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As long as crops shall be given to the farmers, entrusted to the countryside, this lioness will roar, this wild beast will rage against the law. She is the ultimate madness, an enemy within, an inmost plague. While she refuses she allures, and she casts crime even upon the modest. This fleshly flesh, but with the plague of a Proteus in mobility, is known to conquer; she is seen as pious in her impiety. She teaches vice; let not my art call her vicious. I call her vice itself, I prove her treachery, I name her harm. That merchandise is most abundant, that thing is the worst, the worst of things; the art of women alone becomes more cunning than all the arts. The she-wolf is not more wicked than she, because her onslaught is more sparing. Not the dragon, not the lion — but what worse than her can I say? Condemn all of hers not only as harmful but even as good. This crime John charged, and by the sword that John fell.
By her too the man Hippolytus fell, by her Amnon fell, by her Joseph is afflicted, and by her your hair is shaved, O Samson. By her Reuben, by her David, by her Solomon falls, by her the first man. She gives, she does, she works whence shame perishes, whence we perish. The woman, in heart, in mouth, or in deeds, is a dreadful dragon, a most grievous flame creeps into the inmost parts, like a venom. Into her crimes the evil woman paints herself, adorns herself, rouges, falsifies, renews, alters, and colors. While she contrives crime, she circles like a lion, she runs like a wild beast; she runs, and by devouring fires the fire is burned, and burns. Slippery in her eye, fervid in crime, and herself the crime, standing in love-affairs, in fickleness she is now fixed.
She glues fast, she allures, as much as she gazes too intently upon the one gazing; and as often as it is allowed, so often it pleases her to be harmful. When she shall be seen more faithful and more closely joined to you, then she will set a servant over you, if more is given to her. Light is the heart, light the voice, and brief the faith in a woman. The woman by her gift gives brief sport, but no brief weeping; the last things are sad and the first sweet in love; the outcome of crime is wont to be beset with grief. The flame, first kindled, rekindles the lost hearts; the outcome of crime — alas for me! — utterly, alas for me! it cries. A foul woman, fervid to deceive, the flame of frenzy, the first destruction, the worst portion, the plunderer of modesty: alas for her wild crimes! she shakes her own offspring from her womb; she cuts off what is born, casts it away, kills it, in a depraved order.
The woman is a viper, not a human but a wild beast, not even faithful to herself. Of His creation, nay, of her own beforehand, she is the murderer, fiercer than an asp and more furious than the raging. Oh ferocity! she plunges her own innards into the waves. A faithless woman, a foul woman, a woman that is a stench, she is the throne of Satan; to her modesty is a burden — flee her, reader! And it is read that more pleasing to the Lord, more acceptable too, are wicked deeds of men than well-done deeds of women. O evil times! Why? Because they have brought forth so much dung, and have given so many filthy things — not to speak of horrid ones. Every good thing falls, every man flows into every disgrace; every good thing lies low, every evil pleases all alike. Chaste beds are now held cheap; broad ones are sought; conjugal or married pacts are forsaken.
The bride spurns her husband and rushes upon men, she draws them to herself; lest she lie alone, lest she be as it were a peasant-woman, she gives her own and gives herself. What woman is good? to whom belong good names? Which is truly chaste? Which excels in piety, or endures to remain within unbroken enclosures? Which keeps sacred covenants? lest she be an adulteress, lest she mark herself guilty, lest she bear offspring without law or order, like a she-wolf, so that here a boy may be noted as a father, here a father by the mouth of a boy, nor be degenerate in origin, nor in semblance. Let the stock given to the husband, begotten by a husband as father, not by a father who is a slave, bring forth the father's face and herself display the father's deeds. To whom belongs a ratified pact, or the blessing that is made at the altar? To whom belong pious eyes? Which woman is good? Believe me, rare. Rarer is this bird, this is a herb too hard to find.
