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On the Accusation of the Criminal in Judgment.
But lived according to the flesh.
You promised also to renounce the flesh and all its concupiscences. And how have you kept that promise? Say when did you fulfil your obligation in that respect? In your childhood, when you first commenced to know what the sin of impurity is? In your youth, when you knew enough of it by experience? The sinful thoughts, desires, wishes, conversations, letters, allurements, words, and actions that resemble those of a dumb beast rather than of a reasoning being—all these things show how you have observed your act of renunciation. Finally, you have renounced me; I renounce Satan and his works, you said. But you have done me little harm. If you had signed a document promising to follow me in all things, I could not have expected more from you than what you have done to please me. You have at once consented to my temptations, nay, sometimes done more evil than I hoped for from you. I have advised you to curse arid swear, but you have gone beyond that and blasphemed God. I have told you to hate your enemy and wish ill to him, and you have really done him harm. I told you to get drunk, and you committed impurity besides. I suggested unchaste thoughts to you that you might take pleasure in them, and you have actually committed the sinful action. I would have been content with your own soul, but by your allurements, seductions, scan dal, and bad example you have brought hundreds of souls into my hands. You have done my will in all things as if you were my servant or slave. Have I perhaps treated you so well and been so kind to you while you were serving me that you had reason to renounce God and adhere to me so faithfully? Oh, how I have embittered for you the short and mean pleasures that you owe to me! I have sent you a worm to gnaw your heart and torture your conscience; the money you procured by my help cost you a world of trouble and anxiety. And have you not often suffered humiliation and scorn in order to satisfy your thirst for honors and the esteem of men? How much disquiet, melancholy, and pain of heart did you not have to endure day and night through your senseless love for that person? Your intemperance in drink you had to pay me for by violent headaches, sickness and injured health, and the shortening of your life. How much discomfort, mortification, and laughter from men of sense you had to put up with in order to gratify your vanity in dress! How often have you not in obedience to me exposed yourself to wind and weather, rain and snow, in the