Discipline, the guardian of hope, the bond of faith, the guide of the way of salvation, the kindling and nourishment of a good disposition, the mistress of virtue, makes us abide ever in Christ and live continually unto God, and arrive at the heavenly promises and divine rewards. To follow her is salutary, to turn away from and neglect her is deadly. In the Psalms the Holy Spirit speaks: Hold fast discipline, lest perchance the Lord be angry and you perish from the right way, when His wrath shall be quickly kindled against you. And again: But to the sinner God saith: Why dost thou declare my justifications and take up my covenant by thy mouth? But thou hast hated discipline and cast my words behind thee. And once more we read: He who casts away discipline is unhappy.
And from Solomon we have received the commands of wisdom admonishing us: My son, neglect not the discipline of God, nor faint when thou art rebuked by Him; for whom God loveth He rebuketh. But if God rebukes him whom He loves, and rebukes him in order to amend him, brethren also, and most of all the priests, do not hate but love those whom they rebuke that they may amend them—since God also foretold through Jeremiah and signified our times, saying: And I will give you shepherds according to my heart, and they shall feed you, feeding you with discipline.
But if in the holy Scriptures discipline is frequently and everywhere enjoined, and the whole foundation of religion and faith proceeds from observance and fear, what ought we more eagerly to seek, what more to will and to hold, than that, with our roots more firmly fixed and our dwellings established with a sturdy mass upon the rock, we may stand unshaken against the storms and whirlwinds of the world, and come to the gifts of God through His divine precepts—considering alike and knowing that our members are the temples of God, cleansed by the sanctification of the life-giving laver from all the filth of the ancient contagion, and that it is not lawful that they be violated or polluted, since he who violates is himself violated? We are the worshipers and the priests of those temples.
Let us serve Him to whom we have now begun to belong. Paul in his epistles, by which he formed us for the courses of living through the divine teachings, says: You are not your own, for you were bought with a great price. Glorify and bear God in your body. Let us glorify and bear God in a pure and clean body and with a better observance; and we who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ, let us obey the command of our Redeemer through every service of submission, and let us take care that nothing unclean or profane be brought into the temple of God, lest, being offended, He forsake the seat which He inhabits. These are the words of the Lord who restores and teaches, who heals as well as admonishes: Behold, He says, thou art made whole; now sin no more, lest something worse befall thee.
He gives the fear of living, He gives the law of innocence, after He has bestowed health; nor does He suffer the man afterward to roam with reins free and loosed, but rather threatens more gravely the very man whom He had healed, as one bound, namely that it was a lesser fault to have offended before, when you did not yet know the discipline of God, but that there is no further pardon for offending after you have begun to know God. And indeed let this be observed and heeded—by men as well as women, by boys as well as girls, by every sex and every age—for the sake of the religion and faith which one owes to God, lest what is received as holy and pure from the Lord's favor be held with too little anxious fear. Now our discourse is to virgins, whose glory is the more sublime, and whose care is the greater.
That is the flower of the Church's growth, the grace and ornament of spiritual gifts, a glad disposition, a whole and uncorrupted work of praise and honor, the image of God answering to the holiness of the Lord, the more illustrious portion of Christ's flock. Through them and in them the glorious fruitfulness of mother Church rejoices and flourishes abundantly; and by how much copious virginity adds to her number, by so much the joy of the mother increases. To these we speak, these we exhort, with affection rather than with authority—not that we, the lowest and least and altogether conscious of our humility, should claim anything by way of censuring license, but that, being more cautious in our solicitude, we may fear the more concerning the assaults of the devil.
Nor is this caution empty, nor this fear vain, which takes counsel for the way of salvation, which keeps the Lord's life-giving precepts—namely, that those who have dedicated themselves to Christ and, withdrawing from carnal concupiscence, have vowed themselves to God in both flesh and mind, should consummate their work, destined for a great reward, and study to adorn themselves or to please no one but their Lord, from whom they also await the reward of virginity, since He Himself says: Not all receive this word, but those to whom it is given; for there are eunuchs who were born so from their mother's womb, and there are eunuchs who were made so by men, and there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. And again, through this voice of the angel the gift of continence is shown forth, and virginity is proclaimed:
These are they who have not defiled themselves with women, for they have remained virgins. These are they who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. Nor indeed does the Lord promise the grace of continence to males only and pass over the women, but, since woman is a portion of man and was taken and formed from him, in well-nigh all the Scriptures God speaks to the first-formed man, because they two are in one flesh, and in the male is signified the female also. But if continence follows Christ, and virginity is destined for the kingdom of God, what have these women to do with earthly adornment and with the ornaments by which, while they are eager to please men, they offend God—not considering that it has been foretold:
They who please men are put to confusion, for God hath brought them to nothing; and Paul also gloriously and sublimely declaring: If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. But continence and chastity consist not in integrity of the flesh alone, but also in the honor and likewise the modesty of dress and adornment, that, according to the apostle, she who is unmarried may be holy both in body and in spirit. Paul instructs and says: The unmarried man thinks on the things that are the Lord's, how he may please God; but he who has contracted marriage thinks on the things of this world, how he may please his wife. So also the woman and the unmarried virgin thinks on the things that are the Lord's, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit. A virgin ought not only to be one, but also to be understood and believed to be one.