Such things I bite at, such things I laugh at, not without weeping. Rare is she who keeps faith, for indeed every order toward the husband perishes. The flock is without its turtledove, for without its sparrow none is desired. The man pleases all peoples, so that one married woman may have leisure. For many a single woman becomes a slippery road, a broken path. The man seeks foreign things, the adulteress rejoices, the harlot rejoices. Soon she contrives crime, she summons, she nods assent, she burns and dares. Her husband's leisure she watches anxiously, glad at his bier, glad at his perils, glad at his bonds, glad at his death. Julian decree and Scatinian law, where now do you sleep? Men live without laws and without norms; many a woman, many a crime, much ruin. Many a Lydia; rare a Lucretia, no Sabine woman; almost none is good, no one now sees a single Amazon.
Apart from three suitors, and those wanton ones, I hear of none. As much without a light as without crime each one wishes to be; she loves equally to be three times bedridden as once to be the only one. The adulterous wife seeks rather to be sent even into hell, than to be the companion of a single husband — O impious madness! A single little eye is more sufficient and more pleasing to her than a single companion — O heathen madness! O guilty earth! Choose whatever ones you please, take any one you please, gather these together: scarcely is even one not guilty in body and chaste in heart. Through a varied kind, Venus rules over the imperious. Lamentable — but to whom? to those blazing for the stars, hating the depths. She herself defiles and glues to herself all the things of the world; into her nets she forces the idle hearts to be poured back.
She herself is more devouring and more rapacious than fire of fires, she burns, planted in idle and wickedly rotten timbers. Into Venus rushes, into coupling flows everyone as if one man; the pledge of that man's wife becomes this man's, and a funeral is near. Who now is not a father? and a boy presses to have boys; it looms over him to fill the halls and the ancestral roofs with offspring. Each one desires his own wife and enters the bridal chamber, and is a husband; in the host of Jacob, not without seed, he is made blessed. He becomes a father, offspring is born, what is born is handed over to him as a new offspring; toward the father's outer parts, toward the mother's breasts, a very great mass. O new ages! Now too the tiny little girl yearns to wed; the raw little maiden craves a husband's kisses and his force. A dowry is handed over to her, a ring is added, a pledge is solemnized.
Hence the lyric jest, thence the cook clatters, the food is passed around; the hall grows hot with rejoicing and singing dance-choirs, and the wedding-pomp follows behind and goes before. No delay: she conceives, she is heavy, she takes on all the burdens of a mother, her breasts full for the babes that pull and drink. Greater and loftier her stock; soon her own stock is in doubt — he who is her son is thought to be his father. Lust begets diseased offspring and many throngs; often a heavy parent and a grandmother are present, overflowing the nest. The flock of boys is quickly born and the harvest brought forth from this; the begetting, the multiplying of them grows. Why delay? Everywhere wanders the very numerous and itself most wicked flock of men, without simple light, of an iniquitous mind.
Through almost all the countryside the throng of the city is scattered; there are no empty places, no places lacking crowds. Now individual places — mountain, cave, island, fields, meadows — are crowded with inhabitants and with those who pass through. Now the Caspian ridges, once trackless, are worn by the foot; not because the greatest man, but because the most numerous man, is a hermit. Innumerable and wretched is today's race, more ready after evils, more prone to evils, bending toward evils. Each one teaches evil and not in the least harms the one doing harm; each one is hot with unmixed wine and is not in the least able to be one who knows. More swiftly and more gladly is the dripping tavern sought than the heavenly temples splendid with the light of God's majesty. The impious race drinks raging wines more than is fair; the hearth bears oil, thence the jest follows in blind procession.
