He that believes contrition alone, with confession to a priest, is enough to expiate ten thousand sins, is furnished with an excuse easy enough to quit himself from the troubles of a holy life; and he that hath a great many cheap ways of buying off his penances for a little money even for the greatest sins, is taught a way not to fear the doing of an act for which he must repent; since repentance is a duty so soon, so certainly, and so easily performed. But these are notorious doctrines of the Roman church; and yet God so loves the souls of His creatures, that many men who trust to these doctrines in their discourses dare not rely upon them in their lives. But while they talk as if they did not need to live strictly, many of them live so strictly as if they did not believe so foolishly. He that tells that antecedently God hath to all human choice decreed men to heaven or to hell, takes away from men all care of the way, because they believe that He that infallibly decreed that end hath unalterably appointed the means; and some men that talk thus wildly, live soberly, and are overwrought in their understanding by some secret art of God, that man may not perish in his ignorance, but be assisted in his choice, and saved by the divine mercies. And there is no sect of men but are furnished with antidotes and little excuses to cure the venom of their doctrine; and therefore although the adherent and constituent poison is notorious and therefore to be declined, yet because it is collaterally cured and overpowered by the torrent and wisdom of God's mercies, the men are to be taken into the quire, that we may all join in giving God praise for the operation of His hands.
From Taylor's sermon 'The Miracles of the Divine Mercy', Part II, in The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor, Volume IV.
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