ich he employed on other martyrs, he
condemned them to be exposed to wild beasts. They are honored on this
day in the Roman Martyrology.

* * * * *

In consecrating ourselves to the service of God, and to his pure love,
the first and most essential condition is that we do it without reserve,
with an earnest desire of attaining to the perfection of our state, and
a firm resolution of sparing nothing, and being deterred by no
difficulties from pursuing this end with our whole strength; and it must
be our chief care constantly to maintain, and always increase this
desire in our souls. Upon this condition {670} depends all out spiritual
progress. This is more essential in a religious state than the vows
themselves; and it is this which makes the difference betwixt the
fervent and the lukewarm Christian. Many deceive themselves in this
particular, and flatter themselves their resolution of aspiring after
perfection, with all their strength, is sincere, whereas it is very
imperfect. Of this we can best judge by their earnestness to advance in
a spirit of prayer, and in becoming truly spiritual; in crucifying
self-love, overcoming their failings, and cutting off all occasions of
dissipation, and all impediments of their spiritual advancement.
Mortification and prayer, which are the principal means, present usually
the greatest difficulties: but these, as St. Terasa observes, are better
than half vanquished and removed by a firm resolution of not being
discouraged by any obstacles, but of gathering from them fresh vigor and
strength. Patience and fortitude crown in the saints what this fervent
resolution began.

ST. SIXTUS III., POPE.

HE was a priest among the Roman clergy in 418, when pope Zozimus
condemned the Pelagian heretics. Sixtus was the first, after this
sentence, who pronounced publicly anathema against them, to stop their
slander in Africa that he favored their doctrine, as we are assured by
St. Austin and St. Prosper in his chronicle. The former sent him two
congratulatory letters the same year, in which he applauds this
testimony of his zeal, and in the first of these letters professes a
high esteem of a treatise written by him in defence of the grace of God
against its enemies. It was that calumny of the Pelagian heretics that
led Garnier into the mistake that our saint at first favored their
errors. But a change of this kind would not have been buried in silence.
After the dea