The drunken race thirsts for famous wines, warlike wines, raging wines that bring violence, full of ruin. By these Noah was broken, by these Lot was inflamed, who before was chaste; to the gluttonous and the bibulous clings wicked ardor. You who too frequently, drunk, crave it and recline at the unmixed cups, you wish quickly to loose the bonds from your loins. By these too you are conquered, you scorch and are scorched with the love of fire; your mind boils with frenzied fires, your bones with heat. A worm more devouring — I do not lie — an implanted enemy is in your reins and thrives by fires stored deep within. By the worm of lust you straightway cease to be modest. Here an enemy rages against enemies, and a heat keener than heats. Venus desires wine, by this torch the mind rages, action smokes; soon the sated stomach is given over to Venus, it foams into disgraces.
Because of unmixed cups the gullet rages first, afterward the belly: soon Venus, roused, frenziedly stirs up the hidden members. There are shameful parts that float and stand, with the belly standing. Food fills the one, Venus the other; these two members love wickedness; the excess of the one rushes into goblets, flows into disgraces; thence straightway comes the flux of lust and of rottenness. The frenzy of the other brings it about that modesty is cast away, that vigor perishes, that firmness dies, that order is pressed down; the only care, the public struggle, is in the eating of flesh; drunkenness pleases, and your voice lies silent, O good Jesus. Greedy gluttony reigns and full drunken excess; hearts are weighed down by drunkennesses, goaded by wickednesses. Full of the abyss, full of lust, and full in the belly, are the times for which there is one love: food and flesh, the procuress.
To give the innards to food, the mouth to drinks, is now reckoned glorious, and both Venus and the gullet are now the rule of belly-worshippers. I deny that they are Christ-worshippers, I call the gluttons belly-worshippers, hating finally no abominable things, no base things. Now the guilty man is good, the stomach is a god, the belly is a school. Each one is zealous for his gullet — ah! it is irksome and shameful to walk shamefully. Receive what I say: with the prince of the cooks standing in ruins, Jerusalem lies low; the wave of food pleases — nay, of foods. The narrow path is despised, and behold, the broad street is sought; first the gullet, then Cytherea, gives each one their bonds. O the grief! behold the ages bound by a threefold madness, bound by a threefold crime: lust, fraud, and swelling pride. Pride binds hearts, but drunken Venus binds bodies.
Fraud binds bodies and hearts, and both death bends to itself. An earthy load, guilty, presses the hearts and the bowed necks; in heart we are bent back, nay rather we turn back to Pharaoh. We go on trackless ways, we stand at impious things, but standing badly, loving altogether the passing or the perishing things. We go and we shall go whence we shall perish, whence we shall fall, we who behold only the perishing or the falling things. Peace weeps, love perishes, this man rages and strikes, that man is struck. Rigid Mars roars, this man stands, that man groans, men go into wickedness, wrath seizes and whirls and shakes the bloody scourge, it bears wild darts, savage perils, deadly war. Heathen peace thrives, the unique peace of the Christ-worshippers falls. If I judge rightly, the union and peace of wild beasts is closer-joined. Behold, guilty people:
no lioness devours a lioness, nor does a boar cut down a boar, nor does the vengeance of fathers slay their own offspring. Spiritual battles finally tempt us grievously always, and the impious mind often stains itself with murders. Ah, with even foot I lament that the right and the wrong run their course! Hence frenzy fights, thence frenzy arms both hands; here and there war is among kinsmen, among brothers of the same mother. Into its own bowels the race rages, the savage Fury reigns. Oh ferocity! the son burns for his father's funeral, he complains that death, the after-road of man, is slow to come; and the impious father longs, in fine fashion, to hide away beforehand the splendid limbs in a poor man's tomb. The daughter rejoices to close her mother's aged eyes, and to weep at the funeral, that afterward, free, she may dare whatever she pleases.
