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WOULD you like to know how dangerously and harmfully that incitement,
unless it has been carefully eradicated, will shoot up for the destruction
of its owner, and put forth all sorts of branches of different sins? Look
at Judas, reckoned among the number of the apostles, and see how because he
would not bruise the deadly head of this serpent it destroyed him with its
poison, and how when he was caught in the snares of concupiscence, it drove
him into sin and a headlong downfall, so that he was persuaded to sell the
Redeemer of the world and the author of man's salvation for thirty pieces
of silver. And he could never have been impelled to this heinous sin of the
betrayal if he had not been contaminated by the sin of covetousness: nor
would he have made himself wickedly guilty of betraying the Lord, unless
he had first accustomed himself to rob the bag intrusted to him.
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