Dearest brothers in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write to you in His precious Blood: with desire to see you divested of the old man and clothed with the new-- divested, that is, of the world and the fleshly self-love which is the old sin of Adam, and clothed with the new Christ sweet Jesus, and His tender charity. When this charity is in the soul, it seeks not its own, but is liberal and generous to render His due to God: to love Him above everything else, and to hate its own lower nature; and to love itself for God, rendering praise and glory to His Name: to render its neighbour benevolence, with fraternal charity and well-ordered love. For charity ought to be regulated: that is, a man must not wrong himself by sinning, in order to rescue one soul--nay more, in order, were it possible, to save the whole world; since it is not lawful to commit the least fault to achieve a great virtue. And our body should not be sacrificed to rescue the body of our neighbour; but we ought surely to sacrifice our bodily life for the salvation of souls, and temporal possessions for the welfare and life of our neighbour. So you see that this charity should be and is regulated in the soul. But those who are deprived of charity and full of self-love do just the opposite; and as they are extravagant in their affections, so they are in all their works. Thus we see that men of the world serve and love their neighbour without virtue, and in sin; and to serve and please them, they do not mind disserving and displeasing God, and injuring their own souls. This is that perverted love which often kills soul and body--robs us of light and casts us into darkness, robs us of life and condemns us to death, deprives us of the conversation of the Blessed and leads us to that of Hell. And if a man does not correct himself while he has time, he destroys the shining pearls of holy justice, and loses the warmth of true charity and obedience. Now on whatever side we turn, we see every kind of rational creature lacking in all virtue, and arrayed in this evil fleshly self-love. If we turn to the prelates, they devote themselves so much to their own affairs and live so luxuriously, that they do not seem to care when they see their subjects in the hands of demons. As to the subjects, it is just the same, they do not care to obey either the civil law or the divine, nor do they care to serve one another unless for their own profit. And yet this kind of love, and the union of those who are united by natural love and not by true charity, does not suffice; such friendship suffices and lasts only so long as pleasure and enjoyment lasts, and the personal profit derived from it.