THE INSTRUCTOR (PAEDAGOGUS)
Modern English version · SermonIndex
Clement of Alexandria · c. AD 190–200

The second book of Clement’s great trilogy (after the Exhortation). Here the Instructor is Christ the Word, who trains new Christians in daily life. Book 1 describes who the Instructor is and how he deals with us as children of God. Books 2 and 3 apply his teaching to eating and drinking, furniture and entertainment, dress and jewellery, marriage, and how Christians should behave in the city, in bath and at the banquet. The work ends with a short hymn to Christ.

This is the modern English version of The Instructor (Paedagogus) from SermonIndex. It was prepared with AI from an older public-domain English translation (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2 (1885)), checked clause by clause against the Greek, so please compare it with the Greek where it matters. Translator’s notes mark places where the older translation departs from the Greek. It is released under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read it beside the Greek at https://sermonindex.net/fathers/clement-paedagogus/


BOOK 1

1.arg.  Chapter headings of the first book. 1. What the Instructor promises. 2. That the Instructor takes charge of us because of our sins. 3. That the Instructor loves humanity. 4. That the Word is Instructor equally of men and of women. 5. That all who devote themselves to the truth are children before God. 6. Against those who suppose that the names “children” and “infants” point to teaching of the first elementary lessons. 7. Who the Instructor is, and about his instruction. 8. Against those who think that what is just is not good. 9. That it belongs to the same power to do good and to punish justly, and in this chapter, what the manner of the Word’s instruction is. 10. That the same God, through the same Word, both holds humanity back from sins by his threats and saves it by his encouragement. 11. That the Word gave instruction through the law and the prophets. 12. That the Instructor, in keeping with a father’s disposition, uses both sternness and kindness. 13. That just as right conduct comes about by right reason, so, conversely, sin is contrary to reason.

1.1a  What the Instructor promises. A foundation of truth has been laid for ourselves, you children: an unbreakable base of knowledge for the holy temple of the great God. It is a good exhortation, a longing for eternal life through reasonable obedience, laid down in a field of the mind. Now there are three things in a human being: character, actions and passions. The Exhortation has been given charge of his character. It guides us into reverence for God, and as a keel is laid beneath a ship, this Word is laid beneath us for the building up of faith. We rejoice greatly in it, renounce our old opinions and are made young again for salvation. We sing along with the prophecy that says in its psalm, “How good is God to Israel, to those who are upright in heart.” The Word that gives counsel oversees all our actions, and the Word that comforts heals our passions. Yet it is one and the same Word throughout. He snatches a person away from the habit that grew up with him and from the custom of the world, and trains him toward the single way of salvation, faith in God.

1.1b  So when the heavenly guide, the Word, was calling people to salvation, his name was “Exhorter.” This stirring-up side of his work is singled out, so that the whole Word is named from a part. All true devotion to God is exhortation, because it produces in our kindred reason a longing for the life that now is and the life to come. But now he is both healer and counselor at once. Following his own earlier steps, he advises the one who has already been turned toward him, and above all he promises healing for the passions within us. So let us fittingly call him by one name, Instructor. He leads us on in practice and does not simply teach a method. His aim is to make the soul better, not to teach it, and to lead us into a self-controlled life, not a scholarly one. The same Word is indeed a teacher as well, but not here. The teaching Word is the one who explains and reveals in matters of doctrine. The Instructor is practical. First he urged us toward a settled disposition of good character. Now he calls us also to do what we ought, handing on pure counsels and showing to those who come later pictures of those who earlier went astray.

1.1c  Both are most helpful. One is the form of counsel, which leads to obedience. The other is taken in the role of example, and it too is twofold, like the first pair. One kind of example is for us to imitate by choosing what is good. The other is for us to turn away by rejecting the opposite. From this the healing of the passions follows. The Instructor strengthens our souls through the comfort the examples bring. With his kindly counsels, as with gentle medicines, he puts the sick on a regimen that leads to full knowledge of the truth. Health and knowledge are not the same thing. Knowledge is gained by learning, health by healing. So a person who is still sick could not first learn any of the teachings before he is completely well. Nor is each instruction always spoken in the same way to those who are learning and to those who are sick. To the first it is spoken for knowledge, to the second for healing.

1.1d  Just as sick bodies need a physician, so those who are weak in soul need an instructor to heal our passions. After that, a teacher will take over. He prepares the soul to be clean and fit for knowledge, able to receive the revelation of the Word. The Word, who loves humanity in every way, is eager to bring us to perfection by a step suited to salvation and to effective discipline. So he follows this fine arrangement: first he urges us on from the beginning, then he trains us, and finally he teaches us fully.

1.2a  Our Instructor watches over us because of our sins. He is like his Father, God, whose Son he is. You, my children, are the ones he instructs. He is sinless, blameless, and free from passion in his soul. He is God in human form, undefiled, serving his Father’s will. He is the Word who is God, who is in the Father and at the Father’s right hand, and who is God even in the form he took. He is our spotless image, and we must try with all our strength to make our souls like him. He is completely free from human passions. That is why he alone is judge, because he alone is without sin. We, as far as we are able, must try to sin as little as possible. For nothing is so urgent as, first, to be rid of our passions and sicknesses, and then to stop ourselves from slipping easily into the habit of sin.

1.2b  It is best, then, not to sin at all, in any way. We say that this belongs to God alone. Second best is never to commit a wrong deliberately, which is the mark of a wise person. Third is not to fall into very many unintended offences, which belongs to those who have been well and nobly trained. Not to linger long in sins let us put last. Even this is a saving thing for those who are called back to repentance, so that they can take up the fight again. The Instructor, it seems to me, speaks very well through Moses: “If anyone dies suddenly beside him, at once the head of his vow will be defiled, and it shall be shaved.” He calls unintended sin “sudden death.” He says it defiles because it stains the soul. So he prescribes the cure at once, with all speed, advising that the head be shaved immediately. He is urging us to wipe away the hair of ignorance that shades the reasoning mind. Then the mind, which has its seat in the brain, is left bare of the thick growth of wickedness and can run back to repentance.

1.2c  Then, after a few words in between, he adds, “The former days were without reason.” This clearly points to sins that were not done according to reason. The unintended act he called “sudden,” and sinning he called “irrational.” This is why the Word, the Instructor, has taken charge over us: to prevent irrational sin. Notice also this phrase in Scripture: “Therefore thus says the Lord.” The earlier sin is exposed by the words that follow, since just judgment comes after it. The prophets show this plainly. It is as if they were saying, “If you had not sinned, he would not have threatened this.” So they say, “Therefore thus says the Lord,” and “Because you did not listen to these words, therefore thus says the Lord,” and “Therefore, behold, says the Lord.”

1.2d  This is why there is prophecy: because of obedience and disobedience. Through obedience we are saved, and through disobedience we are corrected. So our Instructor, the Word, heals through his exhortations the passions of the soul that are against nature. Strictly speaking, help for bodily diseases is called medicine, an art that human wisdom can teach. But the Word of the Father alone is the healer of human sicknesses, and the holy charmer who sings over the sick soul. “Save your servant, my God, who hopes in you,” it says. “Have mercy on me, Lord, for I will cry to you all day long.” For as Democritus says, “Medicine heals the diseases of the body, but wisdom takes the passions from the soul.” The good Instructor, who is Wisdom, the Word of the Father who made humanity, cares for his whole creation. He is the Physician who can cure every ill of humankind, and he heals both body and soul.

1.2e  The Savior says to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take the bed you are lying on, and go home.” At once the sick man was made strong. And to the dead man he said, “Lazarus, come out.” The dead man came out of the tomb as he had been before he suffered, having practiced resurrection. He also heals the soul itself by commandments and by gifts of grace. As for his counsels, he perhaps holds them back for a time. But he is rich in gifts, and he says to us sinners, “Your sins are forgiven.” As soon as we thought of it, we became children, receiving the best and most secure order from his own good order. This order is first at work about the world and the heaven, the circuits of the sun, the circles and courses of the other stars, all for man’s sake. Then it is at work about man himself, on whom all its zeal is spent. Counting him its greatest work, it set his soul straight with prudence and self-control. It blended his body with beauty and fine proportion. And into the actions of mankind it breathed its own right-doing and good order.

1.3a  The Instructor loves humankind. The Lord benefits everything and helps everything, both as man and as God. As God he forgives our sins; as man he trains us along the way so that we do not sin. It is fitting, then, that man is a friend to God, since man is his own creation. The other things he made simply by command, but man he shaped with his own hands, and he breathed into him something of his own. Now what was formed by him and after his own pattern was either made by God because it was desirable for its own sake, or fashioned because it was desirable for the sake of something else. If man is desirable for his own sake, then God, being good, loved what is good. The love-charm is then within man himself, and this is what is called the breath of God. But if man became desirable for the sake of other things, God had no other reason for making him than this: without man it was not possible for one to be a good Creator, or for the other to arrive at the knowledge of God. (For God would not have accomplished the purpose for which man was made unless man had been made.) The power God had hidden within him, his willing, he carried further through the power that works outside him in making. He took from man what he made man; he saw what he had, and what he willed came to be. There is nothing that God cannot do.

1.3b  Man, then, whom God made, is desirable for his own sake. What is desirable for its own sake is close to the one for whom it is so, and it is welcome and lovable to him. But can something be lovable to someone and yet not be loved by him? Man has been shown to be lovable, so man is loved by God. For how could he not be loved, for whose sake the only-begotten Word of faith is sent down from the Father’s bosom? Here is faith in overflowing measure: the Lord himself plainly confesses it and says, “For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me.” And again he says, “And you have loved them, as you have loved me.” What the Instructor wants and promises is already clear. He is engaged in deed and word, directing what must be done and forbidding the opposite.

1.3c  It is clear that the other kind of discourse is the teaching kind. It is plain and spiritual and concerned with exact statement. It belongs to the higher vision of divine things, and we will set it aside for now. What is fitting for us is to love in return the one who leads us, lovingly, to the best life. We should live according to the ordinances of his will. We should not only carry out what is commanded and keep from what is forbidden. We should also turn away from some of the examples set before us and imitate others as closely as we can. In this way we do the works of the Instructor in his likeness, so that “in the image and in the likeness” may be fulfilled. For we wander through life as in deep darkness, and we need a guide who does not stumble and who is exact. The best guide is not blind, as the Scripture says, leading the blind into the pit. He is the Word, who sees sharply and looks through the hidden things of the heart.

1.3d  There is no light that does not give light, nothing that moves without moving something, nothing that loves without loving. In the same way nothing is good that does not do us good and guide us toward salvation. So let us love the commandments by way of the works of the Lord. For the Word himself became flesh and showed us plainly the same virtue, both in practice and in contemplation. Let us take the Word as our law, and let us recognize his commandments and counsels as short, direct roads to eternity. For his orders are full of persuasion, not of fear.

1.4a  (Heading: That the Word is Instructor of men and women alike.) Let us, then, embrace this good obedience all the more and give ourselves to the Lord. Let us fasten on to the surest cable, which is faith in him, and understand that the virtue of a man and of a woman is the same. If God is one for both, the Instructor is also one for both. There is one church, one self-control, one modesty. Their food is shared, and marriage is a yoke they bear together. Breathing, sight, hearing, knowledge, hope, obedience and love are all alike. Those whose life is shared also share grace and salvation, and so their virtue and their training are shared too. “For in this age,” he says, “they marry and are given in marriage.” Only in this age is the female distinguished from the male. “But in that age it is so no longer.” There the rewards of this shared and holy life, which comes from the union of marriage, are kept in store not for male and female but for the human being, who is set free from the desire that divides him.

1.4b  So the name “human being” is common to men and women. For this reason, I think, the Attic Greeks used the word “paidarion” (“little child”) of both sexes, not only of boys but of girls, if the comic poet Menander in his play *The Girl Who Was Slapped* seems reliable to anyone. He says something like: “my little daughter . . . for the little child (paidarion) is by nature very affectionate.” In the same way, “lambs” is a common name, expressing harmlessness, for the male and the female animal. And “the Lord himself shepherds us” forever. Amen. “Without a shepherd, neither sheep nor anything else is to live, nor children without an instructor, nor servants without a master.”

1.5a  (Heading: That all who devote themselves to the truth are children with God.) It is clear from the name itself that paidagogia (“instruction”) is the training of children. What remains is to consider the children whom Scripture has in view, and then to put the Instructor in charge of them. We are the children. Scripture praises us in many ways and speaks of us in many figures, varying the simplicity of faith with different names. In the Gospel, for example, it says: “The Lord stood on the shore before the disciples (they happened to be fishing) and called out, ‘Children, do you have anything to eat?’” Here he addresses as children those who were already settled in the state of disciples. It also says: “They brought children to him” so that he might lay his hands on them in blessing. When the disciples tried to stop them, Jesus said, “Let the children be, and do not hinder them from coming to me, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” The Lord himself makes clear what this means when he says, “Unless you turn and become like these children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” He is not speaking here in a figure about regeneration. He is setting before us the simplicity found in children, so that we may become like them.

1.5b  The prophetic Spirit also singles out the children. It says: “The children cut branches of olive or palm and went out to meet the Lord, and they cried out, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’” This is light, glory and praise offered to the Lord with supplication, for this is what “Hosanna” means when it is interpreted in the Greek language. And it seems to me that Scripture, hinting at the prophecy mentioned before, rebukes the careless: “Have you never read that out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have perfected praise?” In the same way the Lord in the Gospel goads his disciples, urging them to give heed to him as one already hurrying to the Father. He makes his hearers more eager by telling them beforehand that he will soon be gone. They must gather the fruit of the truth without holding back, he shows them, since the Word was just about to go up to heaven.

1.5c  So again he calls them children, for he says, “Children, I am with you a little while longer.” And again he compares the kingdom of heaven to children “sitting in the marketplaces and saying, We piped for you, and you did not dance; we sang a funeral song, and you did not beat your breasts,” and whatever else he added that fits with this. It is not only the Gospel that thinks this way; prophecy agrees with it. David, for example, says, “Praise the Lord, you children; praise the name of the Lord.” And through Isaiah he says, “Look, I and the children whom God has given me.” Are you surprised to hear that men from the Gentiles are children before the Lord? You do not seem to understand the Attic Greek idiom. From it you can learn that beautiful, blooming and free-born young women are called “paidiskai,” and slave girls “paidiskaria,” who are also young women, honored with a diminutive form because of the fresh bloom of youth.

1.5d  And when he says, “Let my little lambs stand on my right,” he is hinting at the simple-hearted, who are children, like lambs, and not grown men, like sheep by nature. He thought the little lambs worthy of special privilege, because he valued most highly the gentleness among people, the simplicity of mind, the freedom from malice. Again, when he says, “like suckling calves,” he is speaking of us figuratively once more; and “like a dove, without malice and without gall,” again he means us. Through Moses he also commands that two young doves, or a pair of turtledoves, be offered for sin. He is saying that the sinlessness, the harmlessness, and the readiness to forget wrongs of these tender young birds are acceptable to God, and he is showing that like cleanses like. The timidity of turtledoves also pictures a careful fear of sins. That he calls us the young birds, Scripture is witness: “As a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,” so we are the Lord’s chicks. In this wonderful and mysterious way the Word sketches the simplicity of the soul as the age of childhood.

1.5e  For in one place he calls us children, in another young birds, sometimes infants, elsewhere sons, and often offspring, and a young people and a new people. “My servants,” he says, “will be called by a new name” (by “new name” he means what is new and everlasting, undefiled, simple, childlike and true), “which will be blessed on the earth.” Speaking figuratively, he also calls us colts: free from the yoke of vice, untamed by wickedness, simple, and leaping only toward the Father himself. We are not “the horses that neigh after their neighbors’ wives,” the yoked beasts mad after females, but free and newborn colts, proud because of faith, running well toward the truth, quick toward salvation, trampling and stamping on the things of the world.

1.5f  “Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion; proclaim it, daughter of Jerusalem. Look, your king is coming to you, righteous and saving, and gentle himself, mounted on a beast of burden and a young colt.” It was not enough for him to say “colt” alone; he added “young,” showing the youthfulness of humanity in Christ, and a simplicity that is eternal and never grows old. We little ones are such young colts, and our divine colt-tamer brings us up. Even if the young animal in Scripture is an ass, it is still a colt, the foal of an ass. “And he tied the colt to a vine.” He tied this simple, childlike people to the Word, whom he pictures as a vine. For the vine bears wine, as the Word bears blood, and both are a drink for people’s salvation: the wine for the body, the blood for the spirit.

1.5g  That he calls us lambs as well, the Spirit is a reliable witness through Isaiah: “Like a shepherd he will tend his flock, and with his arm he will gather the lambs.” Here lambs, even more tender than sheep, are a figure for simplicity. And indeed we ourselves honor the finest and most perfect things in life by a word taken from the child: we have named instruction “paideia” and guidance “paidagogia.” We hold that “paidagogia” is good guidance toward virtue, beginning from childhood. The Lord reveals the meaning of the name “child” to us more clearly. When a dispute arose among the apostles about which of them was greater, Jesus set a child in the middle and said, “Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is greater in the kingdom of heaven.” So he does not use the name “children” as though it meant the age of those who cannot reason, as some have thought. And when he says, “Unless you become like these children, you will not enter the kingdom of God,” it must not be taken in an ignorant way.

1.5h  So we who are infants no longer roll on the ground, and we no longer crawl on the earth as we did before, like snakes, wriggling with our whole body after senseless desires. Instead we stretch upward in mind, separated from the world and from sins, “touching the earth with only a small foot,” just enough to seem to be in the world, and we pursue holy wisdom. To those whose wits are sharpened for cunning, this seems foolishness. Rightly, then, those who know God alone as Father are called children: plain, infantile and pure, lovers of the horns of the unicorns. To those who have advanced in the Word he proclaimed this saying. He told them to be free of worry about the things of this world and urged them to give their attention to the Father alone, imitating children. So in the verses that follow he says, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for its own evil is enough for the day.” In this way he commands them to lay aside the cares of life and cling to the Father alone.

1.5i  Whoever fulfils this commandment is truly an infant and a child, both to God and to the world: to the world as one who is deluded, and to God as one who is loved. Scripture says, “There is one teacher in heaven,” and this is agreed. So all those on earth will rightly be called disciples. For this is the truth: perfection belongs to the Lord, who always teaches, while childhood and infancy belong to us, who are always learning. For this reason prophecy honors the perfect by giving them the name “man.” For example, through David it says of the devil, “The Lord abhors a man of bloodshed.” It calls him a man because he is perfect in evil. And the Lord is also called man, because he is perfect in righteousness.

1.5j  So, for instance, the apostle writes to the Corinthians: “For I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.” Whether he means them as infants or as holy ones, they are still presented to the Lord alone. Writing to the Ephesians, he explains the point at issue most clearly, speaking in this way: “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 by waves and carried about by every wind of teaching, by the dice-play of men, by craftiness aimed at the scheming of error; but, speaking the truth in love, let us grow up in all things into him.” He says this “for the building up of the body of Christ,” “who is the head,” and who is the man who alone is perfect in righteousness.

1.5k  But we who are infants must guard against the winds of the heresies, which blow upon us to puff us up. We must not put our trust in those who lay down other fathers for us. We are made perfect when we are the church, having received Christ as our head. Here it is right to look closely at the word “infant.” The Greek nēpion is not applied to fools. The foolish person is nēpytios, but nēpios comes from neēpios, just as ēpios is the tender-minded person. That is, the infant is one who has newly become gentle and mild in manner. The blessed Paul pointed this out most clearly when he said, “Though we could have been a burden to you as apostles of Christ, we became gentle among you, as a nurse cherishes her own children.” So the infant is gentle, and for that reason all the more tender: delicate, simple, guileless and without hypocrisy, straight and upright in purpose. This is the very substance of simplicity and truth.

1.5l  “For on whom,” it says, “will I look, but on the gentle and quiet?” Such is the virgin word: tender and unfeigned. This is why a virgin bride is customarily called “tender” (atalē), and a child “tender-minded.” We are tender when we are soft toward persuasion, ready to be shaped toward goodness, free of bitterness, and unmixed with malice and crookedness. For the old generation was crooked and hard-hearted, but the company of infants, we who are the new people, is delicate like a child. In the letter to the Romans the apostle confesses that he rejoices over “the hearts of the innocent.” He also gives what we might call a definition of infants when he says, “I want you to be wise for what is good, but innocent for what is evil.” For we do not understand the name “infant” as expressing a lack, even though the pupils of the grammarians lay down that nē- is a negative prefix.

1.5m  If those who run down childhood call us fools, see how they blaspheme against the Lord, since they take those who have fled to God for refuge to be fools. But if, as is rather the sense we should hear, they themselves take “children” to mean the simple, then let us rejoice in the name. For the new minds are “childlike” in the old folly: they have only just become wise, and they have dawned under the new covenant. God, at any rate, has only recently been known, through the coming of Christ. “For no one has known God except the Son, and the one to whom the Son reveals him.” So the new people are young, in contrast to the older people, because they have learned new blessings. Our age has its fullness in this youth that never grows old. In it we are always at our prime for understanding, always young, always gentle, always new. For those who have shared in a new Word must be new.

1.5n  What shares in eternity tends to become like the incorruptible. So for us the name of childhood means a springtime for the whole of life, because the truth in us is ageless, and our character is poured out toward the truth. Wisdom is ever-blooming, always the same in the same way, and never changing. “Their children,” it says, “will be lifted on their shoulders and comforted on their knees. As a mother comforts someone, so I will comfort you.” The mother draws her children to herself, and we look for our mother, the Church. Everything weak and tender, since in its weakness it needs help, is welcome, sweet and delightful, and God does not withhold help from such as these. Fathers and mothers take more pleasure in seeing the foals of horses, the little calves of cattle, a lion’s cub, a deer’s fawn, and a human child. In the same way the Father of all welcomes those who have fled to him for refuge. He has been born them again by the Spirit into adoption as sons, and he knows them as gentle. He loves only these, helps them and fights on their behalf, and for this reason he calls them “child.”

1.5o  I also trace Isaac back to the child. Isaac means “laughter.” The prying king saw him playing with his wife and helper, Rebecca. The king (his name was Abimelech) seems to me to represent a wisdom above the world, watching closely the mystery of the play. They interpret Rebecca as “endurance.” What a wise play this is: laughter helped by endurance, with the king looking on! The spirit of the children in Christ, who live as citizens in endurance, rejoices, and this too is the divine play. Heraclitus says that his Zeus plays a play like this. For what other work is fitting for a wise and perfect person than to play and rejoice together in the endurance of what is good, and in the ordering of what is good, keeping festival together with God? The prophecy can also be understood in another way: that we, like Isaac, laugh and rejoice in salvation.

1.5p  Isaac also laughed, released from death, playing and rejoicing with his bride, the helper for our salvation, the Church. The firm name “endurance” is given to her, either because she alone remains forever, always rejoicing, or because she is made up of the endurance of believers, who are the members of Christ. The witness of those who endured to the end, and the thanksgiving for them, is the mystical play, and the salvation that helps us along with solemn gladness. So Christ the King looks down on our laughter from above. As the Scripture says, he “looks through the window.” He watches over his own Church: the thanksgiving, the blessing, the joy and gladness, and also the endurance that works with them, and the Church that binds them together. He shows only his face, which was lacking to the Church, now made perfect by her royal Head.

1.5q  And where was the window through which the Lord showed himself? It was the flesh, through which he has been made visible. Isaac can also be taken another way, as a type of the Lord. He is a child, as a son (for he was Abraham’s son, as Christ is God’s Son), and he is an offering, as the Lord is. But unlike the Lord, he was not actually offered up. Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice, as the Lord carried the wood. And he laughed in a mystical way, prophesying that the Lord would fill us with joy, us who have been redeemed from corruption by the blood of the Lord. Isaac did not suffer. This was fitting, since he yielded the first place in suffering to the Word. But in not being slain he also hints at the Lord’s divinity. For Jesus rose again after his burial, as though he had not suffered, just as Isaac was released from the sacrifice.

1.5r  I will offer one more very strong argument in support of the point before us. The Spirit himself calls the Lord a child, prophesying this through Isaiah: “Behold, a child has been born to us, a son has also been given to us, whose rule is upon his shoulder, and his name has been called Angel of Great Counsel.” Who, then, is this little child, in whose likeness we are little children? The same prophet describes his greatness: “Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, by increasing instruction; and of his peace there is no end.” O the great God! O the perfect child! The Son in the Father, and the Father in the Son. How could the instruction of that child not be perfect, reaching to all of us as children, guiding us, his little ones, as an instructor?

1.5s  He has stretched out to us his hands, which we plainly believe. John, “the greatest prophet among those born of women,” also bears witness to this child: “Behold, the Lamb of God.” Scripture calls young children lambs. So God the Word, who became man for our sake and wished to be made like us in every way, has been called the Lamb of God: the Son of God, the infant child of the Father.

1.6a  The title “Children”: against those who think it means teaching in elementary lessons. We can answer those who love to find fault, and do so more than fully. We are not called children and infants because our learning is childish and worth despising, as those puffed up with “knowledge” have slandered us. On the contrary, the moment we were born again we received the perfection we were hurrying toward. For we were enlightened, and this means coming to know God. So the one who knows the perfect is not imperfect. Do not take me to be claiming that I have fully known God. It seemed right to the Word to say it in this way, and he is free. At the Lord’s baptism, a voice sounded from heaven, witnessing to the beloved one: “You are my beloved Son; today I have begotten you.” Let us ask the wise, then: was Christ, born again today, already perfect, or (which would be most absurd) lacking?

1.6b  If he was lacking, he still has something to learn. But it is unthinkable that he should learn anything more, since he is God. No one could be greater than the Word, or be a teacher of the one and only Teacher. Will they not then admit, though unwillingly, that the Word, perfect and born of the perfect Father, was perfectly born again, according to the plan of the economy that was prefigured? And if he was perfect, why was the perfect one baptized? “It was necessary,” they say, “to fulfil what belongs to human beings.” Quite so. Then I ask: at the very moment he was baptized by John, did he become perfect? Clearly. Then he learned nothing more from John? Nothing. Is he perfected by the washing alone, and sanctified by the descent of the Spirit? That is how it is. The same thing happens to us, for whom the Lord became a pattern. When we are baptized we are enlightened; enlightened, we are made sons; made sons, we are made perfect; 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: gift of grace, enlightenment, perfection, and washing. It is a washing, by which we are cleansed of our sins. It is a gift of grace, by which the penalties for our sins are cancelled. It is an enlightenment, by which we see that holy, saving light, that is, by which we see God clearly. And we call “perfect” the one who lacks nothing.

1.6c  For what is still lacking to the one who has come to know God? It would be truly absurd for something incomplete to be called a gift of God’s grace. Since he is perfect, he will surely give perfect gifts. Just as everything comes into being the moment he commands it, so the completion of his grace follows as soon as he merely wills to give it. For the power of his will anticipates the time still to come. Besides, deliverance from evils is the beginning of salvation. So we who have first laid hold of the boundaries of life are already perfect, and we who have been separated from death already live. Salvation, then, is following Christ. “For what has come into being in him is life.” “Truly, truly, I say to you,” he says, “the one who hears my word and believes the one who sent me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed over from death to life.” So to believe and be born again is, by itself, perfection in life, for God is never weak.

1.6d  For just as his will is a work, and this work is called the world, so his purpose is the salvation of people, and this is called the church. He knows, then, those whom he has called, and those whom he has called he has saved. He called and saved them at the same moment. “For you yourselves,” says the apostle, “are taught by God.” So it is not right for us to think that what he teaches is incomplete. What is learned from him is the eternal salvation given by the eternal Savior, to whom be grace forever, amen. And the one who has simply been born again, as the very name implies, is enlightened. He is set free from the darkness at once and receives the light on the spot. Think of people who shake off sleep: they are immediately awake within. Or better, think of people who try to remove a cataract from the eyes. They do not supply from outside a light they lack, but remove the obstacle from the eyes and leave the pupil free. In the same way we who are baptized wipe away, by the divine Spirit, the sins that overshadow us like a mist. We then have the eye of the spirit free, unobstructed and full of light. By this eye alone we look upon the divine, since the Holy Spirit flows into us from heaven. This is a blending with an eternal radiance that is able to see the eternal light, for like is dear to like, and what is holy is dear to the source of holiness, which is properly called light: “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” This is why I think the ancients called man “light.”

1.6e  “But he has not yet received the perfect gift,” they say. I agree with that. Still, he is in the light, and the darkness does not overtake him. Between light and darkness there is nothing in the middle. The fulfillment is stored up for the resurrection of those who believe. This does not mean receiving something different, but obtaining the promise already declared. For we do not say that both things take place at the same time: the arrival at the goal, and the taking hold of it in advance. Eternity and time are not the same, and neither are the starting out and the end. Yet one and the same person is occupied with both, and with each of them. Faith, so to speak, is the starting out, born in time; the end is the obtaining of the promise, made secure forever.

1.6f  The Lord himself has revealed most clearly that salvation is the same for all, when he said: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” As far as is possible in this world, which he hints at by “the last day,” we believe that we are made perfect. We are kept for that time, until this world comes to an end. For faith is the perfection of learning. This is why he says, “The one who believes in the Son has eternal life.” So if we who have believed have life, what more remains beyond possessing eternal life? Nothing is lacking to faith, since it is perfect and complete in itself. If anything were lacking to it, it would not be whole, and it would not be faith at all, but something limping in some respect. Nor, after we leave this life, does something else await those who have believed. Here we have been given the pledge without distinction, and because we have already grasped by faith what is to come, we receive it as present after the resurrection. In this way what was said is fulfilled: “Let it be done for you according to your faith.” Where faith is, there is the promise, and the completion of the promise is rest.

1.6g  So knowledge lies in the illumination, and the end of knowledge is rest, which is understood to be the last thing we long for. Inexperience is ended by experience, and perplexity by finding a way through. In the same way darkness must vanish when we are illuminated. The darkness is ignorance, which makes us fall into sins because our sight of the truth is dim. Knowledge, then, is illumination. It makes ignorance vanish and gives us the power to see clearly. Throwing away what is worse also reveals what is better. What ignorance bound badly, full knowledge looses well. These bonds are quickly loosed by human faith and divine grace. Our offences are forgiven by one healing remedy, the baptism of the Word. We are washed from all our sins, and from that moment we are no longer evil.

1.6h  This is the one grace of illumination: that our way of life is no longer what it was before we were washed. Knowledge dawns together with the illumination and flashes around the mind. At once we who were untaught hear and become disciples. Was it that this learning had come to us at some earlier time? You could not name the time. Instruction leads us around to faith, and faith is trained together with holy baptism by the Holy Spirit. Faith is the one salvation common to all humanity, and the same equality and fellowship with the righteous and loving God extends to everyone. The apostle explained this most clearly when he said: “Before faith came, we were guarded under the law, shut up for the faith that was about to be revealed. So the law has become our instructor to bring us to Christ, so 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 went with fear, but under the Word, the instructor of free choice?

1.6i  Then Paul added a statement free of all partiality: “For you are all sons, through faith in God, in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” So in the Word himself there are not some who are “knowers” and others who are merely “soulish.” All who have put away the desires of the flesh are equal, and spiritual before the Lord. Elsewhere he writes again: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all given one drink.” It is not out of place to use the very words of those who say that the remembrance of better things is a filtering of the spirit.

1.6j  By “filtering” they mean the separating of the worse from the better, which comes from remembering the better things. Whoever is reminded of better things must then repent of the lesser. They agree, at any rate, that the spirit itself, once it has repented, runs back up. In the same way we too have repented of our sins and said farewell to their faults. We are filtered by baptism, and we run back to the eternal light, as children to the Father. So Jesus, rejoicing in the Spirit, says: “I give thanks to you, Father, God of heaven and earth, because you hid these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to infants.” Here the Instructor and Teacher calls us infants. He means that we are better suited to salvation than the wise of this world, who think themselves wise and are puffed up. Exulting and overjoyed, he cries out, as if lisping along with the infants: “Yes, Father, for so it was well pleasing before you.” That is why the things hidden from the wise and understanding of the present age were revealed to infants.

1.6k  It is fitting, then, that the children of God are infants. They have put away the old man and stripped off the tunic of wickedness. They have put on over it the incorruption of Christ. So we become new, a holy people, born again, so that we may keep the man undefiled. We are infants, like God’s baby, cleansed from fornication and wickedness. The blessed Paul has settled this question for us most clearly in his first letter to the Corinthians, where he writes: “Brothers, do not become children in your thinking, but in evil be infants, and in your thinking become mature.” The words “When I was an infant, I thought as an infant, I spoke as an infant” hint at his life under the law. Then he was not yet simple but still senseless. With childish thoughts he persecuted, and with childish words he blasphemed the Word.

1.6l  For the word “child” has two meanings. “Since I have become a man,” Paul says again, “I have put away the things of the child.” The apostle is not hinting at an immature stage of physical growth, nor at a fixed length of time, nor at some other secret teachings belonging to more manly and advanced instruction. He is the one who declares that he is putting childhood away, sending it off into exile. Rather, he calls “children” those who live under the law, who are thrown into panic by fear, as children are by bogeys. And he calls “men” those who obey the Word and are masters of themselves. We have believed and are saved by free and willing choice, and any fear that frightens us frightens us sensibly, not senselessly. The apostle himself will testify to this, when he calls the Jews heirs under the first covenant, and us heirs by promise. “I mean,” he says, “that as long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a slave, though he is lord of everything. But he is under guardians and stewards until the date set by the father.”

1.6m  “So also we, when we were children, were enslaved under the elemental things of the world. But when the fullness of time came, God sent out his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to buy back those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons through him.” See how he admits that those under fear and sins are children. Those under faith he calls sons, and so makes them men, in contrast with the children who were under the law. “For you are no longer a slave,” he says, “but a son. And if a son, then also an heir through God.” What, then, is still lacking to the son after the inheritance? So it is a fine way to explain “When I was a child” like this: “When I was a Jew” (for he was a Hebrew from the beginning), “I thought like a child,” because I followed the law. “But since I have become a man,” I no longer think the things of the child, that is, of the law, but the things of the man, that is, of Christ, whom alone Scripture, as we said before, calls a man. “I have put away the things of the child.” But childhood in Christ is maturity, in comparison with the law.

1.6n  Having come to this point, we must speak in defense of our childhood. We must also explain further what the apostle said: “I gave you milk to drink, as to infants in Christ, not solid food. For you were not yet able, and even now you are not able.” It does not seem to me that this saying should be taken in a Jewish way. For I will set against it that other Scripture: “I will bring you into the good land, flowing with milk and honey.” So a very great difficulty arises when we put these passages side by side: what do they mean? If childhood on milk is the beginning of faith in Christ, yet it is belittled as childish and imperfect, how is it that the rest of the perfect man, the man of knowledge, which comes after the solid food, is again honored with the infant’s milk? Perhaps the word “as,” which signals a comparison, points to something like this, and the saying should be read in some such way as this: “I gave you milk to drink in Christ.” Then, pausing briefly, let us add, “as to infants.” By this pause in the reading we may take the sense to be: I instructed you in Christ with simple, true, naturally grown, spiritual nourishment. For such is the life-giving substance of milk, which flows from loving breasts. The whole meaning can then be understood like this: as nurses feed newborn children with milk, so I too, by the Word, which is Christ’s milk, drip spiritual nourishment into you.

1.6o  In this way, then, milk is perfect nourishment. It is perfect and leads to the end that never ceases. That is why this same milk, along with honey, is promised in the rest. It is fitting that the Lord promises milk again to the righteous, so that the Word may be clearly shown to be both: “Alpha and Omega, beginning and end.” Homer, too, unwittingly prophesies something like this when he calls the righteous among men “milk-eaters.” The Scripture can also be taken this way: “And I, brothers, could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to fleshly people, as to infants in Christ.” So the “fleshly” can be understood as those newly instructed, still infants in Christ. For he called “spiritual” those who had already believed in the Holy Spirit. He called “fleshly” those newly taught and not yet cleansed, whom he rightly calls “still fleshly,” since like the pagans they still think the things of the flesh.

1.6p  “For where there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and do you not walk in a merely human way?” This is why he says, “I gave you milk to drink.” He means, “I poured knowledge into you,” the knowledge that comes from instruction and nourishes us up to eternal life. The word “gave to drink” is also a symbol of full sharing in the truth. For the mature are said to drink, while infants are said to nurse. “My blood,” says the Lord, “is true drink.” So when he said “I gave you milk to drink,” was he not hinting at the perfect joy found in the Word as milk, the knowledge of the truth? And what follows, “not solid food, for you were not yet able,” can hint at the clear revelation in the age to come, face to face, like solid food. For the same apostle says, “Now we see as through a mirror, but then face to face.” That is why he added, “But even now you are not able, for you are still fleshly.” They set their minds on the things of the flesh: they lust, they crave, they are jealous, angry and envious. He does not mean that we are still in the flesh, as some have supposed. For we shall have the flesh with us, and with a face like the angels’ face we shall see the promise face to face.

1.6q  But suppose that promise really comes after we leave this life, the promise that “no eye has seen, and it has not entered into the mind of man.” How then do they say they know it? They have not conceived it by the Spirit but have received it by learning. They claim to know “what ear never heard,” when only that one who was caught up into the third heaven could say so. Yet even he was told at that time to keep silent. And if what is left to suppose is that this boasting about knowledge is human wisdom, 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.” We are “taught by God,” and we boast in the name of Christ. So why should we not suppose that this is what the apostle means by the milk of infants? After all, those who lead the churches are shepherds after the image of the good Shepherd, and we are the sheep.

1.6r  Does not the Lord keep the same consistency of figure when he also speaks of the milk of the flock? And so the saying must be fitted again to this sense: “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able.” The apostle does not take the solid food to be something other than the milk, but the same thing in substance. For the same Word is either gentle and fluid, like milk, or firm and compact, like solid food. There is another way to take it. We can understand milk as the preaching of the gospel, poured out as widely as possible. Solid food is then faith, built up from instruction into a foundation. Faith is firmer than mere hearing, so it is compared to solid food, as it is made into body within the soul itself. Elsewhere, in the Gospel according to John, the Lord expressed this same nourishment in a different way through symbols. He said, “You shall eat my flesh and drink my blood.” By this figure he spoke of the clear evidence of faith, and of the promise as food and drink. Through these the Church, like a person made of many members, is watered and grows, and is knit and fitted together from both: faith as the body and hope as the soul, just as the Lord himself is made of flesh and blood.

1.6s  For in truth hope is the blood of faith. By hope faith is held together, as by a soul. And when hope breathes its last, like blood flowing out, the life of faith drains away. Now some may want to argue further. They may say that milk means the first lessons, the first foods so to speak, and that solid food means the spiritual understanding to which they lift themselves up in “knowledge.” Let them know that when they call the solid food “solid nourishment” and also “the flesh and blood of Jesus,” their own boastful wisdom carries them back to the true simplicity. For blood is found to be the first-formed thing in a human being, and some have dared to call it the substance of the soul. When the mother conceives, this blood is changed by natural digestion. Through the sympathy of her tender love, it blossoms and ripens, so that the child has nothing to fear. Blood is moister than flesh, being a kind of liquid flesh. And milk is sweeter than blood and finer in texture.

