so as not to be capable of delivering a discourse of a calm and^
208 ON CATECHISING. [CITAP. XIV.
which he meditates in his own human cogitations. For " there are many devices in a man's heart; nevertheless, tlie counsel of the Lord stands for ever."
21. But if our mind is agitated by some cause of offence, so as not to be capable of delivering a discourse of a calm and^ enjoyable strain, our charity towards those for whom Christ died, desiring to redeem them by the price of His own blood from the death of the errors of this world, ought to be so great, that the very circumstance of intelligence being brought us in our sadness, regarding the advent of some person who longs to become a Christian, ought to be enough to cheer us and dissipate that heaviness of spirit, just as the deliglits of gain are wont to soften the pain of losses. For we are not (fairly) oppressed by the offence of any individual, unless it be that of the man whom we either perceive or believe to be perishing himself, or to be the occasion of the undoing of some weak one.
Accordingly, one who comes to us with the view of being formally admitted, in that we cherish the hope of his ability to go forward, should wipe away the sorrow cJiised by one who fails us. For even if the dread that our proselyte may become the child of hell ^ comes into our thoughts, as there are many such before our eyes, from whom those offences arise by which we are distressed, this ought to operate, not in the way of keeping us back, but rather in the w^ay of stimulating us and spurring us on. And in the same measure we ought to admonish him whom we are instructing to be on his guard against imitating those who are Christians only in name and not in very truth, and to take care not to sufler himself to be so moved by their numbers as either to be desirous of following: them, or to be reluctant to follow Christ on their account, and either to be unwilling to be in the church of God, where they are, or to wish to be there in such a character as they bear. And somehow or other, in admonitions of this sort, that address is the more glowing to which a present sense of grief supplies the fuel ; so that instead of being duller, we utter with j^reatcr fire and vehemence under such feelinirs things which, in times of greater ease, we would give forth in a colder and less energetic manner. And this should make us rejoice
Prov. xix. 21. « Matt, xxiii. 15.