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Vice is the counterpart of virtue, and has a correspondence of opposition to it as to character, progress and result. Like virtue, vice is not an action, nor a series of actions, but is a permanent quality or habit of the soul predisposing it to certain classes of sins. The act of sin passes at once, the habit of the sin or the vice remains, as a facility for further sins, a source of them, and a delight in them. A virtue is a permanent resemblance to some particular perfection of God; a vice is a permanent state of departure from some divine perfection. As vices increase, there is a further obliteration of the image of God in many different respects, and a growing hideousness of the soul that turns it into a blasphemous caricature of the All-holy and All-beautiful. The vices, as being opposed to God, who is the ideal of perfection, are also opposed to human nature and human reason. They are diseases of the soul, which disorganize the faculties, curtail freedom, bind the soul in a degrading slavery, drain away its strength, destroy spiritual vision and the savour for spiritual things, render the soul incapable of understanding, enjoying, desiring God and the things that are of God, both in this world and in the next. Vice endures as the character of the soul after the act of sin has ceased, and after death has removed the opportunities of sin; and the soul remains for ever a hideous object, spoilt for its purpose, loathed by God and loathing Him.