1.6t  Whether it is the blood supplied to the unborn child, sent first through the mother’s navel, or whether it is the menstrual blood itself, shut out from its usual course, God, who feeds all things and brings them to birth, commands it to flow back by a natural overflow to the breasts, which are by then swollen. There it is changed by warm breath and prepared as the food the infant longs for. Either way, what is being changed is blood. For of all the members, the breasts have the closest fellow-feeling with the womb. At birth the vessel that carried blood to the child is cut off. The passage closes, and the blood rushes toward the breasts. When a great flow arrives, the breasts are stretched, and the blood turns into milk, in a way comparable to blood turning into pus in a festering wound. Or else, the veins lying near the breasts are opened out during the stretching of pregnancy, and the blood is poured into the natural hollows of the breasts. The breath sent down from the neighboring arteries mingles with it, while the underlying substance of the blood stays unchanged. Stirred up like a wave, it turns white, and by this beating it is changed into froth. It is much like the sea, which, when the winds strike it, the poets say “spits out the foam of the salt.” Yet the substance is still blood.

1.6u  In the same way, rivers rushing along are whipped by the surrounding air and murmur with foam. The moisture in our mouth also turns white with the breath. Why then should we not admit that blood, too, is turned by breath into this most shining and white substance? It undergoes a change of quality, not of substance. You will certainly find nothing more nourishing than milk, nor sweeter, nor whiter. Spiritual food is like it in every way: sweet because of grace, nourishing like life, white like the day of Christ. And the blood of the Word has been shown to us as milk. So, when the child is born, the milk is arranged and supplied to the baby. The breasts, which until then stood upright and looked toward the husband, now bend down toward the child. They are taught to offer, in an easily received form, the food that nature has worked on, for the nourishing of salvation. For the breasts are not full like springs, with ready-made milk flowing into them. They change the food within themselves, make it into milk, and give it out.

1.6v  This food is fitted and suited to the newly formed, newly grown child, and it is prepared by God, the nourisher and Father of those who are born and born again. It is like the manna that flowed down from heaven for the ancient Hebrews, the heavenly food of angels. Even now, in fact, nurses call the first draught of milk by the same name as that food: manna. But women who have conceived become mothers and then their milk flows. The Lord Christ, the fruit of the Virgin, did not pronounce women’s breasts blessed, nor did he judge them to be his nurses. Instead, when the loving Father, who loves humankind, had rained down the Word, Christ himself became spiritual food for the self-controlled. O mystical wonder! There is one Father of all, and one Word of all, and the Holy Spirit is one and the same everywhere, and there is only one virgin who becomes a mother. I like to call her the Church.

1.6w  This mother alone had no milk, because she alone did not become a woman. She is both virgin and mother: undefiled as a virgin, loving as a mother. She calls her children to her and nurses them with holy milk, the Word suited to infants. Therefore she had no milk, because the milk was this child, fair and her own, the body of Christ. It feeds the young people of the Word, whom the Lord himself bore in the pains of the flesh and whom the Lord himself wrapped in swaddling clothes with his precious blood. O the holy births! O the holy swaddling clothes! The Word is everything to the infant: father and mother, instructor and nurse. “Eat my flesh,” he says, “and drink my blood.” The Lord gives us this fitting food. He holds out his flesh and pours out his blood, and nothing is lacking for the children’s growth.

1.6x  What a strange and wonderful mystery! He commands us to strip off our old, fleshly corruption, just as we strip off our old food. We are to share in a new and different way of life, the way of Christ. We are to take him into ourselves, if we can, and store him up there, and to hold the Saviour close to our hearts, so that we may put an end to the passions of our flesh. But you do not want to understand it this way. Perhaps you prefer the more common reading. Then hear it this way too. He speaks of the Holy Spirit allegorically as “flesh,” for the flesh was made by the Spirit. He hints at the Word as “blood,” for the Word has been poured out on our life like rich blood. The mixture of the two is the Lord, the food of infants. The Lord is Spirit and Word. The food, that is, the Lord Jesus, that is, the Word of God, is Spirit made flesh, heavenly flesh made holy.

1.6y  The food is the Father’s milk, and on it alone we infants are nursed. The Word himself, the “beloved” one and our nourisher, poured out his own blood for us to save humanity. Through him we have believed in God, and we run for refuge to the Father’s “care-forgetting breast,” the Word. As it appears, he alone supplies us infants with the milk of love, and those who suckle at this breast are the only ones truly blessed. For this reason Peter also says: “So put away all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander. Like newborn babies, long for the milk of the word, so that by it you may grow into salvation, if you have tasted that the Lord is good.” But suppose someone granted these people that solid food is something other than milk. How then would they not run themselves through, since they have not understood nature?

1.6z  In winter the surrounding air thickens and gives no way out, so the heat is shut up inside. The food is then cooked and digested, turned into blood, and passes into the veins. The veins get no ventilation, so they fill up, become very tense, and pulse. This is why nurses are fullest of milk at that time. A little earlier we showed that in pregnant women the blood turns into milk by a change in form, not a change in substance. In the same way, the fair hair of old people changes to grey. In summer it is the other way around. The body is more porous, so the food is dispersed more easily and there is very little milk, since there is not much blood either; not all the food is retained. So if the working-up of food produces blood, and the blood is turned into milk, then blood is the raw material for milk. It is like the seed of a human being, or the pip of a vine.

1.6aa  So from the moment we are born, we are nursed with milk, the Lord’s food. And from the moment we are born again, we are honoured with the good news of the hope of rest, the Jerusalem above, where, it is written, milk and honey rain down. Through this material food we are already being betrothed to the holy food as well. For “foods will be done away with,” as the apostle himself says. But the nourishment of milk leads the way to the heavens, because it raises citizens of heaven and fellow dancers with the angels. The Word is a gushing spring of life and has been called a river of oil. So Paul speaks allegorically and names him milk, and then adds, “I gave you to drink.” For the Word is drunk; he is the food of truth. Indeed, a drink is called liquid food. The same thing can be both food and drink, depending on how we think of it. Cheese, for example, is curdled milk, or milk that has set.

1.6ab  I am not concerned just now with hunting for exact words. My point is only that one substance serves as both kinds of nourishment. For babies at the breast, milk alone is enough to be both drink and food. The Lord says, “I have food to eat that you do not know about. My food is to do the will of the one who sent me.” You see here another food, which like milk is allegorical: the will of God. He also called the completion of his own suffering a “cup,” using the word loosely, because he alone had to drink it to the end and finish it. So for Christ the food was the fulfilment of the Father’s purpose. For us infants, who milk out the word of the heavens, Christ himself is the food. This is why seeking is called “mastevsai.” To infants who seek the Word, the Father’s breasts of loving kindness give milk.

1.6ac  The Word also declares himself to be the bread of heaven. “For Moses did not give you the bread from heaven,” he says, “but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. And the bread that I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” Here we should note the mystery of the bread. He calls it flesh, and flesh that rises, as wheat rises from decay and sowing. It is also put together through fire, like bread being baked, for the joy of the Church. But this will be made clearer to us later, in the work On the Resurrection. He said, “The bread that I will give is my flesh.” Flesh is watered by blood, and blood is figuratively called wine. So we must understand this. Bread crumbled into a mixture of wine and water takes up the wine and leaves the watery part behind. In the same way the flesh of the Lord, the bread of heaven, drinks up the blood. It feeds the heavenly among men to incorruption, and leaves behind to corruption only the desires of the flesh.

1.6ad  So the Word is described figuratively in many ways: as food, flesh, nourishment, bread, blood and milk. The Lord is all of these for the enjoyment of us who have believed in him. Let no one be surprised, then, when we say that the Lord’s blood is figuratively called milk. Is it not also figuratively called wine? “He who washes his robe in wine,” it says, “and his garment in the blood of the grape.” He means that he will adorn the body of the Word with his own blood. In the same way he will feed with his Spirit those who hunger for the Word. That the blood is the Word is shown by the blood of righteous Abel, which pleaded with God. Blood could never have uttered a voice unless “blood” is understood to mean the Word. The righteous man of old is a type of the new Righteous One. The blood of old that pleaded also pleads on behalf of the new blood.

1.6ae  The blood, which is the Word, speaks to God, because it pointed to the Word who was to suffer. Flesh itself, and the blood in it, is watered and made to grow by milk, as though milk repaid it with a kind of returned care. Even the shaping of what is conceived happens when the seed is mixed with the pure residue left over from the monthly cleansing. The power in the seed curdles the nature of the blood, as rennet sets milk, and so produces the substance for forming the child. A balanced mixture flourishes, but extremes risk childlessness. The earth itself works the same way. When it is flooded by heavy rain, the seed is washed away. When it is dry for lack of moisture, the seed withers. But when the moisture is sticky, it holds the seed and makes it grow. Some suppose that the seed of a living creature is, in its substance, the foam of the blood. In intercourse, they say, the male’s inborn heat stirs the blood up and whips it into foam, and the foam is deposited in the seed-bearing veins. Diogenes of Apollonia wants the word “aphrodisia” (the acts of love) to come from this.

1.6af  It is plain from all this that the substance of the human body is blood. In the womb, what is formed is at first a milky composition of fluid. Then it is turned to blood, and this composition becomes flesh. It sets in the womb by the natural, warm breath by which the embryo is shaped, and so it is brought to life. After birth the child is again fed by the same blood, for the flow of milk is blood in another form, and milk is the source of nourishment. By milk a woman is clearly shown to have truly given birth and to be a mother, and through it she also gains a charm that wins affection. For this reason the Holy Spirit in the apostle, using the Lord’s voice, says in a mystery, “I gave you milk to drink.” For if we have been born again into Christ, the one who has begotten us again feeds us with his own milk, the Word. Everything that begets seems to provide nourishment at once for what it has begotten.

1.6ag  Just as our new birth is spiritual, so in the same way our nourishment has become spiritual. In every respect, then, and in everything, we have been made Christ’s own. We are bound to him by kinship, through his blood, by which we are redeemed. We are bound to him by sympathy, through the upbringing that comes from the Word. And we are bound to him for immortality, through his training of us. “Among mortals, bringing up children often wins more love than begetting them.” So the blood and the milk of the Lord are one and the same: a symbol of his suffering and of his teaching. Each of us who are infants may therefore boast in the Lord, and say, “I claim to be sprung from a good father and from his blood.” That milk comes from blood by a process of change is already clear, but we can also learn it from flocks and herds.

1.6ah  In the season of the year we call spring, the air is moister, and the grass and pastures are juicy and damp. At that time these animals are first filled with blood, as the swelling of the veins and the bulging of the vessels shows. From the blood the milk then flows more abundantly. In summer, by contrast, the blood is scorched and dried up by the heat, and the change is checked, so less milk is drawn. Milk also has a very natural kinship with water, just as the spiritual washing has with spiritual food. People who sip a little cold water after drinking milk are helped at once. Its association with water keeps the milk from turning sour, not through any opposition between them, but because the water agrees with the milk and suits it.

1.6ai  The partnership the Word has with baptism is the same as the bond between milk and water. Milk alone of liquids admits a mixture with water for the sake of cleansing, as baptism is taken for the forgiveness of sins. It also mixes naturally with honey, again for cleansing, along with sweet nourishment. For the Word, mixed with love for mankind, heals our passions and at the same time cleanses away our sins. The line “sweeter than honey flowed his speech” seems to me to have been said of the Word, who is honey. And prophecy in many places lifts him up as “above honey and the honeycomb.” Milk is also mixed with sweet wine. The mixture is beneficial, as when suffering is mixed in for the sake of incorruption. The wine draws off the whey and curdles the milk, and whatever in it is impure is drained away.

1.6aj  In the same way, the spiritual fellowship of faith with suffering man draws off the fleshly desires. It gathers man together for eternity and makes him immortal through divine things. Many people also use the fatty part of milk, which they call butter, as lamp oil. By this clear riddle they show the rich oil of the Word, who alone rightly feeds, nourishes and enlightens the little ones. For this reason 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 he gave them what follows after that. The prophet who foretells the birth of the child also says, “He will eat butter and honey.”

1.6ak  I am even amazed that some dare to call themselves “perfect” and “gnostics,” thinking themselves above the apostle, puffed up and arrogant, when Paul himself admits about himself: “Not that I have already obtained it or have already been made perfect, but I press on to see if I may lay hold of that for which I was also laid hold of by Christ. Brothers, I do not yet count myself to have laid hold of it. But one thing: forgetting what lies behind and stretching out toward what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal, to the prize of the upward call in Christ Jesus.” Paul does count himself perfect, in that he has been set free from his former life and holds fast to the better one. He is not perfect in knowledge, but is reaching for what is perfect. So he adds, “Let us then, as many as are perfect, think this way.” By perfection he clearly means renouncing sins and being born again into faith in the One who alone is perfect, having forgotten the sins left behind.

1.7a  Who the Instructor Is, and His Instruction. We have shown that Scripture calls all of us children. More than that, we who have followed Christ are called babes in a figure of speech. And the Father of all is the only one who is perfect, for the Son is in him and the Father is in the Son. So now, keeping to our order, it is time to say who our Instructor is. He is called Jesus. Sometimes he calls himself a shepherd and says, “I am the good shepherd.” The image is drawn from shepherds who lead their sheep. By it we are to understand the Instructor, who leads the children, the shepherd who cares for the babes. For babes are simple, and so they are pictured as sheep. “And they shall all become one flock and one shepherd,” he says. So the Word, who leads us children to salvation, is rightly called the Instructor.

1.7b  The Word has spoken very plainly about himself through Hosea: “I am your instructor.” Now godliness is instruction. It is learning how to serve God, training toward the knowledge of the truth, and right guidance that leads up to heaven. The word “instruction” is used in several ways. There is the instruction of the one who is led and learns. There is that of the one who leads and teaches. Third, there is the guidance itself. Fourth, there are the things taught, such as the commandments. The instruction that comes from God is a straightening of the way by truth, toward the vision of God. It is also a pattern of holy deeds, set in lasting perseverance. A general directs his battle line out of concern for the safety of his hired soldiers, and a helmsman steers his ship because he wants to save those sailing with him. In the same way the Instructor leads the children toward a saving way of life, out of care for us. In general, whatever we reasonably ask God to do for us will be ours if we obey the Instructor.

1.7c  A helmsman does not always give way to the winds. Sometimes he turns his bow into them and stands against the full force of the gales. In the same way the Instructor never gives way to the winds that blow in this world. He does not let the child, like a ship, be driven onto a bestial and licentious way of life. Instead he is carried along by the favoring wind of the Spirit of truth alone, and he holds the child’s rudder very firmly. By the rudder I mean the ears. He holds on until he brings the child safely into harbor in the heavens. What men call ancestral custom passes away almost at once, but divine guidance is a possession that stays forever. They say that Phoenix was the instructor of Achilles, Adrastus of the sons of Croesus, Leonidas of Alexander, and Nausithous of Philip.

1.7d  But Phoenix was mad after women, and Adrastus was an exile. Leonidas did not remove the conceit of the Macedonian, and Nausithous did not cure the drunkenness of the man from Pella. The Thracian Zopyrus could not restrain the fornication of Alcibiades, but Zopyrus was a slave bought for money. And Sicinnus, the instructor of the sons of Themistocles, was a careless household slave. They say he invented the dance, and the dancing called “sicinnizing,” after his name. We are not unaware of the so-called royal instructors among the Persians. The kings of the Persians choose four of them for their excellence out of all the Persians and set them over their own sons. But the boys learn only to shoot the bow. When they come of age they sleep with sisters, mothers, wives and countless concubines, like boars trained for mating.

1.7e  But our Instructor is the holy God Jesus, the Word who is the guide of all humanity. The God who loves humanity is himself our Instructor. Somewhere in the Song the Holy Spirit says of him: “He provided for the people in the wilderness, in thirst and burning heat, in a waterless land. He surrounded him, instructed him, and guarded him like the apple of his eye. Like an eagle he covered his nest and yearned over his young. He spread out his wings, received them, and took them up on his back. The Lord alone led them, and there was no foreign god with them.” I think Scripture clearly shows us the Instructor here, as it tells of his guidance. Again, when he speaks in his own person, he confesses himself to be the Instructor: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” Who, then, has the authority to lead in and out?

1.7f  Is it not the Instructor? This is the one who “appeared to Abraham and said to him: I am your God; be pleasing before me.” In the manner of a true instructor he shapes Abraham into a faithful child, saying, “And be blameless, and I will set my covenant between me and you and your seed.” Here is a fellowship of friendship, with the Instructor presiding over it. He shows himself most plainly as Jacob’s 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 spoke to you.” He is also said to have wrestled with Jacob. “And Jacob was left alone,” it says, “and a man wrestled with him”—the Instructor—“until morning.” This was the man who led him and carried him, who trained with him and anointed the athlete Jacob for the contest against the evil one.

1.7g  That the Word was both Jacob’s trainer and the Instructor of humanity is shown here: “He asked him,” it says, “and said to him, Tell me your name. And he said, Why do you ask my name?” For he was keeping the new name for the new people, the infant people. God the Lord was still unnamed, since he had not yet become man. Even so, “Jacob called the name of that place the Face of God. For I have seen God face to face,” he says, “and my soul was saved.” The face of God is the Word, by whom God is lit up and made known. Then too he was given the name Israel, when he saw God the Lord. This is God, the Word, the Instructor, who later said to him again, “Do not be afraid to go down into Egypt.”

1.7h  See how the Instructor follows the righteous man, and how he anoints the athlete, teaching him to trip up his opponent. This same Instructor also teaches Moses to be an instructor. 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 I told you of.” Here he is the teacher of instruction. For in truth the Lord was the Instructor of the old people through Moses, but of the new people through himself, face to face. For he says to Moses, “Behold, my angel goes before you.” By this he sets over them the Word’s power as messenger and leader, while still guarding the Lord’s own dignity: “But on the day when I visit them,” he says, “I will bring their sin upon them.” That is, on the day when I sit as judge, I will pay them back what their sins deserve. For the same one is Instructor and judge, and he judges those who disobey him. Yet the Word, who loves humanity, does not stay silent about their sin. He reproves them so that they may repent, for “the Lord wants the repentance of the sinner rather than his death.” And let us, like infants who have only heard about the sins of others, hold back from the same offenses out of fear of the threat, so that we will not suffer the same things.

1.7i  What, then, was the sin they committed? “For 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 does? Before this, the older people had an older covenant. The law trained the people with fear, and the Word was an angel. But to the new and young people a new covenant has been given. The Word has become flesh, fear has been turned into love, and that mystical angel, Jesus, is born. For this same Instructor said to them then, “You shall fear the Lord your God,” but to us he has urged, “You shall love the Lord your God.” This is why he also commands us, “Stop your works,” that is, 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.

1.7j  So the newness of the Word is nothing to be ashamed of. The Lord also says in Jeremiah: “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 set you apart.” This prophecy can hint at us. God knew us for faith before the foundation of the world, yet we are babes now, because his will has only recently been fulfilled, and in that sense we have only just been born to our calling and salvation. That is why he goes on: “I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.” He is saying that Jeremiah must prophesy, and that the name “younger” should not seem a reproach to those who are called babes. The law is an older grace, given by the Word through Moses. That is why Scripture says, “The law was given through Moses.” It does not say by Moses, but by the Word, through Moses his servant. For this reason the law was only for a time. “But eternal grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Notice the wording of Scripture. Of the law it says only “was given.”

1.7k  But “truth” is the grace of the Father and the eternal work of the Word. It is no longer said to be given, but to “come to be through Jesus,” “without whom not one thing came to be.” So Moses, prophetically yielding to the Word as the perfect Instructor, foretells both his name and his work as Instructor, and puts the Instructor before the people, entrusting to them commands of obedience. “God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers,” he says. He means Jesus the son of Nun, but hints at Jesus the Son of God. For the name Jesus, announced in advance in the law, was a sketch in shadow of the Lord. He then adds, counseling what is good for the people: “You shall listen to him,” and, “The man who will not listen to this prophet,” he threatens.

1.7l  Such is the name that the prophecy foretells for our saving Instructor. That is why prophecy gives him a rod: a rod that trains, rules and holds authority. Those whom the obedient word does not heal, threatening will heal. Those whom threatening does not heal, the rod will heal. Those whom the rod does not heal, the fire will consume. “A rod will come out of the root of Jesse,” it says. See the care, the wisdom and the power of the Instructor: “He will not judge by reputation, nor reprove by talk, but he will judge the humble with justice and reprove the sinners of the earth.” And through David: “The Lord has trained me by discipline, and has not handed me over to death.” To be disciplined and instructed by the Lord is deliverance from death. The same prophet says: “You will shepherd them with an iron rod.” The apostle was moved by this when he wrote to the Corinthians: “What do you want? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness?” Through another prophet he says, “The Lord will send out the rod of power from Zion.” And of this instructor’s rod, someone else said, “Your rod and your staff comforted me.” This is the power of the Instructor: dignified, comforting and saving.

1.8a  Against Those Who Think that What Is Just Is Not Good. At this point some people spring up and say that the Lord is not good, because of the rod, the threatening and the fear. They have evidently misheard Scripture, which says somewhere, “He who fears the Lord turns back to his heart.” They have also forgotten the greatest proof of his love for humanity: that he became man for our sake. The prophet prays in words that fit him all the more: “Remember us, for we are dust.” That is, “Have sympathy with us, because you have felt the weakness of the flesh from your own experience.” In this way the Lord our Instructor is altogether excellent and beyond reproach, for in the abundance of his love he has sympathy with the nature of every human being. “For there was nothing that the Lord hates.” Surely he does not hate something and yet want what he hates to exist. Nor does he want something not to exist and yet cause the existence of what he wants not to exist. Nor, again, does he not want something to exist, and yet it exists.

1.8b  If, then, the Word hates anything, he wishes it not to exist. But there is nothing for whose existence God does not supply the cause. So nothing is hated by God, and nothing is hated by the Word either, for the two are one, God. John says, “In the beginning the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” If he hates nothing that he has made, it remains that he loves it. Much more than the rest, and with good reason, he will love man, the most beautiful of all the things he has made, a living creature who loves God. So God loves mankind, and therefore the Word loves mankind. Now whoever loves something wants to benefit it. What benefits is certainly better than what does not benefit, and nothing at all is better than the good. So the good benefits. God is acknowledged to be good, so God benefits.

1.8c  The good, insofar as it is good, does nothing other than benefit. So God benefits all things. Surely he does not benefit man without also caring for him, nor care for him without also looking after him. For what benefits by deliberate choice is better than what does not benefit by deliberate choice, and nothing is better than God. To benefit by deliberate choice is nothing other than to look after. So God cares for man and looks after him. He shows this in action by instructing him through the Word, who is the genuine fellow-worker with God in his love for mankind. Now “good” is not said of righteousness because it possesses virtue. Righteousness is itself virtue. It is called good because it is good in itself and for its own sake.

1.8d  The expedient is also called good in another sense, not because it gives pleasure but because it benefits. Righteousness is all of these. It is good as a virtue, as something to be chosen for its own sake, and as something that does not aim to please. It does not judge in order to win favor, but gives to each what he deserves. And what is beneficial goes with what is expedient. So righteousness is marked out by every aspect in which the good is examined, since the two share equally in the same qualities. Things marked by equal qualities are equal and alike. So righteousness is good. “How then,” they say, “if the Lord loves mankind and is good, does he get angry and punish?” We must deal with this too, as briefly as we can. This way of handling the question is useful for the right upbringing of children and serves as a needed aid.

1.8e  Many of the passions are healed by punishment, by the imposing of stricter commands, and also by teaching certain doctrines. Rebuke is like surgery on the passions of the soul. The passions are a kind of festering growth that breaks away from the truth, and they must be exposed by cutting them open. Reproach is like medicine. It dissolves the hardened callouses of the passions, cleanses the filth of the life, meaning its lusts, and smooths down the swellings of pride, restoring a person to health and truth. Admonition is like the diet of a sick soul. It advises what to take and forbids what not to take. All of this aims at salvation and everlasting health. A general also does this. He lays fines on wrongdoers and inflicts beatings that reach the body itself, with chains and the worst disgrace, and sometimes even punishes some with death. Yet his aim is good, for he is training the soldiers under his command.

1.8f  In the same way our great General, the Word, the Commander of all things, warns those who rebel against his law. He aims to free them from slavery, error, and captivity to the Adversary, and to restrain the passions of the soul. In this way he leads them peaceably into the holy harmony of the common life of his city. Alongside the counseling kind of speech there is the exhorting and encouraging form. In the same way, alongside the praising kind there is the abusive and reproachful form. This form is an art of blame, and blame is a sign of goodwill, not of hatred. Both a friend and a non-friend reproach, but the enemy does it to mock, while the friend does it out of goodwill. So the Lord does not revile people out of hatred. He could have destroyed them for their own faults, yet he even suffered for us. For like a good instructor, he skillfully slips into blame by way of rebuke. He uses abuse like a whip to rouse the dullness of the mind, and then in turn he tries to exhort the same people.

1.8g  Those whom praise did not move to action, blame stirs up. Those whom blame did not call out to salvation, because they were like dead men, harsh words raise up to the truth. For “whips and discipline are wisdom at every time. He who glues a potsherd together is teaching a fool.” That is, he says, it is like bringing the earth to feeling, and sharpening a hopeless person to understanding. That is why he plainly added, “rousing a sleeper from deep sleep,” since sleep, more than anything else, resembles death. The Lord himself shows this very clearly about himself. He speaks in an allegory of his many-sided and richly beneficial care. He said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the farmer.” Then he added, “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit he cleans, so that it may bear more fruit.” A vine that is not pruned runs wild into wood, and so does a human being. The Word, like a knife, cuts away its unruly offshoots. He forces our appetites to bear fruit instead of lusting.

1.8h  The rebuke given to sinners aims at their salvation. The Word adjusts himself, as a musician would, to each person’s own character, sometimes tightening and sometimes loosening. Moses says this very plainly: “Take courage. God has come to test you, so that the fear of him may be in you, so that you do not sin.” Plato learned from this source and says well: “All who pay the penalty truly suffer good things. They are benefited, because their souls become better when they are justly punished.” If those who are set right by the just one suffer good, even according to Plato, then it is agreed that the just one is good. Fear itself is beneficial and was devised for people’s good, because “a spirit that fears the Lord will live, for its hope is in the one who saves it.” This same Word, who imposes the penalty, is the judge. Isaiah also speaks of him: “The Lord handed him over to our sins.” He means, plainly, as one who corrects and directs us away from our sins.

1.8i  For this reason he alone is able to forgive our offenses. The Father of all appointed him as our Instructor, and he alone can tell disobedience from obedience. When someone threatens, it is clear that he does not want to do any harm or carry out what he threatens. By setting fear in place, he stopped the rush toward sin, and he shows his love for people. He still holds back and makes clear what they will suffer if they remain sinners. He does not, like a snake, fasten on and bite immediately. So God is good. The Lord often uses words before the deed. He says, “For my arrows will finish them off. They will waste away with hunger and be devoured by birds, and with an incurable spasm of the back. I will send the teeth of wild beasts against them, together with the fury of things that crawl on the ground.”

1.8j  “Outside, the sword will leave them childless, and inside the storerooms, there will be fear.” So the divine nature is not angry, as some have supposed. Most of what God says is threat, but in everything he has been advising humanity and showing what must be done. This is a good art: to frighten us so that we do not sin. “For the fear of the Lord drives away sins, but the one who has no fear will not be able to be justified,” says the Scripture. God does not bring punishment out of anger. He looks to what is just, since it is not good for us that justice be set aside. Each of us chooses his own penalties by sinning willingly: “The blame belongs to the one who chooses; God is blameless.” “But if our unrighteousness establishes the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous to bring his wrath upon us? By no means.” So he says in his threat: “I will sharpen my sword, and my hand will take hold of judgment. I myself will repay vengeance to my enemies, and I will repay those who hate me. I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword will eat flesh from the blood of the wounded.” It is plain here that those who are not enemies of the truth and do not hate the Word would never hate their own salvation, and so they would escape the penalties of that enmity.

1.8k  “The crown of wisdom,” as Wisdom says, “is the fear of the Lord.” Very plainly, then, the Word has made known his own way of managing things through the prophet Amos, saying, “I overthrew you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you became like a brand snatched out of the fire, and even so you did not turn back to me, says the Lord.” See how God, out of his love of what is good, seeks repentance. By the very method of his threat he quietly shows his love for humanity. “I will turn my face away from them,” he says, “and I will show what will happen to them.” Where the face of the Lord looks, there is peace and rejoicing; where it is turned away, evil creeps in. So he does not wish to look upon evil things, for he is good. But when he willingly looks away, because of human unbelief, evil comes into being.

1.8l  “See then,” says Paul, “the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who fell, but kindness toward you, if you remain in that kindness,” that is, in faith in Christ. Hatred of evil follows upon the good, since he is good by nature. So I would agree that he punishes the unbelieving, for punishment is for the good and benefit of the one punished: it is the correction of one who resists. But I would not agree that he wants to take vengeance. Vengeance is the repayment of evil given for the benefit of the one who takes revenge. And he who teaches us to pray for those who abuse us would not desire to take vengeance. Everyone, even against their will, admits that God is good. That the same God is also just, I need no more words to show, once I set beside it the voice of the Lord in the Gospel. He speaks of God as one: “that they may all be one, just 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.”

1.8m  “And the glory which you gave 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 perfected into one.” God is one, and beyond the one, and above the very Monad. This is why the word “you,” which points directly at someone, shows the one who truly alone is, who was and is and will be, and for these three times there is one name: “the One who is.” That this same God, who alone is, is also just, the Lord will testify in the same Gospel, saying, “Father, I want those whom you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they may see my glory, which you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”

1.8n  “Righteous Father, the world did not know you, but I knew you, and these knew that you sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known.” This is the one “who repays the sins of fathers upon children for those who hate him, and shows mercy to those who love him.” He is the one who sets some on the right and others on the left. Insofar as he is thought of as Father, he is good, and he is called only what he is: good. Insofar as he is Son, his Word who is in the Father, he is called righteous. This comes from the loving relation of the two to each other, a name of power measured out by equality. Scripture says, “He will judge a man according to his works.” God has shown us Jesus as the face of a good balance, and through him we have come to know God, as from a scale whose two pans are equally weighted.

1.8o  Of this same God Wisdom also speaks plainly: “For mercy and wrath are with him.” He alone is Lord of both: “mighty in propitiations, pouring out wrath. As great as his mercy, so great is his reproof.” The aim of both mercy and reproof is the salvation of those who are reproved. Now the Word himself will again declare that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus is good: “for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.” He also says, “Be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate.” And he says plainly, “No one is good except my Father in the heavens.” On top of this he says again, “My Father makes his sun shine on all.” Notice here that he acknowledges his own Father to be both good and Creator. No one disputes that the Creator is just.

1.8p  And again he says, “My Father sends rain on the just and the unjust.” Insofar as he sends rain, he is the Creator of water and clouds. Insofar as he sends it on all, he holds the balance evenly and justly. Insofar as he is good, he does it for the just and the unjust alike. So we reason very plainly that God is one and the same, in this way. The Holy Spirit sang, “I will see the heavens, the works of your fingers,” and “The one who made the heavens dwells in the heavens,” and “Heaven is your throne.” The Lord says in his prayer, “Our Father in the heavens.” The heavens belong to the one who made the world. So it cannot be denied that the Lord is also the Son of the Creator. Everyone agrees that the Creator is just, and the Lord is the Son of the Creator. Therefore the Lord is the Son of the Just One.

1.8q  This is why Paul says, “But now the righteousness of God has been revealed apart from law.” Again he says (so that you may understand it all the more as said of God), “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there is no distinction.” Then, bearing witness to the truth, he adds a little later, “in the forbearance of God, to show that he is righteous and that he justifies the one who is of faith in Jesus.” He also knows that what is righteous is good, for he says somewhere, “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” He places both names under the same power. And Scripture also says, “No one is good except his Father.” So it is the same Father of his, who is one, who is made known by many powers. This is what was meant by “No one knew the Father”: he was everything before the Son came. So it is truly plain that the God of all is one alone: good, righteous, Creator, and Son in the Father. To him be glory for ever. Amen.

1.8r  It is not foreign to the saving Word to rebuke out of loving care. This too is a medicine of God’s love for humanity. It brings out the blush of modesty and slips in a shame at sinning. If censure is needed, then rebuke is needed too, when the time has come to wound a soul that has grown numb. The wound is not deadly but saving, for by a little pain the soul gains escape from eternal death. There is great wisdom in his training, and the manner of his dealing is varied, all aimed at our salvation. The Instructor bears witness to the good. He calls those who are called to better things. He turns back from their course those who are hurrying to do wrong, and he urges them to change to a better life. Neither side is left without witness, since the one is witnessed to alongside the other, and the grace that comes from such witness is very great. Even the passion of anger, if his admonition should be called anger, shows love for humanity. For God comes down to feelings for the sake of man, and for man’s sake the Word of God became man.

1.9a  That it belongs to the same power both to do good and to punish justly, and what the manner of the Word’s training is. With all his strength, then, the Instructor of humanity, our divine Word, makes use of every device of wisdom and sets himself to save the little children. He admonishes, scolds, rebukes, reproves, threatens, heals, promises, and gives gifts. As with “many reins,” so to speak, he “binds” the irrational impulses of humanity. To put it briefly, the Lord is toward us as we are toward our own children. “Do you have children? Train them,” Wisdom advises, “and bend them from their youth. Do you have daughters? Take care for their bodies, and do not show them a cheerful face.” Yet we love our children, sons and daughters, very much, above anything whatever.

1.9b  People who speak to us only to please us have little love for us, since they do not grieve us. But those who speak sharply for our benefit may cause pain at the moment, yet they do us good for the age to come. So the Lord looked not to pleasure of the moment but to the delight that is coming. Let us now go through the manner of his loving training, with the witness of the prophets. Admonition, then, is loving censure that produces understanding. 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 were not willing!” Scripture likewise admonishes when it says, “And they committed adultery with wood and stone, and burned incense to Baal.” It is the greatest proof of his love for humanity that, though he knew clearly the shamelessness of the people who had kicked against him and bolted away, he still calls them to repentance. He says through Ezekiel, “Son of man, you live in the midst of scorpions; nevertheless, speak to them, in case they will listen.” And to Moses he says, “Go and tell Pharaoh to send the people away, but I know that he will not send them away.”

1.9c  For in this he shows both things: his divine foreknowledge of what would happen, and his love for humanity, in giving the soul’s free will occasions for repentance. He also admonishes through Isaiah, out of care for the people, when he says, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” This is reproving censure. Then: “They worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” Here his loving care, having made the sin plain, shows salvation alongside it. Rebuke is censure for shameful things that draws people close to what is good. He shows this through Jeremiah: “They became horses mad for females; each one neighed after his neighbor’s wife. Shall I not visit them for these things? says the Lord. Or on such a people shall my soul not take vengeance?” Everywhere he weaves fear in, because “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of perception.”

1.9d  And again, through Hosea, he says, “I will not visit them, because they themselves were mixed up with prostitutes and sacrificed with those who were initiated into the mysteries, and the people who understood were entangled with a prostitute.” He makes their sin plainer by declaring that they understood, so that they sinned willingly. Understanding is the eye of the soul. This is why Israel, “the one who sees God,” means the one who understands God. Complaint is blame directed at people who are thought to be despising or neglecting someone. The Instructor uses this method of training through Isaiah, saying: “Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken: I have begotten sons and raised them high, but they have rejected me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey the manger of its lord, but Israel has not known me.” How terrible it is if the one who knows God will not know the Lord! The ox and the donkey, dull and foolish animals, will know the one who feeds them, but Israel will be found even less reasonable than these.

1.9e  Through Jeremiah, after complaining against the people on many counts, he adds: “And they have forsaken me, says the Lord.” Rebuke is a stinging reproof, or blame that strikes hard. The Instructor uses this remedy too, through Isaiah, saying: “Woe to you, rebellious children. Thus says the Lord: you made a plan, but not through me, and agreements, but not through my Spirit.” In each case he applies fear like a very sharp astringent. It opens their mouths and, at the same moment, turns the people through it toward salvation. In the same way, wool that is to be dyed is usually treated first with a mordant, to prepare it to take the dye firmly. Reproof is bringing a sin out into the open. He uses this method most of all, as necessary because the faith of many is slack. For he says through Isaiah, “You have forsaken the Lord and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger.” And he says through Jeremiah: “The heaven was astonished at this, and the earth shuddered all the more. For this people has done two evil things: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and they have dug broken cisterns for themselves that cannot hold water.” And again through the same prophet: “Jerusalem has sinned a sin; therefore she has become an object of tossing and shaking. All who glorified her have dishonored her, because they have seen her shame.” He softens the severity of the reproof and the rebuke through Solomon, hinting by what he leaves unsaid at the fatherly love in his training: “My son, do not despise the discipline of the Lord, and do not lose heart when you are reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and scourges every son whom he receives.” For “a sinful man turns away from reproof.”

1.9f  Accordingly, Scripture says, “Let the righteous man reprove me and discipline me, but let the oil of the sinner not anoint my head.” Calling to one’s senses is blame that puts sense into a person. He does not hold back from this method of training either, but says through Jeremiah: “How long shall I cry out and they will not listen? Look, their ears are uncircumcised.” What blessed patience! And again through the same prophet: “All the nations are uncircumcised, but this people is uncircumcised in heart.” And, “The people are disobedient, sons,” he says, “who have no faith.” Visitation is a sharp rebuke. He uses this kind in the Gospel: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you.” The doubling of the name makes the rebuke strong. For how can one who knows God persecute God’s servants?

1.9g  This 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 kindness, you will come to know his power. Abuse is intensified blame. He uses abuse as a kind of medicine, through Isaiah, saying, “Woe to a sinful nation, lawless sons, a people full of sins, an evil seed.” In the Gospel, through John, he says, “Serpents, brood of vipers.” Accusation is blame of those who do wrong. He uses this training method through David, saying: “A people whom I did not know served me, and at the hearing of the ear obeyed me. Foreign sons lied to me and limped away from their paths.” And through Jeremiah: “And I gave her a certificate of divorce, and treacherous Judah was not afraid.” And again: “The house of Israel acted faithlessly against me, and the house of Judah lied to the Lord.” Complaining of one’s lot is hidden blame. It too arranges salvation by skillful help, under a covering.

1.9h  He uses this kind of speech through Jeremiah: “How does the city sit alone, she who was full of people? She has become like a widow. She who ruled over the regions has become subject to tribute. Weeping, she has wept in the night.” Mockery is censure that holds a person up to ridicule. The divine Instructor used this remedy too, through Jeremiah, saying: “You have the face of a prostitute; you have become shameless toward everyone. Did you not call me your house, your father, and the guide of your virginity?” And again: “a beautiful and charming prostitute, mistress of drugs.” With great skill he insults the virgin with the name of prostitution, and then, by shaming her, calls her back to modesty. Indignation is lawful rebuke, or rebuke of those who are exalted in their ways beyond what is fitting. In this way he trained them through Moses, speaking of “blameworthy children, a crooked and perverse generation: is this how you repay the Lord?

1.9i  “This is a foolish people, not a wise one. Is not he himself your father, who acquired you?” He says also through Isaiah: “Your rulers are disobedient, partners of thieves, lovers of bribes, chasers after payment; they do not give justice to orphans.” In general, then, his skilful handling of people through fear is a fountain of salvation, and saving is the work of a good being: “The mercy of the Lord is upon all flesh, as he reproves, disciplines and teaches, like a shepherd with his flock. He has mercy on those who accept discipline and on those who earnestly seek to cling to him.” By this same training, “he kept safe the six hundred thousand foot soldiers who had been gathered together in their hardness of heart, by scourging and pitying, striking and healing, in compassion and discipline.” “For as great as his mercy is, so great is his reproof.” It is good not to sin, but it is also good for the sinner to repent. In the same way, the best thing is to be always healthy, but it is also good to recover from illness.

