(19) ¶Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

(4) "Blessed be thou, who of our border-lands," He recommenced who first had questioned us, "Experience freightest for a better life. The folk that comes not with us have offended In that for which once Caesar, triumphing, Heard himself called in contumely, 'Queen.' Therefore they separate, exclaiming, 'Sodom!' Themselves reproving, even as thou hast heard, And add unto their burning by their shame. Our own transgression was hermaphrodite; But because we observed not human law, Following like unto beasts our appetite, In our opprobrium by us is read, When we part company, the name of her Who bestialized herself in bestial wood. Now knowest thou our acts, and what our crime was; Wouldst thou perchance by name know who we are, There is not time to tell, nor could I do it. Thy wish to know me shall in sooth be granted; I'm Guido Guinicelli, and now purge me, Having repented ere the hour extreme." The same that in the sadness of Lycurgus Two sons became, their mother re-beholding, Such I became, but rise not to such height,

(43) Then the chaste Spirit out of God in Adam (viz. the Virgin) said; My dear Love, and Companion; I plainly see thy Lust, thou wouldst fain copulate with me; but I am a Virgin, and thou and besides, thou wouldst mingle thy Sourness with my Sweetness, and darken my bright Light; therefore I will not [do so.] I will lend thee my Pearl, and adorn thee with my Garment, but I will not give it dto be thy own.

(69) Timaeus: which has within it passions both fearful and unavoidable—firstly, pleasure, a most mighty lure to evil; next, pains, which put good to rout ; and besides these, rashness and fear, foolish counsellors both and anger, hard to dissuade; and hope, ready to seduce. And blending these with irrational sensation and with all-daring lust, they thus compounded in necessary fashion the mortal kind of soul. Wherefore, since they scrupled to pollute the divine, unless through absolute necessity,

(40) Now the chaste Virgin ought to be bent into the Heart of God, and to have no Imagination to lust after the Beauty of the comely young Man; but yet the young Man was kindled with Love towards the Virgin, and he desired to copulate with her; for he said, thou art my dearest Spouse [or Bride,] my Paradise, and Garland of Roses, let me into thy Paradise: I will be impregnated in thee, that I may get thy Essence, and enjoy thy pleasant Love; how willingly would I taste of the friendly Sweetness of thy Virtue [or Power?] If I might but receive thy glorious Light, how full of Joy should I be?

(11) The disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. But Jesus answered,

(55) Therefore God established the State of Wedlock with Adam and Eve, and bound it fast with a strong Chain, in that he said; A Man shall leave Father and Mother, and cleave to his Wife, and they two shall be one Flesh. And God tolerates their as one Body and its Members, and must aim (in the Fear of God) at the Getting of Children; or else the Wantonness [or Lust] in itself (without that true Love of the State of Wedlock) is continually a bestial Lust, [Infection,] and Sin. And if you (in the State of Wedlock) seek nothing but the Lust and Lechery, then in such a Condition, thou art not a Jot better than a Beast, And do but consider it rightly, that without this, thou standest [already] in a bestial Birth [or Generation,] contrary to the first Creation, like all Beasts. For the holy Man in Adam was not predetermined to have propagated so, but in great modest Love out of himself.

(32) But that, he did not, but reached back from the love into the wrath, and lusted after his dead or mortal mother, to eat of her, and to suck her breast, and to stand upon her stock.

(86) Timaeus: for the most part of his life because of those greatest of pleasures and pains, and keeps his soul diseased and senseless by reason of the action of his body. Yet such a man is reputed to be voluntarily wicked and not diseased; although, in truth, this sexual incontinence, which is due for the most part to the abundance and fluidity of one substance because of the porosity of the bones, constitutes a disease of the soul. And indeed almost all those affections which are called by way of reproach “incontinence in pleasure,” as though the wicked acted voluntarily, are wrongly so reproached; for no one is voluntarily wicked,

(4) Bartholomew said: "A man who hath intercourse with a male, what is his vengeance?" "Thereafter there cometh a receiver of the little Sabaōth, the Good, him of the Midst. He himself bringeth a cup filled with thoughts and wisdom, and soberness is in it; [and] he handeth it to the soul. And they cast it into a body which can neither sleep nor forget because of the cup of soberness which hath been handed unto it; but it will whip its heart persistently to question about the mysteries of the Light until it find them, through the decision of the Virgin of Light, and inherit the Light for ever."

