Page:MeditationsOnTheMysteriesOfOurHolyV1.djvu/309

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Almighty God and His things, God Almighty will be forgetful of me and mine.

ii. The second vice is imprudence, or precipitation and want of consideration in those things that I have to do or say, casting myself into them with violence of passion, without first considering whether they be lawful or unlawful, or without taking convenient counsel concerning them, [1] whence proceed innumerable errors and defects in all matters of virtue.

iii. The third vice is rashness in judging the sayings and doings of my neighbours, condemning them or suspecting amiss of them without sufficient foundation, [2] in which I do injury to Almighty God our Lord by usurping His authority, and interposing myself to judge that secret that is proper to His tribunal. I likewise do injury to my neighbour, in condemning him without sufficient reason; and I do hurt to myself, for ordinarily I come to fall into that which I would rashly judge of.

iv. The fourth vice is inconstancy and changeableness in the good [3] that I have determined, easily altering my opinion; whence proceeds failure in the good resolutions that I had purposed, that I do not keep my word with Almighty God and with men, and the easy giving credit to the temptations of the devil and to the flattering deceits of the flesh; and with this inconstancy is joined changeableness of thoughts, suffering myself to be carried by foolish imagination, which blunts the understanding and renders it wild and inconsiderate in thinking upon divers things without any order. Hence also proceeds mutability in good exercises, skipping from one to another only to satisfy my own pleasure, and by the novelty of them to take away their tediousness.

  1. S. Th. 2, 2, q. liii.
  2. S. Th. 2, 2, q. lx. art. 3.
  3. S. Th. 2, 2, q. liii. art. 5.