(2) And they say that by the words "it is better to marry than to burn" the apostle means this: "Do not cast your soul into the fire, so that you have to endure night and day and go in fear lest you should fall from continence. For a soul which has to concentrate upon 'endurance has lost hope." In his Ethics, Isidore says in these very words: " Abstain, then, from a quarrelsome woman lest you are distracted from the grace of God. But when you have rejected the fire of the seed, then pray with an undisturbed conscience. And when your prayer of thanksgiving," he says, "descends to a prayer of request, and your request is not that in future you may do right, but that you may do no wrong, then marry. But perhaps a man is too young or poor or suffers from weak health, and has not the will to marry as the apostle's saying suggests. Such a man should not separate himself from his brother Christian. He should say, I have come into the sanctuary, I can suffer nothing. And if he has a presentiment that he may fall, he may say, Brother, lay your hand on me lest I sin, and he will receive help both spiritually and physically. Let him only wish to accomplish what is right and he will achieve his object.

(56) Therefore, O Man, look to it! [have a care] how you use the bestial Lust; it is (in itself) an Abomination before God, whether it be in the State of Wedlock, or out of it. But the right Love and Fidelity (in the Fear of God) covers it before the Countenance of God; and (through the Sun of the Virgin) it is regenerated to be a pure undefiled Creature again, in the Faith, if thy Confidence be in God.

(107) "Go into no way of the heathen and enter no city of the Samaritans," says the Lord, to keep us away from society contrary to his will. "For the end of the lawless man is evil. And these are the ways of all those who do lawless deeds." "Woe to that man," the Lord says, "it were well for him if he had never been born, than that he should cause one of my little ones to stumble. It were better for him that a millstone were hung about him and he cast into the sea than that he should pervert one of my elect." "For the name of God is blasphemed because of them." Therefore the apostle nobly says, "1 wrote to you in my letter to have no company with fornicators," as far as the words "but the body is not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body." And to show that he does not regard marriage as fornication he goes on: "Do you not know that he Who is joined to a harlot is one body with her?" Or who will assert that before she is married a virgin is a harlot? " And do not deprive one another," he says, "except by agreement for a time," indicating by the word "deprive" the obligation of marriage, procreation, which he has set forth in the preceding pas- sage where he says: "Let the husband give the wife her due and likewise also the wife to the husband."

(43) To attain the knowledge of God is impossible for those who are still under the control of their passions. Therefore they cannot attain the salvation they hope for as they have not obtained any knowledge of God. He who fails to attain this end is clearly subject to the charge of being ignorant of God, and ignorance of God is shown by a man's manner of life. It is absolutely impossible at the same time to be a man of understanding and not to be ashamed to gratify the body. Nor can the view that pleasure is the supreme Good be reconciled with the view that only the beautiful is good, or that only the Lord is beautiful, and God alone is good and is alone to be loved. "You are circumcised in Christ with a circumcision not done with hands, which consists rather in the putting away of the carnal body, in the circumcision of Christ." "If you then are risen with Christ, seek those things which are above; have in mind higher things, not earthly things. For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God" -but not the fornication which they practice. "Mortify therefore your earthly members, fornication, uncleanness, passion, lust; for on account of these wrath is coming." Let them also therefore "put away anger, wrath, wickedness, blasphemy, filthy talk from their mouth, putting off the old man with its lusts, and putting on the new man which is renewed to possess full knowledge according to the image of him who created it."

(14) Marriage to her was a calamity. To be subjected, then, to the passions, and to yield to them, is the extremest slavery; as to keep them in subjection is the only liberty. The divine Scripture accordingly says, that those who have transgressed the commandments are sold to strangers, that is, to sins alien to nature, till they return and repent. Marriage, then, as a sacred image, must be kept pure from those things which defile it. We are to rise from our slumbers with the Lord, and retire to sleep with thanksgiving and prayer,- "Both when you sleep, and when the holy light comes," confessing the Lord in our whole life; possessing piety in the soul, and extending self-control to the body. For it is pleasing to God to lead decorum from the tongue to our actions. Filthy speech is the way to effrontery; and the end of both is filthy conduct.

