If, O virgins, Wisdom stood within the same passages of the rational art and always traversed the same path, there would be no device for one not to weary those who have already contended before. But if there are countless impulses and outlets of discourse, since God breathes upon us in many parts and in many ways, what allotment is there for being covered with shame and playing the coward? For he is not without blame who has a share of grace, if he does not adorn good things with thankful words. Therefore come, let us too hymn that fair-shining star of the graces and most precious of Christ's gifts—chastity. For very broad and ungrudging is this way of the Spirit. From what point, then, beginning, shall we seem to say things fitting and suitable to what lies before us—this we must consider.
For I think I have accurately perceived that no other cause has proved so saving for men—as regards restoration to paradise, and change unto incorruption, and reconciliation with God—as chastity, which has led us as a general unto life. For I will now try to set forth what I think concerning these things, that, having clearly heard the power of the aforesaid gift, you may know of how many good things it has become the bestower upon us. In ancient times, then, after man had been driven out and removed because of his transgression, the stream of corruption poured forth abundantly, and, carried violently in extraordinary torrents, not only swept disorderly along outside, but, pouring in within, flooded the souls. Continually suffering this, they were borne along deaf and dull-witted, unable to steer their own vessels because they had nothing secure. For the senses of the soul, as those skilled in these matters have said, whenever, overcome by the passions falling upon them from without, they admit the assaults of the wave of folly that floods within, immediately, being darkened, they impede the soul's straight impulse, so that its whole well-reined hull cannot proceed according to nature. Wherefore, God, taking pity on us who were thus unable either to bear up or to recover, sent down from the heavens the best and most glorious help—chastity—that, mooring our souls fast to it like ships, we might rest in calm, anchored away from corruption; and the Holy Spirit bears witness. For this is set forth in the hundred-and-thirty-sixth psalm, where the souls cheerfully sing a thankful hymn to God—as many as, having been taken up and rescued, now go about heaven with Christ—because they have escaped the material and bodily streams. Hence too they say that Pharaoh bore a type of the devil, since he ordered the male children to be cast unsparingly into the river, but the females to be kept alive. For indeed the devil also, reigning from Adam until Moses over the great Egypt, namely the world, was eager that the male and intellectual offspring of the soul should be swept away and destroyed by the passions, but yearns that the fleshly and sensible should increase and multiply.
But, that we may not depart from the matter in hand, come, let us take this psalm in our hands and expound it—the one which the pure and unblemished souls sing to God, saying, "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst of it we hung up our instruments"—calling their tabernacles instruments, which they plainly hung up, suspending them from the cords of chastity, fastening them to the willow, that they might not, being snatched away, be again dragged off by the stream of incontinence. For Babylon, which is interpreted "confusion" or "disturbance," denotes this life flowed round about us, in the midst of which, seated, we are flooded for as long as we are in the world, the rivers of vice ever rushing upon us. Wherefore we are also full of dread, and lament, and cry with weeping to God, lest our instruments, torn away by the waves of pleasure, slip down from the tree, that is, from chastity. For as a type of virginity the divine Scriptures everywhere take the willow, since its flower, if it be steeped for use, quenches all that boils up unto coitus and provocations, until it utterly renders barren and unfruitful all the impulse unto childbearing—just as Homer too signified, calling the willows "fruit-destroying" for this reason. And in Isaiah the righteous are said to spring up like the willow beside flowing water. For then the work of virginity is greatly and exceedingly magnified unto a high estate, whenever the righteous man who has been entrusted to keep it and to labor at it waters it with the gentlest waters of Christ, sprinkling it with wisdom. For in the way that this tree by nature grows green with water and sprouts, so virginity by nature ever blooms and flourishes, fattened with words, that one may indeed be able to hang up his instrument upon it, away from himself.