1.9j  For this reason Solomon too gives the command: “Strike your son with the rod, and rescue his soul from death.” And again: “Do not hold back from disciplining a child. Correct him with the rod, for he will not die.” Reproof and rebuke, as the very word hints, are blows to the soul. They bring sins to their senses, keep death away, and lead to self-control those who are being swept along into licentiousness. In the same way Plato knew that reproof is the greatest power for setting people right and the most authoritative purification. Following this line of argument, he holds that the man who is most deeply impure is uneducated and ugly because he has never been reproved, whereas the man who is truly to be happy ought to be as pure and as beautiful as possible. For if “rulers are no terror to good work,” how could God, who is good by nature, be a terror to the one who does not sin?

1.9k  “But if you do evil, be afraid,” as the apostle says. That is why the apostle himself, after the Lord’s likeness, tightened the reins on the churches on every occasion. Aware 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?” Those who are healthy do not need a doctor, because they are strong, but the sick need his skill. In the same way we, who are sick in our way of life, with shameful desires, blameworthy lack of self-control and the other inflammations of the passions, need the Saviour. He applies not only soothing medicines but also astringent ones. The bitter roots of fear halt the spread of sins, which feed like a creeping sore. So fear is saving, even if it is bitter.

1.9l  It is right, then, that we who are sick need a saviour; that we who have gone astray need someone to guide us; that the blind need someone to lead them to the light; and that the thirsty need the fountain of life, from which those who drink will never thirst again. The dead need life, the sheep need the shepherd, and children need the instructor. Indeed all humanity needs Jesus, so that we do not fall into final condemnation as undisciplined sinners, but are sifted out from the chaff and heaped up in the Father’s storehouse. For the winnowing fork is in the Lord’s hand, and with it the chaff, which is due to the fire, is separated from the wheat. And if you wish, we may learn the highest wisdom of the all-holy Shepherd and Instructor, the almighty Word of the Father, in the place where he speaks in figure and calls himself the shepherd of the sheep. He is also the instructor of little children.

1.9m  He says, then, through Ezekiel, addressing the elders and setting before them a saving pattern of wise care: “I will bind up the lame, and heal the one who is troubled, and bring back the one who has wandered, and I myself will feed them on my holy mountain.” These are the promises of a good shepherd. Feed us, who are children, like sheep. Yes, Master, fill us with your pasture, which is righteousness. Yes, Instructor, shepherd us to your holy mountain, to the Church, which is lifted high, which is above the clouds, which touches the heavens. “And I will be their shepherd,” he says, “and I will be near them,” as close as a tunic to their skin. He wants to save my flesh, clothing it in the tunic of incorruption, and he has anointed my skin. “They will call me,” he says, “and I will say, ‘Here I am.’” You answered sooner than I expected, Master. “And if they pass over, they will not slip, says the Lord.” For we who are passing over into incorruption will not fall into corruption, because he himself will hold on to us. For he himself has spoken, and he himself has willed it.

1.9n  Such is our Instructor, and he is rightly called good. “I did not come,” he says, “to be served, but to serve.” For this reason he is shown in the Gospel as weary, because he toils for us, and he promises “to give his life as a ransom in place of many.” For this is the only one he acknowledges to be a good shepherd. He is generous, then, who gives the greatest gift for us, his own life. He is greatly beneficial and loving toward humanity, because, though he could have been Lord, he chose to be a brother of human beings. He is so good that he even died on our behalf. His righteousness also cries out: “If you come to me straight, I also will be straight toward you; if you walk crookedly, I also will be crooked, says the Lord of hosts.” By the crooked ways he hints at the rebukes given to sinners. For the straight way, the natural one, which the iota of “Jesus” hints at, is his goodness, which is unmoved and unwavering toward those who have believed through obedience.

1.9o  “Since I called and you did not obey, says the Lord, but made my counsels void and paid no attention to my reproofs.” In this way the Lord’s reproof is most beneficial. Concerning these people he also says through David: “A crooked and embittering generation, a generation that did not set its heart straight, and whose spirit was not faithful toward God. They did not keep God’s covenant, and they were unwilling to walk in his law.” These are the causes of the embitterment, and for them the Judge comes to bring judgment on those who were unwilling to choose a good life. For this reason he dealt with them more harshly from that point on, to see whether he could hold them back from their rush toward death. Through David he gives the very clear reason for his threat: “They did not believe in his wonders. When he killed them, they sought him, and turned back, and rose early to seek God, and remembered that God is their helper and God the Most High is their redeemer.” In this way he knows that they turn back through fear, but have despised his kindness.

1.9p  For goodness that is always gentle is generally neglected, but it is respected when it reminds us through the humane fear that comes from righteousness. The kind of fear is twofold. One kind comes with reverence, which citizens show toward good rulers, and we toward God, as well-behaved children do toward their fathers: “For an untamed horse,” it says, “turns out stubborn, and a son left unrestrained turns out reckless.” The other kind of fear comes with hatred, which slaves feel toward harsh masters, and which the Hebrews felt when they made God their master instead of their father. In matters of godliness, I think, what is willing and chosen differs greatly, indeed completely, from what is forced. “For he himself is compassionate,” it says, “he will heal their sins and not destroy them; and he will multiply his turning away of his anger, and will not kindle all his wrath.” See how the Instructor’s justice is shown in his corrections, and God’s goodness in his acts of compassion.

1.9q  For this reason David, that is, the Spirit speaking through him, takes in both together and sings of the one God: “Righteousness and judgment are the preparation of your throne; mercy and truth will go before your face.” He acknowledges that it belongs to the same power both to judge and to do good. For authority over both belongs together, and the judgment of the just one distinguishes between opposites. The same God is just and good. He is truly God, who is himself all things, and all things are the same to him, because he is God, the only God. A mirror is not bad to an ugly person because it shows him what he looks like. A physician is not bad to a sick person because he reports the fever. The physician is not the cause of the fever; he only exposes it. In the same way, the one who reproves is not ill-disposed toward the person who is sick in soul. He does not put the faults into him. He shows the sins that are already there, so that the person may turn away from similar practices.

1.9r  So God is good for his own sake, and just for our sake, and he is just because he is good. His justice is shown to us through his own Word, from above, from the place where he became Father. For before he became Creator he was God, and he was good. For that reason he also wished to be Creator and Father. The disposition of that love became the beginning of justice. It is the reason he makes his own sun shine and sends down his own Son. And this Son was the first to announce the good righteousness that comes from heaven, when he said, “No one knew the Son except the Father,” and “no one knew the Father except the Son.” This knowledge, balanced equally on both sides, is the sign of an ancient, impartial justice. Then justice came down to human beings, in letter and in body, that is, in the Word and in the law. It pressed humanity toward saving repentance, for it was good. But you do not obey God? Then blame yourself, for you are drawing the judge down on you.

1.10a  That the same God, by the same Word, both restrains from sins by threatening and saves humanity by exhorting. We have shown that the plan of dealing sharply with humanity is good and saving. We have shown that the Word necessarily adopts it, and that it is well suited to bring repentance and to prevent sins. Next we should look at the gentleness of the Word. For he has been shown to be just, and he sets before us his own counsels, which call us to salvation. Through them, by his Father’s will, he wants to make known to us what is noble and what is beneficial. Consider this: the noble belongs to the style of praise, and the beneficial to the style of advice. Exhortation and dissuasion belong to the style of advice. Commendation and censure belong to the style of praise.

1.10b  For advice becomes exhortation in one state of mind and dissuasion in another. In the same way the style of praise becomes censure in one state and commendation in another. The just Instructor, who aims at what is good for us, is chiefly occupied with these. We have already been shown the censuring and dissuading kind. Now we must deal with the exhorting and commending kind, and, as on a balance, set the equal pans of the just one against each other. The Instructor uses exhortation toward what is beneficial through Solomon, somewhat as follows: “I call on you, people, and I send out my voice to the sons of men. Listen to me, for I will speak solemn things,” and so on. He advises what saves, because advice is suited to choosing and avoiding. He does this through David when he says, “Blessed is the man who did not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, and did not stand in the way of sinners, and did not sit in the seat of the pestilent, but his desire is in the law of the Lord.” There are three parts to advice. One takes its examples from past times: for instance, what the Hebrews suffered when they worshipped an idol in the golden calf, and what they suffered when they committed fornication, and the like. The second is observed in the present time, grasped by the senses, as in what was said to those who asked the Lord, “Are you the Christ, or are we to wait for another?” He said, “Go away.

1.10c  “...and tell John: the blind see again, the deaf hear, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, and blessed is the one who is not offended in me.” This is what David meant when he prophesied, “As we have heard, so also we have seen.” The third part of counsel is made up of things to come. By it the Instructor commands us to guard against what will result. So it was said: “Those who fall into sins will be thrown into the outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” and similar words. From these it is plain that the Lord goes through every kind of treatment to call humanity to salvation. By consolation he comforts us in our 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 listen to you as to a holy people.” And again he says, “Come to me, all who labor and are weighed down, and I will give you rest,” and the words that follow, which the Lord speaks in his own person.

1.10d  Most plainly he calls us 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 it, and it likes to be seen by the one who has found it. Through Jeremiah also he explains understanding. He says, “We are blessed, Israel, because what pleases God is known to us.” It is known through the Word, through whom we are blessed and wise. For through the same prophet knowledge is shown to be understanding, when he says, “Hear, Israel, the commandments of life; listen closely, so as to know understanding.” Through Moses, too, because of his love for humanity, he promises in advance a gift to those who hurry toward salvation. For he says, “I will bring you into the good land which the Lord swore to your fathers.” And in addition, through Isaiah he says, “I will bring you into the holy mountain and make you glad.”

1.10e  There is another form of his instruction as well: pronouncing blessing. Through David he says, “Blessed is the one who has not sinned, and he will be like the tree planted beside the streams of water, which will give its fruit in its season, and its leaf will not fall off” (by this he also hinted at the resurrection), “and everything he does will prosper.” He wants us to become such people, so that we may be blessed. Then, to show the opposite pan of the scale of justice, he says, “Not so the ungodly, not so; they are like the chaff which the wind blows off the face of the earth.” The Instructor shows the penalty of sinners, how easily they are scattered and how they are at the mercy of the wind. In this way he turns us away from the cause of sin by the threat of penalty. By holding up the punishment they deserve, he shows the goodness of his kindness. With great skill he leads us by this means to the use and possession of good things.

1.10f  He also urges us toward knowledge. Through Jeremiah he says, “If you had walked in the way of God, you would have lived in peace forever.” By pointing here to the reward of knowledge, he calls the thoughtful to love it. And to the one who has strayed he grants forgiveness: “Turn back, turn back,” he says, “like a grape-gatherer to his basket.” Do you see the goodness of justice, which counsels repentance? Further, through Jeremiah he lights up the truth for those who wander: “Thus says the Lord: Stand at 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. This is why he says, “If you repent, the Lord will cleanse your heart and the heart of your offspring.” We could have called in the philosophers as advocates for this inquiry, who say that only the perfect person deserves praise, and the worthless person deserves blame.

1.10g  But some people misrepresent the blessed life. They say it takes no trouble over anything itself and brings none to anyone else, and so they fail to understand its love for humanity. For their sake, and for the sake of those who still do not join justice to goodness, I set this argument aside. For it would follow that we should say the rebuking and censuring side of instruction suits human beings, since the philosophers say that all men are bad. God alone is wise, since wisdom comes from him, and he alone is perfect, and therefore he alone is worthy of praise. But I do not use this argument. I say instead that praise, blame, or anything like praise or blame is, above all else, the most necessary medicine for people. Some are hard to cure. Like iron, they are driven into shape by fire, hammer and anvil, that is, by threat, exposure and rebuke. Others give their attention to faith itself. They are, as it were, self-taught and willing, and they grow by praise: “For virtue that is praised grows like a tree.”

1.10h  It seems to me that Pythagoras of Samos understood this when he gave the command: “When you have done shameful things, rebuke yourself; but delight in what is good.” Rebuking is also called admonishing. The word for admonition (nouthetesis) is explained as “putting sense into the mind” (nou enthematismos), so that the rebuking kind of instruction is what produces understanding. But countless other commands have been found for gaining good and avoiding evil: “There is no peace for the ungodly, says the Lord.” For this reason he commands the little children, through Solomon, to be on guard: “My son, do not let sinners lead you astray. Do not walk their roads with them. Do not go if they urge you, saying, ‘Come with us, share in the shedding of innocent blood, let us bury a righteous man in the earth for no reason, let us wipe him out like Hades, alive.’” This is also a prophecy about the Lord’s suffering. And through Ezekiel Life lays down commands: “The soul that sins shall die.

1.10i  But the man who is righteous, who does righteousness, will not eat on the mountains. He has not set his eyes on the idle fancies of the house of Israel. He will not defile his neighbor’s wife. He will not come near a woman while she is set apart for her uncleanness. He will not oppress anyone. He will return the pledge of a debtor. He will not seize plunder. He will give his bread to the hungry and clothe the naked. He will not lend his money at interest or take extra profit. He will keep his hand from injustice, and will make a just judgment between a man and his neighbor. He has walked in my commands and kept my ordinances to do them. This man is righteous. He will surely live, says the Lord.” These words contain an outline of the Christian way of life and a notable encouragement toward the blessed life, the prize of a good life: eternal life.

1.11a  That the Word instructed through the Law and the Prophets. We have shown, as well as we could, the manner of his love for humanity and of his instruction. So, explaining himself very beautifully, he compared himself to a “grain of mustard seed.” By this he hinted at several things: the spiritual nature of the word that is sown, its fruitful and many-sided character, and the greatness and easy growth of the power of the Word. He also hinted that the biting and cleansing effect of rebuke does good because of its sharpness. So through the little seed, which is an allegory, he freely gives to all humanity a very great thing, salvation. Honey, though very sweet, produces bile, just as kindness produces contempt, which is the cause of sinning. Mustard, on the other hand, reduces bile (that is, anger) and cuts through phlegm (that is, pride). From this Word comes true health of the soul and its lasting, well-balanced condition.

1.11b  Long ago, then, the Word trained us through Moses, and afterward through the prophets. Moses was himself a prophet. For the law is the training of unruly children. Scripture says, “Having been filled, they rose up to play.” The word it uses is “fodder,” not “food,” meaning a mindless stuffing of the belly. They had been filled without thought, and they played without thought. So the law followed them, and fear with it, to check their sins and urge them toward right conduct. It prepared them to listen to the true Instructor and to obey him. He is one and the same Word, fitting himself to what each moment requires. Paul says that the law was given as “a tutor to bring us to Christ.” From this it is plain that there is only one Instructor of ours who is true, good and just: the Son, Jesus, the Word of God, in the image and likeness of the Father. God has handed us over to him, as a loving father entrusts his children to a faithful tutor. God gave an explicit command: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” The divine Instructor deserves our trust, because he is adorned with three of the finest qualities: knowledge, goodwill and boldness of speech. He has knowledge, because he is the Father’s wisdom: “All wisdom is from the Lord and is with him forever.” He has boldness, because he is God and Creator: “All things were made through him, and without him not one thing was made.” He has goodwill, because he alone gave himself as a sacrifice for us: “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,” and he did lay it down. Goodwill is nothing other than wishing good for one’s neighbor for that neighbor’s own sake.

1.12a  The Instructor shows both sternness and kindness, in keeping with a father’s affection. With these points already covered, the next step is for our Instructor Jesus to sketch for us the true life and to train the person who is in Christ. His character is not excessively fearsome, nor is it wholly slack through kindness. He gives commands and at the same time shapes them so that we are able to carry them out. It seems to me that this same one formed man from the dust, gave him new birth by water, made him grow by the Spirit, and trained him by the Word. He guides us by holy commands toward adoption as sons and toward salvation. His purpose is to remake the earth-born man into a holy and heavenly man, raised up by ascent, and so to fulfil most completely that divine saying, “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” Christ has become the full realization of what God said, while the rest of humanity is understood to be made only “in the image.”

1.12b  But let us, children of a good Father and nurslings of a good Instructor, fulfil the Father’s will. Let us listen to the Word and take the impress of the truly saving life of our Savior. From now on let us practice the heavenly way of life, by which we are made divine. Let us anoint ourselves with the ever-fresh ointment of joy and the unspoiled ointment of sweet fragrance. We have the Lord’s way of life as a clear example of incorruption, and we follow in the footsteps of God. He alone is fit to consider, and does care, how and in what manner the life of human beings may become healthier. He also prepares us for a life of self-sufficiency and simplicity, and for being ready to travel lightly and unencumbered toward the endless blessedness of the good life. He teaches each of us to be our own storehouse. For he says, “Do not worry about tomorrow.” He means that the person enrolled in Christ’s service should be self-sufficient, his own servant, and should live a life that takes up each day as it comes.

1.12c  For we are trained in peace, not in war. War requires heavy preparation, and luxury demands lavish supply. But peace and love are plain, quiet sisters. They need no weapons and no wasteful provision. The Word is their food. He has been given the leadership that shows us the way and trains us. From him we learn simplicity, freedom from pride, and in sum everything that belongs to a love of freedom, a love of humanity and a love of what is good. In a word, through a kinship of virtue we become like God. So work hard and do not grow weary, for you will become what you do not hope for and could not even imagine. Philosophers have one kind of training, orators another, wrestlers another. In the same way there is a noble character, matching a choice to love what is good, that comes from the training of Christ. In those trained by it, the activities of life show a worthy dignity: how they walk, how they recline at table, their food, sleep, bed, daily regimen, and the rest of their training. For this training by the Word is not overstrained but properly tuned.

1.12d  For this reason the Word is also called Saviour. He has discovered for people these rational remedies, which bring sharp perception and salvation. He watches for the right moment, exposes the harm, explains the causes of the passions, and cuts out the roots of irrational desires. He commands what we must keep away from, and he brings every antidote of salvation to the sick. For this is God’s greatest and most kingly work: to save humanity. Sick people resent a doctor who gives them no advice for their health. How then could we fail to give the greatest thanks to the divine Instructor? He does not keep silent, and he does not overlook the acts of disobedience that lead to destruction. He exposes them, checks the impulses that stretch toward them, and teaches the fitting counsels for a right way of life.

1.12e  We must therefore confess the very greatest thanks to him. What else do we say the rational creature, I mean man, must do, if not contemplate the divine? I say he must also contemplate human nature, and live as the truth leads. He must greatly admire both the Instructor himself and his commands, because they are fitting and in harmony with each other. After this pattern we too must fit ourselves to the Instructor, make our words agree with our deeds, and truly live.

1.13a  Virtue Rational, Sin Irrational. Just as right conduct comes about according to right reason, so, in the opposite way, sin comes about against reason. Everything that goes against right reason is sin. For example, the philosophers see fit to define the most general passions in this way. Desire is an appetite that disobeys reason. Fear is an avoidance that disobeys reason. Pleasure is an elation of the soul that disobeys reason. Grief is a contraction of the soul that disobeys reason. Now if disobedience to reason produces sin, then obedience to reason, which we call faith, must surely bring about what is called duty. For virtue itself is a condition of the soul that is in harmony with reason throughout the whole of life. Above all, they define philosophy itself as the pursuit of right reason. So everything done wrongly must come about through a failure of reason, and it is rightly called a “sin.”

1.13b  So when the first man sinned and disobeyed God, Scripture says, “man was likened to the beasts.” He had sinned against reason, and so he was counted irrational and compared to beasts. This is why Wisdom also says, “The pleasure-lover and the adulterer is a horse for mating.” He is compared to a senseless animal, and so it adds, “He neighs under everyone who sits on him.” Man, it says, no longer speaks. Whoever sins against reason is no longer rational. He is an irrational beast, handed over to his desires, with every pleasure sitting on his back. But what is done rightly through obedience to reason, the heirs of the Stoics call “fitting” and “duty.” Now duty is what is fitting, and obedience is built on commands. These commands are the same as the counsels, and they have truth as their aim. They train us toward the final 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 the age to come.

1.13c  Now the right accomplishment of godliness fulfils duty through works. So duties rightly consist in actions, not in words. An action is the activity of the rational Christian soul. It follows a refined judgment and a desire for truth, and it is carried out through the body, the soul’s natural partner and fellow-combatant. A duty is a single purpose in life that follows God and Christ, and it is rightly completed in eternal life. For the Christian life, in which we are now being trained, is a system of rational actions. That means the unfailing activity of what the Word teaches, which we have called faith. The system is the Lord’s commandments. They are divine decisions and spiritual counsels, written down for us, and they are suited both to ourselves and to our neighbours. They also come back to us again, as a ball bounces back to the one who threw it when it strikes something solid. For this reason duties are necessary for divine training, since God commanded them and provided them for our salvation.

1.13d  And some necessary things serve only for life here, while others lift us on wings from here toward the good life there. In the same way, some duties are laid down for living, and others for living well. The commands given for ordinary, worldly living are common knowledge among the many. But what is fitting for living well, which is how that eternal life is gained, we may consider in outline by gathering it from the Scriptures themselves.


BOOK 2

2.arg.  Chapter headings of the second book. 1. How we should behave about food. 2. How we should approach drink. 3. That we should not be eager for costly household vessels. 4. How we should relax at feasts. 5. On laughter. 6. On obscene talk. 7. What those who live decently together must guard against. 8. Whether perfumes and garlands may be used. 9. How we should approach sleep. 10. What we must understand about having children. 11. On footwear. 12. That we should not be excited over jewels and golden ornaments.

2.1a  How we should behave about food. So let us hold to our aim and choose from the Scriptures what serves the practical purpose of our training. We must outline briefly what a person called a Christian ought to be throughout his whole life. We must begin with ourselves and with how we ought to conduct ourselves. So, keeping in view the proportion of the whole work, we must say how each of us should treat his own body, or rather how he should direct it. When someone is led by the Word away from outward things, and even from the mere management of the body, to the mind, and learns exactly how things happen in man according to nature, he will know not to be eager about outward things. He will know instead to cleanse what is truly man’s own, the eye of the soul, and to purify the flesh itself as well.

2.1b  For if someone is cleanly freed from those things by which he is still dust, what could he have that is more useful than himself for going on the road to grasp God? Other people live in order to eat, just like the irrational animals, whose whole life is nothing but the belly. But the Instructor commands us to eat in order to live. Food is not our work, and pleasure is not our aim. Food is approved for the sake of our staying here, which the Word is training toward immortality. This food is simple and unfussy, fitting the truth and suiting simple, unfussy children. It is suited to living, not to luxury. And this living is made of two things, health and strength. For these the easiest food is most fitting. It helps digestion and keeps the body light, and from it come growth, health, and a right strength. It is not an unjust, risky and miserable strength like that of athletes produced by forced feeding.

2.1c  So the many kinds of flavors must be spat out. They breed all sorts of harm: bad condition of the body and upset stomachs. The sense of taste is made to play the harlot by an evil-spirited art, the art of cookery, and by the empty craft of pastry-making. People dare to call food that cultivated pursuit of luxuries which slides into harmful pleasures. Antiphanes of Delos, a physician, said that this variety of dishes is one of the causes of disease. Such people are displeased with the truth. In their varied vanity they swear off a sober diet and go to great trouble over foods from overseas. I feel pity for their sickness, but they are not ashamed to sing the praises of their pleasures. They hunt out lampreys from the Strait of Sicily, eels from the Maeander, kids from Melos, mullets from Sciathos, mussels from Pelorus, and oysters from Abydos. They do not leave out the sardines of Lipara or the Mantinean turnip, nor even the beets of the Ascraeans. They search for scallops from Methymna, flatfish from Attica, thrushes of the laurel groves, and swallow figs. For the sake of such things the ill-starred Persian sent five hundred myriads of men into Greece at once.

2.1d  On top of these they buy up birds from the river Phasis, Egyptian francolins, and the Median peacock. The gluttons vary all this with seasonings and stand gaping at the delicacies. They provide for their greed with whatever the earth, the depths of the sea and the measureless breadth of the air produce. These grasping, meddlesome people seem to be simply dragging the whole world with a net to feed their love of pleasure. The sound of “sizzling frying pans” rings around them. They wear out their whole lives at the mortar and the grinding stone, these eaters of everything, who cling to their fuel like fire. They even make bread, the plain and easy food, soft and effeminate by sifting out the nourishing part of the wheat. So the necessary part of food becomes a reproach to pleasure. Among men, daintiness knows no limit. It has run aground on cakes and honey-cakes, and on sweets as well, inventing a multitude of desserts and hunting out every kind of flavor.

2.1e  Such a man seems to me to be nothing but a jaw. “Do not desire the rich man’s dainties,” says the Scripture, “for they belong to a life that is false and shameful.” Such people cling to rich dishes, which a little later end up in the latrine. But we are hunting for the heavenly food, so we must rule the belly, which belongs under heaven, and still more the things attached to it. “God will destroy” these, says the apostle, rightly pronouncing a curse on greedy appetites. “Foods are for the belly,” and on these hangs this truly fleshly, corrupting way of life. Some even dare to call by the name of “love” (agape) little suppers that reek of fat and gravy, and they use a tongue with no door on it. They insult the good and saving work of the Word, the sanctified love, with small pots and a flow of sauce. By drinking, luxury and smoke they slander the name. They are mistaken in their notion, for they expected to buy the promise of God with suppers.

2.1f  For gatherings held for good cheer, we ourselves would count suppers, lunches and receptions among them. Following the Word, we may fittingly call such a gathering a “reception.” But the Lord has not called such feasts “love-feasts.” He says in one place, “When you are invited to a wedding, do not recline in the chief place, but when you are invited, lie down in the last place.” In another place he says, “When you give a lunch or a dinner.” And again, “But when you give a reception, invite the poor,” which is the very occasion for which a dinner should chiefly be given. And again, “A certain man gave a great dinner and invited many.” But I see where the respectable name for these dinners came from. It came from gullets and from a madness that haunts the dinner table, as the comic poet puts it: “For truly, most things for most people are for the sake of dinner.” They have not learned that God provided food and drink for his creature, man, for the sake of his being kept alive, not for pleasure. The body does not naturally benefit from costly foods. Quite the opposite: those who live on the cheapest food are stronger, healthier and nobler, as servants are than their masters and farmers than their landlords. They are not only more robust but also wiser, as philosophers are than rich men. For they have not buried the mind under food, nor deceived it with pleasures.

2.1g  Love (agape) is truly heavenly food, a banquet of the mind and reason. “It bears all things, endures all things, hopes all things. Love never falls.” “Blessed is he who will eat bread in the kingdom of God.” It is the worst of all falls for love, which never falls, to be flung from heaven above down to the ground among the gravies. Do you suppose I count as a supper that which is to be done away with? “For if I give away all that I have,” he says, “and 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 the heavens. The earthly one is called a dinner, as has been shown from Scripture. A dinner is given out of love, but the dinner is not love. It is a token of a kindly, sharing and generous goodwill.

2.1h  “So do not let our good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking,” says the apostle. He says this so that the meal he means will not be understood as one that lasts only a day. He goes on: “but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Whoever eats this best of meals will gain the best of all things that exist, the kingdom of God. He will have practiced here below for that holy gathering of love, the heavenly church. Love, then, is something pure and worthy of God, and its work is sharing. “The care of instruction is love,” says Wisdom, “and love is the keeping of her laws.” These feasts of joy have a spark of love in them, taken from the food common to all, and they train us in the habit of eternal food. So love is not a dinner, but let the feast depend on love. For it says, “Let your sons, whom you have loved, Lord, learn that it is not the produce of the crops that feeds a man, but your word that keeps safe those who believe in you.” For the righteous man will not live on bread alone.

2.1i  But let our dinner be simple and light, suited to keeping us alert, not mixed with a variety of flavors. Even this is not left without instruction. For love is a good nurse for fellowship, and her rich provision is self-sufficiency. When self-sufficiency oversees the food, measured out in the right amount, it manages the body for its health, and it also gives some share out of its own store to our neighbors. But a diet that overflows what is sufficient harms a person. It makes the soul sluggish and the body liable to sickness. Moreover, pleasure in rich dishes brings on itself names of blame that are hard to bear: daintiness, greediness, gluttony, fondness for delicacies, insatiability, ravenous eating. Flies, weasels, flatterers, gladiators, and “the wild tribes of parasites” fit these names well. Some sell their reason, some their friendship, some their very life for the pleasure of the belly. They creep along on their bellies, beasts in the shape of men, made in the image of their father, the greedy beast.

2.1j  Those who first called such people “asotoi” (dissolute) seem to me to have hinted well at their end. They understood the word as “asostoi” (unsaved), with the letter sigma squeezed out. Are these not the very people who busy themselves over casserole dishes and the silly fussiness of seasonings, low-minded and earth-born, chasing a life that lasts a day as if they were never going to live again? The Holy Spirit pronounces them wretched through Isaiah, quietly taking away from them the name of love, since their feasting was not according to reason: “But they made merry, slaughtering calves and sacrificing sheep, and saying, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’” And to show that he counts such luxury as sin, he adds: “And this sin of yours will not be forgiven until you die.” He does not mean that a death without feeling is forgiveness of sin. He means that death, the loss of salvation, is the repayment for sin.

2.1k  “Do not rejoice in a little luxury,” says Wisdom. Here we should also recall the so-called idol sacrifices, and why we are told to abstain from them. Those things seem to me foul and loathsome, and over their blood hover “souls from Erebus of the dead who have died.” “For I do not want you to become partners with demons,” says the apostle, since the food of those who are being saved and of those who are perishing is separate. So we must abstain from them. We do not do so out of fear, for there is no power in these foods. We do so for the sake of our conscience, which is holy. We do so because we loathe the demons, whose names the foods carry, for their foulness. And we do so also because of those who are watery-minded and take many things in a slippery way, “whose conscience, being weak, is defiled. For food will not bring us before God.” And he says, “It is not what goes in that defiles a man, but what comes out of his mouth.” So the natural use of food makes no difference. “For if we eat, we gain nothing extra,” he says, “and if we do not eat, we lack nothing.” But it is not reasonable for people who have been counted worthy to share in divine and spiritual food to take part in “the table of demons.”

2.1l  The apostle says, “Do we not have the right to eat and drink, and to take a wife about with us?” But we hold our pleasures in check and so restrain our desires. “Take care, then, that this right of yours never becomes a stumbling block to the weak.” We must not squander the Father’s gifts like the rich man’s son in the Gospel story, living wastefully. We should use them as rulers do, with no leaning toward them. For we were appointed to reign and to rule, not to be slaves to our food. It is admirable, then, to look up to the truth and cling to the divine food from above. We should be filled with the insatiable vision of him who truly is, and taste a pleasure that is steady, lasting and pure. For the food of Christ shows that we must receive this love. But it is utterly senseless, useless and inhuman to be fed for death, fattened like livestock. Such people look down at the ground, always creatures of earth, bent over their tables. They chase a greedy life and bury the good here, in a life that will not last. They flatter only the act of swallowing, and because of it cooks have become more highly valued than farmers.

2.1m  We are not doing away with companionship. We only regard the slippery slope of habit as a disaster. So we must refuse greediness and take only a few necessary things. If one of the unbelievers invites us and we decide to go (for it is good not to mix with the disorderly), Paul tells us to eat whatever is set before us, “asking no questions for conscience’ sake.” In the same way he told us to buy from the meat market without fussy inquiry. So we are not to abstain completely from varied dishes; we are only not to make them our concern. We should take what is set before us as befits a Christian. We honor the one who invited us by sharing in the company in a way that does no harm and does not wear anyone out. We treat the costliness of what is brought in as a matter of indifference, and we despise the delicacies, since in a little while they will be gone. “Let the one who eats not despise the one who does not eat, and let the one who does not eat not judge the one who eats.” A little further on he explains the reason for this instruction, saying, “The one who eats, eats to the Lord and gives thanks to God; and the one who does not eat, does not eat to the Lord and gives thanks to God.” So the right food is thanksgiving, and the one who always gives thanks is not preoccupied with pleasures.

2.1n  And if we are urging any of our fellow guests toward virtue, that is all the more reason to keep away from these greedy dishes. We show ourselves as a clear example of virtue, just as we ourselves have Christ. Paul says, “If any such food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat it, so that I do not make my brother stumble.” By a little self-restraint he wins the man. “Do we not have the right to eat and drink?” And he says, “We have come to know the truth, that there is no idol in the world, but there is truly one God for us, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus.” But, he says, “the weak brother is destroyed by your knowledge, the brother for whom Christ died. And those who wound the conscience of weak brothers sin against Christ.” This is why the apostle, taking care for us, distinguishes between dinners. He says we are “not to associate with anyone called a brother who is found to be sexually immoral, or an adulterer, or an idolater, and not even to eat with such a person.” We are to avoid it whether it be the conversation or the dish, suspecting the defilement that comes from it, just as from the tables of demons.

2.1o  “It is good, then, not to eat meat or to drink wine.” Paul himself says this, and so do the followers of Pythagoras. For eating flesh is more the way of wild animals, and the vapor that rises from it is thick and clouds the soul. Yet if someone does take these things, he does not sin, provided he takes them with self-control, without clinging to them, being dependent on them, or gorging on the delicacies. A voice will speak within him, saying, “Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food.” It is very foolish to marvel and gape at what is served at ordinary banquets, after the luxury we have in the Word. It is far more foolish to have made one’s eyes slaves to the side dishes, as though the servants carried one’s lack of self-control around along with them. How useless it is to raise oneself up on the couches, almost throwing one’s face into the dishes, and to peer out from the couch as from a nest, as the common saying goes, just to catch the wandering vapor with one’s breath!

2.1p  And is it not senseless to smear the hands with sauces, or to keep reaching out to the dishes? These people do not taste; they snatch. They stuff themselves without measure and without decency. You can see such people, in their greed to be filled, looking more like pigs or dogs than human beings. Both jaws bulge at once, and the veins in the face swell. Sweat pours over them, gripped as they are by insatiable appetite, and they pant from lack of self-control. The food is shoved in with frantic haste, with no thought for anyone else, down into the belly. They stow away the dishes as if packing provisions for a journey, not as food to be digested. Excess is an evil everywhere, but it is most plainly exposed in the matter of food. Thus “dainty-gluttony” (opsophagia) is nothing other than excess in the use of delicacies. “Throat-gluttony” (laimargia) is madness about the throat. “Belly-gluttony” (gastrimargia) is lack of self-control about food, and, as the very name implies, madness about the belly, since a margos is a madman.

2.1q  The apostle rebukes those who practice such habits at feasts, and says: “For each one takes his own supper ahead of others as he eats, and one is hungry while another is drunk. Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing?” Among those who do have, the people who eat without restraint, the insatiable, bring shame on themselves. Both groups do wrong. The one burdens those who have nothing, and the other exposes its own lack of self-control in front of those who have. So the apostle, of necessity, turns to those who have lost all shame and who abuse their meals without restraint, the insatiable, for whom nothing is enough. A second time he raises his voice in indignation: “So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.

2.1r  If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that you do not come together for judgment.” So we must keep away from all servile behavior and lack of self-control. We should take what is set before us in an orderly way, keeping the hand, the couch and the chin unsoiled, keeping the face’s good appearance undistorted, and behaving decently even in swallowing. The hand should be stretched out in order, at intervals. * * We must also take care not to say anything while eating. The voice becomes unseemly and indistinct when it is cramped by full jaws. The tongue, pressed by the food and hindered in its natural working, gives out a squeezed sound. Nor is it fitting to eat and drink at the same time. It is the greatest intemperance to confuse times whose uses do not go together. And “whether you eat or drink,” he says, “do everything for the glory of God.” We should aim at true simplicity of living. I think the Lord hinted at it when he blessed the loaves and the broiled fish with which he feasted his disciples, giving us a fine example of plain, unfussy food.

2.1s  The fish that Peter caught at the Lord’s command also hints at food that is easy to come by, given by God, and moderate. For he suggests that, among those who come up out of the water to the bait of righteousness, we should remove extravagance and love of money, like the coin from the fish’s mouth. In this way he would drive out vainglory, and by giving the stater to the tax collectors, rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s, he would keep for God what is God’s. The stater could have other explanations, which are not unknown to us, but the present moment is not suitable for working them out. It is enough to mention it, since we are using it for our subject and it does not clash with the flowers of the Word. We have often done this, drawing the many-benefiting spring to the pressing point of the question, to water what the Word has planted.

2.1t  For even if “it is lawful for me to partake of everything, not everything is beneficial.” Those who do everything that is lawful quickly fall into doing what is not lawful. Righteousness is not gained through greed, nor self-control through licentiousness. In the same way, the Christian’s way of life is not acquired through pleasure-seeking. The table of truth is far from “dishes that crave indulgence.” Even if everything was made chiefly for the sake of human beings, it is not good to use everything, nor to use it at all times. For the occasion, the time, the manner, and the purpose all make no small difference, for the person being trained, in leading to what is profitable. Fitness for the occasion has the strength to put an end to the life lived for the belly. Riches invite such a life, though not riches that see sharply, but an abundance that is blind to gluttony.

2.1u  No one is poor when it comes to the necessities of life, and no human being is ever overlooked. There is one God who feeds the birds, the fish, and, in a word, all the creatures without reason. They lack nothing at all, though they take no anxious thought for food. We are better than they, since we are their masters, and closer to God, since we are wiser. We were made, not to eat and drink, but to come to the knowledge of God. “For the righteous man,” it says, “eats and is satisfied in his soul, but the bellies of the ungodly are in want,” because they crave a gluttony that never rests. Lavish expense is suited not to solitary enjoyment but to sharing with others. So we must be on guard against foods that bewitch our appetites and persuade us to eat when we are not hungry. For surely a wholesome variety of dishes is possible even within a temperate simplicity?

2.1v  Bulbs, olives, certain vegetables, milk, cheese, fruits in season, and all kinds of cooked dishes without rich sauces. If roast or boiled meat is needed, it should be served. After the resurrection the Lord said to the disciples, “Do you have anything to eat here?” And they, as men taught by him to practise simple living, “gave him a piece of roasted fish. And when he had eaten in front of them, he said to them” what he said, as Luke records. Besides these, we must not overlook that those who dine according to the Word are not to be left without nuts and honeycombs. Of all foods, the most suitable are those we can use straight away without fire, since they are the most readily available. Next come the plainest, as we said before. But those who hunch over inflamed tables, nursing their own passions, are led by a most gluttonous demon. I would not be ashamed to call him the “belly-demon,” the worst and most ruinous of demons.

2.1w  This demon is just like the so-called ventriloquist spirit. But it is far better to become blessed (“well-spirited”) than to have a demon living with you. Happiness is tested by the practice of virtue. The apostle Matthew, then, ate seeds, nuts and vegetables, without meat. John carried self-control to the extreme: “he ate locusts and wild honey.” Peter also abstained from pork. But “a trance fell upon him,” as it is written in the Acts of the Apostles, “and he saw heaven opened and a vessel tied at four corners resting on the earth. In it were all the four-footed animals and reptiles of the earth and the birds of heaven. And a voice came to him: ‘Get up, kill and eat.’ But Peter said, ‘Certainly not, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common and unclean.’”

2.1x  “And the voice came to him again a second time: ‘What God has cleansed, do not you call common.’” So for us, too, the use of foods is a matter of indifference. “For it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person.” What is empty is the notion about self-indulgence. For God, when he formed man, said, “All things shall be yours for food.” But “a dish of vegetables with love” (or “a calf with deceit”) is a good reminder of what was said before: it is not that vegetables are love, but that meals are to be taken with love. The middle state is good in everything, and not least in the preparation for a feast, since extremes are slippery and the middle is good. The middle is whatever lacks none of the necessities. For natural appetites are bounded by what is sufficient.

