The Instructor

My children, we have laid a foundation of truth for ourselves: an unbreakable foundation of knowledge for the holy temple of the great God, a noble exhortation, a longing for eternal life through reasonable obedience, laid down in the ground of the mind. There are three things in the human being: character, actions, and passions. The Word who exhorts has taken character as his province: he is the guide to godliness, lying beneath, like a ship's keel, for the building up of faith. Rejoicing greatly in him and renouncing our old opinions, we grow young again for salvation, singing with the prophecy that sings, “How good is God to Israel, to the upright in heart.” Over all our actions the Word who counsels presides, and the passions the Word who consoles heals. Yet it is one and the same Word throughout, snatching the human being from the custom of the world in which he was brought up, and training him in the one salvation of faith in God. So the heavenly guide, the Word, when he was calling us to salvation, had the name “Exhorter” (this word of encouragement is properly called by the name of the whole from a part, for all godliness is exhortation, begetting in the reason that is akin to it a longing for the life that now is and for the life to come). But now, being both healer and counselor at once, following on from himself, he advises the one he has already converted, and, most important of all, promises the healing of the passions within us. Let us give him one fitting name: the Instructor, a guide to practice, not to method, since his aim is to improve the soul, not to teach, and to lead us to a life of self-control, not of knowledge.

Yet the same Word is also a teacher, but not now. In matters of doctrine the Teacher explains and reveals; but the Instructor, being practical, first exhorted us to a disposition of good character, and now calls us also to the practice of our duties, giving us pure precepts and showing those who come later the examples of those who went astray before. Both are most useful: the one, the kind that advises, leads to obedience; the other, taken in the form of example, is itself twofold, like the previous pair: in the one part, that we may imitate it by choosing the good; in the other, that we may turn away from it by rejecting the opposite.

Healing of the passions, then, follows from this, as the Instructor strengthens souls with the consolations of examples, and, as with gentle medicines, treats the sick with his kindly precepts, leading them to the complete knowledge of the truth. Health and knowledge are not the same: the one is gained by learning, the other by healing. No one who is still sick would learn any of the lessons of teaching before being fully healed. For not every precept is spoken in the same way to those who are learning and to those who are sick: some are addressed to some for knowledge, others to others for healing. Just as those sick in body need a physician, so those who are weak in soul need an Instructor, to heal our passions; and then he will lead us to the Teacher, preparing the soul pure and fit for knowledge, able to receive the revelation of the Word. So the all-loving Word, eager to perfect us by a saving gradation, uses a fine plan suited to effective education: first he exhorts, then he trains, and finally he teaches.

Our Instructor, my children, is like God his Father, whose Son he is: sinless, blameless, and without passion in soul; God undefiled in the form of man, minister of the Father's will, the Word who is God, who is in the Father, who is at the Father's right hand, God with the form as well. He is our spotless image; to him we must try with all our strength to make our soul like. He is entirely free from human passions, and that is why he alone is judge, because he alone is sinless; but we, as far as we can, try to sin as little as possible. For nothing is so urgent as, first, to be set free from passions and diseases, and then to be kept from easily falling into the habit of sin. Best of all is not to sin at all in any way, which we say belongs to God; second, never to touch any deliberate wrongdoing, which is proper to the wise man; third, not to fall into very many involuntary sins, which is characteristic of those who are nobly instructed; and let the last place be given to not remaining very long in our sins. But even this is saving for those who are called back to repentance, to renew the fight.

(… to renew the fight.) And it seems to me that the Instructor speaks very beautifully through Moses: “If anyone dies suddenly beside him, the head of his vow will immediately be defiled, and he shall be shaved,” calling involuntary sin a “sudden death.” He says it defiles, because it stains the soul; so he prescribes the cure as quickly as possible, advising that the head be shaved at once, that is, urging that the locks of ignorance that overshadow the reason be cut off, so that the reason (which is enthroned in the brain), stripped of the thick growth of wickedness, may run back to repentance. Then, after a few words, he adds: “But the former days were irrational,” by which it is clear that sins are meant, those that were not done according to reason. He called the involuntary “sudden,” and sinning “irrational.” For this reason the Word, the Instructor, has been given charge of preventing irrational sin. See this from the Scripture: “Therefore thus says the Lord.” The sin that came before is shown, by way of reproof, in the saying that follows, since just judgment follows; and this appears plainly through the prophets, as if they were saying, “If you had not sinned, he would not have made these threats”; and “Therefore thus says the Lord,” and “Because you did not hear these words, therefore thus says the Lord,” and “Therefore behold, says the Lord.” For this is why there is prophecy: because of obedience and disobedience; because of the one, that we may be saved, and because of the other, that we may be disciplined.

Our Instructor, then, is the Word, who by his counsels heals the unnatural passions of the soul. Strictly speaking, the help given for the diseases of the body is called medicine, an art taught by human wisdom; but the Father's Word is the only healer of human infirmities, the physician and holy charmer of the sick soul. “Save your servant,” it says, “my God, who hopes in you; have mercy on me, Lord, for I will cry to you all the day long.” “Medicine,” according to Democritus, “heals the diseases of the body, but wisdom rids the soul of passions.” But the good Instructor, Wisdom, the Word of the Father, who made the human being, cares for the whole of his creature; the all-healing physician of humanity heals both its body and its soul. The Savior says to the paralytic, “Rise, take the couch on which you lie, and go home”; and at once the sick man was made strong. And to the dead man he said, “Lazarus, come out”; and the dead man came out of the coffin, just as he had been before he suffered, having rehearsed the resurrection. Indeed, he heals the soul by itself too, by commandments and by gifts: by his counsels, perhaps, he takes time; but, rich in gifts, he says to us sinners, “Your sins are forgiven you.” And in the same instant we have become children, receiving from his good order the best and most secure order, which is concerned first with the world and the heavens, the courses of the sun and the circuits and movements of the other stars, for the sake of the human being; and then with the human being himself, on whom all its care is spent. Considering him its greatest work, it directed his soul by wisdom and self-control, blended his body with beauty and proportion, and breathed into human actions its own rightness and good order.

The Lord helps us in all things and benefits us in all things, both as man and as God: as God he forgives our sins, and as man he trains us not to sin. Naturally, then, the human being is dear to God, since he is his creature. The other things he made by command alone, but the human being he shaped with his own hands and breathed into him something of his own. So what was fashioned by him and in his likeness was made by God either because it is desirable to God for its own sake, or it was formed as desirable for the sake of something else. If the human being is desirable for his own sake, then God, being good, loved what is good; and the love charm is within the human being, that very thing which is called God's breath. But if the human being was made desirable for the sake of other things, God had no other reason for making him than that without him God could not have become a good Creator, nor could man have come to the knowledge of God (for God would not otherwise have made that for which the human being was made, had the human being not been made). And the power which God had hidden within himself, his will, he fulfilled by the power of making that was outside him, receiving from man that for which he made man; and he saw what he had, and what he willed came to be.

There is nothing that God cannot do. The human being, then, whom God made, is desirable for his own sake; and what is desirable for its own sake is akin to the one for whom it is desirable for its own sake, and to him it is also welcome and lovable. But can something be lovable to someone and not be loved by him? The human being has been shown to be lovable; so the human being is loved by God. For how can he not be loved, for whose sake the only-begotten is sent down from the bosom of the Father, the Word of faith, faith in abundance? The Lord himself confesses it plainly, saying, “For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me”; and again, “And you loved them, as you loved me.” What the Instructor wants and what he promises, then, being engaged in both deed and word, prescribing what is to be done and forbidding the opposite, is by now clear.

It is clear that the other kind of discourse, the teaching kind, is subtle and spiritual, attending to precision: it is the discourse of the higher mysteries, and let it be postponed for now. It is our duty to love in return him who lovingly guides us to the best life, and to live according to the ordinances of his will, not only doing what is commanded and guarding against what is forbidden, but also turning away from some examples and imitating others as closely as possible, so as to do the works of the Instructor in his likeness, that the words “in the image and likeness” may be fulfilled. For wandering in life as in deep darkness, we need a guide who cannot stumble and is accurate. The best guide is not a blind one, who, as the Scripture says, leads the blind by the hand into the pit; but the Word, who sees keenly and discerns the secrets of the heart. Just as there is no light that does not give light, nor mover that does not move, nor lover that does not love, so there is no good that does not benefit and lead to salvation. Let us love, then, the commandments through the works of the Lord (for the Word himself, clearly made flesh, displayed the same virtue as both practical and contemplative); and, taking the Word as law, let us recognize his commandments and counsels as short and swift roads to eternity; for his precepts are full of persuasion, not of fear.

Embracing, then, this good obedience still more, let us give ourselves to the Lord, holding fast to the most secure cable of faith in him, and recognizing that the virtue of man and woman is the same. For if the God of both is one, the Instructor of both is also one. One church, one self-control, one modesty; their food is common, marriage a yoke of two; breathing, sight, hearing, knowledge, hope, obedience, love, all are alike. Those whose life is common, whose grace is common, whose salvation is common, have virtue and training in common too. “For in this age,” he says, “they marry and are given in marriage,” in which alone female is distinguished from male; “but in that age no longer.” There the rewards of this shared and holy life of marriage are laid up not for male and female, but for the human being, separated from the desire that divides him.

(… separated from the desire that divides him.) So the name “human being” is common to men and women. This is why, it seems to me, the Athenians called not only the boy but also the girl by the common name paidarion (“little child”), if the comic poet Menander is to be trusted, who says in The Girl Who Was Slapped: “my little daughter … for the little child (paidarion) is very loving by nature.” And “lambs” is a name for simplicity common to male and female animals; and the “Lord himself shepherds” us forever, amen. “Neither sheep nor anything else should live without a shepherd, nor children without an instructor, nor servants without a master.”

That the instruction of children (paidagōgia) is the training of children (paides) is clear from the word itself. It remains to consider the children whom Scripture means, and then to set the Instructor over them. We are the children. Scripture praises us in many ways and speaks of us allegorically in many forms, varying the simplicity of faith with a range of names. In the Gospel, for instance, it says: “The Lord stood on the shore and called to the disciples (they happened to be fishing): Children, have you any fish?” calling them children, though they were already disciples. “And they brought to him children,” it says, for the laying on of hands in blessing, and when his disciples prevented them, Jesus said, “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” What the saying means, the Lord himself will make plain, saying, “Unless you turn and become like these children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Here he is not speaking figuratively of rebirth, but setting before us the simplicity of children for us to imitate. The prophetic Spirit too chooses us as children: “Having cut branches of olive or palm,” it says, “the children went out to meet the Lord and cried out, saying, Hosanna to the son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Light and glory and praise, with supplication, to the Lord: this is what “Hosanna” means when translated into Greek.

(… when translated into Greek.) And it seems to me that Scripture, alluding to the prophecy just mentioned, rebukes the careless: “Have you never read, Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babes you have prepared praise?” So too in the Gospel the Lord spurs on his disciples, urging them to attend to him as one already hastening to the Father, making his hearers more eager by telling them in advance that he will soon be gone, and showing them that they must gather the fruit of the truth all the more generously, since the Word was about to depart for heaven. So again he calls them children: “Little children, yet a little while I am with you.” And again he likens the kingdom of heaven to children “sitting in the marketplaces and saying, We played the flute for you and you did not dance; we mourned and you did not lament,” and the other things he added in keeping with these. And not only the Gospel thinks so; prophecy agrees with it. David says, “Praise the Lord, you children; praise the name of the Lord.” And he says through Isaiah, “Behold, I and the children whom God has given me.”

Are you surprised to hear that men from among the nations are children before the Lord? You do not seem to me to understand the Attic language, from which one can learn that beautiful, lovely, and freeborn young women are called paidiskai (“girls”), and slave women paidiskaria, though these too are young women, honored with a diminutive on account of the bloom of youth. And when he says, “Let my lambs stand on the right,” he means the simple, children like lambs, not men like sheep by kind; and he has given the lambs a privilege, preferring gentleness and simplicity of mind in human beings, innocence. And again when he says, “like suckling calves,” he speaks allegorically of us again; and “like a dove, innocent and without gall,” us again. And through Moses he commands two young doves or a pair of turtledoves to be offered for sin, saying that the sinlessness, innocence, and forgiving nature of the tender young birds is acceptable to God, and suggesting that like purifies like; and the timidity of turtledoves figures caution toward sins. That he calls us the young birds, Scripture bears witness: “as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings”; so we are the Lord's chicks, the Word most wonderfully and mystically describing the simplicity of the soul in terms of the age of childhood. For sometimes he calls us children, sometimes chicks, sometimes infants, elsewhere sons, often little children, and a young people and a new people: “My servants,” he says, “shall be called by a new name” (by “new” name he means fresh and eternal, pure and simple and childlike and true),

“which shall be blessed on the earth.” And again, figuratively, he calls us colts: unyoked by vice, unbroken by wickedness, simple, and frisking toward the Father alone; not “horses neighing after their neighbors' wives,” beasts of burden mad for females, but free and newborn, spirited through faith, swift runners toward truth, quick to salvation, trampling and stamping on the things of the world. “Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion; proclaim it, daughter of Jerusalem: behold, your king comes to you, righteous [meek] and saving, and he is gentle and riding on a beast of burden and a young colt.” It was not enough to say “colt”; he added “young” as well, showing the youthfulness of humanity in Christ and its ageless eternity together with simplicity. Such young colts, us infants, our divine colt-tamer rears. And even if the young animal in the Scripture is an ass, still it too is a colt. “And he tied the colt to the vine,” it says: tying this simple and infant people to the Word, whom he calls figuratively a vine. For the vine bears wine, as the Word bears blood, and both are drink for human beings for salvation: the wine for the body, the blood for the spirit. And that he also calls us lambs, the Spirit is a trustworthy witness through Isaiah: “As a shepherd he will shepherd his flock, and gather the lambs with his arm,” calling figuratively “lambs” the part of the flock still more tender in simplicity.

Indeed, we too have honored the finest and most perfect possessions in life with a name drawn from childhood, calling them education (paideia) and instruction (paidagōgia). We agree that instruction is good training from childhood toward virtue. The Lord reveals to us more expressively what is meant by the name “child”: “When a question arose among the apostles as to which of them was greatest, Jesus set a child in their midst, saying, Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” So he did not use the name “children” for the age of those who lack reason, as some have thought; nor, when he says, “Unless you become like these children, you will not enter the kingdom of God,” is it to be taken ignorantly. We infants no longer roll on the ground, nor creep on the earth like snakes as before, wriggling with our whole body around senseless desires; but, stretched upward in our thought, having renounced the world and sins, “touching the earth with a light foot,” only so far as to seem to be in the world, we pursue holy wisdom, which seems folly to those who are sharpened for knavery.

Rightly, then, those who have known God alone as Father are children: simple, infant, and pure, lovers of the unicorn's horns. To those who have advanced in the Word he proclaimed this saying, commanding them to take no thought for the affairs of this world and urging them to attend to the Father alone, imitating children. So in what follows he says: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow; sufficient for the day is its own evil.” So he commands them to lay aside the cares of life and to hold fast to the Father alone. And whoever fulfills this commandment is truly an infant and a child both to God and to the world: to the world as one who has gone astray, to God as one beloved. And if, as Scripture says, there is “one teacher in heaven,” then all on earth may rightly be called disciples.

For this is how the truth stands: perfection is always with the Lord who teaches, and childhood and infancy with us who are always learning. So prophecy has honored the perfect with the name “man.” Through David, speaking of the devil, it says, “The Lord abhors a man of blood,” calling him “man” as perfect in wickedness; and the Lord too is called “man” because he is perfect in righteousness. So the apostle, writing to the Corinthians, says: “For I betrothed you to one man, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ,” whether as infants and holy, but in any case to the Lord alone. Writing to the Ephesians, he revealed most clearly what we are seeking, saying: “Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be infants, tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we may grow up in all things into him.” He says this “for the building up of the body of Christ,” “who is the head,” and the only man perfect in righteousness. And we infants, guarding against the winds of the heresies that puff us up with pride, and not trusting those who set up other fathers for us, are perfected when we are the church, having received the head, Christ.

Here it is right to consider the name “infant” (nēpios): the infant is not classed among the foolish. The foolish one is nēpytios; but nēpios is ne-ēpios (“newly gentle”), as ēpios is the tender-minded, as if one had newly become gentle and mild in character. The blessed Paul pointed to this most clearly when he said: “Though we could have been a burden as apostles of Christ, we became gentle among you, as a nurse cherishes her own children.” The infant, then, is gentle, and in this way more tender, delicate, simple, guileless, and without hypocrisy, straightforward and upright in mind; and this is the foundation of simplicity and truth. “For on whom shall I look,” it says, “but on the gentle and quiet?” Such is the virgin speech, tender and unaffected; so it is customary to call a maiden a tender bride and a boy tender-minded. And we are tender, soft toward persuasion and easily shaped toward goodness, without gall and unmixed with malice and crookedness. For the old generation is crooked and hard-hearted; but the chorus of infants, we the new people, is delicate as a child.

In the letter to the Romans the apostle declares that he rejoices over “the hearts of the innocent,” and he gives something like a definition of infants when he says: “I want you to be wise as to what is good, and guileless as to what is evil.” For we do not understand the word nēpios (“infant”) as a privative, though the grammarians lay down that nē is privative. If those who disparage our infancy call us foolish, see how they blaspheme against the Lord, supposing that those who have fled to God are foolish. But if, as is rather to be understood, they themselves take “infants” to mean the simple, let us rejoice in the name. For the minds that are infant are new minds, newly made wise amid the old folly, which have dawned according to the new covenant. For God has been known only recently, at the coming of Christ: “No one has known God except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son reveals him.” The new people, then, are young, in contrast to the older people, having learned the new good things. And we have this ageless youth as the fullness of our life, in which we are always in the prime of understanding, always young, always gentle, always new. For those who have shared in the new Word must be new.

What has shared in eternity tends to be made like the incorruptible, so that for us the name of childhood is the springtime of our whole life, because the truth in us is ageless, and our character is steeped in that truth. And wisdom is ever-blooming, always remaining the same and unchanging, never altering. “Their children,” it says, “shall be carried on shoulders and comforted on knees; as a mother comforts someone, so will I comfort you.” The mother draws her children to her, and we seek our mother, the church. Everything weak and tender, since it needs help because of its weakness, is welcome, sweet, and delightful, since God does not refuse help to such an age. For as fathers and mothers take more pleasure in seeing the foals of horses, the little calves of cattle, the lion's cub, the fawn of the deer, and the human child, so the Father of all things welcomes those who have fled to him; and having regenerated them by the Spirit to adoption, he knows them as gentle, and loves these alone, and helps them, and fights for them; and so he names them “child.” I also refer Isaac to the child. Isaac means “laughter.” The curious king saw him playing with his wife and helper, Rebecca. The king (Abimelech was his name) seems to me to be a certain supramundane wisdom, spying on the mystery of the play; and they interpret Rebecca as “patience.” O the wise play! Laughter helped by patience, and the king watching over it! The spirit of the children in Christ, who live in patience, rejoices; and this is the divine play. Heraclitus says that his Zeus plays such a game.

For what other work is fitting for the wise and perfect than to play and rejoice together in the patience of good things and the ordering of good things, keeping festival with God? The message of the prophecy can also be understood in another way: that we rejoice and laugh at our salvation, like Isaac. He too laughed, freed from death, playing and rejoicing with the bride who is our helper for salvation, the church. The fixed name of patience has been given her, either because she alone remains forever, always rejoicing, or because she is composed of the patience of believers, who are members of Christ. And the witness of those who endured to the end, and the thanksgiving for them, is the mystic play and the salvation that helps us, with holy joy. So Christ the King looks down from above on our laughter, and, “looking out through the window,” as Scripture says, he beholds the thanksgiving and the blessing, the exultation and gladness, and also the patience that works with them, and their union, the church, his own; showing only his face, which is lacking to the church,

the church being perfected by her royal head. And where, then, was the window through which the Lord was shown? The flesh, through which he was made manifest. Again, Isaac (for it can be taken in another way too) is a type of the Lord: a child as son (for he was the son of Abraham, as Christ is the Son of God), and a sacrificial victim like the Lord. But he was not offered up as the Lord was; Isaac only carried the wood of the sacrifice, as the Lord carried the wood of the cross. He laughed mystically, prophesying that the Lord would fill us with joy, us who have been redeemed from corruption by the Lord's blood. But he did not suffer; not only, fittingly, yielding the first place in suffering to the Word, but also, by not being slain, hinting at the divinity of the Lord. For Jesus rose after his burial … without suffering, just as

Isaac was released from being sacrificed. I will add another very strong argument for my point. The Spirit calls the Lord himself a child, prophesying this through Isaiah: “Behold, a child is born to us, and a son is given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder; and his name is called Angel of Great Counsel.” Who, then, is this infant child, in whose image we infants are? Through the same prophet he describes his greatness: “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace, for the increase of his instruction; and of his peace there is no end.” O great God! O perfect child! The Son in the Father, and the Father in the Son! And how could the instruction of that child not be perfect, which extends to all of us his children, instructing us his infants? He has stretched out to us his hands, which are clearly trusted. John too, “the greatest prophet among those born of women,” bears witness to this child: “Behold the Lamb of God.” For since Scripture calls the infant children lambs, it has called God the Word, who became man for our sake and wished to be made like us in every way, the Lamb of God, the Son of God, the Father's infant.

We can also, and abundantly, strip for the contest against those who love to find fault.

For we are not called children and infants because of the childish and contemptible character of our learning, as those who are puffed up about knowledge have slandered us. On the contrary, as soon as we are regenerated we have received the perfection for which we were striving. For we were enlightened, and that is to know God. So the one who has known the perfect is not imperfect. And do not find fault with me for professing to have known God; for this is how it pleased the Word to speak, and he is free. For example, when the Lord was baptized, a voice sounded from heaven as witness to the Beloved: “You are my beloved Son; today I have begotten you.” Let us ask the wise, then: is Christ, begotten again today, already perfect, or, what is most absurd, deficient? If the latter, he must learn something more. But it is not reasonable that he should learn anything more, since he is God. For no one could be greater than the Word, nor a teacher of the only Teacher. Will they not, then, be forced to admit that the Word, born perfect of the perfect Father, was perfectly born again, in accordance with the prefiguring of the divine plan? And if he was perfect, why was the perfect one baptized? “It was necessary,” they say, “to fulfill what is required of human beings.” Excellent. For I say: then at the moment he was baptized by John, did he become perfect? Clearly. Then he learned nothing more from him? No. But is he perfected by the washing alone, and sanctified by the descent of the Spirit? So it is.

The same thing happens with us, for whom the Lord became a model. Being baptized, we are enlightened; being enlightened, we are adopted as sons; being adopted, we are made perfect; being made perfect, we are made immortal. “I said,” it says, “You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High.” This work is called by many names: grace, enlightenment, perfection, and washing. It is a washing, by which we are cleansed of our sins; a grace, by which the penalties due to our sins are remitted; an enlightenment, by which that holy light of salvation is beheld, that is, by which we see the divine clearly; and we call perfect that which lacks nothing. For what more does the one who has known God still lack? It would truly be absurd for something not complete to be called a grace of God; being perfect, he will surely give perfect gifts. And as everything comes to be at the moment he commands, so the completion of the grace follows at the moment he merely wills to give it. For the future is anticipated by the power of his will.

Moreover, deliverance from evils is the beginning of salvation. Those, then, who have merely first grasped the boundaries of life are already perfect; and we who have been separated from death already live. Salvation, then, is following Christ: “For what came to be in him is life.” “Truly, truly, I say to you,” he says, “whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” So merely believing and being born again is perfection in life; for God is never weak. For as his will is a work, and this is called the world, so his intention is the salvation of human beings, and this has been called the church. He knows, then, whom he has called; and those whom he has called, he has saved; and he has called and saved at the same moment. “For you yourselves,” says the apostle, “are taught by God.” It is not lawful for us, then, to think imperfect what is taught by him; and the lesson is the eternal salvation of the eternal Savior, to whom be thanks forever, amen. And the one who has only been regenerated, as the very name shows, being enlightened, is at once set free from darkness and receives the light on the spot.

So those who have shaken off sleep are at once awake within; or rather, as those who try to remove a cataract from the eyes do not supply them from outside with light, which they do not have, but by removing the obstruction from the eyes leave the pupil free; so we who are baptized, having wiped away by the divine Spirit the sins that darken us, like a mist, have the eye of the spirit free, unobstructed, and full of light, by which alone we behold the divine, as the Holy Spirit flows into us from heaven. This is a blending of eternal radiance, able to see the eternal light; since like is dear to like, and the holy is dear to him from whom the holy comes, who is properly called light: “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” That is why, I think, the human being was called by the ancients phōs (“man,” also “light”). “But he has not yet received the perfect gift,” they say. I agree; yet he is in the light, and the darkness does not overtake him; and between light and darkness there is nothing. The end is reserved for the resurrection of those who believe; and it is not the receiving of something else, but the obtaining of the promise already made. For we do not say that both exist together at the same time, the arrival at the goal and the anticipation of the arrival. For eternity and time are not the same, nor are the beginning and the end; but both concern one thing, and the one Lord is concerned with both. Faith, so to speak, is the beginning, born in time; the end is the obtaining of the promise, secured forever. The Lord himself revealed most clearly the equality of salvation, saying: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on …

“… the last day.” So, as far as is possible in this world, which he hinted at as “the last day,” being kept until the time when it will end, we believe that we have become perfect. For faith is the perfection of learning; that is why he says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.” If, then, we who have believed have life, what remains beyond the possession of eternal life? Nothing is lacking to faith, which is perfect of itself and complete. If anything is lacking to it, it is not wholly perfect, and it is not faith, limping in some respect. Nor do other things await believers after their departure from here, who have all alike received the pledge here; but what we have already grasped beforehand by believing as something that will be, we receive after the resurrection as something that has come to be, so that the saying may be fulfilled: “Let it be done according to your faith.” Where faith is, there is the promise; and the fulfillment of the promise is rest. So knowledge is in the enlightenment, and the end of knowledge is rest, which is understood to be the last thing desired. As inexperience is ended by experience and perplexity by a way through, so darkness must vanish by enlightenment. Darkness is ignorance, by which we fall into sins, being dim-sighted about the truth. Enlightenment, then, is knowledge, which makes ignorance vanish and gives clear sight. And the casting off of worse things is the revealing of better things; for what ignorance wrongly bound, knowledge rightly unbinds.

These bonds are loosed as quickly as possible, by human faith and divine grace, when our offenses are forgiven by one healing medicine, the baptism of the Word. We wash away all our sins, and are no longer evil on the spot. This is one grace of the enlightenment: that our character is not the same as before we were washed. And since knowledge rises together with enlightenment, flashing around the mind, we who were unlearned are at once called disciples, that learning having come to us at some earlier time; for you could not name the moment. For instruction leads to faith, and faith, together with baptism, is trained by the Holy Spirit. Further, that faith is the one universal salvation of humankind, and that the equality and fellowship of the just and loving God are the same toward all, the apostle explained most clearly, saying: “Before faith came, we were guarded under the law, shut up for the faith that was to be revealed; so the law became our instructor to Christ, that we might be justified by faith; but now that faith has come, we are no longer under an instructor.”

Do you not hear that we are no longer under that law, which was with fear, but under the Word, the Instructor of free choice? Then he added the saying that is free of all partiality: “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus; for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” So in the Word himself there are not some who are “gnostics” and others “psychics,” but all who have put away the desires of the flesh are equal and spiritual before the Lord. And elsewhere again he writes: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free; and we were all made to drink of one drink.”

It is not out of place to use the very words of those people, who say that the remembrance of better things is a straining of the spirit. By “straining” they mean the separation of worse things that comes from the recollection of better; and repentance for lesser things necessarily follows for the one who has recalled the better; indeed they admit that the spirit itself, having repented, runs back up. In the same way we too, having repented of our sins, renouncing our failings, strained clean by baptism, run back to the eternal light, children to the Father. “Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said, I thank you, Father, God of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to infants.” The Instructor and Teacher calls us infants, who are better suited for salvation than the wise of the world, who, thinking themselves wise, are puffed up. And he cries out, rejoicing and exceedingly glad, as if lisping along with the infants: “Yes, Father, for so it was well-pleasing before you.” For this reason what was hidden from the wise and understanding of this age has been revealed to infants. Rightly, then, the children of God are infants: those who have put off the old man and stripped off the tunic of wickedness, and put on the incorruption of Christ, so that, having become new, a holy people, born again, we may keep the human being undefiled, and be infants as a newborn of God, cleansed of sexual immorality …

… and wickedness. The blessed Paul most clearly released us from the inquiry in the first letter to the Corinthians, writing: “Brothers, do not be children in your minds; be infants in evil, but in your minds be perfect.” And the saying, “When I was an infant, I thought as an infant, I spoke as an infant,” hints at his life under the law, in which, not yet as one simple but as one still foolish, thinking childish things he persecuted, and speaking childish things he blasphemed the Word. For “infant” has two meanings. “When I became a man,” Paul says again, “I did away with the things of the infant.” The apostle who confesses that he does away with infancy, banishing it, is not hinting at an immature stage of life, nor at a fixed measure of time, nor at other secret teachings of manly and more perfect lessons; but he calls “infants” those under the law, who are terrified by fear as children are by bogeys, and “men” those who obey the Word and are free: we who have believed, saved by our own free choice, frightened by fear intelligently, not foolishly. The apostle himself will bear witness to this, calling the Jews heirs according to the former covenant, and us heirs according to the promise: “I say,” he says, “that as long as the heir is an infant, he differs in nothing from a slave, though he is lord of all, but is under guardians and stewards until the time set by the father. So we too, when we were infants, were enslaved under the elements of the world; but when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption through him.”

See how he acknowledged that those under fear and sins are infants, while he made men of those under faith, calling them sons, in contrast to the infants under the law. “For you are no longer a slave,” he says, “but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.” What, then, does the son lack after the inheritance? So it is fitting to explain the words “When I was an infant” thus: that is, when I was a Jew (for he was a Hebrew from the beginning), “I thought as an infant,” since I followed the law; “but when I became a man,” I no longer think the things of the infant, that is, of the law, but the things of the man, that is, of Christ, whom alone Scripture, as we said before, calls “man”; “I did away with the things of the infant.” But infancy in Christ is perfection, compared with the law. Having come this far, we must defend our infancy, and also explain what the apostle said: “I gave you milk to drink, as infants in Christ, not solid food; for you were not yet able; indeed, even now you are not able.” For it seems to me that the saying should not be understood in the Jewish way. I will set beside it that other Scripture: “I will bring you into the good land, flowing with milk and honey.” There arises, then,

… a very great difficulty, when these Scriptures are compared, as to what they mean. For if the infancy that comes by milk is the beginning of faith in Christ, and it is despised as childish and imperfect, how is the rest of the perfect and knowing man, after solid food, honored again with infant's milk? Perhaps, then, the “as,” which indicates a comparison, shows something like this, and the saying should be read as follows: “I gave you milk to drink in Christ,” and, pausing a little, let us add, “as infants,” so that, by this division of the reading, we may accept a meaning like this: I instructed you in Christ with simple, true, and natural spiritual food. For such is the life-nourishing substance of milk, springing from loving breasts. So that the whole may be understood thus: just as nurses rear newborn children on milk, so I too, with the Word, the milk of Christ, instill spiritual food into you.

So milk is perfect food, since it is perfect and leads to the end that has no end. That is why the same milk and honey are promised in the rest as well. Rightly the Lord again promises milk to the righteous, so that the Word may be clearly shown to be both, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end [the Word being figuratively called milk]. Homer too, unwillingly, prophesies something of this kind when he calls the righteous among men “milk-drinkers.” The Scripture can also be understood in this way: “And I, brothers, could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to people of the flesh, as to infants in Christ,” so that “people of the flesh” may be understood as those recently instructed and still infants in Christ. For he called spiritual those who have already believed in the Holy Spirit, and fleshly those newly instructed and not yet purified, whom he rightly calls “still fleshly,” since, like the pagans, they still think the things of the flesh. “For where there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly and walking as mere men?” That is why he says, “I gave you milk to drink,” meaning, I poured into you the knowledge that nourishes from instruction to eternal life. And the word “I gave to drink” is a symbol of perfect partaking; for the perfect are said to drink, and infants to suck. “For my blood,” says the Lord, “is true drink.” When he said, “I gave you milk to drink,” did he not then hint at the perfect gladness in the Word, the milk, the knowledge of the truth? And what follows, “not solid food, for you were not yet able,” may hint at the clear revelation in the age to come, face to face, like solid food. “For now we see as in a mirror,” the same apostle says, “but then face to face.” So he added that too: “Indeed, even now you are not able, for you are still fleshly,” thinking the things of the flesh: desiring, loving, being jealous, raging, envying. Not because we are still in the flesh, as some have supposed; for with the flesh, having a face like the angels', we shall see the promise face to face.

(… face to face.) But if that promise truly comes after our departure from here, “which eye has not seen, nor has it entered into the mind of man,” how do they claim to know, not having understood by the Spirit but having received it by learning, “what ear has never heard,” except that which was caught up to the third heaven? But even that he was commanded to keep silent about at the time. And if the boasting of knowledge is human wisdom, which is what remains to be understood, hear the law of Scripture: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, and let not the strong man boast in his strength; but let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.” But we are “taught by God” and boast in the name of Christ. How, then, should we not suppose that the apostle understood the milk of infants in this way? And if those who lead the churches are shepherds in the image of the Good Shepherd, and we are the sheep, should we not suppose that the Lord, speaking allegorically, keeps to the sequence by calling himself the milk of the flock? And the saying is again to be fitted to the meaning: “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able,” not supposing that the solid food is something other than the milk, but the same in substance. For the same Word is either loosened and gentle like

milk, or set and thickened like solid food. Moreover, taking it in this way, we may understand milk as the proclamation, poured out most widely, and solid food as faith, compacted by instruction into a foundation; faith, being more solid than hearing, is likened to food, being given body in the soul itself. The Lord also expressed this kind of food in another way, by symbols, in the Gospel according to John, when he said, “Eat my flesh and drink my blood,” speaking figuratively of the evident drink and food of faith and of the promise. By these the church, like a human being composed of many members, is watered and grows, is knit together and made firm from both: from the body, which is faith, and from the soul, which is hope; just as the Lord too is of flesh and blood. For hope is truly the blood of faith, by which faith is held together as by a soul; and when hope breathes its last, like blood that has drained away, the vital force of faith is dissolved.

But if some want to argue further, saying that milk signifies the first lessons, as the first food, and solid food spiritual knowledge, raising themselves up to knowledge, let them know that when they call solid food meat and the flesh and blood of Jesus, they are brought down by their own boastful wisdom to the true simplicity. For blood is found to be the first thing formed in a human being, and some have even dared to call it the substance of the soul. This blood, changed by a natural digestion when the mother conceives, blooms and ages through sympathetic love, so that the child need not fear. Blood is more liquid than flesh, being a kind of liquid flesh; and milk is more nourishing than blood and finer in texture. For whether the blood supplied to the embryo, previously sent through the mother's navel, or the menstrual flow itself, shut off from its proper course, is commanded by God, who nourishes all and brings all to birth, to go by a natural diffusion to the breasts, now swelling, and, changed by warm air, is prepared as desirable food for the infant, it is the blood that is changed. For of all the members the breasts are in closest sympathy with the womb. So when, at birth, the vessel by which blood was carried to the embryo is cut off, its passage closes, and the blood takes its course toward the breasts; and when much of it flows there, they are distended and the blood is changed into milk, just as blood is changed into pus in an ulcer. Or again, the veins beside the breasts open when they are stretched in pregnancy, and the blood pours into the natural cavities of the breasts; mixed with the air sent down from the neighboring arteries, while the underlying substance of the blood remains intact, it foams and turns white, and by such agitation is changed into froth, much as the sea, which the poets say, when winds strike it, “spits out the foam of the brine.” But its substance remains blood.

In this way rivers too, rushing along with a roar, are churned by the surrounding air they take in and seethe with foam; and the moisture in our mouths is whitened by breath. What objection, then, is there to admitting that blood too is changed by air to the brightest and whitest? It undergoes the change in quality, not in substance. Indeed, you could find nothing more nourishing than milk, nor sweeter, nor whiter.

