” Existens cum passionis dominicæ ministris, Doininum, negavit."
3. But how, asks St. Ambrose, can bad companions give you the odour of chastity, when they exhale the stench of impurity? How can they infuse into you sentiments of devotion when they themselves fly from it? How can they impart to you a shame of offending God, when they cast it away? ” Quid tibi demonstrant castitatem, quem non habent? Devotionem quam non sequuntur? Verecundiam quam projiciunt?" St. Augustine writes of himself, that when he associated with bad companions, who boasted of their wickedness, he felt himself impelled to sin without shame; and to appear like them, he gloried in his evil actions. ” Pudebat," he says, ” me esse pudentem." (Lib. 2, de Conf., c. ix.) Hence Isaias admonishes you to ” touch no unclean thing." (Isa. lii. 11.) Touch not what is unclean: if you do, you too shall be polluted. He that handles pitch, says Ecclesiasticus, shall certainly be denied with it; and they who keep company with the proud shall be clothed with pride. The same holds for other vices: ” He that toucheth pitch shall be denied with it; and he that hath fellowship with the proud shall put on pride." (Eccl. xiii. 1.)
4. What then must we do? The Wise Man tells us that we ought not only to avoid the vices of the wicked, but also to beware of treading in the ways in which they walk. ” Restrain thy foot from their paths." (Prov. i. 15.) That is, we should avoid their conversations, their discourses, their feasts, and all the allurements and presents with which they will seek to entice us into their net. ” My son," says Solomon, "if sinners shall entice thee, consent not to them." (Prov. i. 10.) Without the decoy, birds are not enticed into the fowler’s net. ” Will the bird fall into the snare upon the earth if there be no fowler?" (Amos iii. 5.) The devil employs vicious friends as decoys, to draw so many souls into the snare of sin. "My enemies, ” says Jeremias, ” have chased me, and have caught me like a bird without cause." (Lamen. iii. 52.) He says, without cause. Ask the wicked why they have made a certain innocent young man fall into sin, and they will answer:
