Confessions

the lowest kind of goods and we thereby turn away from the better and higher: from you yourself, O Lord our God, and your truth and your law.

For in vice there lurks a counterfeit beauty: pride, for instance —even pride apes sublimity, whereas you are the only God, most high above all things. As for ambition, what does it crave but honors and glory, while you are worthy of honor beyond all others, and eternally glorious?

Sin gains entrance through these and similar good things when we turn to them with immoderate desire, since they are