6. This is the true reason why vices of so detestable a nature universally abound among Christians; many of which were not so much as known among the Pagan nations. What satanical pride, what insatiable covetousness, what unheard-of intemperance, what bestial lust; in a word, what inhuman wickedness, is not practised by those who call themselves Christians! And whence does all this arise, but from that blindness and hardness of heart, which they have contracted by confirmed habits of iniquity. When those who are called Christians disdain to imitate the meek and lowly Jesus in their manners and their conversation; when they are scandalized at him, and consider it disgraceful to look to him whom God has appointed to be the light of the world, and our great example (John 8:12); then the righteous God gives them up to follow Satan; to take upon them the life of the devil, his abominable impiety, wickedness, and lies; that they may execute with him all the works of darkness, inasmuch as they refuse to walk in the light. For thus saith the Lord, “Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.” John 12:35. 7. Finally, if God gave up the heathen to so terrible a blindness and so reprobate a mind; and this because they proved disobedient to the glimmering light of nature; or, as St. Paul expresses it, “because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge,” in order to be preserved by him (Rom. 1:28); how much more shall those be banished from life and salvation, to whom the truth of God has come not only by natural light, but by means of his revealed word, and the new covenant, and who yet haughtily despise these special tenders of divine mercy! Of which new covenant, God thus speaks: “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Jer. 31:33, 34; John 6:45.