The very church which should be the body to appease the anger of God, alas! what reigns there but disorders calculated to incense the Most High? It is more common to meet with Christians who are guilty of the greatest abominations than with those who are wholly exempt from crime. So that today it is a sort of sanctity among us to be less vicious than the generality of Christians. We insult the majesty of the Most High at the foot of his altars. Men, the most steeped in crime enter the holy places without respect for them. True all men ought to pay their vows to God, but why should they seek his temples to propitiate him, only to go forth to provoke him? {186} Why enter the church to deplore their former sins, and upon going forth--what do I say?--in those very courts the commit fresh sins, their mouths and their hearts contradict one another. Their prayers are criminal meditations rather than vows of expiation. Scarcely is the service ended before each returns to his old practices. Some go to their wine, others to their impurities, still others to robbing and brigandage, so that we cannot doubt that these things had been occupying them while they were in the church. Nor is it the lowest of the people who are thus guilty. There is no rank whatever in the church which does not commit all sorts of crimes. 14. It may be urged that we are at heart better than the barbarians who oppose us. Suppose this to be granted; we ought to be better than they. But as a matter of fact, they are more virtuous than we. The mass of Christians are below the barbarians in probity. True, all kinds of sins are found among them but what one is not found among us? The several nations have their peculiar sin; the Saxons are cruel; the Franks perfidious; the Gepidae inhuman; the Huns lewd. But we, having the law of God to restrain us, are given over to all these offenses. Then to confine ourselves to the single sin of swearing, can many be found among the faithful who have not the name of Jesus Christ constantly upon their lips in support of their perjuries? This practice coming down from the higher to the lower classes, has so prevailed that Christians might be deemed pagans. This, although the law of God expressly forbids to take his name in vain. We read this law but we do not practice it; as a consequence the pagans taunt us that we boast ourselves the sole possessors of God's law, and of the rules of truth and of what that law enjoins. Christians, indeed, to the shame of Jesus Christ! say they.[106] 15. In book VI on _The Providence of God_, Salvian continues his arraignment: