power to do them, but that they are exceedingly imperfect, and greatly lack that pure intention, proper care and fervency, accompanied with which they should be wrought.
If you will look at them in this light, you will find cause for shame rather than complacency, for it is but too true that the graces which were pure and perfect when they came from God are sullied by our imperfect use of them.
After this, compare your works with those of the Saints, and other servants of God; for by such a comparison you will clearly see that your best and greatest deeds are of much baser metal, and of little worth.
Then, proceed to compare them with those which Christ wrought for you in the Mysteries of His Life and of His continuous Cross; consider His works in themselves apart from His Divinity, and in the affection and purity of that love with which He wrought them, and you will clearly see that all your works are precisely nothing.
And lastly, if you will lift up your thoughts to the Divinity and boundless Majesty of your God, and to the service which He deserves, you will plainly perceive, that the amount of what you have done for Him ought rather to be a ground of considerable fear than of vanity. Therefore, in all your ways, in all your works, however holy they may be, you must cry unto
