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54. The Distinction of Habits

1. In the same subject there may be a variety of habits which are specifically (that is, essentially) distinct from one another.

2. Habits are distinguished one from another on three scores: (a) their respective active principles; thus, for example, habits of intellect are distinguished from habits of will; (b) their own nature; thus knowledge differs from moral virtue; (c) their respective ends or objects; thus knowledge which aims at truth is distinguished from moral virtue which aims at moral goodness.

3. Habits affect their subjects with respect to well-being or ill-being. Thus habits are distinguished as good habits and bad habits. This distinction of habits holds in the physical order (health; infirmity), in the intellectual order (knowledge; ignorance), and in the moral order (virtue; vice).

4. A habit is a simple thing, and hence a single thing. No habit is a collection or coalescence of other habits. Many habits may, indeed, be found together in one subject, but they do not fuse into general or compound habits in the subject. A man is sometimes said to be "a bundle of habits." The phrase is often used as a description of what we call a man's "character." But no habit is a bundle of other habits.

"God gives us some things, as the beginning of faith, even when we do not pray. Other things, such as perseverance, he has only provided for those who pray."
St Augustine

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"If, devout soul, it is your will to please God and live a life of serenity in this world, unite yourself always and in all things to the divine will. Reflect that all the sins of your past wicked life happened because you wandered from the path of God's will. For the future, embrace God's good pleasure and say to him in every happening: "Yea, Father, for so it hath seemed good in thy sight." "
St Alphonsus de Liguori

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"When the devil has failed in making a man fall, he puts forward all his energies to create distrust between the penitent and the confessor, and so by little and little he gains his end at last."
St Philip Neri

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