ill at last submit thy
Savior to death and crucifixion for thee?" It is of no consequence if
He be crucified, provided I can have my enjoyments. "But what evil has
He done, and what reason hast thou to abandon Him in this manner?" My
pleasure is my reason; and since Christ is the enemy of my pleasure,
and my pleasure crucifies Him, I say it again, let Him be crucified.

Behold, my dear hearers, what passes every day in the consciences of
men, and what passes in you and in me, every time that we fall into
sin, which causes death to Jesus Christ, as well as to our souls!
Behold what makes the enormity and wickedness of this sin! I know that
we do not always speak, that we do not always explain ourselves in
such express terms and in so perceptible a manner; but after all,
without explaining ourselves so distinctly and so sensibly, there is a
language of the heart which says all this. For, from the moment that I
know that this pleasure is criminal and forbidden of God, I know that
it is impossible for me to desire it, impossible to seek it, without
losing God; and consequently I prefer this pleasure to God in the
desire that I form of it, and in the pursuit that I make after it.
This, then, is sufficient to justify the thought of St. Chrysostom and
the doctrine of the theologians upon the nature of deadly sin ...

That there are men, and Christian men, to whom, by a secret judgment
of God, the passion of Jesus Christ, salutary as it is, may become
useless, is a truth too essential in our religion to be unknown, and
too sorrowful not to be the subject of our grief. When the Savior from
the height of His cross, ready to give up His spirit, raised this cry
toward heaven, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" there
was no one who did not suppose but that the violence of His torments
forced from Him this complaint, and perhaps we ourselves yet believe
it. But the great Bishop Arnauld de Chartres, penetrating deeper into
the thoughts and affections of this dying Savior, says, with much more
reason, that the complaint of Christ Jesus to His Father proceeded
from the sentiment with which He was affected, in representing to
Himself the little fruit which His death would produce; in considering
the small number of the elect who would profit by it; in foreseeing
with horror the infinite number of the reprobate, for whom it would
be useless: as if He had wished to proclaim that His merits were not
fully enough nor worthily enou