A Voice from the Past - Gregory the Great

Those who transgress frequently in very little things are to be admonished to consider anxiously how that sometimes there is worse sin in a small fault then a greater one. For a greater fault, in that it is the sooner acknowledged to be one, is by so much the more speedily amended; but the smaller one, being reckoned as though it were none at all, is retained in use with worse effect as it is so with less concern.

Gregory the Great, 540-604 AD, Pastoral Rule, Part III, Chapter XXXIII, (translated by Rev. James Barmby, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, T & T Clark and Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1997, Second Series, Vol. XII, p. 65)

Is there a tendency to be led gradually into sin? How can it be avoided?