(1) For it is not suitable to the nature of the thing itself, that they should apprehend in the truly gnostic manner the truth, that all things which were created for our use are good; as, for example, marriage and procreation, when used in moderation; and that it is better than good to i become free of passion, and virtuous by assimilation to the divine. But in the case of external things, agreeable or disagreeable, from some they abstain, from others not. But in those things from which they abstain from disgust, they plainly find fault with the creature and the Creator; and though in appearance they walk faithfully, the opinion they maintain is impious. That command, "Thou shall not lust," needs neither the necessity arising from fear, which compels to keep from things that are pleasant; nor the reward, which by promise persuades to restrain the impulses of passion.

(101) But on the question whether everyone who turns from I sin to faith turns from sinful habits to life as though born of a mother, I may call as witness one of the twelve prophets who said:, “Am I to give my firstborn for my impiety, the fruit of my womb for the sin of my soul?" This is not an attack on him who said: "Increase and multiply." Rather he calls the first impulses resulting from birth, by which we do not know God, "impiety." If on this basis anyone maintains that birth is evil, let him also on the same ground hold that it is good, since in it we recognize the truth. "Be sober as is right,.and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God," that is, those who sin. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual powers." But "the rulers of darkness" have power to tempt us. That is why concessions are made. Therefore also Paul says: "I buffet my body and bring it into subjection." "For everyone who wishes to take part in a contest is continent in all things" (the words "he is continent in all things" really mean that, though he does not abstain from everything, yet he is self-controlled on such things as he thinks fit). "They do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible," as if we conquer in the struggle, though there is no crown for us if we do not put up any fight at all. There are also some now who rank the widow higher than the virgin in the matter of continence, on the ground that she scorns pleasure of which she has had experience.

(2) Although he also shall be punished as for a voluntary action, if one transfer the affection to the truth. For, in reality, he that cannot contain the generative word is to be punished; for this is an irrational passion of the soul approaching garrulity. "The faithful man chooses to conceal things in his spirit." Things, then, that depend on choice are subjects for judgment. "For the Lord searcheth the hearts and reins." "And he that looketh so as to lust" is judged. Wherefore it is said, "Thou shalt not lust." And "this people honoureth Me with their lips," it is said, "but their heart is far from Me." For God has respect to the very thought, since Lot's wife, who had merely voluntarily turned towards worldly wickedness, He left a senseless mass, rendering her a pillar of salt, and fixed her so that she advanced no further, not as a stupid and useless image, but to season and salt him who has the power of spiritual perception.

(20) " And guard yourselves from all fornication and uncleanness, And from all pollution of sin, Lest ye make our name a curse, And your whole life a hissing, And all your sons be destroyed by the sword, And ye become accursed like Sodom, And all your remnant as the sons of Gomorrah.

(28) It is to the brothels that this "communion" leads. They can have pigs and goats as their associates. Those who have most to hope from them are the public harlots who shamelessly receive all who want to come to them. "But you have not so learned Christ, if you have heard him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Christ Jesus; put off with the ways of your former life your old man which is corrupted by the deceitful lusts. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness," so as to be made like unto God. "Be therefore imitators of God, as dear children, and walk in love as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us as an offering and sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor. But fornication and all impurity and covetousness and shamefulness and foolish talk, let them not be mentioned among you as is fitting for saints." Moreover, the apostle teaches us to be chaste in speech when he writes, "Know this well that no fornicator..." and so on as far as the words "but rather expose them."

(89) But if anyone dares to call marriage fornication, he again falls into blasphemy against the law and the Lord. For as covetousness is called fornication because it is opposed to contentment with what one possesses, and as idolatry is an abandonment of the one God to embrace many gods, so fornication is apostasy from single marriage to several. For, as we have re- marked, the apostle uses the words fornication and adultery in; three senses. On this matter the prophet says: "You were sold to your sins." And again: "You were defiled in a foreign land." Here he regards as defilement an association which is bound up with a strange body and not with that which in marriage is bestowed for the purpose of procreation. That is why the apostle! also says: "I wish then that the younger women marry, bear children, look after their houses, and give the adversary no occasion for abuse; for some have already turned aside after Satan."