The spiritual food is like it in every way: sweet through grace, nourishing as life, white as the day of Christ; and the blood of the Word has been shown to be like milk. In this way milk is provided at birth for the infant by God's plan; and the breasts, which until then stood upright looking toward the husband, now bend toward the child, taught to supply the easily digested food prepared by nature for the nurture of salvation. For the breasts are not full like springs, with milk ready-made flowing into them; they change the food within themselves, make milk, and send it out. This food, suited and fitting for the newly formed and newborn child, is prepared by God, the nourisher and Father of those born and born again, just as the manna flowed from heaven for the Hebrews of old, the heavenly food of angels. Indeed, even now nurses call the first-flowing drink of milk by the same name as that food, “manna.” But women who conceive and become mothers pour forth milk; the Lord Christ, the fruit of the Virgin, did not bless women's breasts nor judge them to be nourishers, but, since the loving and kind Father rained down the Word, he himself has become spiritual food for the self-controlled.

O mystic wonder! One is the Father of all things, one also the Word of all things, and the Holy Spirit is one and the same everywhere; and there is one only virgin mother. I love to call her the church. This mother alone had no milk, because she alone did not become a woman; she is at once virgin and mother, undefiled as a virgin, loving as a mother. Calling her children to her, she nurses them with holy milk, the Word for infants. So she had no milk, because the milk was … this fair and familiar child, the body of Christ, the young people nourished by the Word, whom the Lord himself brought forth in the travail of the flesh, whom the Lord himself swaddled in his precious blood. O holy births! O holy swaddling clothes! The Word is everything to the infant: father and mother and instructor and nurse. “Eat my flesh,” he says, “and drink my blood.”

These are the proper foods the Lord supplies to us: he holds out his flesh and pours out his blood, and nothing is lacking to the children for their growth. O paradoxical mystery! He commands us to strip off the old corruption of the flesh, as also the old food, and, partaking of another, new diet, that of Christ, to receive him, if possible, and store him up within ourselves, and to take the Savior into our breasts, so that we may put an end to the passions of our flesh. But you do not wish to understand it in this way, but perhaps more commonly. Hear it in this way too: the Holy Spirit is figuratively called flesh for us, for the flesh was fashioned by him; and blood points to the Word, for the Word has been poured out on our life like rich blood. The mingling of both is the Lord, the food of the infants: the Lord is Spirit and Word. The food, that is, the Lord Jesus, that is, the Word of God, Spirit made flesh, holy heavenly flesh. The food is the Father's milk, by which alone we infants are nursed. The “beloved” Word himself, our nourisher, poured out his own blood for us, saving humanity; through him, having believed in God, we flee to the “care-forgetting breast” of the Father, the Word; and he alone, it seems, supplies us infants with the milk of love; and truly

blessed are those alone who suck this breast. That is why Peter says: “Putting away, then, all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander, like newborn babes long for the rational milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation, if you have tasted that the Lord is good.” And even if one were to grant them that solid food is something other than milk, how will they not be impaled on their own arguments, not having understood nature? For in winter, when the surrounding air is dense and gives no passage to the heat shut up inside, food is cooked and digested and passes into the veins as blood; and they, getting no outlet, become very full, and are distended and throb. That is why nurses are then especially full of milk. We showed a little earlier that in women who have given birth blood passes into milk by change, not in substance, just as the fair hair of the aged turns gray. In summer, on the other hand, the body, being more porous, lets the food pass off more easily, and there is least milk, since there is least blood; for not all the food is retained.

If, then, digested food turns to blood, and blood turns to milk, blood is the preparation for milk, as the seed is for a human being and the pip for a vine. With milk, then, the Lord's food, we are nursed as soon as we are born; and as soon as we are born again we have been honored with the hope of rest, being given the good news of the Jerusalem above, in which, it is written, honey and milk rain down; through material food we are betrothed to the holy food as well. For foods are done away with, as the apostle himself says; but the food that comes through milk leads the way to heaven, having reared citizens of heaven and fellow dancers with the angels. And since the Word is a gushing spring of life and is called a river of oil, Paul rightly, speaking figuratively and calling him milk, adds “I gave to drink”; for the Word, the food of truth, is drunk. Indeed, drink is called liquid food. The same thing can be both food and drink, in different respects, just as cheese is a curdling of milk, or curdled milk. I am not concerned now to chase words, except that one substance serves both kinds of food. And for children at the breast milk alone is enough, being both drink and food. “I have food to eat,” says the Lord, “which you do not know; my food is to do the will of him who sent me.”

You see another food, spoken of figuratively like milk: the will of God. He also called the completion of his own passion a “cup,” by extension of the word, because he had only to drink it and finish it. So for Christ the food was the fulfilling of the Father's will; but for us infants, who milk the Word of heaven, the food is Christ himself. That is why seeking is called mastheuein (from mastos, “breast”): because to the infants who seek the Word, the Father's breasts of love for humankind supply milk. Further, the Word also confesses himself to be the bread of heaven: “For it was not Moses,” he says, “who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. And the bread which I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” Here the mystery of the bread should be noted: he calls it flesh, as rising, supposedly [through fire], just as wheat rises from decay and sowing, and also as formed by fire for the joy of the church, like bread that is baked.

But this will be shown more clearly in our work On the Resurrection. Since he said, “And the bread which I will give is my flesh,” and flesh is watered with blood, and blood is figuratively called wine, we must know that, as bread crumbled into a mixture of wine and water soaks up the wine and leaves the watery part, so the flesh of the Lord, the bread of heaven, drinks up the blood, nourishing to incorruption those of humankind who are heavenly, and leaving to corruption only the fleshly desires. So the Word is spoken of figuratively in many ways: as food, flesh, nourishment, bread, blood, and milk; the Lord is all these for the enjoyment of us who have believed in him. Let no one, then, be surprised that we say the Lord's blood is figuratively called milk. Is it not also figuratively called wine? “Washing his robe in wine,” it says, “and his garment in the blood of the grape.” He says that he will adorn the body of the Word with his own blood, just as he will nourish with his own Spirit those who hunger for the Word. And that the blood is the Word is witnessed by the blood of righteous Abel pleading with God; for the blood would never have uttered a voice unless it is understood as the Word. For the righteous man of old is a type of the new Righteous One, and the old blood that pleads, pleads on behalf of the new blood.

The blood, the Word, speaks to God, since it signified the Word who was to suffer. And the flesh itself and the blood in it are watered and made to grow by milk, as if by a return of care. The formation of what is conceived also takes place when the seed is mixed with the pure residue left from the monthly cleansing; for the power in the seed, clotting the nature of the blood as rennet sets milk, produces the substance that is formed. For a right mixture flourishes, while an extreme brings the danger of barrenness. So too in the earth itself: seed flooded by heavy rain is washed away, and through drought it is dried up for lack of moisture; but sap, being sticky, holds the seed together and makes it grow. Some suppose that the seed of an animal is in substance the foam of the blood, which, stirred by the innate heat of the male in intercourse, is fanned into foam and deposited in the seminal veins; from this, Diogenes of Apollonia holds, sexual union is called aphrodisia (from aphros, “foam”).

From all this it is plain that blood is the substance of the human body. Indeed, what is in the womb is at first a milk-like consistency of liquid; then this consistency becomes blood and turns into flesh; and, set in the womb by the natural and warm breath by which the embryo is shaped, it is brought to life. And after birth the child is nourished again by the same blood; for the flow of milk is of the nature of blood, and milk is the spring of nourishment, by which a woman is shown to have truly given birth and to be a mother, and by which she gains a charm of love. That is why, mystically, the Holy Spirit in the apostle, using the voice of the Lord, says, “I gave you milk to drink.” For if we have been born again into Christ, he who regenerated us nourishes us with his own milk, the Word; for everything that begets seems at once to supply food to what is begotten. And as the new birth is spiritual, so correspondingly the food of the human being has become spiritual. In every way, then, we have been united to Christ in all things: into kinship through his blood, by which we are redeemed; into sympathy through the nurture that comes from the Word; and into incorruption through his training. “Among mortals, rearing children often wins more love than begetting them.”

The same thing, then, blood and milk, is a symbol of the Lord's passion and teaching. So each of us infants may boast in the Lord, saying: “I claim to be of a good father's race and blood.” That milk comes from blood by change is already clear; but it can also be learned from the flocks and herds. For these animals, in the season of the year we call spring, when the air is moister, and the grass and pastures are then juicy and moist, first fill with blood, as is shown by the swelling of the veins, the vessels bulging; and from the blood the milk flows more abundantly. In summer, on the other hand, the blood, scorched and dried by the heat, stops the change, and so they give less milk. Indeed, milk has a most natural kinship with water, just as the spiritual washing has with the spiritual food. Those who sip a little cold water after drinking the milk just mentioned benefit at once; for its fellowship with water does not let the milk turn sour, not by any antipathy, but by sympathy, as it is further ripened. And the fellowship the Word has with baptism, milk has with water.

For milk alone of liquids accepts mixture with water, and is taken for cleansing, as baptism is taken for the forgiveness of sins. It also mixes naturally with honey, and this again for cleansing, with sweet food; for the Word, mingled with love for humankind, at once heals the passions and cleanses away sins. And the words “From his tongue flowed speech sweeter than honey” seem to me to have been said of the Word, who is honey; and prophecy often exalts him “above honey and the honeycomb.” Milk also mixes with sweet wine, and the mixture is beneficial, as when suffering is blended into incorruption. For milk is curdled by wine and separates, and whatever in it is impure is drained off. In the same way the spiritual fellowship of faith with the human being subject to suffering, curdling out the fleshly desires, draws the human being together into eternity, making him immortal by divine things. Many people also use the fat of milk,

which they call butter, for their lamps, making plain by a clear riddle the abundant oil of the Word, since he alone rightly nourishes, increases, and enlightens the infants. That is why Scripture says of the Lord: “He fed them with the produce of the fields; they sucked honey from the rock and oil from the solid rock, butter of cattle and milk of sheep with the fat of lambs,” and the rest that he gave them. And the one who prophesies the birth of the Child says, “Butter and honey shall he eat.” I am amazed how some dare to call themselves perfect and “gnostics,” thinking themselves above the apostle, puffed up and snorting with pride, when Paul himself confesses about himself: “Not that I have already obtained it or am already perfect; but I press on to see if I may lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of by Christ. Brothers, I do not consider that I have laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call in Christ Jesus.” He considers himself perfect because he has been set free from his former life and holds to the better one, not as perfect in knowledge but as longing for the perfect. So he adds, “Let those of us who are perfect think this way,” clearly calling perfection the renouncing of sins and being born again to faith in the only Perfect One, forgetting our past sins.

Since, then, we have shown that Scripture calls all of us children, and also speaks figuratively of us who have followed Christ as infants, and that the Father of all alone is perfect (for the Son is in him and the Father in the Son), it is time, following our order, to say who our Instructor is. He is called Jesus. Sometimes he calls himself a shepherd and says, “I am the good shepherd,” by a metaphor from shepherds who lead sheep: he is understood as the Instructor who leads children, the shepherd who cares for infants; for infants, being simple, are figuratively called sheep. “And they shall all become,” he says, “one flock and one shepherd.” The Word, then, who leads us children to salvation, is rightly called the Instructor. Most clearly the Word has said of himself through Hosea, “I am your instructor.” And godliness is instruction, being the learning of the service of God and training for the knowledge of the truth, and right guidance leading up to heaven.

“Instruction” is used in many senses: for the one who is led and learns, for the one who leads and teaches, third for the guidance itself, and fourth for what is taught, such as the commandments. The instruction that is according to God is the right direction of truth to the contemplation of God, and a pattern of holy actions in eternal perseverance. As the general directs the phalanx, taking thought for the safety of his soldiers, and as the pilot steers the ship, choosing to save those on board, so the Instructor leads the children to a saving way of life, out of care for us; and in general, whatever we might reasonably ask God to grant us will be ours if we obey the Instructor. As the pilot does not always yield to the winds, but sometimes turns his bow into them and resists whole storms, so the Instructor never yields to the winds that blow in this world, nor lets the child, like a ship, be dashed against a beastly and licentious way of life; but, borne along by the favoring wind of the Spirit of truth alone, he holds very firmly to the child's rudders, I mean his ears, until he brings the child safely to anchor in the harbor of heaven. For what people call ancestral custom

is all but passing away, but divine guidance is a possession that remains forever. They say that Phoenix was the tutor of Achilles, Adrastus of the sons of Croesus, Leonidas of Alexander, and Nausithous of Philip. But Phoenix was mad for women, Adrastus was an exile; Leonidas did not remove the Macedonian's arrogance, nor did Nausithous cure the man from Pella of drunkenness. The Thracian Zopyrus could not restrain the sexual immorality of Alcibiades; but Zopyrus was a bought slave. And Sicinnus, the tutor of Themistocles's children, was a lazy servant; they say he invented dancing, and the sikinnis dance. We are not unaware of the so-called royal tutors among the Persians: the Persian kings chose four of them, the best from all the Persians, and set them over their own sons. But the boys learned from them only to shoot the bow; and when they came of age they had intercourse with sisters and mothers, with wedded wives and countless concubines at once, like boars trained for mating.

But our Instructor is the holy God Jesus, the Word, the guide of all humanity; the loving God himself is Instructor. Somewhere in the song the Holy Spirit says of him: “He sufficed for the people in the wilderness, in the thirst of heat, in a waterless place; he encircled him and instructed him, and guarded him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle to shelter its nest, and it yearned over its young; spreading out its wings, it received them and took them up on its back. The Lord alone led them, and there was no foreign god with them.” Clearly, I think, Scripture points to the Instructor in describing his guidance. Again, when he speaks in his own person, he confesses himself to be Instructor: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” Who, then, has authority to lead in and out? Is it not the Instructor? He “appeared to Abraham and said to him: I am your God; be well-pleasing before me.” And most like an instructor he prepares him to be a faithful child, saying, “and be blameless; and I will set my covenant between me and you and your seed.” Here there is a fellowship of guiding friendship. Of Jacob he appears most clearly to be the instructor. He says to him: “Behold, I am with you, guarding you in every way you go; and I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done all that I have spoken to you.” He is also said to wrestle with him: “Jacob was left alone,” it says, “and a man,” the Instructor, “wrestled with him until morning.”

This was the man who led and carried, who trained with the athlete Jacob and anointed him against the evil one. That the Word was Jacob's trainer and the Instructor of humanity, it says: “He asked him and said to him, Tell me what your name is. And he said, Why do you ask my name?” For he was keeping the new name for the new, infant people; and the Lord God was still unnamed, not yet having become man. Yet “Jacob called the name of that place the Form of God: for I have seen God,” he says, “face to face, and my soul was saved.” The face of God is the Word, by whom God is made visible and known. Then too he was named Israel, when he saw the Lord God. This is God, the Word, the Instructor, who said to him again later, “Do not be afraid to go down into Egypt.” See how the Instructor accompanies the righteous man, and how he anoints the athlete, teaching him to trip up his opponent. This same one teaches Moses to instruct. For the Lord says: “If anyone has sinned before me, I will blot him out of my book.

But now go, and lead this people to the place of which I told you.” Here he is a teacher of instruction. For truly the Lord was, through Moses, the Instructor of the old people, and through himself the guide of the new people, face to face. “Behold,” he says to Moses, “my angel goes before you,” setting over them the power of the Word as bearer of good news and guide; but keeping the Lord's own dignity, he says, “On the day I visit, I will bring their sin upon them,” that is, on the day I sit as judge I will repay what their sins deserve. For the same one is Instructor and Judge, and he judges those who disobey him; the loving Word does not pass over their sin in silence, but convicts it, so that they may repent. “For the Lord wills the repentance of the sinner rather than his death.” And let us, as infants, hearing of the sins of others, keep from similar offenses for fear of the threat, lest we suffer the same. What, then, was their sin? “That in their anger they killed men, and in their desire they hamstrung a bull; cursed be their anger.” Who, then, could train us more lovingly than he?

Formerly, then, the older people had an older covenant, and the law instructed the people with fear, and the Word was an angel; but to the fresh and new people a fresh and new covenant has been given, the Word has become flesh, fear has been turned into love, and that mystic angel, Jesus, is born. For this same Instructor then said, “You shall fear the Lord your God,” but to us he has urged, “You shall love the Lord your God.” That is why he also commands us, “Cease from your deeds,” your old sins; “learn to do good; turn away from evil and do good; you have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness.” This is my new covenant, engraved in the old letter. The newness of the Word, then, is not to be reproached. In Jeremiah too the Lord says: “Do not say, I am too young; before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you came out of the womb I sanctified you.” The prophecy can hint at us here, who before the foundation of the world were known to God for faith, and now are infants because of God's will recently fulfilled, since we are newborn to the call and to salvation.

So he adds, “I have appointed you a prophet to the nations,” saying that he must prophesy, and that the name of “youth” should not seem a reproach to those called infants. The law is an old grace given by the Word through Moses. That is why Scripture says, “The law was given through Moses” (not by Moses, but by the Word through Moses his servant; that is why it was temporary), “but eternal grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” See the words of Scripture: of the law it says only “was given”; but “the truth,” being the grace of the Father, is the eternal work of the Word, and is no longer said to be given, but “to come through Jesus, without whom not one thing came to be.” So Moses, prophetically yielding place to the perfect Instructor, the Word, foretells both the name and the instruction, and commends the Instructor to the people, handing over commandments of obedience: “God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers,” he says, speaking of Jesus the son of Nun, but hinting at Jesus the Son of God; for the name Jesus, proclaimed beforehand in the law, was a sketch of the Lord. So he adds, counseling what is profitable for the people, “You shall hear him,” and “the man who does not hear this prophet,” him he threatens.

Such is the name of the saving Instructor that he prophesies to us. That is why prophecy puts a rod in his hand, a rod of discipline, of rule, of authority: so that those whom the persuasive Word does not heal, a threat will heal; those whom the threat does not heal, the rod will heal; and those whom the rod does not heal, fire consumes. “There shall come forth,” it says, “a rod from the root of Jesse.” See the care, the wisdom, and the power of the Instructor: “He will not judge by appearance,” it says, “nor convict by hearsay; but he will give judgment to the humble and convict the sinners of the earth.” And through David: “The Lord has disciplined me severely, but has not given me over to death”; for to be disciplined and instructed by the Lord is deliverance from death. And through the same prophet he says, “You shall shepherd them with a rod of iron.” Moved by this, the apostle too says in the letter to the Corinthians, “What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness?” And through another prophet he says, “The Lord will send out a rod of power from Zion.” And this rod of instruction, another said, “your rod and your staff, they have comforted me.” This is the Instructor's power: holy, consoling, saving.

Here some attack us, saying that the Lord is not good because of the rod and the threat and the fear. They have not listened, it seems, to the Scripture when it says, “And whoever fears the Lord will turn to his heart,” and they have forgotten the greatest proof of his love for humankind: that he became man for our sake. And indeed the prophet prays to him more intimately in these words: “Remember us, that we are dust,” that is, sympathize with us, since you have experienced in your own person the weakness of the flesh. In this the Lord, the Instructor, is best and blameless: out of his surpassing love for humankind, he has sympathized with the nature of each human being. “For there was nothing that the Lord hates.” For surely he does not hate something and yet will that what he hates should exist; nor does he will something not to exist and yet become the cause of its existence, though he wills it not to exist; nor does he will something not to exist, and yet it exists. If, then, the Word hates something, he wills it not to exist; but nothing exists to which God does not give the cause of its existence; so nothing is hated by God. Nor by the Word; for both are one, God, since it says, “In the beginning the Word was in God, and the Word was God.”

If he hates nothing of what he has made, it remains that he loves it. Much more than the rest, naturally, he will love the human being, the most beautiful of his creatures and a creature that loves God. God, then, loves humankind; the Word, then, loves humankind. And the one who loves something wishes to benefit it; what benefits is surely better than what does not benefit; and nothing is better than the good; so the good benefits. God is acknowledged to be good; so God benefits. And the good, insofar as it is good, does nothing else than benefit; so God benefits all things. And surely he does not benefit the human being without caring for him, nor care for him without taking care of him. For what benefits intentionally is better than what does not benefit intentionally, and nothing is better than God. And benefiting intentionally is nothing else than taking care [of the human being]; so God cares for and takes care of the human being. This he shows in deed by instructing him through the Word, who is the true fellow champion of God's love for humankind.

The good is not said to be good by having virtue, just as justice is not said to be good by having virtue (for it is itself virtue), but by being good in and of itself. In another sense, what is advantageous is also called good, not by giving pleasure but by benefiting. Justice is all these: it is good both as virtue and as desirable for its own sake, and as not giving pleasure; for it does not judge to win favor, but assigns to each what he deserves, and benefit follows what is advantageous. In all the respects, then, in which the good is examined, justice too is characterized, both sharing equally in the same qualities; and things characterized by the same qualities are equal and alike to one another; so justice is good. “How then,” they say, “if the Lord loves humankind and is good, is he angry and does he punish?” We must deal with this too, as briefly as possible. For such a plan is in some way profitable for the right upbringing of children, holding the place of a necessary aid. Many passions are healed by punishment, and by the enjoining of sterner precepts, and also by the teaching of certain principles.

Reproof is like surgery on the passions of the soul; the passions are an abscess of the truth, which must be laid open by cutting. Rebuke is like a medicine, dissolving the callouses of the passions, cleansing the filth of life, the lusts, and smoothing down the proud flesh of arrogance, restoring the human being to health and truth. Admonition, then, is like the diet of a sick soul, advising what one must take and forbidding what one must not; and all these aim at salvation and eternal health. A general too, when he imposes fines on wrongdoers, and bodily punishments with chains and the utmost disgrace, and sometimes even punishes some with death, has the good as his aim, acting as general for the correction of those under him. In the same way that great general of ours, the Word, the ruler of all things, admonishing those who throw off the reins of his law, to free them from slavery and error and captivity to the adversary, and to calm the passions of the soul, leads them to the holy concord of the commonwealth.

Just as the hortatory and consoling kind of speech belongs to deliberative speech, so the reproaching and rebuking kind belongs to the speech of praise [and praising]. This kind is an art of censure; and censure is a sign of goodwill, not of hatred. Both friend and enemy reproach, but the enemy mocks, while the friend means well. So the Lord does not revile human beings out of hatred; though he could have destroyed them for their own faults, he even suffered for us. For as a good Instructor, very skillfully, he takes on censure through rebuke, rousing the sluggishness of the mind with reproach as with a whip, and then in turn tries to encourage the same people. Those whom praise did not encourage, blame has spurred on; and those whom blame did not call out to salvation, as if they were dead, reproach raises up to the truth. “For whips and discipline are at every time wisdom. He who teaches a fool glues together a potsherd,” it says, bringing the earth to feeling and sharpening the despairing to understanding. So it clearly added, “rousing a sleeper from deep sleep,” which of all things is most like death. And the Lord himself shows this most clearly of himself, speaking figuratively of his many-sided and most beneficial care, when he said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser,” and then added, “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” For an unpruned vine runs wild with wood, and so does a human being; the Word, the knife, prunes his wanton shoots, compelling his desires to bear fruit, not to lust.

Reprimand of sinners aims at salvation, the Word adjusting himself musically to each person's character, now tightening, now loosening the strings. It is said most clearly through Moses: “Take heart; God has come to test you, so that his fear may be in you and you may not sin.” Plato, who learned from this, says well: “All who pay a penalty truly suffer what is good; for they are benefited, since their soul becomes better when they are justly punished.” If those who are corrected suffer good at the hands of the just one, even according to Plato, the just one is admitted to be good. Fear itself benefits and has been found out for the good of human beings, since “the spirit of those who fear the Lord will live; for their hope is in him who saves them.”

This same Word who imposes punishment is judge; of him Isaiah says, “The Lord gave him up for our sins,” evidently as the corrector and director of sins. That is why he alone can forgive offenses, appointed by the Father of all as our Instructor, he alone who is able to distinguish disobedience from obedience. One who threatens clearly does not wish to do any evil or to carry out his threats; but by putting us in fear he checks the rush toward sins and shows his love for humankind, delaying still and making plain what they will suffer if they remain sinners, and not, like a snake, fastening on at once and biting. God, then, is good. And the Lord uses words for many things before the deed: “My arrows,” he says, “will finish them off: wasting with hunger and the devouring of birds, and incurable spasm; I will send the teeth of beasts against them, with the fury of things crawling on the earth. Outside the sword will make them childless, and fear within the chambers.” So the Divine is not angry, as some have thought; but most things are threatened, while in all things he has admonished humanity and shown what must be done. This is a good art, to frighten us so that we may not sin: “For the fear of the Lord drives away sins, and the one without fear cannot be justified,” says the Scripture.

God does not inflict punishment out of anger, but looks to justice, since it is not good that justice be neglected for our sake. Each of us chooses his punishments himself, sinning willingly: “The blame is the chooser's; God is blameless.” “But if our unrighteousness shows the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unjust, who inflicts wrath? By no means.” Threatening, he says: “I will sharpen my sword, and my hand will take hold of judgment, and I myself will render justice to my enemies and repay those who hate me; I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword will eat flesh with the blood of the wounded.” For it is clear here that those who are not at enmity with the truth and do not hate the Word would not hate their own salvation, and would escape the penalties of enmity. “The crown of wisdom, then,” as Wisdom says, “is the fear of the Lord.” Most clearly the Word has declared his own plan through the prophet Amos, saying: “I overthrew you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you became like a brand plucked from the fire; and even so

you did not turn back to me, says the Lord.” You see how God, out of love for the good, seeks repentance, and quietly shows his love for humankind alongside the plan of threatening. “I will turn my face away from them,” he says, “and show what will become of them.” For where the face of the Lord looks, there is peace and rejoicing; but where it has turned away, wickedness creeps in. He does not wish to look on evils, for he is good; but when he willingly overlooks them, wickedness comes to be through human unbelief. “See, then,” says Paul, “the kindness and severity of God: severity toward those who fell, but kindness toward you, if you continue in his kindness,” that is, in faith in Christ. Hatred of wickedness goes with the good, since he is good by nature. So I would admit that he punishes the unbelieving (for punishment is for the good and benefit of the one punished, being correction of one who resists), but not that he wills to take vengeance. Vengeance is a repaying of evil directed to the advantage of the one taking vengeance. He who teaches us to pray for those who mistreat us would not desire to take vengeance.

That God is good, all admit, even against their will. That the same God is also just, I need no more words to show, once I have set down the Lord's saying in the Gospel. He calls him one: “that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. And the glory which you have given me I have given them, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one.” God is one, and beyond the one, and above the Monad itself. So also the word “you,” having demonstrative force, points out God, the only one who truly is, “who was and is and will be,” for whom, in the three tenses, the one name “He who is” is set. That the same God who alone is is also just, the Lord will bear witness in the same Gospel, saying: “Father, I want those whom you have given me to be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which you have given me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you, and these have known that you sent me; and I have made your name known to them, and will make it known.” This is he “who visits the sins of the fathers on the children of those who hate him, and shows mercy to those who love him.” For he who sets some on the right hand and others on the left, insofar as he is understood as Father, being good, is called by that alone which he is, good; but insofar as, being Son, his Word is in the Father, he is called just, † a name of power measured by equality, from their relation of love to each other.

“He will judge a man according to his works,” it says, God having made Jesus known to us as the face of a good balance [of justice], through whom we have known God as by an evenly balanced scale. Of him Wisdom also says expressly, “For mercy and wrath are with him”; for he alone is Lord of both: “mighty in forgiveness, pouring out wrath; as great as his mercy, so great also is his reproof.” For the aim of both mercy and reproof is the salvation of those reproved. And that “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus” is himself good, the same Word will again confess, “for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked,” and further, when he says, “Be merciful, as your Father is merciful”; and also when he says expressly, “No one is good but my Father who is in heaven.” Besides these he says again, “My Father makes his sun shine on all.” It should be noted here that he confesses his own Father to be the good one and the Creator; and that the Creator is just is not disputed. And again, “My Father sends rain on the just and the unjust.”

Insofar as he sends rain, he is the Creator of waters and clouds; insofar as it is on all, he holds the balance justly and † of virtue; and as good, on the just and the unjust alike. Most clearly, then, we conclude that God is one and the same, as follows. The Holy Spirit sang, “I will see the heavens, the works of your fingers,” and “He who created the heavens dwells in the heavens,” and “Heaven is your throne”; and the Lord says in the prayer, “Our Father who are in the heavens.” But the heavens belong to him who created the world. It is beyond dispute, then, that the Lord is the Son of the Creator. And if the Creator is admitted by all to be just, and the Lord is the Son of the Creator, then the Lord is the Son of the Just. That is why Paul says, “But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been manifested,” and again, so that you may better understand God, “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe; for there is no distinction”; and, bearing further witness to the truth, he adds a little later: “in the forbearance of God, to show that he is just and justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.”

And he clearly knows that the just is good when he says, “So the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good,” setting both names under the same power. And “no one knows the Son but the Father”; the same, then, is his Father, who is one, indicated by many powers. And this was the meaning of “no one knew the Father,” who is all these, before the Son came. So it is truly evident that the God of all things is one only: good, just, Creator, the Son in the Father; to whom be glory forever [and ever], amen. Nor is it foreign to the saving Word to rebuke out of care. For this too is a medicine of divine love for humankind, from which the blush of modesty blooms and shame at sinning creeps in. For if one must censure, one must also rebuke, when it is time to wound the callous soul, not mortally but savingly, escaping eternal death at the cost of a little pain. Great is the wisdom of his instruction, and varied the manner of his plan for salvation. For the Instructor bears witness to the good, calls out the called to better things, turns those eager to do wrong from their impulse, and urges them to change to a better life. Neither is without witness when the other is attested, and the grace from witness is very great; but even the passion of wrath, if we must call his admonition wrath, is loving, since God descends to passions for the sake of the human being, for whose sake the Word of God also became man.

With all his strength, then, the Instructor of humanity, our divine Word, using every device of wisdom, has set himself to save the infants: admonishing, censuring, reprimanding, reproving, threatening, healing, promising, giving freely, “binding,” as it were, “with many bridles” the irrational impulses of humanity. In short, the Lord is toward us as we are toward our children. “Have you children? Discipline them,” Wisdom advises, “and bend them from their youth. Have you daughters? Watch over their bodies, and do not show them a cheerful face.” Yet we love our children, sons and daughters, very much, above everything. But since those who converse to please love little, since they do not cause pain, while those who are severe for another's benefit, though painful for the moment, do good for the time to come, the Lord has looked not to present pleasure but to future delight. Let us now go through the manner of his loving instruction, with the testimony of the prophets. Admonition (nouthetēsis), then, is caring blame, putting sense into the mind (nous).

Such is the Instructor when he admonishes, as when he says in the Gospel: “How often I wanted to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not.” Again Scripture admonishes, saying, “They committed adultery with wood and stone, and burned incense to Baal.” For this is the greatest proof of his love for humankind: that although he knew clearly the shamelessness of the people who had kicked and bolted, he still calls them to repentance and says through Ezekiel: “Son of man, you live among scorpions; yet speak to them, if perhaps they will hear.” And to Moses he says: “Go and tell Pharaoh to send the people away; but I know that he will not send them away.” He shows both: his divinity, foreknowing what will be, and his love for humankind, giving the soul's free will occasions for repentance. He admonishes also through Isaiah, caring for the people, when he says: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (this is blame that convicts); “in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” Here his care, having revealed the sin, shows salvation alongside it. Censure (epitimēsis) is blame for shameful things, winning one over to what is good.

He shows this through Jeremiah: “They became horses mad for females; each neighed after his neighbor's wife. Shall I not visit for these things? says the Lord. Shall not my soul take vengeance on such a people?” He weaves fear in everywhere, since “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of understanding.” And again through Hosea: “I will not visit them, because they themselves mingled with harlots and sacrificed with the initiates, and the people that understands embraced a harlot.” He shows their sin more plainly by admitting that they understand, since they sin willingly. And understanding is the sight of the soul. So Israel is the one who sees God, that is, who understands God. Complaint (mempsis) is blame of those who are negligent or careless. He uses this manner of instruction through Isaiah, saying: “Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken: I have begotten sons and raised them up, but they have rejected me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's manger; but Israel has not known me.” How is it not dreadful, if the one who knows God will not recognize the Lord, while the ox and the donkey, slow and foolish animals, know who feeds them, and Israel will be found more irrational than they? And through Jeremiah, after many complaints against the people, he adds: “And they have forsaken me, says the Lord.”

Reprimand (epiplēxis) is striking censure or smiting blame. The Instructor uses this treatment too, through Isaiah, saying: “Woe, rebellious children, says the Lord: you have made a plan, but not through me, and covenants, but not through my Spirit.” At every point he uses fear as a very sharp astringent, at once opening up the people and turning them back through it to salvation, just as wool that is to be dyed is usually treated with an astringent first, to prepare it to take the dye firmly. Reproof (elenchos) is the bringing of sin to light, setting it out in the open. He uses this manner of instruction most of all, as necessary, because of the weakness of the faith of the many. For he says through Isaiah: “You have forsaken the Lord and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger.” And he says through Jeremiah: “Heaven was astonished at this, and the earth shuddered greatly; for this people has done two evils: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and dug for themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water.” And again through the same prophet: “Jerusalem sinned a sin; therefore she has become unsettled; all who glorified her have dishonored her, for they saw her shame.” He softens the severity and sharpness of reproof through Solomon, hinting by implication at the fatherly love in his instruction: “My son, do not make light of the discipline of the Lord, nor lose heart when you are reproved by him; for the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and scourges every son whom he receives,” since “a sinful man shuns reproof.” Consistently, then, Scripture says, “Let the righteous one reprove me and discipline me; but let not the oil of the sinner anoint my head.”

Bringing to one's senses (phrenōsis) is blame that puts sense into the mind (phrenes). He has not refrained from this manner of instruction either, but says through Jeremiah: “How long shall I cry out, and they will not listen? Behold, their ears are uncircumcised.” O blessed forbearance! And again through the same prophet: “All the nations are uncircumcised, but this people is uncircumcised in heart.” “For it is a disobedient people, sons,” he says, “in whom there is no faith.” Visitation (episkopē) is severe reprimand. He uses this kind in the Gospel: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you.” The repetition of the name makes the reprimand strong. For how can one who knows God persecute the ministers of God? That is why he says: “Your house is left to you desolate; for I tell you, from now on you will not see me until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” For if you do not accept his love for humankind, you will know his power.

Reviling (loidoria) is intensified blame. He uses reviling as a medicine through Isaiah, saying: “Woe, sinful nation, lawless sons, a people full of sins, an evil seed”; and in the Gospel through John he says, “Serpents, brood of vipers.” Accusation (enklēsis) is blame of wrongdoers. He uses this means of instruction through David, saying: “A people whom I did not know served me, and at the hearing of the ear they obeyed me; foreign sons lied to me and limped from their paths”; and through Jeremiah: “And I gave her a certificate of divorce, and faithless Judah did not fear”; and again: “And the house of Israel dealt faithlessly with me, and the house of Judah lied to the Lord.” Lamentation (mempsimoiria) is hidden blame, and it too, by skillful help, works salvation under a veil. He uses it through Jeremiah: “How the city that was full of peoples sits alone! She has become like a widow; the ruler of lands has become subject to tribute; she weeps bitterly in the night.”

Ridicule (diasyrsis) is mocking blame. The divine Instructor uses this aid too through Jeremiah, saying: “You had the face of a harlot; you were shameless toward all. And did you not call me as your house and father and guardian of your virginity?” and “a harlot, fair and charming, skilled in sorceries.” Very skillfully insulting the virgin with the name of harlotry, he calls her back again to modesty, putting her to shame. Indignation (katanemesēsis) is lawful censure, or censure of those who are exalted beyond what is fitting †. By this he instructed through Moses, saying: “Blemished children, a crooked and perverse generation, is this how you repay the Lord? This is a foolish people and not wise. Is not he your father who acquired you?” And through Isaiah he says: “Your rulers are disobedient, partners of thieves, loving bribes, pursuing rewards, not judging for orphans.” In general, his art of using fear is a spring of salvation, and to save belongs to the good one. “The mercy of the Lord is upon all flesh, reproving and disciplining and teaching, as a shepherd his flock. He has mercy on those who accept discipline and are eager to cling to him.” And by this guidance “he guarded six hundred thousand foot soldiers, gathered together in their hardness of heart, scourging, having mercy, striking, healing, in compassion and discipline.” “For as great as his mercy, so great also is his reproof.” It is good not to sin, but it is also good for one who has sinned to repent; just as it is best always to be healthy, but good also to recover from illness.

So it is also commanded through Solomon: “Strike your son with the rod, and you will deliver his soul from death.” And again: “Do not refrain from disciplining a child; correct him with the rod, for he will not die.” Reproof and reprimand (epiplēxis), as the name itself suggests, are blows (plēgai) to the soul, chastening sins and warding off death, and leading to self-control those who are carried away into licentiousness. So Plato too, knowing that reproof is the greatest power of correction and the most sovereign purification, holds, consistently, that the one who is most impure has become uneducated and shameful because he has not been reproved, whereas the one who is truly to be happy ought to be most pure and most beautiful. For if “rulers are not a terror to good conduct,” how will God, good by nature, be a terror to one who does not sin?

