Who can love a world that has the devil as its governor?

October 20, 2021 • 2 min

From The Sinner’s Guide, page n306

Moreover, if you would know the world still better, consider him who governs it.

As Jesus Christ tells us that the devil is the prince of this world—that is, of wicked men—what must be a body with such a head, a commonwealth with such a ruler? What must it be but a den of thieves, an army of brigands, a prison of galley-slaves, a nest of serpents and basilisks?

Why, then, will you not long to leave a place so vile, so filled with treachery and snares; a place from which justice, religion, and loyalty seem banished; where all vices reign; where honesty counts for so little among friends; where the son desires the death of his father, the husband that of his wife, and the wife that of her husband; where the majority of men of every station rob one another under plausible pretexts, and where the fires of impurity, anger, cupidity, ambition, and every other passion continually rage?

Who would not fly from such a world? “Who will give me in the wilderness a lodging-place, … and I will leave my people?” says the prophet, “because they are all adulterers, an assembly of transgressors.” [Jer. ix. 2.]

All that we have said on this subject applies to the wicked, for there are good men in all ranks of life, for whose sake God bears with the rest of mankind.

Judge, therefore, by the picture we have given you how much reason you have to hate a world so full of corruption, where evil spirits and crimes are more numerous than the atoms we behold in the rays of the sun.

Nourish and increase the desire to fly, at least in spirit, from this world, saying with David: “Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest?”

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