(46) The task of the law is to deliver us from a dissolute life and all disorderly ways. Its purpose is to lead us from unrighteousness to righteousness, so that it would have us self-con- trolled in marriage, in begetting children, and in general behavior. The Lord is not "come to destroy the law but to fulfill it." "To fulfill" does not imply that it was defective, but that by his coming the prophecies of the law are accomplished, since before the law the demand for right conduct was proclaimed by the Logos to those also who lived good lives. The multitude who know nothing of continence live for the body, not for the spirit. But the body without spirit is "earth and ashes."28 Now the Lord judges adultery which is only committed in thought. What then? Is it not possible to remain continent even in the married state and not to seek to "put asunder what God has joined together" For such is the teaching of those who divide the yoke of marriage, by reason of whom the Christian name is blasphemed. If it is the view of these people who themselves owe their existence to sexual relations that such relations are impure, must not they be impure? But I hold that even the seed of the sanctified is holy.

(106) On account of them the same prophet gives us advice saying: "Go not in the way with them, withdraw thy foot from their steps. For not unjustly are nets spread out to catch birds; for they are guilty of bloodshed and treasure up evil for them- selves" -that is, they seek for immorality and teach their neighbours to do the same. According to the prophet they are "fighters struck with their own tails" (ourai), to which the Greeks give the name kerkoi. Those to whom the prophecy refers might well be lustful, incontinent, men who fight with their tails, children of darkness and wrath, bloodstained suicides and murderers of their neighbours. "Purify out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump," cries the apostle to us. And again in anger at such people he directs that we should "have no fellowship with anyone called a brother if he is a fornicator or covetous man or idolater or reviler or drunkard or robber; with such a man one ought not even to eat." "For I through the law am dead to the law," he says, "that I may live unto God. I am crucified with Christ; it is no longer I that live," meaning that I used to live according to my lusts, "but Christ lives in me," and I am pure and blessed by obeying the commandments; so that whereas at one time I lived in the flesh carnally, "the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God."

(12) But despite its fall, the whole earth cannot satisfy the lust of the flesh; who can do its will? To him who longs for the impossible come guilt and bafflement of desire; but he who is utterly without desire has a happiness that ages not. Then give no room for the lust of the flesh to swell; blessed indeed is the thing that is not imagined for the sake of its pleasant- ness. The body is a motionless thing stirred by something without, and ending in ashes, a loathsome frame of foulness; why do I cling to it? What have I to do with this machine, alive or dead? What distinguishes it from such things as clods of earth? Alas, O thought of self, thou wilt not die! Through complicity with the flesh I win sorrow, all to no purpose; it is no better than a thing of wood, and what should avail its hatred or its kindness? It feels no love when I guard it, no hate when vultures devour it; then why do I love it? I am angered when it is treated with scorn, delighted when it is honoured; but if it has no knowledge, to what end is my toil? My friends, forsooth, are they who wish well to this body; but all men wish well to their own flesh, and why are not they also my friends? So I have surrendered my body indifferently for the weal of the world; it is but as an instrument of work that I still bear it, with all its guilt. Enough then of worldly ways! I follow in the path of the Wise, remembering the Discourse upon Heedfulness and putting away sloth. To overcome the power of darkness I concentre my thought, drawing the spirit away from vain paths and fixing it straightly upon its stay.

(50) And xhere, thou fair lascivious Whore in Babel, full of Immodesty and Lechery, in such Whoredom thou hast a Gloss in thy [evil or] false Copulation without the Fear of God; thou shouldst look [well to it] what thou sowest, that there grows not a Tree in Hell-Fire. Thou supposest that it is a small Matter to commit Whoredom. But I pray consider thyself, whither dost thou send thy Tincture? Which, if it be true [or faithful,] reaches the Element of God; and now, if you pour it forth thus, in such a false [or evil] Way, in the Impulsion of the Region of the Stars, with the Infection of the Devil, and also into such an unclean Vessel, what dost thou suppose shall accept it? Dost thou not know that the Tincture in the Seed is a Blossom of the Life, which qualifies [or mingles] with thy Body and Soul, which (as often as it is generated) is a Figure before God? How dost thou think, whether does it stand in the Love, or Anger of God? 51.0 thou Babylonish Whore, when thou thus committest Whoredom, and breakest afterwards the Limbus, together with the Matrix, wherein the Figure of the Image of God stands, only for thy filthy Lechery Sake; what dost thou think, how shall this Figure appear? Seeing all (whatsoever is generated at any Time out of the Tincture) shall after the Breaking of this World stand before God. And will not these Figures appear in the Anger of God? Or hast thou an Absolution for that which thou sowest in Hell? Look to it that this Figure does not qualify [or mingle] with thy Body and Soul; for the Tincture [then] is not yet become the Blood of Christ) then thou must bathe [swim or swelter] therein eternally. It is not I that say this, but the high Spirit in the Bosom of the Virgin.

