Who drifts into unbelief? Those whose hearts are full of the smoke of sin, of the mist of evil passions; those who are averse to the holy truths of religion and detest its threats and admonitions on account of the sinful lives they are leading. It would be wonderful indeed, if such persons could see as clearly as those who, free from evil passions, follow after truth.
3. Yes, it is vice, evil, unruly, unbridled passions, which deprive men of their faith. Who is it, for instance, who mocks at confession and communion, or despises and rails at the commands of the Church? It is the man addicted to vice, who finds it difficult to confess the shameful deeds which he commits over and over again. Who begins to, doubt about eternal punishment? The man addicted to vice, who trembles at the thought of hell, and heartily wishes that such a place did not exist. It is vice, the sinful gratification of the passions, which has produced heresies, and it is vice which keeps them alive.
There is one vice in particular which gradually weakens and destroys the mental powers of man. Men endowed with the highest gifts may become weak in intellect and memory, and if this happens in regard to worldly affairs, the vice to which we refer attacks all the more frequently and inevitably the supernatural endowments of the soul. "The sensual man," as St. Paul tells us, " perceiveth not those things that are of the Spirit of God" (1 Cor. ii. 14). Hence comes the saying of St. Jerome, the Doctor of the Church: "It is difficult to find a heresiarch who was chaste."
4. If we open the pages of ecclesiastical history, we find this truth confirmed in the most striking manner. We will illustrate our meaning
