or incest; that is right; but you are impure in your thoughts and desires; you are a cause of sin to others by your extravagance in dress, by your caresses and allurements; it is this latter vice and not the former that will condemn you. You are meek, charitable, merciful; a beautiful virtue! but you are addicted to an idle, comfort-seeking, and intemperate mode of life; the cause of your damnation will not be vindictiveness, harshness, or cruelty, but your intemperance and sloth in the divine service. You are not one of those who seek quarrels, and foment discord and disunion; but you are apt to rash-judge and speak ill of your neighbor. It is not a revengeful spirit, but rash-judging and an unbridled tongue that will be the cause of your ruin. You are not a public, notorious, scandalous, and abandoned sinner; but you are addicted to a secret sin known to yourself alone, and that will be reason enough for God to reject you. No matter what good works you perform, as long as you do not renounce all vices, you are, as Tertullian says, only half a Christian; you are divided between God and the devil; you have only half a wish to go to heaven. God does not allow that; He must have all or nothing. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.”[1] Such is the command given to us. We are not told to love Him with half of our heart, soul, or mind, but with our whole heart, etc. He who does not give himself altogether to God, and keeps back something for himself, acts against God: “He that is not with Me is against Me.”[2]
Nay, they have less hope of heaven than if they were altogether wicked. Nay, T might almost say that although every sin is an abomination in the sight of God, yet it would be better for many a one and more advantageous to his salvation, to be altogether and evidently vicious than to be as we have described, and only half devout. Why? Because a great and wicked sinner has a clearer perception of his unhappy and miserable state, and is more likely to free himself from it by sincere repentance and amendment through the fear of hell, while the half-Christian, since he is not conscious of grievous or very enormous sins, and actually does some apparently good works every day, natters himself that his devotion is all right, and lives assured of salvation without fear or anxiety, nor does he find out his mistake until he has actually entered on an unhappy eternity. It was the pub-
