|
To begin with, because it is an immediate reproof of our sloth and
carelessness, and like some energetic schoolmaster who never allows us to
deviate from the line of strict discipline, and if our carelessness has
ever so little exceeded the limits of due gravity which become it, it
immediately excites us by the stimulus of desire, and chides us and recalls
us to due moderation. Secondly, because, in the matter of chastity and
perfect purity, when by God's grace we see that we have been for some time
kept from carnal pollution, in order that we may not imagine that we can no
longer be disturbed by the motions of the flesh and thereby be elated and
puffed up in our secret hearts as if we no longer bore about the corruption
of the flesh, it humbles and checks us, and reminds us by its pricks that
we are but men. For as we ordinarily fall without much thought into
other kinds of sins and those worse and more harmful, and are not so easily
ashamed of committing them, so in this particular one the conscience is
especially humbled, and by means of this illusion it is stung by the
recollection of passions that have been neglected, as it sees clearly that
it is rendered unclean by natural emotions, of which it knew nothing while
it was still more unclean through spiritual sins; and so coming back at
once to the cure of its former sluggishness, it is warned both that it
ought not to trust in the attainments of purity in the past, which it sees
to be lost by ever so small a falling away from the Lord, and also that it
cannot attain the gift of this purity except by God's grace alone, since
actual experience somehow or other teaches us that if we are anxious to
reach abiding perfection of heart we must constantly endeavour to obtain
the virtue of humility.
|
|