Complete Works of Saint Cyprian

Then, furthermore, what a decay of morals, what incitements of profligacy, what nourishment of vices—to be stained by histrionic gestures, to see the endurance of incestuous turpitude practiced against the covenant and law of birth: males are un-manned, all the honor and vigor of the sex is softened by the disgrace of an enervated body, and it is more pleasing there, whoever has broken the man into a woman more thoroughly. He grows in praise from his crime, and is judged more skillful the more base he is. This is watched, oh the wickedness, even gladly. What could he not persuade who is such as this? He moves the senses, he soothes the affections, he conquers the stronger conscience of a good heart: nor is there a lack of authority for the seductive shame, so that through softer hearing, destruction may creep into men. They express an unchaste Venus, an adulterous Mars, that Jupiter of theirs, a prince no more of his kingdom than of his vices, burning in earthly loves even with his own thunderbolts, now whitening into the plumage of a swan, now flowing down in a golden shower, now springing forth through bird-messengers for the rape of puberulent boys. Ask yourself now whether he who watches can be upright or modest. He imitates his own gods, whom he venerates: for the wretches, even their sins become religious.

9 Oh, if you could also, stationed in that high watchtower, insert your eyes into secrets, open the locked doors of bedchambers, and reveal the hidden inner sanctums to the conscience of the lights: you would see what is done by the unchaste that a modest brow could not even look upon, you would see what is a crime even to behold, you would see what they deny having done in the madness of their vices, and yet they hasten to do. In insane lusts, men rush upon men. Things are done that cannot even please those who do them. I am lying, unless he who is such a one accuses others; the base man defames the base and believes that he has escaped detection, as if his conscience were not enough. They are the same ones: in public they are accusers, in secret they are the guilty; they are simultaneously censors and sinners against themselves. They condemn abroad what they practice within; they willingly admit what, when they have admitted it, they denounce.