“THE devil is a clever fellow. He does not in the first instance assail God’s servants in great matters, he is much too acute for that; but, little by little, imperceptibly in small and minute things, he does his work better than if he tempted his man in great things. If he started with mortal sins, he would easily be perceived and packed off; but entering by small and minute things he is neither perceived nor packed off, but admitted.
“Therefore does St. Gregory say that in some ways there is more danger in small faults than in great ones, because great ones are more clearly known and the evil of them accordingly is more in evidence, moving us to avoid them, and to feel more alarm when we fall into them; but small faults are less known, less easily avoided, and made less account of; and as they are made nothing of, so they are repeated and continued, and men settle down to them and never make up their minds manfully to throw them off; and on the heels of small faults there come great ones. St. Chrysostom quite agrees. He says a thing which he calls a marvel. “I dare to utter a marvellous saying, which will appear to you new and unheard of: it is that sometimes we need take more care and pains over avoiding small sins than over avoiding great ones; for great sins of themselves strike us with horror, so that we abhor and fly from them, but the other sins, by the very fact that they are small, make us remiss and negligent; and as we make little account of them, so we never succeed in getting clear of them, and so they come to do us great harm.”
— Alphonsus Rodriguez, S.J. (1526-1616), Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues
