Omnis qui facit peccatum, servus est peccati, followed by the
rendering in English, "Whosoever doeth sin is sin's bond thrall."
The words answered well to the ghastly delineations that seemed
stamped on Ambrose's brain and which followed him about into the
nave, so that he felt himself in the grasp of the cruel fiend, and
almost expected to feel the skeleton claw of Death about to hand him
over to torment. He expected the consolation of hearing that a
daily "Hail Mary," persevered in through the foulest life, would
obtain that beams should be arrested in their fall, ships fail to
sink, cords to hang, till such confession had been made as should
insure ultimate salvation, after such a proportion of the flames of
purgatory as masses and prayers might not mitigate.

But his attention was soon caught. Sinfulness stood before him not
as the liability to penalty for transgressing an arbitrary rule, but
as a taint to the entire being, mastering the will, perverting the
senses, forging fetters out of habit, so as to be a loathsome horror
paralysing and enchaining the whole being and making it into the
likeness of him who brought sin and death into the world. The
horror seemed to grow on Ambrose, as his boyish faults and errors
rushed on his mind, and he felt pervaded by the contagion of the
pestilence, abhorrent even to himself. But behold, what was he
hearing now? "The bond thrall abideth not in the house for ever,
but the Son abideth ever. Si ergo Filius liberavit, vere liberi
eritis." "If the Son should make you free, then are ye free
indeed." And for the first time was the true liberty of the
redeemed soul comprehensibly proclaimed to the young spirit that had
begun to yearn for something beyond the outside. Light began to
shine through the outward ordinances; the Church; the world, life,
and death, were revealed as something absolutely new; a redeeming,