“But if you do evil, be afraid,” as the apostle says. That is why the apostle himself, in the image of the Lord, is severe with the churches at every point; and, conscious of his own boldness and of the weakness of his hearers, he says to the Galatians, “Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?” As the healthy do not need a physician, so far as they are well, while the sick require his art, so we too, who in this life are sick with shameful desires, blameworthy incontinence, and the other inflammations of the passions, need the Savior. He applies not only soothing medicines but astringent ones too. The bitter roots of fear check the spreading of sins; so fear is saving, even if bitter. Rightly, then, we who are sick need a Savior, those who have gone astray a guide, the blind someone to give them light, the thirsty the spring of life, from which those who partake will thirst no more; the dead need life, the sheep the shepherd, and the children the Instructor; indeed all humanity needs Jesus, so that we may not, untrained and sinful, fall at last into condemnation, but may be separated from the chaff and gathered into the Father's granary. For the winnowing fan is in the Lord's hand, by which the chaff is separated from the wheat,

the chaff due to the fire. If you will, we may learn the supreme wisdom of the all-holy Shepherd and Instructor, the almighty Word of the Father, where he speaks figuratively, calling himself shepherd of sheep; he is the Instructor of infants. He says through Ezekiel, addressing the elders and setting before them a saving model of wise care: “And I will bind up the lame, and heal the afflicted, and turn back the one that wanders, and I myself will feed them on my holy mountain.” These are the promises of a good shepherd. Feed us infants like sheep. Yes, Master, fill us with your pasture, righteousness; yes, Instructor, shepherd us to your holy mountain, the church, which is exalted above the clouds and touches the heavens. “And I will be their shepherd,” he says, “and I will be near them,” as the tunic to their skin. He wishes to save my flesh, clothing it with the tunic of incorruption, and he has anointed my skin. “They will call me,” he says, “and I will say, Here I am.” You heard more quickly than I expected, Master! “And if they pass through, they will not slip, says the Lord.” For we who pass over to incorruption will not fall into corruption, because he himself will hold us up; for he himself said it, and he himself willed it.

Such is our Instructor, rightly good. “I came,” he says, “not to be served, but to serve.” That is why he is presented in the Gospel as weary, he who labors for us and promises “to give his life as a ransom for many.” For he confesses that only such a one is a good shepherd. Generous, then, is he who gives the greatest thing for us, his life; very beneficial and loving to humankind, since, though he could be Lord of human beings, he has willed to be their brother; and so good that he even died for us. His justice too has cried out: “If you come to me upright, I too will be upright toward you; if you walk crookedly, I too will be crooked, says the Lord of hosts,” hinting at the reprimands of sinners as crooked ways. For the straight and natural way, which the iota of Jesus hints at, is his goodness, unmoved and unswerving toward those who have believed through obedience. “Since I called and you did not listen, says the Lord, but made my counsels void, and paid no attention to my reproofs.” So the Lord's reproof is most beneficial.

Of these he says also through David: “A crooked and embittering generation, a generation that did not set its heart right, and whose spirit was not faithful to God. They did not keep God's covenant, and would not walk in his law.” These are the causes of the provocation, for which the Judge comes to bring punishment on those who did not choose to live well. That is why he has dealt more harshly with them from then on, to check, if possible, their rush toward death. Through David he gives the clearest reason for the threat: “They did not believe in his wonders. When he slew them, they sought him and turned back and rose early to seek God, and remembered that God is their helper, and God Most High their redeemer.” So he knows that they turn back through fear, having despised his love for humankind. For goodness that is always kind is generally slighted, but it is honored when it reminds us by the loving fear of justice.

Fear is of two kinds. One comes with reverence: citizens have it toward good rulers, and we toward God, as sensible children toward their fathers. “For an untamed horse turns out stubborn,” it says, “and a son left to himself turns out headstrong.” The other kind of fear comes with hatred: slaves have it toward harsh masters, and the Hebrews had it, who made God a master, not a father. The voluntary, freely chosen fear differs greatly, I think, indeed entirely, from compelled fear in relation to piety. “For he is merciful,” it says; “he will heal their sins and not destroy them; and he will abound in turning away his anger, and will not kindle all his wrath.” See how the justice of the Instructor is shown in his rebukes, and the goodness of God in his compassion. That is why David, that is, the Spirit through him, including both, sings of the same God: “Righteousness and judgment are the foundation of your throne; mercy and truth will go before your face.”

He confesses that judging and doing good belong to the same power; for the authority over both together is the judgment of the just one, separating opposites. The same God is just and good, the one who truly is God, who himself is all things, and all things are himself, because he himself is God, the only God. As a mirror is not bad to an ugly man because it shows him as he is, and as a physician is not bad to a sick man when he tells him of his fever (for the physician is not the cause of the fever, but its detector), so neither is the one who reproves ill-disposed toward one sick in soul; for he does not put the offenses there, but points out the sins that are present, to turn us from similar practices. So God is good in himself, and just for our sake, and this because he is good. He shows us his justice through his own Word from there above, from where he became Father. For before he became Creator he was God, he was good; and for this reason he willed to be both Maker and Father. The relation of that love became the beginning of justice, as he makes his sun shine and sends down his Son. And the Son first proclaimed the good justice from heaven, saying, “No one knew the Son except the Father, nor the Father except the Son.” This mutually balanced knowledge is a symbol of primal, equal justice. Then justice came down to human beings, both in letter and in body, in the law and in the Word, constraining humanity to saving repentance; for it was good. But you do not obey God: blame yourself for bringing the judge upon you.

If, then, we have shown that the plan of treating humanity severely, which is good and saving, is necessarily adopted by the Word, and is well suited both to repentance and to the prevention of sins, it would be next to consider the gentleness of the Word. For he has been shown to be just, and he sets before us his own sayings, which encourage us to salvation, and by which he wishes to make known to us, by the Father's will, both the noble and the advantageous. Consider this: the noble belongs to the speech of praise, the advantageous to deliberative speech; for exhorting and dissuading are aspects of deliberative speech, and praising and blaming of the speech of praise. In one disposition the deliberative mind exhorts, in another it dissuades; likewise the speech of praise in one disposition blames, in another praises. With these the just Instructor, who aims at our advantage, is most concerned. The kind that blames and dissuades has already been shown to us; now we must deal with the kind that exhorts and praises, and, as on a balance, set the equal scales of justice against each other.

The Instructor uses exhortation to what is advantageous through Solomon, in this way: “I call on you, O men, and I send forth my voice to the sons of men; listen to me, for I will speak noble things,” and so on. He counsels what saves, since counsel serves for choosing and avoiding, as he does through David, saying: “Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the pestilent; but his will is in the law of the Lord.” Counsel has three parts. One takes its examples from times past: for instance, what the Hebrews suffered when they worshiped the golden calf, and what they suffered when they committed sexual immorality, and the like. Another is understood from the present, as perceived by the senses, as was said to those who asked the Lord, “Are you the Christ, or are we to wait for another?”: “Go and tell John: the blind see again, the deaf hear, lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised; and blessed is whoever is not offended in me.”

This, then, is what David said in prophecy: “As we have heard, so we have seen.” The third part of counsel is drawn from the future, by which he bids us guard against what will come; as it is said: “Those who have fallen into sins will be cast into the outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” and the like. From this it is plain that the Lord, going through every kind of treatment, calls humanity to salvation. By consolation he soothes sins, lessening desire and at the same time giving hope of salvation. For he says through Ezekiel: “If you turn back with your whole heart and say, Father, I will hear you as a holy people.” And again he says: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” and what follows, which the Lord speaks in his own person. Most clearly he calls to goodness through Solomon, saying: “Blessed is the man who has found wisdom, and the mortal who has found understanding.” For the good is found by the one who seeks, and is wont to be seen by the one who finds. And through Jeremiah he explains understanding, saying, “Blessed are we, Israel, for what pleases God is known to us”: known through the Word, through whom we are blessed and understanding. For understanding is said to be knowledge through the same prophet, who says, “Hear, O Israel, the commandments of life; give ear to learn understanding.” And through Moses he also promises a gift, out of his love for humankind, to those who hasten to salvation: “And I will bring you into the good land, which the Lord swore to your fathers”; and besides, he says through Isaiah, “And I will bring you to the holy mountain and make you glad.”

There is another kind of his instruction too: the beatitude. “Blessed is he,” he says through David, “who has not sinned; and he will be like the tree planted by the streams of water, which will give its fruit in its season, and its leaf will not fall” (this he hinted with a view to the resurrection too), “and whatever he does will prosper.” He wants us to become such, so that we may be blessed. On the other hand, showing the counterweight on the scale of justice, he says: “Not so the ungodly, not so, but like the dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth.” By showing the penalty of sinners, and how easily they are scattered and blown away, the Instructor turned us from the fault by means of the penalty; and holding up the deserved punishment, he showed the kindness of his benefaction, calling us most skillfully, by this means, to the use and possession of good things. He also calls us to knowledge through Jeremiah, saying: “If you had walked in the way of God, you would have dwelt in peace forever.” Here, showing the reward of knowledge, he calls the intelligent to love it; and granting pardon to the one who has gone astray, he says, “Turn back, turn back, as the grape-gatherer to his basket.”

Do you see the goodness of justice, advising repentance? Further, through Jeremiah he lights up the truth for those who are astray: “Thus says the Lord: Stand by the roads and look, and ask for the eternal paths of the Lord, which is the good path, and walk in it, and you will find purification for your souls.” He leads us to repentance for the sake of our salvation. That is why he says: “If you repent, the Lord will cleanse your heart and the heart of your seed.” We could have brought in as advocates in this inquiry the philosophers who say that only the perfect man is praiseworthy and that the bad man is blameworthy. But since some slander the Blessed One as having no concerns himself and causing none to anyone else, not understanding his love for humankind, and because of these and of those who still do not attach justice to the good, this argument has been passed over by us. For it would follow that we should say that the reproving and blaming kind of instruction suits human beings, since they say that all human beings are bad; and God alone is wise, from whom wisdom comes, and alone perfect, and for that reason

alone is praiseworthy. But I do not use this argument; rather I say that praise and blame, or something like praise and blame, are the most necessary medicines of all for human beings. Those who are hard to cure are beaten out like iron by fire and hammer and anvil, that is, by threat, reproof, and censure; while those who give heed to faith itself, being as it were self-taught and of good will, grow by praise: “For virtue, when praised, grows like a tree.” And it seems to me that Pythagoras of Samos understood this when he commanded: “When you have done base things, rebuke yourself; but when good, rejoice.” Reprimanding is also called admonishing (nouthetein); and admonition (nouthetēsis) is, by etymology, putting sense (nous) into the mind, so that the reprimanding kind is a gaining of sense. Countless precepts have been devised for the acquisition of good things and the avoidance of evil. “For there is no peace for the ungodly, says the Lord.” That is why he commands the infants through Solomon to be on guard: “Son, do not let sinners lead you astray, nor walk in their ways; do not go if they call you, saying: Come with us, share in innocent blood; let us unjustly hide a righteous man in the earth; let us swallow him alive like Hades.”

This is prophesied of the Lord's passion as well. And through Ezekiel Life itself sets out the commandments: “The soul that sins shall die. But the man who is righteous, who does righteousness, will not eat on the mountains, and has not lifted his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel; he will not defile his neighbor's wife, nor come near a woman in her impurity; he will not oppress anyone, but will restore the debtor's pledge, and will not seize plunder; he will give his bread to the hungry and clothe the naked; he will not lend his money at interest nor take increase; he will turn his hand from injustice and execute true justice between a man and his neighbor; he has walked in my statutes and kept my ordinances to do them: this man is righteous, he shall surely live, says the Lord.” These words contain an outline of the Christian way of life, and a notable exhortation to the blessed life, the reward of a good life, eternal life.

The manner of his love for humankind and of his instruction has now been shown as far as we could. That is why, explaining himself most beautifully, he likened himself to “a grain of mustard seed,” hinting at the spiritual nature of the Word that is sown, its abundant nature, the magnificence and easy growth of its rational power, and also that the sting and cleansing power of his censure is beneficial through its sharpness. By the small grain spoken of figuratively he gives a great gift, salvation, to all humanity. Honey, which is very sweet, generates bile, as goodness generates contempt, which is the cause of sinning; but mustard lessens bile, that is, anger, and cuts through phlegm, that is, arrogance. From this Word come the true health of the soul and its eternal good temper. Of old, then, the Word instructed through Moses, and afterward through the prophets too; and Moses is also a prophet. For the law is the instruction of unruly children. “Having eaten their fill,” it says, “they rose up to play,” calling it a fill of fodder (chortasma), the irrational filling with food, not a meal.

But since, glutted irrationally, they played irrationally, the law and fear followed them, to check their sins and urge them to good deeds, preparing them to listen to the true Instructor, that is, to obedience; the Word being one and the same, adapting himself to what was pressing. For Paul says that “the law was given as an instructor to Christ,” so that it is plain from this that the one only true, good, and just Instructor is Jesus, the Son in the image and likeness of the Father, the Word of God, to whom God has handed us over, as a loving father entrusts his children to a genuine tutor, expressly commanding us: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” The divine Instructor is trustworthy, adorned with the three finest things: knowledge, goodwill, and freedom of speech. Knowledge, because he is the Father's wisdom: “All wisdom is from the Lord and is with him forever.” Freedom of speech, because he is God and Creator: “For all things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be.” Goodwill, because he alone has given himself as a sacrifice for us: “For the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,” and indeed he laid it down. And goodwill is nothing other than wishing good to one's neighbor for his own sake.

Now that this has been set out, it would follow that our Instructor Jesus should sketch for us the true life and instruct the human being who is in Christ. His character is neither very fearsome nor quite relaxed by kindness. He gives commandments, and at the same time shapes them so that we can carry them out. And it seems to me that he himself formed the human being from dust, regenerated him by water, made him grow by the Spirit, and instructs him by the word, directing him by holy commandments to adoption and salvation, so that, transforming the earthborn by stages into a holy and heavenly human being, he may above all fulfill that divine saying: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” Christ has become the fullness of what God said, while the rest of humankind is understood to be in the image only. But let us, children of a good Father, nurslings of a good Instructor, fulfill the Father's will, listen to the Word, and truly take the impress of the saving life of our Savior. Practicing even now the heavenly way of life, by which we are deified, let us anoint ourselves with the ever-fresh ointment of gladness and the pure ointment of fragrance, having the Lord's way of life as a clear example of incorruption, and following in the footsteps of God. To him alone it belongs to consider, and indeed he cares, how and in what way human life may become healthier. He prepares us for self-sufficiency and simplicity of life, and for an unencumbered, ready readiness for the journey to the eternity of a good life, teaching each of us to be his own storehouse. “Do not be anxious,” he says, “about tomorrow,” meaning that the one enrolled with Christ must take up a life that is self-sufficient, serving itself, and lived from day to day.

For we are instructed not in war but in peace. War needs much preparation, and luxury requires abundance; but peace and love, simple and quiet sisters, need no weapons and no extravagant preparation. The Word is their food, the Word to whom the guidance that shows and instructs has been allotted, from whom we learn frugality and freedom from arrogance, and the whole love of freedom, of humanity, and of the beautiful, in a word, being made like God through kinship with virtue. Labor, then, and do not grow weary; for you will be such as you do not hope for, nor could even imagine. As there is one training of philosophers, another of orators, and another of wrestlers, so there is a noble disposition, suited to a will that loves the beautiful, which comes from the instruction of Christ; and trained in its activity, our walk, our reclining, our food, our sleep, our bed, our way of life, and the rest of our conduct appear dignified. For such training is not overstrained

but well tuned. So the Word is also called Savior, since he has found for human beings these rational medicines for good sense and salvation: watching for the right moment, reproving the harm, explaining the causes of the passions, cutting out the roots of irrational desires, commanding what we must abstain from, and bringing all the antidotes of salvation to the sick. For this is the greatest and most royal work of God: to save humanity. The sick are annoyed with a physician who gives them no advice for their health; how then should we not acknowledge the greatest gratitude to the divine Instructor, who does not keep silent nor overlook the disobediences that lead to destruction, but reproves them, checks the impulses that tend toward them, and teaches the precepts proper for right conduct? We must acknowledge the greatest gratitude to him. For what else do we say the rational animal, I mean the human being, must do, but contemplate the divine? And I say that he must also contemplate human nature, and live as the truth directs, greatly admiring both the Instructor himself and his commandments, since they befit and suit each other. After this pattern we too must fit ourselves to the Instructor, making our speech agree with our deeds, and truly live.

Everything contrary to right reason is sin. The philosophers, for instance, think fit to define the most general passions in this way: desire as an appetite disobedient to reason; fear as an aversion disobedient to reason; pleasure as an elation of the soul disobedient to reason; grief as a contraction of the soul disobedient to reason. If, then, disobedience to reason begets sin, how can obedience to the Word, which we call faith, not necessarily produce what is called duty? For virtue itself is a disposition of the soul in harmony with reason throughout the whole of life. Indeed, most important of all, they define philosophy itself as the cultivation of right reason; so that everything done amiss necessarily arises through a failure of reason, and is rightly called sin (hamartēma, “missing the mark”).

When the first man sinned and disobeyed God, it says, “man became like the beasts”; having sinned against reason, he is rightly thought irrational and likened to beasts. Hence Wisdom too says: “A lustful man and an adulterer is a horse for breeding,” likened to an irrational beast; and so it adds: “He neighs under everyone who sits on him.” The man no longer speaks, it says; for one who sins against reason is no longer rational, but an irrational beast given up to desires, on whom all pleasures sit. What is rightly done in obedience to the Word the followers of the Stoics call the fitting and the duty (kathēkon). The duty is what is fitting; obedience is founded on commandments; and these, being the same as precepts and having truth as their aim, lead us to the last object of desire, which is understood as the end. The end of godliness is eternal rest in God, and our end is the beginning of eternity. The right action of godliness accomplishes duty by works; so duties rightly consist in actions, not in words. And the action of the Christian is the activity of the rational soul according to sound judgment and desire for truth, carried out through the body, its natural partner and fellow combatant. Duty is a consistent will in life, one with God and Christ, rightly carried out for eternal life. For the life of Christians, in which we are now being instructed, is a system of rational actions, that is, the unfailing practice of what the Word teaches, which

we have called faith. The system is the Lord's commandments, which, being divine doctrines, have been written down for us as spiritual precepts, suited both to ourselves and to our neighbors; and they rebound on us, as a ball bounces back to the thrower from the wall. So duties are necessary for divine instruction, as commanded by God and provided for salvation. And since of necessary things some concern only life here, while others lift us from here to living well there, so too, correspondingly, some duties are ordered to living, others to living well. What is commanded for ordinary life has been made common among the many; but what fits living well, from which that eternal life comes, may be considered in outline, gathered from the Scriptures themselves.

Keeping to our aim, then, and selecting the Scriptures that bear on the usefulness of instruction for life, we must sketch in outline what the one called a Christian ought to be through the whole of life. We must begin, then, with ourselves, and with how we ought to order ourselves. Aiming at the proportion of our treatise, we must say how each of us should behave toward his own body, or rather how he should direct it. For when someone, led by the Word from external things, and from the care of the body itself, to the mind, has accurately learned to contemplate what happens to the human being by nature, he will know not to be eager about external things, but to cleanse what is proper to the human being, the eye of the soul, and to purify the flesh itself. For one who has been cleanly released from the things by which he is still dust, what better has he than himself for going on the way to the comprehension of God? Other people live to eat, as indeed the irrational animals do, whose life is nothing but the belly; but the Instructor commands us to eat so that we may live.

For food is not our business, nor pleasure our aim; food is admitted for the sake of our continuance here, which the Word is training for incorruption. This food is simple and plain, suited to truth, fitting for simple and plain children, as being suited to living, not to luxury. And this living is made up of two things, health and strength, to which easy food is most suited, useful for digestion and for lightness of body; from it come growth, health, and strength that is right, not wrong or precarious and wretched like that of athletes from forced feeding. The many kinds of dishes are to be spat out, since they breed various harms: bad condition of the body, upset stomachs, the taste being debauched by an ill-starred art of cookery and the vain art of pastry. For they dare to call food the pursuit of luxuries that slides into harmful pleasures. Antiphanes, the physician of Delos, said that this variety of dishes is one of the causes of disease, when people, dissatisfied with the truth, forswear moderation in diet out of varied vanity, and go searching for foods from across the sea.

(… foods from across the sea.) For my part I feel pity for their disease; but they are not ashamed to sing the praises of their own luxuries, searching out the lampreys of the Strait of Sicily, the eels of the Maeander, the kids of Melos, the mullets of Sciathus, the mussels of Pelorus, the oysters of Abydos; not leaving out the sprats of Lipara, or the Mantinean turnip, or even the beets of the Ascraeans. They seek out the scallops of Methymna, the Attic turbot, the thrushes of Daphnis, and the swallow figs for which the ill-starred Persian marched into Greece with five million men. Besides these they buy birds from the Phasis, Egyptian francolins, the Median peacock. The gluttons, altering these with sauces, gape for the dishes, procuring for their gluttony “whatever the earth and the depths of the sea and the immeasurable expanse of air produce.” These greedy busybodies seem simply to sweep the world with a net for their luxury, surrounded by “hissing frying-pans,” spending their whole life around the mortar and pestle, devouring everything, clinging to matter like fire.

They even make effeminate that easy food, bread, sifting out the nourishing part of the wheat, so that what is necessary in food becomes a reproach to pleasure. Gluttony has no limit among human beings. It has run aground on cakes and honey pastries and sweetmeats, inventing a host of desserts, hunting for every kind of dish. Such a man seems to me nothing but a jaw. “Do not desire,” says Scripture, “the dishes of the rich; for these belong to a false and shameful life.” They cling to dishes which the latrine soon receives; but we, who seek the heavenly food, must rule the belly beneath the heavens, and still more what is attached to it, which “God will destroy,” says the apostle, rightly cursing gluttonous desires. “For foods are for the belly,” and on them this truly fleshly and destructive life depends. And if some, with unbridled tongue, dare to call by the name of agapē (love) certain little suppers reeking of the savor of meat and sauces, insulting the good and saving work of the Word, the sanctified agapē, with pots and streams of sauce, blaspheming the name with drink and luxury and smoke, they are mistaken in their idea, expecting to buy God's promise with little suppers. For gatherings for the sake of good cheer we too would reckon as little suppers and dinners and receptions, and would rightly call such a meeting so, following the Word; but the Lord did not call such feasts “love feasts” (agapai). He says in one place: “When you are invited to a wedding, do not recline in the place of honor, but when you are invited, recline in the lowest place”; in another: “When you give a dinner or a supper”; and again: “But when you give a reception, invite the poor,” for whom above all a supper should be made; and further:

“A certain man gave a great supper and invited many.” But I see where the fine-sounding name of suppers flowed from: from gullets and the madness of going to dinner, as the comic poet says. “For truly most things for most people are for the sake of dinner.” They have not learned that God prepared food and drink for his creature, the human being I mean, for the sake of being kept alive, not for pleasure; since bodies are not by nature benefited by expensive foods. Quite the contrary: those who use the cheapest foods are stronger, healthier, and nobler, as servants are than masters and farmers than landowners; and not only more robust but wiser too, as philosophers than the rich; for they have not buried the mind under food nor deceived it with pleasures. But love is truly heavenly food, a rational feast: “It bears all things, endures all things, hopes all things; love never fails.” “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.” The hardest fall of all is for love, which does not fall, to be thrown from heaven above to the ground among the sauces. And do you think I consider a supper, which is done away with, to be love? “For if I give away all my goods,” it says, “but have not love, I am nothing.”

The whole law and the Word depend on this love; and if you love the Lord your God and your neighbor, this is the heavenly feast in heaven. The earthly one is called a supper, as has been shown from Scripture: a supper that takes place because of love, but the supper is not love; it is a sign of sharing and generous goodwill. “Let not your good, then, be spoken evil of. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink,” says the apostle, so that the daily meal may be understood, “but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

Whoever eats of this meal will gain the best of all things, the kingdom of God, having practiced here the holy assembly of love, the heavenly church. Love, then, is a pure thing and worthy of God, and its work is sharing. “Care for instruction is love,” says Wisdom, “and love is the keeping of her laws.” These festivities have a spark of love, accustoming us through common food to eternal food. Love, then, is not a supper; but let the feast depend on love. “For let your sons, whom you loved, O Lord, learn,” it says, “that it is not the growing of crops that nourishes a man, but your word preserves those who believe in you”; for the righteous man will not live by bread. Let our supper be plain and light, suited to wakefulness, unmixed with various dishes; nor is this without instruction. For love, a good nurse of the young, has a rich provision for fellowship, self-sufficiency, which, presiding over food measured in just quantity, directs the body wholesomely and shares something of itself with neighbors; while a diet that overflows self-sufficiency harms the human being, making the soul sluggish and the body liable to disease. Indeed, the pleasures of rich sauces bring on hard-to-bear names of reproach: daintiness, gluttony, fish-hunger, insatiability, voracity. Proper to these names are flies and weasels, flatterers and gladiators, and “the wild tribes of parasites,” who have sold for the pleasure of the belly, some their reason, some their friendship, some their life, crawling on their bellies, beasts in human form, in the image of their father, the dainty beast. Those who first called them asōtoi (“profligates”) seem to me to hint at their end, understanding them as asōstoi (“not to be saved”), by the dropping of the letter sigma.

For are not these the people busy with dishes and the foolish elaborations of sauces, the base-minded and earthborn, pursuing the life of a day as if they would not live? The Holy Spirit pronounces them wretched through Isaiah, quietly withdrawing the name of love, since the feast was not according to reason: “But they made merry, slaughtering calves and sacrificing sheep, saying, Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” And that he counts such luxury as sin, he adds: “And this sin of yours shall not be forgiven until you die,” judging, not that senseless death is forgiveness of sin, but that death from salvation is the repayment of sin. “Do not delight in a little luxury,” says Wisdom. Here we must also mention the so-called things sacrificed to idols, and in what way we are commanded to abstain from them. Those things seem to me foul and abominable, over whose blood flit “the souls from Erebus of the dead who have died.” “For I do not want you to become partners of demons,” says the apostle, since the foods of the saved and of those who perish are different. We must abstain from them, then, not out of fear (for there is no power in them), but out of regard for our conscience, which is holy, and loathing the demons to whose names they are dedicated because of their foulness; and further, because of the weakness of those who take many things unsteadily, “whose conscience, being weak, is defiled.

For food will not commend us to God.” “Nor does what goes in defile a man,” he says, “but what comes out of the mouth.” The natural use of food, then, is indifferent: “For neither if we eat are we the better,” he says, “nor if we do not eat are we the worse.” But it is not reasonable for those who have been counted worthy to partake of divine and spiritual food to share in “the table of demons.” “Do we not have the right to eat and drink,” says the apostle, “and to take wives about with us?” But clearly, by mastering pleasures, we restrain desires. “Take care, then, lest this right of yours become a stumbling block to the weak.” We must not, like prodigals, after the image of the rich man's son in the Gospel, misuse the Father's gifts, but use them without attachment, as masters; for we were appointed to reign and to rule, not to be slaves to food. It is admirable, then, to look up to the truth, to cling to the divine food from above, and to be filled with the inexhaustible contemplation of him who truly is, tasting the firm, abiding, and pure pleasure. The eating of Christ shows that we must receive this love. But it is utterly irrational, useless, and not human, to be fed for death like fattened cattle, those from the earth always looking down to the earth and stooping over tables, pursuing the dainty life, burying the good here in a life that will not last, flattering only the swallowing, for the sake of which cooks have become more valued than farmers.

We do not do away with social intercourse, but we regard the slippery slope of habit with suspicion, as a calamity. So we must decline daintiness, partaking of a few necessary things. And if one of the unbelievers invites us and we decide to go (for it is good not to mix with the disorderly), he commands us to eat whatever is set before us, “asking no questions for conscience's sake”; and likewise he ordered us to buy what is sold in the meat market without inquiry. We must not, then, abstain altogether from various foods, but we must not be eager about them. We should partake of what is set before us, as befits a Christian, honoring the host by a harmless and moderate sharing in the gathering, regarding the expense of what is brought in as indifferent, and despising the dishes, which will shortly be gone. “Let not the one who eats despise the one who does not eat, and let not the one who does not eat judge the one who eats.” A little further on he explains the reason for the precept: “The one who eats, eats to the Lord and gives thanks to God; and the one who does not eat, abstains to the Lord and gives thanks to God,” so that righteous food is thanksgiving (eucharistia); and the one who always gives thanks is not occupied with pleasures. And if we would urge any of our fellow guests to virtue, we should abstain all the more from these dainty foods, presenting ourselves as a clear example of virtue, as we ourselves have Christ. “For if any such food makes my brother stumble,” he says, “I will never eat it, so that I may not make my brother stumble,” gaining the human being by a little self-control. “Do we not have the right to eat and drink?” And “we know the truth,” he says, “that an idol is nothing in the world, but there is truly only one God for us, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus.” But “by your knowledge,” he says, “the weak brother is destroyed, for whom Christ died; and those who wound the conscience of weak brothers sin against Christ.” So the apostle, taking care for us, distinguishes suppers, saying “not to associate”: “if anyone called a brother is found to be sexually immoral or an adulterer or an idolater, not even to eat with such a one,” whether in speech or at table, suspecting the defilement from it, as also from the tables of demons.

“It is good not to eat meat nor to drink wine,” he himself admits, and so do the followers of Pythagoras; for this belongs rather to beasts, and the vapor from meat, being more turbid, darkens the soul. But if anyone partakes of these, he does not sin; only let him partake with self-control, not clinging to them nor dependent on them, nor greedy for the dish; for a voice will sound in his ears, saying, “Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food.” It is very foolish to marvel and gape at what is set before us at public feasts after the luxury of the Word; and much more foolish to enslave our eyes to the dainties, our incontinence being carried around, so to speak, by the servants along with them. How is it not unseemly to rise up from one's couch, all but throwing one's face into the dishes, leaning out from the couch as from a nest, as the saying goes, to catch the wandering steam with one's breath? How is it not irrational to smear one's hands in the sauces, or to reach constantly for the dish, not tasting but snatching, filling oneself immoderately and indecently? One can see such people more like pigs or dogs than human beings for their greed, hurrying to be stuffed, so that both cheeks swell at once and the vessels about the face stand out, and besides they are drenched with sweat, gripped by insatiability and panting from incontinence, the food being thrust with unsociable haste into the belly, as if they were storing up provisions for a journey, not digesting.

Excess, which is evil everywhere, is exposed most of all in the matter of food. Gourmandise is nothing but excess in the use of delicacies; gluttony is madness about the gullet; and belly-madness is incontinence about food, and, as the name implies, madness about the belly, since margos means mad. So the apostle, checking those who practice wrongdoing at a feast, says: “For each one goes ahead with his own supper in eating, and one is hungry and another is drunk. Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?” Among those who have, those who eat without restraint, the insatiable, shame themselves; and both do wrong: the one, by burdening those who have nothing; the other, by exposing their incontinence before those who have. So, of necessity, addressing those who have lost all shame and use suppers too freely, the insatiable, for whom nothing is enough, the apostle again broke out in an indignant voice: “So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.

If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that you may not come together for judgment.” We must abstain, then, from all servility and incontinence, touching what is set before us decorously, keeping hand and couch and chin unsoiled, preserving the good form of the face undistorted, not behaving indecently in swallowing either; but we should stretch out the hand in order and at intervals. … We must also guard against saying anything while eating; for the voice becomes unseemly and indistinct when confined by full cheeks, and the tongue, pressed by food and hindered in its natural action, gives out a crushed utterance. Nor is it fitting to eat and drink at the same time; for it is the height of incontinence to confuse the times of things whose uses do not agree. And “whether you eat,” he says, “or drink, do all to the glory of God,” aiming at true frugality, which the Lord too seems to me to have hinted at when he blessed the loaves and the broiled fish with which he feasted the disciples, introducing a fine example of simple food.

(… example of simple food.) And that fish which Peter caught at the Lord's command also hints at easy, God-given, and temperate food. He advises us to take away from those who come up out of the water to the bait of righteousness their profligacy and love of money, like the coin from the fish, so as to separate them from vainglory; and, giving the stater to the tax collectors, rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's, to keep for God what is God's. The stater could have other interpretations, not unknown to us, but the present is not the right time to work them out. It is enough to recall it, using for our purpose flowers of the Word that are in tune with it, as we have often done already, drawing the most useful spring to the urgent point of the inquiry, to water what the Word has planted. For even if “I am permitted to partake of all things, not all things are profitable”; for those who do everything that is permitted quickly fall into doing what is not permitted. As justice does not come from greed, nor self-control from licentiousness, so the Christian's way of life is not acquired by luxury; for the table of truth is far from “lewd dishes.” For even if all things were made above all for the sake of human beings, it is not good to use all things, nor always. The occasion, the time, the manner, and the purpose give no small weight toward what is profitable for one being instructed; and what is fitting has power to do away with the life devoted to the belly, which wealth tends to call forth: not a wealth that sees sharply, but an abundance blind about gluttony. No one is poor in necessities, nor is a human being ever overlooked; for there is one who nourishes the birds and the fish and, in a word, the irrational animals: God; and they lack nothing at all, though they take no thought for food. And we are better than they, as their masters, and nearer to God, as more self-controlled. We were not made to eat and drink, but to exist, having been made for the knowledge of God. “For the righteous man,” it says, “eats and satisfies his soul, but the bellies of the ungodly are in want,” craving unceasing daintiness.

Costliness is suited not to solitary enjoyment but to sharing with others. So we must guard against foods that persuade us to eat when we are not hungry, bewitching the appetite. Is there not, even in temperate frugality, a healthy variety of foods? Bulbs, olives, some vegetables, milk, cheese, fruits, and all kinds of cooked dishes without sauces. And if roast or boiled meat is needed, it may be taken. “Have you anything to eat here?” the Lord said to the disciples after the resurrection. “And they” (having been taught by him to practice frugality) “gave him a piece of broiled fish; and he ate before them and said to them,” says Luke, what he said. Besides, those who dine according to reason should not be kept without their share of sweetmeats and honeycombs. Of foods, the most suitable are those that can be used at once without fire, since they are also readier; and second, as we said, the cheaper ones. But those who stoop over steaming tables, nursing their own passions, are led by a most dainty demon, whom I would not be ashamed to call a “belly-demon” [and] the worst and most ruinous of demons. He is very like the one called a ventriloquist (“belly-speaker”). It is much better to be happy (eudaimōn, “with a good daimon”) than to have a demon as housemate; and happiness is found in the practice of virtue.

The apostle Matthew partook of seeds, nuts, and vegetables, without meat; and John, exceeding in self-control, “ate locusts and wild honey.” Peter abstained from pork; but “a trance fell upon him,” as is written in the Acts of the Apostles, “and he sees heaven opened and a vessel let down to the earth by four corners, and in it all the four-footed animals and creeping things of the earth and birds of the air; and a voice came to him, Rise, kill and eat. But Peter said, By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common or unclean. And the voice came to him again a second time, What God has cleansed, do not call common.” For us too, then, the use of food is indifferent. “For it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man,” but a vain opinion about incontinence. For God, when he formed man, said, “All things shall be food for you.” “Better vegetables with love than a calf with deceit”: this recalls well what was said before, that love is not the vegetables, but suppers are to be taken with love. The middle state is good in all things, and not least in the preparation of meals; since extremes are dangerous, but means are good.

The mean is whatever lacks none of the necessities; for natural appetites are limited by sufficiency. To the Jews frugality was enjoined through the law with great wisdom; for the Instructor, through Moses, took away from them the use of a great many things, attaching reasons, the spiritual ones hidden, the fleshly ones plain, which they believed: to some animals, that they do not have divided hooves; to others, that they do not chew the cud; to others, that they alone of water creatures do not have scales; so that very few indeed were left them suitable for food. And of those he allowed them to touch, he again forbade what had died of itself, what was offered to idols, and what was strangled; it was not lawful to touch even these. For since it is impossible for one who uses pleasant things to refrain from accepting them, he set against this the opposite training, until he should break the habitual rush toward luxury. In human beings pleasure has bred much harm and pain, and overfeeding begets in the soul sluggishness, forgetfulness, and folly.

