, and by omission as well as by commission.

It is well to bear in mind that a thought, as well as a deed, is an
act, may be a human and a moral act, and consequently may be a sin.
Human laws may be violated only in deed; but God, who is a searcher of
hearts, takes note of the workings of the will whence springs all
malice. To desire to break His commandments is to offend Him as
effectually as to break them in deed; to relish in one's mind forbidden
fruits, to meditate and deliberate on evil purposes, is only a degree
removed from actual commission of wrong. Evil is perpetrated in the
will, either by a longing to prevaricate or by affection for that which
is prohibited. If the evil materializes exteriorly, it does not
constitute one in sin anew, but only completes the malice already
existing. Men judge their fellows by their works; God judges us by our
thoughts, by the inner workings of the soul, and takes notice of our
exterior doings only in so far as they are related to the will.
Therefore it is that an offense against Him, to be an offense, need not
necessarily be perpetrated in word or in deed; it is sufficient that
the will place itself in Opposition to the Will of God, and adhere to
what the Law forbids.

Sin is not the same as vice. One is an act, the other is a state or
inclination to act. One is transitory, the other is permanent. One can
exist without the other. A drunkard is not always drunk, nor is a man a
drunkard for having once or twice overindulged.

In only one case is vice less evil than sin, and that is when the
inclination remains an unwilling inclination and does not pass to acts.
A man who reforms after a protracted spree still retains an
inclination, a desire for strong drink. He is nowise criminal so long
as he resists that tendency.

But practically vice is worse than sin, for it supposes frequent wilful
acts of sin of which it is the natural consequence, and leads to many
grievous offenses.

A vice is without sin when one struggles successfully against it after
the habit has been retracted. It may never be radically destroyed.
There may be unconscious, involuntary lapses under the constant
pressure of a strong inclination, as in the vice of parsing, and it
remains innocent as long as it is not wilfully yielded to and indulged.
But to yield to the ratification of an evil desire or propensity,
without restraint, is to doom oneself to the most prolific of evils and
to lie under the curse of