Now, also, the Lord says, the virgin
hath committed two evils, she hath forsaken me, the true and holy
bridegroom of sanctified souls, and hath fled to an impious and
lawless polluter of the body, and corrupter of the soul. She hath
turned away from God her Savior, and hath yielded her members
servants to imparity and iniquity; she bath forgotten me, and gone
after her lover, by whom she shall not profit.

It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck,
and he cast into the sea, than that he should cause one of the
Lord's virgins to offend. What impudent servant ever carried his
insane audacity so far as to fling himself upon the couch of his
lord? Or what robber has ever become so madly hardened as to lay
hands upon the very offerings devoted to God?--but here it is not
inanimate vessels, but living bodies, inhabited by souls made in the
image of God. Since the beginning of the world was any one ever
heard of, who dared, in the midst of a great city, in broad midday,
to deface the likeness of a king by inscribing upon it the forms of
filthy swine? He that despises human nuptials dies without mercy
under two or three witnesses; of how much sorer punishment, suppose
ye, shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son
of God, and defiled his espoused wife, and done despite to the
spirit of virginity? . . .

But, after all this, "shall they fall and not arise? shall he turn
away and not return?" Why hath the virgin turned away in so
shameless an apostasy?--and that, too, after having heard Christ,
the bridegroom, saying by Jeremiah, "And I said, after she had
lewdly done all these things, turn thou unto me. But she returned
not," "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?
Why, then, is not the health of the daughter of my people
recovered?" Truly thou mightest find in the Divine Scriptures many
remedies for such an evil--many medicines that recover from
perdition and restore to life; mysterious words about death and
resurrection, a dreadful judgment, and everlasting punishment; the
doctrines of repentance and remission of sins; those innumerable
examples of conversion--the piece of silver, the lost sheep, the
son that had devoured his living with harlots, that was lost and
found, that was dead and alive again. Let us use these remedies for
the evil; with these let us heal our souls. Think, too, of thy last
day (for thou art not to live always, more than oth