Our thoughts are the first movers of all the evil that is in us. For they make the motion, bringing the heart and the object together; they are panderers to our lusts, holding up the object until the heart has played the adulterer with it. So in speculative uncleanness, and in other lusts, the thoughts hold up the images of those gods which they create, which the heart falls down and worships. Our thoughts present praise, riches, beauty to the heart until it has worshipped them—and this even when the things themselves are absent!
