known and freely committed by your servants, domestics, and even by your children, because you did not take due care of them, nor look after them day and night, as you should have done, nor kept a watchful eye on your children’s training, seeing whether any wrong-doing was going on in the house; because you did not inflict punishment for faults committed, and tolerated everything; therefore in all those things you are guilty. A high official or minister of a great man may be most just and upright in his own conduct; a judge may be most anxious to keep the strict balance of justice, and not to allow himself to be biassed by gold, or promises, or hopes, or fears, and yet he may find himself convicted of many grievous sins and faults by his strict Judge. These will make themselves known to him, and cry out to him, as St. Bernard says, in a terrible voice: “We are thy works; we shall follow thee to the tribunal of the Almighty.”[1] Ah, my God, how can these things be put down to me! When, where, and how have I become guilty of them? Answer: your servants, the domestics under your care and authority have forced bribes and presents from those whom they presented to you in audience; the cases entrusted to you were put off till the contending parties were impoverished and tired out, and obliged to put a stop to all law proceedings, so that he who had right on his side was compelled to suffer the loss of his case; you are to be blamed for all this, and it will all be put down to you because you have not been more careful, and have neglected the duties and obligations of your state; for you might easily have prevented all these evils. Give an account of what you have done wrong through culpable ignorance. Here and there you had a reasonable doubt as to the lawfulness of what you were about to do, but self-love, human respect, and other motives made you deaf to the doubt, so that you proceeded to act without taking any advice. You seldom heard instructions on the Christian doctrine, or attended sermons in which you might have been taught many duties of your state of life that you have not fulfilled through culpable ignorance. In all states there are certain sins that one either does not know or does not wish to know; one is apt to adopt erroneous maxims and to look on certain customs as lawful, or at all events as not sinful, and to conform to them because they are in vogue and are practised without scruple by the greater number of men of the world, although they are quite
- ↑ Opera tua sumus; sequemur te ad Dei tribunal.
