Volume III, Treatise VI, Chapter V

How Dangerous a Thing Tt Ts to Contemn Our Rules, Though but in Small Things

“He who is faithful in little things, shall be also faithful in great ones; and he who offends in small things offends also in great ones” (Luke 16:10) It being the ordinary. practice of the Devil to urge us to a non-observance of our rules under pretence that the things they order are of small importance, and that our spiritual advancement does not depend upon them, I shall speak here of two remedies against this temptation. The first is to consider how dangerous it is to neglect small things; the second is to consider what advantage is derived from a diligent observance of them. Our Saviour takes notice of the one and the other in the words I have just now cited. With respect to the first, he says, that ‘“‘ he who is faithful in little things, will be faithful also in greater”. The Holy Ghost had said the same of them before, ‘that he who contemns small things, will by little and little come to fall” (Ecclesiasticus 19:1) We cannot doubt but that these sentences come from God; and therefore they ought to suffice to render us extremely careful in the observance of our rules, and hinder us from breaking them under pretence of the small importance of the things they prescribe. The prophet Jeremiah assures us that it was from small beginnings that God came to destroy Jerusalem. ‘Our Lord”, says he, “proposed to cast down the walls of the daughter of Sion—he has taken his measures with his line, and has not ceased to endeavour its ruin.

All its outworks are entirely demolished, and its walls in like manner cast down”—Thren., ii. 8. Behold here after what manner even the strongest places are taken; and it is according to this method that the devils endeavour to make themselves masters of the fortress of our soul. The rules, as I have already said, are the outworks, and serve for a defence to the law of God, which is the chief wall. So that if you look not well to these outworks and exterior fortifications, your invisible enemies will afterwards undermine your chief wall, and hereby become masters of your soul. ‘He that destroys the hedge shall be bitten by the serpent” (Ecclesiastes 10:8),—says the wise man. If you begin to destroy this hedge and this enclosure of your rules, if you once come to break it, the old serpent, which is the Devil, will not fail thereby to enter into your soul and to destroy you. “Why hast thou destroyed the dry wall that encompassed thy vineyard”, says the prophet speaking to God, “and now all passengers make their vintage there” (Psalms 79:13) If you destroy this wall which encompasses the vineyard of our Lord, you can never hope to reap any fruit from the vineyard; it will be soon laid waste.

> But since this is a matter of great importance, and cannot be rendered too intelligible, let us lay aside these figures and metaphors, and speak more plainly. Would you know how that is to be understood which the Holy Ghost says to us, that “he who despises little things, by little and little will come to fall”? (Ecclesiasticus 15) We ought to understand these words in the same sense that saints and divines do, who say that venial sin is a disposition to mortal. Venial sins, though ever so great in number, can never amount to one mortal sin, and cannot inflict death on a soul, or make it lose the grace of God; but they leave behind them in the soul a certain disposition to a slackness to devotion, and a love of ease and softness, which weakens it, and renders it more easy to be overcome upon the first occasion, and to fall into mortal sin. It is in this manner that, though the first discharge of cannon against a wall does not beat it down, yet it shakes it so that it disposes it to be easily beaten down by the subsequent discharges; and moreover, though the first drops of water which fall upon a stone are not able to make any impression upon it, yet they dispose it in such manner that those that follow actually make holes in it. ‘‘ Water makes stones hollow”, says Job, “and floods by little and little carry away the earth” (Job 14:19) The effects of venial sin are the very same.

They insensibly carry us to lose the fear of offending God, and to act by other motives than by that of his love; and after this we are not far from doing what is directly contrary to it. He who makes no difficulty in telling a he, and who gives himself the liberty of swearing without necessity, will soon come to swear to a lie or to what is doubtful, and thereby miserably fall into mortal sin. He who makes little or no scruple to detract in small things, will soon find occasion to detract in things of great importance, and will hereby be in danger of losing the grace of God. He who keeps not a custody over his eyes, and has not a particular care to reject bad thoughts when they come to him, is very near his fall. An occasion will happen in which his heart and desires will follow his thoughts and looks; and behold here again a miserable fall. It is just this—the Devil aims at engaging us to commit venial sins, thereby to precipitate us into those sins which give death to the soul.

It is the same with the contempt and breach of rules. These are the means the Devil makes use of to urge us by little and little to do worse things, and to make us at last fall into a precipice. In the beginning we shall have a very great scruple to break the least rule, but afterwards we shall have less; and in the end we shall come freely to break them without the least remorse of conscience. The same thing happens also in regard of prayer and other spiritual exercises, because they carry with them no stricter obligation than the rest. At one time we neglect to make them, at another we make them by halves and very negligently, without reaping any fruit from them; and at last we fall into such remissness, and into so great a negligence of them, that we come to lose the gust of spiritual things. It is from these kind of beginnings, which seem very inconsiderable, that the mortal falls of a religious proceed; and St. Austin very well takes notice, in regard to the reflection made by the evangelist, which was, that Magdalen, having poured out her ointment of great price upon the feet of the Son of God, Judas murmured at it, saying, ““Why was not this perfume sold, and the money given to the poor?” for the Gospel says expressly, “that he said not this because he took any care of the poor, but because

‘he was a thief, kept the purse, and had the dispensation of all that was given” (John 12:5,6) He was displeased that Magdalen hereby took from him the occasion of robbing or taking away some of that money for which the perfume might have been sold;

and to compensate himself for this loss the miserable wretch resolved to sell his Master. Remark, says St. Austin, that it was not in selling our Saviour that Judas began to lose himself. The evil began long before—he had been a long time a thief, and his body only followed Jesus Christ, while his heart was far distant from him. When you perceive that any religious has grievously fallen, believe not that the evil began only then; for without doubt, long before his mind and heart were not in religion, he had no care of keeping his rules, and he made not prayer, or examen, or any other exercise of piety. Consider into what a precipice Judas is fallen for want of repressing the motions he had of covetousness of money; and let us learn never to relent even in the least things, lest weak and small beginnings cast us into terrible consequences. ‘ Poverty and want go before his face” (Job 41:13),—says the Scripture; and one of the senses which is given to these words is, that remissness and tepidity are always forerunners of the Devil into a soul; it falls first into this spiritual want, which proceeds from a multitude of venial sins, and because it has deprived itself of those helps which it was wont to derive from prayer and spiritual exercises, it afterwards easily gives way to the attacks of the first great temptation which comes upon it. Let us beware then of being in the least degree negligent of our rules for fear of giving entrance unto the Devil; for as soon as we make no scruple of falling into deliberate imperfections and of committing venial sins, we are not far from committing mortal. ‘Learn, O Jerusalem”, says our Saviour by the mouth of Jeremy, “learn lest my soul retire from thee, and that I render thee a desert and an uninhabitable land”—VJerem., vi. 8. Learn, O religious souls, learn how to conform yourselves to the practice of religious discipline, and apply yourselves to an exact observance of your rules, lest God leave and abandon you, and that thereby you receive some dangerous fall.

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