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Ad Donatum

9.

Oh, if placed on that lofty watch-tower you could gaze into the secret places--if you could open the closed doors of sleeping chambers, and recall their dark recesses to the perception of sight,--you would behold things done by immodest persons which no chaste eye could look upon; you would see what even to see is a crime; you would see what people embruted with the madness of vice deny that they have done, and yet hasten to do,--men with frenzied lusts rushing upon men, doing things which afford no gratification even to those who do them. I am deceived if the man who is guilty of such things as these does not accuse others of them. The depraved maligns the depraved, and thinks that he himself, though conscious of the guilt, has escaped, as if consciousness were not a sufficient condemnation. The same people who are accusers in public are criminals in private, condemning themselves at the same time as they condemn the culprits; they denounce abroad what they commit at home, willingly doing what, when they have done, they accuse,--a daring which assuredly is fitly mated with vice, and an impudence quite in accordance with shameless people. And I beg you not to wonder at the things that persons of this kind speak: the offence of their mouths in words is the least of which they are guilty. ¹

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Ad Donatum (CSEL)

§ 9

O si et possis in illa sublimi specula constitutus oculos tuos inserere secretis, recludere cubiculorum obductas fores et ad conscientiam luminum penetralia occulta reserare: aspicias ab inpudicis geri quod nec possit aspicere frons pudica, uideas quod crimen sit et uidere, uideas quod uitiorum¹ furore ²P. 11 dementes geesisse³ se negant et gerere festinant. libidinibus insanis in uiros⁴ uiri proruunt. fiunt quae nec illis possunt placere qui faciunt. mentior, nisi alios qui talis est increpat, turpes turpis infamat et euasisse se conscium credit, quasi conscientia satis non sit. idem in publico accusatores⁵, in occulto rei, in semet⁶ ipsos censores pariter et nocentes: damnant foris quod intus operantur, admittunt libenter, quod cum admiserint criminantur. audacia prorsus cum uitiis⁷ faciens et inpudentia congruens inpudicis. nolo mireris quae locuntur huiusmodi: ore illo quidquid iam uoce delinquitur minus est.