avarice, and injustice.  One hour to God, the rest to the devil, as if by composition and compensation.  ’Tis a wonder to see actions so various in themselves succeed one another with such an uniformity of method as not to interfere nor suffer any alteration, even upon the very confines and passes from the one to the other.  What a prodigious conscience must that be that can be at quiet within itself whilst it harbours under the same roof, with so agreeing and so calm a society, both the crime and the judge?

A man whose whole meditation is continually working upon nothing but impurity which he knows to be so odious to Almighty God, what can he say when he comes to speak to Him?  He draws back, but immediately falls into a relapse.  If the object of divine justice and the presence of his Maker did, as he pretends, strike and chastise his soul, how short soever the repentance might be, the very fear of offending the Infinite Majesty would so often present itself to his imagination that he would soon see himself master of those vices that are most natural and vehement in him.  But what shall we say of those who settle their whole course of life upon the profit and emolument of sins, which they know to be mortal?  How many trades and vocations have we admitted and countenanced amongst us, whose very essence is vicious?  And he that, confessing himself to me, voluntarily told me that he had all his lifetime professed and practised a religion, in his opinion damnable and contrary to that he had in his heart, only to preserve his credit and the honour of his employments, how could his courage suffer so infamous a confession?  What can men say to the divine justice upon this subject?

Their repentance consisting in a visible and manifest reparation, they lose the colour of alleging it both to God and man.  Are they so impudent as to sue for remission without satisfaction and without penitence?  I look upon these as in the same condition with the first:  but the obstinacy is not there so easy to be overcome.  This contrariety and volubility of opinion so sudden, so violent, that they feign, are a kind of miracle to me:  they present us with the state of an indigestible agony of mind.

It seemed to me a fantastic imagination in those who, these late years past, were wont to reproach every man they knew to be of any extraordinary parts, and made profession of the Catholic religion, that it was but outwardly; maintaining, moreover, to do him honour forsooth, that whatever he might pretend to the contrary he could not but in his heart be of their reformed opinion.  An untoward disease, that a man should be so riveted to his own belief as to fancy that others cannot believe otherwise than as he does; and yet worse, that they should entertain so vicious an opinion of such great parts as to think any man so qualified, should prefer any present advantage of fortune to the promises of eternal life and the menaces of eternal damnation.  They may believe me:  could anything have tempted my youth, the ambition of the danger and difficulties in the late commotions had not been the least motives.