Caput XIV
The Depravity of Obstinate Minds
Depraved minds cling more obstinately to what is lowest the more they hate what is highest, and they resist correction with sharp rebukes.
But while we say this, something else grieves us more deeply: the minds of depraved people hate the highest things all the more obstinately the more tightly they've clung to the lowest. And it's not enough for them that they themselves perish — but what is worse, when they see anyone being called to account, they oppose the one who reproves with sharp rebukes, so that at least no one else is corrected.
Shades Protecting a Shade
Drawing on Job's behemoth, Odo explains how wicked people, as shades of the devil, mutually protect one another in their sins out of fear that correction of others will expose their own guilt.
Hence it is well said also about their leader: 'Shades protect his shade' (Job 40:17).✦ All wicked people are, in fact, shades — that is, devils — who, while they serve to imitate his wickedness, draw the appearance of an image from his body, as it were. Shades protect a shade, because each sinner, in whatever area they are badly conscious of themselves, in that same area also defends another person who is sinning. They do this with deliberate zeal, so that while the very fault by which they themselves are also bound is being corrected in others, it might not eventually come back to them. For a similar guilt binds them together in shared obstinacy, and perverse defense crowds them in, so that they protect themselves by taking turns defending one another over their own misdeeds. They cover themselves while they protect others, because they foresee their own life under attack from the very source in which they see others being freely confounded by reproof.
The Growth of Sin Through Impunity
Defended crimes only grow greater, and the wickedness of sinners expands all the more when shielded by the protection of the powerful.
And so it happens that the greatest crimes, while they are defended, grow greater — and each person's wickedness becomes that much easier to commit, by the same measure that it is difficult to punish. The crimes of sinners grow all the larger the longer they go unpunished — shielded by the protection of the powerful.12
Read the original Latin
Sed dum hoc dicimus, illud nos vehementius contristat, quia mentes pravorum tanto obstinatius summa odiunt, quanto arctius infimis inhaeserunt: quibus neque hoc sufficit ut ipsi pereant, sed adhuc, quod est deterius, cum quoslibet argui conspiciunt, corripientis increpationibus obviant, ne saltem alii corrigantur. Unde bene et de capite eorum dicitur: Protegunt umbrae umbram ejus (Job XL, 17). Umbrae quippe sunt diaboli omnes iniqui, qui dum imitationi iniquitatis ejus inserviunt, quasi ab ejus corpore imaginis speciem trahunt. Umbrae umbram protegunt, quia peccatores quique, in quo sibi male sunt conscii, in eo et alium peccantem defendunt. Quod hoc nimirum studio faciunt, ne dum culpa, in qua et ipsi obligati sunt, in aliis corrigitur, ad ipsos quandoque veniat. Quos enim similis reatus sociat concordi pertinacia, etiam defensio perversa constipat, ut de facinoribus suis alterna se invicem defensione tueantur. Se igitur tegunt dum alios protegunt, quia suam vitam praevident impeti, unde alios considerant libera correptione confundi. Sicque fit ut summa criminum dum defenditur augeatur, et uniuscujusque nequitia eo sit ad perpetrandum facilis, quo difficilis ad puniendum.
Scelera quippe peccantium tanto majora incrementa percipiunt, quanto per defensionem potentium diu inulta tolerantur.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Job.40.17 — It makes its tail stiff like a cedar; the sinews of its thighs are tightly knit.
Notes
- 1 ↩quippe rendered as 'you see' to capture the confirmatory/emphatic force of the particle, signaling the speaker is drawing out a logical consequence the listener should recognize.
- 2 ↩tanto ... quanto: correlative ablative of degree ('by so much ... by how much') rendered idiomatically as 'all the larger ... the longer' to preserve the proportional logic in natural English.
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