86 SIN 



works." According to Ex. XXII, 22 sq. the 

 Mosaic law prescribed: ''You shall not hurt a 

 widow or an orphan," adding: "If you hurt 

 them they will cry out to me, and I will hear their 

 cry." Deut. XXIV, 14 sq. : "Thou shalt not re- 

 fuse the hire of the needy and the poor . . . ; but 

 thou shalt pay him the price of his labor the same 

 day, before the going down of the sun, because 

 he is poor, and with it maintaineth his life: lest 

 he cry against thee to the Lord, and it be reputed 

 to thee for a sin." James V, 4: "Behold the 

 hire of the laborers, who have reaped down your 

 fields, which by fraud has been kept back by you, 

 crieth : and the cry of them hath entered into the 

 ears of the Lord of sabaoth." 



If we study the nature of the sins thus charac- 

 terized as crying to Heaven for vengeance, we 

 find that they form a category separate and dis- 

 tinct from the capital sins. For whereas the lat- 

 ter spring from an inordinate craving of the nat- 

 ural appetites, and are sinful only when they 

 involve a lack of rational self-control, the distin- 

 guishing note of the so-called peccata clamantia 

 is violent suppression of certain natural instincts 

 and conscious frustration of their ends and ob- 

 jects. In other words, besides a trangression 

 of the moral order, they entail a violation of 

 the laws of nature, thus provoking divine wrath 

 in a special manner. This fact is well expressed 