Stepmothers give cups with venom, foods full of death. Savage death comes on, when one seeks foreign things with rich wares. The rich man pays for his wealth, the guest rushes upon the throat of his host. Rare is the husband who is safe with his wife surviving and none unharmed. By his wife the man perishes, and the sharp sword strikes him for his wife; from the harsh father-in-law the tender one, the son-in-law, is ill-protected; the brother pursues his friend with death, if entreaty avails less; whom he cannot overcome with swords, he crushes with arts — O wicked heart! A race harmful to itself, an utterly impious throng, is its own undoing. Your neighbor is to you, and you mutually to him, what the wolf is to the lamb. Grace falls and the fire of love grows cold; now the royal path is lost, the path of right conduct; and hearts empty of light and full of crime grow frozen; cold breasts and true frosts are proven to stand.
Grace falls, a chill more ample than the Ister bristles up. The people are without morals, without order, without king, without master. The law of the Lord falls, and its head streams everywhere with dew, that good head which — O grievous is this sound! — spews out the lukewarm from its mouth. In short, why do I delay? both swelling and its sister, Wrath, sister of pride, stand above all things, and the twofold fraud of heart and mouth. The honest race has passed away, the dishonest and shameful race has come forth, busy with chatterings, with drunkennesses, full of sloth, full of lust, full of crime, cunning in heart and small in body, and lacking in countenance. Almost no one bears ancestral hearts or ancestral strength; a son is from a father as Sisyphus from Polyphemus. One form does not remain for parents and grandchildren; all the failing things of the body are like the moon.
As the state of the body is given over to ruin, so it is with the mind. The race teems, parched; the bodies of the race are languid, and the hearts. Each one now is most wicked in heart and nearest to himself, the one who supplicates you; he doubles his inmost parts with art and guile, into two it is split, the union is dissolved by otherness, the covenants by schism, and the simple bowels by duplicity. That man becomes this man's, this man becomes that man's enemy, friend; he laughs and envies, he opposes and sits beside, just and unjust. The royal path of simplicity is betrayed, made vain; impious pretense puts on the cloaks of duplicity. I want you to believe what I want to say: no age has borne pseudo-prophets more fruitfully or more numerously than this one. Finally, with their inner filth, these Pharisees are a slippery road, a public gateway of destruction.
The plague has bristled up, and the host of hypocrites has burst in, a race rough in body, slippery in heart, a race of darkness. To these belong sacred names and sacred coverings, but proud hearts; the lamb lies open to them in the tunic, the snake lurks in the grass. They are wanton hearts, stiff with the brow of a Cato, waxen in their morals, brazen in their faces, prone to evils, threatening hearts, rapacious hearts, wolfish hearts; a sheep's clothing rouges with an image, cloaks with order; swelling hearts, hearts lacking the single unity of the heart, they are pious in their brows, impious in their fruits, courts of filth. To these is added guile, as the hair is shaved and clipped; the wolf feigns a sheep, and the bramble is likened to the rose. To these belong unmixed cups and many dishes, the whole rule; to these belongs union as their place, pretense as their law, their vows as their right.
Scandals, schisms, and no Sabbaths of the mind are in them. Finally, order is taken away from their acts and added to their hair; with shears, with comb, the hair is canonized in due order. I, more foolish here, am lying — but they feign it. One of them, older in countenance and as it were more just, is to the brothers lower in rank a school of morals. The heart ruminates evil, the mouth sows good things and utters good things. O shame, O wickedness! he is Satan, he is thought to be an angel; he is Satan in his acts, and the same man an angel in his words. What the sound teaches, the action unteaches, an enemy to the same man. Argus sees neither his own base things nor his impious things toward the brothers, the sower of eloquence and giver of pardon, he is lavish to himself. Old men's words lack an old heart; an old man's words are approved; senile members are summoned under youthful vows.
He covers the wolf with a fox, he governs himself by the outer appearance; in his mouth the good man lies open, and in his inner self lurks guile. A mind evilly conscious, a burden of its own, a nearest plague, subjects itself to itself, flees and puts to flight the inmost witness. His brow bears a Hector, his age is believed to conquer a Nestor, his skin is dry and bears bristles along his shaggy arms. Now near to the grave, his right hand counts the years on the thumb, and while the old man here totters, he himself harbors tyrant souls. Now what more openly? lo, a third Cato sent from heaven, more severe in brow, more just in skin, slack within. He is a Cato; in time he is seen to be Maurus Iarbas. Hence Venus unmans him, thence a shaggy beard prepares the man; his brow bears the man, within the man perishes, there is a wolf within.
