Second Sermon for the Sixth Sunday After Pentecost: On the Sevenfold Mercy of God Towards the Sinner

“ The mercies of the Lord I will sing for ever.’ —Ps. Ixxxviii. 2.

“The mercies of the Lord I will sing for ever.” Wherefore do I occasionally hear some silly thought making a murmur in my soul about the burden of our penitential life here, as if to cause that burden to press more heavily upon me? I am conscious of a burden of a different kind, sweeter indeed, but heavier far. For God has so laden me with His tender mercies, so encompassed and overwhelmed me with His benefits, that I am unable to feel any other burden. “What shall I render to the Lord for all the things that He hath rendered to me ? ” (Ps. cxv. 3). So much hath He given me and so much hath He rendered to me, and shall anyone speak to me of another burden? “ My spirit within me swooneth away” (Ps. Ixxvi. 4). Yes, it fainteth and swooneth away, whilst I ponder the mercies of the Lord, so great and so many. And although I have not the power to offer Him worthy thanks, I will nevertheless do what I can, for my soul abhors ingratitude. Ingratitude is a most pestilential vice, the destroyer of grace, and the enemy of salvation. I assure you, dearest brethren, that in my opinion there is nothing so displeasing to God, especially in the children of grace, and in those who have been converted from worldliness, as this vice of ingratitude.

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It blocks up all the avenues of grace ; and wheresoever it is found, thither grace cannot come, there it has no room. Hence “I have great sadness and continual sorrow in my heart ” (Rom. ix. 2). For I see not a few so much inclined to levity, to laughter, and to sloth, and so ready to indulge in frivolous conversation that I am very uneasy lest, being too unmindful of God’s mercy towards them and too little thankful for His multiplied benefits, they should at last be abandoned by grace for failing to honour it with the reverence due to grace. i

But, brethren, what shall I say of the man who perseveres with obstinate mind in his murmuring and impatience? Or of him who repents of having cleaved close to God (Ps. Ixxii. 28), and who now, with as much perversity as unreason performs every good work against the grain, who plainly not only makes no return of thanks for the mercies of the Lord, but rather requites them with insult? For he beyond a doubt dishonours—so far as it depends on him—the Master Who called him, whosoever continues in His service to harbour feelings of sadness and discontent*—I speak of course of that sadness which is according to the flesh and “‘ worketh death’ (2 Cor. vii. 10). Does it seem to you that such a one shall receive further grace, and not rather that “that also which he seemeth to have shall be taken away ” (Matt. xxv. 29)? For may we not rightly regard as lost whatever has been given to the ungrateful? And surely one repents of having given what one believes to have been lost? Consequently, whosoever desires that the gifts of grace shall remain and be multiplied in his soul ought to show himself devout and grateful to the Giver. There is no man indeed who will not, if he examines, discover abundant reasons for being grateful to God, because, as the Psalmist sings, ‘‘ There is no one that can hide himself from His heat” (Ps. xviii. 7). But as for us whom He has called out of the world and chosen to serve Himself alone, if, according to the Apostle, “ we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit That is of God, that we may know the things that are given us from God” (x Cor. ii. 12): we, my brethren, most particularly, shall find innumerable motives for offering unceasing thanks to the Lord. For is there a single individual amongst us who cannot sincerely say to Him with the Prophet, “Thy mercy is great towards me ” (Ps. lxxxv. 13)? Therefore, from so great a multitude of divine mercies I will now single out a few and set them briefly before you, so that he who is wise may become wiser still when the occasion is given (Prov, ix:.).

Now, I see in my own case seven mercies of the Lord, which you likewise, I think, can easily discover in yourselves by looking into your conscience. The first is that He preserved me from many sins whilst I yet lived in the world; the first, I mean, of the seven I am speaking about, not of all that the divine goodness has bestowed upon me. For who does not perceive that, many as are the sins into which I fell, I should have fallen into many more had I not been restrained by the mercy of the Almighty? I freely acknowledge

THE SEVENFOLD MERCY OF GOD 333 and will ever acknowledge that “ unless the Lord had been my helper, my soul in a little would have been ” * (Ps. xciii. 17) guilty of every species of crime.t Oh, what patience and goodness did He manifest in thus preserving by His grace one so thankless and unappreciative, in most kindly protecting one so refractory and so arrogant from the innumerable other sins which I should have committed! But where shall I find words to describe the second of T hy mercies towards me, O Lord my God, to tell how kind it was, how generous, how gratuitous? I sinned against Thee, and Thou didst dissemble; I refrained not from crime, and Thou didst refrain from punishment; I persevered for long in my iniquity, and Thou, O Lord, Thou didst persevere for as long in showing me mercy. But of what avail would Thy long-suffering have been unless it were followed by the grace of repentance? It would have only served to render my damnation more complete and utter, wert Thou obliged to say at the last, “ These things hast thou done and I was silent ” (Ps. xlix. 21).

Therefore the third of God’s mercies to me was that He visited and changed my heart, so that what had been sweet to it before was now rendered bitter, and I who used to be “ glad when I had done evil and to rejoice in most wicked things” (Prov. ii. 14), began at length ‘‘ to recount to Him all my years in the bitterness of my soul” (Is. xxxviii. 15). And now, O Lord, “ Thou hast moved t “ There is no sin committed by any man which any other man might not also commit unless prevented by God’s grace and providence,’’— St. Augustine, Homil. liii.

the earth—of my heart—and hast troubled it ” : therefore “heal Thou the breaches thereof, for it has been moved ” (Ps. lix. 4). There are many who are led to repent of their sins, but without any profit, because their very repentance is as displeasing to God as was their former disobedience. It was consequently a further mercy on the part of the Lord that He compassionately received me when I returned to Him, and placed me in the number of those of whom the Psalmist sings, ‘‘ Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered ” (Ps. xxxi. I).

The fifth mercy is that by which He gave me strength to abstain from sin in future and to live more purely, lest I should fall back into my old evil ways and my “last state be made worse than the first ” (Matt. xii. 45). For manifestly no human strength, but Thy power alone, O Lord my God, is able to remove from our necks the yoke of sin, once we have voluntarily sub-mitted to it: because “‘ whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin” (John viii. 34), and cannot be delivered from that thraldom except by “Thy strong hand and stretched-out arm” (Deut. v. 15). But now when I have been emancipated from the power of evil by these five mercies, Thou givest me the grace of well-doing in two others, so that the words of the Prophet may be fulfilled, “Decline from evil and do good” (Ps. xxxvi. 27). These last two mercies are the grace of acquiring merits, the grace, that is, by which Thou enablest me to live a virtuous life; and the grace to hope for an eternal reward, whereby Thou encouragest an unworthy and sinful man to presume so far on Thy oft-proved generosity as to look forward to the enjoyment of celestial bliss.