So it happens that, in public, impious impurity shouts into people’s ears with noisy din, while in private, hidden chastity is scarcely heard of even by a few. For depravity there is notoriety; for decency, only concealment. Decency goes into hiding; indecency goes on parade. Evil action summons a mob; a good discourse scarcely finds a handful of listeners. It is as though virtue were matter for shame, and vice for boasting. Such is the perversion in the temples of the demons, in those haunts of deceit. The esoteric instructions are to ensnare the decent few; the public worship is to keep the immoral majority from reform. https://thepilgrimjournal.com/the-city-of-god-book-2-chapters-twenty-five-and-twenty-six/