'Come ye to Him and be enlightened. He that
wants light must draw near to God; but because, according to the words
of St. Thomas, "a thoroughly impure man is mostly removed from God,"
impurity removes man to a great distance from God, the unchaste becomes,
as it were, senseless brutes that no longer apprehend spiritual things.
But the sensual man, says St. Paul, perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God. Hell, eternity, and the dignity of the priesthood, no longer make any impression upon the incontinent ecclesiastic: He perceiveth not.
Perhaps he will, as St. Ambrose says, begin even to entertain doubts
about faith: "Whenever one begins to be incontinent, one begins to
deviate from the faith." Oh! how many miserable priests have by this
vice even lost their faith? His bones, says Job, shall be filled with the vices of his youth (the vices of youth are impurities), and they shall sleep with him in the dust.
As the light of the sun cannot enter into a vessel filled with earth,
so the light of God cannot shine into a soul habituated to sins of the
flesh: her vices shall continue to sleep with her till death.'
