will not now examine them. It is certain, our Saviour did often cat with some pharisees, who far from being his disciples were the most implacable enemies of his person and doctrine. If this man were a disciple of Jesus Christ, it should seem very strange that he should doubt the divinity of the mission of Christ, and inwardly refuse him even the quality of a prophet. This pbarisee was named Simon, however nothing obliges us either to confound Simon the pharisee with Simon the leper, mentioned in Matthew, and to whose house, Jesus Christ retired, or the history of our text with that related in the last mentioned place, for the circumstances are very different, as it would be easy to prove, had we not subjects more important to propose to you. Whoever this pharisee might be, he said within himself, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who, and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner. There are four defects in this judgment-a criminal indolence-am extravagant rashness-an intolerable pride-an antichristian cruelty. As we cannot help condemning the opinion of the pharisee for these four defects, so we cannot avoid censuring most of the judgments, that people form on the conduct of their neighbours for the same reasons. : A criminal indolence. That disposition of mind, I allow, is very censurable, which inspires a perpetual attention to the actions of our neighbours, and the motive of it is sufficient to make us abhor the practice. We have reason to think, that the more people pry into the conduct of their neighbours, the more they intend to gratify the barbarous pleasure of defaming them but there is a disposition far more censurable still, and that is to be always ready to form a rigorous judgment on the least appearances of impropriety, and without taking pains to enquire, whether there be no circumstances that diminish the guilt of an action apparently wrong, nothing that renders it deserving of patience or pity. It doth not belong to us to set ourselves up for judges of the actions of our brethren, to become inquisitors in regard to their manners, and to distribute punishments of sin and rewards of virtue, At |