2.1y  To the Jews, frugality was proclaimed through the law in a very well-ordered way. For through Moses the Instructor took away from them the use of countless things, attaching reasons: the spiritual ones hidden, the fleshly ones plain, and these latter they believed. Some animals were forbidden because they do not have a divided hoof, some because they do not chew the cud, and some fish because they alone of water creatures lack scales. So very few were left that were suitable for their food. Even among the things he allowed them to touch, he forbade animals that died of themselves, food offered to idols, and animals that had been strangled, for it was not right to touch these either. Since it is impossible for someone who enjoys pleasant things to give up approving of them, he set against them the opposite discipline, until he could break the habit’s rush toward self-indulgence.

2.1z  For human beings, pleasure has mostly brought harm and grief. Overeating breeds in the soul dullness, forgetfulness and folly. They also say that children’s bodies grow well in height when they are given somewhat less food. The breath that runs up through the body to make it grow is then not hindered, because plenty of food does not block the free flow of its course. So Plato, the philosopher who most zealously sought the truth, condemned the life of luxury and fanned the spark of Hebrew philosophy back into flame. He says: “When I came there, the life they call happy, full of Italian and Syracusan tables, did not please me at all. It means living stuffed twice a day, never sleeping alone at night, and all the habits that go with that kind of life. No human being under heaven could ever become wise if he practiced such things from his youth, nor would he ever be so wonderfully balanced in character.” For Plato was not unaware of David. David set up the holy ark in his own city, in the middle of the tent, and made all the people under his rule glad. “Before the Lord he distributed to the whole host of Israel, from man to woman, a loaf of bread to each, a baked cake, and a cake from the frying pan.”

2.1aa  This food was enough for the Israelites, but the food of the Gentiles is excessive. A man who lives on it “would never even intend to become temperate.” He has buried his mind in his belly. He is very like the fish called the “ass,” which Aristotle says is the only creature with its heart in its stomach. The comic poet Epicharmus calls this fish “monster-belly.” Such are those who put their trust in the belly: “whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.” The apostle foretold nothing good for them, for he said, “Their end is destruction.”

2.2a  On Drinking. How we should approach drink. The apostle tells Timothy, who drank only water, “Use a little wine, for your stomach’s sake.” This was an excellent way to treat an ailing, flabby body, for he gave it a fitting, strengthening remedy. He approved only a little, so that the remedy would not, through its quantity, quietly become something that itself needed another treatment. The natural and sober drink that the thirsty need is water. The Lord supplied this to the ancient Hebrews as the one drink of self-control, pouring it from the sheer rock. Those who were still wandering most needed to be sober. Afterward the holy vine put forth the prophetic cluster of grapes. This was a sign for those who had been trained out of wandering into rest. The great cluster is the Word, crushed for our sake. The Word wished the blood of the grape to be mixed with water, just as his own blood is mixed with salvation. The Lord’s blood is twofold. One is fleshly, by which we have been redeemed from corruption. The other is spiritual, and by it we have been anointed.

2.2b  To drink the blood of Jesus is to share in the Lord’s incorruption. The Spirit is the power of the Word, as blood is of flesh. In the same proportion, then, wine is mixed with water, and the Spirit with the human being. The mixture of wine and water feeds us toward faith, and the Spirit leads us on to incorruption. The mixture of both, the drink and the Word, is called the Eucharist, a grace that is praised and beautiful. Those who share in it by faith are made holy in body and soul. The Father’s will mystically mixes the human being, this divine mixture, with the Spirit and the Word. For the Spirit is truly joined to the soul that it carries, and the flesh is joined to the Word, the flesh for whose sake “the Word became flesh.”

2.2c  I admire, then, those who have chosen a strict way of life. They long for water, the medicine of self-control, and flee as far as they can from wine, as from the threat of fire. So it seems good to me that boys and girls, for the most part, should keep away from this drug. It is not suitable to pour the hottest of liquids, wine, onto an age that is already boiling. That is like channeling fire onto fire. From it wild impulses, inflamed desires and a fiery temper are kindled. Young people, heated from within, become hasty toward their appetites. The harm is then plain to see in their bodies, since the organs of desire ripen sooner than they should. They are aroused more shamelessly, as if from boiling wine. Their breasts and private parts swell, and already announce a picture of fornication. The wound of the soul forces the body to inflame, and shameless throbbings drive them on to excess, calling the well-ordered character out into lawlessness.

2.2d  From this point the “new wine” of youth passes beyond the limits of modesty. So as far as possible we must try to quench the urges of the young. We should take away the fuel, the Bacchic frenzy that threatens them, and pour on the remedy for the boiling over. This will hold back the soul that is already smoldering, check the swelling members, and put to sleep the agitation of desire that is already stirring. As for those in the prime of life, let them take a midday meal, since a midday meal suits them. Let them taste bread only and abstain entirely from drink, so that their excess moisture may be soaked up and drunk in by the dry food. For constant spitting and blowing the nose and hurrying to relieve oneself are signs of intemperance, caused by immoderate intake that floods the body with fluids. If thirst does come, let them cure the discomfort with a little water. It is not right to drink water freely either, lest the food be washed out. The food should be broken down for digestion, with the solid food settling into a mass and only a very little passing off in the excretions.

2.2e  Besides, it is not fitting to be heavy with wine when we are occupied with thoughts of God. For, as the comic poet says, “unmixed wine compels a man to think few thoughts,” let alone to be self-controlled. Wine should be used toward evening, around supper time, when we are no longer busy with the more sober readings. At that hour the surrounding air is cooler than in the daytime, so the natural warmth that is failing needs to be fed with warmth brought in from outside. Even then the wine should be little, for we must not go on to the bowls of insolence. Those who are already past their prime may be allowed to take the drink more freely. With the vine’s remedy they can safely rekindle the chill of age, which seems to wither under time. For the appetites of older men, for the most part, no longer swell toward the shipwrecks of drunkenness. Moored, as it were, by reason and by time as by anchors, they bear more easily the gale of desires that blows up from drink. They may perhaps even allow themselves a little pleasantry at feasts.

2.2f  But even for these let the limit of drinking be the point at which they keep their reasoning steady, their memory active, and their body unmoved and unshaken by wine. Those who are skilled in these matters call this state “top of the breastplate.” It is good, then, to stop beforehand because of the risk of slipping. A certain Artorius, in his book On Long Life (so I remember), thinks we should go only as far as is needed to moisten the food, so that we may gain a longer life. It is fitting, then, that some take wine as part of a treatment, for health alone, and others for rest and relaxation. For wine first makes the drinker kinder to himself than before, gentler to his fellow drinkers, milder to his servants, and more pleasant to his friends. But if he is made drunk, it repays him with insolence. For wine is warm and has sweet juices. When mixed in due measure, it dissolves the sticky waste matter by its warmth, and blends the sharp and bad humors with its pleasant aromas.

2.2g  Rightly, then, it has been said: “Wine was created from the beginning as a gladness of soul and heart, when drunk in sufficient measure.” It is best to mix the wine with as much water as possible and to dull its force against drunkenness. It should not be poured in like water out of a love of wine. Both are works of God, and so the mixture of both, water and wine, contributes to health, because life consists of what is necessary and what is useful. So the necessary, water, should be mixed in as abundantly as possible with the useful. But when wine is taken without measure, the tongue stumbles, the lips go slack, and the eyes turn aside, as if the sight were swimming in the quantity of liquid. Forced to deceive, the eyes think everything is spinning around, and they cannot count distant objects as single. “Indeed, I seem to see two suns,” said the old Theban man in his drunkenness. The sight, stirred by the heat of the wine, often pictures one thing as many. It makes no difference whether the eye is moved or the thing seen, for the sight suffers the same either way: because of the tossing, it cannot accurately grasp the object before it.

2.2h  Their steps are swept away from under them as by a current. Hiccups, vomiting and madness crash in on the revel. For, as the tragedy says, every man drunk with wine is overcome by anger and empty of sense. He loves to pour out a flood of idle talk, and then unwillingly hears the evil things he said willingly. Even before the tragedy, Wisdom cried out: “Wine drunk in quantity increases irritation and every kind of fall.” Therefore most people say that we should unbend at drinking parties and put serious matters off until dawn. I hold the opposite. That is exactly the time to bring in the Word to share the feast and to act as instructor over the drinking, so that the feast does not slip unnoticed into drunkenness. No sensible person would think of closing his eyes before he goes to sleep. In the same way no one could rightly want the Word absent from the banquet, or do well to put him to sleep before the day’s business is done.

2.2i  Indeed the Word can never withdraw from what is his own, not even when we sleep, for we must call on him even for our sleep. Wisdom is perfect: it is knowledge of divine and human affairs and embraces the whole. In so far as it oversees the flock of men, it becomes an art of living. So it is present with us everywhere, as long as we live, always completing its own work, which is the good life. But the wretched men who drive self-control out of the feast think that the disorder of their drinking parties is the happy life. Their living is nothing but revelling, hangovers, baths, unmixed wine, chamber pots, idleness and drink. You can see some of them half-drunk and staggering, with garlands around their necks like wine jars, forcing the unmixed wine down one another’s throats in the name of a toast to friendship. Others are sodden from their hangover, unwashed and pale, with livid faces. Yet on top of yesterday’s drunkenness they pump up another drunkenness at dawn.

2.2j  It is good, my friends, very good, to study this picture, at once ridiculous and pitiable, from as far away as possible. Then we may shape ourselves toward something better, fearing that we too might become a similar sight and a laughingstock to others. It was well said: “As the furnace tests the temper of steel in the dipping, so wine tests the heart of the proud in drunkenness.” Now drunkenness is the more violent use of unmixed wine. Drunken misbehavior is the disorder that comes from that use. A hangover (kraipalē) is the discomfort and distaste that follow drunkenness. It is named from the head throbbing (kara pallein). This kind of life, if it should be called life, is lazy, restless after pleasures, and frantic over wine. Divine Wisdom looks on it with suspicion and commands her children: “Do not be a wine-drinker, and do not stretch yourself out in contracts and purchases of meat. For every drunkard and every frequenter of prostitutes will become poor, and every drowsy person will wear torn clothes.” For the drowsy person is anyone who is not awake to wisdom but is plunged into sleep by drunkenness.

2.2k  “And the drunkard,” it says, “will wear torn clothes.” He will be ashamed of his drunkenness because of those who look on. The tears in the garment are the holes that the sinner’s love of pleasure has made in the fabric of the flesh. Through them the shame of the soul within is seen, which is sin. Because of sin the fabric will not easily be saved. It has been torn away on every side and is rotting in many desires, cut off from salvation. So Scripture adds this very instructive warning: “Who has woe? Who has uproar? Who has judgment? Who has unpleasant chatter? Who has bruises for nothing?” See the wine-lover, torn to pieces. He pays no heed to the Word himself, and he has handed himself over to drunkenness. See everything Scripture has threatened against him. Again it adds to the threat: “Whose eyes are livid? Is it not those who linger over wine? Those who track down where the drinking parties are?” Here the Word already shows the lover of drink to be dead. It points to the livid eyes, which is a mark that appears on corpses, and so announces to him a death “in the Lord.” For forgetfulness of the things that lead to true life tilts toward destruction.

2.2l  It is only natural, then, that the Instructor, who cares for our salvation, forbids this most firmly: “Do not drink wine to drunkenness.” Why, you ask? “Because,” he says, “your mouth will then speak twisted things, and you will lie down as in the heart of the sea, like a ship’s pilot in a heavy swell.” Poetry has learned from this too, and says: “Wine, whose force is like fire when it comes among men, and which heaves like the Libyan sea under the north wind or the south; it reveals everything that is hidden, and makes men speak wrongly. Wine is a slippery slope to the drunk; wine deceives the soul,” and so on. Do you see the danger of shipwreck? The heart is swamped by heavy drinking. The Scripture compares the flood of drunkenness to the threat of the sea. In that sea the body is sunk like a ship; it goes down into the depths of disorder, buried under the triple waves of wine. The pilot, the human mind, is swept about in the surge while drunkenness towers over it. Out at sea it reels in the murk of the storm, having missed the harbor of truth. In the end it strikes hidden rocks, runs itself aground on pleasures, and destroys itself.

2.2m  It is only natural, then, that the apostle also commands: “Do not get drunk with wine, in which there is much dissipation.” By the word “dissipation” (asotia) he hints that drunkenness cannot be saved (asoston). For although the Lord made water into wine at the wedding, he did not give permission to get drunk. Rather he brought to life the watery quality of our thinking. [The Greek text is damaged here.] He filled the whole world with the blood of the vine, which is the drink of truth. He gave to godliness the mixture of the old law and the new Word, for the fulfilment of the time already set in reconciliation. So Scripture has called wine a mystical symbol of holy blood. But when it exposes the hangover that comes from wine, it says: “Wine is undisciplined, and drunkenness is insolent.” Right reason therefore approves drinking in winter, because of the cold, up to the point of not shivering, for those who are easily chilled. At other times it approves it as a remedy for the inner organs.

2.2n  We should use drink to stop thirst just as we use food to stop hunger, carefully guarding against slipping, for wine’s creeping in is treacherous. In this way our soul will be pure, dry and full of light, “for a dry soul is a radiance, the wisest and best.” So it can also look on divine things, and is not waterlogged and turned into a cloud-like body by the vapors that rise from wine. We should not fuss about Dian wine if it is not to be had, or Ariusian wine when it is not at hand. Thirst is the feeling of some lack, and it looks for the fitting remedy to fill it, not a swollen, showy drink. Importing wines from overseas is for an appetite that has gone soft through lack of self-control, a soul that is already out of its mind with desires before it gets drunk. There is fragrant Thasian, sweet-breathing Lesbian, a sweet Cretan, a pleasant Syracusan, an Egyptian Mendesian, island Naxian, and another flowery-scented wine from the land of Italy. Those are many names. For the self-controlled drinking companion there is one wine, the farm-produce of the one God.

2.2o  Why should the local wine not be enough to satisfy the desire? Unless, of course, they will also bring in water, like the foolish kings who brought along Choaspes water as they brought their friends. The Holy Spirit pronounces the rich wretched for their luxury here too, speaking through Amos: “Those who drink strained wine,” he says, “and lie on ivory couches,” and he adds the rest that follows in the way of reproach. We should take special care for decency. (The story says that Athena, whoever she was, looked after her own appearance and threw away the pleasure of the flutes because of the ugliness it gave her face.) So we should drink without distorting the face. We should not gulp until we are full, or force our eyes into unseemly looks over the cup, or pull at it in one breath through lack of self-control. We should not pour the drink over the chin or soak our clothes when the drink rushes in all at once. That would be almost washing and rinsing our own faces in the cups.

2.2p  Think of the gurgling noise as the drink comes pouring down, drawn in with a great gasp of breath as if it were being poured into a clay jar, while the throat echoes with the rushing gulps. That is ugly, and the sight of such self-indulgence is unseemly. A love of drinking is also a harmful habit for the one who gives in to it. Don’t rush into harm, my friend. Your drink is not being snatched away. It has been given to you and is waiting for you. Don’t be so eager to gulp it down with open mouth that you burst. Your thirst will be filled even if you drink more slowly, and you will have gained good order, if the drink is taken in measured portions. What self-indulgence grabs in haste is not taken from you by waiting. Scripture says, “Do not play the strong man with wine, for wine has ruined many.” “Drunkenness is practiced above all by the Scythians, Celts, Iberians and Thracians. These are all warlike peoples, and they consider it a fine and happy custom.” But we are a peaceful people. We feast for enjoyment, not for insolence, so let us drink our friendship cups sober, so that they may truly be shown to be friendly pledges, as the name says.

2.2q  How do you think the Lord drank when he became man for our sake? As shamelessly as we do? Was it not with refinement? With decorum? With careful thought? You may be sure that he too took wine, for he too was man. And he blessed the wine, saying, “Take, drink; this is my blood.” The blood of the vine is his figure for the Word, “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins,” the holy stream of gladness. He showed clearly, by what he taught at feasts, that the one who drinks must be self-controlled, for he did not teach while drunk. And that what he blessed was wine, he showed again when he said to his disciples, “I will not drink of this fruit of the vine until I drink it with you in the kingdom of my Father.” That it was wine the Lord drank, he also says of himself, when he rebukes the hard-heartedness of the Jews: “For the Son of Man came, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a wine-drinker, a friend of tax collectors.’” Let this be thrown in, as a playful aside, against those who call themselves Encratites.

2.2r  Women, supposedly to keep up a graceful appearance, avoid wide cups so that their lips will not be stretched and split by opening the mouth wide. Instead they drink indecently from narrow-necked alabaster flasks. They tilt their heads back and bare their necks, which is not decent, in my opinion. They stretch the throat and gulp as they swallow, as though they were exposing to their fellow drinkers all they could. They draw up belches like a man’s, or rather like a slave’s, and carry on in wanton luxury. For no such noise is fitting for a reasoning man, and still less for a woman, for whom the mere awareness of what she is brings nothing but shame. Scripture says, “A drunken woman is great wrath.” It is as if a wine-soaked woman were the anger of God. Why? Because “she does not cover up her disgrace.” A woman is quickly dragged into disorder if she only gives her will over to pleasures.

2.2s  We have not forbidden drinking from alabaster flasks. What we cut off is the habit of drinking only from them, as a piece of showiness. We advise women to use whatever happens to be at hand without fuss, and so to check their appetites while they are still far from slipping. The swelling of air that rises toward a belch should be let out quietly. In no way should women be allowed to let any part of the body be seen uncovered, so that both do not fall: the men, provoked to look, and the women, drawing the men’s eyes to themselves. We must always behave decently, as though the Lord were present. Otherwise the apostle may say to us in anger, as he did to the Corinthians, “When you come together, it is not possible to eat the Lord’s supper.” It seems to me that the star the astronomers call “the Headless,” which is counted before the “wandering” star, with its head sunk into its chest, hints at gluttons, lovers of pleasure and those ready for drunkenness.

2.2t  For in such people the reasoning faculty is seated not in the head but in the bowels, enslaved to the passions of desire and anger. Elpenor broke his neck when he fell down drunk. In the same way the brain of these people, made dizzy from above by drunkenness, falls down to the liver and the heart, that is, to the love of pleasure and to anger. It is a greater fall than the one the poets’ children say Hephaestus took when Zeus threw him from heaven to the ground. Scripture says, “Sleeplessness brings pain, and bile and colic, with an insatiable man.” This is also why Noah’s drunkenness was written down. We are to guard against drunkenness as much as we can, having the failure set plainly before us in writing. For this reason those who covered the shame of his drunkenness are blessed by the Lord. So Scripture gathers it all up very briefly and says it in one sentence: “Wine is enough for an instructed man, and he will rest on his bed.”

2.3a  That we should not be eager for costly furnishings. The use of drinking cups made of silver and gold, or others set with jewels, is to be rejected. They are only a deception of the eye. If you pour a hot drink into them, the vessels become scorching, and taking hold of them hurts. If you pour in something cold, the material passes on its quality and spoils the mixture, so the rich man’s drink is harmful. Away, then, with Thericlean cups, Antigonid cups, cantharoi, labronioi, lepastai, the endless kinds of drinking vessels, and the wine-coolers and wine-pourers besides. For gold and silver, in private and in public alike, are a possession that provokes envy when they go beyond what we need. They are rare to get, hard to keep, and not suitable for use. The over-elaborate vanity of engraved glass is also to be kept out of our well-ordered life. Because of its craftsmanship it breaks all the more easily, and it teaches us to be afraid and to drink at the same time. Then there are silver couches, basins, vinegar-dishes, small plates and bowls. There are further vessels of silver and gold, some for serving food and some for other uses that I am ashamed even to mention. There are tripods finely worked in easily split cedar, in thyine wood, in ebony and in ivory. There are couches with silver feet, inlaid with ivory and dotted with gold, and bed-screens decorated with tortoise-shell. There are purple bedcovers and others in colours hard to come by. All these are proofs of tasteless luxury, advantages that scheme to bring envy and laziness. All of them are to be set aside, for none of them deserves any serious effort.

2.3b  “For the time is short,” as the apostle says. [The Greek text has a gap here.] What remains is that we not make ourselves look ridiculous. Some people are seen in processions smeared on the outside to impressive effect and made to look dignified, but they are wretched within. To make this clearer, the apostle added, “What remains is that those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who buy as though they did not possess.” If this applies to marriage, about which God says, “Multiply,” how, do you think, must tasteless display be driven out by the Lord’s authority? This is also why the Lord says, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and come, follow me.” Follow God stripped of arrogance, stripped of perishable show. Keep only what is truly yours, the good that cannot be taken away. That is faith in God, confession of the One who suffered, and kindness to people, the most precious possession of all.

2.3c  I also approve of Plato, who lays it down outright that one should have no wealth of silver or gold. He says one should not even have a useless vessel, one that is not moderate as well as serving a necessary use. The same thing should be suitable for many purposes, and owning many things should be done away with. The divine Scripture speaks admirably somewhere to the self-loving and the boastful: “Where are the rulers of the nations, and those who lord it over the wild beasts on the earth, who make sport of the birds of the sky, who store up silver and gold, in which people trusted, and there is no end to their possessions, who work silver and gold and worry over it? There is no tracing their works. They have vanished and gone down to Hades.” This is the reward of tasteless extravagance.

2.3d  We farm the land, and for that we need a hoe and a plough. Yet no one would forge a hoe of silver or a sickle of gold. For farming we use the material that works well, not the one that is rich. So what is to stop those who can see the same principle from thinking the same way about household utensils? Let use be their measure, not expense. Tell me, then: does the table knife not cut unless it is studded with silver or has an ivory handle? Or must we forge Indian steel to carve a portion of meat, as if we were calling in an ally for battle? And what if the washbasin is earthenware? Will it not take the water from washing hands? Will the footbath not take the water from washing feet? Will a table with ivory legs feel insulted at carrying a loaf worth a penny? Will the lamp refuse to give light because it is the potter’s work and not the goldsmith’s?

2.3e  I say further that a plain cot gives a rest no worse than an ivory couch. A coat of goatskin is quite enough to spread over the bed, so there is no need for purple or scarlet covers. Yet people condemn such simplicity because of the foolishness of luxury, the origin of all evil. See how great the error is, how great the love of empty show! The Lord ate from a cheap dish. He had his disciples recline on the grass on the ground. He washed their feet with a linen towel tied around him. He is the God without pride, the Lord of all, and he did not bring a silver footbath down from heaven. He asked the Samaritan woman for a drink, as she drew water from the well in an earthenware jar. He did not look for royal gold, but taught us to quench thirst without trouble. He made need his aim, not unlimited abundance. At feasts he ate and drank, but he did not dig metals out of the earth. He did not use little vessels of silver and gold, which is to say, of rust, giving off the smell of that puffed-up material.

2.3f  In general, then, I say that food, clothing, utensils and everything else in the household must fit the settled purpose of a Christian. Each should suit the person, age, occupation and time. We are servants of one God, so our possessions and the furniture that goes with them should show the marks of one good life. Each individual, with a faith that makes no distinctions, with this single settled purpose, should be seen doing whatever follows from it, in agreement with that one disposition. Whatever we acquire without hardship, use without difficulty, and so can praise, keep easily and share readily, is better. Useful things are better, and certainly the cheaper things are better than those of the rich.

2.3g  In sum, wealth that is not rightly managed is a fortress of evil. Many people have their eyes fixed on it, and they will never enter the kingdom of heaven. They are sick with worldly things and live arrogantly because of their luxuries. But those who hurry toward salvation must grasp this first: all creation exists for us to use, and possessions exist for the sake of self-sufficiency, which one can attain with few things. People are foolish who, out of insatiable greed, take delight in their stored-up treasures. Scripture says, “He who gathers wages has gathered them into a bag with holes.” This is the man who gathers and locks up his seed and ends up with less, the man who shares with no one. It is a joke and a big laugh that men carry silver chamber pots and glass urinals around with them, as they take their advisers along with them. Rich women, without any sense, have gold made as containers for their excretions. So even to relieve themselves, the rich cannot do it unless they do so with pomp. I would pray that for their whole lives they would judge gold to be fit for dung.

2.3h  But as things are, the fortress of evil has been found: the love of money. The apostle says it is the root of all evils: “Some, reaching for it, have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.” The best wealth is to be poor in desires, and true greatness of mind does not mean being proud of wealth but despising it. To boast about one’s household utensils is utterly shameful. It is hardly right to take pains over things that anyone who wishes can buy in the market. Wisdom, however, cannot be bought with earthly coin or in a market. It is sold in heaven, and it is sold for honest coin: the incorruptible Word, the royal gold.

2.4a  Heading: How we should relax at feasts. Let revelry be kept far from our rational feasting. So too the empty all-night parties that run wild in drunken excess. Revelry is a drunken restlessness, an improvised outburst of lovesick distress. Love and drunkenness, those irrational passions, are banished far from our company. An all-night party over drink is a kind of drunken carousing: it calls out for drunkenness and stirs up lust, a daring that does shameful things. People who give themselves to flutes, harps, choruses, dances, Egyptian castanets and such idle amusements become unruly, indecent and wholly uninstructed, deafened by cymbals and drums and surrounded by the noise of instruments of deceit. To my mind, a drinking party like that is simply a theatre of drunkenness. The apostle calls on us to put off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, “walking decently as in the day,” not devoting ourselves to “revelries and drunkenness, to beds and licentiousness.”

2.4b  Let the shepherd’s pipe be left to shepherds, and the flute to superstitious people hurrying off to idol worship. In truth these instruments should be sent away from a sober banquet, for they suit wild animals better than human beings, and the more irrational kind of human beings at that. We are told that deer are charmed by pipes and led by the tune into the snares when hunters are chasing them. And when mares are being mated, a flute-tune is played over them like a wedding song; the musicians call it the “horse-mounting song.” In short, every sight and sound that is unworthy of a free person, and every shameful sensation that comes from lack of self-control (which is truly a lack of feeling), must be cut out completely. We must guard against the pleasure that tickles the eyes and ears and makes us soft and unmanly. For the varied spells of limp, broken melodies and mournful rhythms of the Carian muse corrupt character, and with their undisciplined and wicked art drag people down into passion.

2.4c  In contrast to such revelry, the Spirit sings of the divine service: “Praise him with the sound of the trumpet.” For at the sound of a trumpet he will raise the dead. “Praise him with the psaltery,” because the tongue is the Lord’s psaltery. “And praise him with the harp”: let the harp be understood as the mouth, struck by the Spirit as though with a plectrum. “Praise him with drum and dance”: he means the Church, rehearsing the resurrection of the flesh in the sounding of the skin. “Praise him with strings and organ”: he calls our body the organ and its sinews the strings, through which it has received its harmonious tension, and when it is struck by the Spirit it gives out human voices. “Praise him with cymbals of shouting”: he calls the tongue the cymbal of the mouth, which sounds along with the lips as they are struck.

2.4d  For this reason he called out to humanity, “Let every breath praise the Lord,” because he has watched over every breath he has made. For man is truly an instrument of peace. If you investigate the other instruments, you will find them to be instruments of war, which either inflame desires, or kindle passions, or work up rage. In their wars, for example, the Etruscans use the trumpet, the Arcadians the pipe, the Sicilians the pektis, the Cretans the lyre, the Spartans the flute, the Thracians the horn, the Egyptians the drum, and the Arabs the cymbal. But we use only one instrument, the peaceful Word alone, with which we honor God. We no longer use the old psaltery, trumpet, drum and flute. Men trained for war, who despised the fear of God, were accustomed to use these at their festivals, so that through such rhythms their slackened spirit might be roused up again.

2.4e  Let our friendly cheer at the drink be twofold, as the law teaches. For if the command is “You shall love the Lord your God,” and then “your neighbor,” then the first kind of goodwill should be toward God, in thanksgiving and the singing of psalms. The second should be toward our neighbor, in dignified conversation. For the apostle says, “Let the word of the Lord dwell in you richly.” This Word fits itself to times, persons and places, and here it is a Word for the banquet. For the apostle adds again: “teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing to God in your hearts with grace; and whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God his Father.” This is our revel of thanksgiving. And if you want to sing and play to the harp or the lyre, there is no fault in it. You will be imitating the righteous Hebrew king who gave thanks to God.

2.4f  “Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous; praise is fitting for the upright,” says the prophecy. “Give thanks to the Lord on the harp; sing to him on the ten-stringed psaltery; sing him a new song.” Does not the ten-stringed psaltery point to the Word, Jesus, who is shown forth by the letter standing for ten? Just as it is fitting to bless the Maker of all things before we share in food, so at the drinking it is right to sing to him as we share in his creatures. For a psalm is a tuneful and sober blessing; the apostle calls the psalm “a spiritual song.” Above all, before we fall asleep, it is holy to give thanks to God, having enjoyed his grace and kindness, so that we go to sleep in godly fashion. “And give thanks to him in songs of the lips,” it says, “for all good pleasure comes by his command, and there is no lack in his salvation.” Even among the ancient Greeks, at drinking feasts and over the cups being poured, a song called the skolion was sung, after the pattern of the Hebrew psalms. Sometimes all sang the paean together with one voice, and sometimes they took turns passing the toasts of the song around. The more musical among them sang to the lyre.

2.4g  But let love songs be gone far away, and let our songs be hymns to God. “Let them praise his name in the dance,” it says; “let them sing to him with timbrel and psaltery.” And who is the choir that sings? The Spirit himself will tell you: “His praise is in the assembly of the holy ones; let them rejoice in their King.” And again he adds: “For the Lord takes pleasure in his people.” We should accept only sober harmonies. We must drive as far as possible from our vigorous minds those truly soft and slack harmonies, which use corrupt skill in the bending of the notes and slide into softness and vulgar buffoonery. But stern and sober melodies reject the arrogance of drunkenness. So we should leave the chromatic harmonies to drunken, unrestrained revels and to flowery, harlot-like music.

2.5a  On Laughter. People who imitate ridiculous, or rather laughable, passions must be driven out of our way of life. All speech flows from the mind and character, so ridiculous words cannot be uttered unless they come from a ridiculous character. The saying “There is no good tree that bears rotten fruit, nor again a rotten tree that bears good fruit” fits here too, for speech is the fruit of the mind. So if buffoons are to be banished from our community, we must be far from allowing ourselves to play the buffoon. It is out of place to be found imitating what we are forbidden to listen to. It is much more out of place to work at becoming ridiculous oneself, that is, abusive and laughable. If we would not put up with being dressed in a ridiculous way, as some are seen in processions, how could we reasonably tolerate the inner man being shaped into something still more ridiculous?

2.5b  And if we would not willingly twist our faces into something more ridiculous, how could we deliberately try to be, and to look, ridiculous in our speech, mocking the most precious of all human possessions, the word? To practice this is mere buffoonery, since talk that is merely comic is not worth hearing. By its very words it trains us toward shameful deeds. We should be witty and charming, but not clowns. Even laughter itself must be kept under control. When it comes out in the right way, it shows good order; when it goes the wrong way, it reveals a lack of self-control. In short, we must not remove from people whatever is natural to them, but set a fitting measure and a proper time for it. Man is a creature that can laugh, but that does not mean we should laugh at everything, just as a horse, which can neigh, does not neigh at everything. As reasoning creatures, we should keep ourselves in good balance. We should ease the strictness and over-tension of our earnestness in tune, not let it go slack out of tune.

2.5c  The proper relaxing of the face in harmony, as of an instrument, is called a smile. This is the laughter of self-controlled people (the cheerfulness is, so to speak, reflected in the face). But when the face goes slack out of tune, it is called, in women, a giggle, which is the laughter of a prostitute. In men it is called a guffaw, which is the laughter of a suitor and of an insolent man. “A fool raises his voice when he laughs,” says the Scripture, “but a shrewd man will hardly smile quietly.” Here he uses “shrewd” to mean sensible, the opposite of the fool. But we must not on the other hand be sullen; we should be thoughtful. I quite approve of the man who was seen “smiling with a grim face,” for then his laughter “would be less open to ridicule.” Even the smile needs to be trained. If something is shameful, we should be seen to blush rather than smile, so that we do not seem to share in the pleasure out of fellow-feeling. If something is sad, it is fitting to look downcast rather than seem to enjoy it. The one is a sign of human reasoning; the other suggests a reputation for cruelty.

2.5d  We should not laugh all the time, for that is without measure. We should not laugh in the presence of older people or others who deserve respect, unless they themselves make a pleasant joke to cheer us. We should not laugh at just anyone, or in every place, or with everyone, or about everything. Laughter is especially a slippery slope into slander for young people and women. Looking dignified, even from a distance, drives off those who would tempt us. Dignity alone, just by its appearance, can beat back the assaults of licentiousness. As for the senseless, one might say all of them, wine “bids them laugh softly and dance,” turning their effeminate character toward softness. And we should notice how, from this, loose freedom of speech increases disorder into foul talk: “and he let slip a word that had better been left unsaid.” Indeed, it happens that in wine the characters of the deceitful are most clearly seen, stripped of their pretense by the shameless frankness of drunkenness. Because of it reason, heavy-headed with drink, is put to sleep within the soul itself, and the unruly passions are roused and overpower the weakness of reasoning.

2.6a  On Filthy Speaking. We must keep entirely away from filthy talk ourselves, and we must shut the mouths of those who use it. We can do this with a sharper look, by turning the face away, by what is called a sneer, and often also with a rather harsh word. “For what comes out of the mouth,” he says, “defiles a man.” It shows him to be common, pagan, uneducated and licentious, not a person of his own mind, well-ordered and self-controlled. As for hearing and seeing shameful things, the divine Instructor acts like the trainers of boys who wrestle. To keep their ears from being injured, he puts self-controlled words around us like ear-guards, so that the blow of fornication cannot reach far enough to break the soul. And he directs our eyes to the sight of what is good, saying that it is better to slip with the feet than with the eyes.

2.6b  The apostle drives off this filthy speaking when he says, “Let no rotten word come out of your mouth, but only what is good.” And again: “As is fitting for saints, let shamefulness not be named among you, nor foolish talk, nor coarse joking, which are not fitting, but rather thanksgiving.” If the person who calls his brother a fool is liable to judgment, what shall we say of the one who talks foolishly? About this too it is written: “Whoever speaks an idle word will give account of it to the Lord on the day of judgment.” And again He says, “By your word you will be justified, and by your word you will be condemned.” What, then, are the ear-guards that save us? And what is the training for eyes that slip? They are time spent with the righteous. Such company takes hold of the ears beforehand and blocks them against those who want to draw us away from the truth.

2.6c  “Bad company corrupts good character,” says the poet. The apostle puts it more nobly: “Be those who hate what is evil and cling to what is good.” For the one who lives among the holy will be made holy. We must therefore keep away completely from shameful things heard, said or seen. Much more must we keep clear of shameful deeds. These include displaying or uncovering parts of the body that should not be shown, and gazing at the more private parts. The modest son could not bear to look at the righteous man’s nakedness, which was shameful. Self-control covered what drunkenness had uncovered, the glaring fault of ignorance. We must be no less pure in the words we utter, and the ears of those who believe in Christ must be closed to such words. For this reason, it seems to me, the Instructor does not allow us even to say anything indecent. He attacks licentiousness from far off.

2.6d  For He is always skilled at cutting out the roots of sins. He turns “You shall not commit adultery” into “You shall not desire,” since adultery is the fruit of desire, the evil root. In the same way here, the Instructor condemns the careless use of words, cutting off the careless mixing with licentiousness. Disorder in words builds the habit of disorder in deeds, and practising self-control in speech is training to resist lust. We have explained in a deeper discussion that the label “truly shameful” does not belong to the names (the unusual names, not used in everyday speech) for the organs of intercourse, nor to those organs, nor to the union of marriage. Knee and shin are not shameful members, nor are their names, nor what they do. The private parts are also members of the human body, and they are counted worthy of reverence, not shame. What is shameful is their unlawful use, and that is why it deserves disgrace, reproach and punishment. For the only thing that is truly shameful is vice and what is done through it.

2.6e  By the same reasoning, “shameful speaking” is properly the name for talk about the deeds of vice, such as discussing adultery or the love of boys and the like. Idle, foolish chatter must also be silenced. “For in much talking,” it says, “you will not escape sin.” So the lazy tongue will pay a penalty. “There is one who is found wise by keeping silent, and one who is hated for his many words.” The chatterer is already sick of himself: “For the one who multiplies words makes his own soul loathe him.”

2.7a  What those who live together in a refined way must guard against. Let mockery stay far from us, for it starts insult, and from insult come quarrels, fights and hatreds, which swell up. We said that insult is the servant of drunkenness. A person is judged not only by his deeds but also by his words. “At a banquet,” it says, “do not rebuke your neighbour, and do not speak a word of reproach to him.” For even if we are told above all to keep company with the saints, mocking a holy person is a sin. “From the mouth of fools,” Scripture says, “comes a rod of insult.” By “rod” it means the support of insult, the thing on which insult leans and rests. So I admire the apostle, who here too urges us not to let slip coarse jokes or unfitting words. For if gatherings at feasts are held out of love, and the aim of a banquet is friendly kindness toward those who are together, and eating and drinking only go along with love, how should we not behave reasonably?

2.7b  We must not be puzzling one another with riddles, either, for the sake of love. If we gather to deepen our goodwill toward one another, how can we stir up hatred by mocking? It is better to keep silent than to argue back, adding sin to ignorance. “Blessed,” truly, “is the man who has not slipped with his mouth and has not been pierced with grief for sin.” That is, he has either repented of the sin he committed by speaking, or he has spoken in such a way as to grieve no one. In general, then, young men and young women should for the most part keep away from such feasts, so that they do not stumble where they should not. Unaccustomed things heard and indecent things seen stir up the mind while their faith is still tossed by waves. The instability of their age also helps push them toward desire, to which they are already inclined. Sometimes, too, they cause others to stumble, by showing off the dangers of their youthful beauty.

2.7c  Wisdom, it seems, gives good instruction: “Do not sit at all with a married woman, and do not recline with her on your elbow.” That is, do not dine with her often or eat with her. So the text goes on: “And do not argue with her over wine, lest your heart turn aside toward her, and in your blood you slide into destruction.” For the freedom that comes with wine is treacherous, and it can lead to a fall. He says “married” because the danger is greater for the man who tries to break the bond of a marriage. But if some necessity arises that requires women to be present, let them be well covered, outwardly with clothing and inwardly with modesty. As for women who are not married, it is the worst scandal for them to be present at a banquet of men, especially men who have been drinking. The men, for their part, should keep their eyes fixed on the couch, lean steadily on their elbows without moving, and be present with their ears alone. If they sit, they must not cross their legs, or lay one thigh over the other, or prop the chin on the hand. It is ill-bred not to hold oneself up, and in a young man it is a fault to be blamed.

2.7d  Constantly shifting about and changing position is also a sign of lightness. It belongs to the self-controlled man, right from the start, to choose the smaller portion and the slower pace in eating and drinking, not the more hasty, both at the beginning and in the pauses between courses. He also stops early and is not attached to the food. “Eat,” it says, “what is set before you, as a man should. Be the first to stop, for the sake of good manners. If you are seated among many, do not reach out your hand before them.” So we must never leap ahead because greed persuades us. Nor should we strain to stretch the meal out for a long time, since by lagging behind we confess our lack of self-control. Nor should we be seen in the middle of the meal clinging to the food like wild animals, or taking a large helping of savory dishes. For man is by nature not a relish-eater but a grain-eater. It is also fitting for a self-controlled man to rise before the crowd and quietly slip away from the banquet. “For at the time for getting up,” it says, “do not be last; hurry off home.” The Twelve called together the multitude of the disciples and said, “It is not right for us to leave the word of God and serve tables.” If they guarded against this, much more did they flee gluttony.

