Who being past feeling
Their consciences being cauterized or seared as with a red hot
iron, which is the consequence of judicial hardness; so that they
have lost all sense of sin, and do not feel the load of its guilt
upon them, and are without any concern about it; but on the
contrary commit it with pleasure, boast of it and glory in it,
plead for it and defend it publicly, and openly declare it, and
stand in no fear of a future judgment, which they ridicule and
despise: the Vulgate Latin, Syriac, and Arabic versions, and the
Claromontane exemplar read, who "despairing": of mercy and
salvation, saying there is no hope, and therefore grow hardened
and desperate in sin;
have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work
all
uncleanness with greediness;
by "lasciviousness" is meant all manner of lusts, and a wanton
and unbridled course of sinning; and their giving themselves over
unto it denotes their voluntariness in sinning, the power of sin
over them, they being willing slaves unto it, and their
continuance in it; and this they do in order
to work all uncleanness;
to commit every unclean lust, to live in a continued commission
of uncleanness of every sort; and that
with greediness;
being like a covetous man, never satisfied with sinning, but
always craving more sinful lusts and pleasures.