The Instructor (Paedagogus)

The Instructor (Paedagogus)

continued

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.

On the True Beauty.

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.

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, 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.

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.

Against Embellishing the Body.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.”

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.

Against Men Who Embellish Themselves.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

With Whom We are to Associate.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Behaviour in the Baths.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Christian Alone Rich.

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.

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.

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.

Frugality a Good Provision for the Christian.

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.”

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. 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.

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.

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.

Similitudes and Examples a Most Important Part of Right Instruction.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Why We are to Use the Bath.

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. 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.

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.

The Exercises Suited to a Good Life.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

A Compendious View of the Christian Life.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

Continuation: with Texts from Scripture.

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.

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.

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.

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.” 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.”

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.”

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.