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 Colloquy. — O most pure God, who, being free from sin and from pains, taking our nature upon Thee, didst charge Thyself with pains to discover the detestation Thou hast of sin, load me here with torments so Thou for ever free me from sin!

5. From hence proceeds a third reason, which manifestly declares the grievousness of sin. For God our Lord, of His infinite wisdom, ordained the evils of this life for the medicine of sin. And seeing no wise physician does any very great evil to cure another that is small, it is a sign that all these miseries are less evils than sin. And therefore with great reason our most merciful Saviour and physician Christ Jesus would suffer such terrible pains in His passion and death, to deliver us from our sins; and yet, had they been much greater than they were, they would not have been equal to our sins, nor would they serve to redeem them nor to cure them had not the Person that suffered them been of infinite dignity and sanctity. Whence I will draw a great horror of so terrible an infirmity, for whose cure are ordained such bitter draughts and drugs and purges, and, moreover, great patience in my afflictions, considering that however great they be, they are incomparably less than are my sins, saying, as it is written in Job,

Colloquy. — " Peccavi, et vere deliqui, et ut eram dignus non recepi " I have sinned, and indeed I have offended, and I have not received what I have deserved." O Heavenly physician, that well knowest the grievousness of my sores, burn and cut me here, and spare me not so Thou cure me of them!

1. Thirdly, I must consider the grievousness of sin by comparison with the pains eternal, pondering first, that mortal sin is so great an evil, that having caused (as has