8. By attention to the mortification of self-love we shall become saints in a short time, and without the risk of injury to health: for, since God is the only witness of interior acts, they will not expose us to the danger of being puffed up with pride. Oh! what treasures of virtue and what treasures of virtue and of merits are laid up by stifling, in their very birth, those little inordinate desires and affections; those bickerings; those suggestions of curiosity; those bursts of wit and humour; and all similar effects of self-love.
When you are contradicted, give up your opinion with cheerfulness, unless the glory of God require that you maintain it. When feelings of self-esteem spring up in your heart, make a sacrifice of them to Jesus Christ. If you receive a letter, restrain your curiosity, and abstain from opening it for some time. If you desire to read the termination of an interesting narrative, lay aside the book, and defer the reading to it to another time. When you feel inclined to mirth, to pull a flower, or to look at any object, suppress these inclinations for the love of Jesus Christ, and deprive yourself, for his sake, of the pleasure of indulging them. A thousand acts of this kind may be performed in the day. St. Leonard of Port Maurice relates, that a servant of God performed eight acts of mortification in eating an egg, and that it was afterwards revealed to her, that, as the reward of her self-denial, eight degrees of grace, and as many degrees of glory, were bestowed upon her. It is also narrated of St. Dositheus, that, by similar mortifications of the interior, he arrived, in a short time, at a high degree of perfection. Though unable, in consequence of bodily infirmities, to fast, or to discharge the other duties of the community, he attained so perfect an union with God, that the other monks, struck with wonder at his sublime sanctity, asked him what exercises of virtue he performed. "The exercise," replied the Saint, "to which I have principally attended, is the mortification of all selfwill."
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