Page:Sermons for all the Sundays in the year.djvu/18

 her votaries, or some prayer which we should offer to her.

6. Moreover, the preacher should often speak of the means by which we are preserved in the grace of God : such as, flying dangerous occasions and wicked companions, frequenting the sacraments, and especially recommending ourselves often to God and the Virgin Mother, in order to obtain the graces necessary for salvation, and principally the graces of perseverance and of the love of Jesus Christ, without which we cannot be saved.

7. The preacher should likewise often speak against bad confessions, in which sins are concealed through shame. This is an evil not of rare occurrence, but frequent, especially in small country districts, which consigns innumerable souls to hell. Hence it is very useful to mention, from time to time, some example of souls that were damned by wilfully concealing sins in confession.

8. We shall now speak briefly of the parts of a discourse, which arc nine : the exordium, the proposition, the division, the introduction, the proof, the confutation, the amplification, the peroration or conclusion, the epilogue, and the appeal to the passions. These are again reduced to three principal divisions : 1 the exordium ; 2 the proof, which comprises the introduction that precedes, and the confutation of the opposite arguments, that follows it ; 3 the peroration or conclusion, which comprises the epilogue, the moral exhortation, and the appeal to the passions. To the exordium rhetoricians assign seven parts : the introduction, general proposition, confirmation, repetition of the proposition, connection, particular proposition, and division. But,