Acts xxiv. 24, 25.
After certain days, when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, which was a Jewess, he sent for Paul, and heard him concerning the faith of Christ. And, as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.
This Felix, whose name is become so memorable in the Christian church, had been made Procurator of Judæa by the Emperor Claudius, and continued in that government during the six or seven first years of Nero: when he was recalled to answer for his oppressive administration before the emperor; who, we are told, would have punished him, according to his deserts, but for the interposition of Pallas, at that time Nero’s chief minister.
He was, indeed, in all respects a very corrupt and profligate man, as appears from the testimony of Tacitus[2] and Josephus[3]; from whom we learn, that he was more especially addicted to the vices of lust and cruelty; both which he exercised in the most audacious manner; vexing the people with all sorts of oppression, and rioting in his excesses, without restraint. Drusilla, too, is represented to us in a light, not much more favourable. For, though a Jewess, and the wife of another man, she had contracted a marriage, or rather lived in adultery with this pagan governor of Judæa; transgressing at once both a moral and positive law of her religion, for the sake of ascending to that honour.
One would wonder how persons of this character should have any curiosity to hear Paul concerning the faith of Christ. And, without doubt, they had no serious desire of information. It is likely they proposed to themselves some entertainment from questioning the prisoner; and the presence of Drusilla makes it credible that the entertainment was chiefly designed for her; who might be a bigot to her religion, though she scorned to live up to it; and therefore wanted, we may suppose, to insult Jesus in the person of his disciple.
However, let their purpose be what it would, such were Felix and Drusilla, before whom Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come.
Paul was not in the number of those complaisant preachers, who take a text, in which their hearers have no concern. He had to do with persons, who bade defiance to religion in all its forms; and his subject was well suited to the occasion. They expected an amusing tale of Jesus Christ: but the Apostle, who knew how unworthy they were of being instructed in the faith, as not yet possessing the fist principles of morals, took up the matter a great deal higher; and, discoursing to them on the natural duties of justice and temperance, which they had grossly violated, and on the natural doctrine of a judgment to come, which they had never believed or respected, gave them to understand, that they had much to learn, or practise at least, before they were fit hearers of what he had further to say concerning the Christian revelation.
Being taken at this advantage, we may easily conceive their surprise and disappointment: and, as the speaker knew how to give an energy to his discourse on these interesting topics, we cannot wonder, that one or both of them should be much discomposed by it. Of Drusilla the sacred text says nothing: she was, perhaps, the more skilful dissembler of the two; or her rage and indignation might, for the moment, get the better of her fears: but Felix had not the address, or the fortune, to disguise his feelings; he trembled before this plain, intrepid speaker.
This event is instructive, indeed, as it sets before us the power of conscience over the worst of men; and, at the same time, the meanness of guilt, which, in such place and dignity, could not help shrinking at the voice of truth, though speaking by the mouth of a poor dependant prisoner. But when we have made the proper use of these reflexions, on the case of Felix, we shall find a still more instructive lesson in the subsequent conduct of this affrighted sinner.
When the fit of trembling came upon him, he said hastily to the preacher: Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.
How striking a picture of that fatal disposition which men have to put off repentance, even under the fullest conviction of guilt; and that too, on the most frivolous pretences! What Felix should have done instantly, when his conscience was so much alarmed, he omits to do: Go thy way for this time: and yet, to quiet that conscience, he would not be thought to lay aside all purpose of reformation: When I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.
With this famous example in my eye, I shall attempt to shew in the following discourse: 1. That PROCRASTINATION is the usual support of vice: 2. That false reasoning, or, what we may call, the SOPHISTRY OF VICE, is the great support of procrastination: 3. That a FINAL IMPENITENCE is the too common effect of this pernicious confederacy. And
I. Procrastination is the main support of vice; the favourite stratagem, by which the grand deceiver himself ensnares the souls of men, and maintains his empire over them.
There are few persons so desperately wicked but they resolve, secretly at least, and in their own minds, to amend their bad lives, at some time or other. But that time is rarely the present. They have other business in hand: some scheme of interest to manage, some project of ambition to pursue, some intrigue of pleasure to accomplish; in short, some darling sin or other to gratify, before they can be at leisure to execute this intended work of reformation.
Nay, there are seasons of recollection, in which the memory of their past lives afflicts and torments them; there are hours of melancholy, or ill health, in which the necessity of repentance seems pressing and instant; there are certain moments of terror, in which the final resolution is on the point of being taken: yet still, this delusive idea of to-morrow steps in: the memory, the necessity, the terror, are over-ruled: the ungrateful task is, for the present, deferred; to-morrow laid aside, and the next day forgotten.