They say too that children's bodies grow well and increase in height when their food is scanty; for the breath that runs up into growth is not hindered by much food blocking the free passage of its course. So Plato, the philosopher who most zealously sought the truth, kindling the spark of Hebrew philosophy, condemning the luxurious life, says: “When I came, the life called happy there, full of Italian and Syracusan tables, did not please me at all: to live filling oneself twice a day and never sleeping alone at night, and all the practices that go with this life. For from these no one under heaven could ever become wise, practicing such things from youth, nor will he be blended with so wonderful a nature.” For Plato was not unacquainted with David, who, setting up the holy ark in his city in the middle of the tent, made merry with all the people under him, and “before the Lord distributed to all the host of Israel, from man to woman, to each a loaf of bread, a cake baked on the hearth, and a pancake from the pan.” This was sufficient food, the food of Israel; the food of the nations is excessive. The one who uses it “would never even be likely to become self-controlled,” having buried his mind in his belly, very like the fish called the ass, which alone of all animals, Aristotle says, has its heart in its stomach. Epicharmus the comic poet calls it “belly-turned.” Such are the people who have put their faith in the belly, “whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.” For them the apostle foretold no good, saying, “whose end is destruction.”

“Use a little wine,” the apostle says to Timothy, who drank only water, “for the sake of your stomach,” very rightly offering a suitable astringent remedy to a sick and flabby body, and prescribing it in small amount, lest the remedy should unawares, by its quantity, need other treatment. The natural, sober, and necessary drink for the thirsty is water. This, streaming down from the flinty rock, the Lord supplied to the Hebrews of old as their one drink of self-control; and those still wandering needed above all to be sober. Afterward the holy vine sprouted the prophetic cluster. This is a sign to those who have been instructed and led from wandering into rest: the great cluster, the Word, crushed for us, the Word wishing “the blood of the grape” to be mixed with water, as his blood is mixed with salvation. The blood of the Lord is twofold: one is fleshly, by which we have been redeemed from corruption; the other spiritual, that is, by which we have been anointed.

And this is to drink the blood of Jesus: to partake of the Lord's incorruption. The Spirit is the strength of the Word, as blood is of flesh. Correspondingly, then, wine is mixed with water, and the Spirit with the human being; the mixture nourishes to faith, and the Spirit leads to incorruption; and the mingling of both again, of the drink and of the Word, is called Eucharist, a praised and beautiful grace; those who partake of it in faith are sanctified in body and soul, since the Father's will mystically mingles the divine mixture, the human being, with Spirit and Word. For truly the Spirit is joined to the soul, which is carried by him, and the flesh to the Word, for whose sake “the Word became flesh.” I admire, then, those who have chosen an austere life and long for water, the medicine of self-control, fleeing as far as possible from wine as from the threat of fire. It is right that boys and girls should for the most part keep away from this medicine; for it is not suitable to pour on a seething age the hottest of liquids, wine, like channeling fire onto fire. From it wild impulses, burning desires, and a fiery character are kindled; and the young, heated from within, become rash toward their appetites, so that their harm is plainly shown through the body, the members of desire ripening sooner than is fitting. When wine boils up, breasts and private parts swell and are shamelessly aroused, proclaiming already an image of sexual immorality; the body is compelled to inflame the wound of the soul, and shameless pulses pursue curiosity, calling the orderly person to lawlessness.

Thereupon the new wine of youth overflows the bounds of modesty. We must try, as far as possible, to quench the impulses of the young, taking away the fuel, the threatening Bacchic element, and pouring on the antidote to the boiling, which will restrain the soul already smoldering, check the swelling members, and put to sleep the irritation of desire already stirred. Grown men, when they take a midday meal, if a midday meal suits them, should eat only bread and abstain from drink altogether, so that their superfluous moisture may be absorbed and sponged up by dry food. For constant spitting, blowing the nose, and hurrying to relieve oneself are a sign of incontinence, when the fluids overflow in the body from immoderate intake.

If thirst comes on, let them relieve it with a little water; for it is not fitting to fill oneself unrestrainedly with water either, lest the food be washed through instead of being ground down for digestion, the food being assigned to the body's mass and very little of it passing out in excretion. And in any case it is fitting for those occupied with divine concerns not to be heavy with wine; for “neat wine,” as the comic poet says, “compels one to think little,” to say nothing of self-control. Toward evening, at supper time, wine may be used, when we are no longer occupied with the more sober readings. Then the air too becomes colder than in the day, so that we need to nourish the failing natural warmth with heat from outside; but here too with a little wine, for we must not go on to the bowls of outrage. Those who are already past their prime may be allowed to partake of drink more cheerfully, harmlessly rekindling with the medicine of the vine the chill of age, withering as it were with time; for the appetites of the old are not, for the most part, still tossed by the shipwrecks of drunkenness. Anchored, as it were, by reason and by time, they bear more easily the storm of desires that rushes down from drunkenness; and perhaps they may even be permitted some jesting at feasts. But for them too let the limit of drinking be the point at which they keep their reasoning unshaken, their memory active, and their body unmoved and unshaken by wine; those skilled in these matters call this state “slightly tipsy.” It is good, then, to stop beforehand, for fear of slipping.

A certain Artorius, in his book On Long Life, as I remember, thinks that one should drink only enough to moisten the food, so that we may obtain a longer life. It is fitting, then, for some to take wine as a treatment, only for health, and for others for relaxation and cheer. For wine first makes the drinker more gracious to himself than before, and gentle to his fellow drinkers, milder to his servants, and more agreeable to his friends; but when abused, it repays the outrage. Being warm and having sweet juices, when mixed in due measure, it melts by its heat the sticky residues, and tempers the sharp and bad humors with its fragrance. So it was well said: “Wine drunk in sufficiency was created from the beginning as the gladness of the soul and heart.” It is best to mix wine with as much water as possible, so that it may be blunted against drunkenness [and not be sought like water], and not be poured in like water through love of wine. For both are God's works, and the mixing of both, water and wine, contributes to health in this way, because life consists of the necessary and the useful.

(… of the necessary and the useful.) With the necessary, water, then, as much as possible, some of the useful should be mixed. But with immoderate wine the tongue is hampered, the lips are loosened, the eyes turn aside, the sight swimming, as it were, in the abundance of moisture; and, forced into error, they think everything is going round in a circle, and cannot count distant things as single: “And indeed I seem to see two suns,” said the old Theban when drunk. For sight, moved by the heat of the wine, imagines the one substance many times over. It makes no difference whether the eye or the object seen is moved; for the eye suffers the same from both, being unable, because of the tossing, to grasp its object exactly. And the feet are carried off as by a current, and hiccups, vomiting, and delirium come reveling in. For “every man flushed with wine,” according to tragedy, “is overcome by anger and empty of mind, and, pouring out much talk in vain, he is wont to hear unwillingly the evil he spoke willingly.” And before tragedy, Wisdom cried out: “Wine drunk in excess multiplies provocation and every fall.”

So most people say that at drinking parties one should relax and put off serious matters until the morning. But I think it right to bring in the Word then above all, to share the feast and to instruct the love of wine, lest the feast slip unawares into drunkenness. For as no one in his right mind would think of closing his eyes before going to sleep, so no one could rightly wish the Word to be absent from the banquet, nor would one do well to put him to sleep before our actions. Indeed the Word will never be able to leave his own, not even when we sleep; for he must be called to our sleep too. For wisdom, being perfect knowledge of divine and human things, embracing the whole, becomes, insofar as it oversees the flock of humankind, an art of living, and so it is present everywhere as long as we live, always fulfilling its proper work, a good life. But the ill-starred who drive self-control away from their feasts think the disorder of banquets a blessed life; for them life is nothing but revelry, hangover, baths, neat wine, chamber pots, idleness, drinking.

One can see some of them half-drunk, staggering, with garlands around their necks like wine jars, spitting neat wine at one another in the name of loving toasts; and others full of last night's excess, unwashed, pale, their faces livid, and still, on top of yesterday's drunkenness, drawing up another drunkenness in the morning. It is good, friends, it is good, having observed this ridiculous and pitiable picture from as far away as possible, to shape ourselves for the better, fearing lest we too somehow become a similar spectacle and laughingstock to others. So it has been well said: “As the furnace tests the temper of steel by dipping, so wine tests the heart of the proud in drunkenness.”

Drunkenness is the immoderate use of neat wine; drunken misbehavior is the disorder that comes from that use; and crapulence (kraipalē) is the discomfort and nausea after drunkenness, named from the shaking of the head (kara pallein). Divine Wisdom, viewing this life, if it should be called life, which is idle, stirred up for luxuries and excited by the love of wine, commands her children: “Do not be a wine-bibber, nor stretch yourself out at banquets and meat-buying; for every drunkard and whoremonger will become poor, and every sleepy one will be clothed in rags.” For everyone is sleepy who is not awake to wisdom but is plunged into sleep by drunkenness. And the drunkard, it says, will be clothed in rags; he will be put to shame by his drunkenness before those who see him. For the rents are the sinner's holes, the tears in the fleshly fabric, bored through by love of pleasure, through which the shame within the soul is seen, the sin; because of which the fabric, torn on every side and rotting into many desires, torn away from salvation, will not easily be saved. So, most admonishingly, it adds: “Who has woe? Who has tumult? Who has judgment? Who has unpleasant talk? Who has wounds without cause?” You see the lover of wine entirely in rags, who overlooks the Word himself and has given himself up to drunkenness, all the things with which Scripture threatened him. And again it adds to the threat: “Whose eyes are livid? Is it not those who linger over wine? Is it not those who track down where drinking parties are held?” Here it shows the lover of drink as already dead to the Word, through the livid eyes, a sign that appears on the dead, announcing to him death in the Lord; for forgetfulness of what leads to true

life slides toward corruption. Rightly, then, the Instructor, caring for our salvation, forbids most strictly: “Do not drink wine to drunkenness.” Why, you will ask? “Because,” it says, “your mouth will then speak crooked things, and you will lie as in the heart of the sea, and like a pilot in a great storm.” Poetry, having benefited from this, says: “And wine, which has might equal to fire, when it comes upon men, surges as the north or south wind surges the Libyan sea, and reveals all hidden things, a speaker of wrong words; wine is a slip for the drunken, wine a deceiver of the soul,” and so on. Do you see the danger of shipwreck? The heart is flooded by much drinking; and he likened the mass of wine-bibbing to the threat of the sea, in which the body, sunk like a ship, has gone down into a deep of disorder, buried under the huge waves of wine; while the pilot, the human mind, is carried around by the surge as drunkenness prevails, and, tossing at sea, grows dizzy in the darkness of the storm, missing the harbor of truth, until, striking hidden rocks, it runs itself aground and is destroyed in pleasures.

Rightly, then, the apostle also commands: “Do not get drunk with wine, in which there is much profligacy (asōtia),” hinting through “profligacy” that drunkenness is beyond saving (asōston). For even if he made water into wine at the wedding, he did not permit drunkenness; he gave life to the watery state of mind, † the worker of the law from Adam, filling the whole world with the blood of the vine, the drink of truth, providing the mixture of the old law and the new Word for the fulfilling of the time foreordained for godliness. Scripture, then, called wine the mystic symbol of the holy blood; but reproving the dregs of wine, it says, “Wine is licentious, and drunkenness insolent.” Right reason, then, approves drinking in winter, because of the cold, as much as to keep from shivering, for those who easily shiver; and at other times as treatment for the intestines. For as with food, to keep from hunger, so with drink, to keep from thirst, we must use it, guarding carefully against slipping; for the entry of wine is on the edge of danger. So our soul may be pure, dry, and luminous: “The dry soul is a ray of light, wisest and best.” In this way it is also able to contemplate, and is not soaked through with the vapors of wine, given body like a cloud.

We must not, then, busy ourselves looking for Chian wine if it is absent, or Ariusian when it is not at hand. For thirst is the feeling of a lack, and seeks a suitable remedy to fill it, not a pretentious drink. Wines imported from overseas are for an appetite made flabby by incontinence, the soul being out of its mind about its desires even before drunkenness. Fragrant Thasian, sweet-breathing Lesbian, a sweet Cretan, a pleasant Syracusan, an Egyptian Mendesian, the island Naxian, and another, a flower-scented one, from the land of the Italians: these are many names; but for a self-controlled drinker there is one wine, the tillage of one God. Why is not the local wine enough to satisfy desire? Unless they will also import water, as foolish kings do, the Choaspes water [the Choaspes being a river so called in India, whose water is finest for drinking], bringing water along with them, as they do their friends. Here too the Holy Spirit pronounces the rich in their luxury wretched, crying out through Amos: “Those who drink strained wine,” it says, “and lie on ivory couches,” and the other things that follow, which he added as a reproach.

We must take special care for decorum (the myth says that Athena, whoever she was, out of concern for herself threw away the delight of the flute because of the unseemliness of her face), so as to drink with an undistorted face, not gulping it down to the full, nor, while drinking, forcing our eyes into indecency, draining it at one draught from incontinence; nor pouring it over our beard or soaking our clothes, the drink being poured in all at once, all but washing and drenching our faces in the bowls. For the gurgling, as the drink rushes violently down, drawn in with much breath as if poured into an earthen jar, the throat sounding with the torrent of swallowing, is shameful, and the sight of incontinence unseemly; and besides, heavy drinking is a harmful practice for the one who indulges in it. Do not hurry to your harm, you there. Your drink is not being snatched away; it has been given to you and waits for you. Do not strive to burst yourself by drinking greedily; your thirst is filled even if you drink more slowly, gaining decorum as the drink is taken decorously in portions; for time does not take away what incontinence snatches ahead. “Do not act the man in wine,” it says, “for wine has ruined many.”

“The Scythians, Celts, Iberians, and Thracians, all warlike races, give themselves most to drunkenness, and think it a fine and happy practice.” But let us, the peaceful race, feasting for enjoyment and not for outrage, drink sober toasts of friendship, so that friendships may truly be shown to deserve the name. How do you think the Lord drank, when he became man for our sake? As shamelessly as we do? Not with refinement? Not decorously? Not thoughtfully? For you know well that he himself partook of wine; for he too was man. And he blessed the wine, saying: “Take, drink; this is my blood,” the blood of the vine. He speaks figuratively of the Word, “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins,” as a holy stream of gladness. And that the one who drinks must be self-controlled, he showed clearly by what he taught at feasts; for he did not teach while drunk. That what he blessed was wine, he showed again when he said to the disciples: “I will not drink of this fruit of the vine until I drink it with you in the kingdom of my Father.” And that what the Lord drank was wine, he himself says again of himself, reproaching the hardness of heart of the Jews: “For the Son of Man came,” he says, “and they say, Behold, a glutton and a drunkard,

a friend of tax collectors.” Let this be said by us in passing against the so-called Encratites. Women, affecting decorum, so as not to split their lips by spreading them on wide cups and widening their mouths, drink indecently from alabaster vessels with very narrow mouths, throwing back their heads and baring their necks, not decorously, it seems to me; and stretching the throat as they swallow, they gulp, as if exposing to their fellow drinkers whatever they can; and, bringing up manly belches, or rather slavish ones, they give themselves airs in their wantonness. No noise is proper to a rational man, still less to a woman, for whom even the consciousness of what she is brings shame. “A drunken woman,” it says, “is great wrath,” as if a woman mad for wine were the anger of God. Why? Because “she does not cover her shame.” For a woman is quickly drawn into disorder if she but gives her will over to pleasures. We have not forbidden drinking from alabaster vessels; but we cut off the pretension of drinking only from these, advising them to use without attachment whatever comes to hand, checking their appetites from afar before they slip. The drawing in of air that bursts out in a belch should be let out quietly. In no way should women be allowed to show themselves with any part of the body uncovered, lest both fall: the men, provoked to gaze, and the women, drawing the men's eyes to themselves. We must always behave decorously, as if the Lord were present, lest the apostle be angry with us too, as with the Corinthians, and say: “When you come together it is not to eat the Lord's supper.”

It seems to me that the one called “headless” by the astrologers, counted before the planet †, with its head sunk into its breast, hints at gourmands, pleasure-lovers, and those ready for drunkenness. For in these too the reasoning part is seated not in the head but in the entrails, enslaved to the passions, desire and anger. So, just as Elpenor, falling from drunkenness, “broke his neck,” so their brain, dizzy with drunkenness, falls from above onto the liver and the heart, that is, onto love of pleasure and anger, a greater fall than the one the sons of the poets say Hephaestus was thrown down from heaven to the ground by Zeus. “Distress of sleeplessness,” it says, “and cholera and colic are with the insatiable man.” That is why Noah's drunkenness was written down, so that we might guard as much as possible against drunkenness, having a clear and written image of the fall, because of which those who covered the shame of drunkenness were blessed by the Lord. Most briefly, then, Scripture has summed up everything in one saying: “Wine enough for a well-instructed man; and he will rest on his bed.”

The use of cups made of silver and gold, and of others set with stones, is to be rejected, a mere deception of the eye. For if one pours a warm mixture into them, the vessels get hot and are painful to hold; and if one pours in a cold one, the material imparts its quality, spoiling the mixture, and the rich drink is harmful. Away, then, with Thericlean cups and Antigonids, canthari and labronii and lepastae, and countless kinds of drinking vessels, and wine coolers and wine jugs besides. “For gold and silver, in a word, both privately and publicly, are an envied possession,” exceeding need, rare to acquire, hard to keep, and unsuitable for use. And the elaborate vanity of engravers on glass, more ready to break because of the art, teaching us to fear and to drink at the same time, must be banished from our good order. Silver couches and basins, saucers, plates, and dishes, and besides silver and gold vessels, some for serving food, others for other uses which I am ashamed even to name; tripods worked of “well-split cedar,” citron wood, ebony, and ivory; couches with silver feet and inlaid with ivory, folding doors studded with gold and adorned with tortoise shell; purple coverlets and others of hard-to-get colors, proofs of tasteless luxury, treacherous advantages of envy and effeminacy: all these must be dismissed, having no worth worthy of pursuit. “For the time has been shortened,” as the apostle says.

… it remains that we not be made ridiculous, as some are seen in processions, outwardly made up to look impressively solemn, but wretched within. Making this more precise, he adds: “From now on let those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who buy as though they had no possessions.” If this is said of marriage, of which God says, “Multiply,” how much more, do you think, must tastelessness be banished by the Lord's authority? That is why the Lord says, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and come, follow me.” Follow God stripped of pretension, stripped of perishable pomp, possessing what is yours, the only good that cannot be taken away: faith in God, confession of him who suffered, and kindness toward human beings, the most precious possession. I also accept Plato, who legislates plainly “that one should not have wealth of silver or gold,” nor any useless vessel that is not moderate and suited to necessary use, so that the same thing may serve for many purposes, and the acquisition of many possessions be removed. Very beautifully the divine Scripture says somewhere, addressing the self-loving and pretentious: “Where are the rulers of the nations, and those who lord it over the beasts of the earth, who sport with the birds of the air, who hoard silver and gold, in which men trusted, and there is no end of their getting; who work silver and gold and are anxious?

There is no finding out of their works; they have vanished and gone down to Hades.” This is the reward of tastelessness. For if in farming we need a mattock and a plow, no one would forge a silver pickaxe or a golden sickle, but we use for tillage the workable material, not the costly; what prevents those who can see the likeness from having the same mind about household vessels? Let need, not costliness, be their measure. What? Tell me: does the table knife not cut unless it has silver studs or an ivory handle? Or must we forge Indian steel for a portion of meat, as if calling in an ally? What then? If the washbasin is earthenware, will it not receive the water from washing the hands? Or the foot-basin the water from the feet? Will the table with feet made of ivory be indignant at carrying a penny loaf? Nor will the lamp give its light because it is the work of a potter, not of a goldsmith? I say that the pallet gives no worse rest than the ivory couch, and that the goatskin rug is quite sufficient as a covering, so that there is no need of purple or scarlet coverlets; yet frugality is condemned through the folly of luxury, the author of evils.

See how great this error is, how great the love of display. The Lord ate from a cheap bowl, made his disciples recline on the grass on the ground, and washed their feet, girded with a towel, the unpretentious God and Lord of all, not bringing a silver foot-basin down from heaven. He asked the Samaritan woman for a drink as she drew it up from the well in an earthenware vessel, not seeking royal gold, but teaching us to quench thirst simply; for he set need as his aim, not ignorant display. He ate and drank at feasts, not digging up metals from the earth, nor using vessels of silver and gold, that is, reeking of rust, such as [the rust] the pretentious material gives off. In general, food, clothing, vessels, and everything else in the house, in a word, must be in keeping with the Christian's way of life, suited appropriately to the person, the age, the occupation, and the occasion. For being servants of one God, our possessions and the furnishings with them must show the tokens of one good life, and each person, by undivided faith, this single-minded way of life, must make what follows appear consistent and in harmony with the one disposition. What we acquire without difficulty, use easily, praise, keep readily, and share easily, is better. Useful things are better, and cheaper things surely better than costly ones.

In general, wealth that is not rightly steered is a citadel of vice; eyeing it covetously, the many would never enter the kingdom of heaven, sick as they are about worldly things and living arrogantly because of their luxuries. Those who hasten to salvation must understand beforehand that all creation is ours for use, and possession for the sake of self-sufficiency, which one could obtain even from a few things. Vain are those who, from insatiability, rejoice in their treasures: “He who gathers wages,” it says, “has gathered into a bag with holes.” This is the one who gathers and shuts up the grain and becomes poorer, who shares with no one. It is a mockery and a broad laugh that men should have silver urinals and glass chamber pots brought to them, as they bring in their counselors, and that these foolishly rich women should make the receptacles of their excrement of gold, so that, being rich, they cannot even relieve themselves without pretension. I would have wished that throughout their whole life they judged gold worthy of dung. As it is, love of money has been found to be the citadel of vice, which the apostle says is the root of all evils, “by craving which some have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.” The best wealth is poverty of desires, and true greatness of mind is not to be proud of wealth but to despise it. To boast of vessels is quite shameful; for it is not right to be eager any longer about things anyone who wishes can buy in the market. But wisdom is not bought with earthly coin nor in the market; it is sold in heaven, and sold for true coin, the incorruptible Word, the royal gold.

Let revelry be kept far from our rational feasting, and also the foolish all-night parties that pride themselves on drunkenness. For revelry is a drunken restlessness, the improviser of erotic distress; and love and drunkenness, irrational passions, are banished far from our chorus. The all-night party over drink is a kind of revel-drunkenness, calling forth drunkenness and exciting intercourse, a daring that does shameful things. Those who are stirred by flutes and harps, choruses and dances, Egyptian castanets and such idle amusements would become quite disorderly, indecent, and uneducated, beaten upon by cymbals and drums and surrounded by the noise of the instruments of deceit. For simply, it seems to me, such a banquet becomes a theater of drunkenness. The apostle asks that “we put off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, walking decently as in the day, not in revels and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness.”

Let the panpipe be left to shepherds, and the flute to superstitious people hurrying to idolatry. For truly these instruments are to be banished from a sober banquet, being more suited to beasts than to human beings, and to the more irrational of human beings. We have learned that deer are charmed by panpipes and, hunted, are led by the tune into the hunters' snares; and when mares are mated, a sort of wedding song is played on the flute; musicians call it the “horse-mounting” tune. In a word, we must cut out every illiberal sight and sound, and, to put it briefly, every shameful sensation of incontinence, which is truly insensibility, guarding against the pleasure that tickles the eyes and ears and makes them effeminate. For the various enchantments of broken melodies and mournful rhythms of the Carian muse corrupt character, drawing it down into passion by licentious and mischievous music. Separating the divine service from this revelry, the Spirit sings: “Praise him with the sound of the trumpet,” for with the sound of the trumpet he will raise the dead; “praise him with the psaltery,” for the tongue is the Lord's psaltery; “and with the harp praise him”: let the harp be understood as the mouth, struck by the Spirit as by a plectrum; “praise him with timbrel and dance”: he means the church, meditating on the resurrection of the flesh in the resounding skin; “praise him with strings and organ”: he calls our body an organ, and its sinews strings, from which it has received its harmonious tension, and when struck by the Spirit it gives forth human sounds; “praise him with loud cymbals”: he calls the tongue the cymbal of the mouth,

which echoes when the lips are struck. That is why he called out to humanity, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord,” because he has cared for every breath he made. For the human being is truly a peaceful instrument; while if one looks into the others, one will find them instruments of war, inflaming desires, kindling loves, or enraging anger. In their wars the Etruscans use the trumpet, the Arcadians the panpipe, the Sicilians the harp, the Cretans the lyre, the Spartans the flute, the Thracians the horn, the Egyptians the drum, and the Arabs the cymbal. But we use one instrument, the peaceful Word alone, with which we honor God; no longer the old psaltery and trumpet and drum and flute, which those trained for war and those who despise the fear of God were accustomed to use at their festivals, so that the slackness of their spirit might be roused by such rhythms.

Let our friendliness at drinking be twofold, according to the law. For if “you shall love the Lord your God,” and then “your neighbor,” let the first friendliness be toward God, through thanksgiving and psalm-singing, and the second toward our neighbor, through dignified conversation. “For let the word of the Lord dwell in you richly,” says the apostle. And this word adapts and fits itself to times, persons, and places; and now it is at a banquet. For the apostle adds again: “in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, with grace, singing in your hearts to God; and whatever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and his Father.” This is our thankful revel. And if you wish to sing and play to the cithara or lyre, there is no blame; you will imitate the righteous Hebrew king, who gave thanks to God. “Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous; praise befits the upright,” says the prophecy; “give thanks to the Lord with the cithara, play to him on the ten-stringed psaltery, sing to him a new song.”

And perhaps the ten-stringed psaltery points to the Word, Jesus, manifested by the letter of the number ten. As it is fitting, before we partake of food, to bless the Maker of all, so it is proper at drinking to sing psalms to him as we partake of his creatures; for the psalm is a melodious and sober blessing. The apostle called the psalm a “spiritual song.” And above all it is holy, before going to sleep, to give thanks to God, having enjoyed his grace and love for humankind, so that we may go to sleep in a godly way. “And confess to him with songs of the lips,” it says; “for at his command all his good pleasure is done, and there is no lessening of his salvation.” Among the ancient Greeks too, at drinking parties and over the brimming cups, in imitation of the Hebrew psalms, a song called the skolion was sung, all singing the paean together with one voice, and sometimes in turn passing the toasts of the song around; the more musical among them sang to the lyre. But let love songs be banished far away, and let our songs be hymns to God. “Let them praise his name in the dance,” it says; “let them play to him with timbrel and psaltery.” And what the singing chorus is, the Spirit himself will tell you: “His praise is in the assembly of the holy; let them rejoice in their king.” And again he adds: “For the Lord takes pleasure in his people.” We must admit temperate harmonies, driving as far as possible from our vigorous mind the truly soft harmonies, which, playing tricks with the modulations of sounds, lead to effeminacy and buffoonery; while austere and temperate melodies bid farewell to the arrogance of drunkenness. Chromatic harmonies, then, are to be left to shameless drunken parties and to flowery, courtesan music.

Imitators of ridiculous, or rather contemptible, passions must be banished from our commonwealth. For since all words flow from the mind and character, it is not possible to utter ridiculous words that do not come from a ridiculous character. For the saying “There is no good tree that bears rotten fruit, nor a rotten tree that bears good fruit” would fit here too; speech is the fruit of the mind. If, then, jesters must be expelled from our commonwealth, much less must we allow ourselves to play the jester. It is absurd to be found imitators of what we are forbidden to hear; and much more absurd to strive to become ridiculous oneself, that is, an object of insult and mockery. For if we would not endure to be made up ridiculously, as some are seen in processions, how could we rightly bear to have the inner man made up to look still more ridiculous? And if we would never willingly twist our face into something more ridiculous, how could we practice being and appearing ridiculous in our speech, mocking the most precious of all human possessions, speech? To practice this, then, is buffoonery, since the talk of jesters is not worth hearing, accustoming us by its words to shameful deeds. We should be graceful, not jesters.

Laughter itself must be bridled too. For when it is let out in the right way it shows decorum, but when it goes otherwise it shows licentiousness. In a word, whatever is natural to human beings must not be taken away from them, but rather given a fitting measure and time. For because the human being is an animal that laughs, it does not follow that he should laugh at everything; the horse, too, being an animal that neighs, does not neigh at everything. As rational animals we must tune ourselves in good proportion, relaxing melodiously the severity and overstrain of our seriousness, not loosening it unmelodiously. The decorous relaxing of the face in harmony, as of an instrument, is called a smile (this is how cheerfulness is reflected on the face), the laughter of the self-controlled. But an unmelodious loosening of the face, if it happens in women, is called giggling, and is the laughter of a harlot; if in men, guffawing, and this is the laughter of the suitors, and insolent. “A fool raises his voice in laughter,” says Scripture, “but a shrewd man will scarcely smile quietly.”

By “shrewd” he now means the prudent man, the one disposed contrary to the fool. But neither, on the other hand, should one be sullen, but thoughtful. For I greatly approve of the one who “appeared smiling with a stern face”; “for his laughter would be less ridiculous.” The smile too must be instructed: if it is at shameful things, we should appear to blush rather than smile, lest we seem to share the pleasure through sympathy; if at painful things, it is fitting to be seen downcast rather than to seem to take pleasure; for the one is a sign of human reasoning, the other suggests cruelty. We should not laugh always (that is immoderate), nor in the presence of elders or others worthy of respect, unless they themselves jest to cheer us; nor should we laugh with just anyone, nor in every place, nor at everyone, nor at everything.

For laughter is especially, for youths and women, a slip into slander. A formidable appearance puts tempters to flight from afar; for dignity, even by the look alone, can repel the attacks of licentiousness. But wine, so to speak, bids all the foolish “laugh softly and dance,” turning a womanish character to effeminacy. And we must observe how, from this, freedom of speech increases disorder into foul talk: “and he let fall some word that were better left unsaid.” It is especially in wine that the characters of the deceitful are seen, stripped of their hypocrisy by the unrestrained freedom of drunkenness, through which reason falls asleep in the very soul, heavy-headed with drink, and outlandish passions are awakened, overpowering the weakness of reasoning.

We must abstain entirely from foul speech ourselves, and silence those who use it, with a sharper look, turning away the face, and what is called turning up the nose, and often with harsher words too. “For what comes out of the mouth,” he says, “defiles a man,” showing him to be common, pagan, uneducated, and licentious, not distinguished, decorous, and self-controlled. Against hearing shameful things and seeing things of the same kind, the divine Instructor, just as with boys who wrestle, lest their ears be broken, puts self-controlled words around them like ear-guards, so that the blow of sexual immorality cannot reach through to the breaking of the soul; and he directs the eyes to the sight of good things,

saying that it is better to slip with the feet than with the eyes. Driving back this foul speech, the apostle says, “Let no rotten word come out of your mouth, but only what is good.” And again: “As befits saints, let not shamefulness or foolish talk or coarse jesting be named among you, which are not fitting, but rather thanksgiving.” And if the one who calls his brother a fool is liable to judgment, what shall we declare about the one who talks foolishness? Of him too it is written: “Whoever speaks an idle word will give account to the Lord on the day of judgment.” And again, “By your words you will be justified,” he says, “and by your words you will be condemned.” What then are the saving ear-guards? And what is the training of slippery eyes? Associating with the righteous, which forestalls and blocks the ears against those who wish to lead us away from the truth. “Bad company corrupts good morals,” says poetry.

More nobly the apostle says, “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good”; for one who associates with the holy will be made holy. We must entirely abstain from shameful things heard, said, and seen, and much more keep ourselves pure from shameful deeds: on the one hand, from displaying and exposing any parts of the body we should not; on the other, from gazing at the more private parts. For the self-controlled son would not bear to look upon the nakedness of the righteous man, which was shameful; self-control covered what drunkenness had laid bare, the fault of ignorance exposed to view. We must be no less pure in the utterance of words, which must be inaccessible to the ears of those who have believed in Christ. So it seems to me that the Instructor does not allow us to utter anything indecent, setting us against licentiousness from afar.

For he is skilled at always cutting out the roots of sins: “You shall not commit adultery” through “You shall not covet”; for adultery is the fruit of desire, the evil root. So here too the Instructor has condemned the fearless use of words, cutting out fearless intercourse with licentiousness. For disorder in words produces practice in misbehaving in deeds too, while self-control in speech is training in resisting lust. We have explained in a deeper discussion that neither in the words, nor in the organs of intercourse, nor in the union of marriage, for which words not worn by common use are appointed, is the name of what is truly shameful to be applied. For knee and shin are not shameful as members, nor are the names for them or their activity; and the private parts of the human being are members too, worthy of modesty, not of shame. What is shameful is their unlawful activity, which therefore deserves shame, reproach, and punishment; for only vice is truly shameful, and what is done according to it. Correspondingly, foul speech would rightly be the name for talk about the works of vice, such as talking about adultery or pederasty and the like. And idle chatter must be silenced too. “For from much talking,” it says, “you will not escape sin”; so the idle tongue will pay the penalty. “There is one who keeps silent and is found wise, and one who is hated for much talk.” The chatterer is already wearisome to himself: “For one who multiplies words makes himself abhorred.”

Away, away from us also with mockery, the beginning of insolence, from which quarrels, fights, and enmities swell. We said that insolence is the servant of drunkenness. A human being is judged not only by deeds but also by words. “At a banquet,” it says, “do not rebuke your neighbor, and do not speak a word of reproach to him.” For if we are commanded above all to keep company with the holy, it is a sin to mock the holy one. “From the mouth of fools,” says Scripture, “is a rod of insolence,” calling the rod a stepping stone of insolence, on which insolence leans and rests. So here too I admire the apostle, who urges us not to utter coarse jests or unfitting words. For if our gatherings for feasts are for love's sake, and the end of a banquet is friendliness toward those present, and food and drink follow love, how should we not conduct ourselves rationally? Nor must we fail because of love. For if we come together to increase our goodwill to one another, how can we stir up enmities by mockery? It is better to keep silent than to contradict, adding sin to ignorance. “Blessed” truly “is the man who has not slipped with his mouth and has not been pricked with the grief of sin,” either having repented of what he sinned in speaking, or having spoken so as to grieve no one. In general, young men and young women should for the most part keep away from such feasts, so that they may not fall in matters where they ought not. For unaccustomed sounds and unseemly sights, while faith is still tossing in them, fan their minds into flame, and the instability of their age helps the proneness of desire; and sometimes they become the cause of others' falls, displaying the dangerous bloom of their youth.

For Wisdom seems to command well: “Do not sit at all with a married woman, nor recline on your elbow with her”; that is, do not dine with her often, nor eat with her. So it adds: “Nor feast with her over wine, lest your heart turn aside to her, and with your blood you slip into destruction.” For the freedom of wine is dangerous, apt to rob one of the bloom of chastity. It named a married woman, since the danger is greater for one who tries to loosen the bond of a shared life. If some necessity requires them to be present, let the married women be well covered outwardly with clothing and inwardly with modesty; for unmarried women it is the utmost reproach to be present at a men's banquet, especially of men flushed with wine. Let the men, fixing their eyes on the couch, unmoving, leaning on their elbows, be present only with their ears. And if they sit, let them not cross their feet, nor put one thigh on the other, nor prop the chin with the hand; for it is ignoble

not to support oneself, and this is a charge against the young. Constantly shifting and changing one's posture is a sign of levity. It belongs to the self-controlled, in drinking and eating, to choose the smaller portion and the slower pace, not the more headlong, both in beginning and in the intervals, and to stop first, and to be unattached. “Eat,” it says, “like a man what is set before you; stop first for the sake of good manners; and if you are seated among many, do not reach out your hand before them.” We must never jump forward urged on by gluttony, nor, craving, prolong the meal, confessing our incontinence by lingering; nor appear in the meantime to be intent on the food like beasts, nor take more of the relishes; for man is not by nature an eater of relishes, but

a bread-eater. It is suitable for a self-controlled man to rise before most and to slip away from the banquet quietly. “For at the hour of rising,” it says, “do not be last, and run off to your house.” And the twelve, calling together the multitude of the disciples, said: “It is not right that we should leave the word of God to serve tables.” If they guarded against this, much more did they flee gluttony. These same apostles, writing “to the brothers in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia,” said: “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these necessary things: to abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and blood, and what is strangled, and sexual immorality; if you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.” We must guard against drunken misbehavior as against hemlock; for both drag down to death. “One must also restrain excessive laughter and tears.” For often those flushed with wine, after laughing very loudly, are then led, I know not how, by some drunken persuasion into tears; for both effeminacy and insolence are out of tune with reason.