But your glory, O king's daughter, stands within you. Why is delay woven? The order is abandoned, men stand for evils; pretense stands, the show of obedience is mocked. The right hand becomes for you a vain Pythagorean letter; your right side lies idle, and it pleases you to walk the street of crimes. The narrow way is abandoned, and the broad path is taken by all; we seek out the trackless, the loose, the flowing things, and we flow together, seeking the high tables, scepters, the first seats; each one makes a tumult, presses on and boils, busy with these things. The world is breathless for honors and not at all for morals; now there stand fixed luxury, idleness, pretense, and zeal;
There stands pretense, dissimulation, both a crime, dice, drunken excess, fraud, villainy, gluttony, and outrage, double-tongued mouths, strife, murders, Mars, the trumpet, terror, violence, disgraces, quarrels — why do I delay? — all the things that error teaches. Such offspring, that is, such hosts, are of the vices; such offspring are the capital wounds of morals; first, pride urges the mind to go on trackless ways, it brings in hosts, the greatest crimes, the seven crimes; first, pride gives impious commands, the flock howls; first it besieges the heart and quickly possesses it, laid low by this flock. This one warns, that one rushes in and undermines good things, and keeps the evil ones; while lust stands and crime stands, it heaps up crime.
The Hebrew drowns his male offspring, his living pledges of life, yet keeps the female and everything that belongs to softness. O wicked age! Why so? Because no rule is kept; the man quick at outward show, who is learned in inward things, is reckoned a fool. Not patience but violence now grants peace. He who is silent goes hungry, and to be talkative brings forth gain. The sophistical tongue, the tyrannical tongue, the forensic tongue commands all things, strikes down whatever it meets, just as a sword. The glib tongue is now held noble: 'Come here,' it says, and one obeys. The mute bishop, reprobate in his order, shuts the doors. You taste nothing puffed up; you are judged to be either a beast or a stone. You are like a viper; you bear witness to an open heart. Now to repay evil and to yield glory is counted a fault; irreverence is called praise, and patience a crime.
To live by alms and not to repay evil—both alike bring shame. By day and night a wicked nation flourishes in crime and in disgrace. Alas! evil speech, worse deed, the most vile practice: now crime stands strong, and the strength of good order lies thrust aside. As few sober hearts can now be found as there are mouths of the overflowing Nile, as few pious hearts as there are wandering stars. If anywhere I perceive someone to be of simple breast and modest, I judge that to be crude, and I count an honest heart among monstrous things! I liken the open sea to ploughing chariots, dry land to sails, the fields to fishes, the air to ships, the stars to camels. Flaccus Horace, and Cato, Persius and Juvenal: what, I ask, would they do, if their life were now a companion to these times?
That Lucilius would be astounded at the deeds of this age, and would not keep silent about his own prosperous and holy times. He would now call best those times which he called worst; he would write as golden what he wrote as black, as guilty, as evil. Look upon the ages, look upon each thing plunged in darkness! You slip into evil, fallen you are loved; upright you shall be in want. Do you wish to forsake evil, to grasp what is right, to live rightly? Then you become a public lyre, a stage-play made of yourself about yourself. Ah, the grief! true Charybdis swallows all things into impiety. Heap up crimes, and you shall be reckoned first, you shall go as the greatest. Do you wish to rest, and to live in safety? Do you wish peace for yourself? Be a pander to the powerful in their guilt; anoint the threatening man. Seeing guilty deeds, take on the eyes of a goat, the sight of a mole. What you have seen, quickly drive it from your heart, scrape it away, erase it.