2.7e  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 no greater burden on you than these necessary things: to abstain from things sacrificed to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.” We must guard against drunken excess just as we guard against hemlock, for both drag us down to death. “We must also keep away from extreme laughter and from excessive tears.” Often drunken men laugh loudly for a long time, and then, I do not know how, are led by some drunken impulse into tears. Both effeminate behavior and insolence are out of harmony with the Word. Older men, looking on the young as their children, will very seldom, but perhaps sometimes, play with them, joking in a way that will train them in good behavior.

2.7f  For example, to a shy and silent young man one may say playfully something like this: “This son of mine—I mean the one who says nothing—never stops talking.” A joke like this deepens the young man’s modesty. In a playful way it brings out the good qualities he has by accusing him of the bad ones he does not have. It is a teacher’s device, confirming what is present by what is not. The same kind of judgment lies behind the saying that a water-drinker, a sober man, is behaving drunkenly and is drunk. But if there are people who love to mock, we must keep silent and pass their idle words along, as we pass on the full cups. Such sport is risky. “The mouth of the reckless is near to ruin.” “You shall not accept an empty report, nor agree to join an unjust man as an unjust witness,” whether in slanders, in abusive speech, or even in malicious talk.

2.7g  I think I should also set a limit on the voice of self-controlled people, at least those who are permitted to speak, namely the one who is answering in conversation. Silence is the virtue of women and the safe honor of the young, but good speech belongs to a tested age. “Speak, elder, at a banquet, for it becomes you. But speak without hindrance and with exact knowledge.” “Young man,” wisdom allows you also: “Speak, if you must. When you have barely been asked twice, sum up your words briefly.” Both speakers should keep their voices in due proportion. A loud delivery is utterly mad, and speaking so that those nearby cannot hear is the mark of a senseless person, since they will not hear him. The first is a sign of low breeding, the second of arrogance. Let there also be no quarrelsomeness, no striving for an empty victory in words, since our goal is freedom from disturbance, and this is what “Peace to you” means. “Before you have heard, do not answer a word.” A soft, broken voice belongs to an effeminate man, but a measured voice belongs to the self-controlled man, who keeps his speech in check in loudness, length, speed and amount.

2.7h  We must never talk at great length, or too much, or idly, nor must we speak in a hurried, tumbling rush. The voice itself, so to speak, must be given its due of justice, and those who shout at the wrong moments and bawl must be silenced. This is why the self-controlled Odysseus beat Thersites with blows. He was the only one who was punished, because he was a man of measureless words, who knew in his mind many words that were disorderly, uttered idly and not in good order. “A talkative man is dreadful in his own destruction.” With babblers it is like old shoes: everything else is worn out by wickedness, and only the tongue is left over, to do harm. So Wisdom gives the most practical advice for life: “Do not chatter in the company of elders.” She cuts off foolish talk at the top and begins from God, laying down the rule of moderation like this: “Do not repeat your words in your prayer.” Clicking noises, whistles, and snapping of the fingers, which people use to call their servants, are signals without words, and rational people should avoid them. We should also give up constant spitting and violent throat-clearing.

2.7i  Do not blow your nose at the drinking either. We must have some regard for our fellow guests, so that they do not turn away in nausea from this kind of disorderly conduct, which accuses a person of lack of self-control. The manger and the dung-heap are not in the same place for oxen and donkeys. Yet many people blow their nose and spit while they are dining in the same place. If someone happens to sneeze, or likewise belch, he must not make a noise that rings in the ears of those nearby and testifies to his own lack of training. The belch must be let pass quietly with the breath as it goes out, the mouth shaped decently, not stretched and gaping like a tragic mask. The disturbance of a sneeze should be removed by checking the breathing gently. In this way, by managing the passage of the breath, we can quietly put out the sudden threat of the wind in the most seemly manner, and even try to conceal anything superfluous that the air may force out with it.

2.7j  To want to add to such noises instead of reducing them is a sign of arrogance and disorder. People who pick at their teeth until their gums bleed are unpleasant to themselves and offensive to their neighbors. Tickling the ears and provoking sneezes are also pig-like itches, which practice unrestrained fornication. We must also avoid shameful sights and shameful talk about them. Let the gaze be steady, the turning of the neck and the movement of the body composed, and the gestures of the hands in conversation restrained. In short, the Christian belongs to stillness, quietness, calm and peace.

2.8a  Question: should we use perfumed oils and wreaths? We have no need to use wreaths and perfumed oils. They run aground on pleasures and laziness, especially when night is near. I know that the woman brought an “alabaster jar of ointment” to the holy supper, anointed the Lord’s feet, and sang his praise. I also know that the ancient kings of the Hebrews were crowned with gold and precious stones. But the woman had not yet shared in the Word (for she was still a sinner). She honored the Master with the thing she thought finest among her possessions, the ointment. With the adornment of her body, her own hair, she wiped away the excess ointment, and she poured out on the Lord tears of repentance. For this reason “her sins have been forgiven.” This can also be a symbol of the Lord’s teaching and his suffering. Feet anointed with fragrant ointment hint at divine teaching traveling with good repute to the ends of the earth: “Their voice has gone out to the ends of the earth.” And if I do not seem tiresome, the Lord’s perfumed feet are the apostles. In keeping with prophecy, they received a share of the Holy Spirit, the fragrance of the anointing.

2.8b  So the apostles, who went around the whole world and proclaimed the gospel, are allegorically called the Lord’s feet. The Spirit foretells this about them through the psalmist: “Let us worship at the place where his feet stood.” That is, let us worship where his feet, the apostles, arrived, since by their preaching he came to the ends of the earth. The tears are repentance. The loosened hair announced release from love of adornment. It also announced the affliction, borne with endurance, that goes with preaching for the Lord’s sake, since the old vainglory has been loosed for the sake of the new faith. But it also reveals the Lord’s passion, for those who understand it mystically in this way. The oil is the Lord himself, from whom comes the mercy shown to us. The ointment, which is oil that has been tampered with, is Judas the betrayer. Through him the Lord was anointed on the feet as he was departing from his life in the world, for the dead are anointed with perfume. We are the tears: sinners who have repented, who have believed in him, and whose sins he has forgiven. The loosened hair is Jerusalem, deserted and in mourning, for whose sake the prophets’ laments were made.

2.8c  The Lord himself teaches us that Judas is the one who is tampered with, when he says, “Whoever dips with me in the dish, this one will betray me.” Do you see the deceitful table companion? This same Judas betrayed the Teacher with a kiss. He became a hypocrite with a deceitful kiss, imitating another hypocrite of old, and exposing that people of whom it was said: “This people love me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” So it is not unlikely that Judas himself stands for both kinds of oil. As a disciple who had been shown mercy, he is oil. As a betrayer, he is deceitful, drugged oil. This, then, is what the perfumed feet were prophesying: the betrayal by Judas, as the Lord went on toward his passion. And the Savior himself, when he washed the disciples’ feet and sent them out to good works, hinted at their journey for the benefit of the nations. By his own power he had made that journey ready beforehand, fair and clean.

2.8d  In these events the ointment gave off its fragrance, and the work of that fragrance, which reaches everyone, has been made known. For the Lord’s passion has filled us with fragrance, but 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 makes known through us the fragrance of the knowledge of him in every place. For we are the Lord’s fragrance to God, among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To some it is a fragrance from death to death, and to others a fragrance from life to life.” As for the kings of the Jews, they wore a composite, varied crown of gold and precious stones. They were the “anointed ones” (the christs), and they carried Christ symbolically on their heads without knowing it. They were adorned with the head of the Lord.

2.8e  A precious stone, a pearl or an emerald, is a hidden picture of the Word himself. Gold, in turn, is the incorruptible Word, who does not admit the rust (or poison) of decay. When he was born, the Magi brought him gold as a symbol of kingship. This crown, made in the likeness of the Lord, stays immortal, for it does not wither like a flower. I also know what Aristippus the Cyrenian said. Aristippus lived a soft and luxurious life. He put a sophistical argument like this: “A horse anointed with perfume is not harmed in its excellence as a horse, nor is a dog perfumed in its excellence as a dog. So neither is a man.” That was how he drew his conclusion. But the horse and the dog take no notice of the perfume. Those whose sense of smell is more rational are more to be blamed for enjoying it when they put on girlish scents. These perfumes come in endless varieties: the Brenthian, the Metallian, the Royal, the Plangonian, and the Egyptian Psagdas.

2.8f  Simonides is not ashamed to say in his iambic verses: “I was anointed with perfumes and incense and bacchar, for a merchant happened to be there.” People also make perfume from lilies and from henna. Nard is highly valued among them, as are ointment of roses and the others that women still use: liquid and dry perfumes, scented powders, and perfumes burned as incense. Every day they invent some new way to match their insatiable desire with an insatiable supply of fragrance. So they reek of a great lack of taste. These women also perfume their clothes, bedding and houses with incense and sprinkle them with scent. Luxury all but forces even their chamber pots to smell of perfume. Some people are indignant at this enthusiasm. They think perfumes make the men’s quarters effeminate, and they seem to me right to be so hostile to them. They even drive the makers of perfume, the perfumers, out of well-governed cities, and the dyers of flower-colored wools as well. For deceitful garments and ointments have no right to enter the city of truth.

2.8g  It is especially fitting that the men among us should smell not of perfumes but of nobility and goodness. Let the woman breathe out Christ, the royal ointment, and not scented powders and perfumes. Let her always be anointed with the heavenly oil of self-control, taking delight in the holy ointment, the Spirit. Christ prepares this for people who know him: an ointment of fragrance, made up from heavenly spices. The Lord himself is anointed with this ointment, as David shows: “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. Myrrh, stacte and cassia come from your garments.” But let us not, without noticing it, come to loathe perfumes the way vultures do, or beetles (they say beetles die when anointed with rose perfume). Women should be permitted a few of these perfumes, those that do not overwhelm their husbands. For excessive anointing with perfume smells of a funeral, not of life together.

2.8h  Yet oil itself is hostile to bees and to insects. Among people, it has helped some and stirred others to fight. Those who were cowardly before, once anointed with it, it turns in the stadiums into thorough fighters in the contest. But perfume is a soft oil. Do you not think it can make noble character effeminate? Certainly. Just as we have shut out luxury from taste, so we also banish the pursuit of pleasure in what we see and smell. Otherwise we may unknowingly give a way back into the soul, through the senses (like unguarded doors), to the self-indulgence we drove out. Suppose they say that the Lord, the great High Priest, offers the incense of fragrance to God. Let them not take this to mean a sacrifice and the fragrance of burning incense. Let them accept instead that the Lord offers on the altar what love has made acceptable, the spiritual fragrance.

2.8i  Oil by itself is enough to make the skin glossy, to relax the sinews, and to check any heavy smell of the body. For that purpose we may well need oil. But the cultivation of fragrance is a bait of idle self-indulgence, drawing a person from far off into greedy desire. The undisciplined man is led on from every side: by food, by bedding, by company, by his eyes, his ears and his jaws, and by his nostrils too. As oxen are pulled by rings and ropes, so the undisciplined man is dragged about by incense, perfumes and the scents of garlands. We give no place to any pleasure that is tied to no useful service in life. So let us make a distinction here too, and choose what is useful.

2.8j  There are some fragrances that do not dull the head or stir up desire. They do not smell of sexual embrace or loose company. Used with moderation they are healthy, feeding the brain when it is in poor condition and strengthening the stomach. We should not throw out their use altogether. Ointment should be used like a medicine or a remedy: to revive failing strength, and against catarrh, chills and low spirits. The comic poet says somewhere: “He anoints his nostrils with perfumes; it is a very great part of health to give the brain good smells.” The rubbing of the feet with the oil of warming or cooling ointments is also practised for the sake of benefit. In those who are congested, it draws the fluid from the head and lets it drain down to the less important parts of the body.

2.8k  But pleasure that has no usefulness joined to it is a mark of a courtesan’s character and a drug that provokes desire. There is a real difference between bathing oneself in perfume and being anointed with ointment. The first is womanish; the second is sometimes even profitable. The philosopher Aristippus, for example, once anointed himself with ointment and said that the wretched effeminate men deserved to perish miserably for bringing the benefit of ointment into disrepute. “Honour the physician for the use you have of him,” says the Scripture, “for the Most High created him, and healing comes from the Lord.” Then it goes on: “And the perfumer will make a mixture.” Clearly, ointments are given for benefit and not for self-indulgence. We must never take pains over the provocative side of ointments, but choose what is helpful. After all, God granted people the making of oil to help them in their labours.

2.8l  Foolish women dye their grey hairs and perfume their locks, yet they go grey sooner, because spices are drying. This is why those who use perfume look more unkempt, and dryness makes the hair greyer. (Whether grey hair is a withering of the hair or a lack of heat, the dryness drinks up the moist nourishment proper to the hair and turns it grey.) How can people who run from grey hair reasonably go on loving perfumes, when perfumes cause it? Just as dogs track wild animals by the scent, so the self-controlled hunt down the licentious by their overdone perfume. The use of garlands is much the same, fit for revelry and drunkenness: “Away! Do not put a garland around my head.” In spring it is good to spend time in dewy, soft meadows, green with flowers of every colour, and to feed, like the bees, on their natural, pure fragrance. But to weave a garland from an untouched meadow and wear it about at home is not for people of self-control. It is not fitting for revelling hair to be covered with rosebuds, violets, lilies or other such flowers, as though dressing oneself in the greenery.

2.8m  A garland set around the head chills the hair in any case, both by its moisture and by its coldness. For this reason physicians, explaining by natural science that the brain is cold, think it right to anoint the chest and the tips of the nostrils with ointment. Then the warm vapour, passing gently upward, can strongly warm the chill. So a man is far from right to cool the head with flowers when the sinewy part wants to be warmed. Besides, those who wear garlands lose the delight of the blossoms. People who bind a garland above their eyes do not enjoy the sight, and those who drive the flowers up above their breathing do not enjoy the fragrance. Fragrance naturally rises and evaporates upward above the head, so the breath is left without enjoyment, since the fragrance is snatched away. A flower, like any beauty, gives pleasure when it is looked at, and in enjoying beautiful things through the eye we should glorify the Creator.

2.8n  Wearing them is harmful, and the pleasure soon passes, punished by regret. Their short life is quickly exposed, for both of them fade, the flower and the beauty. And of those who touch them, the one cools them and the other sets them on fire. In a word, enjoying them by any means other than the eye is an outrage, not a delight. We should take our delight as in a paradise, with self-control, since we truly follow the Scripture. We should think of a woman’s crown as her husband, and of a husband’s crown as his marriage. The flowers of the marriage are the children of both, which the divine farmer gathers from the meadows of the flesh. “The crown of old men is their children’s children, and the glory of children is their fathers,” it says. For us the glory is the Father of all, and the crown of the whole church is Christ.

2.8o  Flowers, like roots and herbs, have their own properties. Some are beneficial, some harmful, and some risky. Ivy, for example, is cooling. The walnut tree gives off a drugging vapor, as its name, when traced to its origin, shows. The narcissus is a flower with a heavy scent, and its name exposes it, since it produces numbness in the nerves. The scents of roses and violets, which are mildly cool, relieve and check heaviness of the head. But we are not permitted to join others in drinking at all, and not even to get drunk on wine. Saffron and the cyprus flower lead to painless sleep. Many flowers, though, warm the brain, which is naturally cold, by their scents, thinning out the excess matter in the head.

2.8p  They say the rose also gets its name from this, because it sends out a great stream of fragrance, and so it fades quickly. But the ancient Greeks did not yet use crowns at all. Neither the suitors nor the luxury-loving Phaeacians wore them. At the games, first came the giving of the prizes, second the circling round to be acclaimed, third the showering of leaves, and last the crown, after Greece, once the Persian wars were over, had grown in luxury. Those trained by the Word, then, are kept from crowns. It is not that they think this would bind the Word, who has his seat in the brain, and not that the crown might be a symbol of revelry and arrogance. It is because crowns are named after the idols. Sophocles, for example, 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 of Pieria.” They say that Hera delights in the lily and Artemis in the myrtle.

2.8q  Even if flowers were made above all for the sake of man, foolish people have taken them and used them wrongly. They have not used them in thankful use of their own, but in the ungrateful service of demons. So we must abstain from them “for conscience’ sake.” The crown is a symbol of carefree ease, free from trouble. For this reason people crown the dead, and for the same reason the idols, bearing witness by the act itself that the idols are dead. Revelers do not celebrate their rites without crowns, and once they have put on the flowers, they are inflamed for the ceremony. We must have no fellowship at all with demons. Nor should we crown the living image of God, as dead idols are crowned. The fair crown of what does not fade is laid up for the one who has lived well. The earth has no room to bear this flower. Heaven alone knows how to bring it to fruit.

2.8r  Besides, it is senseless for us who have heard that the Lord was crowned with thorns to put on flowers, making light of the Lord’s solemn suffering. The Lord’s crown spoke prophetically in riddle of us, who were once fruitless, and who are placed around him through the church, of which he is the head. It is also a figure of faith: of life, because of the substance of the wood; of joy, because of the name of a crown; and of danger, because of the thorn. For it is not possible to approach the Word without blood. But this woven crown of flowers fades. The braid of crookedness comes undone, and the flower withers. For the glory of those who have not believed in the Lord fades. They crowned Jesus when he was lifted up, bearing witness to their own ignorance. The hard-hearted do not understand that this very thing, which they call an insult to the Lord, was a prophecy, wisely framed.

2.8s  “The people who went astray did not know the Lord. They are not circumcised in their reasoning, and their darkness has not been enlightened. They did not see God. They denied the Lord, and they have lost the name of Israel. They persecuted God and hoped to insult the Word. The one they crucified as a criminal, they crowned as a king. For this reason they will come to know, as Lord and righteous, the loving God in the man they did not believe in. They provoked him to show himself as Lord, and by that very act they bore witness to him when he was lifted up. They fastened the diadem of righteousness on the one exalted above every name, by means of the ever-flowering thorn. To those who plot against him, this diadem is an enemy and holds them back. To those who gather together in the church, it is a friend and fences them round. This crown is the flower of those who have believed in the glorified One, but it draws blood from the unbelieving and punishes them.”

2.8t  Yes, and the crown is also a symbol of the Lord’s triumph. On his head, the ruling part of his body, he bore all our evils, by which we were being pricked. By his own suffering he rescued us from stumbling-blocks, sins and thorns of that kind. He brought the devil to nothing, and so he rightly said in triumph, “Death, where is your sting?” And we gather grapes from thorns and figs from brambles, while those toward whom he stretched out his hands, a disobedient and fruitless people, are torn into wounds. I can tell you another hidden meaning here as well. When the almighty Lord of all began to give the law through the Word, he wanted his power to be made plain to Moses. A vision of God’s form appeared to him, light shaped upon a burning bush. (The bush is a thorny plant.) When the Word had finished giving the law and his visit among men, the Lord was again crowned with thorn, in a hidden sense. He was going from here to the place from which he had come down, and he recapitulated the beginning of his old descent. The Word first seen in the bush, and afterward taken up through the thorn, would show that everything is the work of one power. He is one, from the one Father, who is the beginning and end of the age.

2.8u  But I have strayed from the instructor’s manner by bringing in the style of a teacher, so I now return to the subject before us. We have shown that the delight of flowers, and the benefit of perfumes and incense, are not to be rejected. They serve as a medicine for healing, and sometimes also for moderate relaxation. Some may ask, “What then is the use of flowers to those who do not wear them?” Let them know that perfumed oils are made from flowers, and that these have many uses. Susinon oil is made from lilies and is warming, opening, drawing, moistening, cleansing, fine in texture, stimulating to the bile and softening. Narcissus oil, made from the narcissus, helps just as much as the Susinon. Myrtle oil, made from myrtle and myrtle berries, is astringent and holds back discharges from the body. The oil from roses is cooling.

2.8v  In general, these things too were made for our good use. Scripture says, “Listen to me, and blossom like a rose planted by streams of water. Give off a sweet smell like frankincense, and bless the Lord for his works.” There would be much to say on this subject, since we hold that flowers and spices were made for necessary benefits, not for the excesses of luxury. If some allowance must be made, it is enough for people to enjoy the scent of flowers. Let them not wear them as crowns. For the Father cares greatly for man, and gives his own craftsmanship to him alone. So 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.”

2.9a  How We Should Approach Sleep Next we must say how to go to sleep, keeping in mind the rules of self-control. After the meal we bless God for sharing these enjoyments with us and for the day that has run its course. Then our talk should turn to sleep, and we should dismiss costly bedding: rugs sprinkled with gold, smooth coverlets embroidered in gold, purple robes, expensive shaggy cloaks, fancy purple blankets, thick woolen covers laid on top, and beds “softer than sleep.” Besides the shame of such self-indulgence, sleeping in downy feathers is harmful. The bodies of those who lie in them sink as into a chasm because the bedding is so soft. † It is not suitable for those who turn over in it, because the bed rises like a hill on either side of the body. It allows food to be digested, but it overheats it all the more, and that ruins the nourishment.

2.9b  Those who can roll over on level beds have, in this, a kind of natural exercise for sleep. They digest their food more easily and make themselves readier for emergencies. Furthermore, silver-footed couches condemn their owners as very showy. And ivory on little beds, “from a body that has left its soul, is not pure.” For holy people it is a lazy contrivance for rest. So we should not be eager about such things. Those who own them are not forbidden to use them, but fussing over them is forbidden, for happiness does not lie in them. On the other hand, it is Cynic vainglory to make a practice of sleeping like Diomedes, “and under him was spread the hide of an ox of the fields,” unless circumstances force it. Odysseus set right the lame leg of his wedding bed with a stone. Such plain living and doing for oneself was practiced not only by ordinary people but also by the leaders of the ancient Greeks.

2.9c  But why do I speak of these? Jacob slept on the ground with a stone for his pillow, and then he was counted worthy to see the sight that is beyond man. For us, following reason, the bed should be plain and simple, with a moderate comfort: in summer something to cover us, in cold weather something to keep us warm. The bedstead should not be fussy, and its legs should be smooth. Elaborate carvings sometimes become highways for crawling creatures, which wind around the cuts of the craftsman’s work and do not slip off. Above all, the softness of the bedding should be moderate and manly. Sleep should not be a total loosening of the body, but a relaxing of it. So I say we should take sleep not for laziness, but as a rest from our work.

2.9d  So we should doze off in such a way that we wake easily. For he says, “Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning. Be like people waiting for their master to return 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.” A sleeping man is of no more use than a dead one. So we should often rise from bed in the night and bless God. Blessed are those who stay 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 does sleep, since there is no darkness. So the enlightened person is awake toward God, and such a person lives: “What came to be in him was life.” “Blessed is the man,” says Wisdom, “who will listen 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 like the rest,” says the Scripture, “but let us stay awake and be sober.

2.9e  For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night.” That is, in the darkness of ignorance. “But let us, who belong to the day, be sober. For you are all sons of light and sons of the day. We do not belong to night or to darkness.” “But whoever among us is most of all a guardian of true life and of genuine understanding stays awake as long as possible. He keeps only as much sleep as is useful for his health, and that is not much, once it has become a good habit.” Training in self-discipline, born of hard work, produces a lasting wakefulness. So let our food not weigh us down but lighten us, so that sleep harms us as little as possible. Weighed-down food is like the weights hung on swimmers. Instead, let sobriety lift us up, as if from the deep below, to the surface of wakefulness.

2.9f  The pull of sleep is like death. Through lack of awareness it carries us down into insensibility, and it cuts off the light by the closing of the eyelids. So let us, who are sons of the true light, not shut this light outside. Let us turn it inward on ourselves and light up the eyes of the hidden man. Let us look upon the truth itself and share in its streams, so that true dreams may be clearly and wisely revealed to us. But the belching of those heavy with wine, the rattling breath of those stuffed with food, the snoring wrapped up in bedclothes, and the rumbling of cramped stomachs bury the seeing eye of the soul, because the mind is filled with countless fantasies. The cause is excess food, which drags the reasoning part down into insensibility. “For much sleep brings no benefit to our bodies or our souls, and even though it is natural, it is not altogether suited to the pursuit of truth.” The righteous Lot (I leave aside for now the interpretation of the economy of regeneration) would not have been led into that unlawful union if he had not been made drunk by his daughters and stupefied by sleep.

2.9g  If, then, we cut away the causes of heavy drowsiness, we shall sleep more soberly. For those who have the wakeful Word living in them “ought not to sleep the whole night through.” We should rise in the night, especially when the days are growing short. One should pursue learning, another begin his own craft, and the women take up their wool-working. All of us, so to speak, should fight against sleep, accustoming ourselves to it gently and by degrees, so that through wakefulness we may gain more time for living. (For sleep, like a tax collector, takes half of our lifetime.) Much less should we allow sleep in the daytime to those who cut off most of the night for staying awake. Restlessness, drowsy nodding, stretching and yawning are signs of discontent in an unsteady soul. Above all we must know this: it is not the soul that needs sleep, for the soul is always in motion. It is the body that is eased and let go by rest, while the soul no longer works through the body but thinks by itself. So true dreams, for anyone who reasons rightly, are the thoughts of a sober soul. At that time it is undistracted by the body’s sympathies and gives itself the best counsel. For the soul, to be still is destruction. Therefore, by thinking always of God and keeping constant company with him, the soul enrolls wakefulness in the body, makes the person equal to the angels in grace, and takes hold of the eternity of life from the practice of staying awake.

2.10a  What should be said about the begetting of children. The time for intercourse is left for married people alone to consider. For the married, the purpose is the begetting of children, and the end is good children. It is like the farmer: the reason he scatters seed is to provide food, and the end of his farming is gathering in the crops. But far better is the farmer who sows a living field. The one farms because he wants food for the season. The other farms because he cares for the continuance of the whole race. The one plants for himself, the other for God. For God said, “Multiply,” and we must obey. In this respect man becomes an image of God, that a man works together with God in the birth of a man. Not every soil is fit to receive seed. Even if every soil were, it would not be so for the same farmer. Nor should anyone sow on rocks, or outrage the seed. The seed is the substance that begins generation, and it has the principles of nature sown together within it. To shame those natural principles senselessly, by sending them into unnatural channels, is utterly godless.

2.10b  See, then, how the all-wise Moses figuratively rejects fruitless sowing when he says, “You shall not eat the hare or the hyena.” He does not want a man to share their nature or to taste the same licentiousness, for these animals are driven to excess in mating. They say the hare gains an extra opening each year, having as many openings as the years he has lived. So the ban on eating hare shows, they say, a turning away from the love of boys. The hyena, they say, changes in turn from male to female every year, and abstaining from the hyena hints that one must not rush into adultery. I too agree that the all-wise Moses, by this prohibition, hints that we must not be made like these animals. But I do not agree with this way of explaining what he said symbolically.

2.10c  Nature can never be forced into change. What has once been formed in it may not be remade into its opposite by passion. For passion is not nature. Passion tends to debase the stamp of creation, not to rearrange it. Many birds are said to change both color and voice with the seasons. The blackbird, for example, turns yellow from black and becomes a chatterer instead of a singer. The nightingale likewise changes both its color and its song as the seasons turn. But they do not change their nature itself, so as to become female from male by a change of form. Instead, the new growth of feathers blossoms like fresh clothing, a kind of dye on the plumage. A little later, at winter’s threat, it fades like a flower whose color withers. The voice, worn down by the cold, withers in the same way. The surface of the body is thickened by the surrounding air, and the passages in the neck are squeezed and thickened and press upon the breath. The breath is badly confined and chokes, and so it gives out its sound.

2.10d  Then, once the breath is again made like the surrounding air and relaxes with the spring, it is freed from its confinement. It travels through wide passages that until then had been shut. The withered song no longer twitters faintly. It blossoms now, clear and shrill, and the sound of the birds pours out more broadly. The song becomes the spring of the birds’ voice. So we must never believe that the hyena changes its nature. The same animal does not have both organs at once, male and female, as some have supposed. They tell marvelous tales of hermaphrodites and invent a new third nature between female and male, the androgyne. They are badly deceived, because they have not understood the artistry of nature, the mother of all and maker of generation. The hyena is an extremely lustful animal. Under its tail, before the passage for waste, there grows a fleshy protrusion, similar in shape to the female organ. But this fleshy formation has no passage leading to any useful end, that is, neither to a womb nor to the rectum. It has only a large cavity, which receives empty lust when the passages occupied with bearing young are turned away.

2.10e  This same feature grows on both the male and the female hyena, because of their excessive passive lust. The male also takes the passive part with other males. This is why it is very rare to find a female hyena. Pregnancies are not frequent in this animal, since unnatural sowing is so common among them, unchecked. For this reason, it seems to me, Plato in the Phaedrus rejects pederasty and calls it a beastly thing. He says that lustful men, handed over to pleasures, “take the bit between their teeth, mount in the manner of four-footed animals, and try to beget children.” The godless, as the apostle says, “God handed over to passions of dishonor. For their females exchanged natural use for what is against nature. In the same way their males also left natural use and burned in their desire for one another, males working shameful things with males and receiving in themselves the repayment that was due for their error.” Yet nature has not allowed even the most lustful animals to leap upon the passage of waste. Urine is separated off into the bladder, and moistened food into the stomach. Tears go to the eye, blood to the veins, wax to the ears, and mucus to the nostrils. The seat lies next to the end of the rectum, and through it the waste is expelled.

2.10f  Only in hyenas, then, has nature in her variety devised this extra organ for their excessive mating. So it is hollow to a certain depth, to serve the itching parts, but beyond that the cavity is blind, because it was not made for generation. From this it is plain, and generally agreed, that we must refuse sex between males, barren sowing, intercourse from behind, and unnatural unions of the androgynous kind. We are to follow nature herself, who forbids them by the construction of the bodily parts. She made the male virile not to receive seed but to send it forth. When Jeremiah says, that is, when the Spirit says through him, “My house has become a hyena’s den,” he shows his loathing for food taken from dead bodies. By this wise allegory he condemns idolatry. For the house of the living God must truly be pure of idols.

2.10g  Again, Moses forbids eating the hare. The hare mates in every season. The male mounts the female while she sits, coming at her from behind, for the hare is a rear-mounting animal. She conceives every month and conceives again while already pregnant. She mates and gives birth, and right after giving birth she is mated by whatever hare happens to come along, since she is not content with one partner. She conceives again while still nursing, because her womb is divided in two. The empty space of the womb is not the only thing that drives her to intercourse, for everything empty longs to be filled. When hares are pregnant, the other half of the womb is gripped by desire and is in heat. That is why they conceive again on top of a pregnancy. So the prohibition in this riddle urged us to keep away from violent appetites and from repeated acts of intercourse. It urged us to avoid relations with pregnant women, males mounting one another, the corruption of boys, adultery and lust.

2.10h  So the same Moses forbade these things openly, no longer in riddles, with uncovered head, saying: “You shall not commit fornication, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not corrupt boys.” We must keep the Word’s command with all our strength. We must never break it in any way or make the commandments void. For the name of evil desire is “hubris” (outrage). Plato called the horse of desire “outrageous,” having read the words “You have become to me horses mad for women.” The punishment for such outrage will be shown to you by the angels who came to Sodom. They burned up, together with the city itself, those who wanted to violate them. By this clear example they sketched out fire as the fruit of lust. For the misfortunes of the ancients, as we said before, were written down to warn us. They were written so that we would not be caught in the same sins, but would guard against falling into the same penalties.

2.10i  We should regard boys as our sons, and look on other men’s wives as our own daughters. It is a most masterful thing to rule over pleasures, to hold the belly in check, and to be lord over what lies below the belly. The Stoics agree that reason does not allow even the wise man to move his finger carelessly. How much more, then, must those who pursue wisdom master the organ of intercourse! For this reason, I think, it is called the “aidoion” (part of shame), because we must use this part of the body, above all others, with modesty. Nature has allowed us what is fitting, useful and decent, both in food and in lawful marriage. She has also allowed us to desire to have children. Those who chase after excess go wrong against what is natural, and harm themselves through unlawful intercourse.

2.10j  For it is right above all never to have sexual relations with young men as one does with women. So the philosopher who learned from Moses says we must not “sow on rocks and stones,” because what is sown there will never take root and receive its fertile nature. And the Word, through Moses, commanded very plainly: “And you shall not lie with a male as with a woman, for it is an abomination.” Besides this, the noble Plato took his advice from the divine Scriptures and gave it as a law received from there. He said to keep away from “every female field” except one’s own. The Scripture says: “And you shall not give your bed of seed to your neighbor’s wife, to be defiled with her.” And Plato says: “The seeds of concubines are unconsecrated and illegitimate.” Do not sow where you would not want what is sown to grow. Do not touch anyone at all except your own wedded wife. It is right to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh with her alone, for the sake of legitimate offspring.

2.10k  For these are the only things the Word counts as lawful. Since we share in the divine creative power, we must not throw seed away, or abuse it, or sow it in ground that cannot receive it. This same Moses forbids approaching even our wives when they are in their monthly cleansing. It is not reasonable to defile the most fertile part of the seed, which will soon be a human being, with the body’s waste. Nor is it reasonable to wash away the seed of a well-formed offspring in the filthy flow and discharge of that matter, cut off from the furrows of the womb. Nor has Moses presented any of the ancient Hebrews as having intercourse with his pregnant wife. For mere pleasure, even when taken within marriage, is unlawful, unjust and irrational. Moses, on the contrary, keeps husbands away from pregnant women until they have given birth. In fact, the womb lies beneath the bladder and above the intestine called the rectum. It extends its neck “between the shoulders” in the bladder. The opening of the neck, which receives the seed, closes when the womb is full. It is emptied again when it is cleansed by childbirth. Once it has laid down its fruit, it then receives seed again.

2.10l  It is not shameful for us to name the organs of conception, for the benefit of those who hear. God was not ashamed to create them. So the womb, thirsting for children, receives the seed. It refuses the blameworthy side of intercourse, and once the seed is sown it shuts its mouth and bars wantonness completely. Its desires had until then been stirred toward loving embraces. Now they turn inward and are busy with bearing a child, and so they work together with the Creator. It is not right, then, to trouble nature while it is already at work, by going on to excess and outrage. Outrage has many names and many forms. When it turns aside into that part of disorder which concerns sexual pleasure, it is called lust (lagneia). The name itself shows what it is: the common, vulgar, unclean urge toward mating. When these appetites grow, a great crowd of diseases follows: love of fine food, love of wine, love of women, and also profligacy and every kind of love of pleasure. Desire is the tyrant over all of them.

2.10m  Countless sister passions grow alongside these, and from them the undisciplined character reaches its peak. Scripture says, “Whips and punishments are prepared for the undisciplined, on the shoulders of fools.” It calls the strength of undiscipline, and its stubborn endurance, “the shoulders of fools.” For this reason it says, “Remove from your servants empty hopes, and turn away from me unseemly desires. Let the appetite of the belly and sexual intercourse not overtake me.” So we must keep the great mischief of those who plot against us far away. For not only into the knapsack of Crates, but into our city too, “there sails no foolish parasite, no greedy fornicator exulting in his backside, no deceitful harlot,” and no other such beast of pleasure. Let us then sow much dignity of conduct in ourselves throughout our whole life. Whether one should marry at all, or keep entirely clear of marriage (for this too is open to inquiry), I have explained in my work On Continence.

2.10n  But if the very question whether one should marry needed examination, how could anyone be allowed to use intercourse without restraint, as if it were necessary every time, like food? One can see that the nerves, like threads on a loom, are pulled apart and torn by the strain of the union. It also spreads a mist over the senses and cuts down the body’s strength. This is plain among animals without reason and among trained bodies. Athletes who abstain overcome their opponents in contests. Animals are led away from mating, dragged around, almost hauled along, completely drained of all strength and spring. The sophist from Abdera called intercourse “a small epilepsy,” and thought it an incurable disease. Do not faint spells and weakness follow, and are they not put down to the greatness of what is lost? “For a human being grows out of a human being and is torn away from him.” See how great the harm is.

2.10o  A whole man is torn away through the loss that comes with intercourse. For Scripture says, “This now is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh.” A man is emptied by the seed to the full extent of what is seen in his body, because what leaves him is the beginning of generation. The seething of the matter also stirs up the body and shakes its harmony. How witty, then, was the man who was asked how he stood toward sexual pleasures. He said, “Hush, man! I was most glad to escape them, as from a raging and savage master.” But let marriage be approved and given its place. The Lord wants humanity to “multiply.” He does not say, “Be licentious,” and he did not want people to give themselves up to pleasures as if they had been made for mating. Let the Instructor put us to shame, crying through Ezekiel, “Circumcise your fornication.”

2.10p  Even the animals without reason have a fitting season for sowing. To come together for any purpose other than the begetting of children is to outrage nature. We should take nature as our teacher and observe the wise lessons of the proper time. I mean old age and childhood, which nature brings in: for the one she has not yet permitted marriage, and the other she no longer wishes to marry. But even otherwise, she does not mean us to be married at all times. Marriage is the desire for children, not the disorderly discharge of seed, which is lawless and against reason. Our whole life would run according to nature if we mastered our desires from the start. We must not destroy, by wicked contrivances, the human race that grows by God’s providence. People use these devices to cover up fornication. They take drugs that bring complete destruction, and so they abort human kindness along with the unborn child.

2.10q  For those who are allowed to marry, though, an instructor was needed. The secret rites of nature must not be carried out by day. A man must not come home from church or the marketplace in the early morning and mount his wife like a rooster, when it is the time for prayer, for reading, and for the good works of the day. The evening is the right time to rest, after the meal and after giving thanks for the good things enjoyed. Nature does not always allow the time for marital union to be fulfilled, and a union that is delayed longer is more longed for. Nor should anyone give way to wantonness at night, as if in the dark. Instead, modesty should be kept shut up in the soul like the light of reason. Otherwise we will be no different from Penelope at her loom: by day we weave the teachings of self-control, and at night, when we go to bed, we unravel them. If we must practice dignity, as indeed we must, then much more must a man show dignity to his own wife by refusing shameful embraces. And let reliable proof of his dignity toward his neighbors come from his own home.

2.10r  For it cannot be, it cannot be, that a man is thought dignified by a wife in whose experience his dignity is not borne out in those very keen pleasures. Goodwill that admits it slips easily into intercourse blooms only briefly and grows old along with the body. Sometimes it grows old before the body, when desire has withered, as happens whenever the pleasures of a prostitute have insulted the self-control of marriage. For the hearts of lovers are fickle, and love charms are quenched by regret. Love often turns to hatred, when satiety senses it has been condemned. As for unrestrained words, indecent postures, kisses like a prostitute’s, and lewd acts of that kind, we should not even mention them. We are obeying the blessed apostle, who says plainly: “Fornication and every kind of uncleanness or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper for saints.” Someone seems to have put it well: “Intercourse has never done anyone good; we should be glad if it has not done harm.” For even lawful intercourse is hazardous, except as far as it serves the begetting of children. About unlawful intercourse Scripture says: “A woman for hire will be reckoned a fattened pig, but a married woman is a tower of death to those who use her.” It compared the passion for a prostitute to a boar or a sow. And it called adultery “death that is sought,” when it is committed with a prostitute who is kept under guard.

2.10s  As for a house and a city where people live in wantonness, your own poetry somewhere reproaches them, writing: “Adulteries are found with you, and unlawful mingling of men, womanish and unjust, wicked city, wholly unclean.” On the other hand, it admires the self-controlled: those who do not feel shameful desire for another man’s bed, and do not rush to the hateful and loathsome outrage against a male, because it is against nature. Most people think of these things as luxuries, though they are their own sins. Those who are a little more decent know that they are sins, but they are overcome by pleasures. And darkness is their cover for their passions. For a man who treats his own marriage like a relationship with a prostitute commits adultery against it, and he does not hear the Instructor crying out: “The man who goes up onto his bed, who says in his soul: Who sees me?