Old men, regarding the young as children, may very rarely perhaps jest with them, teasing them in a way that will train their decorum. For instance, one may joke with a bashful and silent youth like this: “This son of mine,” I mean the silent one, “never stops talking.” Such teasing heightens the young man's modesty, gracefully showing the good qualities he has by charging him with bad ones he does not have; for this device too is instructive, confirming what is there by what is not. Such is the judgment of one who says that the water-drinker and self-controlled man is a drunken reveler. And if there are some who love to mock, we must keep silent and pass by superfluous words, as we pass by full cups; for such play is dangerous. “The mouth of the rash draws near to ruin.” “You shall not receive an idle report, nor agree with the unjust to become an unjust witness,” neither for slander nor for blasphemy, nor for

malice. I think I would set as the measure of the voice for the self-controlled, when they are allowed to speak, the person they are talking to. Silence is a virtue of women and a safe privilege of the young; good speech belongs to proven age. “Speak, old man, at a banquet, for it befits you; but speak without hindrance and with accurate knowledge. Young man,” Wisdom permits you too, “speak if you are needed, scarcely when asked twice; sum up your speech in few words.” Let both, when they converse, measure their voice by proportion; for loud speech is most like madness, and speaking inaudibly to those near is a mark of insensibility, for they will not hear. The one is a sign of vulgarity, the other of arrogance.

Away too with contentiousness in words for the sake of empty victory, since our end is tranquility; and this is what “Peace to you” means. “And do not answer a word before you have heard.” An effeminate softness of voice belongs to a womanish man; but a measured voice belongs to the self-controlled, restraining his utterance in loudness, length, speed, and quantity. We should never speak at great length, nor talk much, nor chatter, nor converse rapidly and in a rush. We must give, so to speak, justice even to the voice, and silence those who shout out of season and bawl. That is why the self-controlled Odysseus beat Thersites with blows, because he alone, unmeasured in words, kept brawling, “who knew in his mind many disorderly words, idly, and not in due order.” “A talkative man is fearsome in his ruin.” Of chatterers, as of old shoes, all the rest has been worn out by vice, and only the tongue is left, to do harm.

So Wisdom advises, most usefully for life, “not to chatter in a crowd of elders,” cutting out our babbling from the start, beginning from God, and legislating moderation thus: “Do not repeat a word in your prayer.” Smacking of the lips, whistling, and snapping the fingers to call servants, being irrational signals, are to be avoided by rational human beings. We must also refuse constant spitting and violent clearing of the throat. Nor should one blow his nose at a drinking party; we must have some regard for our fellow guests, lest they be disgusted and turn away from such indecency, which accuses us of incontinence. For we are not like oxen and donkeys, for whom the manger and the dung heap are the same; many people blow their noses and spit at the same time and in the same place where they dine. If anyone sneezes, or belches, he should not deafen those near by the noise, bearing witness to his lack of education; the belch should be let out quietly with the breath, the mouth shaped decorously, not stretched and gaping like tragic masks. The disturbance of a sneeze should be removed by gently holding the breath; in this way the sudden threat of the breath is most decorously quenched, managing its passage, so as to try to hide it, if the forced air brings out any matter with it. Wishing to add to the noises, not to subtract, is a sign of arrogance and disorder. Those who pick their teeth until the gums bleed are unpleasant to themselves and hateful to those near them. Tickling the ears and provoking sneezes are swinish itchings, practice for licentious sexual immorality. Unseemly sights and foul talk about them are to be refused. Let the gaze be steady, and the turning of the neck and the motion, and the movement of the hands in conversation. For in general the Christian is at home with calm, quiet, stillness, and peace.

The use of garlands and perfumes is not necessary for us. For it runs aground on pleasures and idleness, especially as night comes on. I know that the woman, bringing “an alabaster jar of perfume” to the holy supper, anointed the Lord's feet and delighted him. I know too that the ancient kings of the Hebrews were crowned with gold and precious stone. But the woman, not yet having received the Word (for she was still a sinner), honored the Master with what she thought the most beautiful thing she had, the perfume; and indeed with the adornment of her body, her own hair, she wiped off the excess perfume, pouring out on the Lord tears of repentance. That is why “her sins were forgiven.” This can be a symbol of the Lord's teaching and of his passion; for the feet anointed with fragrant perfume hint at the divine teaching traveling with glory to the ends of the earth: “For their sound has gone out to the ends of the earth.”

And if I do not seem tiresome, the perfumed feet of the Lord are the apostles, who by prophecy received the fragrance of the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The apostles, who went about the world and preached the gospel, are figuratively called the Lord's feet; of them the Spirit also prophesies through the psalmist: “Let us worship at the place where his feet stood,” that is, where his feet, the apostles, arrived, through whom he came, preached, to the ends of the earth. The tears are repentance; and the loosened hair proclaimed release from love of adornment, and the affliction borne with patience that went with the preaching for the Lord's sake, the old vanity being loosed through the new faith. Understood in this way too, it mystically shows the Lord's passion: the oil (elaion) is the Lord himself, from whom mercy (eleos) comes to us; the perfume, adulterated oil, is Judas the traitor, with whom the Lord's feet were anointed as he departed from his life in the world; for the dead are anointed with perfume. The tears are we sinners who have repented, who have believed in him, whose sins he forgave; and the loosened hair is mourning Jerusalem, left desolate, for which the prophets' laments were made. The Lord himself will teach us that Judas is adulterated, saying, “He who dips with me in the dish, he will betray me.” Do you see the treacherous fellow guest? And this same Judas betrayed the Teacher with a kiss; he became a hypocrite with an adulterated kiss, imitating another hypocrite of old, and convicting that people: “This people kisses me with their lips,

but their heart is far from me.” It is not unlikely, then, that he points to Judas as oil, as a disciple who received mercy, but as a traitor, treacherous, poisoned oil. This, then, was what the perfumed feet foretold: the betrayal of Judas as the Lord went on his way to the passion. And the Savior himself, washing the disciples' feet and sending them out to good works, hinted at their journey to benefit the nations, having made it seemly and pure beforehand by his own power. The perfume gave off its scent in them, and the work of the fragrance that reaches all has been proclaimed; for the Lord's passion has filled us with fragrance, and the Hebrews with sin. The apostle showed this most clearly when he said: “Thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us makes manifest the fragrance of the knowledge of him in every place; for we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” The kings of the Jews, using a crown composed of gold and precious stones, and various, the anointed ones, bearing Christ symbolically on their heads, were unknowingly adorned with the Lord's head. For a precious stone, pearl, or emerald hints at the Word himself, and gold again at the incorruptible Word, who does not admit the rust of corruption. The magi brought him gold at his birth as a symbol of kingship. This crown remains immortal, after the image of the Lord; for it does not wither like a flower. I know also the sayings of Aristippus of Cyrene.

Aristippus lived luxuriously. He posed a sophistical argument of this kind: a horse anointed with perfume is not harmed in its excellence as a horse, nor a dog perfumed in its excellence as a dog; so neither is a human being, he concluded. But for horse and dog perfume means nothing; while for those whose perception is more rational, the enjoyment is more blameworthy when they wear girlish scents. The varieties of these perfumes are countless: brenthium, metallium, royal, plangonium, and Egyptian psagdas. Simonides, in his iambics, is not ashamed to say: “And I anointed myself with perfumes and incense and baccaris; for a merchant was at hand.” They also cultivate perfume from lilies and from henna; nard is esteemed among them, and ointment from roses, and the others that women still use, liquid and dry, powders and perfumes for burning. For every day they invent an insatiable supply of fragrance to match the insatiability of desire; so they reek of great tastelessness. Some even fumigate and sprinkle their clothes, beds, and houses; luxury all but forces the chamber pots to smell of perfume.

Some, it seems to me, rightly indignant at the zeal for this, are so averse to perfumes, which make the men's quarters effeminate, that they drive their makers, the perfumers, out of well-governed cities, and drive out the dyers of flowered wool too; for it is not right for deceptive garments and ointments to enter the city of truth. Our men should smell not of perfumes but of goodness; and let a woman breathe of Christ, the royal ointment, not of powders and perfumes, and let her always be anointed with the ambrosial ointment of self-control, delighting in the holy perfume, the Spirit. This is what Christ prepares for those who know him, an ointment of fragrance, composing the perfume from heavenly spices. With this perfume the Lord himself is anointed, as was declared through David: “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions; myrrh and stacte and cassia from your garments.”

But let us not, without noticing, be like vultures who loathe perfumes, or beetles (they say these die when anointed with rose perfume); a few of these perfumes may be allowed to women, those that do not stupefy the husband. For immoderate anointing with perfumes smells of a funeral, not of married life. Indeed oil itself is hostile to bees and insects; among human beings it benefits some, and calls others out to fight, turning those formerly cowardly, when anointed, to all-out fighting in the stadiums. Do you not think that perfume, being softened oil, can make noble characters effeminate? Very much so.

As we have shut luxury out of taste, so we banish the voluptuousness of sights and smells, lest we unwittingly give the licentiousness we have exiled a way back into the soul through the senses, as through unguarded doors. If they say that the great High Priest, the Lord, offers to God the incense of fragrance, let them not understand this as a sacrifice and fragrance of incense, but let them accept that the Lord offers on the altar the acceptable offering of love, the spiritual fragrance. Oil itself is sufficient to anoint the skin, relax the sinews, and suppress any heavier smell of the body, if we need oil for this too. But the pursuit of fragrance is a bait of idleness, drawing us from afar toward dainty desire. For the licentious man can be led from every side: by food, by bed, by company, by the eyes, the ears, the jaws, and also by the nostrils.

As oxen are led by rings and ropes, so the licentious man is dragged about by incense and perfumes and the fragrance of garlands. But since we give no room to pleasure that is not joined to some profitable use in life, let us make a distinction here too, choosing what is useful. There are some fragrances that are neither stupefying nor erotic, not smelling of intercourse and licentious company, but healthful with self-control, nourishing the brain when it is in poor condition and strengthening the stomach. [It is far from right, then, to chill it with flowers, when the sinews want warming.] We must not reject their use altogether, but use perfume as a medicine and remedy, to rouse failing strength, and for catarrhs, chills, and discomfort, as the comic poet says somewhere: “He rubs his nostrils with perfumes; the greatest part of health is to give the brain good smells.” And rubbing the feet with the fat of warming or cooling perfumes is practiced for its benefit, so that there may be a drawing off and withdrawal from the head, when it is congested, to the less vital parts. But pleasure without usefulness is a charge of a courtesan's character and a drug for provocations.

There is a great difference between being drenched in perfume and being anointed with perfume; the one is effeminate, while anointing with perfume is sometimes even beneficial. Aristippus the philosopher, when anointed with perfume, used to say that the effeminate deserved to perish miserably for having brought the usefulness of perfume into disrepute. “Honor the physician for his use,” says Scripture, “for the Most High created him, and healing comes from the Lord.” Then it adds, “And the perfumer will make a mixture,” clearly because perfumes were given for benefit, not for luxury. We must not in any way be eager for the stimulating effect of perfumes, but choose what is beneficial, since God caused oil to grow for human beings as a help in their labors. Foolish women who dye their gray hair and perfume their locks become grayer sooner, because aromatics are drying. That is why those who perfume themselves look more parched; and dryness makes people grayer (whether grayness is a withering of the hair or a lack of heat), the dryness drinking up the hair's proper moist nourishment and making it gray. How then could those who flee gray hair still reasonably love perfumes, which cause gray hair? And as dogs, following the scent, track down game by smell, so the self-controlled detect the licentious by the elaborate fragrance of their perfumes.

Such too is the use of garlands, belonging to revels and drunkenness: “Away! Do not put a garland on my head.” In spring it is good to spend time in dewy, soft meadows, green with many-colored flowers, feeding like the bees on their natural, pure fragrance; but to adorn oneself with a woven garland from an untouched meadow and carry it about at home does not befit the self-controlled. It is not fitting to crown the hair of revelers with rosebuds or violets or lilies or other such flowers, decking out the grass. A garland placed around the head chills it, both through moisture and through coldness. That is why physicians, holding that the brain is cold by nature, think it right to anoint the chest and the tips of the nostrils with perfume, so that the fiery vapor, passing quietly, may vigorously warm the coldness. It is far from right, then, to chill it with flowers, when the sinews want warming. Moreover, those who are crowned lose the delight of the flowers. For those who bind the garland above their eyes do not enjoy seeing it, nor do those who put the flowers above their breathing enjoy the fragrance; for since fragrance naturally rises and evaporates above the head, the breath is left without enjoyment, the fragrance being carried off. Like beauty, the flower delights when seen; and we should glorify the Creator by enjoying good things through sight. Their use is harmful, and passes quickly, punished by regret.

Their short life is shown at once; for both wither, the flower and beauty. Of those who touch them, the one (the flower) chills them, the other (beauty) inflames them. In a word, the enjoyment of both beyond sight is insolence, not delight; it befits us to take delight, as in paradise, self-controlled, truly following Scripture. We should consider the husband the crown of the wife, and marriage the crown of the husband, and the children the flowers of the marriage of both, which the divine Farmer gathers from the fleshly meadows. “Children's children are the crown of old men, and fathers the glory of children,” it says; and our glory is the Father of all, and the crown of the whole church is Christ. Like roots and plants, flowers too have their own qualities, some beneficial, some harmful, and some dangerous. Ivy cools; the walnut (karya) gives off a stupefying (karōtikon) air, as its name shows by derivation. The narcissus is a heavy-scented flower, and its name convicts it of causing numbness (narkē) in the sinews. The scents of roses and violets, being mildly cold, contract and check headaches; but we are not permitted to get drunk with others in any way at all, nor even to be flushed with wine. Saffron and the henna flower lead to painless sleep. Many of them, by their scents, warm the brain, which is naturally cold, thinning the residues of the head. Hence, they say, the rose (rhodon) was named, because it gives off a great stream (rheuma) of scent; that is why it withers so quickly.

Even among the ancient Greeks the use of garlands was not yet customary. Neither the suitors nor the luxurious Phaeacians used them. In the games, first came the giving of prizes, second the procession, third the throwing of leaves, and last the garland, as Greece progressed toward luxury after the Persian wars. Those instructed by the Word, then, keep away from garlands, not because they think they bind the reason seated in the brain, nor because the garland is a symbol of reveling arrogance, but because it has been dedicated to idols. Sophocles called the narcissus “the ancient garland of the great gods,” meaning the gods of the underworld; Sappho crowns the Muses with the rose: “for you have no share † in the roses from Pieria”; and they say Hera delights in the lily and Artemis in myrtle. For even if flowers were made above all for the sake of human beings, the foolish have taken them and misused them, not for their own thankful use, but for the thankless service of demons; so we must abstain from them “for conscience's sake.”

The garland is a symbol of undisturbed freedom from care; that is why they crown the dead, as they do idols, bearing witness in deed that these are dead. Bacchants do not celebrate their orgies without garlands; when they put the flowers on, they are inflamed toward the rite. We must have no fellowship at all with demons, nor crown the living image of God like dead idols. For the beautiful crown of amaranth is laid up for the one who has lived well; the earth cannot bear this flower; heaven alone knows how to bring it forth. Besides, it is unreasonable for us, who have heard that the Lord was crowned with thorns, to deck ourselves with flowers, as if reveling in the Lord's holy passion. For the Lord's crown pointed prophetically to us, once fruitless, who are placed around him through the church, of which he is the head. It is also a type of faith: of life, through the substance of the wood; of gladness, through the name of the crown; of danger, through the thorn; for it is not possible to approach the Word without blood. But this woven garland withers, the weave of crookedness is undone, and the flower dries up; for the glory of those who have not believed in the Lord withers. They crowned Jesus when he was lifted up, bearing witness against their own ignorance. For the hard-hearted do not understand the very thing that is a wise prophecy, which they call an insult to the Lord. The people that went astray did not know the Lord; it was not circumcised in reasoning, not enlightened in its darkness; it did not see God; it denied the Lord; it lost its being Israel; it persecuted God; it hoped to insult the Word; and him whom it crucified as a criminal

it crowned as a king. Therefore, the man in whom they did not believe they will recognize as the loving God, Lord and just; for what they bitterly provoked, to show the Lord, they bore witness to him when he was lifted up, placing the diadem of righteousness through the evergreen thorn on him who is exalted above every name. This diadem, hostile to those who plotted against him, restrained them; friendly to those who gather in the church, it crowned them. This crown is the flower of those who have believed in the one who is glorified, but it draws blood from and punishes those who have not believed. It is also a symbol of the Lord's achievement, since he bore on his head, the ruling part of the body, all our evils by which we were pierced. For by his own passion he rescued us from stumbling blocks, sins, and such thorns, and, having destroyed the devil, he rightly said in triumph, “Where, O death, is your sting?” And we gather grapes from thorns and figs from thistles; but they are torn to wounds, those over whom he stretched out his hands, over a disobedient and fruitless people.

I could tell you something else mystical here. When the almighty Lord of all began to give the law by the Word, and wished his power to be made plain to Moses, a godlike vision of light in form was shown to him in a burning bush; and the bush is a thorny plant. And when the Word ceased from giving the law and from his sojourn among human beings, the Lord was mystically crowned again with thorn, departing from here to where he came down from, summing up the beginning of his former descent; so that the Word, who was first seen through the bush and later taken up through the thorn, might show that all things are the work of one power, being himself one, of the one Father, the beginning and end of the age.

But I have strayed from the pattern of instruction into the teaching kind; so I return to our subject. We have shown that the delight of flowers and the benefit of perfumes and incense are not to be rejected as medicine for healing, and sometimes for temperate cheer. If some ask what benefit there is in flowers for those who do not use them, let them know that perfumes are made from them and are very beneficial: susinum, from lilies and irises, is warming, opening, drawing, moistening, cleansing, fine, stirring bile, softening; narcissus perfume, from the narcissus, is equally beneficial with susinum; myrtle perfume, from myrtles and myrtle berries, is astringent, checking the discharges of the body; and rose perfume is cooling. In general these too were made for our use. “Listen to me,” it says, “and bud like a rose planted by streams of water; give off a sweet smell like frankincense, and bless the Lord for his works.” Much could be said about these, since we say that flowers and aromatics were made for necessary benefits, not for the outrages of luxury. And if anything is to be allowed, it is enough for them to enjoy the scent of the flowers, but let them not wear garlands. For the Father takes great care of the human being and gives his own art to him alone. Scripture says: “Water and fire and iron and milk, fine wheat flour and honey, the blood of the grape and oil and clothing, all these are for good to the godly.”

We must now say how we should go to sleep from here, remembering the precepts of self-control. After the meal, having blessed God for the sharing of good things and for the passing of the day, we must call on the Word to accompany us to sleep, dismissing costly bedding, gold-embroidered carpets, gold-worked smooth rugs, purple robes, costly fleeces, the poets' purple blankets and woolly cloaks on top, and beds “softer than sleep.” For besides the reproach of voluptuousness, sleeping on downy feathers is harmful, the body sinking as into a chasm through the softness of the bedding. It does not † hold those who turn over in it, because of the bed rising up like banks on each side of the body; it lets the food be digested less and rather burns it up, which is to spoil the food. [Rolling over on level beds, being a natural exercise of sleep, helps the distribution of food.] Those who can roll over on level beds, having this as a natural exercise of sleep, distribute their food more easily and make themselves fitter for emergencies. Moreover, couches with silver feet accuse great pretension; and the ivory on beds, “from a body that has left its soul, is not a pure thing,” an effeminate device of rest for holy people.

We must not, then, be eager about these things. Their use is not forbidden to those who have them, but anxious pursuit of them is prevented; for happiness does not lie in them. On the other hand, it is Cynic vanity to make a point of sleeping like Diomedes, “and under him was spread the hide of a field-dwelling ox,” unless circumstances compel. Odysseus propped up the limping leg of his bridal bed with a stone. Such frugality and self-help were practiced not only by private persons but also by the leaders of the ancient Greeks. And why speak of them? Jacob slept on the ground, and a stone was his pillow; and then he was counted worthy to see the vision beyond human sight. We, following the Word, should use a simple and plain bed, suitably giving relief: in summer, shelter; in winter, warmth. Let the bed be unelaborate, with smooth feet; for elaborate turnings sometimes become tracks for creeping things, which wind around the grooves of the carving and do not slip off. Above all, the softness of the bed should be moderately hardened. For sleep should not be a complete dissolving of the body, but a relaxing. So I say it should be taken not for idleness but for rest from our activities. We should doze, then, in a way that keeps us ready to wake.

“Let your loins be girded,” it says, “and your lamps burning; and be like men waiting for their master, when he returns from the wedding, so that when he comes and knocks they may open to him at once. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes.” For a sleeping man is of no use, just as a dead one is not. So we should often rise from our bed at night and bless God; for blessed are those who are awake for him, making themselves like the angels, whom we call “Watchers.” “A man asleep is worth nothing, no more than one who is not alive.” But the one who has the light is awake, and the darkness does not overtake him, nor sleep either, since there is no darkness. The one who has been enlightened, then, is awake toward God, and such a one lives: “For what came to be in him was life.”

“Blessed is the man,” says Wisdom, “who listens to me, and the man who keeps my ways, watching daily at my doors, guarding the posts of my entrances.” “So let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake,” says Scripture, “and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who are drunk, are drunk at night,” that is, in the darkness of ignorance; “but since we belong to the day, let us be sober. For you are all sons of light and sons of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.” “But whoever of us cares most for true life and genuine wisdom stays awake as long as possible, keeping only what is useful for his health; and that is not much, when it has become a good habit.” The practice of discipline begets perpetual wakefulness from labors. Let our food, then, not weigh us down but lighten us, so that we may be as little harmed by sleep as possible, like swimmers with weights hung on them; on the contrary, let sobriety lift us, as from the deep below, to the surface of wakefulness. For the descent of sleep is like death, carried by folly into insensibility, cutting off the light by the closing of the eyelids. Let us, the sons of the true light, not shut this light out of doors, but turn it inward to ourselves, lighting the eyes of the hidden man, beholding the truth itself and partaking of its streams, so that we may clearly and wisely receive the revelation of true dreams.

(… true dreams.) The belches of those heavy with wine, the snorting of those stuffed with food, snoring wrapped in the bedclothes, and the rumbling of crowded bellies bury the discerning eye of the soul, the mind being filled with countless fancies. The cause is excessive food, dragging the reasoning part into insensibility. “For much sleep brings no benefit to our bodies or our souls, nor does it at all suit activities concerned with truth, even though it is natural.” Lot the righteous (I pass over for now the explanation of the plan of regeneration) would not have been led into that lawless union had he not been made drunk by his daughters and stupefied by sleep. If, then, we cut off the causes of excessive falling into sleep, we will sleep more soberly. For “one should not sleep all night,” those who have the wakeful Word dwelling in them; we should rise at night, especially when the days are short. One should study, another practice his craft, women should take up their spinning; and all of us, in a word, should fight against sleep, accustoming ourselves gently and by degrees, so as to gain more time of life by being awake (for sleep, like a tax collector, divides half our life with us). Much less should those who cut off most of the night for wakefulness be allowed to sleep by day. Restlessness, drowsiness, stretching, and yawning are the discontents of an unstable soul.

Above all, we must know this: it is not the soul that needs sleep (for it is ever in motion), but the body, borne up by rests, relaxes, the soul no longer acting through the body but thinking by itself. Hence, rightly considered, true dreams are the reasonings of a sober soul, not distracted at that time by the sympathies of the body and counseling itself what is best. Stillness is the ruin of the soul. So, always thinking of God, by continual converse with him, it enrolls the body in wakefulness, makes the human being equal to the grace of the angels, and gains eternal life from the practice of being awake.

Only the married are left to consider the right time for intercourse; and for the married the aim is the begetting of children, and the end is good offspring, just as for the farmer the reason for sowing seed is to provide food, and the end of his farming is the gathering of the fruits. But far better is the farmer who sows living soil; for the one farms seeking food for a season, the other providing for the continuance of the whole; the one plants for himself, the other for God. For he said, “Multiply,” and we must obey. In this the human being becomes an image of God, in that a human being cooperates in the coming into being of a human being. Not all ground is suitable for receiving seed; and even if all were, not for the same farmer. Nor must seed be sown on rocks, nor seed be outraged, since it is the originating substance of generation, having the principles of nature sown within it. To shame the principles of nature irrationally in unnatural passages is utterly godless. See how the all-wise Moses symbolically rejects unfruitful sowing, saying, “You shall not eat the hare nor the hyena.” He does not want the human being to share their quality, nor to taste a like licentiousness; for these animals are excessively excited about mating. They say that the hare each year increases the number of its anal openings, having as many holes as the years it has lived; so the prohibition of eating the hare shows a turning away from pederasty. And they say the hyena changes alternately from male to female each year; and it hints that one who abstains from the

hyena should not rush into adultery. I agree that the all-wise Moses, by this prohibition, clearly hints that we should not become like these animals; but I do not assent to this interpretation of what was said symbolically. For nature could never be forced to change; what has once been formed cannot be reshaped by a passion; for passion is not nature; passion is accustomed to counterfeit, not to remodel, the form. For even if many birds are said to change both their color and their voice with the seasons (the blackbird, for example, becoming tawny from black, and chattering instead of singing; likewise the nightingale changes both color and song with the turning of the year), they do not change their very nature, so that a female comes from a male by transformation. The new growth of feathers, like a new garment, blooms with a dye of feathers, and a little later fades in the threat of winter, the color withering like a flower. The voice too, in the same way, worn down by the cold, withers; for when the surface of the body is contracted by the surrounding air, the arteries around the neck, compressed and contracted, squeeze the breath, and this, greatly confined and choked, gives out a stifled sound.

When it becomes like the surrounding air again and is relaxed in spring, the breath is freed from confinement, carried through the widened arteries that were before closed; the song no longer warbles faintly withered, but already blooms clear, and their voice pours out more fully, and the song of the birds becomes the springtime of their voice. So neither must we ever believe that the hyena changes its nature. Nor does the same animal have both organs, male and female, as some have supposed, telling tales of hermaphrodites and inventing this third, man-woman nature between female and male. They are much mistaken, not understanding the artistry of nature, mother and creator of all. Since the hyena is a very lustful animal, it has under the tail, in front of the passage for excrement, a fleshy growth resembling in shape the female organ. This formation of flesh has no passage leading to anything useful, either to a womb or to the rectum; it has only a large cavity, which receives the empty lust when the

passages are turned away, occupied with bearing young. This same thing grows on both male and female hyena because of their excessive perversion; for the male too mounts the male, so that very rarely can one catch a female hyena; for pregnancies are not frequent in this animal, since unnatural sowing abounds unrestrainedly among them. That is why, it seems to me, Plato too, in the Phaedrus, rejecting pederasty, called it a beast, because the lustful, given up to pleasures, “taking the bit in their teeth, go after the manner of four-footed beasts and try to beget children.” And God “gave up” the godless, as the apostle says, “to dishonorable passions; for their women exchanged natural use for what is against nature, and likewise the men too, leaving the natural use of women, were inflamed in their desire for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error.”

(… penalty of their error.) Yet nature has not permitted even the most lustful of animals to mount the passage of excretion. Urine is discharged into the bladder, liquefied food into the bowel, tears into the eye, blood into the veins, wax into the ears, mucus into the nose; and the anus, through which the residues are expelled, is continuous with the end of the rectum. Only in hyenas has varied nature, for their excessive matings, devised this superfluous part. So it is hollow for a certain distance, to serve the itching members, and then the hollow is blind; for it was not made for generation. From this it is plain to us that we must reject intercourse of males with males, fruitless sowing, intercourse from behind, and unnatural man-woman unions, following nature itself, which forbids them by the structure of the parts, having made the male a man for emitting seed, not for receiving it. And when Jeremiah says, that is, the Spirit through him, “My house has become a hyena's den,” loathing food from dead bodies, he condemns idolatry by a wise allegory; for truly the house of the living God must be pure of idols.

Again, Moses forbids eating the hare. The hare mates at every season, and mounts the female from behind as she crouches; for it mates from behind. It conceives every month and conceives again while pregnant; it mates and gives birth, and as soon as it has given birth it mates with whatever hare it happens on; for it is not content with one mate. And it conceives again while still suckling, for it has a double womb. Not only is the emptiness of the womb a spur to intercourse (for everything empty desires filling), but when they are pregnant, the other part of the womb is gripped by desire and in heat; that is why they conceive again while pregnant. The prohibition in this riddle, then, advised abstaining from violent desires, from repeated intercourse, from intercourse with pregnant women, from homosexual acts, from the corruption of boys, from adultery, and from lust.

So the same Moses forbade it openly, no longer through riddles, with bare head, saying, “You shall not commit sexual immorality, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not corrupt boys.” The ordinance of the Word must be kept with all our strength; nothing must in any way be transgressed, nor the commandments made void. For insolence is the name of evil desire, and Plato called the horse of desire “insolent,” having read, “You have become horses mad for females.” The angels who came to Sodom will show you the punishment for insolence. Those who wished to shame them they burned up with the city itself, marking out a clear example: fire, the fruit of lust. For what happened to the ancients has been written, as we said before, for our admonition, so that we may not

be caught in the same things, but may guard against falling into like ones. We should regard boys as sons, and look on other men's wives as our own daughters, master the pleasures of the belly, and most commandingly rule what is below the belly. For if the Word does not permit the wise man, as the Stoics agree, to move even a finger at random, how much more must those who pursue wisdom master the organ of intercourse? That is why, it seems to me, it is called aidoion (“the part of modesty”), because we must use this part of the body, more than any other, with modesty (aidōs). For nature has permitted us, as with food, so with lawful marriages, what is proper, useful, and seemly; and it has permitted us to desire the begetting of children. Those who pursue excess stumble concerning what is natural, harming themselves in unlawful intercourse. Above all it is right never to have sexual relations with youths as if with women.

So too “do not sow on rocks and stones,” says the philosopher who learned from Moses, “where it will never take root and find its fertile nature.” Most clearly the Word commanded through Moses: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; for it is an abomination.” And besides, “abstain from every female field” except one's own, the good Plato advised, gathering from the divine Scriptures and taking the law from there: “And you shall not give your bed of seed to your neighbor's wife, to be defiled with her.” “The seed of concubines is unhallowed and bastard.” Do not sow where you would not wish what is sown to grow; and do not touch anyone at all except your own wedded wife, from whom alone it is right to reap the pleasures of the flesh for legitimate descendants. For these alone are lawful by the Word.

Those who have received a share in the divine creative work must not throw away seed, nor outrage it, nor sow it on barren ground. This same Moses forbids husbands even to approach their own wives if they happen to be in their monthly cleansing. For it is not reasonable to defile with the body's refuse the most fertile part of the seed, which will soon be a human being, nor to wash away with the filthy flow and refuse of matter the seed of a well-born generation, deprived of the furrows of the womb. Nor did he bring forward any of the ancient Hebrews having intercourse with his wife when she was pregnant; for bare pleasure, even if taken in marriage, is unlawful, unjust, and irrational. On the contrary, Moses keeps husbands away from pregnant wives until they give birth. For in fact the womb, lying above the bladder and upon the intestine called the rectum, stretches its neck between the shoulders into the bladder; and the mouth of the neck, by which it admits the seed, closes when it is filled, and is emptied again when cleansed by childbirth; and having delivered its fruit, it then receives the seed.

It is not shameful for us, for the benefit of our hearers, to name the organs of childbearing, whose creation God was not ashamed of. The womb, then, thirsting for childbearing, receives the seed and refuses the blameworthy part of intercourse, shutting out licentiousness entirely after the sowing by closing its mouth. Its appetites, formerly stirred by loving embraces, turn away and, occupied within with bearing the child, cooperate with the Creator. It is not right to disturb nature further when it is already at work, going to excess in insolence. Insolence, which has many names and many forms, when it turns aside in this part of disorder, that concerned with sexual love, is called lagneia (“lust”), the common, vulgar, and impure. The proneness to mating, as the name shows: from these, when they increase, comes the great multitude of diseases: love of delicacies, love of wine, love of women, and indeed profligacy and every love of pleasure, over which desire tyrannizes. Countless kindred passions grow with these, from which the licentious character comes to its height. Scripture says: “Scourges are prepared for the licentious, and punishments for the shoulders of fools,” calling the strength of licentiousness and its vigorous endurance “the shoulders of fools.” That is why: “Remove from your servants vain hopes,” it says, “and turn away from me unseemly desires; let not the appetite of the belly and sexual lust take hold of me.” We must keep far off the great villainy of those who plot against us. For not only into the wallet of Crates, but also into our city, “sails no foolish parasite, nor dainty lecher glorying in his buttocks, nor deceitful harlot,” nor any other such beast of pleasure. Let great dignity of conduct be sown in us throughout our whole life.

Whether, in general, one should marry or keep entirely pure of marriage (for this too is a subject of inquiry) we have explained in our work On Self-Control. But if even the question whether one should marry needed consideration, how could it be permitted to use intercourse freely on every occasion, like food, as a necessity? One can see from it the sinews being worn out like the threads of a warp and broken in the strain of the act; it also spreads a mist over the senses and cuts down the strength. This is plain in irrational animals and in bodies in training: those who abstain overcome their opponents in contests, while the animals are led away from mating dragged about, all but drawn along, completely emptied of all strength and vigor. The sophist of Abdera called intercourse “a minor epilepsy,” thinking it an incurable disease. Do not faintings follow, attributed to the greatness of the loss? “For a human being grows from a human being and is torn from him.” See the greatness of the harm: a whole human being is torn away in the loss of intercourse; for it says, “This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” A man is emptied by the seed as much as is seen in the body; for what departs is the beginning of generation. And the agitation of matter too disturbs and jars the harmony of the body.

Very witty, then, was the man who, when asked how he stood with regard to sexual pleasures, said: “Hush, man; I have most gladly escaped them, as from a raging and savage master.” But let marriage be accepted and given its place; for the Lord wishes humanity “to multiply,” but he does not say “be licentious,” nor did he wish them to give themselves up to pleasures as if born for mating. Let the Instructor put us to shame, crying through Ezekiel, “Circumcise your sexual immorality.” Even irrational animals have a proper season for sowing. But to have intercourse not for the begetting of children is to outrage nature, which we should take as our teacher, observing the wise instructions of her times, I mean old age and childhood, which she introduces (for she has not yet allowed the one, and no longer wishes the other, to marry); nor should one marry at all times.

Marriage is the desire for the begetting of children, not the disorderly, unlawful, and irrational emission of seed. Our whole life would go according to nature if we mastered our desires from the start and did not kill, by evil devices, the human race born by divine providence. For women who, to hide their sexual immorality, use abortive drugs that bring on complete ruin, cast out their humanity together with the embryo. But those who have been permitted to marry need an Instructor, so that they may not perform the mystic rites of nature by day, nor, say, coming from church or from the market at dawn, mate like a rooster, when it is the time for prayer, reading, and the good works of the day. In the evening it is fitting to rest after the meal and

after thanksgiving for the good things enjoyed. Nature does not always give opportunity for fulfilling the intercourse of marriage; indeed, union after a longer interval is more desired. Nor should we be licentious at night, as if in darkness, but should keep modesty shut up in the soul, like the light of reason. For we will be no different from Penelope at her weaving if by day we weave the teachings of self-control and by night unravel them when we go to bed. For if we must practice dignity, as we must, we should show dignity much more to our own wife, refusing indecent embraces; and let trustworthy faithfulness toward our neighbors begin at home. For it is not, it is not possible to be thought dignified by a woman before whom dignity is not shown to be witnessed in those very sharp pleasures. Affection that confesses a slippery tendency toward intercourse blooms a little and ages with the body, and sometimes grows old before it, when desire has withered, whenever courtesan-like pleasures outrage marital self-control. For the hearts of lovers have wings, and their love charms are quenched by regret; and love often turns to hate when satiety perceives its own condemnation.

Licentious words, indecent postures, courtesans' kisses [whorish names], and such lustful acts must not even be mentioned, if we obey the blessed apostle, who says plainly: “But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is fitting among saints.” Someone seems to have said well: “Intercourse has never benefited anyone; one must be content if it has done no harm.” For lawful intercourse is risky, except so far as it is for the begetting of children; and of unlawful intercourse Scripture says: “A hired woman will be counted as a hog, and a married woman a tower of death to those who use her.” It likened the courtesan's passion to a boar or a sow, and called adultery with a woman under guard a seeking of death.

Your own poetry too writes reproachfully of a house and city in which they live licentiously: “Adulteries are with you, and lawless union of males with males, womanish and unjust, evil city, wholly unclean.” On the other hand it admires the self-controlled: “having no shameful desire for another's bed, nor rushing into the hateful and abominable outrage on a male,” because it is against nature. The many consider these things, their own sins, to be luxuries; those more reasonable than they recognize them as sins but are overcome by pleasures. And darkness is a cover for their passions. For the one who treats his own marriage as a courtesan's affair commits adultery against it, and does not hear the Instructor crying out: “The man who goes up on his bed, who says in his soul, Who sees me? Darkness is around me, and the walls are my shelter, and no one sees my sins; what should I fear? The Most High will not remember.” Most wretched is this man, fearing only the eyes of men and supposing that he will escape God's notice. “For he does not know,” says Scripture, “that the eyes of the Lord Most High are ten thousand times brighter than the sun, looking upon all the ways of men and perceiving the hidden places.” So again the Instructor threatens them through Isaiah, saying: “Woe to those who make plans in secret, and will say, Who sees us?” One may perhaps escape the perceptible light, but the intelligible light is impossible to escape, or as Heraclitus says, “How could anyone escape that which never sets?”

