repliest, I am a notorious sinner, mine offences are not so great as infinite.  Hear Fulgentius, [6762]"God’s invincible goodness cannot be overcome by sin, His infinite mercy cannot be terminated by any:  the multitude of His mercy is equivalent to His magnitude.”  Hear [6763]Chrysostom, “Thy malice may be measured, but God’s mercy cannot be defined; thy malice is circumscribed, His mercies infinite.”  As a drop of water is to the sea, so are thy misdeeds to His mercy:  nay, there is no such proportion to be given; for the sea, though great, yet may be measured, but God’s mercy cannot be circumscribed.  Whatsoever thy sins be then in quantity or quality, multitude or magnitude, fear them not, distrust not.  I speak not this, saith [6764]Chrysostom, “to make thee secure and negligent, but to cheer thee up.”  Yea but, thou urgest again, I have little comfort of this which is said, it concerns me not:  Inanis poenitentia quam sequens culpa coinquinat, ’tis to no purpose for me to repent, and to do worse than ever I did before, to persevere in sin, and to return to my lusts as a dog to his vomit, or a swine to the mire:  [6765]to what end is it to ask forgiveness of my sins, and yet daily to sin again and again, to do evil out of a habit?  I daily and hourly offend in thought, word, and deed, in a relapse by mine own weakness and wilfulness:  my bonus genius, my good protecting angel is gone, I am fallen from that I was or would be, worse and worse, “my latter end is worse than my beginning:”  Si quotidiae peccas, quotidie, saith Chrysostom, poenitentiam age, if thou daily offend, daily repent:  [6766]"if twice, thrice, a hundred, a hundred thousand times, twice, thrice, a hundred thousand times repent.”  As they do by an old house that is out of repair, still mend some part or other; so do by thy soul, still reform some vice, repair it by repentance, call to Him for grace, and thou shalt have it; “For we are freely justified by His grace,” Rom. iii. 24.  If thine enemy repent, as our Saviour enjoined Peter, forgive him seventy-seven times; and why shouldst thou think God will not forgive thee?  Why should the enormity of thy sins trouble thee?  God can do it, he will do it.  “My conscience” (saith [6767]Anselm) “dictates to me that I deserve damnation, my repentance will not suffice for satisfaction:  but thy mercy, O Lord, quite overcometh all my transgressions.”  The gods once (as the poets feign) with a gold chain would pull Jupiter out of heaven, but all they together could not stir him, and yet he could draw and turn them as he would himself; maugre all the force and fury of these infernal fiends, and crying sins, “His grace is sufficient.”  Confer the debt and the payment; Christ and Adam; sin, and the cure of it; the disease and the medicine; confer the sick man to his physician, and thou shalt soon perceive that his power is infinitely beyond it.  God is better able, as [6768]Bernard informeth us, “to help, than sin to do us hurt; Christ