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| Chapter IX.—Why We are to Use the Bath.
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Chapter IX.—Why We are to Use the Bath.
There are, then, four reasons for the bath (for
from that point I digressed in my oration), for which we frequent it:
for cleanliness, or heat, or health, or lastly, for pleasure. Bathing for
pleasure is to be omitted. For unblushing pleasure must be cut out by the
roots; and the bath is to be taken by women for cleanliness and health,
by men for health alone.1653
| 1653
[The morals of Clement as to decency in bathing need to be enforced
among modern Christians, at seaside places of resort.] | To
bathe for the sake of heat is a superfluity, since one may restore what
is frozen by the cold in other ways. Constant use of the bath, too,
impairs strength and relaxes the physical energies, and often induces
debility and fainting. For in a
way the body drinks, like trees,
not only by the mouth, but also over the whole body in bathing,
by what they call the pores. In proof of this often people, when
thirsty, by going afterwards into the water, have assuaged their
thirst. Unless, then, the bath is for some use, we ought not to
indulge in it. The ancients called them places for fulling1654
men, since they wrinkle men’s bodies sooner than they ought, and
by cooking them, as it were, compel them to become prematurely old. The
flesh, like iron, being softened by the heat, hence we require cold, as it
were, to temper and give an edge. Nor must we bathe always; but if one is
a little exhausted, or, on the other hand, filled to repletion, the bath
is to be forbidden, regard being had to the age of the body and the season
of the year. For the bath is not beneficial to all, or always, as those
who are skilled in these things own. But due proportion, which on all
occasions we call as our helper in life, suffices for us. For we must not
so use the bath as to require an assistant, nor are we to bathe constantly
and often in the day as we frequent the market-place. But to have the
water poured over us by several people is an outrage on our neighbours,
through fondness for luxuriousness, and is done by those who will not
understand that the bath is common to all the bathers equally.
But most of all is it necessary to wash the
soul in the cleansing Word (sometimes the body too, on account
of the dirt which gathers and grows to it, sometimes also to
relieve fatigue). “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites!” saith the Lord, “for ye are like to whited
sepulchres. Without, the sepulchre appears beautiful, but within it
is full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.”1655
And again He says to the same people, “Woe unto you! for ye
cleanse the outside of the cup and platter, but within are full of
uncleanness. Cleanse first the inside of the cup, that the outside may
be clean also.”1656
The best bath, then, is what rubs
off the pollution of the soul, and is spiritual. Of which prophecy
speaks expressly: “The Lord will wash away the filth of the
sons and daughters of Israel, and will purge the blood from the
midst of them”1657
—the blood of crime and the murders of
the prophets. And the mode of cleansing, the Word subjoined, saying,
“by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning.” The
bathing which is carnal, that is to say, of the body, is accomplished
by water alone, as often in the country where there is not a bath.1658
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