able conversation; the children of your hands, those acts of injustice, those impure touches,—these shall all cry out against you: you have committed us! we are your works! Unhappy sinner! what excuse shall you make? Wherever you turn you are betrayed by other men, by all creatures, by yourself. There is no use in denial; you are fully convicted of having led a godless life. Nor is there any chance of making an available excuse, for it shall also be clearly proved that you might have lived much better and holier, as we shall see in the
Second Part.
During life we are apt to excuse our sins in various ways. In nothing is our understanding quicker and more apt than in palliating and excusing our own faults and sins; it is most easy for us to find some way of either lessening or cloaking our own our wickedness. Sometimes we put the blame on the Almighty, saying that it is He who gave us such strong inclinations for evil; sometimes we accuse our own weakness and frailty; sometimes others with whom we have to deal in the duties of our state, and in whose company we find daily occasions of sin; sometimes we blame our own ignorance or want of deliberation, and say: I knew no better; 1 did not think this or that was forbidden under pain of mortal sin. With these and similar excuses we try to persuade ourselves while here on earth that our sins are not so very grievous, and that God does not look on them as very wicked.
On that day the sinner shall not be able to lay the blame on his corrupt nature.
But bring those lame excuses with you on the judgment-day and see how they will serve to defend and protect you. Say to God: O Lord, I am the work of Thy hands; as Thou has made me, so I am; the violent inclination and proclivity to anger that I experience every day; the impatience, avarice, impurity, and sensuality that I am subject to; the aversion I have to the cross, and to everything that is hard and bitter; the law of sin that always fights in my members against Thy holy law—these things I have not given myself; I have received them from nature. What else then couldst Thou have expected from a poor, weak mortal, such as Thou has created me, but faults and sins? What! will you make the Almighty the Author and Cause of your wickedness? Bring witnesses here! Your own conscience will convict you of a lie. Is it true that you came forth from the hands of your Creator with those violent passions? Were you always so wicked and inclined to evil? even before good fortune or the esteem of men turned your head? even before that