(35) Whereby then you see here, that God has not willed the earthly Copulation. Man should have continued in the fiery Love which was in Paradise, and generate out of himself. But the Woman was in this World in the outward elementary Kingdom, in the Inflammation of the forbidden Fruit, of which Adam should not have eaten. And now he has eaten and thus destroyed us; therefore it is now with him [the Adamical Man,] as with a Thief that has been in a pleasant Garden, and went out of it to steal, and comes again and would fain go into the Garden, and the Gardener will not let him in, he must reach into the Garden with his Hand for the Fruit, and then comes the Gardiner and snatches the Fruit out of his Hand, and he must go away in his burning Lust and Anger, and come no more into the Garden, and instead of the Fruit there remains his desirous burning Lust with him; and that he has got instead of the paradisical Fruit, of that we must now eat, and live in the Woman.

(30) We must consider in the Virtue [or Power] of the Virgin, that the Will first is threefold, and each in its Center is fixed [stedfast or perfect] and pure, for it proceeds out of the Tincture. In the first Center there springs up between the Parents of the Child the Inclination [or Lust,] and the bestial Desire to copulate; this is the outward elementary Center, and it is fixed in itself. Secondly, there springs up, in the second Center, the inclinable Love to the Copulation; and although they were at the first Sight angry and odious one to another, yet in the Copulating the Center of Love springs up, and that only in the Copulating; for the one pure Tincture receives [or catches] the other, and in the Copulating the tMass receives them both.

(2) And what more? Surely whoso will look verily in the story of the gospel, he shall find many wonderful points of perfect love written of her to our ensample, and as even according to the work of this writing, as if they had been set and written therefore; and surely so were they, take whoso take may. And if a man list for to see in the gospel written the wonderful and the special love that our Lord had to her, in person of all accustomed sinners truly turned and called to the grace of contemplation, he shall find that our Lord might not suffer any man or woman—yea, not her own sister—speak a word against her, but if He answered for her Himself. Yea, and what more? He blamed Symon Leprous in his own house, for that he thought against her. This was great love: this was passing love.

(461) Certainly, he said, both in men and women those years are the prime of physical as well as of intellectual vigour. Any one above or below the prescribed ages who takes part in the public hymeneals shall be said to have done an unholy and unrighteous thing; the child of which he is the father, if it steals into life, will have been conceived under auspices very unlike the sacrifices and prayers, which at each hymeneal priestesses and priest and the whole city will offer, that the new generation may be better and more useful than their good and useful parents, whereas his child will be the offspring of darkness and strange lust. Very true, he replied. And the same law will apply to any one of those within the prescribed age who forms a connection with any woman in the prime of life without the sanction of the rulers; for we shall say that he is raising up a bastard to the State, uncertified and unconsecrated. Very true, he replied. This applies, however, only to those who are within the specified age: after that we allow them to range at will, except that a man may not marry his daughter or his daughter’s daughter, or his mother or his mother’s mother; and women, on the other hand, are prohibited from marrying their sons or fathers, or son’s son or father’s father, and so on in either direction. And we grant all this, accompanying the permission with strict orders to prevent any embryo which may come into being from seeing the light; and if any force a way to the birth, the parents must understand that the offspring of such an union cannot be maintained, and arrange accordingly. That also, he said, is a reasonable proposition. But how

(6) "Summae Deus clementiae," in the bosom Of the great burning chanted then I heard, Which made me no less eager to turn round; And spirits saw I walking through the flame; Wherefore I looked, to my own steps and theirs Apportioning my sight from time to time. After the close which to that hymn is made, Aloud they shouted, "Virum non cognosco;" Then recommenced the hymn with voices low. This also ended, cried they: "To the wood Diana ran, and drove forth Helice Therefrom, who had of Venus felt the poison." Then to their song returned they; then the wives They shouted, and the husbands who were chaste. As virtue and the marriage vow imposes. And I believe that them this mode suffices, For all the time the fire is burning them; With such care is it needful, and such food, That the last wound of all should be closed up.

(3) Now the Pharisee [Simon, the leper] spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known what manner of woman this is; for she is a sinner. Jesus said unto him,

(34) But now this Lust [or Longing] must be thus, or else no good Creature could be, and this World would be a mere Hell and Wrathfulness. And now seeing the Virgin stands in the second Principle, so that the Spirit of this World cannot possibly reach to her, and yet that the Virgin does continually behold herself [or appear] in the Spirit of this World, to [satisfy] the Lust and Longing in the Fruit and Growing of every Thing, therefore mhe is so very longing, and seeks the Virgin continually. He exalts many a Creature in great Skill and cunning Subtlety, and he brings it into the highest Degree that he can; and continually supposes that so the Virgin shall again be generated for him, which he saw in Adam before his Fall; which also brought Adam to fall, in that mhe would dwell in his Virgin, and with his great Lust so pressed Adam, that he fell asleep; that is, he set himself by Force in Adam's Tincture close to the Virgin, and would fain have qualified in her, and [mingled] with her, and so live eternally, whereby the Tincture grew weary, and the Virgin withdrew.