(58) Our general argument concerning marriage, food, and other matters, may proceed to show that we should do nothing '- from desire. Our will is to be directed only towards that which is necessary. For we are children not of desire but of will. A man who marries for the sake of begetting children must practise continence so that it is not desire he feels for his wife, whom he ought to love, and that he may beget children with a chaste and controlled will. For we have learnt not to "have thought for the flesh to fulfil its desires." We are to "walk honourably as in the way", that is in Christ and in the enlightened conduct of the Lord's way, "not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and lasciviousness, not in strife and envy."

(52) Therefore consider thyself, and say not, I stand in the Dark, and exercise Love, none sees it. Thou standest before the clear Countenance of God; also thou standest before the Abyss of Hell, before the Council of all Devils, who mock at thee; and besides, thou hast an evil [false] or unfaithful Love, and it is no other than a [wanton] Lechery; if ait was faithful, thou wouldst not defile thy Brother or Sister; both of you miserably defile the Image of God, and are the worst Enemies one of another; you cast one another into the Devil's murdering Den, and are in the Wrestling; but the Devil amuses you, and strows Sugar, that he may catch you and bind you fast; and then he leads you to Jericho, and scourges, [wounds,] and plagues you sufficiently.

(59) However, one ought to consider continence not merely in relation to one form of it, that is, sexual relations, but in relation to all the other indulgences for which the soul craves when it is ill content with what is necessary and seeks for luxury. It is continence to despise money, softness, property, to hold in small esteem outward appearance, to control one's tongue, to master evil thoughts. In the past certain angels became incontinent and were seized by desire so that they fell from heaven to earth. And Valentine says in the letter.to Agathopus: "Jesus endured " all things and was continent; It was his endeavour to earn a divine nature; he ate and drank in a manner peculiar to him- self, and the food did not pass out of his body. Such was the power of his continence that food was not corrupted within him; for he himself was not subject to the process of corruption." As for ourselves, we set high value on continence which arises from love to the Lord and seeks that which is good for its own sake, sanctifying the temple of the Spirit. It is good if for the sake of the kingdom of heaven a man emasculates himself from all desire, and "purifies his conscience from dead works to serve the living God."

(104) Furthermore they wish to maintain that the intercourse of man and wife in marriage, which is called knowledge, is a sin; this sin is referred to as eating of the tree of good and evil, and the phrase "he knew" signifies transgression of the commandment. But if this is so, even knowledge of the truth is eating of the tree of life. It is possible for a sober-minded marriage to partake of that tree. We have already observed that marriage may be used rightly or wrongly; and this is the tree of knowledge, if we do not transgress in marriage. What then? Does not the Saviour who heals the soul also heal the body of its passions? But if the flesh were hostile to the soul, he would not have raised an obstacle to the soul by strengthening with good health the hostile flesh. "This I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God nor corruption incorruption." For sin being corruption cannot have fellowship with incorruption which is righteousness. " Are you so foolish?" he says; "having begun in the Spirit are you now to be made perfect by the flesh."

(67) Therefore a man ought not to think that marriage on rational principles is a sin, supposing that he does not look on the bringing up of children as being bitter (on the contrary to many childlessness is most grievous); but if a man regards the rearing of children as bitter because it distracts him from the things of God on account of the time it takes up, he may yet desire to marry because he does not take easily to a bachelor's life. What he wants to do is not harmful if it is done with self- control; and each one of us is master of his own will in deciding whether to beget children. But I am aware that because of marriage there are some who have kept clear of it and against the principles of holy knowledge have lapsed into hatred of humanity so that the spirit of charity has departed from them. There are others who have become absorbed by marriage and fulfil their desires in the indulgence which the law permits, and, as the prophet says, "have become like beasts."