espite their
boast of the Gospel and their certain knowledge of the polluting and
condemning power of spiritual and carnal sins, continue in their evil
course, forgetful of God's wrath, or endeavoring to trust in false
security. Indeed, it is a very common thing for men to do just as they
please and yet pretend innocence and seek to avoid censure. Some would
represent themselves guileless as lambs and blameless; no act of
theirs may be regarded evil or even wrong. They pretend great virtue
and Christian love. Yet they carry on their insidious, malicious
frauds, imposing falsehoods upon men. They ingeniously contrive to
make their conduct appear good, imagining that to pass as faultless
before men and to escape public censure means to deceive God also. But
they will learn how God looks upon the matter. Paul tells us (Gal 6,
7) God will not, like men, be mocked. To conceal and palliate will not
avail. Nothing will answer but dying to vice and then striving after
what is virtuous, divine and becoming the Christian character.

16. Paul enumerates some gross and unpardonable vices--fornication, or
unchastity, and covetousness. He speaks also of these in Ephesians 5,
3-5 and in First Thessalonians 4, 3-7, as we have heard in the epistle
lessons for the second and third Sundays in Lent. He enjoins
Christians to guard against these sins, to be utterly dead to them.
For they are sensual, acknowledged such even among the gentiles; while
we strive after the perfect purity becoming souls who belong to Christ
and in heaven. It is incumbent upon the Christian to preserve his body
modest, and holy or chaste; to refrain from polluting himself by
fornication and other unchastity, after the manner of the world.

17. Similarly does the apostle forbid covetousness, to which he gives
the infamous name of idolatry in the effort to make it more hideous in
the Christian's eyes, to induce him to shun it as an abominable vice
intensely hated of God. It is a vice calculated to turn a man wholly
from faith and from divine worship, until he regards not, nor seeks
after, God and his Word and heavenly treasures, but follows only after
the treasures of earth and seeks a god that will give him enough of
earthly good.

18. Much might be said on this topic were we to consider it relative
to all orders and trades in succession. For plainly the world,
particularly in our day, is completely submerged in the vice of
covetousness. It is impossible to enume