Yoke of impieties; conscience as choking yoke

Providence, she says, has not slept over my impieties; for God, as if taking them into hands through examination, has woven them into the works that are for repayment. And these have become for me just as a yoke upon a neck and have set slavery; for the slavery I served to Nebuchadnezzar is my impieties, for which reason I have become without tension, having been handed over to those whose mastery I cannot endure.

And after a few: “His yoke is upon my neck.” And through the present saying it is shown that one must take more tropically the things said as about our passions concerning God. For how else have the impieties of Jerusalem been woven with the hand of God, except tropically? For no one would say these things also bodily. And how is it not out of place, Jerusalem being a city, for the neck to be taken tropically, but the members spoken of as of God not to be heard in the same manner? And let the present things be said as by a soul that has fallen asleep unto impiety, in having thrown off the saving yoke of the sound word—which the Savior names kind—and having slipped under the yoke of the impieties, through which she grew weak, having been left of the divine oversight and handed over to sin that reigns among the evils, whose wills, because of the unbounded and infinite character of wickedness, she cannot altogether serve and provide satiety. And truly sin humbles and chokes and makes one look downward; and a yoke also is the conscience, always choking and wounding and not allowing one to lift the head and stripping away all boldness of speech. And a paresis, she says, of the strength which I used not well, he has made, and I am loosed as I behold the evils that hold me together.