Endless Sin

Sed videlicet peccator fuit aliquando aliquis, fortasse jam non est? An est ullus criminum modus, et non prius est ut de vita homines quam de iniquitate discedant? Quis enim non cum ipsis iniquitatibus suis moritur, et cum ipsis admodum atque in ipsis sceleribus sepelitur? Ut vere de his propheticum illud rectissime dici possit: 'Sepulcra eorum, domus eorum in aeternam; et comparati sunt jumentis insipientibus, et similis facti sunt illis.' Atque utinam jumentis! Melius quippe fuerit belluina imprudentia deviasse. Illud pejus et criminosius, quia non ignorantia Dei, sed despectione peccareunt. Atque hoc videlicet laici tantummmodo, non quidam etiam clericorum? Saeculares tantummodo, non multi etiam religiosi? Immo sub specie religionis vitiis saecularibus mancipati: qui scilicet post veterum flagitiorum probra et crimina titulo sibimet sanctitatis inscripto, non conversatione alii, sed professione nomen tantum demutavere, non vitam et summam divini cultus habitum magis quam actum existimantes, vestem tantummodo exuere, non mentem. Unde illi se minore invidia criminosos putant; qui cum poenitentiam quasi egisse dicantur, sicut mores pristinos, ita etiam habitum non relinquunt. Non taliter ferme omnia agunt, ut eos non tam putes antea poenitentiam criminum egisse quam postea ipsius poenitentiae poenitere, nec tam prius poenituisse, quod male vixerint quam postea quod se promiserint bene esse victuros. Sciunt me verum loqui et testimonium mihi etiam conscientia sua dicunt, cum multi alii, tum praecipue illi novorum honorum religiosi ambitores, et post acceptum poentitentiae nomen, amplissimae ac prius non habitae potestatis emptores. Adeo non saeculares tantum, sed plus etiam quam saeculares esse voluerunt; ut non sufficeret eis quod ante fuerant, nisi plus essent postea quam fuissent. Quomodo igitur tales isti poenitentiam se egisse non poenitent? Salvianus, De Gubernatione Dei, Liber V

But surely someone who was a sinner  may perhaps now not be one? But is there any way of wickedness that  before they are cut off from life men are cut off from iniquity? For who does not die in his iniquities, to be buried with them and in his crimes? And truly concerning these one is able to speak as the Prophet: 'Their graves are their houses for eternity, and they are compared to mindless cattle, and are become like them.' 1 And that they were cattle! Since it would have been better to have gone astray through brute imprudence. Worse it is and more worthy of reproach that they sinned, not through the ignorance God, but in despite of Him. And does this apply to the lay only and not even some of the clergy? With the worldly only and not with many of the religious? Or rather to men who under the appearance of religion surrender themselves to worldly vices? Those who indeed after the disgrace of past wickedness have taken to themselves the title of sanctity, and who have not changed their ways but only their profession, and thinking that the greatest life of Divine service is more apparel than deed, have changed only garments but not the heart. Whence they think their guilt less hateful, who, though they are said to have performed a penance, do not cast off their old ways when they do their clothes. Nearly all their deeds are such that one is not able to think that they have so much done penance for their misdeeds than afterwards repented their penitence, that they have less repented their evil life than that they have overcome the promise of a good one. They know that I speak the truth, and they even give witness to me in their own conscience, and along with many others, chief among these are the religious who are ambitious for new honours, who after receiving the name of penitent would buy greater powers that they did not have. They wish not only to men of the world, but more than worldly, that what they were before is not enough for them unless they may become greater than what they were. And how then do such men not repent their repentance? Salvian, On the Governance of God, Book 5. 1 Ps 48, 12, 13