of our gospel, was the publicity of the scandal attending the corruption of her conduct. The scandal of the law, which was dishonoured in the opinion of the Romans and of so many other Gentiles, spread throughout Palestine, and who, witnessing the ill-conduct of our sinner, took occasion, no doubt, from it, to blaspheme the name of the Lord, to despise the sanctity of his law, to harden themselves in their impious superstitions, and to look upon the hope of Israel and the wonders of God, as related in the holy books, as fictions invented to amuse a credulous people.
Scandal of place. Her ill conduct had been conspicuous in the city, that is to say, in the capital of the country, from whence the report of such accidents was soon circulated throughout Judea. Now behold the scandals for which her penitence makes reparation,— the scandal of the law, by renouncing the superstitious traditions of the Pharisees, who had adulterated their precepts; and by confessing Jesus Christ, who was the end and the fulfilment of them. For, too frequently, after having dishonoured religion in the minds of the impious, through our excesses and scandalous conduct, we again dishonour it through our pretended piety; we create for ourselves a kind of virtue altogether worldly, superficial, and pharisaical; we become superstitious without becoming penitent; we make the abuses of devotion succeed to those of the world; the only reparation we make for the scandal of our debaucheries, is that of a sensual piety; and we reflect more disgrace upon virtue through the weaknesses and the illusions which we mingle with it, than we did by our open and avowed excesses. Thus the impious are more hardened in their iniquity, and more removed from conversion, by the example of our false penitence, than ever they had formerly been by the example even of our vices.
Lastly, the scandal of place. That same city which had been the theatre of her shame and of her crimes, becomes that of her penitence. She goes not into retired places to give vent to her sorrows and her tears; she takes no advantage, like Nicodemus, of the shades of night to come to Jesus Christ, nor waits the opportunity of his being in a retired corner of the city, in order to conceal from the eyes of the public the first steps of her conversion. In the face of that great city which she had scandalized by her conduct, she enters into the house of the Pharisee, and is not afraid of submitting to have, as spectators of her penitence, those who had been witnesses of her former crimes. For often, after having despised the world's opinion in debauchery, it becomes dreaded in virtue: the eyes of the public did not appear formidable to us during our dissipation; they become so in our penitence; our vices are carelessly laid open to view; our virtues are backward and cautious: we dare not at first declare openly for Jesus Christ; we are ashamed to show ourselves in a light so new to us; we have gloried in vice as if it had been a virtue, and we blush for being virtuous, as though it were a shame.
As our fortunate sinner had not been timid in evil, so she is not
