ℹ️ This corpus has no morphological tagging. Glosses are matched by word form against a dictionary — a match does not prove it is the same word (an inflected form can coincide with another word’s lemma). Verify against the original and a specialist lexicon where precision matters.
ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
The ascent to great things is not easy. What sweat do we endure, what toil, while we strive to climb hills and the peaks of mountains? What then, that we may ascend to heaven? If you attend to the reward of the promise, what you labor at is the less. Immortality is given to the persevering, perpetual life is promised, the Lord pledges a kingdom. Keep, O virgins, keep what you have begun to be; keep what you shall be. A great reward awaits you, a grand prize of virtue, the greatest gift of chastity. Do you wish to know from what evil the virtue of continence is free, and what good it holds? I will multiply, God says to the woman, your sorrows and your groanings, and in sorrow you shall bring forth children, and your turning shall be toward your husband, and he shall have dominion over you.
You are free from this sentence; you do not fear the sorrows and groanings of women; no fear of childbearing touches you concerning offspring; nor is the husband your lord — your Lord and head is Christ, in the place and stead of the male; your lot and condition is shared in common. It is the Lord's voice that says: The children of this world beget and are begotten; but they who shall be counted worthy of that world and of the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage; for neither shall they begin to die; for they are equal to the angels of God, since they are children of the resurrection. What we are to be, you have already begun to be. You already hold in this world the glory of the resurrection; you pass through the world without the world's contagion.
When you persevere chaste and virgins, you are equal to the angels of God. Only let virginity remain and endure solid and unharmed, and as it has begun bravely, let it persevere continually; let it not seek the ornaments of necklaces or garments, but of morals. Let it look toward God and heaven, and let it not lower its eyes, stretched on high, to the concupiscence of flesh and world, nor cast them down to earthly things. The first sentence commanded to grow and to be multiplied; the second urged continence as well. While the world was as yet rude and empty, we are propagated and grow by begetting in abundance unto fruitfulness, for the increase of the human race; but when now the globe is full and the world entices, those who can receive continence are castrated unto the kingdom, living after the manner of eunuchs.
Nor does the Lord command this, but exhorts it; nor does He impose the yoke of necessity, since the free choice of the will remains. But when He says that there are many dwellings in His Father's house, He points to the lodgings of a better habitation. These better dwellings you seek, when, by castrating the desires of the flesh, you obtain in the heavens the reward of a greater grace. All indeed who attain to the divine gift and the Father's by the sanctification of baptism there lay aside the old man by the grace of the saving laver, and, renewed by the Holy Spirit, are purged from the filth of the old contagion by a repeated birth. But to you a greater holiness and truth of the repeated birth belongs, you who have now no desires of flesh and body.
In you alone the things which are of virtue and of the spirit remain unto glory. It is the voice of the Apostle, whom the Lord called the vessel of His election, whom God sent to set forth the heavenly commandments. The first man, he says, was from the slime of the earth, the second from heaven; such as was he of the slime, such also are they who are of the slime; and such as is the heavenly, such also are the heavenly. As we have borne the image of him who is of the slime, let us bear also the image of him who is from heaven.
This image virginity bears, integrity bears, sanctity and truth bear it; they bear it who are mindful of the discipline of God, holding justice together with religion, steadfast in faith, humble in fear, brave for every endurance, gentle for the bearing of injury, ready for the doing of mercy, of one mind and concord in brotherly peace. These several things, O good virgins, you ought to observe, to love, to fulfill — you who, being free for God and Christ, go before, with both the greater and the better part, unto the Lord to whom you have dedicated yourselves. You who are advanced in years, give instruction to the younger; you who are lesser in age, furnish an incitement to your peers. Stir one another up with mutual exhortations; by emulous proofs of virtue provoke one another unto glory.