_ 43 _ You can think about your approach to preaching and how you are to treat them in confession and the help you should give them. Bear in mind that you will not find anything better than that of persuading them to make a general confession of their sins. Make some meditations of the first week so that they discover contrition, sorrow, tears and regret at seeing their damnation. Acquaint yourself too with the many disputes and frauds that they have a hand in through the courts, using perjury, bribes, connections and other deceits, whereby they withhold and conceal the truth. Thus, to put it briefly, in no other way will you benefit the souls of the men of this city, than by knowing their lives in detail. This is the principal inquiry that helps to bring improvement to souls. It consists of reading books that teach things that are not to be found in dead books. Doing this will not help you as much to enrich souls as obtaining such information from living men who share the same way of life. Anyway, I have always felt happy with this rule. On Sundays, feast days or working days, you will occupy yourself in forging friendships, and in preventing and settling lawsuits. Because they spend more on lawsuits
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