On the Lapsed 26

This happened with an infant, who had not yet reached the age to speak of another's crime committed upon her. But a woman of advanced age, in her more adult years, who secretly crept in while we were sacrificing, taking not food but a sword for herself and admitting as it were deadly poisons into her throat and breast, began afterward to be choked and stifled, her soul in turmoil; and, suffering the oppression no longer of persecution but of her own sin, she fell down, quivering and trembling. The crime of her concealed conscience did not remain long unpunished or hidden. She who had deceived man felt God as avenger. And when another woman tried with unclean hands to open her box in which was the holy thing of the Lord, she was frightened off from daring to touch it by fire rising from it. And another man, who, himself also stained by sacrifice, dared secretly to receive a part with the others when the priest had celebrated, could not eat or handle the holy thing of the Lord; on opening his hands he found he was holding ashes. By the evidence of one it was shown that the Lord withdraws when he is denied, and that what is received does not profit the undeserving for salvation, since saving grace is changed into ashes as the holy thing flees. How many are daily filled with unclean spirits, how many are shaken out of their senses by the fury of madness, even to insanity of mind! Nor is it necessary to go through the ends of each, since, through the manifold ruins throughout the world, the punishment of sins is as varied as the multitude of sinners is numerous. Let each consider not what another has suffered but what he himself deserves to suffer; nor let him think he has escaped if punishment has meanwhile put him off, since he whom the wrath of God the judge has reserved for itself ought to fear the more.