If you wish to expose evils and to gnaw at the crimes of others, you take no counsel for yourself: besides, the penalty of exile is yours. Now wild quarrelling is fond of pricking the foul deeds of vices; to pluck at disgraces and to speak the truth is the fountain of hatreds. He who exposes my crimes, even with good intent, is a burden to me; a mind ill at ease with its conscience gnaws at and hates all the light. The nation drinks, drunken, harmful cups, the cups of Lethe which that poet devised for all the dying. Each one, mindful of evil, is forgetful of the one thing—piety. The just man lacks a home; no one wishes to give of his own to the good for free. All things go by census, all by merchandise, but without coin you carry nothing, nothing but nothing. Alas! the hut of the poor man is without smoke. The halls of the rich man, or his lofty panelled ceilings, gleam again; male offspring and the first strength now laugh to themselves.
The wealthy man reclines, the haughty man walks abroad, himself in his Liburnian galley, and as often as it pleases him he lies high upon his ivory couch in his chamber. In the morning he summons his cooks, and at once sacrifices a bull to his stomach. Gold supports honeyed cups and rich dishes. Night brings him dreams, the sun returns to give him festal feasts. His gullet is the equal of an abyss; what does it do but gobble whole ages? The smell of the kitchen is savory to him, and the food seizes his throat. His feasts are usury, quarrels, gains, robberies. The man is a beast, and the victim of his belly, a beast indeed, swollen in belly and lively in tooth, but dead in mind. He wants good dinners, he wants good estates, he wants good meadows, he wants good cups, he wants good dishes—but not good deeds. Property has worth, money tastes sweet to such men; the strongbox snatches up titles in these days.
Tongue, learning, and sober life are nothing without possessions. Gifts to the rich, but lashes to the meek, are redoubled. To lesser men they threaten laws, to inferior men, arms. Money commands all things, and besides, money receives all things. The rich man goes celebrated, endowed with bronze, supreme in his fortress; he possesses earthly goods; for these he provides, increases, and heaps up. By chance he keeps that wealth, swollen, in reserve for robbers or for enemies; in the end, when his coffers or doors are broken, he is parched the more with weeping than if he had buried his own children and dear bodies. He circles the ages, ruminates impious schemes, rolls the depths about, and goes over the seas, over the mountain ridges, over the marketplaces; he changes climes. He strives across the sea, he goes into exile, he makes use of a fresh world. The shores give themselves to him, the level seas give themselves; only the winds do not give him the straits.
His property is frivolous, his mind crafty, his lot to be wept over. He dreams of things sold, enlarges things bought, haggles over what must be amended. He prepares gain upon gain, and with his account-styluses crowds in this and that. Debts, credits, and whatever is stored away in a rich chest. To this man it is sweet to rest beneath a mound of riches; often he turns the heap over, and he loves still more often to add gold. In the end he falls short, because by these very things he profits, and overflowing he is parched; Mammon is laid by, and thirst is added—O thirst that overflows! Without renown he becomes, by the omen of his name, that Tantalus. His joys are gains, money, estates, country houses. He builds barns, one man overflows with all things, opulent, slower to the good, quicker to evil, first to the marketplace. The rich man is roused to all impious things, slow to what is just.
As the rose is beheld, as the wheel is laid low, so too are his things laid low with him; standing in fame today, he himself collapses tomorrow—himself, yet another. In the morning the rich man sees his own things, and these in the evening are yours, you poor man. The wealthy man shall sleep, and at once, being dead, he shall lose all; soon a robber shall carry off his goods that are not his, and shall lay himself low by his own death. As a light leaf for a short while, so the thief steals his goods, death takes himself away, and he forsakes all things; then his harmful gains stand as harms against him. What a year's labor brought in, a single hour took away—all the rich man's goods, all that gleamed, all that was comely. O wretched man, O man to be wept over by himself, O the same man miserable! As great as his money, so great a trouble grows for that same man. He dreads all things, whom his own abundance renders needy; his own property possesses him, and besieges and chokes his mind on every side. Care makes the heart anxious, anguish intoxicates, error hinders.
