Untitled - Saints' Books

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INSTR. ix.] Exterior Mortification. 375
of the world: for the sake of eating an apple, Adam
brought death on himself and the entire human race.
But priests, who are bound by a vow of chastity,
should pay special attention to the mortification of the
appetite. St. Bonaventure says that excess in eating
1
nourishes impurity. And St. Augustine has written:
If the soul is
weighed down by too much food, the
mind becomes torpid, and there will spring up thorns of
wicked desires," 2 Hence in the forty-second Canon of
the Apostles we read: "Those priests are to be deposed
that are given excessively to good The Wise
cheer."
;
Man has said, that he who accustoms servants to deli
cate food shall not find them obedient to his commands:
He that nourishes a servant delicately from his childhood,
afterwards shall find him stubborn* St. Augustine exhorts
us not to give the flesh strength to fight against the
soul.* Palladius relates that a certain monk being asked
why he treated his body so badly, said: I trouble him
that troubles
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me." St. Paul has done and said the
same. / chastise my body, and bring it into subjection. If
with diffi
the flesh is not mortified, it obeys reason only
culty. But, on the other hand, according to St. Thomas,
the devil, when vanquished in his temptations to the in
dulgence of the appetite, ceases to tempt to impurity. 8
Cornelius a Lapide says that when intemperance is
" 1
Luxuria nutritur a ventris ingluvie."
De Prof. rel. 1. 2, c. 52.
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Si ciborum nimietate anima obruatur, illico mens torpescit, et
corporis nostri terra spinas libidinum germinabit." Serm. 141, E. B.
app.
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Sacerdotes qui intemperanter ingurgitant, deponendi
sunt."
Qui delicate a pueritia nutrit servum suum, postea sentiet eum
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contumacem." Prov. xxix. 21.
Ne praebeamus vires corpori, ne committat bellum adversus
spiritum."
DC Sal. docum. c. 35.
6
Vexo eum "
qui vexat me
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Vit. S. M. c. 7.
Castigo corpus meum, et in servitutem redigo."
I Cor. ix. 27.
Diabolus, victus de gula, non tentat de libidine."