I mean to point out three principal causes, which is the only
arrangement of this discourse. Art, and far-sought reasonings, would
be ill-timed. Oh, attend, therefore, be ye whom ye may. No subject can
be more worthy your attention, since it goes to inform you what may be
the hopes of your eternal destiny.

Few are saved, because in that number we can only comprehend two
descriptions of persons: either those who have been so happy as to
preserve their innocence pure and undefiled, or those who, after
having lost, have regained it by penitence. This is the first cause.
There are only these two ways of salvation: heaven is only open to
the innocent or to the penitent. Now, of which party are you? Are you
innocent? Are you penitent?

Nothing unclean shall enter the kingdom of God. We must consequently
carry there either an innocence unsullied, or an innocence regained.
Now to die innocent is a grace to which few souls can aspire; and to
live penitent is a mercy which the relaxed state of our morals renders
equally rare. Who, indeed, will pretend to salvation by the chain of
innocence? Where are the pure souls in whom sin has never dwelt, and
who have preserved to the end the sacred treasure of grace confided to
them by baptism, and which our Savior will redemand at the awful day
of punishment?

In those happy days when the whole Church was still but an assembly of
saints, it was very uncommon to find an instance of a believer who,
after having received the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and acknowledged
Jesus Christ in the sacrament which regenerates us, fell back to his
former irregularities of life. Ananias and Sapphira were the only
prevaricators in the Church of Jerusalem; that of Corinth had only one