which he is tempted. If he flame up into pleasure at the thought, and give way, then is he all dead in soul; “and thus is sin accomplished, by temptation, by delight, and by consenting; and then is the sin actual.” Sin is either venial, or deadly; deadly, when a man loves any creature more than Jesus Christ our Creator, venial, if he love Jesus Christ less than he ought. Venial sins diminish man’s love to God more and more, and may in this wise skip into deadly sin; for many small make a great. “And hearken this example: A great wave of the sea cometh sometimes with so great a violence, that it drencheth the ship: and the same harm do sometimes the small drops, of water that enter through a little crevice in the thurrok, and in the bottom of the ship, if men be so negligent that they discharge them not betimes. And therefore, although there be difference betwixt these two causes of drenching, algates the ship is dreint. Right so fareth it sometimes of deadly sin,” and of venial sins when they multiply in a man so greatly as to make him love worldly things more than God. The Parson then enumerates specially a number of sins which many a man peradventure deems no sins, and confesses them not, and yet nevertheless they are truly sins:—]
This is to say, at every time that a man eateth and drinketh more than sufficeth to the sustenance of his body, in certain he doth sin;