Untitled - Saints' Books

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138 Material for Sermons. [PARTI.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SIN
OF SCANDAL.
THE devil first procured the invention of deities
addicted to vice, he then sought to induce the Gentiles
to worship them, that thus men might consider it law
ful to sin as often as they pleased, and that they might
even lose all horror for the vices with which they saw
their gods clothed. This, Seneca, who was a Gentile,
confessed: Since we have such gods the horror of
vice should disappear from among men." "
To attribute
vices to the gods what is it but to inflame passion
in the hearts of men, at the same time legalizing all the
disorders through the example of the 2
divinity?" Hence,
as we read in the works of the same Seneca, the unhappy
Gentiles would say: "Why
should that be forbidden to
me what the gods have a right to do 3
?" But what the
devil obtained from the Gentiles by means of these pre
tended deities, whom he proposed as models for imita
tion, he now obtains from Christians by means of the
scandalous priest, who by his bad example persuades
poor seculars into a belief that what they
pastor is lawful, or at least not a great
see in their
evil in world
lings.
"Seculars think," says St. "that
Gregory, all is
allowed them what they see their pastors do, so that
" 1
2 "
Quibus nihil aliud actum est, quam ut pudor hominibus peccandi
demeretur." De Vita beata, c. 26.
Quid aliud est vitia incendere, quam auctores illis inscribere
deos, dare morbo, exemplo divinitatis, excusatam licentiam ?" De
Brevit. vita, c. 1 6.
3
Quod divos decuit, cur mihi "
turpe putem
?"