2.10t  Darkness is all around me, and the walls cover me, and no one sees my sins. Why should I be afraid? The Most High will not remember.” This man is utterly wretched. He fears only human eyes, and he supposes 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. They look upon all the ways of men and see into hidden places.” Again the Instructor threatens such people through Isaiah, saying: “Woe to those who make their plans in secret, and will say: Who sees us?” One might perhaps escape the light that we perceive with the senses, but the light of the mind cannot be escaped. As Heraclitus says: “How could anyone hide from what never sets?” So let us never cover ourselves with darkness, for the light lives in us. “And the darkness,” it says, “did not overcome it.” The night is lit up by self-controlled reasoning, and Scripture calls the thoughts of good men lamps that never sleep.

2.10u  Yet to try to hide what one is doing is itself an admission of sinning. Everyone who sins does wrong at once. If he commits adultery, he wrongs his neighbor less than he wrongs himself, because he is the one who has committed adultery. In every case he shows himself to be worse and less honorable. For the sinner, to the extent that he sins, is worse and less honorable than he was himself before. And surely a man who is mastered by a shameful pleasure already has licentiousness added to him. For this reason the fornicator has altogether died to God. The Word has left him, as the spirit leaves a corpse. For what is holy shrinks from being defiled, as one would expect. It is always right for the pure to touch what is pure. So let us never strip off modesty at the same moment that we take off a garment, since it is never right for the righteous man to strip off self-control. “For behold, this corruptible will put on incorruption.” That happens when the insatiable appetite, which flows toward licentiousness, has been trained by self-control and has ceased to love corruption. It then yields the man to an everlasting self-control. “For in this age they marry and are given in marriage.” But when we have put away the works of the flesh, and have put on incorruption in the flesh itself, now pure, we pursue the measure of the angels.

2.10v  For this reason Plato in the Philebus, a disciple of the barbarian philosophy, mystically called “godless” those who ruin and defile, as far as they can, the God who dwells in them, the Word, by making themselves at home with the passions. So those who are made holy to God must never live in a merely mortal way. Nor, as Paul says, may we make the members of Christ members of a prostitute. Nor may we make the temple of God a temple of shameful passions. Remember the twenty-four thousand who were cast off because of fornication. The sufferings of those who committed fornication, as I have already said, are “types” that train our desires. And the Instructor advises us most plainly: “Do not go after your desires, and keep yourself back from your appetites.” “For wine and women will lead the wise astray, and he who joins himself to prostitutes will become more reckless. Rot and the worm will inherit him, and he will be taken away as a greater public example.” And again, for he never tires of doing us good: “He who stands face to face against pleasure crowns his life.” So it is not right to be mastered by sexual pleasures, nor to gape after desires, nor to be driven wild by irrational appetites, nor to wish to be defiled.

2.10w  The married man, like a farmer, is permitted only to sow, and only at the time when the season receives the seed. Against other kinds of intemperance the Word is the best medicine. It also helps to go without being stuffed, since fullness inflames the desires and makes them leap about after pleasures. So we should not strive after expensive clothing, any more than after elaborate food. The Lord himself divides his counsel into three parts: soul, body, and, third, external things. He advises us to get external things for the sake of the body, to govern the body by the soul, and he trains the soul, saying, “Do not worry for your soul about what you will eat, or for your body about what you will wear. For the soul is more than food, and the body more than clothing.” And he adds a clear example for his teaching: “Consider the ravens. They do not sow or reap. They have no storeroom or barn, and God feeds them.

2.10x  Are you not worth more than the birds?” That is what he says about food. He gives the same instruction about clothing, which belongs to the third division, external things, saying, “Consider the lilies, how they neither spin nor weave. But I tell you, not even Solomon was dressed like one of these.” King Solomon prided himself greatly on his wealth. What, then, is more beautiful or more colorful than flowers? What is more delightful than lilies or roses? “And if God clothes in this way the grass that is in the field today and thrown into the oven tomorrow, how much more will he clothe you, you of little faith! You also, do not seek what you will eat or what you will drink.” Here the word “what” rules out variety in food. The Scripture means this: do not worry about what sorts of things you will eat or drink. To worry about such things is greed and luxury. Eating, understood simply by itself, is a sign of need, since it is, as we said, the filling of a want. But the “what” goes beyond that, and Scripture has shown that whatever goes beyond what is needed comes from the devil.

2.10y  The words that follow make his meaning clear. After saying, “Do not seek what you will eat or what you will drink,” he added, “and do not be lifted up.” Pride and luxury lift people up and away from the truth. The pleasure-seeking that busies itself with superfluous things also leads away from the truth. That is why he says, very rightly, “All these things the nations of the world seek.” The “nations” are the disorderly and senseless. And what does he mean by “these things”? Luxury, self-indulgence, rich seasoning, dainty eating, gluttony. These are the “what.” But about plain food, dry and liquid, which is necessary, he says, “Your Father knows that you need it.” If we have become seekers at all, let us not waste our seeking on luxury. Let us fan it into flame to find the truth.

2.10z  “Seek the kingdom of God,” he says, “and what you need for food will be added to you.” If he removes anxiety about clothing, food and all superfluous things, as unnecessary, what must we think he would say about love of finery? What about the dyeing of wool, the variety of colours, the fussiness over gems, the elaborate working of gold, artificial hairpieces and twisted curls? What about painting the eyes, plucking hairs, rouge, white lead, hair dye, and all the evil tricks used in these deceptions? Should we not strongly suspect that what was said a little earlier about the grass was said also about these “unadorned” lovers of adornment? For the field is the world, and we are the plants of the field, refreshed with dew by the grace of God. When we are cut down, we spring up again, as will be shown at greater length in the book On the Resurrection. But the common crowd is pictured by the “hay.” It belongs to a passing merriment and blooms only briefly. It loves the world and loves glory, and loves anything more than truth. It is good for nothing except to feed a fire.

2.10aa  “There was a man,” says the Lord in his account, “very rich, who dressed in purple and fine linen and made merry splendidly every day.” This man was the hay. “And a poor man named Lazarus had been thrown at the rich man’s gate, covered with sores, longing to be filled with what fell from the rich man’s table.” This man is the grass. But the rich man was being punished in Hades, sharing in the fire, while the other flourished again in the bosom of the Father. I admire the old city of the Spartans. It allowed only courtesans to wear flowered clothing and gold ornaments. By permitting only women of that kind to adorn themselves, it took the love of finery away from respectable women. The Athenian magistrates were the opposite. They were keen on the refined life of the city, and they forgot what befits men. They wore gold and put on tunics down to their feet. They tied up the *krobylos*, a kind of braided knot of hair, adorned with golden cicadas fastened into it. So they displayed their “earth-born” origin, in the tasteless vulgarity of their effeminate decadence.

2.10ab  The zeal of these magistrates spread to the other Ionians as well. Homer mocks them as effeminate and calls them “trailing their robes.” So there are people who turn to love of finery, which is only an image of the beautiful, and not to the beautiful itself. Under a fair-sounding name they practise idolatry again. They must be sent far away from the truth, because they dream of the nature of the beautiful by opinion, not by knowledge. Life here is for them a deep sleep of ignorance. We must wake from it and hurry toward what is truly beautiful and orderly. We must long to lay hold of that alone, and leave the ornaments of this life to delight in the world itself, before we fall fast asleep for good. I say, then, that people needed woven cloth for one reason only: to cover the body, to protect against extreme cold and fierce heat, so that the excesses of the air around us do not harm us.

2.10ac  If this is the purpose of clothing, consider whether one kind of clothing should be assigned to men and another to women. Being covered is common to both, just as eating and drinking are. Since the need is common, we approve a similar provision. As both need coverings, so the coverings should be alike. [The Greek text is damaged at this point.] If so, we must also adopt that covering by which women are to hide their eyes. Even if the female sex claims more for itself because of its weakness, we should blame the habit of a bad upbringing. Through it, men raised on poor ways of living have often become more effeminate than women. We must not slacken our firmness. But if some allowance must be made, we should give women a little room to use softer fabrics. We should remove only the foolish fineness and the elaborate patterns in the weaving. We should bid farewell to gold thread, Indian silks and the fussy products of silkworms.

2.10ad  Then the creature changes again into a third form, which some call the “chrysalis” (others call it “nekydallos”). From this a long thread is produced, as the spider’s thread comes from the spider. These excessive, see-through fabrics are the proof of a weak mind. They cover the shame of the body with a slight veil, and so serve as a go-between for it. For luxurious clothing is no longer a covering at all, since it cannot hide the shape of the nakedness. Such clothing falls against the body and takes its impression more easily. It clings to the figure like flesh and moulds itself to it. It stamps the outline of the woman, so that anyone looking sees the whole form of the body, even though he is not actually looking at the body itself. Dyes in clothing must also be refused. They are far from what is needed and far from the truth, and they also break out into a slander on one’s character. Their use is not helpful, for they are not good against cold. They provide nothing for covering beyond what other clothing gives, except the blame. The pleasing effect of the colour troubles the greedy and provokes them to foolish ogling. But for those who are white inside and not counterfeit, it is most fitting to wear white and simple clothes.

2.10ae  Daniel the prophet says clearly and plainly: “Thrones were set, and one like an Ancient of days sat on them, and his garment was white as snow.” He sees the Lord in a vision wearing such a robe. The Revelation also says: “I saw the souls of those who had borne witness, under the altar, and a white robe was given to each.” But if some other colour must be sought, the natural dye of truth is enough. Garments that look like flowers should be left to Bacchic nonsense and the mystery rites. So should “the purple and the silver plate,” as the comic poet says, “which are useful for tragic actors and not for life.” Our life ought to be anything but a parade. Yet Sardian dye, another the colour of unripe grapes, another green, another rose-mixed, another scarlet, and countless other dyes have been devised, with great effort, for ruinous self-indulgence.

2.10af  This kind of clothing is for the eye, not for covering. We must also bid farewell, along with the art itself, to garments embroidered with gold, to the purple-dyed and those woven with figures (a luxury that is merely a show in the wind), to that saffron robe dyed with perfume, and to the costly, many-coloured cloaks of fine membrane that people stare at, with little figures in the purple. “What sensible or splendid thing could we women do,” says the comedy, “when we sit about decked in flowers, wearing saffron robes and made up with cosmetics?” The Instructor, however, gives plain advice: “Do not boast about the clothing you wear, and do not be lifted up by any glory, since it does not last.” So in the Gospel he mocks those dressed in soft clothing: “Look, those who live in splendid clothing and luxury are in kings’ palaces.” He means the earthly palaces, the perishable ones, where there is love of reputation, hunting for fame, flattery and deceit. But those who serve in the heavenly court around the King of all are made holy in the unstained garment of the soul, the flesh, and over it they put on incorruption.

2.10ag  So the unmarried woman gives her time to God alone, and her concern is not divided. The self-controlled married woman divides her life between God and her husband. But the woman who is carried off in another direction gives herself wholly to marriage, which means to passion. In the same way, I think, the self-controlled wife who devotes herself to her husband worships God without hypocrisy. But if she loves finery, she falls away both from God and from chaste marriage. She trades her husband for adornment, just like the Argive courtesan, I mean Eriphyle, who “accepted precious gold in place of a dear husband.” For this reason I also approve of the sophist of Ceos, who drew matching and corresponding pictures of virtue and vice. He made one of them, Virtue, stand simply, in white, clean, adorned with modesty alone. (Faith ought to be like that: virtuous, with modesty.) The other, Vice, he presented in the opposite way: dressed in excessive clothing and made radiant with borrowed colour. Her movement and her bearing are practised for pleasing effect, and she is displayed as a sketch for loose women.

2.10ah  The one who follows the Word will not attach himself to any shameful pleasure. So in clothing, too, what is useful should be chosen first. The Word sings through David about the Lord: “The daughters of kings made you glad in your honor; the queen stood at your right hand, in a robe woven with gold, clothed in golden fringes.” Here he does not mean luxurious clothing. He means the unspoiled adornment of the Church, woven together out of faith, made up of those who have received mercy. In her the guileless Jesus “shines like gold,” and the fringes are the elect, the golden ones. If we must relax our strictness a little for the sake of the women, let the cloth be woven smooth and soft to the touch. It should not be decked with flowers like paintings, to please the eye. A painting fades with time. The washing and soaking in the drug-like juices of the dye eat away the wool and leave the fabric of the garments weak. That is not good household management either.

2.10ai  It is the greatest tastelessness to be so excited about robes, long gowns, wraps, 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 parts we are ashamed of. The first man in paradise measured out his covering for shame with branches and leaves. Now that sheep have been made for us, let us not be as foolish as sheep. Trained by the Word, let us expose the costliness of clothing by saying: “You are sheep’s hair. Though Miletus boasts of you and Italy praises you, and though the hair that so many go mad over is kept safe under skin covers, we ought not to take it seriously.” The blessed John looked down even on sheep’s hair, since it smells of luxury. He chose camel’s hair and wore it, setting before us an example of a plain and honest life.

2.10aj  John also ate honey and locusts, a sweet and spiritual food, preparing the Lord’s ways to be free of pride and self-controlled. Would a man who had turned away from the showiness of city life wear a purple cloak? He went into the desert, living for God in the stillness of the wilderness, far from all empty busyness, from clumsy display and from pettiness. Elijah wore a sheepskin cloak and fastened it with a belt made of hair. Isaiah, another prophet, was “naked and barefoot,” and often wore sackcloth as a garment of humility. If you mention Jeremiah, he had only a linen loincloth. Well-fed bodies show their vigor more plainly when stripped. In the same way the beauty of character shows its greatness when it is not wrapped up in tasteless nonsense.

2.10ak  It is also thoroughly showy to let clothes hang down to the tips of the toes and drag along. It gets in the way of walking. The garment sweeps the loose rubbish on the ground like a broom. Not even those degenerate dancers on the stage, who act out a silent shamelessness, overlook a robe that falls to such a disgrace. Their careful draping, their dangling hems and the elaborate rhythms of their poses show the dragging of petty-minded softness. Someone may point to the Lord’s robe that reached to the feet. But that tunic, with its many flowers, shows the flowers of wisdom: the varied Scriptures that never fade, the oracles of the Lord flashing with the rays of truth. The Spirit clothed the Lord in another such robe through David, singing something like this: “You have put on praise and splendor, wrapping yourself in light like a garment.” So, just as we must keep clear of everything improper in making our clothes, we must also guard against excess in using them.

2.10al  It is not fitting either for a woman’s dress to be above the knee, as they say the Spartan girls dressed. No part of a woman should be bared. A modest woman can answer very properly, with that witty remark, someone who says, “Your arm is beautiful.” She can reply, “But not for the public.” When he says, “Your legs are beautiful,” she can say, “But only for my husband.” And “Your face is lovely”: “But only for the man who married me.” Still, I do not want chaste women even to give occasion for such praises to men who use praise to hunt for something to blame. And it is not only forbidden to show the ankle. The head is also commanded to be covered and the face shaded. It is not holy for the beauty of the body to become a trap for men. Nor is it reasonable for a woman to use a purple veil to make herself the center of attention.

2.10am  If only it were possible to remove purple from clothing altogether, so that spectators would not be drawn to look at the faces of those who wear it! But these women weave only a very small part of their garment in other colors and make the whole thing purple, and so they inflame their own careless indulgence. Those who are besotted with these foolish, dainty purples fall under the poet’s saying, “purple death took hold of them.” Because of this purple, Tyre and Sidon, and the seacoast neighboring Laconia, are most longed for. Their dyers and purple-fishers are held in high esteem, and so are the shellfish themselves, because the purple blooms from their blood. Deceitful women, and effeminate men too, mix these deceitful dyes into their greedy fabrics and rave on without any limit. They no longer get their linens from Egypt, but obtain other kinds from the land of the Hebrews and the land of the Cilicians.

2.10an  I say nothing of the Amorgian and fine linen garments; luxury has gone beyond even the names for things. A covering, I think, should show that what it covers is better than itself: as the statue is better than the temple, the soul than the body, and the body than its clothing. But now it is the complete opposite. If the body of these women were put up for sale, it would never fetch a thousand Attic drachmas, yet they will pay ten thousand talents for a single garment, and so they prove themselves more worthless and less valuable than the fabrics. Why then do you chase after what is rare and costly rather than what is common and cheap? Because you do not know what is truly beautiful and truly good. Foolish people pursue what only seems so in place of what really is, and like madmen they imagine white things to be black.

2.11a  On Shoes. Showy women behave much the same way with their footwear, and here too they display great softness of living. Those sandals with gold ornaments on them are truly shameful. They even insist on having the nails driven into the soles in spiral patterns. Many of them engrave love-greetings on the soles, so that as they walk they set the ground to a rhythm, and stamp the harlot’s attitude of mind into it by their stride. So we must say goodbye to the pointless craftsmanship of gold-covered and jeweled sandals, to Attic and Sicyonian half-boots, and to Persian and Tyrrhenian buskins. Setting before ourselves, as our truth is accustomed to do, the right aim, we should choose what is natural. For shoes are used partly to cover the feet, and partly to guard the sole of the foot against stumbling and against the roughness of mountain paths.

2.11b  Women may be allowed white shoes, except when they are traveling; then they should use greased leather. Women who travel need shoes with nailed soles. Still, they should wear shoes most of the time, for it is not fitting to show a bare foot; besides, a woman is easily led into harm. For a man, going barefoot is entirely suitable, unless he is serving as a soldier, for being shod is somehow close to being bound. Going barefoot is best for training, and it suits health and ease, wherever no necessity prevents it. But if we are not traveling and cannot bear to go barefoot, we should use slippers or white shoes. The Athenians called these “dust-feet,” I think because they keep the feet close to the dust. John is sufficient witness for simple footwear, since he declared that he was not worthy to untie the strap of the Lord’s sandals. The man who was showing the Hebrews the pattern of true philosophy wore nothing elaborate on his feet. If this also hints at something further, it will be explained elsewhere.

2.12a  That we should not be wild about jewels and gold ornaments. It is childish to gape at dark blue or green stones, at what a distant sea throws up, and at the nuggets of the earth. To rush after little transparent stones, stones of unusual color, and varicolored glass is nothing but the mark of foolish people who are drawn by whatever has a striking appearance. In the same way, children who see a fire run to it, led on by its brightness, and in their foolishness do not understand how dangerous it is to touch. Such are the stones that silly women hang on their chains and fasten into their necklaces: amethysts, thunderstones, jaspers, topaz, and the Milesian emerald, a most costly piece of merchandise. The very expensive pearl has also burst into the women’s quarters in an extravagant way. It is formed in a kind of oyster like the pinna-shell, and is about the size of a large fish’s eye.

2.12b  These wretched women are not ashamed to have put all their effort into this little oyster. They could be adorned with a holy stone, the Word of God, whom Scripture somewhere calls a pearl: the clear and pure Jesus, the eye that watches over us in the flesh, the transparent Word, through whom the flesh is made precious when it is born again by water. For that oyster, which comes to be in water, covers the flesh around it, and the pearl is conceived from that flesh. We have received the teaching that the Jerusalem above is walled with holy stones. We understand that the twelve gates of the heavenly city are likened to precious stones, and that this hints at the conspicuous grace of the apostles. For in costly stones the colors are what is prized, and these are the valuable part, while the rest is left over as earthy matter. It is fitting, then, that the city of the saints, built spiritually, is walled with these stones as symbols.

2.12c  In contrast to the inimitable bloom of the stones, they have understood the bloom of the Spirit, the pure and holy bloom of its being. But these women do not grasp the symbolic language of the Scriptures. They stand gaping at the stones, offering that marvelous excuse: “Why should we not use what God has shown us?” “I have it at hand; why should I not enjoy it?” “For whom, then, did these things come to be, if not for us?” Such talk comes from people who are completely ignorant of God’s will. First, God supplies the necessities, such as water and air, openly to all. But everything that is not necessary he hid in earth and water. This is why ants mine gold, griffins guard it, and the sea hides the pearl, that stone. But you are meddlesome about what you should leave alone.

2.12d  Look, the whole heaven is spread open, and you do not seek God. But the gold and stones that lie hidden are dug out of the earth, among us, by those condemned to death. You even sing against Scripture, which cries out plainly: “Seek first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things will be added to you.” But suppose all things have been given to you and all things allowed to you. The apostle says, “All things are lawful for us, but not all things are beneficial.” God himself brought our race into being for fellowship. He was first to share what was his own, and he offered his own Word as a help common to all people, making all things for the sake of all. So all things are common, and the rich should not grab more than their share. Therefore the saying “I have it, and I have more than enough; why should I not enjoy it?”

2.12e  is neither human nor sociable. This one is much more loving: “I have it; why should I not share it with those in need?” The person who says this is perfect, having fulfilled “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” For this is true luxury, wealth that is stored up as treasure. But spending on empty desires should be counted as destruction, not as expense. I know that God has given us the freedom to use things, but only up to what is necessary, and he has willed that the use be shared. It is out of place for one person to live in luxury while many are poor. How much more glorious it is to do good to many than to live in costly splendor! How much wiser to spend on people than on stones and gold! How much more useful to gain well-ordered friends than lifeless ornaments! What have fields ever profited anyone as much as giving generously does?

2.12f  So we still have to answer this objection that follows: “For whom, then, are the more costly things, if everyone chooses the cheaper?” I would say: for people, if we use them without attachment and without favoritism. But if it is impossible for everyone to be self-controlled, we should still pursue what is easy to obtain, for the sake of what we need, and bid a long farewell to these superfluities. In general, then, women must drive away their “ornaments” like girls’ trinkets, and refuse adornment itself altogether. For they ought to be well-ordered within and show the woman inside to be beautiful. Beauty and ugliness show themselves only in the soul. So only the earnest person is truly beautiful and good, and the teaching holds that only the beautiful is good. Virtue alone shines through a beautiful body and blooms in the flesh. It shows the lovely bloom of self-control as worthy of love, when character shines on the appearance like a ray of light.

2.12g  The beauty of every plant and every animal lies in the particular excellence of each. The excellence of a human being is justice, self-control, courage and godliness. So the beautiful person is the just and self-controlled person, in short the good person, not the rich one. Yet even soldiers now want to be decked out with gold. They have not read the poet’s line about the man who “went to war wearing gold, like a silly young girl.” The love of finery cares nothing for virtue and lays claim only to the body. Here the love of what is beautiful has turned aside into vainglory, and it must be thrown out completely. It attaches to the body things that do not belong to it, as though they did. In this way it trains people in lying and breeds a habit of deceit. It shows not what is dignified, unaffected and truly childlike, but what is haughty, soft and pampered.

2.12h  Some women dim true beauty by overshadowing it with gold. They do not realize how great their fault is, since they have put countless rich bonds around themselves. They say that among the barbarians criminals are bound with gold, and these women seem to me to be imitating those rich prisoners. Is the golden necklace not a collar, and the twisted neck-rings too? The so-called “catheters” work like chains, and Attic writers call them by that very name, “chains.” Philemon, in his play *The Fellow-Cadet*, called the women’s unseemly adornment of the feet “ankle-fetters”: “transparent garments and a golden fetter.” What else, then, is this envied beautifying, women, but a wish to be seen in fetters? If the material takes the edge off the shame, the condition is still the same.

2.12i  To me, then, women who fall into bonds of their own free will seem to be boasting about rich misfortunes. Perhaps the poet’s myth also says that such bonds were thrown around Aphrodite when she was caught in adultery. If so, it hints that these ornaments are nothing but a sign of adultery, for Homer called those bonds golden too. Yet women are not ashamed to wear the plainest emblems of the evil one. The serpent deceived Eve, and in the same way golden ornament has driven other women wild into licentiousness. It uses the serpent’s shape as bait, and they have moray eels and snakes molded into jewelry to look attractive. The comic poet Nicostratus says: “chains, catheters, rings, bracelets, snakes, anklets, hellebore.” Aristophanes, in the *Thesmophoriazusae*, lists the whole array of women’s finery in a very reproachful way. I will set down the comic poet’s own words, which expose exactly how vulgar your ignorance of what is good really is. Speaker A:

2.12j  “Headbands, hair-bands, soda, pumice, breast-band, back-sling, veil, rouge, necklaces, eye-liner, soft shawl, hellebore, hair-net, girdle, wrap, luxury gown, border, long robe, tunic, *barathron*, round cloak, little tunic. And I have not mentioned the biggest items.” B: “What else, then?” A: “Ear-pendants, gem-set pieces, plasters, mallow-colored dye, cluster earrings, bracelets, brooches, armlets, necklaces, anklets, seal rings, chains, finger rings, poultices, bubbles, ties, *olisboi*, carnelians, *hypoderides*, spiral ornaments.” I am tired and annoyed at listing so many ornaments. I am amazed that these women are not worn out carrying such a load. What empty fussing! What vain craze for glory! Like prostitutes they pour out their wealth to their own shame. In their lack of taste they counterfeit God’s gifts and imitate the craft of the evil one. The Lord in the Gospel plainly called the rich man a fool. He stored up his goods in barns and said to himself, “You have many good things laid up for many years; eat, drink, be merry.” But the Lord said, “This very night they are taking your soul from you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” The painter Apelles once saw one of his pupils who had painted Helen loaded with gold. “Young man,” he said, “since you could not paint her beautiful, you have made her rich.”

2.12k  Such Helens are the women of today: not genuinely beautiful, but richly made up. To them the Spirit prophesies through Zephaniah: “Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to rescue them in the day of the Lord’s wrath.” Women who are being trained by Christ should be adorned not with gold but with the Word, through whom alone gold shows itself for what it is. The ancient Hebrews would have been blessed if they had simply taken off their women’s ornaments and thrown them away or melted them down. Instead they cast the gold into a calf and worshiped it as an idol. They gained nothing from their craft or their scheme. Yet they taught our women, in a most striking pattern, to keep away from ornaments. That part of desire which prostitutes itself to gold becomes an idol, and it is put to the test by fire. Luxury is kept for fire alone, as an idol is, and not truth.

2.12l  Here the Word, rebuking the Hebrews through the prophet, says, “They made silver and gold things for Baal.” He means ornaments. And in a most vivid threat he says, “I will take vengeance on her for the days of the Baalim, on which she offered sacrifice to it, and put on her earrings and her necklaces.” Then he adds the reason for her adornment: “And she went after her lovers, but me she forgot, says the Lord.” So let women lay aside these trifles to the evil sophist himself. Let them take no part in this harlot-like beautifying, and let them not practice idolatry behind a respectable screen. The blessed Peter speaks very admirably here: “Women likewise, not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly clothing, but with what is fitting for women who profess reverence for God, adorning themselves through good works.” He is right to command that their beautifying be absent. If they are beautiful, nature is enough. Let art not compete with nature. That is, let deceit not quarrel with truth. But if they are ugly by nature, what they put on to cover what they lack exposes them.

2.12m  It is fitting, then, for women who serve Christ to embrace simplicity. For simplicity really does provide for holiness. It evens out excess and obtains the use we seek from superfluities by means of ordinary things. For what is simple, as the very name suggests, does not stick out or swell or puff itself up at any point. It is wholly level, smooth, even and free of excess, and for that reason it is sufficient. Sufficiency is a settled state that reaches its proper end without lack and without excess. The mother of these is righteousness, and their nurse is self-sufficiency. This is a settled state that is content with what is needed and by itself provides what contributes to the blessed life. Then let your adornment be in the fruits of your hands: holy, generous sharing and works of homemaking. “For he who gives to the poor lends to God,” and “the hands of the courageous enrich.” By “courageous” he means those who despise money and are ready to share it.

2.12n  On your feet, let there appear a tireless readiness to do good and a walking in the way of righteousness. Modesty and self-control are your chains and necklaces. These are the kind of necklaces God makes of gold. “Blessed is the man who has found wisdom, and the mortal who has seen understanding,” says the Spirit 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 true adornment. Their ears should not be pierced, against nature, to hang pendants and earrings from them. It is not right to force nature against what it intends. Nor could there be a better ornament for the ears than true instruction, which goes down by the natural passages of hearing. Eyes anointed with the Word, and ears pierced for perception, make a person a hearer of divine things and a beholder of holy things. The Word truly shows the true beauty, “which eye has not seen, nor ear heard” before.


BOOK 3

3.arg.  Chapter headings of the third book. 1. On true beauty. 2. That one should not beautify oneself. 3. Against men who beautify themselves. 4. With whom one should spend time. 5. How one should behave at the baths. 6. That only the Christian is rich. 7. That frugality is a good provision for a Christian. 8. That images and examples are a very large part of right teaching. 9. For what purpose the bath is to be used. 10. That exercises too are to be approved for those who live according to reason. 11. A summary survey of the best life. 12. A similar summary survey of the best life, drawn from the holy Scriptures that mark out the Christian life.

3.1a  On the True Beauty. It appears, then, that the greatest of all lessons is to know oneself. For if someone knows himself, he will know God. And knowing God, he will be made like God. This happens not by wearing gold or trailing robes, but by doing good and by needing as few things as possible. God alone needs nothing. He is most pleased when he sees us clean in the adornment of the mind, and then also in that of the body, clothed in self-control, which is a pure robe. The soul has three parts. The first is the rational part, also called the reasoning faculty. This is the inner man, who rules this visible man, while that inner man is himself led by another, God. The second is the spirited part, which is bestial and lives close to madness. The third is the desiring part, which has many forms. It is more changeable than Proteus, the sea-god, taking one shape after another and working itself up into adultery, lust and seduction. “First he became a bearded lion,” still keeping his finery, for the hair of the beard shows he is a man. “But then a serpent, or a leopard, or a great boar.” Love of finery has slid down into wantonness.

3.1b  No longer does the man appear in a mighty beast, “but he became flowing water, and a tree with high leaves.” The passions pour out and the pleasures gush forth. Beauty withers. It falls to the ground faster than a leaf when the lustful storms of insolence blow on it, and it is shriveled by corruption before autumn even comes. For desire becomes everything, fashions itself, and wants to deceive, so as to hide the man. But the man in whom the Word lives is not painted up and not fashioned. He has the form of the Word and is made like God. He is beautiful and does not beautify himself, for the true beauty is God. That man becomes God, because God wills it. Heraclitus therefore spoke rightly when he said, “Men are gods, and gods are men,

3.1c  for the Word is the same.” This is a plain mystery: God in man, and man God. The Mediator carries out the Father’s will. For the Word is Mediator, shared by both: Son of God and Savior of men, servant of the one and our Instructor. Now the flesh is a slave, as Paul testifies. So how could anyone reasonably deck out the maid-servant like a procurer? That the fleshly is the form of a slave, the apostle says of the Lord: “He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.” He calls the outward man a slave even before the Lord became a slave and bore flesh. But the compassionate God himself set the flesh free. He rescued it from corruption and from the bitter, death-bringing slavery, and clothed it with incorruption. He put on the flesh this holy adornment of eternity: immortality.

3.1d  There is another beauty of men: love. As the apostle says, “Love is patient, is kind, is not jealous, does not brag, is not puffed up.” For beautifying oneself is bragging, since it gives the impression of excess and uselessness. This is why he adds, “It does not behave indecently.” For a form that is foreign and not according to nature is indecent, and what is artificially made up is foreign. He makes this clear by saying that love “does not seek what is not its own.” Truth calls its own what truly belongs to it, but love of finery seeks what is foreign, since it stands outside God, the Word and love. The Spirit testifies through Isaiah that the Lord himself was ugly in appearance: “And we saw him, and he had no form or beauty, but his form was without honor, lacking beside men.” And who is better than the Lord? But what he showed was not the outward, illusory beauty of the flesh. It was the true beauty of both soul and body: in the soul, doing good; in the flesh, immortality.

3.2a  That is why it is not the outward appearance of a person that must be adorned. It is the soul that must be adorned with the ornament of true nobility of character. We could say the same of the flesh, which is to be adorned with the ornament of self-control. But women who beautify the surface while leaving the depths a wasteland do not realize that they are decorating themselves like the temples of the Egyptians. Those people take great care over gateways and outer courts, with groves and sacred meadows. Their courtyards are ringed with many columns. Their walls shine with imported stones, and no skill in painting is lacking. The temples gleam with gold, silver and amber, and sparkle with many-colored gems from India and Ethiopia. The inner sanctuaries are shaded with curtains woven with gold. But suppose you go on into the depths of the enclosure, eager to see something greater, and look for the statue that lives in the temple. Then a priest, or some other temple official, comes forward with a solemn look on his face, singing a hymn in the Egyptian language. He lifts the curtain a little, as if to show you the god, and gives us a good laugh at the thing they worship.

3.2b  The god we hurried to find will not be found inside. We will find a cat, a crocodile, a native snake, or some such animal. It is unworthy of the temple and fit only for a hole, a den or the mud. The god of the Egyptians appears as a beast rolling on a purple couch. In the same way, I think, women who wear gold are like this. They work at curling their hair, rub ointment on their cheeks, paint under their eyes, dye their hair, and devise other kinds of mischievous self-indulgence. They decorate the fleshly enclosure, truly acting like Egyptians, to draw in lovers who are superstitious. But suppose someone pulled back the curtain of the temple. I mean the hairnet, the dye, the clothing, the gold, the rouge, the cosmetics, that is, the whole fabric woven from these. He expects to find true beauty inside, but he will be disgusted, I know well.

3.2c  He will not find the image of God, so worthy of respect, living inside. Instead a prostitute and adulteress has taken over the inner shrine of the soul. The real beast will be exposed: an ape smeared with white lead. That shifty serpent eats away the mind of the person through the love of glory and makes the soul his den. He fills everything with deadly drugs and spits out into them his own venom of deceit. This dragon, this pimp, has turned women into prostitutes. For love of finery belongs not to a wife but to a courtesan. Such women give little thought to keeping house for their husbands. They undo their husbands’ purses and divert the money to their desires, so that they may have many witnesses to their seeming beauty. They sit all day at the hairdresser’s and spend their time with slaves they have bought.

3.2d  Like a bad relish, they season the flesh. They spend the day shut up in their rooms, wasting away over their cosmetics, so that no one will catch them dyeing their hair blond. In the evening this counterfeit beauty creeps up to the lamp as if out of a den. Drunkenness and the dim light help the make-up they have put on. The comic poet Menander banishes from the house the woman who dyes her hair blond: “Now get out of this house.” For a self-controlled woman must not make her hair blond, and she must not rouge her cheeks or paint her eyes either. These unlucky women do not realize that by bringing in a foreign beauty they destroy their own. At daybreak they are torn at, scrubbed and plastered with various pastes. They scrape the skin, wear down the flesh with drugs, and by their fussy washes they wither their own natural bloom.

3.2e  That is why they look pale from the plasters, and they easily fall sick, since their flesh, shaded with paints, is already softened by the drugs. They dishonor the Creator of human beings, as though he had given them a beauty that was not good enough. No wonder they become idle about keeping house. They sit like painted pictures, made to be looked at and not to run a household. This is why the thoughtful woman in the comic poet says: “What wise or brilliant thing could we women do, who sit with our hair dyed blond, spoiling the character of free women? We bring about the ruin of households, the turning aside of marriages, and the passing off of substitute children.” Antiphanes the comic poet, in his play *Malthake*, mocks this courtesan-like behavior of women in words that apply to all of them and describe the endless wearing-out of themselves: “She comes, she goes again, she approaches, she goes again, she has come, she is here, she is washing, she approaches, she is soaping, she is combing, she has stepped in, she is rubbing, she is bathing, she is looking in the mirror, she is dressing, she is perfuming, she is adorning, she is anointing herself. And if she has anything wrong, she hangs herself.”

3.2f  They deserve to be destroyed three times, not just once, for using crocodile dung, smearing themselves with the foam of rotting matter, rubbing soot onto their eyebrows and white lead into their cheeks. If even the pagan poets are sick of these women because of their manner of life, how could the truth not cast them out? Another comic poet, Alexis, exposes them. I will quote his words as well, so that his elaborate wording may shame their stubborn shamelessness; he was not overdoing it that much. I myself am ashamed that the women’s quarters should be mocked in comedy so far, when woman was made to be a “helper” and yet ends up destroying her husband as well. “First of all, everything else is a side issue to them compared with making a profit and robbing their neighbors. If one of them happens to be short, she stitches cork into her shoes.

3.2g  “If one is tall, she wears a thin sole and goes out with her head drooped onto her shoulder; this takes away from her height. If one has no hips, she puts on padding sewn in underneath, so that those who see her cry out about her fine figure. If one has a big belly, she gets the sort of false breasts the comic poets give their nurses, and by adding these upright pieces she pushes the front of her belly forward like poles. If one has reddish eyebrows, she paints them with soot. If she happens to be dark, she plasters herself with white lead. If one is too pale, she rubs on rouge. If she has some fine part of her body, she displays it bare. If she has good teeth, she has to laugh, so that those present can see what a pretty mouth she has. But if she has no wish to laugh, she spends the whole day with a thin, straight sliver of myrtle wood held between her lips, so that in time her mouth is fixed in a grin, whether she wants it or not.”

3.2h  I set these passages from worldly wisdom before you to turn you away from the scheming of those who love finery, since the Word wants to save us by every means. Soon I will reinforce them with the divine Scriptures. People who are exposed tend to give up their sins out of shame at being rebuked. A bandaged hand or a salved eye makes people suspect, from the look of it, that the person is ill. In the same way, face-creams and dyes hint that the soul is deeply sick. But the divine Instructor urges us to pass by “a foreign river.” By this figure he means a foreign woman, the lustful one, who flows toward everyone and pours herself out to all in prostitute-like indulgence. “Keep away from foreign water,” he says, “and do not drink from a foreign spring.” He is urging us to guard against the stream of pleasure, “so that we may live a long time, and years of life may be added to us.” This applies whether we avoid hunting after pleasures that belong to someone else, or turn away from the sects.

3.2i  Love of delicacies and love of wine are great passions, but they 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 jewels, neither the gold above and below the earth is enough, nor the Tyrian sea, nor the cargo from India and Ethiopia, nor even the Pactolus river flowing with riches. Not even if one of them became a Midas would she be satisfied; she would still be poor, longing for more wealth. These people are ready to die along with their gold. And if Wealth is blind, as he is, how can the women who are crazy about him and share his feelings not be blind too? Having no limit to their desire, they run aground on shamelessness. For they need the theater, the processions, crowds of spectators, wandering about in the temples and loitering in the streets, so that they are seen by everyone.

3.2j  They adorn themselves to please others, boasting in the face and not in the heart. As brand marks show a runaway slave, so these fancy colors show the adulteress. “Even if you put on scarlet and adorn yourself with golden ornaments, and even if you paint your eyes with eye-shadow, your beautification is in vain,” says the Word through Jeremiah. Is it not absurd that horses, birds and other animals rise up from the grass and the meadows, and fly up, delighting in their own natural adornment, the horse’s mane, the natural color, the varied plumage, while woman, as though worse off than the animals, thinks she is so unlovely that she needs someone else’s beauty, bought and painted on? Hairnets, different kinds of hairnets, elaborate braids, countless arrangements of the hair, and costly mirrors in which they pose themselves to catch those who are as crazy about looks as foolish children: all this belongs to women who have lost every blush of shame. Anyone who called them prostitutes would not be wrong, since they turn their faces into masks.

3.2k  But the Word urges us “not to look at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen; for the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are eternal.” What goes beyond even absurdity is this: for their artificial appearance, as if it were some feat of courage or a work of improvement, they have thought up mirrors. Yet this deceit above all ought to be covered with a veil. For even by the Greek myth it did not turn out well for the handsome Narcissus to be a spectator of his own image. Moses commands that people make no image in rivalry with God’s craft. How then could these women reasonably copy their own likenesses by reflection, to produce a falsified face? Consider also the prophet Samuel. When he was sent to anoint one of Jesse’s sons as king, he saw the eldest of the boys, handsome and tall, and brought out the oil, pleased with him. Scripture says, “The Lord said to him: Do not look at his appearance or the height of his stature, for I have rejected him.

