366 THE STONES OF VENICE

thousand diverse ways, diverse according to the separate framework of every heart in which it dwelt; but one and the same always in its proceeding from the love of God, as sin is one and the same in proceeding from hatred of God. And in their pure, early, and practical piety, they saw that there was no need for codes of morality, or systems of metaphysics. Their virtue comprehended everything, entered into everything; it was too vast and too spiritual, to be defined; but there was no need of its definition. For through faith, working by love,¹ they knew that all human excellence would be developed in due order; but that, without faith, neither reason could define, nor effort reach, the lowest phase of Christian virtue. And therefore, when any of the Apostles have occasion to describe or enumerate any forms of vice or virtue by name, there is no attempt at system in their words. They used them hurriedly and energetically, heaping the thoughts one upon another, in order as far as possible to fill the reader’s mind with a sense of the infinity both of crime and of righteousness. Hear St. Paul describe sin: “Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful.”² There is evidently here an intense feeling of the universality of sin; and in order to express it, the Apostle hurries his words confusedly together, little caring about their order, as knowing all the vices to be indissolubly connected one with another. It would be utterly vain to endeavour to arrange his expressions as if they had been intended for the ground of any system, or to give any philosophical definition of the vices.* So also hear him

* In the original, the succession of the words is evidently suggested partly by similarity of sound; and the sentence is made weighty by an alliteration

¹ [Galatians v. 6.]

² [Romans i. 29-31.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]