Behold, then, already one path of salvation shut to the generality of men.  All have erred.  Be ye whom ye may, listen to me now, the time has been when sin reigned over you.  Age may perhaps have calmed your passions, but what was your youth?  Long and habitual infirmities may perhaps have disgusted you with the world; but what use did you formerly make of the vigor of health?  A sudden inspiration of grace may have turned your heart, but do you not most fervently entreat that every moment prior to that inspiration may be effaced from the remembrance of the Lord?

But with what am I taking up time?  We are all sinners, O my God! and Thou knowest our hearts!  What we know of our errors is, perhaps, in Thy sight, the most pardonable; and we all allow that by innocence we have no claim to salvation.  There remains, therefore, only one resource, which is penitence.  After our shipwreck, say the saints, it is the timely plank which alone can conduct us into port; there is no other means of salvation for us.  Be ye whom ye may, prince or subject, high or low, penitence alone can save you.  Now permit me to ask where are the penitent?  You will find more, says a holy father, who have never fallen, than who, after their fall, have raised themselves by true repentance.  This is a terrible saying; but do not let us carry things too far:  the truth is sufficiently dreadful without adding new terrors to it by vain declamation.

Let us alone examine as to whether the majority of us have a right, through penitence, to salvation.  What is a penitent?  According to Tertullian, a penitent is a believer who feels every moment his former unhappiness in forsaking and losing his God; one who has his guilt incessantly before his eyes; who finds everywhere the traces and remembrance of it.

A penitent is a man instrusted by God with judgment against himself; one who refuses himself the most innocent pleasures because he had formerly indulged in those the most criminal; one who puts up with the most necessary gratification with pain; one who regards his body as an enemy whom it is necessary to conquer—­as an unclean vessel which must be purified—­as an unfaithful debtor of whom it is proper to exact to the last farthing.  A penitent regards himself as a criminal condemned to death, because he is no longer worthy of life.  In the loss of riches or health he sees only a withdrawal of favors that he had formerly abused:  in the humiliations which happen to him, only the pains of his guilt:  in the agonies with which he is racked, only the commencement of those punishments he has justly merited.  Such is a penitent.