3.2l  “For man looks at the eyes, but the Lord looks at the heart.” And he anointed not the one beautiful in body, but the one beautiful in soul. If then the Lord counts the natural beauty of the body as less than that of the soul, what does he think of counterfeit beauty, when he throws out every falsehood root and branch? “For we walk by faith, not by appearance.” The Lord teaches very clearly through Abraham that the one who follows God must despise homeland, relatives, property and all wealth. He made him a foreigner, and for this reason he called him “friend,” because he despised the abundance he had at home. For Abraham was of noble birth and very wealthy. With three hundred and eighteen servants of his own he defeated the four kings who had taken Lot captive. Esther alone, we find, was rightly adorned.

3.2m  That woman made herself beautiful in a hidden, mystical way for her own king, and that beauty of hers turns out to be the ransom of a people marked for slaughter. That adornment turns women into courtesans, and men into effeminate adulterers. The tragic poet bears witness to this, telling the story something like this: “This man who judged the goddesses came from Phrygia to Lacedaemon, as the Argive myth has it. He was bright in a robe of flowered garments and gleaming with gold, in barbarian luxury. A lover, he went off with a loving Helen, snatching her away to the cattle-folds of Ida, having caught Menelaus away from home.” What adulterous beauty! Barbarian love of finery and effeminate luxury overthrew Greece. Clothing, luxury and youthful beauty destroyed Spartan self-control. Barbarian love of display exposed the daughter of Zeus as a courtesan. They had no instructor to cut off their desires. They had none to say “You shall not commit adultery,” or “You shall not desire.” They had none to say: do not travel the road to adultery through desire, and do not inflame your appetites through love of finery.

3.2n  Think what an end followed for them, and how many evils those suffered who were unwilling to restrain self-love. Two continents were shaken by undisciplined pleasures, and everything was thrown into turmoil by a barbarian youth. All Greece set sail, and the sea was crowded, carrying continents. A long war blazed up, and fierce battles broke out, and the plains were filled with corpses. The barbarian insults the naval camp. Injustice prevails, and the eye of that Zeus of the poets looks toward the Thracians. Barbarian plains drink noble blood, and the streams of the rivers stand clogged with dead bodies. Breasts are beaten in lamentation, and grief spreads over the land. All the foothills and peaks of many-springed Ida shake, and the city of the Trojans and the ships of the Achaeans. Where shall we flee, Homer, and make a stand? Show us a land that is not shaken. * * * “Do not touch the reins, child, since you have no experience, and do not mount the chariot to drive without having learned. Heaven delights in two charioteers, and only by them is the fire driven and led.”

3.2o  For the mind is carried away by pleasure. The untouched purity of reason, when it is not instructed by the Word, slides down into licentiousness and receives a fall as the wage of its transgression. The angels of God are an example of this. They abandoned beauty for the sake of a fading beauty, and so fell from heaven to the ground. The Shechemites too were punished and brought low for outraging the holy virgin. Their punishment was a grave, and the memorial of their penalty instructs us toward salvation.

3.3a  Against men who adorn themselves. Luxury has advanced so far that it is no longer only women who are sick with this empty concern for appearances. Men are now eager to catch the disease too. Men who are not free of the love of finery are not healthy. They lean toward softness and become womanish. They have their hair cut in a base and harlot-like style, wrap themselves in fine, transparent cloaks, chew mastic gum, and reek of perfume. What can one say on seeing them? Like a man who reads character from the forehead, one can tell from their appearance that they are adulterers and half-women, hunting after both kinds of sexual pleasure. They hate body hair and are hairless. They loathe the bloom of manhood, yet they adorn their head hair as women do. “Living in unholy acts of daring,” says the Sibyl, these fickle creatures “do reckless and evil deeds.” Because of them the cities are full of people who apply pitch plasters, shave and pluck these effeminate men. Workshops have been set up and opened everywhere. The craftsmen of this prostitute-like vice openly make a great deal of money. Men let themselves be covered with pitch and have their hairs pulled out, offering themselves in every way. They feel no shame before those who watch or pass by, or even before themselves as men. Such are the zealots of the baser passions, whose whole body has been made smooth by the violent tugging of the pitch.

3.3b  They care nothing about going further in such shamelessness. If nothing is left undone by them, nothing will be left unsaid by me. When Diogenes was being sold as a slave, he rebuked one of these degenerates like a teacher, and said very boldly, “Come here, young man, and buy yourself a man.” With a double-edged saying he was correcting the fellow’s harlot-like ways. For men to shave themselves and make themselves smooth: is that not degrading? The dyes for the hair, the ointments for grey hair, the yellow tints, and the womanish combing of hair are the habits of ruined half-women, and must be given up. They think that, like a snake, they can slip off the old age of their head, repainting themselves and making themselves young again. Though they may cleverly trick the hair, they will not escape wrinkles. They will not escape death either by tricking time. For it is not terrible, it is not terrible, to look old when you cannot hide the fact that you are.

3.3c  The nearer a man hurries to his end, the more truly honorable he is. Only God is older than he is, since God is the eternal Elder, older than all that exists. Prophecy has called him “the Ancient of days,” and the prophet says, “the hair of his head was like pure wool.” And no one else, says the Lord, “can make a hair white or black.” How then do these godless men set themselves up as rival makers against God, or rather, struggle to oppose him, when they counterfeit the hair he has turned grey? Scripture says, “The crown of old men is great experience,” and the grey hair on their face is the flower of great experience. But these men disgrace the privilege of old age, the grey head. It is not possible, it is not possible, for a man with a counterfeit head to show a true soul. The apostle says: “But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you heard him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, in keeping with your former way of life, the old man.” He does not mean the grey-haired man, but the one “who is being corrupted by the desires of deceit.” And he says to be renewed, not by dyes and cosmetics, but “in the spirit of your mind,” and to “put on the new man, created according to God in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” For a man to comb his hair, to have it cut with a razor for good looks, to arrange it at the mirror, to shave, pluck and smooth his cheeks: how is that not womanish?

3.3d  If you did not see them naked, you would take them for women. Even if they are not allowed to wear gold, out of their womanish desire they wrap straps and the fringes of their garments in thin sheets of gold. Or they have balls shaped from the same metal made, and tie them to their ankles and hang them from their necks. This is a trick of broken-down men who are dragged off into the women’s quarters: amphibious, lustful beasts. This way of lying in ambush is that of a harlot, and it is godless. God wanted woman to be smooth-skinned, glorying only in her naturally growing hair, as a horse does in its mane. But he adorned man with a beard, like lions, and made him manly with a shaggy chest, a sign of strength and authority. In the same way he decked out the cocks, which fight on behalf of the hens, with combs like helmets.

3.3e  God values these hairs so highly that he commands them to appear on men together with good sense. Delighting in dignity, he has honored the rugged look of a man’s face with venerable grey hair. Good sense and careful reasoning, grown grey with understanding, come to their prime along with time. They strengthen old age with the vigor of long experience, and they hold out the grey head, the lovely flower of serious good sense, as a reasonable ground for trust. The beard, then, is the man’s badge, the thing by which he is plainly seen to be a man. It is older than Eve and is a symbol of the stronger nature. God judged that shagginess suited the man, and he scattered hair over his whole body. But whatever in him was smooth and soft, God took from his side. From it he made Eve, pleasant to the touch for receiving seed, a woman who is a helper in bringing forth children and in keeping the house.

3.3f  But the man (for he gave up the smoothness) remained a man and shows himself a man. To him it is granted to act, as it is to her to be acted upon. For hairy things are by nature drier and hotter than smooth ones. So males are hairier and hotter than females, animals with their organs than castrated ones, and the complete than the incomplete. It is therefore impious to violate the symbol of manly nature, hairiness. As for the adornment of smoothing (for the Word makes me hot with anger), if it is aimed at men, it belongs to an effeminate person. If it is aimed at women, it belongs to an adulterer. Both must be driven as far as possible from our way of life. “But even the hairs of your head are all numbered,” says the Lord. The hairs on the chin are numbered too, and indeed those on the whole body.

3.3g  Nothing at all is to be plucked out against God’s choice, which he has counted in by his own will. The apostle says, “Unless you somehow fail to recognize yourselves, that Christ Jesus is in you.” If we knew that he lives in us, I do not know how we could dare to abuse him. Then there is the use of pitch plasters. I hesitate even to speak of the indecency of the act. These men turn away and bend over, exposing nature’s private parts to view. They sway and arch their backs in shameful postures, and they feel no shame at themselves. They behave indecently among the young men and in the middle of the gymnasium, where the manly virtue of men is tested. They pursue this practice that is against nature. Is that not the height of licentiousness? Those who do such things in public would hardly feel shame before anyone at home. Their shamelessness in public bears witness to their unrestrained wantonness in private. The man who denies his manhood in the light of day is clearly shown up as a woman at night.

3.3h  The Word said through Moses, “There shall not be a prostitute among the daughters of Israel, and there shall not be a fornicator among the sons of Israel.” “But the pitch is useful,” someone says. I say it slanders. No one in his right mind would want to seem a fornicator unless he were sick. No one would willingly choose to make a practice of slandering the beautiful image. For the blessed apostle says that God predestined “those called according to his purpose, whom he foreknew, to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” So how are they not godless who mutilate the body that is conformed to the Lord? The man who wants to be beautiful must adorn the most beautiful thing in a human being, his mind. Each day he should show it more attractive. What must be plucked out is not hairs but desires.

3.3i  I even pity the boys who belong to slave-dealers and are dressed up for abuse. They have not mutilated themselves. The poor things are made up on orders, for someone’s shameful profit. But those who choose of their own will to do what they would rather have died than do on orders, if they were men, how are they not contemptible? Life has now reached such a pitch of licentiousness, with injustice running riot, that all lewdness has flooded the cities and become law. Among them women stand on the brothel roofs, selling their own flesh for the outrage of pleasure. Boys who have been taught to deny their nature pass themselves off as women. Luxury has upset everything. A soft-living, meddling curiosity has disgraced humanity. It searches out everything, tries everything, forces everything, and confuses nature. Men have taken on what belongs to women, and women are made manly against nature, women being both wives and husbands.

3.3j  No road is closed to licentiousness. Their shared lust is made public property, and luxury sits at the same table with them. What a pitiable sight! What an unspeakable way of life! These are the trophies of your city’s lack of self-control that are put on show, and the women who walk the streets are the proof of what is done. Alas for such lawlessness! The wretches do not even understand how many tragedies are caused by the secrecy of these encounters. A son has used prostitutes, and there are daughters who sell themselves, and fathers often sleep with them without knowing it. They forget the children they exposed, and this freedom to indulge without restraint shows the fathers to be the very men who begot them. These are the things your wise laws permit. People may sin by the law, and they call the unmentionable side of pleasure a convenience. Those who commit adultery against nature think they are free of adultery. But justice follows their daring acts as an avenger. They draw down an unavoidable disaster on themselves, and for a little coin they buy their own death.

3.3k  The unhappy traders in these goods sail the seas carrying prostitution as cargo, as if it were grain or wine. Others, far more wretched, buy pleasures as they would bread or relish. They have not even given a thought to the saying of Moses: “You shall not defile your daughter by making her a prostitute, and the land will not prostitute itself, and the land will be filled with lawlessness.” This was prophesied long ago, and the outcome is plain: the whole earth is now filled with prostitution and lawlessness. I admire the ancient Roman lawgivers. They hated unmanly conduct. They judged that a man who gives his body to a woman’s role, against the law of nature, deserved the pit, according to the law of justice. For it is never right to pluck out the beard, the natural beauty, the noble beauty that first belongs to a young man with his first growth of beard, whose youth is most charming.

3.3l  As he grows older, he is anointed and rejoices in his beard, on which the prophetic ointment ran down when Aaron was honored. The man who is rightly trained, on whom peace has settled, ought to keep peace with his own hair as well. What, then, will women not do, women who rush into lewdness, when they see men daring such things in front of their mirrors? Better to call these people not men but degenerates and effeminate creatures. Their voices are soft and broken, and their clothing is made womanish by its feel and its dye. Such people are exposed for what they are by outward things: their cloak, their shoes, their bearing, their walk, their haircut, their look. For Scripture says, “A man will be known by his look, and a person will be known by meeting him. A man’s clothing, the step of his foot, and the laughter of his teeth will tell about him.” These men, even though they fight hard against every other kind of hair, tend only the hair on their heads, and almost bind up their locks in hairnets like women.

3.3m  Lions are proud of their shaggy manes, but their hair arms them for battle. Boars too are proud of their bristly crest, but hunters fear them when they bristle their hair. Woolly sheep are weighed down with their fleeces, but even their hair the Father, who loves humanity, made abundant for your service, O man, having taught you to shear the fleece. Among the nations, the Celts and the Scythians wear their hair long, but they do not dress it up. The thick hair of the barbarian has something fearful about it, and its yellow color threatens war, since the color is akin to blood. Both these barbarian peoples have hated luxury. The German will offer the Rhine as a clear witness, and the Scythian his wagon. The Scythian sometimes even despises the wagon (the barbarian thinks a large one a sign of wealth), and leaving luxury behind, he lives simply. A Scythian takes a horse, a self-sufficient home, lighter to carry than the wagon, and mounts it and is carried wherever he likes. When he is faint with hunger, he asks the horse for food. The horse offers its veins, and gives its master the only thing it has, its blood. So for the nomad the horse becomes both transport and food.

3.3n  Among the Arabs (another nomadic people), the fighting men ride camels. They mount camels that are pregnant. These graze and run at the same time, carrying their masters and bearing their household along with them. If the barbarians run out of drink, they milk the camels. When that food is used up, they do not spare even the blood, like wolves in a frenzy, as people say. Yet the camels, which are gentler than the barbarians, bear no grudge when wronged. They run boldly across the desert, carrying and feeding their masters at once. So let those guardian beasts perish, whose food is blood! For it is not right for human beings to touch blood, since their body is nothing but flesh nourished by blood. Human blood shares in the Word, and takes part in grace through the Spirit. If anyone wrongs it, it will not go unnoticed.

3.3o  Even naked, stripped of outward show, a person may speak to the Lord. I approve of the plain living of the barbarians. They have loved a life free of baggage and have given up luxury. This is what the Lord calls us to be: bare of bad taste, bare of vain glory, torn away from our sins, carrying with us only the wood of life, holding on only to salvation.

3.4a  With Whom We Are to Associate. But I had unawares sailed past the order of my subject in my thoughts. I must run back to it and rebuke the great number of household slaves that people keep. They avoid working for themselves and serving themselves, so they take refuge in servants. They buy up a great crowd of cooks, of table-setters, and of men who skillfully cut up the meat into portions. Their service is divided into many branches. Some labor over their gluttony: the carvers, the seasoners, and those who prepare and make the pastries, the honey-cakes and the soups. Others busy themselves with their excessive wardrobes. Others guard their gold like griffins. Others look after the silver, polish the cups, and get ready the equipment for banquets. Others groom the pack animals. A crowd of cupbearers is trained in their houses, along with herds of handsome young boys, like livestock, from whom they milk out their beauty.

3.4b  Male and female hairdressers attend the women, some with the mirrors, some with the hairnets, others with the combs. There are many eunuchs too, and they act as go-betweens. Because they are believed to be unable to enjoy pleasure, they serve those who wish to indulge themselves without raising suspicion. But a true eunuch is not the man who is unable, but the man who is unwilling, to enjoy pleasure. Now the Word, through the prophet Samuel, bore witness against those Jews who had transgressed when the people asked for a king. He did not promise them a kindly lord. He threatened them with a headstrong, self-indulgent tyrant, who “will take your daughters,” he says, “to be perfumers, cooks and bakers.” Such a king rules by the law of war and has no zeal for peaceful government. Many Celts lift the women’s litters high and carry them on their shoulders. But there is nowhere any wool-working, spinning, weaving, women’s work in the women’s quarters, or housekeeping. Instead those who falsify the women spend all day with them, chattering about love stories, and wear down their bodies and souls with false work and false talk.

3.4c  “You shall not be with many for evil,” it says, “nor add yourself to a crowd.” For wisdom shows itself among the few, but disorder among the many. These women do not buy bearers out of modesty, from not wanting to be looked at. That would be commendable, if they sought the covering with that attitude. They are carried by their servants out of pampered luxury, eager to put on a show. So they pull back the curtain and look sharply around at those who gaze at them, and they prove what their character is. Often they even lean out from inside, and by their unsteady curiosity they disgrace their surface show of modesty. “Do not look around in the streets of the city,” it says, “and do not wander in its deserted places.” For a place is truly deserted, even if there is a crowd of dissolute people, where no self-controlled person is present. These women are carried around the temples, offering sacrifices and consulting oracles. Every day they parade along with beggar-priests, beggar-priests of the Mother goddess, and scurrilous old women who ruin households. They put up with the old women’s whispering over the cups, and they learn love potions and spells from sorcerers, to the destruction of marriages.

3.4d  Some of the men they already have, others they pray for, and others the diviners promise them. They do not realize they are being deceived. They hand themselves over as an instrument of pleasure to anyone who wants to indulge his lust. They trade their purity for the most shameful abuse, and they count their disgraceful ruin as a business deal. Many serve this prostitute-like lewdness, slipping in from one place or another. The licentious are quick to rush toward debauchery, like pigs on a boat rushing to the end that is sinking. So Scripture warns with great force: “Do not bring every man into your house, for the traps of the deceitful are many.” Elsewhere it says: “Let righteous men be your dinner companions, and in the fear of the Lord your boast will stand.” To the crows with fornication! “For you may be sure of this,” says the apostle, “that every fornicator or covetous person, who is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” But these women take pleasure in the company of effeminate men. Crowds of loose-tongued perverts slip into the house, foul in body and foul in speech, grown men fit for shameless services, servants of adultery. They giggle and whisper. Through their noses they make lewd, unrestrained snorts that signal lust. They try to please with indecent words and gestures, and they draw out laughter, which comes before fornication. Sometimes, when some passing anger inflames them, they are fornicators themselves, or devoted followers of the crowd of perverts to their own destruction. Then they snort through the nose like frogs, as if bile lived in their nostrils.

3.4e  But the more refined women raise Indian birds and Median peacocks. They recline at table with deformed, pointy-headed people and play with them, delighted with these satyr-dance freaks. They laugh when they hear about Thersites, yet they buy Thersiteses at high prices. They take pride not in their husbands but in these creatures, who are a burden on the earth. They overlook a chaste widow, who is worth far more than a Maltese lapdog. They look past a righteous old man, who is better looking, I think, than a freak bought with silver. They who raise parrots and plovers will not even take in an orphan child. They expose the babies born in their own homes, but take up the chicks of birds. They prefer creatures without reason to those with reason. They ought instead to support old men who profess self-control, who are better looking than monkeys, I think, and can say something better than nightingales. “As much as you did it to one of these least,” he says, “you did it to me.” But these women, on the contrary, have put lack of training ahead of self-control. They turn their fortunes into stone, into pearls and Indian emeralds. Yes, and they waste and scatter their money on fading dyes and on slaves bought with silver. They are like well-fed hens scratching through the dung heaps of life. “Poverty,” it says, “humbles a man.” By poverty he means stinginess, which makes the rich poor in giving, as though they had nothing.

3.5a  How to behave at the baths. And what are their baths like? They are built-up rooms, solid yet portable, covered with sheer linen. They have gilded chairs, silver ones too [text missing], and countless vessels of gold and silver. Some are carried along for toasts, some for food, some for bathing. They even have braziers of coals. They have reached such a level of self-indulgence that they dine and get drunk while still bathing. The silver plate that they parade about they set out, in poor taste, in the bathhouses. Perhaps this is to show off their wealth out of excessive vanity. But above all it shows their headstrong lack of training, which lets them denounce unmanly men who are ruled by women. In doing so they show, and in a way prove, that they themselves cannot even sweat without a great collection of equipment. For even poor women, who have no share in the procession, use the same baths.

3.5b  So the grime of excess comes wrapped in plenty of reproach. With this, as with bait, they hook the poor fools who gape at the glitter of gold. By dazzling the tasteless with it, they contrive to be admired by their lovers, who a little later treat them with contempt when they are naked. They would not undress before their own husbands, since they are after a pretended reputation for modesty. Yet anyone else who wishes may see these women, who are kept shut up at home, naked in the baths. There they are not ashamed to strip before spectators, as though before dealers in bodies. Hesiod advises that one should not even wash the skin in a woman’s bath. But the baths are open to men and women together, and there they strip for self-indulgence. “For from seeing, people come to desire,” as though their modesty were washed away in the baths.

3.5c  Some women are not quite so shameless. They shut out strangers, but they bathe together with their own household servants. They strip naked before their slaves and are rubbed down by them. In this way they give the servant, who has been cowering with his desire, freedom to touch without fear. For the men brought in to attend their naked mistresses at the bath get practice in stripping themselves. By this evil custom they set fear aside and grow bold in their desire. The athletes of old were ashamed to show a man’s naked body, so they competed in loincloths and kept their modesty. But these women take off their shame along with their tunics. They want to look beautiful, but they are shown, against their will, to be wicked all the same. For the body itself most clearly shows the wanton hunger of desire, just as in people with dropsy the water shows beneath the surface of the skin. In both cases the sickness is recognized by the look.

3.5d  So men ought to give women a noble example of truth. They should be ashamed to strip in front of women, and they should guard against slippery glances. For Scripture says, “He who has looked too curiously has already sinned.” At home, then, we should show respect to parents and servants. On the streets we should respect those we meet. In the baths we should respect the women. In lonely places we should respect ourselves. And everywhere we should respect the Word, who is everywhere, and “without him not one thing came into being.” For a person will stay free from falling only if he always believes that God is present with him.

3.6a  Only the Christian is rich. We must take our share of wealth in a worthy way and give from it generously, not in a mean or showy way. We must not let the love of beauty turn into self-love and bad taste. Otherwise someone may say of us, “His horse is worth fifteen talents, or his land, or his servant, or his gold, but the man himself is worth only three coppers.” Take away the women’s finery and the masters’ servants, and you will find the masters no different from slaves who were bought with money: not in the way they walk, or look, or speak. They look just like their slaves. They differ only by being weaker than their servants and having been brought up in a more sickly way. So we should sing this best of teachings on every occasion: the good man, being self-controlled and just, stores up his wealth in heaven. He sells his earthly goods and gives to the poor, and so finds the treasure that cannot perish, where no moth and no thief comes. He is truly blessed, even if he is small, weak and unknown, and he is truly rich with the greatest wealth. But suppose a man is richer than Cinyras and Midas, yet is unjust and proud. He is like the man who lived in luxury in purple and fine linen and looked down on Lazarus. That man is wretched. He lives a painful life, and he will not live.

3.6b  Wealth seems to me to be like a snake. If someone does not know how to pick it up safely, by holding the creature up at a distance by the tip of its tail, it will wind around his hand and bite. Wealth is just as dangerous as it wriggles. Whether the hand that grips it is skilled or unskilled, it is quick to cling and bite. The only safe way is to look down on it with a great mind and to use it with knowledge. Then, by the charm of the Word, a person can subdue the creature and remain unharmed himself. But it seems that the man who owns the things of greater worth is rich without anyone noticing. And the things of great value are not stone, or silver, or clothing, or bodily beauty. They are virtue, which is the Word handed on through the Instructor to be put into practice. This is the Word who swears off luxury. He calls self-reliant work to serve us, and he sings the praises of simple living, the child of self-control. “Take instruction,” he says, “and not silver, and knowledge rather than tested gold. For wisdom is better than costly stones, and nothing precious is worth as much as she is.” And again: “Gain me as your fruit rather than gold and precious stone and silver. For my produce is better than choice silver.” But if we must make a distinction, let the man with many possessions be called “rich,” stuffed with gold like a filthy bag. The just man, though, is the one who is “well-formed.” For good form is a right order, measured in how one manages and gives. “For there are those who sow and gather more,” and of such a man it is written, “He scattered, he gave to the poor; his righteousness remains for ever.” So the rich man is not the one who has and keeps, but the one who shares. It is the giving, not the owning, that shows a man to be blessed. Generosity is the fruit of the soul. So real wealth lies in the soul.

3.6c  Let it be granted, then, that good things can be possessed only by good people, and Christians are good. A foolish or self-indulgent person could neither perceive what is good nor obtain it. So good things can be possessed by Christians alone. Nothing is richer than these good things, so Christians alone are rich. For true wealth is righteousness, and the Word, more precious than any treasure. This wealth does not grow from flocks and fields but is given by God. It cannot be taken away, and the soul alone is its treasure house. It is the best possession for its owner, and it makes a person truly blessed. Think of the man who desires nothing that is not in our power, who gets what he desires, and who receives from God, by asking, whatever he rightly longs for. Is he not rich in possessions, indeed in everything, when he has God as his everlasting treasure? “To the one who asks,” it says, “it will be given, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” If God refuses nothing, then everything belongs to the godly person.

3.7a  Luxury that wanders off into pleasures becomes a terrible shipwreck for people. For this pleasant but inglorious life of the many is foreign to true love of what is beautiful and to refined pleasures. By nature a human being is a lofty and proud creature who seeks what is noble, since he is the work of the One who alone is noble. But a life lived for the belly is undignified, disgraceful, ugly and laughable. Love of pleasure is most foreign to the divine nature: to eat like sparrows, and to mate like pigs and goats. To think pleasure a good is the mark of complete lack of taste for what is truly excellent. Love of money, too, drives a person from the right way of living. It persuades him to feel no shame at shameful things, “so long as he has the power, like a beast, to eat all kinds of food, to drink in the same way, and to take his fill of sexual pleasure in every way.”

3.7b  For this reason such a person very rarely inherits the kingdom of God. Why, then, are so many dishes prepared, except to fill a single belly? The sewers prove the filthiness of gluttony, for our bellies spit out into them the leftovers of the feast. Why do they gather so many cupbearers, when one cup would be enough to fill them? Why the chests of clothing? Why the gold? Why the ornaments? These things are made ready for clothes-thieves and criminals, and for greedy eyes. “Let acts of mercy and faithfulness not forsake you,” says the Scripture. Look, we have in Elijah the Tishbite a fine example of frugality, when he “sat down under the broom tree” and the angel brought him food: “there was a barley loaf baked in the ashes and a flask of water.” That was the meal the Lord sent him.

3.7c  As we travel toward the truth, then, we must travel light. “Do not carry,” said the Lord, “a purse, a bag, or sandals.” That is: do not acquire wealth that is merely stored up in a purse. Do not fill your own storehouses, as if you were packing grain into a bag, but share with those in need. Do not busy yourselves with pack animals and servants, who carry the burdens of the rich on their journey and are called “sandals” in a figurative sense. So we must throw away the great mass of household goods, the silver and gold drinking cups, and the crowd of servants. In their place we take from the Instructor two fine and dignified companions, self-help and simplicity. We must walk in step with the Word, even if a man has a wife and children. A household is no burden when it has learned to follow a self-controlled traveler. The wife who loves her husband must be equipped like him for the road. Both of them carry simplicity along with one chaste dignity, a good provision for the journey to heaven. As the foot is the measure of the sandal, so each person’s body is the measure of what he should own. What goes beyond that, what people call “ornaments,” and the furnishings of the rich, is a burden and no adornment to the body.

3.7d  Whoever is pressing hard to climb up into the heavens must carry about the good staff of doing good, and by sharing with those in distress, take his share of true rest. For Scripture agrees that “a man’s own wealth is the ransom of his soul.” That is, if he is rich, he will be saved by giving to others. Think of wells that naturally flow freely: when they are drawn down, they rise again to their former level. In the same way giving is a good spring of kindness to people. When it shares drink with the thirsty, it grows and fills again, just as milk usually flows into breasts that are nursed or milked. For the one who has the Word, the almighty God, lacks nothing and is never at a loss for anything he needs. The Word is a possession that lacks nothing, and the cause of all plenty. Someone may say he has often seen a righteous man short of bread. That is rare, and happens only where there is no other righteous man around. Even so, let him read this as well: “For the righteous man will not live on bread alone, but by the word of the Lord.” That Word is the true bread, the bread of the heavens.

3.7e  The good man, then, is never in need, as long as he keeps his confession of God sound. 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. He may also feel no want at all. This Word, who is our instructor, gives us riches, and there is no envy in being rich for those who gain, through him, freedom from want. Whoever has this wealth will inherit the kingdom of God.

3.8a  Similitudes and examples are a very important part of right instruction. If any of you avoids luxury to the end, nursing yourself on simple living, you will find it easier to bear hardships you do not choose. By constantly making voluntary troubles your exercises for persecutions, you will not be untrained in endurance when you come to unavoidable hardships, fears and griefs. This is why we have no homeland on earth: so that we may look down on earthly possessions. Simplicity is the richest condition, since it never runs short in spending, when money is spent on what it should be, and as much as it should be. For expenses are “charges” (tele). How a wife should live with her husband, and about doing one’s own work, housekeeping and the use of servants, and also about the proper time for marriage and what suits women, we will go through in our discourse on marriage. Here we must set down only what belongs to instruction, sketching in outline the life of Christians.

3.8b  Most things have now been said and taught. What remains I will add, since examples are no small weight toward salvation. See what the tragedy says: “Telemachus did not kill the wife of Odysseus; for she did not marry husband upon husband, but the bed stayed sound in the house.” In rebuking shameless adultery, the poet held up a fine picture of chastity, love for one’s husband. And the Spartans made the Helots (Helots is the name of their slaves) drink to excess. They showed their own sober men the deeds of drunkenness, as a kind of cure and correction. Watching the Helots’ disgraceful behavior, so as not to fall into the same condemnation, the Spartans were trained, and benefited by the shame of the drunkards to keep themselves free from fault. For some people were saved by being taught, and others by teaching themselves; they either pursued virtue eagerly or searched for it.

3.8c  “Best of all is the man who works out everything for himself.” That is Abraham, who sought God. “Good also is the man who obeys one who speaks well.” These are the disciples who were persuaded by the Word. So the one was called a friend, and the others apostles. The one busied himself in search, the others preached, one and the same God. Both are good. Their hearers are of two kinds: one is helped through searching, the other saved through finding. “But whoever neither understands for himself nor takes to heart what he hears from another, he is a useless man.” This is the people who do not follow Christ. Yet the loving Instructor helps in many ways. Some things he urged, some he rebuked. When others sinned, he showed us their shame, and made plain the punishment that followed. In this he both led our souls and warned us, devising a kindly way to turn us from evil by showing what others had suffered before. By these pictures he plainly stopped some who were in a bad state, and held back those who dared the same things. He built others up in endurance, and made others stop their wickedness. Others he healed, when they changed for the better by looking at their like.

3.8d  Who, when following someone along a road, would not take care, if the man ahead fell into a pit, to turn aside from the same danger, guarding against following him into his sin? Again, what athlete in training has learned the way to glory and seen the competitor before him win the prize, and does not himself race for the crown, imitating the older man? There are many such pictures in divine wisdom. But I will mention one example and set it out briefly. The suffering of the Sodomites was a judgment on those who did wrong, and instruction for those who heard of it. The Sodomites, through great luxury, ran aground on licentiousness. They committed adultery without fear and were wildly inflamed with passion for boys. The all-seeing Word looked on them. Those who do unholy things cannot hide from him, and the sleepless guardian of humanity did not keep silent about their licentiousness. He wanted to turn us away from imitating them and to train us toward his own self-control. So he brought punishment on the sinners, so that lust going unpunished should not gain a flood of impunity. He ordered Sodom to be burned, pouring out a little of that wise fire on their lack of restraint. Otherwise their lust, grown unchecked, would have thrown wide the gates for those rushing toward pleasure.

3.8e  So the just punishment of the Sodomites became, for people, a picture of salvation that is reasonable. Those who have not sinned as the punished did would never suffer the same penalty as those sinners, since by not sinning they are kept from suffering. “For I want you to know,” says Jude, “that God, having once saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterwards destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not keep their own rank but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day.” Then, a little further on, he sets out in a very instructive way the pictures of those who are judged: “Woe to them, for they have gone the way of Cain, have poured themselves out in the error of Balaam, and have perished in the rebellion of Korah.” For fear keeps from insolence those who cannot bear the freedom of adoption as sons.

3.8f  This is why there are punishments and threats: so that, fearing the penalties, we may hold back from sinning. I could tell you of the punishments for love of the world and for love of glory, and not only for lack of self-control. I could also set beside them the condemnations of the foolish talk that comes from wealth, in which the Word holds us back from wrongdoing by making us afraid. But to spare the length of this work, I now bring you the next commands of the Instructor, so that you may heed his warnings.

3.9a  Why the bath is to be used. Now, to return to the point where I turned aside: there are four reasons why we go to the bath. These are cleanliness, warmth, health, and lastly pleasure. Bathing for pleasure must be set aside, for shameless pleasure must be cut out by the roots. Women should take the bath for cleanliness and health; men for health alone. Bathing for warmth is unnecessary, since a body stiff with cold can be comforted in other ways. Constant use of the bath wears down strength and loosens the body’s natural tone, and it often brings on weakness and fainting. For in a certain way bodies drink, like trees, not only through the mouth but also through the opening of the pores over the whole body in the bath, as they say.

3.9b  Here is the proof: people who are thirsty have often gone into the water and so cured their thirst. So even if the bath is useful for some purpose, we should not give ourselves up to it. The ancients called baths “places for fulling people,” since they wear out the body into rags and force it to grow old sooner than it should. They boil the body, as it were, and the flesh is softened by the heat like iron. So we then need cold water, like the dipping and tempering of the metal. Nor should we bathe every time we can. If someone is very empty, or on the other hand overfull, he should avoid the bath, and he should also consider the age of his body and the season of the year. For the bath does not benefit everyone, or at all times, as the experts in these matters agree. For us moderation is enough, which we call on everywhere as a help in life. We should not spend so long at the bath that we need someone to lead us by the hand, nor bathe constantly and many times a day, as if going to the marketplace.

3.9c  It is also an outrage against our neighbors to have several servants pour water over us. Such people grab more than their share out of love of luxury, and refuse to understand that the bath is equally common to all who bathe. Above all we should wash the soul with the cleansing Word. The body we wash sometimes because of the dirt that grows on it, and sometimes also to ease weariness. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,” says the Lord, “for you are like whitewashed tombs. Outwardly the tomb looks 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, because you clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they are full of uncleanness. First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside may be clean too.” The best bath, then, scrubs the filth from the soul, and it is spiritual. Of this the prophecy says plainly: “The Lord will wash away the filth of the sons and daughters of Israel, and will cleanse the blood from their midst.” This means the blood of lawlessness and the murders of the prophets. And the Word went on to name the manner of the cleansing: “by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of burning.” The bodily, fleshly washing, by contrast, is done with water alone, as often happens in the country, where there is no bath.

3.10a  Those who live by reason should also approve of exercise. For young men the gymnasium is enough, even if a bath is at hand. Indeed, it is perhaps no bad thing for men to choose exercises before baths above all else. They have something useful for the health of the young, and they stir up zeal and ambition to care not only for good physical condition but also for courage of soul. When this is done without being pulled away from better work, it is pleasant and not unprofitable. Women are not to be excluded from bodily exertion either. But they should not be urged toward wrestling and running. Let them exercise by spinning wool, by weaving, and by standing beside the woman who bakes, if need be. Wives should also fetch with their own hands from the storeroom what we need, and there is no shame in their going to the mill. Nor is it a disgrace for a wife who keeps the house and helps her husband to busy herself with the cooking, so that it is pleasing to him.

3.10b  If she also shakes out the bedding herself, hands a drink to her thirsty husband, and sets food before him, she will be exercising herself most becomingly and for sound health. The Instructor approves of such a wife, who “stretches out her arms to useful tasks, and her hands hold the spindle. She opened her hands to the poor and reached out her fruit to the needy.” She was not ashamed of the finest service, imitating Sarah in waiting on travelers. For Abraham said to her, “Hurry, and knead three measures of fine flour, and make hearth cakes.” “Rachel, the daughter of Laban,” it says, “came with her father’s sheep.” And that was not enough: to teach freedom from pride, the text adds, “for she was feeding her father’s sheep.” The Scriptures offer countless examples of simple living and self-reliance, and also of exercise.

3.10c  Among men, let some strip and take part in wrestling. Let others play the small-ball game called phaininda, especially in the sun. For others a walk is enough, whether they go out to the country or down into town. If they also take up a hoe, this is no ignoble side-activity: it is economical, and it is farm exercise. I had almost overlooked the famous Pittacus, the king of the Mytileneans, who is said to have used active exercise (the older English says he turned the mill). It is also good to draw water for oneself and to chop the wood one will use. “Jacob was shepherding the rest of Laban’s sheep,” carrying a royal sign, “a rod of storax wood,” and practicing by means of the wood to change nature for the better. For many people, reading aloud is also at times an exercise. As for the wrestling we have approved, let it not be taken up out of useless rivalry, but to bring out a man’s sweat. We should not work at the skilful tricks, the show-off side of it, but at straight wrestling, freeing the neck, hands and sides. Such exercise is more orderly and manly, done with seemly strength for the sake of useful, beneficial health. The other kinds of athletic labor announce training in postures unworthy of free men.

3.10d  We must always aim at the right measure. Just as it is best for work to come before meals, so working beyond the measure is very bad, tiring, and productive of sickness. So we should not be altogether idle, nor completely worn out with toil. As we have explained about food, so in everything and everywhere our way of life should not be turned toward soft living and self-indulgence, nor to the opposite extreme of harshness. It should take the middle course between them, one that is well-tuned, self-controlled, and free of both vices, luxury and stinginess. As we have also said before, doing things for oneself is an exercise that keeps pride away. Examples are putting on one’s own shoes, washing one’s own feet, and rubbing oneself down after being oiled. To give the same service in return, turn and turn about, to the one who has rubbed you is likewise an exercise in shared justice. So too is staying up through the night beside a sick friend, helping one who cannot help himself, and setting food before one in need.

3.10e  “And Abraham,” it says, “set a meal before the three of them under the tree, and stood by them while they ate.” Fishing is also fitting, as with Peter, if we have time to spare from the necessary lessons of the Word. But better is the catch the Lord gave to his disciple, when he taught him to fish for people through water, as one fishes for fish.

3.11a  A Summary Survey of the Best Life. For this reason we need not cut off entirely the wearing of gold or the use of softer clothing. But we must put a bridle on the irrational impulses, so that they do not throw us into soft living by carrying us off in a flood of too much ease. Luxury that has run on into excess is terrible: it leaps about, rears up, and throws off its driver, the Instructor. He, from a distance, pulls back on the reins and leads and drives toward salvation the human horse. That is the irrational part of the soul, which turns wild over pleasures, blameworthy desires, jewels, gold, embroidered clothing and other finery. Above all we should keep in mind what was said in a holy way: “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles good, so that when they slander you as evildoers, they may see your good works and glorify God.” So the Instructor allows us simple clothing, and white in colour, as we said before. We are then not to be at home with what is patterned by artifice, but with what is produced by nature. We should push aside everything deceitful that tells lies against the truth, and embrace the single manner and single face of the truth.

