tion, he will easily commit faults, by indecent words and by unbecoming gestures. But the greatest evil of intemperance is, that it exposes chastity to great danger. "Repletion of the stomach," says St. Jerome, " is the hotbed of lust."* Excess in eating is a powerful incentive to incontinence. Hence, Cassian says that "it is impossible for him who satiates his appetite not to experience conflicts."* The intemperate cannot expect to be free from temptations against purity. To preserve chastity, the saints practised the most rigorous mortifications of the appetite. "The devil," says St. Thomas, "vanquished by temperance, does not tempt to lust."* When his temptations to indulge the palate are conquered he ceases to provoke incontinence.
He that attends to the abnegation of the appetite makes continual progress in virtue. That the mortification of the palate will facilitate the conquest of the other senses, and enable us to employ them in acts of virtue, may be inferred from the following prayer of the Church: "O God, who by this bodily fast extinguishest our vices, elevatest our understanding, bestowest on us virtue and its reward, etc." By fasting, the Lord enables the soul to subdue her vices, to raise her affections above the earth, to practise virtue, and to acquire merits for eternity.
Worldlings say: God has created the goods of this earth for our use and pleasure. Such is not the language of the saints. The Venerable Vincent Carafa, of the Society of Jesus, used to say, that God has given us the goods of the earth, not only that we may enjoy