Let us by no means, then, cover ourselves with darkness, for the light dwells in us: “And the darkness,” it says, “does not overtake it,” and night is lit up by self-controlled reasoning. Scripture has named the thoughts of good men unsleeping lamps. Indeed, trying to escape notice in what one does is admitting that one sins; and everyone who sins at once does wrong, not so much to his neighbor, if he commits adultery, as to himself, because he has committed adultery. He certainly shows himself worse and more dishonorable. For the sinner, insofar as he sins, is worse and more dishonorable than himself; and licentiousness is present in one who is overcome by shameful pleasure. So the fornicator is altogether dead to God, abandoned by the Word as by the Spirit, a corpse. For the holy loathes being defiled, as is natural; and it is always right for the pure to touch the pure. Let us never, when we take off our tunic, take off modesty too; for it is never right for the righteous to take off self-control. For behold, this corruptible will put on incorruption, when the insatiability of desire, which flows into licentiousness, trained by self-control and no longer in love with corruption, yields the human being to eternal self-control. “For in this age they marry and are given in marriage”; but having done away with the works of the flesh, putting on incorruption in the pure flesh itself, we pursue the measure of the angels.

So Plato too, the pupil of the barbarian philosophy, in the Philebus mystically called godless those who, as far as in them lies, corrupt and defile the God who dwells in them, the Word, by becoming familiar with the passions. Those who are sanctified to God must never live as mortals; nor, as Paul says, must we make the members of Christ members of a harlot, nor make the temple of God a temple of shameful passions. Remember the twenty-four thousand rejected for sexual immorality; the sufferings of those who committed sexual immorality, as I have already said, are “examples,” instructing our desires. The Instructor advises us most clearly: “Do not go after your desires, and restrain yourself from your appetites”; “For wine and women will make the intelligent fall away, and he who cleaves to harlots will become more reckless; decay and worms will inherit him, and he will be removed as a greater example.” And again (for he does not grow weary of helping): “He who shuts his eyes

to pleasure crowns his life.” It is not right, then, to be overcome by sexual pleasure, nor to gape after desires, nor to be driven wild by irrational appetites, nor to desire to be defiled. Only the married man is permitted to sow, like a farmer, at the time when the season receives the seed. For the rest of incontinence the best medicine is the Word; and lack of surfeit helps too, by which desires, inflamed, leap after pleasures. Nor, then, should we lay claim to costly clothing, any more than to varied food. The Lord himself, dividing his precepts into soul, body, and third, external things, advises us to provide external things for the body, and to govern the body by the soul; and he instructs the soul, saying: “Do not be anxious for your soul, what you will eat, nor for your body, what you will put on; for the soul is more than food, and the body more than clothing.” And he adds a clear example of the teaching: “Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have no storeroom or barn, and God feeds them. Are you not worth more than the birds?” This about food; and likewise he gives charge about clothing, which belongs to the third class, external things: “Consider the lilies, how they neither spin nor weave; and I tell you, not even Solomon was clothed like one of these.” And King Solomon prided himself greatly on his wealth.

What is lovelier and more blooming than flowers? What more delightful than lilies [or perfumes] or roses? “If God so clothes the grass that is in the field today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more you, you of little faith. And do not seek what you will eat or what you will drink.” Here the word “what” has thrown out variety of food; for this is what is meant by the Scripture: do not be anxious about what sort of things you will eat or drink; for to be anxious about these is greed and luxury. Eating alone, understood simply, is a sign of necessity, the filling, as we said, of want; but the “what” comes from excess, and Scripture has declared that excess comes from the devil. The following words make the meaning plain. Having said, “Do not seek what you will eat or what you will drink,” he added, “and do not be anxious” (literally, “up in the air”); for pretension and luxury put people up in the air, away from the truth, and voluptuousness occupied with superfluities leads away from the truth. So he says very beautifully, “For all the nations of the world seek these things.” The disorderly and foolish are the nations. What does he mean by “these things”? Luxury, voluptuousness, sauces, gourmandise, gluttony: these are the “what.” But about plain food, both dry and liquid, as necessary things, he says, “Your Father knows that you need them.” And if we have become seekers at all, let us not waste our seeking on luxury, but rekindle it for the finding of the truth.

“For seek the kingdom of God,” he says, “and the things of food will be added to you.” If, then, he removes anxiety about clothing and food and superfluities in general as unnecessary, what must we think he would say about love of finery, dyeing of wool, variety of colors, elaborate stones, working of gold, and besides, artificial locks and curled ringlets, and further, painting the eyes, plucking hairs, rouge, white lead, dyeing the hair, and the mischievous arts that go with these deceptions? Should we not rather suspect that what was said just before about the grass was said of these tasteless lovers of adornment? For the world is a field, and we are the grass, watered by the grace of God, and, cut down, we spring up again, as will be shown more fully in our work On the Resurrection. But “grass” is a figure for the vulgar crowd, at home with the pleasure of a day, blooming for a little, loving finery and glory and everything rather than truth, fit for nothing but kindling for the fire.

“There was a certain man,” the Lord says in a story, “very rich, who was clothed in purple and fine linen, feasting splendidly every day”: this was the grass. “And a poor man named Lazarus had been laid at the rich man's gate, covered with sores, longing to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table”: this is the herb. But the rich man was punished in Hades, sharing in the fire, while the other flourished again in the Father's bosom. I admire the ancient city of the Spartans: it permitted only courtesans to wear flowered clothing and gold ornaments, taking away love of finery from respectable women by allowing only prostitutes to beautify themselves. At Athens, on the contrary, the rulers who aspired to refined city life, forgetting their manliness, wore gold and put on robes reaching to the feet, and tied up their hair in a krōbylos, a kind of braid, adorned with golden cicadas inserted in it, truly displaying their “earthborn” descent by the tastelessness of effeminacy.

The emulation of these rulers spread to the other Ionians too, whom Homer, making them womanish, calls “trailing-robed.” Those who revere love of finery, an idol of the beautiful, instead of the beautiful itself, and so again commit idolatry under a lovely name, must be banished far from the truth, since they dream of the nature of the beautiful by opinion, not by knowledge. For them life here is a deep sleep of ignorance; we must wake from it and hasten to what is truly beautiful and orderly, and long to lay hold of this alone, leaving the ornaments here to the world itself, before we fall fast asleep. I say, then, that the human being needs clothing for nothing else than to cover the body, to ward off excessive cold and intense heat, so that the immoderation of the air may not harm us.

If this is the purpose of clothing, consider whether one kind of clothing need really be assigned to men and another to women; for covering is common to both, like eating and drinking. The need being common, we approve a similar provision. For as the need of coverings is common to each, so the coverings should be alike; but if there is a difference, we must adopt that covering by which … it is fitting to hide women's eyes. For if the female is allowed more because of her weakness, we must blame the habit of bad upbringing, through which men, reared on bad diets, have often become more womanish than women; we must not relax our tension. But if we must make allowances, let a little be conceded to women, to use softer fabrics, only removing the foolish fine work and the elaborate plaiting in the weaving, and saying farewell to gold thread, Indian silks, and elaborate silks. A worm is born first; then from it appears a hairy caterpillar; after this, in a third transformation, it becomes a silk moth (some call it the nekydallos), from which a long thread is produced, as the spider's thread from the spider. These superfluous and transparent fabrics are a proof of a mind not strong, pandering to the shame of the body with a slight screen. For luxurious clothing is no longer a covering, being unable to hide the shape of nakedness; for such clothing, falling against the body, molds itself to it more closely and clings fleshily to its shape, taking the impression of the woman, so that the whole form of the body is visible to one who is not even looking.

Dyes must also be refused in clothing; for they are far from both need and truth, besides blooming into a slander on one's character. Their use is not beneficial (they are no good against cold), nor do they add anything to covering beyond other clothing, except reproach; and the delight of the color distresses the dainty, stirring them to foolish ogling. It is most fitting for those who are white and not counterfeit within to wear white and unelaborate clothing. Daniel the prophet says clearly and plainly: “Thrones were set, and one like the Ancient of Days sat on them, and his garment was white as snow.” He sees the Lord in a vision wearing such a robe. And the Revelation says: “I saw the souls of those who had borne witness under the altar; and to each was given a white robe.” If some other color must be sought, the natural dye of truth is enough; garments like flowers should be left to Bacchic and initiatory nonsense; and besides, “purple and silver plate,” as the comic poet says, “are useful for tragedians, not for life”; and our life should be anything rather than a procession. Sardian dye, and another olive-green, and another pale green, rose-colored, scarlet, and countless others have been eagerly invented for destructive luxuries.

This clothing is for show, not for covering. Garments embroidered with gold, purple-dyed, and figured with animals (this luxury, surely, is a thing for the wind), that perfume-dyed saffron robe, and the costly, varied cloaks of conspicuous fine membranes, with little figures in the purple, must be dismissed along with the art itself. “For what wise or splendid thing could we women do,” says comedy, “who sit about” decked with flowers, wearing saffron robes and beautified? The Instructor advises expressly: “Do not boast of the clothing you wear, nor be exalted in any glory, since it does not last.” Mocking those clothed in soft garments, he says in the Gospel: “Behold, those in splendid clothing and living in luxury are in kings' courts”: he means earthly courts, perishable ones, where there is love of display, glory-hunting, flattery, and deceit. But those who serve in the heavenly court around the King of all are sanctified in the soul's pure garment, the flesh, and in this way put on incorruption. As the unmarried woman devotes herself to God alone and her care is not divided, while the married woman, if she is self-controlled, divides her life between God and her husband, and the one who behaves otherwise belongs wholly to marriage, that is, to passion; in the same way, I think, the self-controlled wife, devoting herself to her husband, is sincerely godly; but when she loves finery, she falls away both from God and from self-controlled marriage, exchanging her husband for ornament, like the Argive courtesan, I mean Eriphyle, “who took precious gold for her own husband.”

So I also accept the sophist of Ceos, who drew fitting and corresponding pictures of virtue and vice. He made the one, virtue, stand simply, dressed in white and clean, adorned only with modesty (such should faith be, virtuous with modesty); and he brought in the other, vice, the opposite, clothed in superfluous clothing and brightened with a borrowed color, and her movement and bearing, contrived to please, were set out as a sketch of lewd women. The one who follows the Word will make no shameful pleasure his own; so in clothing too usefulness must be preferred. And if the Word sings this through David concerning the Lord: “The daughters of kings have delighted you in your honor; the queen stood at your right hand in gold-woven clothing, arrayed in golden fringes,” he has not indicated luxurious clothing, but has shown the pure adornment, woven together from faith, of those who have received mercy, the church, in which the guileless Jesus “shines like gold,” and the

fringes are the elect, the golden ones. If we must relax our tension because of women, let their clothing be woven smooth and soft to the touch, but not embroidered with flowers like paintings for the delight of the eye. For painting fades with time, and washings and the astringent, drug-like juices of dyes melt away the wool of garments and make the weave weak, which is not good for economy either. It is the greatest tastelessness to be so excited about robes, rugs, mantles, cloaks, and tunics, “which cover the private parts,” as Homer says. I am truly ashamed to see so much wealth poured out on covering the private parts. For the first man in paradise measured the covering of his shame with branches and leaves; now that sheep have been created for us, let us not be as foolish as sheep, but, instructed by the Word, let us expose the costliness of clothing, saying: “You are sheep's hair, even if Miletus boasts, even if Italy is glorified, even if the hair is guarded under hides.” The many are mad about it, but we must not be eager.

The blessed John, despising even sheep's hair as smelling of luxury, chose camel's hair and clothed himself with it, showing the frugality and guilelessness of his life. He ate honey and locusts, sweet and spiritual food, preparing the ways of the Lord, free of pride and self-controlled. How could he have put on a purple robe, he who turned from the pretensions of the city, and in the desert … lived for God in the calm of solitude, free from all vain zeal, ignorant display, and pettiness? Elijah used a sheepskin as his garment, and bound the sheepskin with a belt made of hair.

Isaiah, another prophet, was “naked and barefoot,” and often wore sackcloth, the garment of humility. And if you call Jeremiah, he had only a linen loincloth. As well-nourished bodies show their bloom more plainly when stripped, so beauty of character, not wrapped in tasteless trifles, shows its magnificence. Trailing one's clothes down to the tips of the feet is most pretentious, hindering the activity of walking, the garment sweeping up the surface refuse of the ground like a broom; not even those broken dancers who pursue silent effeminacy on the stage let their clothing trail down into such insolence, though their careful dressing, the dangling of their hems, and the elaborate rhythms of their postures show the trailing of petty effeminacy. And if anyone brings up the Lord's long robe, that many-flowered tunic shows the flowers of wisdom, the varied and unfading Scriptures, the oracles of the Lord flashing with the rays of truth. The Spirit clothed the Lord with another such garment through David, singing thus: “You have put on confession and majesty, covering yourself with light as with a garment.”

Just as we must keep clear of all absurdity in the making of clothes, so we must guard against immoderation in their use. It is not good to be dressed above the knee, as they say Spartan girls are; for it is not seemly for any part of a woman to be bared. Indeed, one could very decorously give that witty reply to the man who said, “A beautiful arm,” “But not public”; and “Beautiful legs,” “But only for my husband”; and “A lovely face,” “But only for the one who married me.” But I do not want self-controlled women even to give occasion for such praises to those who, through praises, hunt for what is blameworthy. It is not only that baring the ankle is forbidden; it is commanded that the head be veiled and the face shaded. For it is not holy for the beauty of the body to be a snare for men; nor is it reasonable for a woman to wish to be admired by using a purple veil. Would that it were possible to remove the purple from clothing, so that it might not turn the eyes of spectators to the face of those who wear it! But the women, weaving very little of the rest of the garment, have made the whole of it purple, inflaming idleness; and indeed, going about distracted over these foolish and delicate purples, “purple death has seized them,” as the poet says.

Because of this purple, Tyre and Sidon and the coast of Laconia are most sought after; their dyers and purple fishers are highly esteemed, and the shellfish themselves, because the purple blooms from their blood. And deceitful women, and womanish men, mixing these deceitful dyes into dainty fabrics, run mad in their immoderation, no longer procuring linens from Egypt, but others from the land of the Hebrews and of the Cilicians. I say nothing of amorgine and byssus garments; luxury has outrun even their names. I think the covering should show what is covered to be better than itself, as the statue is better than the temple, the soul than the body, and the body than the clothing. But now it is quite the reverse: if their body were sold, it would never fetch a thousand Attic drachmas, while buying one garment for ten thousand talents they prove themselves more worthless and less valuable than the fabrics. Why, then, do you pursue rare and costly things instead of those at hand and cheap? Because you do not know what is truly beautiful and truly good; and instead of what is, what seems is pursued among the foolish, who, like the mad, imagine white to be black.

Similar are the pretentious women with their footwear, showing much effeminacy here too. Truly shameful are those sandals with golden flowers on them; they even think it right to hammer nails into the soles in spirals; and many engrave erotic greetings on them, so that, keeping time on the ground as they step, they may stamp the courtesan-like character of their mind by their walk. We must say farewell, then, to the vain art of gilded and jeweled sandals, to Attic and Sicyonian shoes, to buskins, Persian and Etruscan; and, setting before us, as is the custom of our truth, the right aim, we must choose what accords with nature.

The use of shoes is partly for covering the feet and partly for protecting the sole of the foot against stumbling and the roughness of mountain paths. Women may be allowed white shoes, except when traveling, when they should use oiled leather; women who travel need nailed soles. But for the most part they should wear shoes; for it is not fitting to show the bare foot; and besides, a woman is easily slipped into harm. For a man, going barefoot is very fitting, except when he is on military service. Indeed, being shod is somehow close to being bound. Using bare feet is most ascetic and suited to health and ease, where no necessity prevents it. If we are not traveling and cannot bear going barefoot, we should use slippers or light white shoes; the Athenians called them “dust-feet,” because, it seems to me, they bring the feet near the dust. John is a sufficient witness to plain footwear, confessing that he was not worthy to untie the strap of the Lord's sandals. For he who showed the Hebrews the pattern of true philosophy wore nothing elaborate. If this hints at something, it will be shown elsewhere.

To gape at stones, dark or green, the refuse cast up by a foreign sea and the scrapings of the earth, is childish. For to rush after translucent pebbles and stones of peculiar colors and varied glass is nothing but the mark of foolish people drawn by things that strike the imagination. So children, seeing fire, rush toward it, drawn by its brightness, not understanding through folly the danger of touching it. Such are the stones that foolish women fasten on themselves in chains and necklaces: amethysts, thunderstones, jaspers, topaz, and the Milesian emerald, the most precious merchandise. And the much-prized pearl has marched in extravagantly into the women's quarters. It is formed in a kind of oyster like the pinna, and is about the size of a large fish's eye. And the wretched women are not ashamed to have spent all their zeal on this little oyster, when they could adorn themselves with the holy stone, the Word of God, whom Scripture somewhere has called a pearl, the translucent and pure Jesus, the eye that watches in the flesh, the transparent Word, through whom the flesh is made precious, regenerated by water. For that oyster too, formed in water, encloses the flesh, and from this the pearl is conceived.

We have received the tradition that the Jerusalem above is walled with holy stones, and we understand that the twelve gates of the heavenly city, likened to precious stones, hint at the conspicuous grace of the apostolic [voice]. For colors are set in the costly stones, and these are precious, while the rest is left as earthy matter. Fittingly, then, the city of the saints, spiritually built, is walled symbolically with these. By the inimitable bloom of the stones they have understood the pure and holy bloom of the Spirit's substance. But those women, not understanding the symbolism of the Scriptures, gape wholly after the stones, offering that marvelous defense: “What God has shown, why should we not use? It is at hand for me; why should I not enjoy it? For whom were these things made, if not for us?” Such words belong to those who are completely ignorant of God's will.

For, first, he supplies the necessities, like water and air, openly to all, while what is not necessary he has hidden in earth and water. So ants dig for gold and griffins guard gold, and the sea has hidden the pearl; but you are curious about what you should not be. Look, the whole heaven is spread open, and you do not seek God; while hidden gold and stones are dug up among us by those condemned to death. And you contradict the Scripture, which cries out plainly: “Seek first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things will be added to you.” Even if all things have been given to you, and all permitted, and “all things are lawful for us,” says the apostle, “not all things are profitable.” God himself brought our race into being for sharing, first sharing his own, and giving his own Word as a common help to all humankind, making all things for all. So all things are common, and let not the rich take more than their share. To say, “It is at hand for me and I have plenty; why should I not enjoy it?” is not human nor social; this rather is loving: “I have it; why should I not share it with those in need?” Such a one is perfect, having fulfilled “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This is true enjoyment, the treasured wealth; while spending on vain desires counts as waste, not expenditure. I know that God has given us the right to use, but only up to what is necessary, and he has willed that the use be common. It is absurd for one to live in luxury while many are in need. How much more glorious it is to do good to many than to live expensively! How much wiser to spend on people than on stones and gold! How much more useful to acquire well-ordered friends than lifeless ornaments! What estates could benefit anyone as much as giving?

It remains for us to answer the objection brought forward: “For whom, then, are the more costly things, if all choose the cheaper?” For human beings, I would say, if we use them without attachment and without discrimination. But if it is impossible for all to be self-controlled, still for the need of necessities we should pursue what is easily obtained, saying a long farewell to these superfluities. In general, ornaments, like dolls' finery, are to be thrown away entirely, and adornment itself refused. For women should be adorned within and show the inner woman beautiful; for only in the soul are beauty and ugliness seen. That is why only the virtuous man is truly beautiful and good, and only the beautiful is held to be good. Virtue alone appears even through a beautiful body and blooms on the flesh, showing the loveliness of self-control worthy of love, when character shines on the form like light. For the beauty of each plant and animal lies in its own virtue; and the virtue of a human being is justice, self-control, courage, and godliness. The beautiful human being, then, is the just, the self-controlled, in a word the good, not the rich. Now even soldiers want to be adorned with gold, not having read that verse of the poet: “who went to war wearing gold, like a foolish girl.”

But love of finery, which cares least for virtue and lays claim to the body, the love of beauty having turned aside into vanity, must be thrown out altogether. For by attaching to the body what is not its own as if it were its own, it has bred the practice of lying and the habit of deceit, showing not what is dignified, unaffected, and truly childlike, but what is pompous, soft, and luxurious. Those women obscure true beauty by shading it with gold, and do not know what an offense it is, putting on themselves countless rich chains, as among the barbarians, they say, criminals are bound with gold. Women seem to me to have emulated these rich prisoners. For is not the golden necklace a collar, and are not the twisted bands the same? The pendants called kathetēres, being like chains, are called by that very name, “chains,” among the Athenians. And Philemon, in The Fellow Youth, called the women's indecent ornaments around their feet “ankle fetters”: “see-through garments and some golden fetter.”

What, then, is still enviable about this adornment, or about your wishing, women, to appear fettered? For if the material removes the reproach, the condition is the same. They seem to me to fall voluntarily into bonds and to boast of rich misfortunes. Perhaps the poets' myth too says that such bonds were thrown around Aphrodite in her adultery, hinting that ornaments are nothing but a symbol of adultery; for Homer called those bonds golden too. And now they are not ashamed to wear the plainest symbols of the evil one. For as the serpent deceived Eve, so golden ornament, using the serpent's shape as bait, has driven the other women mad for outrage, molding themselves images of lampreys and snakes for beauty. The comic poet Nicostratus says: “chains, pendants, rings, bracelets, snakes, anklets, hellebore.”

Aristophanes, in the Women Celebrating the Thesmophoria, very reproachfully lists all women's ornament. I will set out the comic poet's own words, which expose exactly the vulgarity of your tastelessness: “A. Headbands, fillets, soda, pumice, breast-band, back-sling, veil, rouge, necklaces, eye paint, soft gown, hellebore, hairnet, girdle, shawl, bordered robe, fine robe, gown, tunic, pit, round cloak, little tunic. And the greatest of them I have not named. B. What then? A. Eardrops, jeweled ornament, earrings, mallow-dyed garment, grape-clusters, bracelets, brooches, armlets, necklaces, anklets, seals, chains, rings, plasters, bubbles, breast-bands, olisboi, carnelians, collars, spiral earrings.”

I am tired and vexed from naming the multitude of ornaments, and I am amazed at the women for not being worn out carrying such a burden. O vain busyness! O foolish craze for glory! Like courtesans they pour out their wealth for their disgrace, and debase God's gifts by tastelessness, emulating the art of the evil one. The Lord in the Gospel clearly called a fool the rich man who stored up in his barns and said to himself, “You have many good things laid up for many years; eat, drink, be merry”: “For this night they will require your soul of you; and what you have prepared, whose will it be?” Apelles the painter, seeing one of his pupils paint Helen loaded with gold, said: “Young man, unable to paint her beautiful, you have made her rich.”

Such Helens are the women of today: not truly beautiful, but richly made up. To them the Spirit prophesies through Zephaniah: “Their silver and their gold will not be able to deliver them on the day of the Lord's wrath.” But those instructed by Christ should be adorned not with gold but with the Word, through whom alone the gold is seen. The ancient Hebrews would have been blessed if they had taken off the women's ornaments and thrown them away or only melted them down; but as it was, they cast them into a calf and worshiped it as an idol, and they themselves gained nothing from the art or the enterprise, but they taught our women, most figuratively, to abstain from ornaments. For desire that has gone whoring after gold becomes an idol, tried by fire, by which alone luxury is kept, like an idol, not truth. So the Word, reproaching the Hebrews through the prophet, says: “They made silver and gold for Baal,” meaning ornaments; and threatening most plainly, he says: “And I will punish her for the days of the Baals, in which she sacrificed to her, and put on her earrings and her necklaces”; and he added the reason for the adornment, saying: “And she went after her lovers, and forgot me, says the Lord.”

Laying aside, then, these trifles for the evil sophist himself, let them not share in this courtesan's adornment, nor commit idolatry behind a fine-looking screen. Very admirably the blessed Peter says: “Likewise women, not with braids or gold or pearls or costly clothing, but, as befits women who profess godliness, adorning themselves with good works.”

Rightly he commands that adornment be absent from them. For if they are beautiful, nature is enough; let not art contend with nature, that is, let not deceit strive with truth. If they are ugly by nature, they prove it by what they add, since they do not have it. It is fitting, then, for women who serve Christ to embrace simplicity. For simplicity truly provides for holiness, leveling excesses and obtaining from ordinary things the use sought from superfluities. For what is simple (liton), as the name shows, does not stand out, nor swell or puff up in any respect, but is entirely level, smooth, equal, and without excess, and in this way sufficient. Sufficiency is a disposition that reaches its proper end without deficiency and without excess; its mother is justice, its nurse self-sufficiency.

Self-sufficiency is a disposition content with what is needed and able by itself to provide what contributes to the blessed life. Let there be on the wrists of your hands a holy adornment: generous sharing and the works of managing the household. For “whoever gives to the poor lends to God,” and “the hands of the brave make rich.” He called brave those who despise money and are ready to share. On the feet let there appear unwearying readiness to do good and the journey toward righteousness. Pendants and necklaces are modesty and self-control; such chains God forges of gold. “Blessed is the man who has found wisdom, and the mortal who has seen understanding,” the Spirit says through Solomon, “for it is better to trade for her than for treasures of gold and silver, and she is more precious than costly stones.” This is the true good adornment. Let their ears not be pierced, against nature, to hang earrings and ear-ornaments; for it is not right to force nature against what it has willed, nor could there be a better ornament for the ears than true instruction entering the natural passages of hearing. Eyes anointed by the Word and ears pierced for perception make one a hearer of divine things and a beholder of holy things, the Word showing truly the true beauty, “which eye has not seen nor ear heard” before.

It was, then, it seems, the greatest of all lessons to know oneself. For if one knows himself, he will know God; and knowing God, he will be made like God, not by wearing gold or long robes, but by doing good and needing as little as possible. God alone needs nothing, and he rejoices most to see us pure with the adornment of the mind, and then also of the body, clothed with a holy robe, self-control. The soul being threefold, the intellectual part, which is called the reasoning part, is the inner man, the ruler of this visible man; and another leads that one: God. The spirited part, being bestial, dwells near madness; and the desiring part, the third, is many-shaped, more varied than Proteus, the sea daemon, changing its shape now one way and now another, and eager for adulteries, lusts, and corruptions. “First he became a lion with a fine beard,” still keeping the adornment; the hair of the beard shows the man. “But then a serpent, or a leopard, or a great boar”: love of finery has slipped into licentiousness. No longer … does the man appear as a strong beast, but “he became flowing water and a tree with lofty leaves.” The passions pour out, the pleasures gush forth, beauty withers and falls to the ground faster than a leaf, when the erotic storms of insolence blow upon it, and it withers in corruption before autumn comes. For desire becomes and fashions everything and wishes to deceive, so as to hide the human being. But that man with whom the Word dwells does not change his shape, does not make himself up; he has the form of the Word; he is made like God; he is beautiful, he does not beautify himself; his is true beauty, for it is God; and that man becomes god,

because he wills what God wills. Rightly, then, Heraclitus said: “Men are gods, gods are men; for the reason is the same.” A manifest mystery: God in man, and man god; and the Mediator fulfills the will of the Father. For the Mediator is the Word, common to both, Son of God and Savior of human beings, servant of the one and Instructor of us. Since the flesh is a slave, as Paul too testifies, how could anyone reasonably adorn the handmaid like a procuress? For that the fleshly is the form of a slave, the apostle says of the Lord: “He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,” calling the outer man a slave before the Lord became a slave and bore flesh.

But God, who suffers with us, himself set the flesh free from corruption, released it from deadly and bitter slavery, and clothed it with incorruption, putting on the flesh this holy adornment of eternity: immortality. There is another beauty of human beings: love. “Love,” according to the apostle, “is patient, kind, not jealous, does not brag, is not puffed up.” For adornment is bragging, conveying superfluity and uselessness. So he adds: “It does not behave unseemly”; for unseemly is a form that is foreign and not natural; and what is put on artificially is foreign, which he explains clearly by saying, “It does not seek what is not its own.” For truth calls what is proper one's own, while love of finery seeks what is another's, being outside God, the Word, and love. And the Spirit bears witness through Isaiah that the Lord himself was ugly in appearance: “And we saw him, and he had no form nor beauty, but his form was dishonored, falling short of men.” Yet who is better than the Lord? But he showed not the imaginary beauty of the flesh, but the true beauty both of soul and of body: of the soul, beneficence; of the flesh, immortality.

It is not, then, the appearance of the outer man but the soul that must be adorned with the ornament of goodness; and one might say the flesh too, with the adornment of self-control. Those women who adorn the surface and leave the depths barren unwittingly adorn themselves like the temples of the Egyptians. Among them, gateways and forecourts are elaborately built, and groves and sacred meadows; the courts are crowned with many columns; the walls gleam with foreign stones and lack nothing of artful painting; the temples glitter with gold and silver and electrum, and flash, varied with little stones from India and Ethiopia; and the inner shrines are shaded with gold-embroidered curtains. But if you go into the depth of the enclosure, hurrying to see the higher being, and look for the statue that dwells in the temple, a shrine-bearer or some other of those who perform the rites in the precinct, looking solemn and singing a paean in the Egyptian tongue, draws back the curtain a little as if to show the god, and gives us a broad laugh at the object of worship. For the god we hurried to will not be found within, but a cat or a crocodile or a native snake or some such beast, unworthy of the temple, fit rather for a hole or a den or mud. The god of the Egyptians appears on a purple couch

a beast rolling about. Such, it seems to me, are the women who wear gold, practicing the curling of their locks, rubbing ointments on their cheeks, painting their eyes, dyeing their hair, and contriving the rest of their effeminacy: adorning the fleshly enclosure, truly Egyptian-like, to attract superstitious lovers. But if one draws back the curtain of the temple, I mean the headdress, the dye, the clothing, the gold, the rouge, the cosmetics, that is, the web woven of them [the curtain], expecting to find true beauty within, he will be disgusted, I know well. For he will not find dwelling within the image of God, which is worthy of regard; instead a harlot and adulteress has occupied the inner shrine of the soul, and the true beast will be exposed, an ape smeared with white lead; and that deceitful serpent, eating through the intellectual part of the human being by vainglory, has the soul as its hole. Filling everything with deadly poisons and belching out the venom of its own error, this procurer, the dragon, has changed women into harlots (for love of finery belongs not to a wife but to a courtesan). They care little for keeping house with their husbands, but loosening their husband's purse they turn his means to their desires, so that they may have many witnesses to their seeming beautiful; and all day long, sitting by the dressing table,

they spend their time with slaves bought with money. Like bad cooks seasoning a dish, they season the flesh; they waste the day at the dressing table, shut up in their rooms, lest they be caught dyeing their hair; and in the evening this counterfeit beauty creeps out, as from a den, into the lamplight; for drunkenness and the dim light help their scheme. The comic poet Menander drives the woman who dyes her hair blond out of the house: “Now creep out of this house; for a self-controlled wife should not make her hair blond,” nor rouge her cheeks, nor paint her eyes. The wretched women do not see that they destroy their own beauty by bringing in a foreign one. From daybreak they are torn, rubbed, and plastered with some concoctions; they chafe their skin, soften their flesh with drugs, and wither their natural bloom with elaborate washes. So they appear pale from plasters and are easily caught by diseases, having their flesh, painted with drugs, already wasted, dishonoring the Creator of human beings, as though he had not given them beauty as it deserved.

Naturally they become idle for housekeeping, sitting like painted pictures, made to be looked at, not for keeping house. That is why the thoughtful woman in the comic poet says: “What wise or splendid thing could we women do, who sit about all made up,” corrupting the character of free women, bringing about the overthrow of households, the ruin of marriages, and the substitution of children. Antiphanes the comic poet, in The Soft Woman, mocks this courtesan-like behavior of women, using words common to them all, invented for wasting time: “She comes, she goes again, she comes up again, she goes, she arrives, she is here, she washes, she comes up, she is soaped, she is combed, she steps out, she is rubbed, she bathes, she looks at herself, she is dressed, she is perfumed, she is adorned, she is anointed; † and if she has anything, she hangs herself.”

For they deserve to perish three times, not once, those who use crocodiles' dung and anoint themselves with the froth of rotting matter, smear soot on their eyebrows and rub white lead on their cheeks. If even the pagan poets are disgusted with them for their conduct, how could they not be rejected by the truth? Another comic poet, Alexis, exposes them; I will set out his words too, which shame the unabashed shamelessness by the elaborateness of the description (for he was not himself so elaborate). I am ashamed that the women's quarters are ridiculed so much in comedy, the woman who, having become a “helper,” then ruins her husband too. “First, for gain and for plundering their neighbors, everything else becomes secondary to them. One happens to be short: cork is stitched into her shoes. One is tall: she wears a thin sole, and goes out with her head leaning on her shoulder; that takes something off her height. One has no hips: she puts sewn padding under her dress, so that those who see her cry out at her fine figure. One has a big belly: they have breasts like the comic actors'; setting them upright, they draw the front of the dress away from the belly as if with poles. One has red eyebrows: they paint them with soot. One happens to be dark: she plasters herself with white lead. One is too fair: she rubs on rouge. One has a beautiful part of the body: she shows it bare. One has fine teeth: she must laugh, so that those present may see what a pretty mouth she has. And if she does not enjoy laughing, she spends the day with a thin stick of myrtle standing upright between her lips, so that in time she grins, whether she wants to or not.”

I set these things before you from worldly wisdom to turn you from the mischievous contrivance of love of finery, since the Word wishes to save us by every means; a little later I will also apply the astringent of the divine Scriptures. What is not hidden tends somehow to keep away from sins out of shame at being exposed. As a bandaged hand and an eye smeared with ointment suggest to the sight that the person is ill, so cosmetics and dyes hint at a soul sick in its depths. The divine Instructor advises us to pass by “a strange river,” speaking figuratively of the strange woman, the lewd one, as a strange river, flowing to all, pouring out to all in harlot's licentiousness for luxury: “Keep away from strange water,” he says, “and do not drink from a strange spring,” advising us to guard against the stream of voluptuousness, “that we may live a long time, and years of life be added to us,” whether by not hunting after strange pleasure or by turning away from heresies.

Love of dainties and love of wine, though great passions, are not as great as love of finery. A full table and cup after cup are enough to satisfy gluttony; but for those who love gold, purple, and precious stones, neither the gold above and below the earth is enough, nor the sea of Tyre, nor the cargo from India and Ethiopia, nor even the Pactolus flowing with wealth. Even if one of them became a Midas, she would not be satisfied, but would still be poor, longing for more wealth; and these are ready to die with their gold. And if Wealth is blind, as he is, how can the women who are excited about him and share his passion not be blind? Having no limit to their desire, they run aground on shamelessness; for they need the theater, the procession, a crowd of spectators, wandering in the temples, and lingering in the streets, so as to be seen by all. For those who glory in appearance, not in heart, adorn themselves to please others; as brands show the runaway slave, so gaudy clothes show the adulteress. “And if you clothe yourself in scarlet and adorn yourself with golden ornament, and if you paint your eyes with antimony, your beautifying is in vain,” the Word says through Jeremiah.

Is it not absurd, then, that horses and birds and the other animals should spring from the grass and the meadows, and fly up, rejoicing in their own adornment, the horse's mane, natural color, and varied plumage, while woman, as if more deficient even than the nature of beasts, thinks herself so lacking in beauty that she needs a foreign beauty, bought and painted on? Headdresses, varieties of headdresses, elaborate plaits, countless styles of hair, and costly mirrors, by which they arrange themselves to hunt those who, like foolish children, are excited by appearances, belong to women who have lost all shame; one would not be wrong to call them courtesans, since they make their faces into masks. But the Word advises us “not to look at what is seen, but at what is not seen; for what is seen is temporary, but what is not seen is eternal.” And going beyond absurdity, they have invented mirrors for their artificial form, as if it were some brave deed or accomplishment, when they should rather put a veil over the deception. For not even Narcissus, as the Greek myth has it, profited from becoming a spectator of his own image.

