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actions , but they are sensible on examining their hearts , that some secret vanity was mingled in the motives which prompted them . They have even done good to -their enemies , but they have not been able truly to forgive them ; the swellings and workings of angry passions are not suffered to i > oil up , but they too well feel their inward fermentation : they discern , at times , a taint of envy and selfishness lurking in those bosoms from which they had hoped such bad passions had been long eradicated . If the human heart was
laid open in all its secret folds and inward recesses , much would be found to be ashamed of in the most perfect characters . The life of a good man is a continual warfare . How often is he surprised by sudden temptation ! How often overcome by habitual frailties ! How difficult does he find it to mortify his lusts , to quicken his zeal , to steer between dangerous extremes , to preserve the tender sensibility of his conscience amidst his necessary commerce with a loose and scornful world ! Many are the noiseless conflicts he
sustains with his inward enemies : when befalls he rises again , and when he is beaten he scorns to yield ; and this is his utmost boast , his whole triumph . How delightful must be then the idea of a state in which he shall be without fault ! How cheering the hope of seeing the enemy subdued with whom he has had so many painful contests V There is ' nothing a good man hates like sin ; nay , to speak properly , there is nothing he hates but sin ; his enemies may injure , may irritate —but they cannot make him hate
them . Misfortunes , disappointments , these he considers sis incident to a state of imperfection , necessary to a state of trial ; but sin is his extreme dread , his most settled aversion , the thorn that has so often wounded the toosom of his peace ; remorse is the feeling that most hurts him , and the disapprobation of his own mind he is more afraid of than of any thing else . He is glad to think that in that blessed land he shall toe sick no more , glad
he shall be free 'from the many humiliating infirmities of mortality , gladhs shall no more feel the stroke of separation from those he loves , or the pangs and agonies of dissolving nature ; but'he is infinitely happier to think that he shall # m no more , and this it is above all other things which will make the future state a heaven to him .
But before we indulge in this delightful contemplation , it will well become us to consider of what colour that guilt is which death will wash away , and who they are that in the life to come shall sin no more . And , first , it is eertairily not they Who have been doing nothing else all their lives here , they who put far from them the law of their God , and have drunk up iniquity like water , who by long habit of vice and open violations of every moral law "have almost obliterated in themselves the traces of right affections , and confounded the very ideas of good and evil ; it is not for these to expect that 'the ambiguous sorrows of a late , perhaps of a death-bed , repentance , will 'purify and lit them for a state of perfection , will restore to them the
innocence of children , or create tn them the holiness of saints . Heaven is not a pool of Bethesda to cleanse such foul and leprous souls from the corruptions they have contracted ; the stain is gone too deep and spread too far . To such ihe Scripture speaks in "those awful words of the Apocalypse , He that is unjust , let him be unjust still ; and he that is filthy , let him be filthy still
It is , indeed , self-evident that what is completed above , must be begun , at least , below ; that we must be good here , to be perfect hereafter ; the sketch must be ftrawn , the fair outline must be correctly traced , of that lovely character we aspire to , though it is to receive its finishing and nicer touches From the hand -of the great Master . But not to dweH upon what is so obvious ; it is , secondly , not those
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146 A Discourse , by Mrs . Barbauld .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1828, page 146, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2558/page/2/
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