Virtues And Vices

Ad virtutes difficile consurgimus, ad vitia sine labore delabimur. Ista enim prona, illa ardua sunt. Grandes enim surdores perpetimur ut ad coelum conscendere valeamus. Quamadmodum ad virtutem tendentes culmen non a summis inchoant, sed a modicis, ut sensim ad altiora pertingant; ita et qui dilabuntur ad vitia non statim a magnis criminibus incipiunt, sed a modicis assuescunt, et sic in maximis proruunt. Nihil prodest admixto malo agere bonum, sed prius est cohibendum a malo, deinede exercendum bonum. Hoc enim indicat Propheta cum dicit: Quiescite agere perverse, discite benefacere. Prius vitia exstirpanda sunt in homine, deinde inserendae virtutes. Nam cohaerere et conjunji non potest veritas cum mendacio, pudor cum petulantia, fides cum perfidia, castitas cum luxuria. Theodulfus Aurelianensis, Fragmentum Sermonis Source:Migne PL 105 278

To virtues we rise with difficulty, into vices we fall without effort. The latter are easy, the former hard. We must pour out great sweat that we climb up to heaven. And as for reaching virtue's height, it is not done from the beginning, but it comes in degrees, so that slowly we come to touch the heights, and so even those who fall to vice do not instantly begin to perpetrate grave crimes, but by degrees they become accustomed to it and so tumble down into the worst things. There is no profit in mixing good and evil deeds, but first one must curb evil and then exercise oneself in the good. For this the Prophet indicates when he says, 'Be done with acting perversely, and learn to do good.' 1 First vices must be rooted out of man and then the virtues may be planted. It is not possible to stick and to join truth with a lie, modesty with wantonness, faith with treachery, chastity with lust. Theodulf of Orleans, Fragment from a Sermon 1 Isa 1.16