correction, or interruption, they make nothing appear. It cannot be a
cure if the malady be not wholly discharged; if repentance were laid upon
the scale of the balance, it would weigh down sin. I find no quality so
easy to counterfeit as devotion, if men do not conform their manners and
life to the profession; its essence is abstruse and occult; the
appearance easy and ostentatious.

For my own part, I may desire in general to be other than I am; I may
condemn and dislike my whole form, and beg of Almighty God for an entire
reformation, and that He will please to pardon my natural infirmity: but
I ought not to call this repentance, methinks, no more than the being
dissatisfied that I am not an angel or Cato. My actions are regular,
and conformable to what I am and to my condition; I can do no better;
and repentance does not properly touch things that are not in our power;
sorrow does.. I imagine an infinite number of natures more elevated and
regular than mine; and yet I do not for all that improve my faculties, no
more than my arm or will grow more strong and vigorous for conceiving
those of another to be so. If to conceive and wish a nobler way of
acting than that we have should produce a repentance of our own, we must
then repent us of our most innocent actions, forasmuch as we may well
suppose that in a more excellent nature they would have been carried on
with greater dignity and perfection; and we would that ours were so.
When I reflect upon the deportment of my youth, with that of my old age,
I find that I have commonly behaved myself with equal order in both
according to what I understand: this is all that my resistance can do.
I do not flatter myself; in the same circumstances I should do the same
things. It is not a patch, but rather an universal tincture, with which
I am stained. I know no repentance, superficial, half-way, and
ceremonious; it must sting me all over before I can call it so, and must
prick my bowels as deeply and universally as God sees into me.