Let no one, when he has seen a virgin, doubt whether she be a virgin. Let her integrity show itself equal in all things, nor let bodily adornment defame the good. Why does she go forth adorned and decked out, as though she either had or sought a husband? Let her rather fear to please, if she is a virgin, nor let her court her own peril, who keeps herself for better and divine things. She who has no husband whom she may pretend to please, let her persevere whole and pure, not only bodily but also spiritually. For it is not lawful for a virgin to deck herself out for the appearance of her own beauty, or to glory in her flesh and its loveliness, since for them there is no greater struggle than against the flesh, and an obstinate contest of conquering and subduing the body. Paul proclaims with a strong and lofty voice:
But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world. And shall a virgin in the Church glory in the comeliness of her flesh and the beauty of her body? Paul adds and says: For they who are Christ's have crucified their flesh with its vices and concupiscences. And she who professes that she has renounced the concupiscences and vices of the flesh is found in those very things which she had renounced. You are detected, O virgin, you are exposed: you boast yourself to be one thing and you affect another. You sprinkle yourself with the stains of carnal concupiscence, though you are robed in white as a candidate of integrity and modesty. Cry out, says the God of Isaiah, all flesh is grass, and all its glory as the flower of grass. The grass is withered, and the flower is fallen.
But the word of the Lord abideth forever. It befits no Christian, and least of all befits a virgin, to reckon any comeliness or honor of the flesh, but only to seek after the word of God, to embrace the goods that shall abide forever. Or if one is to glory in the flesh, then plainly only when one is tortured in the confession of the Name, when a woman is found stronger than the men who torment her, when she suffers fires or crosses or the sword or wild beasts that she may be crowned. These are the precious necklaces of the flesh, these the better ornaments of the body. But there are some women rich and abounding in wealth of means, who flaunt their riches and contend that they ought to use their goods.
Let them know first that she alone is rich who is rich toward God, that she is wealthy who is wealthy in Christ, that those goods are good which are spiritual, divine, heavenly, which lead us to God, which abide with us in perpetual possession before God. But whatever things are earthly, received in the world and destined to remain here with the world, ought to be despised as the world itself is despised, whose pomps and delights we then renounced when, by a better passage, we came to God. John rouses and exhorts us, testifying with a spiritual and heavenly voice: Love not, he says, the world, nor the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the ambition of the age, which are not of the Father but of the concupiscence of the world. And the world passeth away, and the concupiscence thereof; but he who doeth the will of God abideth forever, even as God abideth forever. Therefore eternal and divine things are to be followed, and all things are to be done according to the will of God, that we may follow the footsteps and teachings of our Lord, who admonished and said: I came not down from heaven to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. But if the servant is not greater than his lord, and the freedman owes obedience to his liberator, we who desire to be Christians ought to imitate what Christ said.
It is written, and read, and heard, and celebrated by the mouth of the Church for our example: He who says that he abides in Christ, ought himself also to walk even as He walked. We must walk with equal footsteps, we must strive with emulous progress. Then will the following of the truth answer to the faith of the Name, and a reward is given to the believer, if what is believed be also done. You say you are wealthy and rich. But Paul meets your riches and by his own voice prescribes how your dress and adornment are to be moderated within a just limit. Let women, he says, with modesty and chastity adorn themselves, not in braided hair, nor in gold, nor in pearls, nor in costly clothing, but, as becomes women professing chastity, by a good manner of life.
