s with innumerable scruples concerning
the necessary measures of sorrow, and adequate degrees of
self-abhorrence; and these rules, corrupted by fraud, or debased by
credulity, have, by the common resiliency of the mind from one extreme
to another, incited others to an open contempt of all subsidiary
ordinances, all prudential caution, and the whole discipline of
regulated piety.

Repentance, however difficult to be practised, is, if it be explained
without superstition, easily understood. _Repentance is the
relinquishment of any practice, from the conviction that it has offended
God_. Sorrow, and fear, and anxiety, are properly not parts, but
adjuncts of repentance; yet they are too closely connected with it to be
easily separated; for they not only mark its sincerity, but promote its
efficacy.

No man commits any act of negligence or obstinacy, by which his safety
or happiness in this world is endangered, without feeling the pungency
of remorse. He who is fully convinced, that he suffers by his own
failure, can never forbear to trace back his miscarriage to its first
cause, to image to himself a contrary behaviour, and to form involuntary
resolutions against the like fault, even when he knows that he shall
never again have the power of committing it. Danger, considered as
imminent, naturally produces such trepidations of impatience as leave
all human means of safety behind them; he that has once caught an alarm
of terrour, is every moment seized with useless anxieties, adding one
security to another, trembling with sudden doubts, and distracted by the
perpetual occurrence of new expedients. If, therefore, he whose crimes
have deprived him of the favour of God, can reflect upon his conduct
without disturbance, or can at will banish the reflection; if he who
considers himself as suspended over the abyss of eternal perdition only
by the thread of life, which must soon part by its own weakness, and
which the wing of every minute may divide, can cast his eyes round him
without shuddering with horrour, or panting with security; what can he
judge of himself, but that he is not yet awakened to sufficient
conviction, since every loss is more lamented than the loss of the
divine favour, and every danger more dreadful than the danger of final
condemnation?

Retirement from the cares and pleasures of the world has been often
recommended as useful to repentance. This at least is evident, that
every one retires, whenever ratioci