Page:Sermons for all the Sundays in the year.djvu/357

 us understand the intensity of his hatred for the sin of impurity, he represents himself as if sorry for having created man, who offended him so grievously by this vice. We, at the present day, see more severe temporal punishment inflicted on this than on any other sin. Go into the hospitals, and listen to the shrieks of so many young men, who, in punishment of their impurities, are obliged to submit to the severest treatment and to the most painful operations, and who, if they escape death, are, according to the divine threat, feeble, and subject to the most excruciating pain for the remainder of their lives. ” Thou hast cast me off behind thy back; bear thou also thy wickedness and thy fornications." (Ezec. xxiii. 35.) 11. St. Remigius writes that, if children.be excepted, the number of adults that are saved is few, on account of the sins of the flesh. ” Exceptis parvulis ex adultis propter vitiam carnis pauci salvantur." (Apud S. Cypr. de bono pudic.) In conformity with this doctrine, it was revealed to a holy soul, that as pride has filled hell with devils, so impurity fills it with men. (Col., disp. ix., ex. 192.) St. Isidore assigns the reason. He says that there is no vice which so much enslaves men to the devil as impurity. ” Magis per luxuriam, humanum genus subditur diabolo, quam per aliquod aliud." (S. Isid., lib. 2, c. xxxix.) Hence, St. Augustine says, that with regard to this sin, ” the combat is common and the victory rare." Hence it is, that on account of this sin hell is filled with souls. 12. All that I have said on this subject has been said, not that any one present, who has been addicted to the vice of impurity, may be driven to despair, but that such persons may be cured. Let us, then, come to the remedies. These are two great remedies prayer, and the flight of dangerous occasions. Prayer, says St. Gregory of Nyssa, is the safeguard of chastity. "Oratio pudicitiæ præsidium et tutamen est." (De Orat.) And before him, Solomon, speaking of himself, said the same. "And as I knew that I could not otherwise be continent, except God gave it... I went to the Lord, and besought him." (Wis. viii. 21.) Thus, it is impossible for us to conquer this vice without God’s assistance. Hence, as