This was the case of Felix in the text. When bad men are clothed with power, it is not easy for truth of any kind, especially for moral truth, to gain access to them. Yet it made its way to this potent governor, and with a force which nothing could resist. It borrowed the thunder of Paul’s rhetoric to speak home and loudly to his affrighted conscience. It shook his guilty mind with the sense of his crimes, his incontinence and injustice, his riot and rapine, his lust and cruelty; and still more, with the apprehension of a judgment to come, armed with terror, and ready to take vengeance of his multiplied iniquities.
You expect now, that, in this agony, he should take the part, which duty and prudence, his conviction and his fears, equally recommended to him. You expect, that he should apply to his instructor, who had raised this storm, to compose it; and that, leaving his chair of state, he should spring forth and accost his prisoner, as the honest jaylor at Philippi had done, on a similar occasion: What must I do to be saved[4]? But, no; it was not yet convenient to put that question. His pleasures, his fortune, his ambition, might be endangered by it. It was not the moment to take this decisive step. Better to think twice of it, and dismiss the preacher for this time.
And is there nothing in this case which we may apply to ourselves? Is there none here, whom the free remonstrance of a friend, an unexpected sentence in a moral writer, the admonition of a preacher, and, above all, the word of God, hath, at any time, awakened to a lively sense of his condition? A reproof from one or other of these sometimes falls in so exactly with a man’s own case, and goes so directly to the heart, that he is more than commonly disturbed and confounded by it. It flashes such conviction on the mind, and shews the sinner to himself in so just a light, that he stands aghast at the deformity of his conduct, and at the peril of it. In the agitation of this distress, he half resolves to repent: nay, he strives for a moment to enforce this good resolution: when, let but that dæmon, which every sinner carries about with him, whisper the word, to-morrow, and his conscience revives, his fears disperse, and this precious opportunity is lost, though at the hazard of never returning any more.
Not that he permits this idle insinuation to banish all thoughts of future repentance, or to prevail with him, for the present, in its true and proper form: No: to be thus far the dupe of his own folly, would disgrace him too much, and expose his prevarication too plainly: if it pass upon him, it shall be under the mask of wisdom. He turns sophister then in his own defence, and is easily convinced, “That his conduct is not altogether absurd or unreasonable.”
And thus, as I proposed to shew,
II. In the next place, this fatal procrastination, which supports vice, is itself supported by a READY AND CONVENIENT SOPHISTRY.
The case of Felix will again illustrate this second observation; and shew us the whole process of that preverted ingenuity, by which the credulous mind is made easy under its delusion.
He thought it not sufficient to say to Paul; Go thy way for this time. This abrupt dismission of the preacher was to be justified, in some sort, to himself, and to those who were witnesses of his consternation. He covers it, then, with this pretence; When I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.
The TIME, it seems, was not proper for his immediate conversion. To become a penitent just then; on the instant; to be surprised into a good life, had the appearance of too much facility and inconsideration. He must take a space to reflect on the grounds and reasons of what had been offered to him. He had, besides, other affairs, which pressed upon him at this moment: or, if not, to deliberate on the matter, would render his conversion more solemn and effectual.
The PLACE, too, we may believe, was as little suited, as the time, to this business. “What! in a public apartment of his palace! in the presence of Drusilla, whose tenderest interests were concerned in the case, and whose delicacy required managing! before his pagan courtiers, and many, we may suppose, of his Jewish subjects, who would be equally scandalized at this precipitate conversion of their master and governor!” These, and other pretences of the like sort, without doubt, occurred to him: and on the strength of these he concludes his procrastination to be fit, and decent, and justifiable, in a good degree, on the principles of virtue and prudence.
“But why, unhappy man (if one may presume to expostulate the case with thee) why this hasty and unweighed conclusion? Could there be any time more convenient for thy conversion, or any place more suitable, if thou wert in earnest to be converted?
Wast thou ever so prepared for this change as now? Was thy mind ever so convinced, or thy heart so affected? Didst thou ever hear and tremble till this day, and wilt thou expect such a miracle a second time? Can thy bad life be reformed too soon, or can it need an afterthought to justify such reformation? Can any other business come in competition with this? and can it deserve the name of weakness and surprise to give way to the powerful workings of thy own conscience? In a doubtful case, it may be well to deliberate: but can it be a secret even to thyself, that nothing is questionable here, but thy sincerity?
For what, let me ask, is that convenient season, which flatters thy present irresolution? Wilt thou find such a monitor, as Paul, in thy dependants? Will thy tax-gatherers preach righteousness to thee, and thy centurions, temperance? or, thy philosophers (if, perhaps, thou hast of these about thee, to grace thy provincial pomp) will they reason with thee, on a judgment to come?
