All of which leads up to the conclusion, of a nature perhaps to surprise some, that to resolve to sin and to commit the sin in deed are not two different sins, but one complete sin, in all the fulness of its malice.  True, the exterior act may give rise to scandal, and from it may devolve upon us obligations of justice, the reparation of injury done; true, with the exterior complement the sin may be more grievous.  But there cannot be several sins if there be one single uninterrupted act of the will.

An evil thing is proposed to your mind; you enjoy the thought of doing it, knowing it to be wrong; you desire to do it and resolve to do it; you take the natural means of doing it; you succeed and consummate the evil—­a long drawn out and well prepared deed, ’tis true, but only one sin.  The injustices, the scandal, the sins you might commit incidentally, which do not pertain naturally to the deed, all these are another matter, and are other kinds of sins; but the act itself stands alone, complete and one.

But these interior acts of sin, whether or not they have reference to external completion, must be sinful.  The first stage is the suggestion of the imagination or simple seeing of the evil in the mind, which is not sinful; the next is the moving of the sensibility or the purely animal pleasure experienced, in which there is no evil, either; for we have no sure mastery over these faculties.  From the imagination and sensibility the temptation passes before the will for consent.  If consent is denied, there is no deadly malice or guilt, no matter how long the previous effects may have been endured.  No thought is a sin unless it be fully consented to.

CHAPTER VIII.  CAPITAL SINS.

You can never cure a disease till you get at the seat or root of the evil.  It will not do to attack the several manifestations that appear on the surface, the aches and pains and attendant disorders.  You must attack the affected organ, cut out the root of the evil growth, and kill the obnoxious germ.  There is no other permanent remedy; until this is done, all relief is but temporary.

And if we desire to remove the distemper of sin, similarly it is necessary to seek out the root of all sin.  We can lay our finger on it at once; it is inordinate self-love.

Ask yourself why you broke this or that commandment.  It is because it forbade you a satisfaction that you coveted, a satisfaction that your self-love imperiously demanded; or it is because it prescribed an act that cost an effort, and you loved yourself too much to make that effort.  Examine every failing, little or great, and you will trace them back to the same source.  If we thought more of God and less of ourselves we would never sin.  The sinner lives for himself first, and for God afterwards.

Strange that such a sacred thing as love, the source of all good, may thus, by abuse, become the fountainhead of all evil!  Perhaps, if it were not so sacred and prolific of good, its excess would not be so unholy.  But the higher you stand when you tumble, the greater the fall; so the better a thing is in itself, the more abominable is its abuse.  Love directed aright, towards God first, is the fulfilment of the Law; love misdirected is the very destruction of all law.