A Quote by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin. — © Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin.
No age has been more prone to confuse the sin with the sinner, not by hating the sinner along with the sin but by loving the sin along with the sinner. We often use "compassion" as an equivalent for moral relativism.
The cliché, God hates the sin but love the sinner, is false on the face of it and should be abandoned. Fourteen times in the first fifty Psalms alone, we are told that God hates the sinner, His wrath is on the liar, and so forth. In the Bible, the wrath of God rests both on the sin (Romans 1:18ff) and on the sinner (John 3:36).
Sin and the sinner both deserve punishment
Sannyas is celebration of life, and sin is natural: natural in the sense that you are unconscious - what else can you do? In unconsciousness, sin is bound to happen. Sin simply means that you don't know what you are doing, you are unaware, so whatsoever you do goes wrong. But to recognize that "I am a sinner" is the beginning of a great pilgrimage. To recognize that "I am a sinner" is the beginning of real virtue. To see that "I am ignorant" is the first glimpse of wisdom.
All the tears of a penitent sinner, should he shed as many as there have fallen drops of rain, since the creation, to this day, cannot wash away one sin. The everLasting burnings in hell, cannot purify the flaming conscience, from the least sin.
He who doesn't sin, is the greatest sinner of all.
In the gay (Catholic) community, it would seem, the maxim is: love the sin and love the sinner, but hate anyone who calls it a sin or him a sinner.
Love the sinner, hate the sin? How about: Love the sinner, hate your own sin! I don't have time to hate your sin. There are too many of you! Hating my sin is a full-time job. How about you hate your sin, I'll hate my sin and let's just love each other!
Whoever with fear of God corrects and directs a sinner gains virtue for himself, that of opposition to sin. But whoever insults a sinner with rancor and without good will falls, according to a spiritual law, into the same passion with the sinner.
What are you to do? You are always to remember that you are the child of a Great Father. You must not think that you are a sinner, that you are a degraded person. If you think that you are a sinner, it means you are meditating on sin! When sin has become the object of your meditation, you will become a sinner, because a person becomes just like the object of his or her ideation. We become the object of our meditation.
Theology reminded me that, however diabolical the act, it did not turn the perpetrator into a demon. We had to distinguish between the deed and the perpetrator, between the sinner and the sin, to hate and condemn the sin while being filled with compassion for the sinner.
Envy, though not the greatest sin, is the only one that gives the sinner no pleasure at all, not even fake and temporary satisfaction.
Sin begins in thought, which is the intimation of conscience. So, if the conscience holds sin, then its thoughts shall be evil.
Grace remits sin, and peace quiets the conscience. Sin and conscience torment us, but Christ has overcome these fiends now and forever.
The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.
It is not the real punishment. The only effectual one, the only deterrent and softening one, lies in the recognition of sin by conscience.
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