1. What of the man given over to the concupiscence of the flesh — does he not seem to have nothing of pride, especially when that very passion seems to humiliate him to lust? And yet, unless he first stood as a rebel against God, whose wholesome precept for keeping chastity he despises through the presumption of a proud spirit, no lust of wantonness would provoke him. In his soul the contempt and the fear of God long contend; but either the contempt of God prevails, and the proud soul, having received lust, loses chastity; or fear obtains the upper hand, and the soul, subject to God, gainsays both lust and pride at once. For gluttony and an abundance of wine basely dissolve very many into lust, others into
the injury of chastity by means of filthy thoughts; some, the opportunities offered cast down from their resolve of chastity; certain ones, the examples of those who live in ruin send under the yoke of unchastity. 2. There are others whose life a vile tongue inflames, or whose foul conscience it makes manifest, who first either utter or gladly hear immodest speeches, and then, little by little as the disease grows, fall away from honor; and, their shame worn away and made vile, while they wish to seem indecently elegant, they now everywhere shamelessly rave with filthy words. For each speaks that which he loves, and delightedly hears what he turns over in continual thoughts.
For thought is what defiles the mind, just as a filthy thought defiles it, so, if it be honorable, it purifies. Or if the disposition of the mind does not arise from thought, but the quality of the thought from the mind; then filthy thoughts do not make the mind filthy, but from a filthy mind filthy thoughts arise. And if this is so, the forms of beautiful bodies, creeping in through the eyes, do not move an uncorrupted mind; and when they move it corruptibly, they do not corrupt a sound mind, but show it to be corrupted by its own will. 3. Foul words too, entering through the ears, what do they prevail, if they have not been admitted by the choice of the mind? But when they do prevail, they do not corrupt the mind itself, but find it already corrupted of its own accord.
For to chaste ears obscene speeches fail away with the sound, nor do they break into the secret place of a chaste heart. What of a tender caress, which flatters an already vicious mind — can it be admitted to the soul through touch, if the soul keeps uncorrupted the resolve of its profession? And so, the soul, of its own accord first corrupted, loses its own integrity, and then admits the delight of touch. Concerning the delight of food or drink that is to be guarded against, I have already spoken sufficiently, as I think, in the second volume, where, with as much brevity as I could, I commended the perfection of spiritual abstinence. 4.
But here too I say this briefly, that the delight of taste does not break in to the mind through the mouth of the flesh, nor does foul speech burst out from the mind, unless the mind first willingly corrupts itself before it receives anything by which it may be corrupted, or utters it. Otherwise, if the soul, steadfast under its God, perseveres by the very gift of its God, it neither yields to any seductive delights, nor utters anything foul nor receives it. Now of smells I will touch briefly, that I may enclose in words the whole temptation distributed through the five senses. These smells the sick mind either craves through the entrance of the nostrils, or, divinely aided, rejects:
and if it subjects itself to its Creator, and lovingly cleaves to him who is its dignity and salvation, not only does no foulness of vices discolor it, but no carnal delight effeminates it. But if, puffed up, it recoils from the love of its Maker and Enlightener, and, forsaking the inner and solid good, casts itself outward into external goods: whatever sinew there can be in it is loosened; whatever strength it has is weakened and broken; and then spiritual action becomes burdensome to it, and it itself becomes restless amid carnal things: so that all things it perceives through the bodily senses it lusts after basely — not as things to be corrupted, but as already corrupted:
and when the body perceives nothing of the sensibles, the soul, by delightfully remembering to itself, represents to itself the images of perceived things. Within itself, without a voice, it hears whatever of sweet song or obscene jesting has flowed in through the winding passages of the ears. There a smell ill-sweet fragrantly and corruptibly reeks for it, which crept in through the open caverns of the nostrils. There a savor delights it, in the way it admitted itself through the allurement of voluptuous taste. There it perceives I know not what softly flattering, which the outer touch impressed upon it. There it concupiscently beholds varied colors and enticing forms, which the curiosity of the eyes announced to it. 5.
Such a mind, often when bodies are absent, is so carnally delighted, affected by the images of bodies, that, fixed by too intense a focus of filthy thought, it seems to itself to embrace not the images of bodies, but bodies themselves. Hence it is that that flux of the body which happens in those who sleep without fault, sometimes befalls the waking from fault. For one thing is what happens in the sleeper, another what the waking man does. There the fullness of humor is naturally expelled; here concupiscence is basely published. But this concupiscence elicits this flux in those waking ones in whom, through foul conversations, it has stirred up filthy appetite. These are they to whom the description of women is a delight:
this one is unpolished, that one witty, that one ill-favored, that one beautiful; the adornment of one pleases, the bearing of another; in one even a liveliness without beauty is praised, in another beauty alone. Thence one passes to character, and to one such men commend a measured silence, while unruly freedom makes another seem disreputable. Those who converse of these and the like things furnish material to their own concupiscence. Nor yet do they covet because they either speak or hear gladly; for unless they were corrupted by the disease of concupiscence, they would never either speak or hear such things: because these things do not corrupt them, but show them already corrupted. 6.
And lest anyone judge that I, who truthfully argue these things, am myself to be reproved, let him know that for this reason perhaps it was decreed by the ancients that none of the youths should read the book of Genesis, and likewise the part of the prophet Ezekiel, or the Song of Songs, and other such things, in which the generations and ages and names of certain women are written. Though we believe these to have existed according to history, yet by their names we receive virtues figured. For just as those women pleased, on account of their exceeding beauty, not only their own husbands through holy conduct, but even strangers, without loss of their modesty; so the holy virtues both make their own people wonderful to all, and grip strangers with a certain admiration of themselves.
Hence it is that even those who live viciously prefer virtues to vices: because it is one thing that they do by disease, another that they are compelled to render by testimony. But lest perhaps the still-carnal should receive these spiritual things according to the flesh, and not ponder the virtues which those women signify, but, pondering them carnally, perish over the women themselves; the younger ones were deliberately forbidden to read those things which, just as, spiritually received, they give life, so, to those who understand carnally, that very carnal understanding furnishes occasions of carnal concupiscence.
Each one frequently has on his lips the names of those women whose desires he bears in his wounded heart, and the baseness which he is ashamed to perform in deed he holds in his soul — guilty, not before human judgment, but before the divine.