De temerario judicio vitando.

Turn Inward, Not Outward

The reader is urged to examine their own heart rather than judge others, since self-scrutiny bears fruit while judging others leads to error and sin.

Turn your attention back to yourself, and be careful not to judge what others do. When you judge others, you labor in vain, you are more often wrong, and you sin easily. But when you judge and examine yourself, your effort always bears fruit. We judge frequently about whatever matters most to our heart, just as it matters to us. For we easily lose true judgment on account of our own private love. If God were always the pure intention of our desire, we would not be so easily disturbed by the resistance of our own senses.

Hidden Currents Within

Hidden motives and self-seeking lurk beneath the surface of our actions, creating false security and breeding division even among the devout.

But there is always something hidden within us, or something from outside that rushes in and pulls us along with it, whether we realize it or not. Many people secretly seek themselves in the things they do, and they do not even realize it. They also seem to stand on solid ground when things go the way they want.¹ Because of the diversity of feelings and opinions, dissensions arise often enough — between friends and fellow citizens, and even between religious people and the devout.

Surrender to Christ's Light

Custom and self-reliance blind us, but true enlightenment comes only through submission to Christ and a love that transcends human reasoning.

Long-standing custom is hard to leave behind, and no one is willingly led to see beyond their own perspective. If you lean more on your own reasoning or on your own diligence than on the virtue laid before you in Jesus Christ, you will rarely and only slowly become an enlightened person, because God wants us to be perfectly submitted to himself and to transcend every human calculation through a love set on fire.²³

Read the original Latin

Ad te ipsum oculos reflecte et aliorum facta caveas judicare. In judicando alios homo frustra laborat, sæpius errat, et leviter peccat. Se ipsum vero judicando et discutiendo semper fructuose laborat. Sicut nobis res cordi est, sic de ea frequenter judicamus. Nam verum judicium propter privatum amorem faciliter perdimus. Si Deus semper esset pura intentio desiderii nostri, non tam faciliter turbaremur pro resistentia sensus nostri.

Sed semper aliquid ab intra latet, vel etiam ab extra concurrit, quod nos etiam pariter trahit. Multi occulte se ipsos quærunt in rebus, quas agunt, et nesciunt. Videntur etiam in bona pace stare, quum res pro eorum velle fiunt. Propter diversitatem sensuum, et opinionum satis frequenter oriuntur dissensiones inter amicos et cives, inter religiosos et devotos.

Antiqua consuetudo difficulter relinquitur et ultra proprium videre nemo libenter ducitur. Si rationi tuæ magis inniteris vel industriæ, quam virtuti subjectivæ Jesu Christi, raro et tarde eris homo illuminatus, quia Deus vult nos sibi perfecte subjicii, et omnem rationem per inflammatum amorem transcendere.

Notes

1 ↩velle (genitive) is an unusual form, possibly a variant for voluntas ('will'); translated as 'want' to convey the sense of things proceeding according to their will.
2 ↩virtuti subjectivæ Jesu Christi: the sense is the virtue or power of Jesus Christ as set before the believer (subjectivæ here likely meaning 'presented' or 'set forth' rather than modern 'subjective'). Rendered as 'the virtue laid before you in Jesus Christ' to capture the devotional-presentation sense.
3 ↩amorem (amor, approved as 'love'): rendered as 'a love set on fire' to capture the force of inflammatum; the love in question is the believer's responsive love, inflamed by grace, that surpasses mere reasoning.