(1) But to the women he is said to have discoursed concerning sacrifices as follows: In the first place indeed, as they would wish that another person who intended to pray for them, should be worthy and good, because the Gods attend to such as these; thus also it is requisite that they should in the highest degree esteem equity and modesty, in order that the Gods may be readily disposed to hear their prayers. In the next place, they should offer to the Gods such things as they have produced with their own hands, and should bring them to the altars without the assistance of servants, such as cakes, honey-combs, and frankincense. But that they should not worship divinity with blood and dead bodies, nor offer many things at one time, as if they never meant to sacrifice again.

With respect also to their association with men, he exhorted them to consider that their parents granted to the female nature, that they should love their husbands in a greater degree than those who were the sources of their existence. That in consequence of this, they would do well either not to oppose their husbands, or to think that they have then vanquished, when they submit to them. Farther still, in the same assembly also, Pythagoras is said to have made that celebrated observation, that it is holy for a woman, after having been connected with her husband, to perform sacred rites on the same day; but that this is never holy, after she has been connected with any other man.

He also exhorted the women to use words of good omen through the whole of life, and to endeavor that others may predict good things of them. He likewise admonished them not to destroy popular renown, nor to blame the writers of fables, who surveying the justice of women, from their accommodating others with garments and ornaments, without a witness, when it is necessary for some other person to use them, and that neither litigation nor contradiction are produced from this confidence,—have feigned, that three women used but one eye in common, on account of the facility of their communion with each other. He farther observed, that he who is called the wisest of all others, and who gave arrangement to the human voice, and in short, was the inventor of names, whether he was a God or a dæmon, or a certain divine man, perceiving that the genus of women is most adapted to piety, gave to each of their ages the appellation of some God.

Hence he called an unmarried woman Core , i. e. Proserpine; but a bride, Nympha ; the woman who has brought forth children, Mater ; and a grandmother, according to the Doric dialect, Maia . In conformity to which also, the oracles in Dodona and at Delphi, are unfolded in to light through a woman. But through this praise pertaining to piety, Pythagoras is said to have produced so great a change in female attire, that the women no longer dared to clothe themselves with costly garments, but consecrated many myriads of their vestments in the temple of Juno. The effect also of this discourse is said to have been such, that about the region of the Crotonians the fidelity of the husband to the wife was universally celebrated; [imitating in this respect] Ulysses, who would not receive immortality from Calypso, on condition that he should abandon Penelope.

Pythagoras therefore also observed, that it remained for the women to exhibit their probity to their husbands, in order that they might be equally celebrated with Ulysses. In short, it is recorded that through the above-mentioned discourses, Pythagoras obtained no moderate honor and esteem, both in the city of the Crotonians and throughout Italy.

(2) Before ere man sinned was the Sensuality so obedient unto the Will, unto the which it is as it were servant, that it ministered never unto it any unordained liking or grumbling in any bodily creature, or any ghostly feigning of liking or misliking made by any ghostly enemy in the bodily wits. But now it is not so: for unless it be ruled by grace in the Will, for to suffer meekly and in measure the pain of the original sin, the which it feeleth in absence of needful comforts and in presence of speedful discomforts, and thereto also for to restrain it from lust in presence of needful comforts, and from lusty plesaunce in the absence of speedful discomforts: else will it wretchedly and wantonly welter, as a swine in the mire, in the wealths of this world and the foul flesh so much that all our living shall be more beastly and fleshly, than either manly or ghostly.

(37) Behold, I give you a true Similitude: Suppose that thou wast a young Man, or young Maid, [or Virgin,] (as Adam was both of them in one [only] Person,) how dost thou think thou shouldst stand? Suppose thus, set a young Man of good Complexion, beautiful, and virtuous; and also a fair chaste modest Virgin, [or young Maid,] curiously featured, and put them together; and let them not only come to speak together, and converse lovingly one with another, but so that they may also embrace one another; and command them not to fall in love together, not so much as in the least Thought, also not to have any Inclination to it, much less any Infection in the Will; and let these two be thus together forty Days and forty Nights, and converse with one another in mere Joy; and command them further, that they keep their Will and Mind steadfast, and never conceive one Thought to desire one another, and not to infect [themselves] with any Essence or Property at all, but that their Will and Inclination be most steadfast and firm to the Command; and that the young Man shall will [and purpose] never to copulate with this, or no other Maid [or Virgin;] and in like Manner, the Maid, [or Virgin] be enjoined the same. Now, thou Reason, full of Misery, Defects, and Infirmities, how do you think you should possibly stand here? Would you not promise fair with Adam? But you would not be able to perform it.