If Moses commands human beings to make no image to rival God, how can these women reasonably make images of themselves by reflection, imitating them for the falsification of the face? When Samuel the prophet was sent to anoint one of the sons of Jesse as king, and saw the eldest of his sons, handsome and tall, and was pleased with him and brought out the anointing oil, “the Lord said to him,” it says, “Do not look on his appearance or the height of his stature, for I have rejected him. For man looks on the eyes, but the Lord on the heart”; and he did not anoint the one beautiful in body, but the one beautiful in soul. If, then, the Lord considers the natural beauty of the body less than that of the soul, what does he think of counterfeit beauty, he who casts out all falsehood entirely? “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” Most clearly the Lord teaches through Abraham that the one who follows God must despise fatherland, kindred, possessions, and all wealth, making him a sojourner; and for this he called him “friend,” since he despised his wealth at home; for he was of noble birth and very rich. With three hundred and eighteen of his own servants he overcame the four kings who had taken Lot captive. We find Esther alone rightly adorned. The woman beautified herself mystically for her king; but that beauty of hers proved to be the ransom of a people being slaughtered.

That adornment makes women courtesans and men effeminate and adulterous, the tragic poet is our witness, telling the story thus: “This judge of the goddesses, coming from Phrygia, as the myth of the Argives has it, to Lacedaemon, flowery in the robe of his garments and gleaming with gold, in barbarian luxury, loving and loved, went off, snatching Helen away to the cattle stalls of Ida, having found Menelaus abroad.” O adulterous beauty! Barbarian love of finery and effeminate luxury overturned Greece; clothing, luxury, and youthful beauty corrupted Spartan self-control; barbarian finery exposed the daughter of Zeus as a courtesan. They had no Instructor to check their desires, nor one who said, “Do not commit adultery,” nor one who said, “Do not covet,” nor “Do not go to adultery through desire,” nor “Do not inflame your appetites through love of finery.” What an end followed for them, and how many evils those enjoyed who would not restrain their self-love! Two continents were stirred by uneducated pleasures, and all was shaken by a barbarian youth. All Greece put to sea, the sea was cramped carrying continents; a long war was fanned into flame, fierce battles broke out, and the plains were filled with corpses; the barbarian insulted the naval station; injustice prevailed, and the eye of that poetic Zeus looked at the Thracians; barbarian plains drank noble blood, and the streams of rivers were dammed by dead bodies; breasts were beaten in lamentation, and mourning spread over the earth; “all the feet of many-fountained Ida were shaken, and its peaks, and the city of the Trojans and the ships of the Achaeans.” Where shall we flee, Homer, and stand? Show us a land that has not been shaken.

… Do not touch the reins, child, being inexperienced, nor mount the chariot to drive without having learned. Heaven rejoices in two charioteers, by whom alone the fire is driven and led. For the mind is carried away by pleasure, and the purity of reasoning, not instructed by the Word, slides into licentiousness and receives the fall as the wage of its transgression. An example of this for you is the angels of God, who abandoned the beauty of God for a fading beauty and fell so far from heaven to the ground. The Shechemites too were punished, falling because they outraged the holy virgin; their tomb is their punishment, and the memory of the penalty instructs us toward salvation.

Luxury has gone so far that not only women are sick with this vain zeal, but men too emulate the disease. Not being free of adornment, they are not healthy, but turning to what is softer they become womanish, cutting their hair in ignoble and whorish styles, wrapped in fine, transparent cloaks, chewing mastic, smelling of perfume. What would one say on seeing them? Like a reader of faces, he would divine from their appearance that they are adulterers and effeminate, hunting both kinds of sexual love, hair-haters, hairless, loathing the bloom of manhood, and arranging their locks like women. “Living in unholy daring,” these shape-changers “do reckless and evil deeds,” says the Sibyl. Because of them the cities are full of those who apply pitch, shave, and pluck these effeminates; shops have been fitted out and opened everywhere, and the craftsmen of this courtesan-like harlotry openly earn a great deal of money. They offer themselves in every way to those who smear them with pitch and pull out their hair, not at all ashamed before those who look on or pass by, nor of themselves, though they are men. Such are the emulators of the more ignoble passions, having their whole

body smoothed by the violent pulling of the pitch. I have no care at all to go further into such shamelessness; for if nothing is left undone by them, neither is anything left unsaid by me. When Diogenes was being sold, rebuking one of these ignoble men in the manner of an instructor, he said very manfully: “Come, young man, buy yourself a man,” correcting his harlotry with an ambiguous saying. For how is it not ignoble for men to shave and smooth themselves? Dyes for the hair, ointments for gray hair, and blondings, the practices of ruined effeminates, and their womanish combing must be given up. For they think that, like a snake, they can strip old age from their heads, repainting and renewing themselves. Even if they trick their hair, they will not escape their wrinkles, nor will they cheat death by cheating time. It is not dreadful, not dreadful, to seem old when one cannot escape being old. The nearer a man hastens to his end, the more venerable he is in truth, having only God older than himself; since he too is the eternal Elder, older than all that exists. Prophecy has called him “the Ancient of Days,” “and the hair of his head like pure wool,” the prophet says.

No one else, says the Lord, “can make a hair white or black.” How, then, do these godless people set themselves up as rival creators to God, or rather force themselves into opposition to him, by counterfeiting the hair he has made gray? “The crown of old men is much experience,” says Scripture, and the gray hair of their face is the flower of much experience; but they shame the privilege of age, gray hair. It is not possible, it is not, for one with a counterfeit head to show a true soul. “But you did not so learn Christ,” it says, “if indeed you heard him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off, according to your former way of life, the old man,” not the gray-haired one, but the one “corrupted according to the desires of deceit, and to be renewed,” not with dyes and adornments, but “in the spirit of your mind, and to put on the new man, created according to God in righteousness and holiness of truth.” For one who is a man to comb himself and cut his hair with a razor for appearance, arranging his hair before the mirror, and to shave, pluck, and smooth his cheeks, how is it not womanish? If one did not see them naked, he would take them for women. Even though they are not permitted to wear gold, out of womanish desire they wrap straps and cords with gold leaf, or make ball-shaped ornaments of the same material, and hang them from their ankles

and dangle them from their necks. This is a device of broken men dragged down into the women's quarters, amphibious and lustful beasts; this manner of ambush is whorish and godless. For God willed the woman to be smooth, priding herself on her natural hair alone, as the horse on its mane; but the man he adorned with a beard, like lions, and made manly with a hairy chest, a sign of strength and rule. So too he adorned cocks, which fight for the hens, with combs like helmets. God values this hair so highly that he orders it to come to men together with wisdom; and, admiring its dignity, he has honored the stern look with venerable gray hair.

Wisdom and exact reasonings, gray with understanding, come to their prime with time, and strengthen old age with the vigor of much experience, holding out gray hair, a lovely flower of dignified wisdom, as a reasonable pledge of trust. This sign of the man, then, the beard, by which the man is seen, is older than Eve and a symbol of the stronger nature. God judged hairiness fitting for him and scattered hair over the whole of the man's body; and whatever was smooth and soft in him he took away from his side, making Eve a woman soft to the touch for receiving seed, a helper in generation and housekeeping. And he (for he had given up the smoothness) remained a man and shows himself a man; and to him it is granted to act, as to her to receive. For hairy things are by nature drier and warmer than smooth ones; so males are hairier and warmer than females, the uncastrated than eunuchs, and the full-grown than the immature. To transgress against the symbol of manly nature, then, the hair, is unholy; and the adornment of smoothing, for I grow warm with the argument, if it is aimed at men, is the mark of an effeminate; if at women, of an adulterer; both must be banished as far as possible from our commonwealth.

“But even the hairs of your head are all numbered,” says the Lord; so are those on the chin, and indeed those on the whole body. None at all must be plucked out against the purpose of God, numbered by his will. “Unless you do not recognize yourselves,” says the apostle, “that Christ Jesus is in you”; if we knew he dwelt in us, I do not know how we would have dared to outrage him. And the application of pitch (I hesitate to name the indecency of the act), turned around and bent over, stripping the private parts of nature into full view, dancing and arching the back in shameless postures without being ashamed of themselves, behaving indecently in the very midst of the youth and the gymnasium, where men's virtue is tested, pursuing this unnatural practice: how is this not the height of licentiousness? Those who do such things in public would hardly respect anyone at home. Their shamelessness in public bears witness to their licentiousness in private when they have license; for the one who denies his manhood in the daylight is plainly proved a woman by night. “There shall not be a harlot among the daughters of Israel,” said the Word through Moses, “and there shall not be a fornicator among the sons of Israel.” “But pitch is beneficial,” one says. “But it brings slander,” I say. No one in his right mind would wish to seem a fornicator, if he is not sick with it, nor would anyone willingly practice slandering the beautiful image. For if, according to the blessed apostle, God “predestined those called according to his purpose, whom he foreknew, to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers,” how are they not godless who mutilate the body that is conformed to the Lord?

A man who wishes to be beautiful must adorn the most beautiful thing in a human being, the mind, and show it more seemly day by day; he must pluck out not hairs but desires. I pity even the boys of the slave dealers, adorned for outrage; but they have not been disfigured by themselves; the poor creatures are beautified on command, for shameful gain. But those who willingly choose to do what, if commanded, they would have preferred death to, if they were men, how are they not despicable? Now life has gone so far in licentiousness, with injustice luxuriating, that every kind of lust is poured out over the cities, having become law. Among them women stand in brothels selling their own flesh for the outrage of pleasure, and boys, taught to deny their nature, play the part of women. Luxury has turned everything upside down; voluptuous excess has disgraced humanity. It seeks everything, attempts everything, forces everything, confounds nature: men suffer what women suffer, and women act like men against nature, being married and marrying women. No passage is closed to licentiousness; sexual love is made public and common among them, luxury a housemate. O pitiable sight! O unspeakable practice! These are displayed as the trophies of your civic incontinence; the prostitutes are the proof of the deeds. Alas for such lawlessness! The wretches do not even understand that the uncertainty of intercourse produces many tragedies. Fathers, not remembering the children they exposed, often unknowingly have intercourse with a son who has become a prostitute and with daughters who have become harlots; and the license of incontinence shows the begetters to be the husbands.

The wise men of the laws permit these things; they are allowed to sin according to law, and they call the unspeakable pleasure a convenience. Those who commit adultery against nature think they are free of adultery; but justice, the avenger of their daring deeds, follows them; and drawing on themselves an inexorable calamity, they buy death for a small coin. The wretched merchants of these cargoes sail, carrying sexual immorality as merchandise, like grain or wine. Others, far more wretched, buy pleasures like bread or meat, not taking to heart that saying of Moses: “You shall not profane your daughter by making her a prostitute, and the land shall not commit sexual immorality, and the land shall be filled with lawlessness.” This was prophesied long ago, and the outcome is plain: the whole earth is already filled with sexual immorality and lawlessness.

I admire the ancient Roman lawgivers: they hated effeminate practice, and they judged the giving of one's body to be used as a woman, against the law of nature, worthy of the pit, according to the law of justice. It is not right to pluck out the beard, the natural beauty, the noble beauty, “for one whose beard is first growing, whose youth is most charming.” As he advances, he is anointed, delighting in his beard, on which the prophetic ointment of Aaron came down when he was honored. The one rightly instructed, on whom peace has settled, should be at peace with his own hair too. What, then, would women eager for lewdness not practice, when they see themselves mirrored in men who dare such things? Rather, such men should not be called men but catamites and womanish, whose voices are softened and whose clothing is made feminine in touch and dye. Such men are clearly exposed in their character from outside, by their cloak, shoes, posture, walk, haircut, and look. “For a man will be known by his look,” says Scripture, “and a man will be known by meeting him; a man's attire, the step of his foot, and the laughter of his teeth tell about him.”

Those who are most at war with their other hair take care only of the hair on the head, all but binding their locks in hairnets like women. Lions boast of their shagginess, but they are armed by their hair for strength; boars too pride themselves on their crest, but hunters fear them when their hair bristles; wool-fleeced sheep are weighed down with fleeces, but the loving Father multiplied their hair for your service, man, teaching you to shear the fleeces. Among the nations, the Celts and Scythians wear their hair long, but do not dress it; the barbarian's thick hair has something fearsome, and its yellow color threatens war; the color is akin to blood. Both these barbarians have hated luxury; the German will show the Rhine as a clear witness, the Scythian his wagon. The Scythian sometimes even despises his wagon (its size seems wealth to the barbarian) and, leaving luxury, lives frugally: taking a house sufficient and lighter than the wagon, his horse, the Scythian mounts and is carried wherever he wishes; and when he is weary with hunger he asks his horse for food, and the horse offers its veins, and gives its master the only thing it has, its blood.

and to the nomad the horse becomes both vehicle and food. Among the Arabs (another nomad people) those of fighting age ride camels; they mount the camels when pregnant, and the camels graze and run at the same time, carrying their masters, and they carry the house along with them. If drink fails the barbarians, they milk them, and when their food is used up they do not even spare their blood, as they say mad wolves do. And the camels, gentler than the barbarians, bear no grudge when wronged, but run boldly across the desert, at once carrying and feeding their masters. Perish, then, the wild beasts who feed on blood! It is not lawful for human beings even to touch blood, for their body is nothing but flesh cultivated by blood. Human blood has shared in the Word and has fellowship with grace through the Spirit; and if anyone wrongs it, it will not escape notice; it may speak to the Lord even when bare of form. I approve the frugality of the barbarians: loving an unencumbered way of life, the barbarians have abandoned luxury. Such the Lord calls us to be: stripped of tastelessness, stripped of vainglory, torn away from sins, carrying only the tree of life, holding only to salvation.

But I did not notice that I had been carried by the wind past the order of my subject; I must return to it and reproach the keeping of many slaves. Avoiding working and serving themselves, they take refuge in servants, buying a great crowd of cooks, table-setters, and those who skillfully carve meat into portions. Their service is divided in many ways: some labor for their gluttony, carvers and sauce-makers and makers of cakes, honey pastries, and broths; others are busy with superfluous clothing; others guard gold like griffins; others keep the silver, polish the cups, and prepare the equipment for feasts; others curry the beasts of burden; a throng of cupbearers is trained among them, and herds of handsome boys like cattle, from whom they milk their beauty. Male and female hairdressers attend the women, some with mirrors, some with hairnets, others with combs; many eunuchs too, and these are procurers, serving without suspicion those who wish to indulge in pleasures, trusted because they cannot enjoy them.

But the true eunuch is not the one who cannot, but the one who does not wish, to indulge in pleasure. Bearing witness through the prophet Samuel against the Jews who had transgressed, when the people asked for a king, the Word does not promise them the loving Lord, but threatens them with a willful and luxurious tyrant, “who will take your daughters,” he says, “as perfumers and cooks and bakers,” ruling by the law of war, not seeking the government of peace. And many Celts lift the women's litters on high and carry them. Spinning, wool-working, weaving, the women's domestic work, and housekeeping are nowhere to be seen; instead those who make the women false spend the day with them, chattering love stories and wearing out their bodies and souls with deceitful work and deceitful talk. “You shall not be with the many for evil,” it says, “nor join the multitude,” because wisdom appears among the few and disorder in the crowd.

They buy litter-bearers not out of modesty, because they do not wish to be seen (that would be welcome, if they took cover with that disposition), but, giving themselves airs, they ride on their servants, eager to make a show. With the curtain opened, looking around keenly at those who look at them, they expose their character; and often they lean out from within, shaming their superficial modesty with slippery curiosity. “Do not look around in the streets of the city,” it says, “nor wander in its deserted places”; for it is truly a desert, even if there is a crowd of the licentious, where no self-controlled person is present. These women are carried around the temples, sacrificing and consulting diviners, going about every day with mendicant priests, begging priests of the Mother, and ribald old women who ruin households, enduring the old women's whispers over the cups, learning love charms and incantations from sorcerers for the ruin of marriages. Some men they have, others they pray for, and others the diviners promise them. They do not know that they are being deceived, and that, giving themselves over as a vessel of pleasure to those who wish to indulge their lust, and exchanging their purity for the most shameful outrage, they think shameful corruption a matter of business.

Many are the servants of courtesan-like licentiousness, creeping in from every side; for the licentious are prone to lewdness, like pigs rushing to a sinking boat. So Scripture most strongly advises: “Do not bring every man into your house, for the snares of the deceitful are many”; and elsewhere it says, “Let righteous men be your companions at table, and your boast will remain in the fear of the Lord.” To the crows with sexual immorality! “For know this well,” says the apostle, “that every fornicator or covetous person, who is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” Those women who enjoy the company of effeminate men let in crowds of catamites with unbridled tongues, foul in body, foul in speech, made men for licentious services, servants of adultery, giggling and whispering and snorting through their noses the whorish sound of lewdness, trying to please with licentious words and postures and to provoke laughter, the forerunner of sexual immorality. And sometimes, inflamed by some chance anger, being fornicators themselves or emulating a crowd of catamites to their ruin, they rattle with their noses like frogs,

as if they had their bile living in their nostrils. The more refined of these women keep Indian birds and Median peacocks, and recline with pointed-headed creatures, playing, delighting in dwarfs as monsters; they laugh when they hear of Thersites, but they themselves, buying costly Thersiteses, pride themselves not on their husbands but on these, who are “a burden to the earth.” They overlook a self-controlled widow, who is worth far more than a Maltese lapdog, and pass by a righteous old man, more seemly, I think, than a monster bought with money. They will not take in an orphan child, these women who keep parrots and curlews; they expose the children born at home, and take in the young of birds, preferring irrational creatures to rational ones. They ought rather to support old men who profess self-control, more handsome, I think, than apes, and able to utter something better than nightingales. “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these,” he says, “you did it to me.” But these women, on the contrary, have preferred ignorance to self-control, turning their property into stone in pearls and Indian emeralds; and they squander and throw away their money on fading dyes and slaves bought with money, like fattened hens scratching the dunghills of life. “Poverty humbles a man,” it says; he calls stinginess poverty, by which the rich are poor in giving, as though they had nothing.

And what baths they have! Artificial rooms, compact and portable, covered with transparent linen, gilded chairs, silver … and countless vessels of gold and silver, carried around, some for drinking, some for food, some for bathing; and even braziers of coals; for they have come to such incontinence as to dine and get drunk while still bathing. They tastelessly display in the baths the silver plate with which they parade, perhaps partly from superfluous pretension about their wealth, but chiefly showing their self-willed lack of education, by which they accuse unmanly men of being ruled by women, and prove at the same time that they cannot even sweat without their many vessels; for poor women, who have no share in the pomp, share the same baths. The filth of wealth has a great covering of blasphemy. With this, as with bait, they hook the wretches who gape at the glitter of the gold; for by dazzling the tasteless with it they contrive to make their lovers admire them, who shortly insult them when they are

naked. Before their own husbands they would not undress, affecting a pretended credibility of modesty; but any others who wish may see them naked in the baths, shut up as they are at home; for there they are not ashamed to undress before spectators, as before dealers in bodies. Hesiod advises not even to wash one's skin in a women's bath. But the baths are open to men and women together, and there they strip for incontinence; for “from looking comes loving,” as if their modesty were washed away in the baths. Those who are not so shameless shut out strangers but bathe with their own servants, strip naked before slaves, and are rubbed down by them, giving the cowering desire the fearless liberty of touching. For those brought in to their naked mistresses at the baths learn to strip for daring in desire, setting aside their fear through evil habit.

The ancient athletes, ashamed to show a man naked, kept their modesty by competing in loincloths; but these women, putting off modesty together with their tunic, want to appear beautiful, but are unwillingly proved bad. For through the body itself the lewdness of desire is most clearly seen, as in those with dropsy the fluid held under the skin; the disease of both is recognized from their appearance. Men, then, being a noble example of truth to women, should be ashamed to strip with them and should guard against slippery looks; “for the one who looks,” it says, “too curiously has already sinned.” At home one should respect parents and servants; in the streets, those one meets; in the baths, the women; in solitude, oneself; and everywhere the Word, who is everywhere, and “without whom not one thing came to be.” For only so will one remain without falling, if he considers that God is always present with him.

Wealth, then, should be partaken of worthily and shared generously, not vulgarly nor pretentiously; nor should love of the beautiful be turned into self-love and tastelessness, lest someone say of us: “His horse is worth fifteen talents, or his estate, or his servant, or his gold; but he himself is worth three coppers.” Indeed, take away the finery of the women and the servants of the masters, and you will find the masters no different from the bought slaves, not in walk, not in look, not in voice; so they are like the slaves. But they are distinguished by being weaker than their servants and by having been brought up more sickly. The best of all teachings must be sung at every turn: that the good man, being self-controlled and just, treasures his wealth in heaven. The one who has sold his earthly goods and given to the poor finds the imperishable treasure, where there is no moth, no robber. He is truly blessed, even if he is small, weak, and obscure, and he is rich with truly the greatest wealth; but if he is richer than Cinyras and Midas, yet unjust and arrogant, like the one who lived in luxury in purple and fine linen and despised Lazarus, he is wretched,

lives painfully, and will not live. Wealth seems to me like a snake: if one does not know how to take hold of it harmlessly, lifting the beast from a distance by the tip of the tail, it will coil around the hand and bite. Wealth too, wriggling in the hand of one who holds it skillfully or unskillfully, is dangerous, clinging and biting, unless one, despising it, uses it with knowledge, so that the beast may be charmed by the incantation of the Word and he himself remain unharmed. It seems that he alone, unnoticed, is rich who possesses what is worth most. What is worth much is not stone, not silver, not clothing, not bodily beauty, but virtue, which is the Word handed on by the Instructor for practice: the Word who forswears luxury, calls in working with one's own hands as a servant, and praises frugality, the offspring of self-control. “Take instruction,” he says, “and not silver, and knowledge rather than tried gold; for wisdom is better than precious stones, and nothing precious is worth as much as she.” And again: “Reap my fruit rather than gold and precious stone and silver; for my produce is better than choice silver.” And if we must distinguish, let the one with many possessions be called rich, loaded with gold like a dirty purse; but the just man is seemly, since seemliness is order, measured in the fitting arrangement of management and giving. “For there are those who sow and gather more,” of whom it is written: “He scattered, he gave to the poor; his righteousness remains forever.” So it is not the one who has and keeps, but the one who shares, who is rich; and it is sharing, not possession, that shows the blessed man; and generosity is a fruit of the soul; so wealth is in the soul.

Goods can be acquired by the good alone, and Christians are the good; a foolish or licentious person could neither perceive the good nor obtain its possession; so goods can be acquired by Christians alone. Nothing is richer than these goods; so these alone are rich. For true wealth is righteousness and the Word, more precious than any treasure, not increased by flocks and fields but given by God, wealth that cannot be taken away (the soul alone is its treasury), the best possession for the one who has it, making the human being truly blessed. For the one who desires nothing that is not in our power, and obtains what he desires, and receives from God by asking whatever he holily seeks: how is he not rich in possessions, possessing all things, having God as his eternal treasure? “To the one who asks,” he says, “it will be given, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” If God refuses nothing, all things belong to the godly.

Luxury, wandering into pleasures, becomes a grievous shipwreck for human beings.

For this pleasant and inglorious life of the many is foreign to true love of the beautiful and to refined pleasures. By nature the human being is a lofty animal, proud, and a seeker of the beautiful, as the creation of the only Beautiful One; but the life given to the belly is undignified, disgraceful, ugly, and ridiculous. Love of pleasure is most foreign to the divine nature: to feed like sparrows and to mate like pigs and goats. To consider pleasure the good belongs to complete tastelessness; and love of wealth drives the human being out of a right way of life, persuading him to lose all shame at what is shameful, “if only he has the power, like a beast, to eat everything and to drink likewise, and to have every kind of fill of sexual pleasure.” That is why he very rarely inherits the kingdom of God. Why, then, are so many dishes prepared, except to fill one belly? The latrines expose the impurity of gluttony, into which our bellies spit the remains of the feast. Why do they gather so many cupbearers, when one cup can satisfy them? Why chests of clothes? Where is the gold for, and the ornaments? They are prepared for clothes-thieves and criminals and dainty eyes.

“Let not almsgiving and faithfulness fail you,” says Scripture. See, we have Elijah the Tishbite as a fine example of frugality, when “he sat under the broom tree,” and the angel brought him food: “there was a barley cake and a jar of water.” Such a meal the Lord sent him. So we, journeying toward the truth, must be unencumbered. “Carry no purse,” said the Lord, “no bag, no sandals,” that is, do not acquire wealth treasured up only in a purse; do not fill your own barns, laying up seed as in a bag, but share with those in need; do not busy yourselves with beasts of burden and servants, who are figuratively called sandals, since they carry the loads of the rich on their journey. We must throw away the multitude of vessels, the silver and gold cups, and the crowd of servants, taking from the Instructor fine and dignified companions: working with one's own hands, and frugality. We must walk in harmony with the Word, even if one has a wife and children; a household that has learned to follow a self-controlled traveler is no burden.

The wife who loves her husband should be equipped like her husband, both carrying frugality, a fine provision for the journey to heaven, with one self-controlled dignity. As the foot is the measure of the shoe, so the body is the measure of each person's possessions; what is superfluous, the so-called ornaments and the furnishings of the rich, is a burden, not an adornment of the body. The one who is striving to force his way up to heaven must carry beneficence as a good staff, and, sharing with the afflicted, partake of true rest. For Scripture confesses that “a man's own wealth is the ransom of his soul,” that is, if he is rich, he will be saved by sharing. As wells that naturally gush up, when drawn from, rise again to their former level, so sharing, being a good spring of love for humankind, when it shares its drink with the thirsty, grows again and is filled, just as milk usually flows into breasts that are suckled or milked.

For the one who has the almighty God, the Word, lacks nothing and is never at a loss for anything he needs; for the Word is a possession that lacks nothing and the cause of all abundance. If anyone should say that he has often seen a just man in need of bread, this is rare, and only where there is no other just man; but let him read this too: “For the just man shall not live by bread alone, but by the word of the Lord,” who is the true bread, the bread of heaven. So the good man is never without resources, as long as he keeps his confession toward God intact. For he may ask and receive from the Father of all whatever he needs, and enjoy what is his own, if he keeps the Son; and this too is possible: to feel no need at all. This Word, our Instructor, gives us wealth, and there is no envy in being rich for those who acquire through him freedom from need; whoever has this wealth will inherit the kingdom of God.

If any of you shuns luxury to the end, nursed by frugality, he will more easily practice enduring involuntary labors, making voluntary hardships a constant training for persecutions, so that when he comes to necessary labors, fears, and griefs, he will not be untrained in endurance. That is why we have no fatherland on earth, so that we may despise earthly possessions. Frugality is the richest thing, being a disposition that lacks nothing in the expenses that ought to be made for what is needed and as far as is needed; for expenses are payments. How a wife should live with her husband, about working with her own hands, housekeeping, and the use of servants, and also about the time for marriage and what befits women, we discuss in the treatise on marriage; what suits instruction is all we must set down now, noting in outline the life of Christians. Most of it has already been said and taught; what is still left we will set out; for examples are no small weight toward salvation. “See,” says tragedy, “Telemachus did not kill the wife of Odysseus; for she did not take a husband over her husband, but the marriage bed remains sound in the house.” Someone, reproaching lewd adultery, showed love for her husband as a fine image of self-control. And the Spartans, compelling the Helots (Helots is a name for servants) to get drunk, showed themselves, being sober, the deeds of drunkenness by way of cure and correction.

Watching the others' indecency, so that they themselves would not fall into similar condemnation, they were trained by the disgrace of the drunkards, benefiting from it for their own sinlessness. Of human beings, some are saved by being taught, others by teaching themselves; they either emulated or sought virtue. “That man is best of all who understands all things for himself”: this is Abraham, who sought God. “And good too is he who obeys one who speaks well”: these are the disciples, who obeyed the Word. That is why the one was called friend, the others apostles: the one searching for the one and the same God, the others proclaiming him; and both are good. Hearers of both are the one who benefits by seeking and the other who is saved by finding.

“But the one who neither understands himself nor, hearing another, takes it to heart, he is a useless man.” [Another people is the pagan, useless.] This is the people that does not follow Christ. But the loving Instructor, helping in many ways, has admonished some things and reproached others, and has also shown us the shame of others who sinned and has revealed their punishment, at once leading and admonishing us, contriving a loving turning away from vice by showing those who suffered before. By these examples he most clearly stopped some who were ill-disposed, prevented others who dared the same things, established others in endurance, stopped others from vice, and healed others who, seeing the like, changed for the better. For who, following someone on a road, when the one ahead has fallen into a pit, would not take care to turn aside from the same danger, guarding against following the sin? And again, what athlete, having learned the way to glory and seen the one before him receive the prize, does not also strive for the crown, imitating his predecessor?

Many such are the images of divine wisdom; I will recall one example and set it out briefly. The suffering of the Sodomites is judgment for the wrongdoers and instruction for those who hear. The Sodomites, running aground through much luxury on licentiousness, committing adultery without fear and madly excited over boys: the all-seeing Word, whom those who do unholy things cannot escape, looked upon them; and the sleepless guardian of humanity did not keep quiet at their licentiousness. Turning us from imitating them, training us to his own self-control, inflicting punishment on the sinners so that impunity for their incontinence might not bring an influx of fearlessness, he commanded Sodom to be burned up, pouring a little of that wise fire on licentiousness, lest their lust, left unchecked, should throw wide the doors to those carried away into voluptuousness. The just punishment of the Sodomites, then, has become an image of salvation well-reasoned for human beings; for those who have not sinned like those who were punished would never suffer a penalty like the sinners, having guarded against suffering by not sinning. “For I want you to know,” says Jude, “that God, having once saved a people from the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe; and the angels who did not keep their own dominion, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day

of savage angels.” And a little further on he sets out most instructively the images of those judged: “Woe to them, for they went in the way of Cain, and abandoned themselves to the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.” Fear keeps those who cannot bear the freedom of adoption from insolence. That is why there are punishments and threats: so that, fearing the penalties, we may keep from sinning. I could tell you the punishments of love of finery and the penalties of love of glory, not only of incontinence, and set out the denunciations of those who are evil-minded about wealth, in which the Word restrains us from wrongdoing by fear. But, sparing the length of the treatise, I bring you the Instructor's commandments that follow, so that you may guard against the threats.

There are four reasons (for this is where I turned aside) for which we go to the bath: for cleanliness, warmth, health, or finally pleasure. Bathing for pleasure must be dismissed; for shameless pleasure must be cut out entirely. Women may take the bath for cleanliness and health, men for health only. Bathing for warmth is superfluous, since one can relieve in other ways what is stiffened by cold. Constant use of the bath weakens the strength and relaxes the natural tone, and often brings faintness and fainting fits. For bodies drink, in a way, like trees, not only with the mouth but also, they say, through the opening of the pores of the whole body in the bath. The proof is that people who are thirsty often relieve their thirst by getting into the water. So even if the bath is useful for something, we should not weaken ourselves by it. The ancients called baths “fullers of men,” since they wrinkle bodies sooner than is fitting and force them to age before their time, boiling them, as the flesh is softened by the heat like iron; hence, as it were for dipping

and tempering, we need cold water. We should not bathe on every occasion, but should avoid the bath if one is very empty or very full; and also according to the age of the body and the season of the year; for it does not benefit all, nor always, as those skilled in these matters agree. For us moderation is enough, which we call on everywhere as a help in life. We should not stay so long in the bath as to need someone to lead us out by the hand, nor bathe continually and many times a day, frequenting it like the market. And to be doused by many servants is an insult to our neighbors, since it takes more for luxury and refuses to understand that the bath should be common to all bathers equally. We must wash above all the soul with the cleansing Word, and the body sometimes, because of the dirt that grows on it, and sometimes also to relieve fatigue. “For woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,” says the Lord, “for you are like whitewashed tombs; outwardly the tomb appears beautiful, but inside it is full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.”

And again he says to the same people: “Woe to you, for you clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they are full of uncleanness. Clean first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean.” The best bath, then, wipes off the filth of the soul and is spiritual; of it prophecy says expressly: “The Lord will wash away the filth of the sons and daughters of Israel, and will cleanse the blood from their midst,” the blood of lawlessness and the murders of the prophets. And the Word added the manner of cleansing, saying: “by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning.” The fleshly washing of the body is accomplished even by water alone, as often happens in the country, where there is no bath.

For youths, the gymnasium is enough, even if a bath is available; and indeed for men too it is perhaps not bad to prefer it to the baths, since it has something useful for the health of the young and instills zeal and ambition to care not only for good bodily condition but also for good spirit; done without being drawn away from better works, it is pleasant and not unprofitable. Nor are women to be excluded from bodily exercise here; but they should not be called to wrestling and running, but exercised in spinning, weaving, and helping the baker if need be. Women should also fetch from the storeroom with their own hands what we need; and it is not shameful for them to go to the mill; nor is it a reproach to a wife who keeps house and is a helper to be busy with the cooking, so that it may please her husband. If she shakes out the bed herself, hands her husband a drink when he is thirsty, and serves him food, she would be exercised most becomingly and for self-controlled health. The Instructor approves such a woman, who “stretches out her arms to useful work, and sets her hands to the spindle; she opens her hands to the needy, and stretches out her fruit to the poor”; who was not ashamed of the finest service, emulating Sarah in waiting on travelers. For Abraham said to her: “Hurry and knead three measures of fine flour and make cakes.” “And Rachel the daughter of Laban came,” it says, “with her father's sheep.”

And that was not enough, but teaching freedom from pride he added: “For she was the one who pastured her father's sheep.” The Scriptures offer countless examples of frugality and working with one's own hands, and of exercise too. As for men, let some strip and take part in wrestling, some play with the small ball the game called phaininda, especially in the sun; for others walking is enough, going out to the country or down to town. If they take up the hoe too, this is no ignoble economic side-benefit of farm exercise. I nearly forgot to mention that famous Pittacus, king of the Mitylenaeans, who ground grain, using an active exercise. It is good also to draw water oneself and to cut the wood one will use. “Jacob pastured the sheep of Laban that were left,” having as a royal sign “a rod of storax,” practicing to change nature for the better by means of the wood.

For many, reading aloud is sometimes an exercise too. As for wrestling, which we have accepted, let it be taken up not for the sake of useless rivalry but for the manly sweating it produces; and not the artful kind, for show, but straight wrestling, with the unwinding of necks, hands, and sides. For such exercise is more decorous and manly, with seemly strength, taken up for useful and beneficial health; while the other exercises of the gymnasium teach unfree postures. Everywhere we must aim at measure. As it is best to take exercise before meals, so to labor beyond measure is worst, fatiguing, and causes disease. One should be neither entirely idle nor wholly laborious. As we discussed concerning food, so in everything and everywhere one must turn neither to voluptuousness and a licentious way of life nor to its opposite extreme, but to the mean between them, harmonious, self-controlled, and pure of both vices,

luxury and stinginess. As we have said before, working with one's own hands is an exercise free of pride: putting on one's own shoes, washing one's own feet, and rubbing oneself with oil. To return the same service in turn to the one who has rubbed us is an exercise of social justice; so is sleeping beside a sick friend, helping one who is unable, and serving food to one in need. “And Abraham set before the three a meal under the tree,” it says, “and stood by them as they ate.” Fishing too, as for Peter, if we have leisure from the necessary lessons of the Word. But the better catch is the one the Lord gave the disciple, teaching him to catch men, like fish, through water.

So wearing gold and using softer clothing is not to be cut off entirely; but the irrational impulses must be bridled, lest, carried off by too much relaxation, they hurl us into effeminacy. For luxury, running aground on satiety, is apt to leap and rear and throw off the charioteer, the Instructor, who, checking the reins from afar, leads and drives to salvation the human horse, the irrational part of the soul, made savage by pleasures and blameworthy appetites, stones, gold, embroidered clothing, and the rest of luxury; keeping in mind above all that holy saying: “Keeping your conduct among the Gentiles good, so that, though they slander you as evildoers, they may see your good works and glorify God.” The Instructor, then, allows us to wear plain clothing, white in color, as we said before, so that, making our own not what is embroidered by art but what is born of nature, and rejecting all that is deceptive and lies against the truth, we may embrace the single form and single face of the truth. Sophocles, reproaching a luxurious youth, says: “You are conspicuous in clothes that imitate women.”

As the soldier, the sailor, and the ruler each have their proper dress, so the self-controlled person has his: unelaborate, seemly, and clean. So the law about leprosy laid down through Moses rejects the many-colored and spotted as unholy, like the variegated scales of the serpent. It wishes the one no longer blooming with a variety of colors, but made white all over from head to foot, to be clean; so that, by transferring the lesson from the body, we may put off the varied and knavish passion of the mind and love the unvaried and unambiguous simple color of truth. And in this too the best Plato, the emulator of Moses, accepts that weaving which does not involve more than the work of a self-controlled woman: “White colors,” he says, “would befit dignity, both elsewhere and in weaving; and dyes should not be used except for the ornaments of war.”

