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particular circumstances of these sins, lest they should be an occasion of new temptations, and therefore they are more to be bewailed than thought upon, saying:

Colloquy. — Wretch that I am! my life is so bestial and filthy that I am ashamed to consider it and afraid to look back on it, lest I should anew be infected with the evil odour thereof. Look on it, O my God, with Thine eyes of mercy, that from my eyes may issue fountains of tears, with which I may purify myself from so great uncleanness! Amen.

POINT II.

Secondly, I will consider three other sorts of punishment corresponding to luxury, as before we have said of gluttony, but much greater, because it is a greater sin.

1. The first punishment is innumerable miseries which this vice draws with it, our Lord permitting that an " angel of Satan," who with the " sting of the flesh" overthrows sinners, should cruelly " buffet" them, [1] tormenting their bodies with a thousand crosses — with painful, loathsome, and shameful diseases — with infamies, and a thousand other torments, until they have consumed their wealth, their health, their content and their life. And as St. Paul delivered over to Satan an incestuous Christian [2] to be bodily tormented, so whosoever gives himself over to this vice delivers both his body and soul to this cruel tormentor, who, though he begin with pleasure, yet " in the end he will bite like a snake, and will spread abroad poison like a basilisk." [3]

2. Besides this, Almighty God, to show the hatred He bears to this vice, has inflicted upon it terrible chastisements. On account of this vice principally came the Deluge that

  1. 2 Cor. xii. 7.
  2. 1 Cor. v. 5.
  3. Prov. xxiii. 32.