all other sinners.[1] They have been so long familiar with all the eternal truths, they have preached them so often, they have handled all the holy things of the sanctuary, they have had so great a profusion of lights, warnings, and calls to repentance, they have had a gratia status so abundant, and all in vain, that their end is like the dying man, on whom all remedies, medicines, and skill have been exhausted, but death has fastened so firmly that the dying must surely die. How often he has preached truths which have converted and sanctified the humble, the clean in heart, the pure in life. But it was the dead preaching to the living. How often he has said Mass with a threefold sacrilege—in consecrating, in communicating to himself, in communicating to others. It was a life written within and without with judgment against himself, and a life of unworthy handling of holy things. Sancta non sancte sed perverse, turpiter, et ad mortem. Then comes the end. A brother priest stands by him; but what is the soul within him? Is there a pulse of life, a beat of the heart, a ray of self-knowledge,
- ↑ "Quis unquam vidit clericum cito pœnitentiam agentem?"—Auctor Incert. in Matthæum, Hom. xl. tom. vi. p. 167.
"Laici delinquentes facile emendantur, clerici autem si semel mali evaserint inemendabiles fiunt."—S. Bonav. Pharetræ, lib. i. c. xxii.