Likewise Peter consents to these same precepts and says: Let there be in a woman not the outward adornment of ornament, or of gold, or of dress, but the adornment of the heart. But if he admonishes that women too are to be restrained and to be moderated by religious observance unto ecclesiastical discipline—women who are wont to excuse their adornments by appeal to their husband—how much more is it right that a virgin should observe this, for whom no pardon for her adornment is fitting, nor can the fault's pretext be transferred to another, but she alone remains in the guilt. You say you are wealthy and rich. But not everything that is possible ought also to be done, nor should desires that are extravagant and born of worldly ambition be extended beyond the honor and modesty of virginity, since it is written: All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient.
All things are lawful, but not all things edify. But if you deck yourself too sumptuously and walk conspicuously through the public, allure to yourself the eyes of youth, draw after you the sighs of young men, nourish the lust of desire, kindle the fuel of hope, so that, even if you yourself do not perish, you nevertheless ruin others and offer yourself as it were a sword and poison to those who behold you—you cannot be excused, as though you were chaste in mind and modest. Your wicked adornment and immodest dress refute you, nor can you any longer be reckoned among the maidens and virgins of Christ, you who so live that you may be loved. You say you are wealthy and rich. But it does not befit a virgin to boast of her riches, since the divine Scripture says:
What hath pride profited us? or what hath the boasting of riches bestowed on us? All those things have passed away like a shadow. And the apostle again admonishes and says: And let those who buy be as though they possessed not, and those who use this world as though they used it not; for the fashion of this world passeth away. Peter also, to whom the Lord commends His sheep to be fed and guarded, upon whom He set and founded the Church, denies indeed that he has gold and silver for himself, but says that he is rich in the grace of Christ, wealthy in His faith and power, by which he wrought many mighty works with miracles, by which he abounded in spiritual goods unto the grace of glory. These resources, these riches, she cannot possess who prefers to be rich to the world rather than to Christ.
You say you are wealthy and rich, and think you must use these things which God willed you to possess. Use them—but for things salutary and for good arts; use them for those things which God commanded, which the Lord pointed out. Let the poor feel you to be rich, let the needy feel you to be wealthy; lend your patrimony to God, feed Christ; that you may be permitted to bear the glory of virginity, that you may attain to come to the rewards of the Lord, win over many by their prayers; commit your treasures there, where no thief may dig them up, where no lurking robber may break in: get for yourself possessions, but rather heavenly ones, where your fruits, continual and perennial and immune from all contact of worldly injury, neither rust may wear away nor hail strike down nor sun scorch nor rain corrupt.
For in this very thing you offend against God, if you believe that riches were given you by Him for this, that you should enjoy them unprofitably. For God gave a voice to man, and yet love-songs or base things are not to be sung; and God willed iron to exist for the tilling of the earth, and yet murders are not therefore to be committed; or, because the Lord instituted incense and wine and fire, are sacrifices therefore to be offered to idols? or, because flocks of cattle abound in your fields, ought you to immolate victims and sacrifices? But indeed a great patrimony is a temptation, unless wealth be made to work toward good uses, so that each one, the richer by his patrimony, ought rather to redeem than to increase his offenses.
The insignia of ornaments and dress, and the enticements of beauty, befit none but harlots and immodest women; and the adornment of well-nigh none is more costly than of those whose modesty is cheap. So in the holy Scriptures, by which the Lord willed us to be instructed and admonished, the harlot city is described, more beautifully decked and adorned, and, with her ornaments and rather on account of those very ornaments, about to perish. And there came, it says, one of the seven angels having the vials, and he approached me, saying: Come, I will show thee the damnation of the great harlot who sitteth upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication. And he led me in spirit, and I saw a woman sitting upon a beast.
And that woman was clothed in a purple and scarlet mantle, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, holding a golden cup in her hand, full of the abominations and uncleanness and fornication of the whole earth. Let chaste and modest virgins flee the adornment of the unchaste, the garb of the immodest, the insignia of brothels, the ornaments of harlots. Isaiah, too, full of the Holy Spirit, cries out and rebukes the daughters of Zion corrupted by gold and dress, and upbraids them as overflowing with pernicious wealth and departing from God through the delights of the age. The daughters of Zion, he says, are lifted up, and they walked with a haughty neck and with winking eyes and a tripping gait, trailing their tunics and at the same time playing with their feet.