If, then, the rivers of Babylon are the streams of voluptuousness, as the wise say—the things that confound and disturb the soul—the willows must necessarily be self-control, from which, hanging up, we draw up the generative organs that swing downward and weigh down the mind, lest, being borne down about the channels of incontinence, they be smeared, worm-like, into the discharges and putrefactions. For God bestowed virginity as a most useful and helpful thing for the acquisition of incorruption, sending it as an ally to those who reach out and yearn for Zion, as the psalmist instructs—Zion, that is, the resplendent love, the commandment concerning her; since Zion is interpreted "the commandment of the watchtower." —For here let us reason out again what follows. Why, then, do the souls confess that they were asked by their captors to sing the Lord's song in a strange land—or rather wholly because they teach that the gospel is a sacred and ineffable song, which sinners and those who commit adultery with the evil one sing to him? For they go forth from the commandments, accomplishing the will of the spiritual hosts of wickedness, and they cast the holy things to the dogs and the pearls before the swine, in the same way as those of whom the one who is indignant says, "and they read the law outside." For it is not because the Jews, going out, read the law outside the gates of Jerusalem or outside the houses, that on this account the prophet strongly accuses them and cries out that they have become liable to charge; but because, while acting impiously toward God, they read the commandments and the ordinances in feigned fashion, as though pious, yet did not receive them in their soul, holding them with faith, but spat them out by their works. For this reason they sing the Lord's song in a strange land, dragging down and expounding the law in a baser sense, expecting a sensible kingdom, and setting their hopes upon this strange land, which the word says shall pass away—where the captors entice with pleasures, lying in wait for deception.
And those who sing the gospel to the foolish seem also to sing the Lord's song in a strange land, of which Christ is not the husbandman. But those who have put on and shone forth with the most pure and radiant and unmixed and reverent and seemly beauty of virginity—who, found barren and unfruitful of the fluid and painful things, do not sing the song in a strange land, because they do not bear their hopes here, nor are they melted away in the luxuries of mortal bodies, nor do they look upon the meaning of the commandments in a base way, but nobly and well, with lofty mind, survey the promises above, thirsting for the heavenly and kindred place. Whence God, admiring their resolves, with an oath promises to give them choice honors, ranking them and seating them beforehand at the beginning of his gladness. For he says thus: "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten. Let my tongue cleave to my throat, if I remember you not, if I set not Jerusalem before me as at the beginning of my gladness"—calling Jerusalem, as I said, these very undefiled, unharmed souls, who, having drawn the unfermented draught with austerely unstained lips, are harmonized to be presented to Christ in heaven as a pure virgin to a single husband, having conquered the contest of undefiled struggles. For thus Isaiah too enjoins, saying, "Be enlightened, be enlightened, O Jerusalem; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you." And that these promises shall be brought to fulfillment after the resurrection is plain to all. For the Holy Spirit oracularly speaks not concerning the much-talked-of little town in Judea, but concerning that truly heavenly and blessed city Jerusalem, which they say is the assembly of the souls whom God, without fail, promises to rank first beforehand at the beginning of the gladness of the new ages, settling them, robed in the most white array of virginity, into the pure habitation of the inmost lights—because they have remembered not to put off the bridal array of the world, that is, not to slacken the reason with strange fancies.
Indeed, the saying in Jeremiah, that the world should not forget its bride, nor the virgin her breast-band, signifies, by deceits and distractions, not to give way and slacken the bond of self-control. For the breast, by a fitting account, is reckoned to be the mind and our understanding; and the breast-band—the girdle that binds together and tightly fastens the soul's purpose toward chastity—is the love toward God, which may our general and shepherd Jesus, both ruler and bridegroom, O fair virgins, grant you to keep unbroken and sealed unto the end. For of this possession one could not easily obtain any other better help for men, pleasing and dear to God. Wherefore I say that all ought to honor chastity, and especially to practice and to extol it. Let these, then, from us also be the first-fruits of discourses dedicated to you, O Arete—partly for sport's sake, partly also for earnest. "But I accept the gift," she said that Arete said, "and I bid Thallousa to speak after you; for I must receive the discourse from each one of you."