White, then, befits peaceful and enlightened people. As signs closest to their causes signify their presence, or rather show the existence of what produced them, as smoke shows fire, and good color and a good pulse show health, so among us such dress shows the state of the character. Self-control is clean and simple, since cleanliness is a disposition that prepares a pure way of life unmixed with shameful things, and simplicity is a disposition that removes superfluities. Solid clothing, and especially undressed wool, keeps in the heat of the body, not because the clothing has heat in itself, but because it turns back the heat going out from the body and gives it no passage; and if any heat falls on it, it takes it in, keeps it, and, warmed by it, warms the body in return; so it should be used especially in winter. It is also a sign of contentment; and contentment is a disposition without superfluity, receptive of what is sufficient for a life lacking nothing according to reason, a healthy and blessed life.

Let the woman too wear plain and dignified clothing, softer than is fitting for a man, but not completely shameless nor dissolving in softness. Let clothes suit age, person, place, nature, and occupation. For the divine apostle very beautifully advises us to “put on Christ Jesus, and make no provision for the flesh, for its desires.” The Word forbids us to do violence to nature by piercing the lobes of the ears. For why not the nose too? So that that saying might be fulfilled: “As an earring in a pig's snout, so is beauty to an evil-minded woman.” In general, if anyone thinks he is adorned by gold, he is less than gold; and one who is less than gold is not its master. How is it not most absurd to confess oneself less adorned and inferior to the Lydian gold dust?

As gold is defiled by the uncleanness of a pig stirring up the filth with its snout, so the more luxurious women, exalted by abundance into licentiousness, outrage true beauty with the pollutions of sexual pleasure. He gives them, then, a gold ring, and not even this for adornment, but for sealing what is worth guarding at home, in their care of the household. If all were instructed, there would be no need of seals, since servants and masters would be equally just; but since lack of instruction gives much weight toward injustice, we have needed seals. But there are times to relax our strictness. Sometimes we must be indulgent to women who are not fortunate in having a self-controlled husband, and adorn themselves to please him. But let their limit be ambition to please their own husbands only. I would not wish them to practice bodily beauty, but to win their husbands by self-controlled love, a powerful and just medicine. Yet since they wish to be unfortunate in soul, let this be set before them, if they wish to be self-controlled: to calm gently the irrational impulses and desires of their husbands, and quietly lead them toward simplicity by accustoming them little by little to greater self-control.

For a dignified bearing comes not from adding what is vulgar but from taking away what is superfluous. Like wing feathers, the women's luxurious possessions must be clipped, since they produce unstable conceit and empty pleasures, by which, lifted up and given wings, they often fly away from their marriages. So women must be restrained decorously and girded with self-controlled modesty, lest they slip away from the truth through conceit. It is good for husbands who trust their wives to entrust the housekeeping to them, as helpers given for this. And if we too, taking part in public life and managing other affairs in the country, often apart from our wives, need to seal something for safety, he gives us too a signet for this purpose only; other rings must be thrown away, since, according to Scripture, “instruction is a golden ornament to the wise.” Women who wear gold seem to me to be afraid that, if one takes away their gold, they will be thought slaves because they are not adorned. But the nobility of truth, examined in what is naturally beautiful in the soul, distinguishes the slave not by sale and purchase but by an unfree mind; and it befits us not to seem free but to be free, instructed by God,

and adopted by God. So our standing, movement, walk, clothing, and in a word our whole life must be as free as possible. Men should not wear a ring on the joint of the finger (that is womanish), but on the little finger, and pushed to its base; for so the hand will be free for the work we need it for, and the signet will not easily fall off, being held by the larger joint. Let our seals be a dove, a fish, a ship running before the wind, a musical lyre, which Polycrates used, or a ship's anchor, which Seleucus had engraved; and if one is a fisherman, he will remember the apostle and the children drawn up out of the water. For the faces of idols must not be engraved, to which we are forbidden even to pay attention; nor a sword or a bow for us who pursue peace,

nor drinking cups for the self-controlled. Many of the licentious have their beloved boys or courtesans engraved on their rings, so that even if they wished they could never forget their erotic passions, through the constant reminder of licentiousness. About hair this is our view: the men's head should be close-cropped, unless their hair is curly, and the chin bearded; and let the hair gathered from the head not hang down too far, slipping into women's locks; “well-bearded” is enough for men. If one cuts part of the beard, it should not be made entirely bare; the sight is shameful, and shaving the beard to the skin is condemned as close to plucking and smoothing. The psalmist, delighting in the beard's hair, says, “like the ointment running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron”; praising the seemliness of the beard in the refrain, he made the face of the Lord shine with ointment.

Since cutting the hair is to be done not for beauty but out of necessity, the hair of the head should be cut so that, as it grows, it does not come down and get in the eyes; and perhaps the hair on the upper lip, which is soiled in eating, should be trimmed, not with a razor (that is ignoble) but with a pair of scissors; but the hair of the beard, which causes no trouble, should not be disturbed, since it gives the face dignity and inspires … respect. The appearance itself teaches many not to sin, because it makes them easily recognized; while for those who wish to sin boldly, an appearance that escapes notice and is not distinctive is most pleasing: slipping behind it, they can offend unrecognized,

and, being like the many, have reaped fearless sinning. A close-cropped head not only shows a man to be austere, but also hardens the skull, accustoming it to cold and heat, and wards off the harm from these, which long hair, soaking it up like a sponge, brings down on the brain, a lasting harm from the moisture. For women it is enough to make their hair soft and to tie up their hair simply with a plain pin at the neck, their self-controlled locks growing with simple care into genuine beauty. For the courtesans' braiding of hair and binding of plaits, besides making them look ugly, cut the hair, pulling it out with their cunning plaits; because of which they do not even touch their own heads, afraid of disarranging their hair; and even sleep comes to them with fear, lest they unwittingly spoil the shape

of the braid. Adding other people's hair must be utterly rejected; putting on the head someone else's locks, clothing the skull in dead tresses, is most godless. For on whom will the presbyter lay his hand? Whom will he bless? Not the woman who is adorned, but the other person's hair, and through it another head. And if “the head of the woman is the man, and the head of the man is Christ,” how is it not godless for them to fall into a double sin? They deceive the men, their husbands, by substituting hair; and, as far as in them lies, they shame the Lord by adorning themselves like courtesans to deceive the truth, blaspheming the truly beautiful head. Nor, then, should hair be dyed, nor gray hair colored; for neither is it permitted to make clothing varicolored. Above all, the venerable and trustworthy mark of age should not be covered, but the honor from God displayed in the light for the reverence of the young; for sometimes the appearance of gray hair, standing over the shameless like an instructor, has turned them toward self-control and startled the youthfulness of their desire by the brightness of its look.

Nor should they rub their faces with the tricks of cunning art; let us show them a self-controlled cosmetic art. The best beauty is first that of the soul, as I have often indicated, when the soul is adorned with the Holy Spirit and breathes with the radiance that comes from him: justice, wisdom, courage, self-control, love of the good, and modesty, than which no more blooming color has ever been seen. Then let bodily beauty too be cultivated, “the symmetry of limbs and parts with good color.” The cosmetic art of health is fitting here, by which the passage from the made-up image to the true is achieved, in accordance with the form given by God. Temperate drinking and moderate eating are powerful for beautifying according to nature; for from these the body gains not only health but also makes beauty shine through. From the fiery element comes brilliance and sparkle; from the moist, radiance and grace; from the dry, manliness and firmness; from the airy, easy breathing and balance; with these this well-proportioned and beautiful statue of the Word is adorned. Beauty is the free-born flower of health; for health works within the body, and beauty, blooming outward on the body, shows a visible good color.

The finest and healthiest ways of life, exercising the body, produce genuine and lasting beauty, the heat drawing to itself all the moisture and cold breath; for heat, fanned by movement, draws things to itself. When it has drawn them, it gently evaporates through the flesh the surplus from food, warmed, with some moisture but an excess of heat. So the earlier food is used up; but in a motionless body the food eaten does not attach itself, but falls away, like bread from a cold oven, either whole or leaving only the bottom.

Naturally, then, in those who have excess in their discharges, urine and stools abound, and other residues too, and also sweat, since the food is not distributed to the body but poured out into superfluities. From this lusts too are stirred, the superfluity flowing to the organs of generation. So by moderate movements this superfluity must be dissolved and diffused into digestion, by which beauty is reddened. It is absurd for those made “in the image and likeness of God,” as though dishonoring the archetype, to bring in foreign cosmetics, preferring human mischief to divine workmanship. The Instructor bids women come “in decent apparel, adorning themselves with modesty and self-control,” “being subject to their own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, seeing,” he says, “your pure conduct in the word; let yours be not the outward adornment of braiding and wearing of gold or putting on of clothes, but the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible ornament of a gentle and quiet

spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.” Working with their own hands most of all gives women genuine beauty, exercising their bodies and adorning themselves by their own efforts, not bringing in ornament worked by others, tasteless, unfree, and courtesan-like, but that of each self-controlled woman, practiced and woven by her own hands when she most needs it. For it is never fitting for women who live according to God to appear adorned with things bought in the market, but with their own household work. For the finest work is a housekeeping wife clothing herself and her husband with her own ornaments, in which all rejoice: the children in their mother, the husband in his wife, she in them, and all in God. In short, a valiant woman is a storehouse of virtue, who “did not eat the bread of idleness, and laws of mercy are on her tongue,” who “opened her mouth wisely and lawfully, whose children rose up and called her blessed,” as the holy Word says through Solomon, “and her husband praised her. For a godly woman is blessed; let her praise the fear of the Lord.” And again: “A valiant woman is a crown to her husband.”

Postures, looks, walks, and voices must be corrected as much as possible. For some women, emulating the acting of comedy and imitating the broken movements of dancers, behave as on the stage in their conversation, with soft movements, languid walks, and affected voices, casting wanton glances around, trained as bait for pleasure. “For honey drips from the lips of a harlot, who, speaking to please, anoints your throat; but afterward you will find her more bitter than gall and sharper than a two-edged sword; for the feet of folly lead down with death to Hades those who have dealings with her.” The harlot defeated the noble Samson, and another woman shaved the man; but another woman did not so deceive Joseph: the Egyptian harlot was defeated, and self-control, accepting chains, proves stronger than licentiousness set free.

That saying would fit very well: “In general I do not know how to whisper, nor to walk with my neck bent sideways affectedly, as I see many other catamites here in the city, and those plucked with pitch.” Womanish movements, affectations, and luxuries must be cut off entirely; for luxuriousness in the movement of walking and “walking mincingly,” as Anacreon says, are quite courtesan-like, it seems to me. Comedy says that “the steps of a courtesan leave behind charm and luxury.” “But the harlot's steps do not rest on truth; for she does not go on the paths of life, and her tracks are slippery and hard to know.”

Above all the eyes must be guarded, since it is better to slip with the feet than with the eyes. The Lord heals this passion most briefly, saying, “If your eye makes you stumble, cut it out,” tearing up desire from its foundations. Wanton looks and ogling, which is winking with the eyes, is nothing but committing adultery with the eyes, desire skirmishing through them. For the eyes are corrupted before the whole body. “The eye that beholds good things gladdens the heart,” that is, the one that has learned to look rightly gladdens; “but one who winks with the eye deceitfully gathers griefs for men.” Such, they portray the effeminate Sardanapalus, king of the Assyrians, sitting astride on a couch, carding purple and rolling up the whites of his eyes. Women who practice these things play the procuress for themselves with their own looks; “for the eye is the lamp of the body,” says Scripture, through which what is within is seen lit up by the light that shines.

“A woman's sexual immorality is in the raising of her eyes.” “Put to death, then, the members that are on the earth: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry, because of which the wrath of God comes,” cries the apostle; but we rekindle the passions and are not ashamed. Some of them, “chewing mastic,” go about grinning at passers-by; others, as if they had no fingers, affectedly scratch their heads with the pins they carry, and take trouble over them, made of tortoise shell or ivory or some other dead animal; others, as though they had some eruptions, adorn themselves with brightly colored salves to please those who see them, and spot their own faces. Through Solomon he calls such a woman “foolish” and “bold,” “who does not know shame; she sits at the doors of her house on a seat, openly calling to those who pass by on the road, those who go straight on their ways,” saying plainly by her appearance and her whole life: “Who among you is most foolish? Let him turn aside to me.

And to those lacking understanding she urges, saying, “Touch hidden bread with pleasure, and sweet stolen water,” meaning this stolen Aphrodite. Benefiting from this, Pindar of Boeotia says, “Something sweet is the stolen care of Cypris.” “But the wretch does not know that the earthborn perish with her and he meets a springboard of Hades. But leap away,” says the Instructor, “do not linger in the place, nor fix your eye on her. For so you will pass through strange water and cross over Acheron.” That is why the Lord says this through Isaiah: “Because the daughters of Zion walked with outstretched necks and with winking eyes, trailing their tunics as they walked and playing with their feet, God will humble the daughters of Zion and uncover their form,” their unseemly form.

I do not think it right even for the maidservants who stand at women's left, or who follow them, to use foul speech or do shameful things; they should be taught self-control by their mistresses. The comic poet Philemon says very reprovingly: “Going out, I see behind a free woman a pretty maidservant following alone, and someone from the Plataean quarter following her and ogling her.” For the maidservant's licentiousness reflects on her mistress, giving those who try lesser things a stepping stone to not fearing greater ones, since the mistress, by forgiving shameful things, shows that she does not condemn them. Not being indignant at the licentious is a clear proof of a mind turning toward the same. “As is the mistress,” say the proverb-makers, “so is the dog.” We must also banish frenzied walking, and choose the dignified and leisurely, not the dawdling walk, nor swaying in the streets and throwing the head back to look sidelong at those one meets, to see whether they are looking at one, as though parading on a stage and being pointed at. Nor should one be propelled uphill by servants, as we see the more luxurious, who seem strong but are softened by weakness of soul. There should be no mark of softness in the face of a noble man, nor in any other part of the body.

Let the unseemliness of unmanliness never be found in our movements or postures. Nor should a healthy man use his servants like beasts of burden. As they are commanded “to be subject with all fear to their masters, not only to the good and gentle but also to the crooked,” says Peter, so equity, patience, and kindness befit masters. “Finally,” he says, “be all of one mind, sympathetic, loving the brethren, compassionate, humble-minded,” and so on, “that you may inherit a blessing.” Zeno of Citium seems to sketch a fine and lovable image of a young man, and sculpts him thus: “Let his face be clean, his brow not lowered, his eye neither wide open nor languishing, his neck not thrown back, the limbs of his body not relaxed but held high like taut strings; let there be an alertness of mind toward reason, a holding fast to what is rightly said, and postures and movements that give the licentious no hope. Let modesty and manliness bloom; and away with the lounging around the perfume shops, goldsmiths, wool shops, and other workshops, where men spend the whole day adorned like courtesans, like women sitting on the roofs.”

Nor should men spend time in barbershops and taverns, babbling and chattering, and hunting the women who pass by; let them stop at last. Many do not stop slandering people to raise a laugh. Dice-playing must be forbidden too, and knucklebones, the practice of greed, which they love to pursue. The unrestrained extravagance of luxury invents such things for those who are idle; for idleness is the cause, and one loves vanities that are outside the truth; for it is not possible to gain cheer otherwise without harm, and each person's choice of life is an imitation of his mind. It seems that only the company of good men benefits. On the other hand, the all-wise Instructor, through Moses, recognizing that living with worthless people is swinish, forbade the people of old to eat pork, showing that those who call on God should not mix with unclean people, who, like pigs, itching for bodily pleasures, filthy food, and lewd titillation, rejoice in the evil-delighting pleasure of sexual love.

Nor, he says, shall you eat “the kite, or the swift-winged bird, or the eagle,” saying, You shall not come near those who get their living by plunder; and the rest is allegorized in the same way. With whom, then, should we associate? With the righteous, he says, again allegorizing. For everything that “parts the hoof and chews the cud” is clean, because parting the hoof signifies righteousness, which is evenly balanced and chews the cud of its own food of righteousness: the Word, which enters from outside like food through catechesis, but is brought back up from within, as from the stomach of the mind, into rational recollection. The righteous man chews the cud of spiritual food, having the Word in his mouth; and righteousness fittingly parts the hoof, sanctifying here and escorting us on to the age to come. So the Instructor will not lead us to the shows either; and one might not unfittingly call the stadiums and theaters “the seat of pestilences”; for there is evil “counsel” there too, as there was against the Righteous One, which is why the assembly against him is cursed. At any rate these gatherings are full of great disorder and lawlessness, and the pretexts for meeting are a cause of indecency, men and women coming together promiscuously to look at one another. There the assembly already shows off its vanity.

For when the sight is greedy, the appetites grow warm, and the eyes, accustomed to look more boldly at their neighbors because they have leisure allowed them, inflame the erotic desires. Let the shows be forbidden, then, and the entertainments full of buffoonery and much idle babble. For what shameful deed is not displayed in the theaters? What shameless word do the clowns not bring out? Those who have enjoyed the vice in them carry home its vivid images, while those who are unmoved and unaffected by these things would never fall into lazy pleasures. For even if they say that the shows are taken up as a kind of play, for amusement, I would say that cities in which even play is pursued in earnest are not sensible. For contests for glory that kill so many without pity are no longer play; nor are vain zeal and senseless ambition, and besides them the futile squandering of wealth, nor indeed the riots that arise over them, still play.

Idleness must never be bought with vain zeal; for no one with sense would ever choose the more pleasant before the better. “But we are not all philosophers,” someone says. Do we not all, then, pursue life? What are you saying? How then have you believed? How do you still love God and your neighbor, if you do not practice philosophy? How do you love yourself, if you do not love life? “I have not learned letters,” he says. But if you did not learn to read, hearing has no excuse, since it need not be taught. Faith is the possession not of the wise according to the world but of those according to God; and it is instructed even without letters, and its book, at once untutored and divine, is called love, a spiritual composition. It is possible to listen to divine wisdom, and it is possible also to live by it; nor is one prevented from conducting the things of the world in a seemly way, according to God.

Whoever sells or buys anything should never name two prices for what he buys or sells, but should name one and study to speak the truth; if he does not get that price, by getting the truth he is rich in right disposition. Let praise and oaths be absent concerning everything sold, and let the oath be absent in other matters too. Let the market people and tradesmen practice philosophy in this way: “For you shall not take the name of the Lord in vain; for the Lord will not hold guiltless the one who takes his name in vain.” Those who act contrary to this, the lovers of money, the liars, the hypocrites, those who peddle the truth, the Lord cast out of his Father's court, not wishing the holy house of God to be a house of unjust trade, whether in words or in material goods. Woman and man are to go to church decently dressed, with natural walk, embracing silence, possessing “love unfeigned,” pure in body, pure in heart, fit to pray to God. Let the woman observe this further: let her be entirely covered, unless she happens to be at home; for that style of dress is grave and protects from being stared at. And she will never fall, who puts modesty and her shawl before her eyes, nor will she invite another to fall into sin by uncovering her face. For this is what the Word wishes, since it is fitting for her to pray veiled.

They say that the wife of Aeneas, through excess of modesty, did not uncover herself even when Troy was being taken, though terrified, but, fleeing from the burning, remained veiled. Those who are being initiated into Christ ought to appear and to shape themselves throughout their whole life such as they present themselves in the churches, in the more dignified manner; and to be, not to seem to be, such: so gentle, so reverent, so loving. But now, I do not know how, they change their fashions and manners with the places, just as they say polyps, becoming like the rocks they cling to, take on their color too. At any rate, laying aside the inspiration of the assembly after leaving it, they become like the many with whom they live; or rather, laying aside the feigned pretense of dignity, they are exposed as what they secretly were. Having revered the word about God, they have left behind inside what they heard, and outside they wander about with the godless, filling themselves with the strumming and trilling of love songs, flute-playing, clapping, drunkenness, and every kind of rubbish. They sing and answer in song, these very people who earlier were hymning immortality, and at the end, wicked men wickedly singing the most ruinous recantation:

“Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” But they are not dying tomorrow; truly they are already dead to God, burying their own dead, that is, burying themselves into death. The apostle opposes them very forcefully: “Do not be deceived: neither adulterers nor effeminate men nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers,” and whatever else he adds in the same strain, “will inherit the kingdom of God.” If we have been called into the kingdom of God, let us live worthily of the kingdom, loving God and our neighbor. Love is judged not by a kiss but by goodwill. But there are those who do nothing but make the churches resound with a kiss, not having love itself within. For this very thing, the unrestrained use of the kiss, which ought to be mystical (the apostle has called it “holy”), has filled the churches with shameful suspicions and evil reports; the soul should taste goodwill through a self-controlled and closed mouth, through which above all a gentle disposition is expressed. There is also another, impure kiss, full of poison, pretending to holiness.

Do you not know that spiders, merely touching the mouth, torment people with pains, and kisses often inject the poison of licentiousness? It has become clear to us, then, that the kiss is not love; “for love is from God.” “And this is the love of God,” says John, “that we keep his commandments,” not that we fawn on one another with the mouth, “and his commandments are not burdensome.” Moreover, greetings given to loved ones in the streets, full of foolish boldness by those who wish to be conspicuous to outsiders, have not the least grace. For if it is right to “pray” to God mystically “in the inner room,” it would follow that we should also greet “our neighbor,” whom we are commanded to love second, like God, mystically and indoors, “redeeming the time.” For we are “the salt of the earth.” “Whoever blesses a friend in the morning with a loud voice,” it says, “will seem no different from one who curses.” It seems that above all one should turn away from the sight of women.

For it is possible to sin not only by touching but also by looking, which the one who is genuinely instructed must above all avoid. “Let your eyes look straight, and your eyelids nod just things.” For is it not possible to look and remain firm? Yes, but falling must be guarded against. For it is possible for one who looks to slip, but impossible for one who does not look to desire. It is not enough for the self-controlled to be pure; they must also take care to be beyond reproach, shutting out every occasion of suspicion, for the crowning of purity, so that we may not only be faithful but also appear worthy of trust. For this too must be guarded against, as the apostle says, “that no one should blame us; for we take thought for what is good not only in the sight of the Lord but also in the sight of men.” “Turn away your eye from a graceful woman, and do not gaze at another's beauty,” says Scripture. And if you ask the reason, it will explain further: “for by the beauty of a woman many have been led astray, and from this affection is kindled like fire,” the affection that springs from fire, which they have called erotic love, leading to unquenchable fire because of sin.

I would advise married men never to kiss their wives at home in front of the servants. For Aristotle did not allow one even to smile at slaves, much less to be seen showing affection to one's wife in their sight. It is better for those who marry to show dignity at home from the start of the marriage. For the greatest union is that of self-control, breathing the fragrance of pure pleasure. The tragedy says very admirably: “Alas, alas, women, among mankind neither gold, nor sovereignty, nor the luxury of wealth holds such surpassing pleasures as the just mind of a noble husband and a godly wife, thinking what is right.”

These precepts of righteousness, even when spoken by those who pursue worldly wisdom, should not be rejected. Knowing, then, “each one's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your sojourning, knowing that you were redeemed from your futile way of life handed down from your fathers not with perishable things, silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” “For the time that is past is enough,” Peter says, “to have done the will of the Gentiles, walking in licentiousness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and lawless idolatries.” Let us have as our boundary the cross of the Lord, by which we are fenced about and walled off from our former sins. Having been born again, then, let us be nailed to the truth, and return to sobriety and be sanctified, “because the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears open to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. And who will harm us, if we become zealous for what is good?” The best way of life is good order, which is complete seemliness and settled, ordered power, rendering well in action the things that follow one another in sequence, unsurpassed in virtue.

“Let these things be said by me,” says the Instructor, “even if I have spoken rather harshly, arranging for the salvation that comes by correction, since ‘he who reproves boldly makes peace.’ If you listen to me, you will be saved; if you do not heed what has been said, it is no concern of mine.” And yet it is his concern even so; “for he prefers the repentance of the sinner rather than his death.” “If you listen to me, you shall eat the good things of the land,” the Instructor says again, calling human goods the good things of the land: beauty, wealth, health, strength, food. For the true good things are those “which ear has not heard, nor have they ever entered into the heart,” the truly existing goods that belong to the truly existing King and await us; for he is the giver and guardian of good things. Things here share the name by participation in those, the Word divinely instructing human weakness from things perceived by the senses to understanding.

The Instructor has discussed with us sufficiently what must be observed at home and how life must be corrected. What it pleases him to say to the children along the way, until he brings them to the Teacher, he sets before us in summary through the Scriptures themselves, setting out the commandments bare, suited to the time of guidance, and entrusting their interpretation to the Teacher. For his law wishes to loosen fear, freeing the will for faith. “Hear,” he says, “O child well instructed, the chief points of salvation; for I will lay bare my character and set before you these good commandments, through which you will come to salvation. I lead you on the way of salvation. Stand away from the ways of error, ‘for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, and the way of the ungodly will perish.’ Follow, then, O child, the good way that I will explain to you, lending me your attentive ears, ‘and I will give you treasures dark, hidden, unseen’” by the Gentiles but seen by us. “The treasures of wisdom are unfailing,” at which the apostle marvels and says, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom!” Many treasures are supplied by the one God; some are revealed through the law, some through the prophets, some by the divine mouth, and another by the sevenfold chorus of the Spirit; but the Lord, being one, is through all of them the same

Instructor. There is, then, a summary precept and counsel for life that embraces everything: “As you wish people to do to you, do so to them.” The commandments can also be comprehended in two, as the Lord says: “You shall love your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” Then he adds, “On these hang the whole law and the prophets.” And to the one who asked, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” he answered, “You know the commandments”; and when he agreed, he said, “Do this and you will be saved.” Nevertheless the Instructor's love for mankind must be set out in more detail through the varied and saving commandments, so that we may have a readier finding of salvation from the abundant ordering of the Scriptures.

We have the Decalogue given through Moses, signified by a single and unique letter, … outlining the saving designation of sins: “You shall not commit adultery, you shall not worship idols,” you shall not corrupt boys, “you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and mother,” and what follows these. These must be observed by us, and whatever else is commanded in the readings of the books. He commands also through Isaiah: “Wash, become clean; put away the evil from your souls before my eyes; learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the wronged, judge for the orphan, vindicate the widow; and come, let us reason together, says the Lord.” We would find many counsels among the other writers too; for example, concerning prayer: “Good works,” it says, “are a prayer acceptable to the Lord,” says Scripture. And the manner of prayer is prescribed: “If you see one naked,” it says, “clothe him, and do not overlook those of your own offspring. Then your light will break forth early, and your garments will spring up quickly, and your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of God will surround you.” What, then, is the fruit of this prayer?

“Then you will cry out, and God will hear you; while you are still speaking he will say, ‘Here I am.’” Concerning fasting: “Why do you fast for me?” he says, “says the Lord. I did not choose this fast, and a day for a man to humble his soul; not even if you bend your neck like a ring and spread sackcloth and ashes beneath you, not even so will you call it an acceptable fast.” What, then, does fasting signify? “Behold,” he says, “this is the fast that I have chosen, says the Lord. Loose every bond of injustice, undo the knots of violent contracts, set free the broken in release, and tear up every unjust bond. Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; if you see one naked, clothe him.” And concerning sacrifices: “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord. I am full of burnt offerings of rams, and I do not want the fat of lambs and the blood of bulls and goats, nor should you come to appear before me. For who required these from your hands? You shall no longer trample my court. If you bring fine flour, it is vain; incense is an abomination to me; your new moons and sabbaths I cannot endure.” How then shall I sacrifice to the Lord? “A sacrifice to the Lord,” he says, “is a broken spirit.” How then shall I crown myself, or anoint myself with ointment? Or what shall I burn as incense to the Lord? “A sweet-smelling fragrance to God,” he says, “is a heart that glorifies him who formed it.”

These are God's crowns, sacrifices, spices, and flowers. Further, concerning forbearance: “If your brother sins,” he says, “rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day and seven times turns to you, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” Through John he commands soldiers to be content with their wages alone, and tax collectors to exact nothing more than what is appointed. To the judge he says, “You shall not show partiality in judgment, for gifts blind the eyes of those who see and corrupt just words.” “Rescue the wronged.” And to those who manage property: “Possessions hastily gained with lawlessness grow less.” Concerning love: “Love,” he says, “covers a multitude of sins.” Concerning civic life: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.” Concerning oaths and bearing grudges: “Did I command your fathers when they came out of the land of Egypt to offer me burnt offerings and sacrifices? But this is what I commanded them: let none of you in his heart

bear a grudge against his neighbor; let him not love a false oath.” He threatens liars and the conceited too, the former somewhat thus: “Woe to those who call sweet bitter and bitter sweet”; the latter thus: “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.” “He who humbles himself will be exalted, and he who exalts himself will be humbled.” He blesses the merciful, “for they shall obtain mercy,” while Wisdom pronounces anger wretched, “for it will destroy even the prudent.” And now he commands us to love our enemies, to bless those who curse us, and to pray for those who mistreat us. “To him who strikes you on the cheek,” he says, “offer the other also, and if anyone takes away your tunic, do not withhold your cloak as well.” Concerning faith: “Whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive,” he says; but “nothing is trustworthy to the faithless,” as Pindar says. Servants should be treated like ourselves, for they are human beings as we are: “For God, if you consider, is the same to all, to the free and to slaves.”

Servants who do wrong should not be punished but rebuked; “for he who spares his rod,” it says, “hates his son.” Further, he drives away love of glory, saying, “Woe to you, Pharisees, for you love the first seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.” He welcomes the repentance of the sinner, loving the repentance that follows sins; for the Word himself alone is without sin; for to sin is natural and common to all, but to turn back from sin is the mark not of an ordinary man but of a remarkable one. Concerning sharing, he said, “Come to me, all you who are blessed, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” And when have we done any of these things for the Lord? The Instructor himself will say again, lovingly referring the good deeds done to the brethren to himself: “Inasmuch as you did it to these little ones, you did it to me. And such people will go away into eternal life.”

Such are the rational laws, the words of exhortation, written not on tablets of stone by the finger of the Lord but inscribed in human hearts, which alone do not admit corruption. That is why the tablets of the hard-hearted were broken: so that the faith of the little ones might be impressed on soft minds. Both laws served the Word for the instruction of humanity, the one through Moses, the other through the apostles. Such, then, is the instruction through the apostles too. It seems necessary to me to discuss this kind as well, or rather, the Instructor himself says, “reminding myself,” whose counsels I will set out again in seed form: “Putting away falsehood, let each of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Let not the sun go down on your anger, nor give place to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, working what is good, so that he may have something to share with one in need. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Be, then, wise, and imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ also loved us.”

“Let wives be subject to their own husbands, as to the Lord, and let husbands love their own wives, as Christ loved the church.” Let the married, then, love one another “as their own bodies.” “Children, obey your parents. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Slaves, obey your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as to Christ, serving from the soul with goodwill. And masters, treat your servants well, giving up threatening, knowing that both their Lord and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him.” “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Do not be deceived; God is not mocked. Let us not grow weary in doing good; for in due season we shall reap, if we do not lose heart.” “Be at peace among yourselves. We exhort you, brothers, admonish the disorderly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient toward all. See that no one repays anyone evil for evil. Do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophecies; test all things; hold fast what is good; abstain from every form of evil.” “Continue steadfastly in prayer, watching in it with thanksgiving. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, redeeming the time. Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each one.”

“Be nourished on the words of the faith; train yourselves for godliness. For bodily training is of some profit for a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having the promise of the present life and of the life to come.” “Let those who have believing masters not despise them because they are brothers, but serve them all the more because they are believers.” “Let the one who shares do so with simplicity, the one who leads with diligence, the one who shows mercy with cheerfulness. Let love be unfeigned. Abhor what is evil, cling to what is good; be devoted to one another in brotherly love, outdo one another in showing honor; be not slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in affliction, constant in prayer, pursuing hospitality, sharing in the needs of the saints.”

These few out of many, for the sake of example, the Instructor has gone through from the divine Scriptures themselves and sets before his children; through them, so to speak, vice is cut out root and branch and injustice is circumscribed. Countless counsels addressed to chosen persons are written in the holy books, some to presbyters, some to bishops and deacons, others to widows, about which there will be another occasion to speak. Many things, too, through riddles, and many through parables, readers may profit from. “But it is not my task,” says the Instructor, “to teach these things any longer. We need a Teacher for the interpretation of those holy words, to whom we must go.”

And now it is time for me to cease from instructing, and for you to listen to the Teacher. He will receive you, reared under good training, and will teach you the oracles. This church here is the school, and the Bridegroom is the only Teacher, the good will of the good Father, genuine wisdom, the sanctuary of knowledge. “And he is the propitiation for our sins,” as John says, he who heals both our body and soul, the eternal man: Jesus, “and not for our sins only, but also for the whole world. And by this we know that we have known him, if we keep his commandments. He who says, ‘I have known him,’ and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps his word, truly in him the love of God has been perfected. By this we know that we are in him: he who says he abides in him ought himself to walk just as he walked.”

O nurslings of blessed instruction! Let us fill up the beautiful face of the church, and run as little children to our good mother; and if we become hearers of the Word, let us glorify the blessed dispensation by which man is instructed and sanctified as a child of God, and, instructed on earth, has his citizenship in heaven, and there receives the Father whom he learns on earth. The Word does all things, teaches all things, instructs in all things. A horse is led by a bridle, a bull by a yoke, a wild beast is caught in a noose; but man is refashioned by the Word, by whom wild beasts are tamed, fish are lured, and birds are brought down. He it is who truly devises the bridle for the horse, the yoke for the bull, the noose for the beast, the rod for the fish, the snare for the bird. He governs and tills, rules and serves, and creates all things: “on it he wrought the earth, and on it the heaven, and on it the sea, and on it all the constellations with which the heaven is crowned.”

O divine works of creation! O divine commands! “Let this be water, let it surge within itself; let this be fire, let it restrain its fury; let this be air, let it wander into the ether; and let the earth be both fixed and moved, when I will. I wish still to form man; I have the elements as material; I dwell with my creature. If you know me, fire will serve you.” Such is this Word, the Instructor, the Creator of the world and of man, and for man's sake now the Instructor of the world too; at whose command both the world and we hold together, awaiting the judgment. “For not a stolen word does he bear for mortals … the word will be wisdom,” as Bacchylides says. But you, “the blameless and pure and unblemished children of God,” according to Paul, “in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, shine like lights in the world.”

Since this is what remains at such a festival of the Word, let us pray to the Word: Be gracious to your children, O Instructor, Father, Charioteer of Israel, Son and Father, both one, O Lord. Grant to us who follow your precepts to fill up the likeness of the image, and to perceive with all our strength the good God and a judge who is not harsh; and supply all things yourself, that we may live as citizens in your peace, be transferred to your city, sail through the surge of sin without being tossed, and be borne along in calm by the Holy Spirit, the Wisdom beyond words; night and day, until the perfect day, praising with thankful praise the only Father and Son, Son and Father, the Son who is Instructor and Teacher, together with the Holy Spirit. All to the One, in whom are all things, through whom all things are one, through whom is eternity, whose members we all are, whose is the glory, the ages; all to the Good, all to the Beautiful, all to the Wise, all things to the Just. To him be the glory, now and forever. Amen. And since the Instructor, having brought us into the church, has entrusted us to himself, the teaching and all-surveying Word, it would be well for us, having arrived here, to send up to the Lord a hymn of praise, a fitting reward of just thanks for his gracious instruction. Bridle of untamed colts, wing of unwandering birds, sure rudder of ships, shepherd of the King's lambs: gather your simple children to praise in holiness, to sing without guile with innocent mouths Christ, the leader of children. King of the saints, all-subduing Word of the Most High Father, ruler of wisdom, support of toils, rejoicing forever, Jesus, Savior of the mortal race, shepherd, plowman, rudder, bridle, heavenly wing of the all-holy flock, fisher of men who are being saved from the sea of evil, luring the pure fish from the hostile wave with sweet life. Lead your rational sheep, holy shepherd; lead, O King, your unharmed children. The footsteps of Christ are the way to heaven. Ever-flowing Word, boundless age, eternal light, fount of mercy, worker of virtue for those who praise God with holy life, Christ Jesus: heavenly milk pressed from the sweet breasts of the Bride, the graces of your wisdom; we little ones, nursed with tender mouths, filled with the dewy spirit of the rational breast, let us sing together simple praises, true hymns, to Christ the King, a holy reward for the teaching of life; let us sing in simplicity to the mighty Child. Choir of peace, born of Christ, a self-controlled people, let us sing together to the God of peace.