subject to the conqueror. If I am ambitious, I am the slave of honour, and of all them that can give it me or take it away. If I am covetous, I am the slave of wealth; if a glutton, I am the slave of delicate food; if luxurious, I am the slave of sensuality, and of those persons that have robbed me of my heart and of my liberty. And what greater baseness can be than this? What more heavy slavery than that of sin made inveterate by vicious custom?
2. This should move me to great detestation of my sins, to cast off from me this servitude, and to restore my spirit to liberty, bringing myself back to the service of my Creator and Redeemer, of whom I am to ask that, seeing He bought me with His blood, [1] He would vouchsafe to free me from the slavery of sin, that with this new title I might be His slave, that He permit not that I be any more the slave of my flesh, of my vices, nor of the devil His deadly enemy.
MEDITATION IV.
ON THE GRIEVOUSNESS OF SIN, UNDERSTOOD BY THE BASENESS OF MAN THAT OFFENDS GOD, AND BY THE NOTHING THAT HE HAS OF HIS OWN.
The end of this meditation is, to know the grievousness of doing injury to Almighty God, and the baseness of him that offends Him; for the more vile the offender is, so much the greater is his audacity and shamelessness in offending the supreme Emperor both of heaven and of earth.
POINT I.
1. First, I must consider what I am with regard to the body, pondering that my original is dirt, and my end is dust; [2] my "flesh" is "a flower," and soon "withers like
