promises the life which is prepared for us by him who willeth not the death of a sinner.  We neglect his call, we despise his invitation, we contemn his promise.  Placed between God and the devil, as between a father and a foe, we prefer the enticement of the enemy to a father’s warning.  “We are not ignorant,” says the Apostle, “of the devices of Satan,”—­the devices, I say, by which he induces us to sin, and keeps us back from repentance.  Suggesting sin, he deprives us of two things by which the best assistance might be offered to us, namely, shame and fear.  For that which we avoid, we avoid either through fear of some loss, or through the reverence of shame....  When, therefore, Satan impels any one to sin, he easily accomplishes the object, if, as we have said, he first deprives him of fear and shame.  And when he has effected that, he restores the same things, but in another sense, which he has taken away; that so he may keep back the sinner from confession, and make him die in his sin.  Then he secretly whispers into his soul:  “Priests are light-minded, and it is a difficult thing to check the tongue.  If you tell this or that to them, it cannot remain a secret; and when it shall have been published abroad, you will incur the danger of losing your good character, or bearing some injury, and being confounded from your own vileness.”  Thus the devil deceives that wretched man; he first takes from him that by which he ought to avoid sin, and then restores the same thing, and by it retains him in sin.  His captive fears temporal, and not spiritual, evil; he is ashamed before men and he despises God.  He is ashamed that things should come to the knowledge of men which he was not ashamed to commit in the sight of God, and of the whole heavenly host.  He trembles at the judgment of man, and he has no respect to that of God.  Of which the Apostle says:  “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”; and the Truth saith himself, “Fear not them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do; but fear him rather who can cast body and soul into hell.”

There are diseases of the soul, as there are of the body; and therefore the Divine mercy has provided beforehand physicians for both.  Our Lord Jesus Christ saith, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”  His priests now hold his place in the Church, to whom, as unto physicians of the soul, we ought to confess our sins, that we may receive from them the plaister of satisfaction.  He that fears the death of the body, in whatever part of the body he may suffer, however much he may be ashamed of the disease, makes no delay in revealing it to the physician, and setting it forth, so that it may be cured.  However rough, however hard may be the remedy, he avoids it not, so that he may escape death.  Whatever he has that is most precious, he makes no hesitation in giving it, if only for a little while he may put off the death of the body.