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| Chapter XXXII.—Elevated Morality of the Christians.
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It is, however, nothing wonderful that they should get
up tales about us such as they tell of their own gods, of the incidents
of whose lives they make mysteries. But it behoved them, if they meant
to condemn shameless and promiscuous intercourse, to hate either Zeus,
who begat children of his mother Rhea and his daughter Koré, and
took his own sister to wife, or Orpheus, the inventor of these tales,
which made Zeus more unholy and detestable than Thyestes himself; for
the latter defiled his daughter in pursuance of an oracle, and when he
wanted to obtain the kingdom and avenge himself. But we are so far from
practising promiscuous intercourse, that it is not lawful among us to
indulge even a lustful look. “For,” saith He, “he
that looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery
already in his heart.”820
Those, then, who are forbidden to look at
anything more than that for which God formed the eyes, which were
intended to be a light to us, and to whom a wanton look is adultery,
the eyes being made for other purposes, and who are to be called to
account for their very thoughts, how can any one doubt that such persons
practice self-control? For our account lies not with human laws, which
a bad man can evade (at the outset I proved to you, sovereign lords,
that our doctrine is from the teaching of God), but we have a law which
makes the measure of rectitude to consist in dealing with our neighbour
as ourselves.821
| 821 Otto translates:
“which has made us and our neighbours attain the highest degree of
rectitude.” The text is obscure, but the above seems the probably
meaning; comp. Matt. xxii. 39, etc. | On this account, too,
according to age, we recognise some as sons and daughters, others we
regard as brothers and sisters,822
| 822
[Hermas, p. 47, note, and p. 57, this volume;
Elucidation, ii.] | and to the more
advanced in life we give the honour due to fathers and mothers. On behalf
of those, then, to whom we apply the names of brothers and sisters,
and other designations of relationship, we exercise the greatest care
that their bodies should remain undefiled and uncorrupted; for the
Logos823
| 823 [The Logos never said,
“it excludes us from eternal life:” that is sure;
and the passage, though ambiguous, is not so interpreted in the Latin of
Gesner. Jones remarks that Athenagoras never introduces a saying of our
Lord in this way. Compare Clem. Alexandrin. (Pædagogue, b.
iii. cap. v. p. 297, Edinburgh Series), where he quotes Matt. v. 28,
with variation. Lardner (cap. xviii. sec. 20) gives a probable
explanation. Jones on The Canon (vol. i. p. 436) is noteworthy.
Kaye (p. 221) does not solve the puzzle.] | again says to us,
“If any one kiss a second time because it has given him pleasure,
[he sins];” adding, “Therefore the kiss, or rather the
salutation, should be given with the greatest care, since, if there be
mixed with it the least defilement of thought, it excludes us from eternal
life.”824
| 824 Probably from some
apocryphal writing. [Come from what source it may, it suggests a caution
of the utmost importance to Americans. In the newer parts of the country,
the practice, here corrected, as cropped out among “brothers and
sisters” of divers religious names, and consequent scandals have
arisen. To all Christians comes, the apostolic appeal, “Let it
not be once named among you.”] | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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