15 But now, what things soever I might seek to recognize you by, I find you in all points distinguished by the contraries of the same. For whether by your place I would fain discern you, I see you spending your day in horse races, and theatres, and scenes of lawlessness, in the wicked assemblies in the market places, and in companies of depraved men; or by the fashion of your countenance, I see you continually laughing to excess, and dissolute as a grinning and abandoned harlot; or by your clothes, I see you in no better trim than the people on the stage; or by your followers, you are leading about parasites and flatterers; or by your words, I hear you say nothing wholesome, nothing necessary, nothing of moment to our life; or by your table, yet heavier from thence will the charge against you appear.
By what then, tell me, am I to recognize the believer in you, while all the things I have mentioned give the contrary sentence? And why do I say, the believer? Since I can not clearly make out whether you are a man. For when you are like an ass, kicking, and like a bull, wantoning, and like a horse neighing after women; when thou dost play the glutton like the bear, and pamper your flesh as the mule, and bear malice like the camel;
also?
Further, if I were bidding you make another man gentle, not even so ought I to seem as one enjoining impossible things; however, you might then object that you have not the control of another's disposition, and that it does not altogether rest with you. But now it is your own wild beast, and a thing which absolutely depends on you. What plea then have you? Or what fair excuse will you be able to put forth, turning as you are a lion into a man, and regardless that you yourself art of a man becoming a lion; upon the beast bestowing what is above nature, but for yourself not even preserving what is natural? Yea, while the wild beasts are by your earnest endeavors advanced into our noble estate, you are by yourself cast down from the throne of the kingdom, and thrust out into their madness. Thus, imagine, if you will, your wrath to be a kind of wild beast, and as much zeal as others have displayed about lions, so much do thou in regard of yourself, and cause that way of taking things to become gentle and meek. Because this too has grievous teeth and talons, and if you tame it not, it will lay waste all things. For not even lion nor serpent has such power to rend the vitals as wrath, with its iron talons continually doing so. Since it mars, we see, not the body only, but the very health likewise of the soul is corrupted by it, devouring, rending, tearing to pieces all its strength, and making it useless for everything. For if a man nourishing worms in his entrails, shall not be able so much as to breathe, his inward parts all wasting away; how shall we, having so large a serpent eating up all within us (it is wrath I mean), how, I say, shall we be able to produce anything noble?
Source: Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew (New Advent)