44. As the wicked increase, faith shall be turned to reproach, and truth to a crime. — By which words is expressed that time of the holy Church wherein she is publicly mocked by the reprobate, when, as the wicked increase, faith shall be for a reproach, and truth shall be for a crime. For each one shall be the more despised the more just he could have been; the more abominable, the more praiseworthy. Thus the holy Church of the elect becomes in the time of affliction a byword to the depraved, because when they behold good men dying by torments, they draw from them a likeness of a curse. For they see the transitory death, but see not the abiding life;
and so much the more do they by mockery flee present evils, the less by inward understanding they reach unto the abiding good. But the things which are subjoined, because they are not entangled in obscurer sentences, we ought to run through briefly, that we may the sooner arrive at those matters in which we must labour. There follows: