Complete Works of Saint Cyprian

Audacity truly makes common cause with vices, and impudence is consistent with the unchaste. I do not want you to marvel at what such men say: whatever is already missed by the voice from that mouth is less than the reality.

10 But for you, after these insidious paths, after the multiple battles dispersed over the whole world, after spectacles that are either bloody or shameful, after the scandals of lusts that are either prostituted in brothels or hemmed in by domestic walls—the more secret the guilt of which is, the greater is the audacity—the forum perhaps might seem immune, as if it were free from provoking injuries and unpolluted by any contacts of evils. Turn your gaze there: you will find more things there that you would detest, and you will turn your eyes away from there all the more. Although laws may be carved on twelve tables and rights may be proscribed in public bronze, one commits crimes amidst the laws themselves, one sins amidst the rights, and innocence is not preserved even there where it is defended. The madness of those who disagree rages in turn, and amidst the togas, peace is broken and the forum bellows with insane lawsuits. There, the spear and the sword and the executioner are at hand: the scraping claw, the stretching rack, the burning fire; there are more tortures for the one body of a man than there are limbs. Who among these could truly help? A patron? But he practices chicanery and deceives. A judge? But he sells his sentence. He who sits [in judgment] binds crimes...