Part 1, lesson 18. That the malignity of the flesh deserves every kind ot humiliations on the part of God and creatures

Q. When will man and the flesh be no longer sin ?

A. In paradise, on the day of the resurection, when God will reform this vile, abject, and humbled body.

Q. Can we say with pro priety: this humbled body?

A. Yes; and it is also ac cording to St. Paul that we say it: for man truly deserves every humiliation, and there is no confusion that he ought not to suffer; for example, if a person says of me, of you, or of any one: this man or this woman is avaricious; we must bear it, since we have in us a principle of insatiable avarice, although grace may perhaps have stifled the sentiment of it in our souls. If a person says: this man or this woman is dishonest, we must bear it, because the seed of every vice and impurity is found in our flesh, and would carry it to sin, if the Holy Spirit did not prevent it. If any one says: there is much pride in you or in me; this is always true, whatever effects the grace of Christ and his Holy Spirit may have wrought in us ; and a person does us no injury, by calling us proud, because our flesh remains always the same, that is to say, always full of pride, always ready to act through pride; so that we never cease to be proud, although we may not feel it, and may sometimes exercise our selves in acts of humility. Thus it is of all other imperfections that can be conceived in man; because the flesh is the source and sink of all impurity, dis order, and sin.

Q. There is then no kind of humiliations that we ought not to suffer, and believe to be our due ?

A. No.

Q. Contempt, injuries, ca lumnies, should not then trou ble us ?

A. No; we should imitate, on the contrary, that holy man, who, being punished for a crime which he. had not committed, would not justify himself, being convinced that he would have committed it, and many other sins, had not God prevented him by his grace.

Q. So we ought to suffer all kinds of persecutions ?

A. If we understood well the malice of our flesh, we would not doubt it; we would, on the contrary, desire to suffer these chastisements, to repress by them the continual rebellion of the flesh against God.

Q. Men, angels, God him self, should then persecute us incessantly ?

A. Yes; we should be treated, as sinners will be at the day of judgement, whom God will pun ish, and upon whom he will ex ercise his vengeance, through all his creatures, as by so many in struments of the execution of his justice.* Thus, in all sick ness, persecution, contempt, and other like afflictions, we must take part with God against ourselves, and say that we justly merit all this and more; that God has a right to use all creatures to punish us, and that we humbly adore the great mercy which he now exercises towards us, knowing that in the time of his justice, he would treat us more rigorously.

Q. What do you call the time of his justice ?

A. The time of the next life, when he will no longer show any mercy to men, when his jus-

• Pugnabit cum illo orbis terrarura contra insensatos. Sap. v, 21.

tice will no longer be blended with compassion for our mise ries, and when he will treat us according to all the severity of his judgment.

Q. This will then be very terrible?

A. It is a fearful thing, says the scripture,* to fall into the hands of the living God; for then there will be no kind of pains or torments, with which our soul and body will not be overwhelmed.

Q. It is then much easier to carry now the cross which his justice imposes upon us, in the time of his mercy, when

• Horrendum est incidere in manus Dei viventis. Heb. x, 31.

we are sustained by his grace and the virtue that his goodness gives us, than to await the time when we shall be deprived of all help and consolation, and overwhelmed with every sort of torments ?

A. You are right; in hell there is no strength to sustain, no grace to fortify, no unction to sweeten the yoke of the rigor of God; which is nevertheless in this world the greatest allevia tion of our cross and torments.