total of all his sins, by the excess of his ever increasing transgressions, as our Saviour said to the Jewish leaders:27 ‘fill you up the measure of your fathers, you serpents, you generation of vipers.’ They were not far from the apex of sin to whom God Himself spoke thus, that they completed their sins in such a way, doubtless, that while they were no longer worthy of salvation, they filled the number of their iniquities through which they perished. Whence it is that, when the Old Law recalled