CHAPTER I.
What is the Nature of our Heart, and how it ought to be Governed.
YOUR heart was created by God for this end alone, to be loved and possessed by Him. And with this love you can make it do whatever you wish, and every thing, however difficult it might be, will in this manner become easy to you; therefore you must in the first place gain a fixed and established intention in your heart, so that outward actions may flow from inward. For, although corporal penances, and all those exercises which chastise and afflict the flesh, are praiseworthy, when used with discretion, and when adapted to the particular, circumstances of each person, yet, if you only use such means as these, you will never gain a single virtue; but on the contrary vanity and the wind of vainglory; and all your labour will be lost, unless these outward exercises are animated and guided by right inward dispositions.
The life of man is nothing else but a warfare
