Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
I come now to the pleasure that is perceived through touch, a sense that indeed belongs to the whole body. But I think I ought to speak here not of adornments and clothing, but of desire alone, since it is this above all that must be restrained, because it is this above all that does harm. When God devised the design of the two sexes, he gave them the impulse to seek one another out and to delight in union. And so he mixed into the bodies of all living creatures a most burning craving, so that they would rush most eagerly into these passions, and by this means the various kinds might be propagated and multiplied. This craving and appetite is found to be more forceful and more intense in man, either because God wished the human race to be more numerous, or because he gave to man alone the capacity for virtue, so that there might be praise and glory in curbing pleasures and abstaining from them. That adversary of ours therefore knows well how great is the force of this craving — some have preferred to call it a necessity — and he turns it from the right and the good toward the crooked and the bad. For he sends in forbidden desires, so that people defile what belongs to others when they might lawfully possess what is their own without any wrongdoing. He throws before the eyes provocative forms, supplies kindling, and feeds fuel to the vices; then in the innermost organs he stirs up and disturbs every goad, and rouses and inflames that natural heat, until he has ensnared and entangled a man and deceived him. And so that no one should abstain from another's wife merely from fear of punishment, he even established brothels and made public the shame of unfortunate women, so as to hold up to mockery both those who commit the act and those who are forced to endure it. By these obscenities he has plunged souls born for holiness as it were into a whirlpool of filth; he has quenched their sense of shame and demanded their chastity as tribute. He has likewise joined males to males, and has contrived unspeakable unions against nature and against God's own ordinance. Thus has he steeped men and armed them for every kind of wickedness. What indeed can be holy in those who have laid a helpless age, one that needs protection, open to be ravaged and defiled by their lust? This deed cannot be recounted in proportion to the magnitude of the crime. I can call such men nothing but impious and murderers of their own kind, men for whom the sex given them by God is not enough unless they profane and wantonly abuse their own sex besides. Yet among such people even this is considered a light and almost respectable thing. What shall I say of those who practice not an abominable lust but something closer to madness? I am ashamed to speak of it — yet what should we suppose is in store for those who are not ashamed to do it? And still it must be spoken of, because it happens: I speak of those whose most foul lust and accursed frenzy spares not even their own kin. With what words, with what indignation, could I pursue so monstrous a wickedness? The magnitude of the crime overwhelms the office of speech. Since, then, lust produces such deeds and marks out such crimes, we must arm ourselves against it with the greatest resolve. Whoever cannot bridle these passions should confine them within the bounds of a lawful marriage-bed, so that he may obtain what he eagerly desires and yet not fall into sin. For what is it that ruined men really want? Surely pleasure follows honorable actions as well: if they seek pleasure itself for its own sake, they may enjoy it justly and lawfully. But if some necessity presses, then above all resolve must be summoned, so that self-restraint may struggle against desire. And it is not only the beds of others that one may not touch — God also commands and teaches us to abstain even from bodies that are common and shared, since when two bodies have been joined together they become one body. So whoever plunges himself into filth must inevitably be smeared with filth. And the body, indeed, can quickly be washed clean, but the mind, once stained by contact with an impure body, cannot be cleansed except over a long time and by many good deeds, from the defilement that has clung to it. Each person, then, ought to set before himself this truth: that the union of the two sexes was given to the living for the purpose of begetting offspring, and that this law was placed upon these passions, that they should provide for succession. Just as God gave us eyes not merely to gaze about and take pleasure, but to see for the sake of those actions that belong to the necessities of life, so too the generative part of the body — as its very name teaches — we have received for no other purpose than the producing of offspring. This divine law must be obeyed with the utmost devotion. Let all who profess themselves disciples of God be so formed and trained in character that they can command themselves. For those who indulge their pleasures, who yield to lust, hand over their soul in bondage to the body and condemn it to death, because they have surrendered themselves to the body, over which death holds power. Let each one, then, as far as he is able, shape himself toward modesty, cultivate a sense of shame, and guard his chastity by conscience and by mind; let him not merely obey the public laws, but let him who follows the law of God stand above all laws. If a man grows accustomed to these good things, he will already feel shame at falling back into worse ones — provided that what is right and honorable pleases him, since to the better sort such things are sweeter than base and dishonorable things are to the worse. I have not yet gone through all the duties of chastity, which God bounds not only within the walls of a private home but even within the limits of the marriage-bed itself, so that a man who has a wife should not wish, besides her, to have another woman, whether slave or free, but should keep faith with his marriage. For it is not the case, as the reasoning of public law would have it, that only the woman who has another man is an adulteress, while the husband, even if he has several women, is acquitted of the charge of adultery; rather, the divine law joins the two together in marriage — which is a single body — with equal right, such that whoever tears apart the union of that body is to be reckoned an adulterer. And it is for no other reason that God, though he willed that in all other living creatures the females resist the males once they have conceived, made woman alone among all creatures compliant to the male — namely, so that lust should not, by the resistance of women, drive men to seek other partners, and so, by that