prate all things to ourselves that we may, without considering what injury may follow from it to others. Whence spring innumerable acts of injustice, avarice, cruelty, contention, processes, oppressions and discords; treading under foot all the laws of justice and of mercy towards our neighbours, as also the laws of charity, which, as St. Paul says, " seeketh not her own; " [1] and therefore self-will is the poison and total destruction of charity.
3. Whence it is, that as self-will is the queen and mistress of all vices and sins, so it is that which peoples hell and is the fuel of those eternal fires. Upon which says St. Bernard, [2] "Let self-will cease and there will be no sins, and then what need is there of hell?" And besides this, if there be any hell in this life, our own will is a hell to itself, for all the miseries of this life so far are the causes of extreme affliction and heaviness as they are contrary to our own will, which if it cease, by conforming ourselves to God's holy will, that which is hell is turned into purgatory and into augmentation of merit and of crowning in heaven. Upon which says St. Ambrose, " Our own will is blind in desires, puffed up in honours, full of anguish in cares, and restless in suspicions; more careful of glory than of virtue, a greater lover of fame than of a good conscience, and much more miserable enjoying the things that it loves than when it wants them, for experience augments her misery." [3] From all this I will conclude how great my misery has been in having subjected myself to my own will, contrary to the will of Almighty God, bewailing my blindness, and purposing firmly to abhor it and to deny it, in imitation of our Lord Christ, " who came down from heaven, not to do" His " own will, but the will of Him that sent" [4] Him. And being in the heaviness and agonies
