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"My brethren," asked he, "ought we not to look upon our prisoners as profaners of holy places, and serve them in secret and before God as once the admirable Judith served Holofernes?" At this proposal there was a general murmur. The assembly grew agitated, but seeing how perilous was the situation, order was soon restored.
But the profanations of this kind are more or less grievous according to the quality of the truth and the consequent faith, and according to the quality of the good and the consequent life, and according to the quality of the withdrawal from these; and therefore there are many specific differences in this profanation. Why the state of profaners after death is so horrible shall be disclosed.
Those who belong to this class of profaners appear after death at first with a face of human color, around which float many wandering stars; and those of them that had been leaders sometimes appear shining about the lips. But as they are brought into the light of heaven, the stars and the shining of the lips vanish, and the color of the face is changed to black, and likewise their garments.
For so long as the delight of the love of ruling resides in man, that mind cannot be opened, and communication with heaven is not possible to him. Moreover, the lot of these profaners after death differs from the lot of the former.
Of this kind there are some who are still more profaners; these are like those just described, but by reasonings and by the Word falsely interpreted they defend their vices as adulteries and lusts that belong to their nature, and thus to their enjoyment.
Therefore all the actions of the civil magistrate, even when he is employed about ecclesiastical matters, are of their own nature and essentially civil, he punisheth externally idolaters, blasphemers, sacrilegious persons, heretics, profaners of holy things, and according to the nature and measure of the sin he condemneth to death or banishment, forfeiture of goods, or imprisonment; he guardeth and underproppeth ecclesiastical canons with civil authority, giveth a place of habitation to the church in his territory, restraineth or expelleth the insolent and untamed disturbers of the church.
They were to punish the heretic, not as one who errs in an intellectual judgment, but as a moral leper and for whose evil influence the community was responsible to God. The civil magistrates were also to punish all profaners of the Sabbath, all contemners of the ministry, all disturbers of public worship, and to proceed "against schismatic or obstinately corrupt churches."
Having already spoken briefly and in a disorderly way of the riches which are here gratuitously offered not the riches of Midas and Pymalion, because mother Nature does not refuse food to her children even if they are profaners of that wonderful temple of her fecundity it is right that I should now draw your attention to two great friends of travellers in the forest.
She was satirised most bitterly after she had received the bays; and the satirists were even more in the wrong than the profaners of the capitol, for all the pamphlets against her laid stress on the circumstance that chastity, at all events, was not one of her merits. All poetesses, from the days of Homer to our own, have sacrificed on the altar of Venus.
I have found by experience in the latter direction, that although many tongues are loose in the habit of profanity, I am roused more and more by grace to impart words of counsel. I know that efforts at consistency in Christian conduct and converse will stop the mouth of profaners of the name of our Redeemer, God."
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