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your present good purposes. How much did it perhaps cost you to enter into yourself — to examine your conscience — to prepare for your late Confession and Communion. Would you then, by relapsing, furnish as much, or rather ten times more uneasinesp, remorse, and difficulty for a future occasion, and at length for the bed of death? Thirdly, consider the uncertainty of your having a wish, or even an opportunity to approach the Sacraments, if the grace you have just received be abused. A desire to be reconciled to God depends on a peculiar grace, of which those who relapse deserve to be deprived; and as to time, how do you know whether you may not die in a week or a month? Whether your late Communion may not be your last? These, and many other good reasons for continuing to act as you are now determined to do, will strengthen your resolution, if you seriously reflect on them, whenever you feel tempted to relapse. Remember, however, that your best resolutions will be vain, if you are not also resolved to adopt the best means calculated to insure perseverance. Those are many, but the chief are, first, such a horror of sin as will dispose you to suffer all that could be endured in this world, rather than offend God mortally; secondly, great care in avoiding the commission of venial sins deliberately, and with a clear* distinct view that you are going to offend God. This point is of so much consequence, that you should take care not to pass it over lightly, because those multiplied venial faults, though slight in themselves, are most dangerous in their consequences. You would not consent to swallow a small quantity of poison frequently, though you were sure it would not kill you; why, then, should you, on any occasion, consent, by a deliberate venial fault, to swallow even