55. Those who divided could scarcely be corrected — how shall they be amended when united? — For those who when divided could be corrected, when united endure in the obstinacy of their iniquities; and they are the more inseparable daily from the knowledge of righteousness, the more they are separated from one another by no rebuke. For as it is wont to be harmful if unity be lacking to the good, so it is pernicious if it be not lacking to the wicked. For unity strengthens the perverse while it makes them agree, and renders them the more incorrigible the more it makes them of one mind. Of this unity of the reprobate it is said by the Wise Man: 'Tow gathered together is the assembly of sinners' (Ecclesiasticus XXI, 10). Of this Nahum the prophet says: 'As thorns embrace one another, so is the banquet of them that drink together' (Nahum I, 10).
For the banquet of the reprobate is the delight of temporal pleasures; in which banquet indeed they drink together who in the shadows of their delight get drunk in concord. Since therefore the members of that Leviathan, that is, all the wicked, whom the word of God compares to the compactings of scales, agree together with a like fault for their defence, it is well said: 'One shall cleave to another, and holding fast they shall by no means be separated' (Job XLI, 9). For holding fast they cannot be separated, because they are mutually bound together for their defence by this—that they remember themselves to be alike to one another in all things. So then, His body having been described, the discourse is led back to the head, and it is announced what the ancient enemy will do through himself in the time of the last persecution. For there follows: