which is purchased at the expense of endless suffering.
All that we have said in the preceding pages will furnish you with spiritual arms to triumph over your enemies. If you follow these counsels you will take the first step in virtue; that is, you will extirpate your vices. Thus will you defend your soul, the citadel which God has confided to your care, and in which He wills to take up His abode. If you defend it resolutely and faithfully you will enjoy the presence of this heavenly Guest, for the Apostle tells us that "God is charity, and that he that abideth in charity abideth in God, and God in him."[1] Now, he abides in charity who does nothing to destroy this virtue, which perishes only by mortal sin, against which the preceding considerations may be applied as a preventive or remedy.
CHAPTER XL.
THREE KINDS OF VIRTUES IN WHICH THE FULNESS OF JUSTICE CONSISTS; AND, FIRST, MAN'S DUTY TO HIMSELF.
Section I.
Our Threefold Obligation to Virtue.
HAVING spoken at length of the sins which profane and degrade the soul, let us now turn to the virtues which elevate and adorn it with the spiritual treasures of justice. It belongs to justice to render to
- ↑ 1 St. John iv. 16.