3.11b  Sophocles, rebuking a soft-living young man, says: “You make a show in clothes that imitate a woman’s.” For as there is a proper dress for a soldier, a sailor and a ruler, so the proper dress for a self-controlled person is one that is unfussy, becoming and clean. For this reason the law about leprosy given through Moses in the Law rejects what is multicoloured and heavily spotted as unholy, since it resembles the mottled scales of the serpent. It wants the person who is no longer decked out in a variety of colours, but has turned wholly white from the top of the head to the soles of the feet, to be clean. Thus, by a change from the body to the mind, we are to let go of the variegated and cunning passion of the mind, and love the plain, unhesitating, simple colour of the truth. In this also Plato, best in everything, shows himself an admirer of Moses. He approves of that kind of weaving which needs no more work than a modest woman can give. He says: “White colours are fitting for dignity, in weaving as elsewhere; but dyes are not to be used, except for the ornaments of war.” So white suits peaceable people, people of light.

3.11c  Signs that stand closest to their causes show the presence of the cause, or rather prove the existence of what produced them. Smoke shows fire, and good colour and a strong pulse show health. In the same way, among us, this kind of clothing displays the settled state of our character. Self-control is clean and plain. Cleanness is a condition that provides for a pure way of life, unmixed with anything shameful. Plainness is a condition that removes what is excessive. Sturdy clothing, especially unbleached cloth, keeps in the heat of the body. It is not that the clothing has heat in itself, but that it turns back the heat leaving the body and gives it no way out. If any heat from outside falls on it, the cloth catches and keeps it, and being warmed by it, warms the body in return. That is why it should be used especially in winter. Such clothing is also easy to live with. Ease of living is an unexcessive condition that accepts what is enough to keep life from lacking anything, so that one lives a life according to reason, healthy and blessed.

3.11d  A woman too should wear plain and modest clothing. It may be softer than is fitting for a man, but it should not be altogether shameless, nor so soft that it is all luxury and slackness. Clothes should suit a person’s age, appearance, place, build and way of life. The divine apostle counsels us very well “to put on Christ Jesus, and to 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 as well? Then the saying would be fulfilled: “Like an earring in a pig’s snout, so is beauty on a woman without sense.” In short, if anyone thinks gold makes her beautiful, she is lower than gold, and one who is lower than gold is not its master. And to admit that you are less adorned than a speck of Lydian gold dust, is that not utterly absurd?

3.11e  Gold is fouled by the filthiness of a sow when she stirs up the muck with her snout. In the same way, the more pampered women, puffed up by their wealth, run wild in wantonness and insult true beauty with the defilement of sexual indulgence. The Word, then, allows them a gold ring, though not as an ornament. It is for sealing whatever in the house is worth guarding, because of their care in keeping house. If everyone were well trained, there would be no need of seals, since righteous people, servants and masters alike, would be on equal terms. But since lack of training gives a strong push toward wrongdoing, we have needed seals. Yet there are times to ease the strictness. Sometimes we must forgive women who have not been fortunate in finding a self-controlled marriage, and who adorn themselves to please their husbands. Let their limit be this: that their eagerness to be admired is directed only at their own husbands.

3.11f  I myself would not want them to cultivate bodily attractiveness at all. I would rather they won their husbands by self-controlled love for them, which is a compelling and righteous charm. Even so, since they choose to be unhappy in soul, let them, if they really want to be self-controlled, set themselves to calm their husbands’ irrational impulses and desires gently. They should lead their husbands quietly toward simplicity, by accustoming them little by little to greater self-restraint. For a dignified bearing comes not from adding something burdensome but from taking away what is excessive. In the same way, women’s luxury goods must be clipped like swift wings. They produce unstable puffed-up vanity and empty pleasures, and lifted up and winged by these, women often fly away from their marriages. So women must be kept in an orderly way and bound with the restraint of modest reserve, so that they do not slip away from the truth through vanity.

3.11g  It is good, then, for husbands who trust their wives to entrust the care of the house to them, since they were given as helpers for this. But we men may need to take part in city life or manage other tasks in the country, often away from our wives, and may need to seal something for safety. For this alone the Word gives us a signet. All other rings must be thrown away, since, as Scripture says, “a golden ornament is instruction for a prudent man.” Women who wear gold seem to me to be afraid that, if someone takes their gold away, they will be taken for slaves rather than adorned women. But the true nobility, which is judged by what is naturally beautiful in the soul, does not tell a slave by sale and purchase. It tells him by a servile mind. It is fitting for us not to appear free but to be free, since we are trained by God and adopted by God.

3.11h  So we must discard every trace of the slavish in our standing, moving, walking, dress and, in a word, our whole way of life, and make them as truly free as possible. Men should not wear the ring on the joint, for that is feminine. They should wear it on the little finger, pushed down to its base. That way the hand will be most useful for whatever work we need it for, and the signet will not easily fall off, since it is held by the thicker joint. Let our seals be a dove, or a fish, or a ship running before the wind, or a musical lyre, as Polycrates used, or a ship’s anchor, which Seleucus had engraved as his device. If someone is a fisherman, he will remember the apostle and the children drawn up out of the water. We must not engrave the faces of idols, since we are forbidden even to pay attention to them. Nor should we engrave a sword or a bow, since we pursue peace, or drinking cups, since we practice self-control.

3.11i  Many licentious people have their lovers or their mistresses engraved on their rings. They seem unwilling ever to forget their love affairs, even if they wanted to, because their licentiousness is constantly brought back to mind. On the matter of hair, this is my judgment. A man’s head should be close-cropped, unless his hair is naturally curly, but his chin should be bearded. The twisted locks on the head should not hang down too far and slide into womanish ringlets, for a “fine beard” is enough for men. If someone does trim some of his beard, he must not make it completely bare, for that is an ugly sight. Cutting the beard right down to the skin is condemned, since it comes close to plucking and smoothing it. The psalmist, for example, delighting in the hair of the beard, says, “Like the ointment that runs down on the beard, the beard of Aaron.” By repeating the word “beard” he praised its seemliness, and he made the face shine with the ointment of the Lord.

3.11j  Cutting the hair is not to be taken up for the sake of beauty but out of necessity. The hair on the head should be cut so that, as it grows, it does not come down and get in the way of the eyes. The hair on the moustache, which gets dirty when we eat, should perhaps be cut too. This should be done not with a razor, which is unbecoming for a free man, but with a pair of cropping scissors. The hair on the chin, however, should not be disturbed when it causes no trouble, since it gives the face dignity and a fatherly, awe-inspiring look. Appearance also trains many not to sin, because they would be easily found out. But for those who do not want to sin openly, an appearance that goes unnoticed and does not stand out is most welcome. Hidden behind it, they can go astray without being recognized, and because they look like the crowd they enjoy sinning without fear. A shaved head, then, not only shows a man to be austere. It also makes the skull hardier, by accustoming it to cold and heat, and it keeps off the harm that hair soaks up like a sponge from these and then lodges in the brain, so that the damage from the moisture lasts.

3.11k  For women it is enough to keep their hair soft and to tie it up simply at the neck with a plain pin. With this unaffected care they let their modest hair grow into true beauty. The elaborate twisting of hair that prostitutes go in for, and the binding of it into coils, make women look unsightly. They also damage the hair, pulling it out with those cunning braids. Because of the braids, women dare not even touch their own heads for fear of disturbing their hair. Even sleep comes with anxiety, in case they unknowingly spoil the shape of the arrangement. But adding other people’s hair is to be rejected entirely. It is utterly godless to fit foreign hair onto the head, dressing the skull in dead locks. For on whom will the elder lay his hand? Whom will he bless? Not the woman who has been adorned, but the strange hair, and through it another head.

3.11l  “The head of a woman is the man, and the head of the man is Christ.” So how is it not godless for these women to fall into a double sin? They deceive the men by substituting hair that is not their own. And as far as it lies in them, they shame the Lord by adorning themselves like prostitutes, to the deception of the truth, and they slander the head that is truly beautiful. So hair must not be dyed, nor must grey hair be changed in colour, for we are not even permitted to vary the colours of our clothing. Above all, the venerable and trustworthy look of old age should not be covered up. The mark of honour should be shown in the light of God, to win the respect of the young. For sometimes, when young people have been shameless, the sight of grey hair, standing over them like a tutor, has turned them to self-control, and the brightness of its appearance has stunned the youthful rage of desire.

3.11m  Women also must not rub their faces with the tricks of crafty cleverness. Instead, let us show them a modest kind of beautifying. The best beauty is first of all that of the soul, as I have often pointed out. This is when the soul is adorned by the Holy Spirit and breathed upon by the bright graces that come from him: righteousness, prudence, courage, self-control, love of the good, and modesty. No colour more blooming than modesty has ever been seen. Next, let bodily beauty also be cultivated: “the symmetry of limbs and parts, with a good colour.” The beautifying that belongs to health is suitable here. By it the artificial image gives way to what is real, according to the form given by God. A well-tempered mixture in drinks and moderation in food are wonderfully able to beautify in accord with nature. For through these the body not only keeps its health but also lets its beauty show through.

3.11n  From what is fiery come gleam and sparkle. From what is moist come brightness and grace. From what is dry come manliness and firmness. From what is airy come easy breathing and balance. With these the Word’s well-proportioned and beautiful statue is adorned. Beauty is the free-born flower of health. Health works inside the body, while beauty blossoms out to the surface and shows a healthy complexion. So the finest and healthiest ways of training, by working the body hard, produce a beauty that is genuine and lasting. Heat draws to itself all the moisture and the cold breath, and heat is fanned into drawing power by movement. Once it has drawn them in, it gently warms the flesh and steams off through the flesh itself the surplus left from food, with a measure of moisture but an excess of heat.

3.11o  For this reason the earlier food is also cleared away. But if the body does not move, the food it has eaten does not take hold. It drops out, like bread from a cold oven, which comes out either whole or with only the bottom left behind. So it is natural that those who live in excess, and do not rub it off by exercise, produce too much urine and excrement. They also have too much of the other waste, and sweat as well, because the food is not distributed through the body but spills out into waste. Lusts also arise from this, since the surplus flows to the organs of procreation. So this surplus should be melted away by moderate exercise and dissolved into digestion, and it is digestion that gives beauty its rosy color. It is absurd for people made “in the image and likeness of God” to dishonor the original, as it were, by bringing in a foreign cosmetic art. They prefer human trickery to the creation of God.

3.11p  The Instructor commands women to come forward “in modest dress, adorning themselves with modesty and self-control,” “submitting to their own husbands, so that even if some are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, as they watch,” he says, “your pure conduct in the word. Let your adornment not be the outward braiding of hair and putting on of gold or wearing of clothes. Let it be the hidden person of the heart, in the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God’s sight.” Working with their own hands, above all, brings women genuine beauty. It exercises their bodies and adorns them by their own efforts. They do not bring out an adornment made by others, which is unadorned, servile and fit for a prostitute. Instead each self-controlled woman brings what she herself has made and woven with her own hands, whenever she needs it most. For it is never fitting for women who live as citizens according to God to appear adorned with things bought in the market. They should be adorned by the work of the household.

3.11q  For a woman who keeps house is a most beautiful piece of work. She clothes herself and her husband in ornaments of her own making. In these all rejoice: the children in their mother, the husband in his wife, she in them, and all of them in God. In short, a woman of courage is a storehouse of virtue. She “did not eat the bread of idleness, and the rules of almsgiving are on her tongue.” She “opened her mouth wisely and lawfully, and her 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, and let her praise the fear of the Lord.” And again: “A woman of courage is a crown to her husband.” Above all, their bearing, their looks, their walk and their voices must be set right.

3.11r  They must not behave like some women who envy the playacting of comedy and copy the loose movements of dancers, and so strut about on a stage in company. They glance around in a languid way, with soft movements, gliding steps and put-on voices, trained as bait for pleasure. “For honey drips from the lips of a prostitute, who speaks to please and makes your throat smooth. But afterward you will find it more bitter than gall and sharper than a two-edged sword. For the feet of folly lead those who use her down to Hades, with death.” Samson, noble man that he was, was beaten by a prostitute, and another woman cut off his hair. But no other woman deceived Joseph like that. The Egyptian prostitute was beaten, and self-control, though it took bonds, showed itself stronger than the one who was free.

3.11s  That saying also fits very well: “In short, I do not know how to whisper, or to walk about with my neck bent sideways in a limp way, as I see other men doing here in the city, many of them effeminate, with their hair plucked out with pitch.” Womanish movements, softness and luxury must be cut out completely. For a delicate, pampered way of walking, and “walking with a mincing gait,” as Anacreon puts it, is altogether the manner of courtesans, or so it seems to me. Comedy says that the tracks of courtesans leave behind youthful beauty and luxury. And Scripture says: “A prostitute’s footprints do not rest firmly on the truth; for she does not travel the paths of life, and her tracks are slippery and hard to recognize.” Above all the eyes must be spared, since it is better to slip with the feet than with the eyes. So the Lord cures this passion in the shortest way, when he says, “If your eye causes you to stumble, cut it out,” pulling desire up from its foundations. Languishing looks and ogling, that is, winking with the eyes, are nothing other than committing adultery with the eyes, as desire shoots its darts through them.

3.11t  For the eyes are ruined before the rest of the body. “An eye that looks on fine things gladdens the heart.” That is, the eye that has learned to look well gladdens it. “But one who winks his eye with deceit gathers griefs for men.” They portray the effeminate Sardanapalus, king of the Assyrians, in much this way: sitting on a couch with his feet up, carding purple wool and rolling up the whites of his eyes. Women who practice these things act as their own procurers by their looks. For Scripture says, “The eye is the lamp of the body,” by which the things inside are shown, lit up by the light that shines out. “A woman’s fornication is in the lifting of her eyes.” “Put to death, then, the members that are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry, on account of which the wrath of God comes,” the apostle cries out. Yet we fan the passions into flame and are not ashamed.

3.11u  Some of these women go about “chewing mastic” and grin at those who pass by. Others behave as though they had no fingers, and put on delicate airs while scratching their heads with the pins they carry. They go to great trouble over these pins, which are made of tortoiseshell, or ivory, or the body of some other dead animal. Others act as if they had some sort of blemishes, and to look attractive to onlookers they decorate themselves with brightly colored cosmetics and so stain their own faces. Through Solomon he calls such a woman “foolish and brazen, a woman who knows no shame. She sat on a chair at the doors of her own house, openly calling to those passing by, those who were keeping their paths straight.” By her posture and her whole way of life she is plainly saying, “Which of you is the most foolish? Let him turn aside to me.” And to those who lack sense she urges, saying, “Gladly touch secret bread and sweet stolen water.” By this he means this stealthy Aphrodite.

3.11v  Helped by this, Pindar of Boeotia says, “Something sweet is the stolen delight of Cypris.” “But the wretched man does not know that earthborn men perish with her, and he comes to the very ledge of Hades. So leap away,” says the Instructor, “and do not linger in that place, or fix your eye on her. For in this way you will cross foreign water and pass over the Acheron.” This is why the Lord says these things through Isaiah: “Because the daughters of Zion walked with raised neck and winking eyes, dragging their tunics as they walked and playing with their feet, God will humble the daughters of Zion and will uncover their shape.” That is, their shameful shape. For my part, I do not think the maidservants who walk at the women’s left, or who follow them, should speak shamefully or act shamefully. They should be corrected by their mistresses. The comic poet Philemon speaks very sharply: “As I went out, I saw behind a free woman only one maidservant following, a pretty one, and some man from Plataea tagging along and ogling her.”

3.11w  The wantonness of a maidservant rebounds on her mistress. It gives a foothold to men who try small liberties first, so that they need not fear to go on to greater ones. For the mistress, by tolerating shameful conduct, shows that she does not condemn it. And not to be angry with those who behave licentiously is a plain proof of a mind inclined the same way. “Like mistress, like dog,” as the proverb-makers say. We must also drive out of our walking any wild, frantic manner. We should choose a dignified and unhurried pace, though not a dawdling step. A man must not swagger in the streets, or throw his head back and glance sideways at those he meets to see whether they are looking at him, as if he were parading on a stage and being pointed out with fingers. Nor should men be pushed up a slope by their servants, as we see the more pampered do. They think themselves strong, but they are worn down by softness of soul.

3.11x  A noble man must show no visible sign of softness in his face, or indeed in any other part of his body. So let the ugly mark of unmanliness never be found in his movements or his postures. Nor should a healthy man use his servants as pack animals. Servants are commanded “to be subject to their masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle but also to the crooked,” as Peter says. In the same way fairness, patience and kindness suit masters. For he says, “Finally, all be of one mind, sympathetic, loving as brothers, tenderhearted, humble,” and what follows, “that you may inherit a blessing.” Zeno of Citium seems to sketch a fine and lovable portrait for a young person, and he sculpts him like this: “Let the face be clear, the brow not drooping, the eye neither wide open nor melting. Let the neck not be thrown back, nor the limbs of the body slack, but held up as if they were taut. Let there be quickness to hear a word and make it one’s own, and a firm hold on what has been rightly said. Let the postures and movements give the licentious no hope at all.

3.11y  Let modesty and manliness bloom in him. Let him stay away from loitering in the perfume shops, goldsmiths’ shops, wool shops and other workshops, where people dressed like prostitutes spend whole days, like women sitting on a brothel’s roof.” So men too must stop spending their time in barbers’ shops and taverns, chattering idly and hunting the women who pass by. Many of them never stop slandering others for a laugh. The game of dice should also be forbidden, and the practice of greed through knucklebones, which such men love to handle. Self-indulgence with no restraint invents things like this for those who spend their leisure badly. The cause is idleness. A man falls in love with empty things that lie outside the truth. There is no other way to get pleasure without harm. And the choice a person makes about how to live reflects the mind of each one.

3.11z  But, it seems, only company with good men does us good. On the other hand, the all-wise Instructor, through Moses, knew that living with worthless people is swinish, so he forbade the older people to eat pork. He was showing that those who call on God must not mix with unclean people. Such people, like pigs, are itching for bodily pleasures, for foul food, and for lewd titillations, and they delight in the ill-joyed pleasure of sex. He also says not to eat “kite, or swift-winged bird that tears at the breast, or eagle.” He means, “You shall not go near those who earn their living by plunder.” The other animals are explained allegorically in the same way. With whom, then, should we keep company? Again speaking allegorically, he says: with the righteous. For everything that “parts the hoof and chews the cud” is clean. The parted hoof shows a balanced righteousness. The chewing of the cud shows righteousness feeding on its own proper food, the Word. The Word enters from outside, like food, through instruction, and is sent back up from within, as if from the stomach of the mind, for rational remembrance.

3.11aa  The righteous man chews the cud of spiritual food, keeping the Word in his mouth. And righteousness fittingly parts the hoof, because it sanctifies us here and sends us on to the age to come. So the Instructor will not take us to the shows either. It would not be unfitting to call the stadiums and theatres “the seat of plagues.” There is a wicked “counsel” here, just as there was against the Righteous One, and so the gathering against him is cursed. These assemblies are full of great disorder and lawlessness. The very reasons for coming together cause indecency, since men and women come mixed together to look at one another. At this point the whole gathering becomes vain and showy. With the eyes feasting greedily, desires grow warm. Eyes grow used to looking more boldly at those nearby, because they have leisure to do so, and they set erotic desires ablaze.

3.11ab  So let us also give up the shows and the public recitals, which are full of coarse jokes and idle chatter. What shameful deed is not put on display in the theatres? What shameless word do the clowns not bring out? Those who have enjoyed the wickedness shown there carry its vivid images home with them. By contrast, those who are not charmed by such things and are unmoved by them will never stumble into easy-going pleasures. People will say they take up the shows as a kind of play, for the heart’s delight. But I would say that cities which take even their play so seriously are not sound-minded. For these ruthless rivalries for glory, which end in so many deaths, are no longer play. Nor are the empty enthusiasms and thoughtless ambitions, or the pointless waste of money, and nor are the riots that follow from them still play.

3.11ac  Relaxation must never be bought at the price of empty zeal. No one with any sense would choose what is more pleasant over what is better. “But,” someone says, “we are not all philosophers.” Then do we not all pursue life? What are you saying? How, then, have you come to believe? How do you still love God and your neighbor, if you do not pursue wisdom? How do you love yourself, if you do not love life? “I never learned letters,” he says. But even if you have not learned to read, you have no excuse for not hearing, since hearing does not have to be taught. Faith is the possession not of those who are wise by the world’s standard, but of those who are wise by God’s. It is trained even without letters. Its book, plain and yet divine, is called love, a spiritual composition. It is possible to listen to divine wisdom, and also to live as a citizen of it. Nothing forbids you to conduct the affairs of this world decently, in a way that honors God.

3.11ad  Let the one who sells or buys never name two prices for what he buys or sells. Let him name a single price and practice telling the truth. If he does not get that price, he still gets the truth, and he is rich in right disposition. Let praising of the goods and oaths over anything sold be far away, and let oaths be far away in everything else. In this way too let the market people and shopkeepers practice philosophy. “You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain, for the Lord will not cleanse the one who takes his name in vain.” Those who act against these things, the lovers of money, the liars, the hypocrites, those who peddle the truth, the Lord drove out of his Father’s courtyard. He did not want the holy house of God to be a house of dishonest trade, whether in words or in goods made of material things.

3.11ae  Woman and man are to be led to the church decently dressed, walking without affectation, loving silence, possessing “love without hypocrisy,” pure in body and pure in heart, fit to pray to God. Let the woman take this further: let her be covered entirely, unless she happens to be at home. For that dress is dignified, and it keeps her from being gazed at. She will never fall if she puts modesty and her covering before her eyes, and she will not tempt another into the slip of sin by uncovering her face. This is what the Word wills, since it is fitting for her to pray veiled. They say that Aeneas’ wife, out of extreme modesty, did not uncover herself even when Troy was being captured and she was in terror. Though fleeing from the burning city, she stayed veiled. Those who are being initiated into Christ ought to appear like this, and to shape themselves like this, throughout their whole life, just as they make themselves look more solemn in the churches. They ought to be such people, not merely seem to be, so gentle, so reverent, so loving. But now, somehow, they change their appearance and manners along with the place, just as they say octopuses become like the rocks they cling to and take on their color.

3.11af  When they leave this place, they lay aside the God-inspired spirit of the assembly and become like the many people they live among. Or rather, by dropping the false show of solemnity, they are exposed as what they secretly were. They showed reverence for the word about God, but they have left it inside, where they heard it. Outside they carry on foolishly with the godless, filled with strumming and love-song trills, flute-singing, clapping, drunkenness and every kind of rubbish. These are the same people who earlier sang hymns to immortality. They sing along, and sing back and forth, and in the end, wicked as they are, they wickedly sing the most ruinous of reversals: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” But they are dead to God not tomorrow but already. They are burying their own dead, that is, burying themselves in death. The apostle stands firmly against them: “Do not be deceived: neither adulterers, nor the soft, nor men who lie with men, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers,” and all the others that go with these, “will inherit the kingdom of God.” And if we have been called to the kingdom of God, let us live as citizens worthy of the kingdom, loving God and our neighbor.

3.11ag  Love is judged not by a kiss but by goodwill. Yet some people do nothing but make the churches ring with kissing, though they do not have the loving heart itself within them. This careless use of the kiss has filled the matter with shameful suspicion and slander. The kiss ought to be a mystery (the apostle called it “holy”). The soul should taste goodwill through a modest mouth that is kept closed, and through such a mouth above all a gentle character does its service. But there is also another kiss, an unchaste one, full of poison, which pretends to be holy. Do you not know that poisonous spiders, merely by touching a person’s mouth, cause them agony? Kisses often inject the venom of licentiousness. So it is plain to us that a kiss is not love, for “love is of God.” “This is the love of God,” says John, “that we keep the commandments” (not that we fawn on one another with the mouth), “and his commandments are not burdensome.” Likewise the greetings of the brothers and sisters in the streets are full of foolish boldness. They come from people who want to be noticed by outsiders, and they have not the least grace in them.

3.11ah  If it is right to pray to God secretly “in the inner room,” it follows that we should also show kindness to “our neighbor,” whom we are commanded to love second, secretly in the same way, from within, “redeeming the time.” For we are “the salt of the earth.” Scripture says: “Whoever blesses his friend early in the morning with a loud voice will seem no different from one who curses.” Above all, it seems best to turn away from looking at women. For it is possible to sin not only by touching but also by looking, and the person who is truly trained must avoid this most of all. “Let your eyes look straight ahead, and let your eyelids look toward what is right.” Surely it is not impossible to stand firm even after seeing? But we must guard against falling. A person who has seen may slip, but a person who has not seen cannot possibly desire. For self-controlled people it is not enough just to be pure. They must also take care to be free from blame, shutting out every ground for suspicion, to complete their purity, so that we are not only believers but also appear trustworthy.

3.11ai  This too must be guarded against, as the apostle says: “that no one find fault with us; for we take thought for what is honorable, not only before the Lord but also before men.” And Scripture says: “Turn your eye away from a graceful woman, and do not study another’s beauty.” If you ask the reason, it explains further: “For many have been led astray by a woman’s beauty, and from it love is kindled like fire.” So the love that starts from fire, which people call passion, leads on, because of sin, to a fire that never stops.

3.12a  A summary overview of the best life: all the passages of the holy Scriptures that mark out the Christian life. I would also advise married men never to kiss their wives at home in front of the servants. Aristotle would not even allow people to smile at slaves, so a husband should be far from showing affection to his wife in their sight. It is better to begin at home, in marriage itself, to show dignity. For the partnership of self-control is the greatest, and it breathes out pure pleasure. The tragedy puts it wonderfully: “Ah, women, among human beings neither gold, nor royal power, nor the luxury of wealth has pleasures so far above the rest as the mind of a good man and a devout wife, a mind that is just and thinks what is right.” We should not reject these precepts of righteousness even when they are spoken by those who pursue the wisdom of the world.

3.12b  So then, since we know “the work of each one,” let us “live out the time of your stay here as foreigners in fear, knowing that you were ransomed from your empty 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.” “The time that has passed is enough,” says Peter, “to have done the will of the Gentiles, living in debauchery, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and lawless idolatries.” Let us take the cross of the Lord as our boundary. By it we are fenced around and walled off from our former sins. Having been born again, then, let us nail ourselves to the truth, return to sobriety, and be made holy, “because the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. And who is there to harm us, if we become zealous for what is good?” The best way of life is good order. It is complete propriety and a settled, well-ordered strength. It gives each thing in turn its proper place in practice, and in virtue it cannot be surpassed.

3.12c  The Instructor says: “If I have spoken rather harshly in arranging for your salvation through correction, let it be put down to me, since ‘the one who rebukes with frankness makes peace.’ If you listen to me, you will be saved. If you pay no attention to what I have said, it is no concern of mine.” Yet it is still a concern to me even so, for “he chooses the repentance of the sinner rather than his death.” The Instructor says again, “If you listen to me, you will eat the good things of the land.” By “the good things of the land” he means what people count as good: beauty, wealth, health, strength, food. The things that are truly good are “what no ear has heard, and what has never entered the heart.” These are the truly good things that belong to the truly existing King and are waiting for us, for he is both the giver and the guardian of good things. The things here share the same names because they take part in those realities. In this way the Word, in a manner worthy of God, trains the weakness of human beings, leading them from what the senses perceive to what the mind understands.

3.12d  The Instructor has now said plenty about what must be guarded against at home and how life is to be set right. But there are also things he likes to say to his children along the road, until he brings them to the Teacher. These he now lays before us in summary form, using the Scriptures themselves. He sets out the commands plainly, fitting them to the time of guidance, and leaves their explanation to the Teacher. For his law intends to loosen the hold of fear by setting the willing will free for faith. “Listen, child,” he says, “you who are being rightly trained, to the main points of salvation. I will lay bare my own character and set before you these good commands, through which you will come to salvation. And I am leading you along the way of salvation.”

3.12e  “Keep 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, child, the good way that I shall explain to you, and lend me your listening ears. “And I will give you treasures that are dark, hidden, and unseen” by the nations, but visible to us. “The treasures of wisdom are inexhaustible,” and the apostle, marveling at them, says, “Oh, the depth of riches and of wisdom!” These many treasures are supplied by one God. Some are revealed through the law, some through the prophets, some by the divine mouth, and another by the sevenfold Spirit singing in harmony. The Lord is one, and through all of these he is the same Instructor. Here, then, is a short rule that sums up the whole of life and includes everything: “As you want people to do to you, do the same to them.” It is also possible to include the commandments in two, as the Lord says: “You shall love your God with all your heart, 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.” Indeed, to the man who asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” he answered, “You know the commandments.” When the man said yes, he said, “Do this, and you will be saved.”

3.12f  Still, the Instructor’s love for humanity should be set out more distinctly, through his many different commandments that lead to salvation. Then, with the Scriptures so generously arranged, we can find the way of salvation more readily. We have the Decalogue given through Moses. It hints at its meaning through a single, simple element, and it marks out a saving name for 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 your mother,” and what follows these. We must keep these commands, and whatever else is commanded in the readings of the books. He also commands through Isaiah: “Wash yourselves, become clean. Remove the evils from your souls from before my eyes. Learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the wronged, give judgment for the orphan, vindicate the widow. And come, let us reason together, says the Lord.” We would find many instructions in other writers too. Take prayer, for example: “Good works,” says the Scripture, “are a prayer acceptable to the Lord.”

3.12g  The manner of prayer is also laid down: “If you see a naked person,” it says, “clothe him, and you will not look down on those of your own family. Then your light will appear early, and your garments will quickly shine out, and your righteousness will go on before you, and the glory of God will wrap you round.” What, then, is the fruit of this prayer? “Then you will cry out, and God will answer you; while you are still speaking, he will say, ‘Look, I am here.’” About fasting he says: “Why do you fast for me? says the Lord. This is not the fast I chose, a day for a man to humble his soul. Even if you bend your neck like a hoop and spread sackcloth and ashes beneath you, you will still not call that an acceptable fast.” What, then, does fasting point to?

3.12h  “Look,” he says, “this is the fast that I have chosen, says the Lord. Loose every bond of injustice. Undo the strangling knots of violent contracts. Set free the broken-down by release, and tear up every unjust written agreement. Break your bread for the hungry, and bring homeless poor people into your house. If you see a naked person, clothe him.” And about sacrifices he says: “What is the multitude of your sacrifices to me? says the Lord. I am full of whole burnt offerings of rams. I do not want the fat of lambs, or the blood of bulls and goats, even if you come to appear before me. For who asked this from your hands? You shall no more trample my court. If you bring fine flour, it is worthless; incense is an abomination to me. I cannot stand your new moons and your sabbaths.” How, then, shall I sacrifice to the Lord?

3.12i  “A sacrifice to the Lord,” he says, “is a broken spirit.” How then shall I crown myself with a wreath, or anoint myself with perfume? Or what incense shall I burn to the Lord? “A fragrant aroma to God,” he says, “is a heart that glorifies the one who formed it.” These are God’s wreaths and sacrifices, his perfumes and flowers. Now, about patience under wrong: “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 back to you saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” Through John he commands soldiers to be content with their pay alone, and tax collectors to demand nothing beyond what is set. To a judge he says, “You shall not show partiality in judgment, for gifts blind the eyes of those who see and ruin just words”; and, “Rescue those who are wronged.” To those who manage households: “A possession hastily gained with lawlessness becomes less.” About love: “Love,” he says, “covers a multitude of sins.” About citizenship: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” About oaths and holding grudges: “Did I command your fathers when they came out of the land of Egypt to bring me whole burnt offerings and sacrifices? This is what I commanded them: let none of you hold a grudge in his heart against his neighbor, and let him not love a false oath.” He also threatens liars and the arrogant. To the first he says something like this: “Woe to those who call sweet bitter and bitter sweet.” To the others: “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and learned 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 themselves will receive mercy,” while wisdom pities the angry person, “because anger will destroy even the wise.” Finally he commands us to love our enemies, to bless those who curse us, and to pray for those who mistreat us.

3.12j  “To the one who strikes you on the cheek,” he says, “offer the other also; and if someone takes your tunic, do not stop him from taking your cloak as well.” About faith he says: “Whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.” And, as Pindar says, “nothing is trustworthy to the unbelieving.” We should also treat our household servants as we treat ourselves, for they are human beings like us. “For God is equal to all, if you consider it, to free men and to slaves alike.” When servants do wrong, we must not punish them but rebuke them. “For the one who spares his rod,” it says, “hates his own son.” Again, he drives out the love of glory, saying, “Woe to you, Pharisees, because you love the best seat in the synagogues and the greetings in the marketplaces.” But he welcomes the repentance of the sinner, loving the repentance that follows sins. For the Word alone is without sin. To sin is inborn in all and common to all, but to recover from sin is not the mark of any ordinary man, but of a man of real worth.

3.12k  About 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 food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; naked and you clothed me; sick and you visited me; in prison and you came to me.” And when did we do any of these things for the Lord? The Instructor himself will answer again, lovingly counting the kindness shown to the brothers as done to himself, saying: “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 laws of the Word, words of encouragement. They are written not on tablets of stone by the finger of the Lord, but inscribed on the hearts of men, the only place where they cannot be destroyed.

3.12l  For this reason the tablets of the hard-hearted were broken, so that the faith of the little children might be impressed on soft minds. Both laws served the Word for the training of humanity, one through Moses and the other through the apostles. What kind of training came through the apostles? I think I must speak about this kind of teaching too. Or rather, the Instructor himself, remembering me, speaks, and I will again set out his counsels in seed form: “Put away falsehood, and let each of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give a place to the devil. Let the thief steal no longer, but rather let him labor, doing good work, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and shouting and slander be taken away from you, along with all malice.

3.12m  Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Be wise, then, and imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ also loved us.” “Let wives submit to their own husbands, as to the Lord, and let husbands love their own wives, as Christ also loved the church.” So let those joined together 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.

3.12n  And masters, treat your servants well, giving up threats, knowing that both their Lord and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.” “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, challenging 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 will reap if we do not give up.” “Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, brothers, admonish the disorderly, encourage the fainthearted, hold on to the weak, be patient with everyone. See that no one repays anyone evil for evil. Do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophecies; but test everything, hold fast to what is good; keep away from every kind of evil.” “Devote yourselves to prayer, staying alert in it with thanksgiving.

3.12o  “Walk in wisdom toward those outside, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” “Feed on the words of faith. Train yourselves for godliness. For bodily training is of benefit for a little, but godliness is beneficial for everything, since it holds a promise for the life now and for the life to come.” “Those who have believing masters must not look down on them because they are brothers, but must serve them all the more, because they are believers.” “Let the one who gives do so with simplicity, the one who leads with diligence, the one who shows mercy with cheerfulness. Let love be without hypocrisy. Hate what is evil and hold fast to what is good. Be tenderly affectionate toward one another in brotherly love, taking the lead in showing honor to one another. Do not be slow in diligence. Be fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, enduring in affliction, devoted to prayer, pursuing hospitality, sharing in the needs of the saints.” These are a few out of many sayings, offered as samples. The Instructor has gone through the divine Scriptures themselves and sets them before his children. By them, one might say, wickedness is torn up by the roots and injustice is shut out.

3.12p  There are countless other instructions written in the holy books, addressed to particular chosen persons: some to elders, some to bishops and deacons, others to widows. We may speak of these at another time. Many things are also said in riddles and many in parables, and readers can benefit from them. But, says the Instructor, it is no longer my task to teach these things. We need a teacher to explain those holy words, and we must go to him. And now it is time for me to stop my instruction and for you to listen to the Teacher. When he takes you over, trained as you have been in good discipline, he will teach you the oracles. This Church is his school, and the Bridegroom is the only Teacher. He is the good purpose of the good Father, the genuine Wisdom, the sanctuary of knowledge. “And he is the propitiation for our sins,” as John says. He is Jesus, who heals both our body and our soul, the eternal person. “And not only for our sins, but also for the whole world.

3.12q  “And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. The one who says, ‘I know him,’ and does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, in him the love of God has truly been brought to completion. By this we know that we are in him. The one who says he remains in him ought himself also to walk just as he walked.” O you who are nurtured by this blessed training! Let us fill out the fair face of the Church, and let us who are infants run to our good mother. Even if we only become hearers of the Word, let us glorify the blessed plan of salvation. By it a person is trained, and made holy as a child of God. He lives as a citizen in heaven while still being trained on earth, and he receives there as Father the one he learns about on earth.

3.12r  The Word does everything, teaches everything and trains in everything. A horse is led by a bridle, a bull is led by a yoke, and a wild animal is caught in a snare. But a human being is reshaped by the Word. By the Word wild animals are tamed, fish are lured and birds are brought down. He is the one who truly devises the bridle for the horse, the yoke for the bull, the snare for the wild animal, the rod for the fish and the trap for the bird. He governs the city and farms the land; he rules, he serves, and he creates the whole universe. “In it he made the earth, in it the sky, in it the sea, in it all the constellations with which the heaven is crowned.” O the divine works of creation! O the divine commands! “Let this water surge within itself. Let this fire hold back its anger. Let this air drift into the upper sky. Let the earth be fixed firm, and let it move whenever I wish. I still want to form a human being. The elements are the matter I have to work with. I dwell with what I have formed.”

3.12s  “If you come to 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 also the Instructor of the world. By his command we both stand firm, man and world together, as we wait for judgment. “For he does not bring to mortals a stealthy, spoken word; the word will be wisdom,” as Bacchylides says. But the “blameless, pure and unblemished” children “of God,” as Paul says, “in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, shine in the world like lights.” Now that we are at such a festival of the Word, what remains is to pray to the Word. Be merciful to your children, Instructor, Father, Charioteer of Israel, Son and Father, both one, Lord. Grant to us who follow your commands that we may fill out the likeness of the image. Grant that we may sense, as strongly as we can, that God is good and a judge who is not harsh. And may you yourself provide everything for us. May we live as citizens in your peace and be moved to your city. May we sail across the surge of sin without being tossed. May we be carried along in calm by the Holy Spirit, by your inexpressible wisdom. Night and day, until the perfect day, may we offer a thankful praise to the only Father and Son, Son and Father, the Son who is Instructor and Teacher, together with the Holy Spirit.

3.12t  All things to the One, in whom are all things, through whom all things are one, through whom there is forever, of whom all are members, whose glory is the ages. All things to the good, all things to the beautiful, all things to the wise, all things to the just. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen. Since the Instructor has set us in the church and has handed us over to himself as the teaching Word who oversees all things, it is fitting that we, having come to this point, send up a song of praise to the Lord. It is a fair wage of thanks, matching his excellent training. Bridle of untamed colts, wing of birds that do not stray, sure rudder of ships, shepherd of royal lambs: gather your simple children to praise you in holiness, to sing to you without guile, with the innocent mouths of children, to Christ, the leader of children. King of the saints, all-conquering Word of the Most High Father, ruler of wisdom, support of those who toil, joy of the ages, Jesus, Savior of the human race: shepherd, plowman, rudder, bridle, heavenly wing of the all-holy flock, fisher of the people who are being saved. You draw pure fish out of the sea of wickedness, out of the hostile wave, and bait them with sweet life.

3.12u  Lead us, holy shepherd of rational sheep. Lead us, king of untouched children. The footsteps of Christ are the heavenly way. Ever-flowing Word, boundless age, eternal light, spring of mercy, worker of virtue for those who hymn God with a reverent life, Christ Jesus: you are the heavenly milk pressed out from the sweet breasts of the bride, from the graces of your wisdom. We are infants, nourished with tender mouths and filled from the breast of the Word with the refreshing Spirit. Simple praises and true hymns to Christ the King, holy wages for the teaching of life, let us sing together, let us send up in simplicity to the mighty Child. We are a chorus of peace, the Christ-born; we are a self-controlled people. Let us sing together to the God of peace.

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Greek text: Otto Stählin’s edition (Leipzig, 1905), via the First Thousand Years of Greek project (CC BY-SA 4.0). Modern English © SermonIndex, CC BY-SA 4.0. https://sermonindex.net/fathers/clement-paedagogus/