His color grows pale; hence comes guile, hence comes grief, on every side terror. Sleep, empty things, and many dreams furnish him nothing; by day his business, by night threatening visions trouble him. The robber seems to break open his coffers and to carry off the rest; the rich man, needy, trembles, and waking he groans and fears it; at once he rises, the chest is unrolled, the money is found. The delay of night departs, the light calls him to the marketplace, the merchandise clamors, off he goes. After gains he runs about, for gains he soldiers, for gains he breathes. The sailor too breathes upon the seas; on foot he often circles the markets. Through the greatest evils, through very many scourges, he avoids being in want. He defrauds and snatches, gives this, receives that, renews bronze with bronze. The miser seeks to give little to his own, and nothing to you, Lazarus; weeping is yours now, weeping shall be his—of what sort? Bitter.
Now let the wealthy man go, let him sate and fill his impious desires; after a little while it shall flow away, and that whole estate shall fall to ruin; just as gravel slides down, so the threshing-floor of riches shall slide; the abundance shall collapse, the floor shall fall, and the man who owned them too. Plainly this man wants, has wanted, and will want fleeting gains, gains that pass away; he cherishes and will cherish these forever. While England gives milk, India ivory, Smyrna the cicada, through the markets, over the ridges, the most numerous Adam shall run, chasing gains. Gains, money, property, opulence now hold dominion. O evils! the poor man's tear, though best, is brought to nothing. Having gotten very many estates or sums by fraud, now he is blessed, and is himself said to be happy. Each man wants grand palaces for himself, builds his houses, as though this world were for him through all ages his own abode.
The splendid halls and flowering castles are the rose of the world; no one builds everlasting halls—all are earthly. We paint our halls, a wicked throng, a Canaanite race—halls built perhaps of marble or of Sabaean wood. We paint our halls—Christ groans at our doors. We stretch ourselves out at the banquet and feed ourselves well—He goes hungry. Evil drunkenness loosens us, gluttony drives us, the flute breaks us in pieces; He thirsts, He groans, He hungers and trembles and laments grievously. We feed on crane, we eat goose, and He on neither. Ah! the guilty man is anointed, and God is afflicted—a lovely order indeed! We feed on fowl, on sheep, on swine, on ox—but He does not. The demon binds stony breasts and bowels of bronze.
We are a drunken people, an impious people, full of the demon, a most wicked nation, a depraved creation, an alien race. We seek out very many of the choicest dishes as a weight for the belly; we send—nay, we abandon—worthless scraps to the hungry man. O wicked age! Why so? Because each single thing is now corrupted, and these are bound to excesses, those to wickednesses. The leader stands, the helpless one falls; the people spit upon this man and honor that one. The fool, growing rich, rages, and buys himself a seal against the upright. Justice has perished, because the broad road of luxury lies open wide—to babblings, to drunkennesses, to gluttony; to lovers of the flesh, to enemies of order, to the envious, to fornicators, to the irreverent, to the ambitious—no wickedness, no foul things are left undone. The matter is now openly displayed, that once was not even acknowledged in word.
Crimes of cunning, or crimes of frenzy, are committed; those last and most evil times are now laid bare. For the harlots' beds are reckoned as almost nothing, and what are venial are called as if they were proper to marriage. Shame has perished in all who stand in the plague, who lie stretched out in disgraces. When was good less, or the bosom of wickedness more ample? When did foul things hold dominion more? When was the abundance of evils broader, or the threshing-floor of good morals more narrow? If God commanded all impious and capital deeds, who would keep those more watchfully, who would keep these more abundantly? If it were lawfully permitted to add crime and to scorn sober things, who would add these more, and scorn and shun those? Through every kind, one Venus shoots at every head; each man fails to bring forth wholesome things, none fails to bring forth wicked ones.