very act, lose the glory of chastity. But neither would a woman attain the virtue of chastity if she were incapable of sinning. For who would call a dumb animal chaste because it resists the male once it has conceived? It does so only because it must otherwise suffer pain and danger if it submits. There is no merit, then, in not doing what one is unable to do. Chastity is praised in man precisely because it is not natural but voluntary. Fidelity, then, must be kept by each toward the other — indeed, the husband must teach his wife, by the example of his own self-restraint, to conduct herself chastely. For it is unjust to demand of another what one cannot furnish oneself. And this injustice has surely brought adulteries into being, since women bear it ill that those who owe them mutual love do not keep faith with them. In the end, there is no adulteress of even the most ruined shame who does not offer this excuse for her vices: that in sinning she is not doing an injury but merely returning one. Quintilian expressed this superbly. Man, he says, is neither one who abstains from another's marriage nor a guardian of his own — the two being naturally bound together. For a husband occupied in corrupting the wives of others cannot attend to holiness in his own household, and a wife, when she falls into such a marriage, roused by that very example, thinks either to imitate him or to avenge herself. We must therefore take care not to give our own lack of self-control as an occasion for vice, but let the characters of husband and wife grow accustomed to one another, and let them bear the yoke with equal minds: let us each consider ourselves in the place of the other. For the whole of justice consists very largely in this — that you should not do to another whatever you yourself would not wish to suffer from another. These are the things that God prescribes for self-restraint. But so that no one should think he can circumvent the divine precepts, these further provisions are added, so that every pretext and occasion for deceit may be removed: that a man who marries a woman dismissed by her husband is an adulterer, as is a man who dismisses his wife for any cause other than adultery in order to marry another; for God did not wish the body to be split apart and torn asunder. Moreover, it is not only the act of adultery that must be avoided, but even the thought of it — that no one should look upon another's wife and desire her in his heart; for the mind itself becomes adulterous if it so much as paints for itself an image of the pleasure. It is truly the mind that sins, which embraces in thought the enjoyment of unrestrained desire; in the mind lies the crime, in the mind lies every wrongdoing. For even if the body is stained by no blemish, the account of chastity does not hold good if the spirit is unchaste, nor can purity be thought untouched where desire has defiled the conscience. And let no one suppose it a difficult thing to put a rein on pleasure and to confine its wandering, straying course within the bounds of purity and chastity, since it lies within human power to conquer it, and very many have kept the blessed and uncorrupted integrity of the body, and there are many who most happily enjoy this heavenly manner of life. God does not command this to be done as though he were compelling it — since men must, after all, be begotten — but rather as one who permits it; for he knows how great a necessity he has laid upon these passions. Whoever, he says, is able to do this will have an extraordinary and incomparable reward. This kind of self-restraint is, as it were, the summit and the crowning point of all the virtues. Whoever can strive toward it and win through to it, the Lord will acknowledge as his servant, the Master as his disciple; this man will triumph over the earth, this man will be like unto God, for he has laid hold of God's own virtue. These things indeed seem difficult, but we are speaking of one for whom, once all earthly things are trodden underfoot, a path to heaven lies prepared. For since virtue consists in the knowledge of God, all things are burdensome while you remain ignorant, but once you have come to know, they become easy: it is through these very difficulties that we must make our way out, we who press on toward the highest good.
Yet no one should give up, or despair of himself, merely because craving overcame him, or lust drove him on, or he was misled by error, or forced by violence, and so he slid onto the road of wrongdoing. He can indeed be restored and set free, if he regrets what he has done and, turning toward what is better, makes fitting amends to God. Cicero doubted such a thing was possible; in the third book of the Academica he wrote this: 'But if it were allowed, just as travelers who have lost their way can correct it, so too those who have pursued a crooked path of living could mend their error through repentance, the reform of their rashness would come more easily.' It is indeed allowed. When we watch our own children regret their misdeeds, we count them reformed, and although we had disowned and rejected them, we take them back anyway, cherishing and embracing them once more � so why would we doubt that the mercy of our true Father can be softened by repentance? This same Lord and most generous Parent, then, pledges to forgive the sins of those who repent, and to wipe away all the wrongdoing of one who has taken up the practice of righteousness anew. Just as a wicked life brings no benefit from earlier good conduct, since the wickedness that follows erases the record of righteous deeds, so too past sins bring no harm to one who has reformed, because the righteousness that follows wipes clean the stain left by an earlier life. Whoever regrets what he has done recognizes his earlier error � which is why the Greeks, more fittingly and with greater meaning, call it metanoia, a term we cannot capture as well in Latin with our word for "coming to one's senses." For a man troubled by his own error returns to himself and, as though rising out of madness, gets his mind back; he rebukes his own foolishness and strengthens his resolve to live more correctly. From that point on he will take special care not to be caught again in the same trap. Even dumb beasts, once caught by some trick, grow more careful afterward if they manage to escape, and forever after steer clear of whatever situations held that deceit and ambush. In just the same way, repentance renders a man careful and wary, so that he avoids the sins into which some deceit once dropped him. No one, after all, can be so watchful and so prudent that he never once slips. For this reason God, aware of our frailty, in his own tender concern has opened for mankind a harbor of safety, so