And God shall humble the chief daughters of Zion, and the Lord shall lay bare their attire; and the Lord shall take away the glory of their dress and their ornaments, and their hair, and their curls, and their crescent ornaments, and their parting-bands, and their bracelets, and their plaited work, and their armlets, and their rings, and their earrings, and their silks woven with gold and hyacinth. And instead of a sweet odor there shall be dust, and instead of a girdle thou shalt be girded with a rope, and instead of the golden ornament of the head thou shalt have baldness. This God blames, this He brands: hence He declares that they have been corrupted, hence that they have fallen away from the true and divine adornment. Lifted up, they have fallen; decked out, they have earned baseness and foulness.
Women clothed in silk and purple cannot put on Christ; adorned with gold and pearls and necklaces, they have lost the ornaments of heart and breast. Who would not abhor and shun that which has been another's ruin? Who would crave and take up that which has served, for the killing of another, as a sword and a weapon? If a man died after draining a cup, you would know that what he drank was poison; if one perished after taking food, you would know that what he received was deadly, since it could kill the taker; and you would neither eat nor drink from that source whence you had seen others die before. How great, then, is the ignorance of the truth, how great the madness of mind, to desire that which has always harmed and harms still, and to suppose that you yourself will not perish from that whence you know others to have perished!
For God did not make sheep scarlet or purple, nor did He teach men to dye and color wool with the juices of herbs and with shellfish; nor did He establish necklaces of gems set apart with gold, or of pearls arranged in a woven sequence and a many-jointed structure, that with them a woman might hide the neck which He had made, so that what God formed in the human being is covered over and what the devil invented is gazed upon instead. Did God will that wounds should be inflicted upon the ears, by which an innocent infancy, as yet ignorant of the world's evil, is tortured, so that afterward precious beads might hang from the scars and hollows of the ears, weighty not so much by their own mass as by the costliness of the merchandise?
All these things the sinful and apostate angels disclosed by their arts, when, having sunk down to earthly defilements, they withdrew from their heavenly vigor. They it was who taught the staining of the eyes with a smear of blackness round about, the tinting of the cheeks with a lying redness, the changing of the hair with adulterate colors, and the assault upon all truth of face and head through the onset of their corruption.
And indeed in this place, out of the fear which faith inspires in us, out of the love which brotherhood demands, I think that not only virgins and widows but also wives, and absolutely all women, are to be admonished that the work of God and His handiwork and His molding ought in no way to be adulterated by the application of yellow color or black powder or rouge, or finally by any dye that corrupts the native lineaments. God says: Let us make man after our image and likeness; and does anyone dare to change and transform what God has made! They lay hands upon God when they strive to refashion and transfigure that which He has formed, not knowing that whatever is born is the work of God, and whatever is altered is the work of the devil.
If some artist of painting had marked out the face and form and bodily quality of a person with rival color, and, when the likeness was already finished and complete, another were to set his hands to it, and, as though more skilled, were to refashion what was already shaped and already painted, the wrong done to the former artist would seem grave and his indignation just. Do you imagine that you will carry off with impunity the boldness of so wicked a rashness, the offense given to God the Artist? Granting that you are not unchaste and impure toward men by your enticing dyes, yet by corrupting and violating what is God's you are held to be a worse adulteress. What you suppose to be adornment, what you suppose to be elegance, is an assault upon the divine work, a betrayal of the truth. It is the voice of the admonishing Apostle: Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened;
for our Passover also, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Does sincerity endure, and truth, when the things that are sincere are polluted with the adulteries of colors, when by the deceits of cosmetics things true are changed into a lie? Your Lord says: You cannot make one hair white or black; and you, to overcome the voice of your Lord, would have yourself be the stronger, and by a daring attempt and a sacrilegious contempt you tinge your hair, with an evil omen of things to come you already prophesy for yourself flame-colored hair, and you sin — O the wickedness! — upon the head, that is, upon the better part of the body! And though it is written of the Lord:
His head and His hairs were white as wool or as snow; yet you execrate whiteness and detest the silver of age, which is like to the head of the Lord! Do you not fear, I beg, you who are such, lest, when the day of the resurrection comes, your Artist may not recognize you, may turn away and exclude you as you come to His rewards and promises, and, rebuking you with the severity of a censor and a judge, may say: This work of mine it is not, nor is this image ours. You have polluted your skin with a false cosmetic, you have changed your hair with an adulterate color, your face is overpowered with a lie, your figure is corrupted, your countenance is another's. You will not be able to see God, since the eyes you have are not those which God made but those which the devil has tinted.
