would avoid death, ever concealing through shame any sin in confession, and for this purpose they should relate to them the sad example of persons who had the misfortune of being condemned to hell for having made sacrilegious confessions.
St. Basil prescribed a very severe chastisement for the nuns of his Order who should entertain particular friendships. St. Bernard calls such friendships " poisoned attachments, and the enemies of the peace of communities." They are a source of disturbance, of murmurings, of irregularities, of factions, and of parties; and sometimes they influence the votes at elections to office in favor not of the most worthy, but of the greatest favorites. Let it be your study to love all and to serve all, so that each will regard you as a friend. But abstain from familiarity with any; let your intimacy be only with God. Be particularly careful to avoid familiarity with all who manifest attachment to you. The way through which you walk in this life is dark and slippery: if you select an imperfect companion who will lead you to the precipice, you are lost.
Beware of all human respect — of the accursed fear of what others will say or think of you. " If," you will say, " I give up all intercourse with such a secular; if I separate from such a one; if I consecrate myself to retirement, to prayer, and to mortification — what will be said of me? I shall be an object of jest and derision to all." Ah! how many religious of both sexes has this accursed weakness of human respect brought to eternal misery? " Oh!" says St. Augustine, "how many has this infirmity precipitated into hell?" St. Francis Borgia says that he who desires to consecrate himself to God must, in the first place, trample under his feet all regard for what others will say of him. O my God,
