Volume II, Treatise I, Chapter III

That One of the Greatest Punishments God Inflicts Upon Man, Ts to Give Him Up to His Own Desires, and Permit Him to Follow His Own

passions. Tat we may the better come to a knowledge of the necessity we are in of overcoming our flesh, and be the more encouraged to take up arms against it, it is of great importance that we should know how great and dangerous an enemy it is. It is so formidable a one, that the saints say, that one of the greatest of God’s punishments, and whereby he shews his severest warmth against a sinner, is when he delivers him into the hands of this enemy, and when he abandons him to his sensual desires and appetites, as to so many merciless executioners. They cite for the proof of this, many passages in holy scripture, and amongst others, that of the royal prophet: “‘ My people have not hearkened to my voice; Israel has not joined itself to me; wherefore I will abandon them to the desires of their heart, they shall hereafter only follow their own imaginations and inventions.” (Psalms 80:12) & 13.) St. Paul says, that this was the way that God took to punish the pride of the ancient philosophers—“Who knowing God, did not glorify him as God, and. rendered him not the thanks due unto him; but strayed and alienated themselves from him, by vain dissipations; and for this reason,” says he, ‘‘ God delivered them up to the desires of their hearts, and to impurity; that abandoning themselves thereunto, they themselves might dishonour their own bodies.”—-(Romans 1:21,24). The chastisement which God indicted upon them, was to deliver them up to their own desires. But we must take notice with St. Ambrose, that when the holy scripture says that God delivers up a man to his desires, we must not hereby understand that God incites him to evil, or causes any one to fall into sin; but only that he permits those bad desires we have secretly conceived in our heart to appear exteriorly in action and execution, by the instigation and assistance of the devil.

‘We may see how grievous and horrible this chastisement is, by what the apostle afterwards adds. He shews us in what manner these proud philosophers were treated by this furious enemy, to whose power God had delivered them up. And it is impossible to express to what an excess of disorder they were carried by: him. He drew them into all sorts of vices; so far as to make them plunge themselves into the most abominable and shameful sins. ‘God delivered them up,” says he, “to infamous passions.” —( (Romans 1:26)). Miserable, therefore, are you, if you permit yourself to fall into the hands of so terrible an enemy, into the claws of so cruel and savage a beast! Do you know how he will treat you? Hear St. Ambrose: “He,” says the saint, “who knows not how to command his desires, finds himself presently carried away with them, as by an unruly horse, who, having got the bit between his teeth, runs even to inaccessible places; and never rests till he falls to with his rider into some precipice.”—_(Amb. 1. 3. de. vir.) Thus it is, if you do not destroy concupiscence—if you do not tame and bring it under, it will carry you from one disorder to another, from one vice to another, and, will not desist, till it has precipitated you into most enormous crimes, and even into the abyss of hell itself. ‘ Permit not yourself to be carried away with concupiscence,” says Ecclesiastes, “and take care not to follow your own will; if you give up yourself to your desires to do what they command, you will become a laughing-stock and a scorn to your enemies,’ ’_(Eeel. xviii. 80, 31). We cannot give the devils, our enemies, a greater subject of joy, than to deliver up ourselves to our passions. For they treat us after so ill @ manner, that all the devils in hell together cannot treat us worse. Wherefore Ecclesiastes earnestly begs of God,

that he would hinder this chastisement from falling upon him. “Thou, O Lord, who art my father, and the God of my life, drive away from me all unchaste and impure thoughts, permit me not to be possessed by the desires of the flesh, and give me not over to a shameless and foolish mind. (Ecclesiasticus 23:4)6). It is therefore with very good reason é@he saints affirm that God cannot show a greater mark of his wrath to a sinner, than to leave him to his own will, and to let him have his liberty in following the inclinations and ‘motions of his passions. It isa very bad sign when a physician permits his patient to eat and drink whatsoever he wishes for; it is a mark that he quite despairs of his cure: and that he looks upon him asa dead man. God deals after the same manner with a sinner who has provoked him to anger; he lets him do whatsoever he will: and in so desperate a state, full of those bad inclinations and passions that reign in him, what can he do, but that which is quite contrary to his own good, and which will bring him unto death? It is very easy hereby to comprehend in what a miserable condition those are who place all their happiness in doing whatsoever they wish to do.

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