Him you have followed, his red and painted eyes — the serpent's — you have imitated; from your enemy you are bedecked, and with him you shall likewise burn. Are these things, I beg, not to be pondered by the handmaids of God; are they not to be feared always, by day and by night? Let wives see to it what flattering excuse they make for themselves through the desire of pleasing, by appeal to the comfort of their husbands; whom, while they bring them forward as their excuse, they enlist as partners in a guilty consent. Virgins certainly — for whom this discourse does not provide counsel — who deck themselves out by such arts, I would not think ought to be numbered among virgins, but should be kept away, like infected sheep and diseased cattle, from the holy and pure flock of virginity, lest by their contagion they pollute the rest while they dwell together, lest they destroy others, whoever themselves have perished.
And since we are seeking the good of continence, let us shun whatever is pernicious and hostile to it. Nor do I pass over those things which, while through negligence they come into use, have made for themselves a license out of mere habitual usage, against chaste and sober morals. Some women are not ashamed to be present at weddings and, amid that loose license of wanton talk, to mingle in unchaste conversations, to hear what is not seemly, to say what is not lawful, to observe and to be present amid foul words and drunken banquets, by which the kindling of lusts is fired, so that the bride is roused to the endurance of defilement, the bridegroom to boldness. What place is there for her at a wedding whose mind is not set upon wedding, or how can the things there be pleasurable and joyful to one whose pursuits and vows are otherwise?
What is learned there, what is seen? How far does the virgin fall short of her resolve! How far more immodest does she depart, who had come modest! Though she remain a virgin in body and in mind, yet in eyes, in ears, in tongue she has diminished what she had. And what of those who frequent the promiscuous baths, who prostitute to eyes curious for lust the bodies that are dedicated to chastity and modesty? Who, naked among men and toward men, behold shamefully and are beheld, do they not themselves furnish an allurement to vices? Do they not solicit and invite the desires of those present to their own corruption and injury? 'Let each see,' you say, 'with what mind he comes thither; for my part my only care is to refresh and to wash my poor little body.'
That defense does not cleanse you, nor does it excuse the crime of wantonness and petulance. That bathing soils, it does not wash away; it does not cleanse the limbs but stains them. You behold no one unchastely, but you yourself are beheld unchastely; you do not pollute your own eyes with foul delight, but while you delight others, you yourself are polluted. You make a spectacle of the bath; the places where you assemble are fouler than the theater. There all modesty is stripped off; together with the garment the honor and shame of the body are laid aside, and virginity is unveiled to be marked out and to be handled. Consider now whether such a woman is modest when clothed among men, who by the boldness of nakedness has advanced to immodesty.
Thus, then, the Church frequently bewails her virgins; thus she groans over the shameful and detestable tales told of them; thus the flower of the virgins is extinguished, the honor and modesty of continence is cut down, all glory and dignity is profaned. Thus the assailing enemy insinuates himself by his arts; thus by snares that deceive through hidden ways the devil creeps in; thus, while virgins wish to be adorned more elegantly, to roam more freely, they cease to be virgins, corrupted by a stealthy disgrace — widows before they were wives, adulteresses not of a husband but of Christ. The greater the prizes for which they had been destined as virgins, the greater the punishments they will feel for virginity lost. Hear, therefore, O virgins, as you would a parent; hear, I beseech you, one who fears for you and admonishes you alike:
hear one who faithfully takes counsel for your advantages and benefits. Be such as God your Artist made you; be such as the hand of the Father formed you. Let the face remain in you uncorrupted, the neck pure, the form sincere; let no wounds be inflicted upon the ears, let no precious chain enclose the arms or the neck with bracelets and necklaces; let your feet be free from golden fetters, your hair tinged with no color, your eyes worthy to behold God. Let the baths be frequented with women among whom your washing is chaste. Let the wicked feasts of weddings and wanton banquets be shunned, whose contagion is perilous. Conquer your garment, you who are a virgin; conquer your gold, you who conquer the flesh and the world.
It is not consistent that one who cannot be overcome by greater things should be found unequal to lesser. Narrow and strait is the way which leads to life; hard and steep is the path which tends toward glory. By this path of the way the martyrs proceed, the virgins go, all the righteous walk. Avoid the broad and spacious roads: there are deadly allurements and death-bearing pleasures; there the devil flatters that he may deceive, smiles that he may injure, entices that he may slay. The first fruit, with its hundredfold, belongs to the martyrs; the second, the sixtyfold, is yours. As among the martyrs there is no thought of flesh and the world, nor a slight and gentle and dainty contest, so also in you, whose reward unto grace is the second, let your virtue unto endurance be the next.
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.