But the PLACE is unfit; and thou wilt send for Paul to confer in private with thee.
Wast thou then afraid to expose thy honour by this step? And did it seem too much to give to God and truth, the glory of thy conversion? True penitence knows nothing of these punctilios. The example had edified thy unbelieving court; and might have had its effect on the insensible Drusilla. Thy injustice and incontinence had been open to all men. Was it not fit thou shouldst atone for this scandal by as public a reformation? Yet still thy pretence is, a convenient season! As if the first season, that offers for renouncing a bad life, were not always the most convenient.”
But I continue this address to the Roman governor too long, if you consider me as directing it to him only. Let me profess, then, that by Felix I mean every sinner at this day, who procrastinates in the affair of his salvation, and would colour that procrastination by a still more contemptible sophistry. For, let us be ingenuous. This miserable Pagan, after all, had something to say for himself. This was, probably, the only time that repentance had ever been preached to him. He still, perhaps, was acquainted with little more than the name of Jesus: for his teacher, as we have seen, insisted chiefly on the great truths of natural religion. If he then scrupled to take the benefit of this first and imperfect lecture, there is some allowance to be made for his folly. But what shall we say of those who possess every possible advantage of light and knowledge, who have grown up in the profession of Christianity, and are not now to learn either its duties or terrors? If such as these have sinned themselves into the condition of Felix, and yet resist the calls of grace, the commands of the Gospel, the exhortations of its ministers, the admonitions of their own conscience, all of them concurring to press upon them an immediate repentance; if there be among us such procrastinators as these, what topics of defence are there by which they can hope to excuse, or so much as palliate, their prodigious infatuation?
“Shall we say for them, or will they say for themselves, that they are young and healthy? that they have time enough before them, in which to grow wise at their leisure? that they wait till the boisterous passions have been calmed by reason and experience? that they expect a convenient season for repentance, in declining life, and the languor of old age? or that they shall find it, as others have done, on the bed of sickness, or on the bed of death?”
I have never heard that Christians have any better reasons than these for delaying repentance: and, if they have not, though the sophistry of Felix deserved to be laid open, the respect I owe to those who now hear me, will not permit me to imagine that such sophistry as this, can want to be exposed.
It will be to better purpose to set before you,
III. In the last place, the issue of this too natural alliance between procrastination and vice, in a FINAL IMPENITENCE; of which the case of Felix, again, affords us a striking example.
When I have a convenient season, says he to Paul, I will call for thee. This season came, and Paul attended; to what effect, we shall now understand.
When Felix dismissed him from his presence, he insinuated, nay perhaps thought, that he should have a disposition hereafter to profit by his religious instructions. But time and bad company quieted his fears: and a favourite vice inspired other motives for the interview, than those of religion. For he hoped, says the historian, that money should have been given him of Paul, that he might loose him: wherefore he sent for him the oftener, and communed with him.
The case, we see, is well altered. He trembled before at Paul’s charge against him of rapine and extortion: he would now exercise these very vices on Paul himself. Such was the fruit of that convenient season, which was to have teemed with better things!
But this is not all: For, after two years Portius Festus came into Felix’s room; and Felix, willing to shew the Jews a pleasure, left Paul bound.
Felix then had his preacher within call for two whole years: time sufficient, one would think, to afford the opportunity of many a lecture concerning the faith of Christ. Yet, though he communed with Paul oft, it does not appear that his conferences with him turned on this subject. What he wanted to draw from him was, not truth, but money; and, when this hope failed, he was little concerned about the rest. Nay, the impression which Paul had made upon him was so entirely effaced, that he left an innocent man in bonds, for the sake of doing a pleasure to the Jews. But he had his reason still for this unwonted courtesy. For their complaints were ready to follow him (as indeed they did) to the throne of Cæsar; whither he went, at last, unrepentant and unreformed, to encounter, as he could, the rigors of imperial justice; just as so many others, by the like misuse of time and opportunity, expose themselves to all the terrors of divine.
Not but there is yet this advantage in the parallel on the side of Felix. He neglected to use the space of two years, which was mercifully allowed him for the season of reformation: but how many Christians omit this work, not for two only, but for twenty, forty years; nay, for the whole extent of a long life; and never find a convenient season for doing the only thing, which it greatly concerns them to do, although with the astonishing delusion of always intending it.
To conclude: We have seen that procrastination serves the ends of vice; and that vice, in return, is but too successful in pleading the cause of procrastination: leaving between them this salutary lesson to mankind, “That he who seriously intends to repent to-morrow, should in all reason begin to-day; to-day, as the Apostle admonishes, while it is called to-day, lest the heart, in the mean time, be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin[5].”