ession.

This was part of her plan of education, for she aimed at moulding manly
souls and not crippled creatures such as are turned out by the spiritual
orthopedists of our day; she dragged out vice and lashed it wherever it
lurked, and did not hesitate to preach the equality of men before God,
insisting that bishops and monks should, when guilty, be placed in the
pillory of its doorways; nay, she gibbeted them more willingly than
others, to set an example.

These scenes were practically a comment of the Sixth (Seventh)
Commandment, a sculptured paraphrase of the Catechism; the Church's
accusation and teaching plainly expressed so as to be understood of all
men.

And Our Mother did not restrict herself to one mode only of expressing
Her warnings and reproofs; to reiterate them she borrowed the language
of other arts. Literature and the pulpit were inevitably the
interpreters that she employed to vituperate the sins of the people.

And they were not a whit more prudish or less audacious than sculpture.
We have only to open the books of the Church to convince ourselves of
the violent language in which she was wont to lash the sins of the
flesh. Beginning with the Scriptures, the Bible itself--which no one
dares read now but in mawkish French versions--what priest, for
instance, would venture to recommend to the nerveless spirit of his
flock the study of the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel or of the Song of
Songs, that Epithalamium of Jesus and the Soul--down to the Fathers and
the Doctors?

How our modern Pharisees would reprove the uncompromising language of
Saint Gregory the Great when he exclaims, "Speak the truth! A scandal is
better than a lie;" or Saint Epiphanius' plain speaking in discussing
the Gnostics and describing in detail the abominations of that sect,
quietly adding in the face of the congregation, "Why should I shrink
from speaking of the things you do not fear to do? By speaking thus, I
hope to fill you with horror of the turpitude you commit."

Or what would they think of Saint Bernard expatiating in his third
meditation on horrible physiological details to demonstrate the baseness
of our carnal ambition and the foulness of our pleasures? Or of Saint
Hildegarde, who placidly discusses the various factors of such
pleasures, Saint Vincent Ferrier freely dealing in his sermons with the
sins of Onan and of Sodom, using the simplest language, and comparing
confession to a purgative, and asserting that t