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because he loved God, did not wish to hear the sound of theft in his house. Some persons take the
property of their neighbor, and then are fain to quiet their consciences by almsdeeds. Christ,
says St. John Chrysostom, will not be fed with the plunder of others. The sins of this kind,
committed by the great, are acts of injustice, the injuries that they inflict upon others, the
taking from the poor of what is their due. These are descriptions of theft which require perfect
restitution, and a restitution most difficult of all to make, and most likely to be the cause of
one's damnation.

4. Impurity.

We have now, lastly, to speak of the fourth gate of hell, which is impurity, and it is by this gate
that the greater number of the damned enter. Some will say that it is a trifling sin. Is it a
trifling? It is a mortal sin. St. Antoninus writes, that such is the nauseousness of this
sin; that the devils them selves cannot endure it. Moreover, the Doctors of the Church say that
certain demons, who have been superior to the rest, remembering their ancient dignity, disdain
tempting to so loathsome a sin. Consider then how disgusting he must be to God, who, like a dog,
is ever returning to his vomit, or wallowing like a pig in the stinking mire of this accursed vice.
The dog is returned to his vomit; and the sow that was washed, to her rolling in the mire.
The impure say, moreover, God has compassion on us who are subject to this vice, because he knows
that we are flesh. What do you say? God has compassion on this vice. But you must know that the
most horrible chastisements with which God has ever visited the earth have been drawn down by
this vice. St. Jerome says that this is the only sin of which we read that it caused God to repent
him of having made man. It repented Him
that had made man; for all flesh had corrupted
 its way. Wherefore it is, St. Jerome says, that there is no sin which God punishes so
rigorously, even upon earth, as this. He once sent fire from heaven upon five cities, and
consumed all their inhabitants for this sin. Principally on account of this sin did God destroy
mankind, with the exception of eight persons, by the deluge. It is a sin which God punishes, not
only in the other life, but in this also. In confirmation of this, you have only to enter the
hospitals, and see there the many poor young men, who were once strong and
.robust, but are now weak, squalid, full of pains, tormented with lancets and caustic, and ulcers,
all through this accursed vice.
Because thou hast forgotten Me and cast Me
off behind thy back, bear thou also thy wickedness and thy fornications. Because, says God, you
have forgotten me and turned your back upon me, for a miserable pleasure of the flesh, I am
resolved that even in this life you shall pay the forfeit of your wickedness.

You say, God has compassion upon men subject to this sin. But it is this sin that sends most
men to hell. St. Remigius says, that the greater number of the damned are in hell through this
vice. Father Segneri writes, that as this vice fills the world with sinners, so it fills hell with
damned souls; and before him St. Bernardine of Sienna wrote: ''This sin draws the whole world, as
it were into sin.'' And before him St. Bernard, St. Isidore, said, that "the human race is
brought under the power of the devil more by lust than by all the other vices." The reason is,
because this vice proceeds from the natural inclination of the flesh. Hence the angelic Doctor
says, that the devil does not take such complacency in securing the commission of any other
sin as of this, because the person who is plunged in this infernal mire remains fast therein, and
almost wholly unable to free himself more. "No one is so obstinate in sin as the impure," says
St. Thomas of Villanova. Moreover, this

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