lived more than nine hundred years, spent them all in weeping and mourning, and suffering a thousand incommodities which the state of his corruption attracted to it, but in the end, (as says the Divine Wisdom,) through penance he obtained pardon; [1] and with this example I must animate myself to lament my miseries and to do penance for my sins, that Almighty God may deliver me from them, imitating in penance him whom I imitated in sin, and beseeching our Lord to chastise me as much as He will in this life, so that He pardon me and deliver me from the torments of the other.
POINT III.
The third point shall be to call to memory some mortal sin, as perjury, carnality, or such other like; for which many souls are burning in hell, and that very justly, for injury done to the infinite majesty of Almighty God.
1. I must, then, descend with my consideration into hell, which is full of souls, among which I shall find many that are there burning for one only sin; some for one perjury, others for a lustful thought consented to, and others for some other sin of word or of deed. And then I will consider how all these condemned persons were men as well as I, and many of them Christians as well as I, who enjoyed the same sacraments and sacrifices, and those sermons and sacred books, that I enjoy, and were perhaps some time very holy and highly in favour with Almighty God; but by little and little they grew careless and came to fall into that mortal sin, and, by the just judgments of God, death attacked and fell upon them in it, and they were most justly condemned for the same. For (as the Apostle St. James says) whosoever shall " offend in one point," breaking a commandment, "becomes guilty of all," [2] the same as he