that the cure of repentance might come to meet this need our weakness is subject to. So whoever has wandered off course should turn his steps back and recover and remake himself as soon as he can. But calling back one's course and climbing again into the clearer air above � that is the real task, that is the labor. Once wicked pleasures have been tasted and enjoyed, men can hardly tear themselves free of them; they would follow the right path far more easily had they never sampled that sweetness in the first place. But let them wrench themselves loose from that wicked bondage: every error will be pardoned them, provided they correct that error with a better life. And let no one imagine he gains something merely because there is no witness to his wrongdoing: the one in whose sight we live knows all things, and even though we may conceal ourselves from every human being, we cannot conceal ourselves from God, from whom nothing lies hidden and nothing can stay secret. Seneca closed his own exhortations with a striking remark: 'There exists some great power, one too great to be fully grasped by thought, and it is to its service that we devote our living. Let us make ourselves worthy of it. Locking one's conscience away inside does no good at all � let us instead stand open before God.' What truer words could have come from someone who actually knew God, than what was said by a man who had no knowledge of true religion? For in calling God's majesty greater than the human mind's thought could ever encompass, and in perceiving that human life is not, as the Epicureans claim, pointless, but rather that people serve God through their living, provided that living has been just and devout, he brushed right up against the very spring from which truth flows. He might have become a genuine worshiper of God, had anyone pointed him the way, and he would surely have rejected Zeno along with his own teacher Sotion, had he ever come across a guide to real wisdom. 'Let us make ourselves worthy of it,' he says � language fit for heaven itself, if only it had not been preceded by an admission of ignorance. 'Locking one's conscience away inside does no good at all; let us instead stand open before God': in that case there is no place left for lying, none for pretense, since walls can keep the eyes of men out, yet even the innermost depths of a person cannot keep out God's own divine power, which sees and knows the whole of a man. The same author, earlier in the same work, writes: 'What is it you're doing? What are you scheming? What is it you're hiding? Your own guardian trails right behind you. Travel took away one witness, death another, sickness yet another � but this witness stays fixed to you, and you can never be free of him. Why look for some hidden corner and dismiss your onlookers? Suppose you actually managed to escape every human eye, madman � what good does that do you, when you yourself remain the one witness who already knows?' Cicero speaks with no less force about conscience and God: 'Let him remember,' he writes, 'that he has God as his witness' � meaning, as I take it, his own mind, than which god himself gave man nothing more godlike. And elsewhere, describing the just and virtuous man, he writes: 'Such a man, I maintain, will not dare so much as think anything he would be unwilling to say openly, let alone actually do it.' Let us, then, keep our conscience clean, since it lies fully exposed to God's gaze, and, as this same writer urges, let us conduct our lives always with the awareness that we will have to give account of ourselves, and let us take it for granted that at every single moment we are being observed � not, as he put it, on some worldwide stage before an audience of men, but from above, by the one who will serve as both our judge and our witness, and before whom, when he asks us to account for our life, we will have no chance to deny what we have done. It is therefore better either to run from our conscience entirely, or of our own will to throw open our heart and drain the sickness by tearing the wounds open � wounds that no one else has the power to heal except the one who alone gave the lame their stride and the blind their sight, cleansed defiled bodies, and brought the dead back to life. It is he who will put out the fire of craving, tear lust up by the roots, strip away envy, and soothe anger; he alone will give back true and lasting health. Everyone should seek out this cure, since the soul suffers a peril worse than any that threatens the body, and treatment ought to be applied as early as possible to sicknesses still concealed. Even if someone enjoys sharp, clear eyesight, has every limb sound, and possesses the most robust bodily health throughout, I still would not call him healthy if he is swept along by rage, bloated and puffed up with pride, enslaved to lust, and burning with cravings. Rather I would call the healthy one that man who does not raise his eyes toward another's good fortune, does not marvel at riches, regards another man's wife with respect, desires nothing whatsoever and covets nothing belonging to someone else, envies no one, looks down on no one, and is humble, compassionate, generous, mild, and kind, with unbroken peace dwelling in his spirit: that is the man who is healthy, that is the man who is just, that is the man who is perfect. Whoever, then, obeys all of these heavenly commands is the true worshiper of God, whose sacrifices consist of a gentle spirit, an innocent life, and good deeds; and whoever offers these very sacrifices does so every time he performs some good and pious act. For God wants no victim at all � not from a dumb animal, nor one drawn from death and blood � but rather one made from a person and a life. This kind of sacrifice has no need of ritual branches, purification rites, or turf altars, all of which are utterly empty things, but only of what comes forth from deep within the heart. And so on the altar of God � which is truly the greatest of all altars, and which, being set up within the human heart, cannot be stained by blood � justice, patience, faith, innocence, chastity, and self-control are laid down. This is the truest rite of all; this is that law of God which Cicero termed splendid and divine, one that always commands what is right and honorable and forbids what is base and disgraceful, and obedience to this most sacred and unshakeable law is required of anyone who wants to live justly and lawfully. I have laid out only a handful of the main points of this law, since I promised to speak of only those matters that place the topmost crown upon virtue and justice. Should anyone wish to take in everything else, let him seek it at the very spring from which this stream of ours has flowed.