Every mortal (said Philo, as cited by St. Ambrose, Lib. 1. of Cain and Abel, cap. 4.) has, within the little habitation of the soul, two females, the one chaste but rigid and unpleasant, the other wanton but soft and amorous. The first is the type of virtue, the second of worldly delights.
II. The learned Jew paints virtue and vice according to appearances at first sight, or according to the opinion of the world, but not according to the truth; and so it comes to pass, that virtue is commonly conceived to be all asperity, and vice all deliciousness; virtue is placed among thorns, and vice reposing on beds of flowers: but this is an error, and of all the false opinions upheld by the blindness of the world, the most pernicious one. I shall endeavour in this discourse to expose its fallacy, by shewing, that even in this life, abstracted from the rewards and punishments of that to come, by people’s abandoning themselves to the pursuit of criminal pleasures, they are liable to more inquietudes, and experience more fatigues, than they would be exposed to, by the practice of the moral and Christian virtues. For this purpose, I shall make use of such arguments as are furnished by natural reason and experience, without having recourse to the sentences of fathers, or the sayings of philosophers, the collection of which might be swelled to a vast bulk; but whoever is not to be persuaded by reason, will never be convinced by authority.
III. Could we but see the hearts of men abandoned to a vicious course, the doubt would be soon removed; however, we may view them by reflection in the looking-glasses of their souls, of which their words and actions are the types. If you observe with attention these unhappy men, you will find, that no others betray such perturbation in their countenances, such inquietude in their actions, nor such embarrassment in their conversation; nor is this to be wondered at, there being many tormentors, who are continually disturbing them in the enjoyment of their beloved pleasures. That domestic enemy, that unavoidable, but unsavoury guest, their own conscience, with the nectar they drink, is constantly mixing the gall they abominate.
IV. Tully said with energetical propriety, that the crimes of wicked men, reflected in their own imaginations, are to them continual and domestic furies? Hæ sunt impiis assiduæ, domesticæque furiæ. (Orat. pro Rosc.) These are the serpents and vulturs, who gnaw in pieces the entrails of the wicked Tityus; these are the eagles, who tear the heart of the rash Prometheus. Consider the torments of Cain, a fugitive from the world, and who, if it were possible, would fly from himself also; wandering through the woods and mountains, without ever having power to extract the dart which had pierced his breast, that is, the memory of his crime; or like another wounded hind, under which image the great poet describes the mortal inquietude of that enamoured queen,
——Silvas, saltusque peragrat
Dictæos; hæret lateri læthalis arundo.
V. Contemplate the anxieties of a Lamech, so violently pressed by the recollection of the murder, or murders, which he had committed, that, wanting power to remain the repository of his own secret, he throws it up like one who has swallowed poison, which excites a coughing or tickling in the throat, and runs the hazard of infamy and punishment, for the sake only of enjoying a trivial and temporary relief. Plutarch relates of one Apollodorus, that the memory of his crimes, haunted him in his sleep; for he dreamed every night, that after being quartered, his members were dissolved in boiling water, and that while he suffered this martyrdom, his heart screamed out, “I am the cause and motive of these torments.”
SECT. II.
VI. I acknowledge it to be true, that all men are not so susceptible of interior remorse, and that, as St. Paul expresses it, there are consciences so cauterized, as to lose all sensation; and hearts, which by a long habit of sin are become petrified;
Sic læthalis hyems paulatim in pectora venit.