Book Snippets

Lust catches souls easily and they only escape rarely and with great difficulty

1 min • Digitized on November 11, 2021

From The Sinner’s Guide, page 345
By Venerable Louis of Granada

This treacherous vice begins in pleasure, but ends in an abyss of bitterness and remorse.

There is nothing into which man is more easily drawn, but nothing from which he is with more difficulty freed.

Hence the Wise Man compares an impure woman to a deep ditch, a narrow pit, to show how easily souls fall into this vice, but with what difficulty they are extricated.

Man is first allured by its flattering aspect, but when he has assumed the sinful yoke, and particularly when he has cast aside all shame, it requires almost a miracle of grace to deliver him from his degrading bondage.

For this reason it is justly compared to a fisherman’s net, which the fish easily enter, but from which they rarely escape.