Untitled - Saints' Books

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No
146 Material for Sermons. LPART i.
Seneca says that the way of instruction is a long and
tedious way of learning vice or virtue; but the way of
example is short and efficacious. 1 Hence, speaking par
ticularly of the chastity of priests, St. Augustine has
written :
To all chastity is very necessary, but especially
to the ministers of Christ, whose lives should be to others
a sermon unto salvation." 2 How can the slave of lust
preach chastity ? says St. Peter Damian. 3 St. Jerome
says that the very state and dress of an ecclesiastic call
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for and demand chastity. What a source of scandal,
then, to the Church to see a man with the name and
rank of a saint give examples of vice?
one," says
St. Gregory, injures the Church more than he that
bears the name and the Order of sanctity."
And must
it not, adds St. Isidore of Pelusium, be a still more dis
astrous evil to see a priest avail himself of his dignity
as the arms with which he commits sin ? 6
According to
the words of Ezechiel, such a priest renders the exalted
dignity of his state an object of abomination: Thou hast
1
St. Bernard says that
made thy beauty to be abominable.
the priest that does not give good example
is an obquod
haeretici faciebant per prava dogmata, hoc faciunt plures hodie
per mala exempla; et tanto graviores sunt hsereticis, quanto prsevalent
opera verbis." S. ad Past, in Syn.
1
Longum iter est per prsecepta, breve et efficax per exempla."
Epist. 6.
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2
Omnibus castitas pernecessaria est, sed maxime ministris Christi
altaris, quorum vita aliorum debet esse assidua salutis prsedicatio."
Serin. 291, E. B. app.
3
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Qui praedicator constitutus es castitatis, non te pudet servum esse
libidinis ?"
Opnsc. 17, c. 3.
4
Clamat vestis "
clericalis, clamat status professi animi sanctitatem."
5
"Nemo amplius in Ecclesia nocet, quam qui, perverse agens,
nomen vel ordinem sanctitatis habet." Past. p. I, c. 2.
Sacerdotii dignitate velut armis ad vitium abuti."
Epist.
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7
ep. 162.
Abominabilem fecisti decorem tuum." Ezech. xvi. 25.
1. 2,