To Donatus 9

O, if placed on that lofty watchtower you could thrust your eyes into secret places, open the closed doors of bedrooms, and unlock the hidden inner rooms to the witness of your sight! You would see things done by the unchaste that a chaste brow could not look at; you would see what it is a crime even to see; you would see what, maddened by the fury of vice, they deny having done and hurry to do. With insane lusts men rush upon men. Things are done that cannot please even those who do them. I lie if the man who is such does not rebuke others; the shameful man defames the shameful, and believes that he, who knows, has escaped, as if conscience were not enough. The same men are accusers in public, defendants in secret, at once censors and guilty against themselves: they condemn outside what they practise inside; they gladly commit what, when they have committed it, they accuse. A boldness entirely in league with vice, and a shamelessness in keeping with the unchaste. I would not have you wonder at the things such people say: with that mouth, whatever sin is committed by the voice is the lesser.