When we enter upon the spiritual life, we ought to consider thoroughly what we are, probing to the very depth. We shall find that we are altogether deserving of contempt, unworthy of the name of Christ, prone to all manner of maladies and subject to countless infirmities, which distress us and impair the souls health, rendering us wavering and unstable in our humors and dispositions; in fact, creatures whom it is God’s will to chasten and make humble by numberless afflictions and adversities, as well within as without.
