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| The Seven Crowns of the Beast to Be Taken Away by Victorious Chastity; The Ten Crowns of the Dragon, the Vices Opposed to the Decalogue; The Opinion of Fate the Greatest Evil.
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Chapter XIII.—The Seven Crowns of the Beast to Be Taken Away
by Victorious Chastity; The Ten Crowns of the Dragon, the Vices Opposed
to the Decalogue; The Opinion of Fate the Greatest Evil.
Therefore, taking to you a masculine and sober
mind, oppose your armour to the swelling beast, and do not at all give
way, nor be troubled because of his fury. For you will have
immense glory if you overcome him, and take away the seven crowns which
are upon him, on account of which we have to struggle and wrestle,
according to our teacher Paul. For she who having first overcome
the devil, and destroyed his seven heads, becomes possessed of the
seven crowns of virtue, having gone through the seven great struggles
of chastity. For incontinence and luxury is a head of the dragon;
and whoever bruises this is wreathed with the crown of
temperance. Cowardice and weakness is also a head; and he who
treads upon this carries off the crown of martyrdom. Unbelief and
folly, and other similar fruits of wickedness, is another head; and he
who has overcome these and destroyed them carries off the honours
connected with them, the power of the dragon being in many ways rooted
up. Moreover, the ten horns and stings which he was said to have
upon his heads are the ten opposites, O virgins, to the Decalogue, by
which he was accustomed to gore and cast down the souls of many
imagining and contriving things in opposition to the law, “Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God,”2745
and to the other precepts which
follow. Consider now the fiery and bitter horn of fornication, by
which he casts down the incontinent; consider adultery, consider
falsehood, covetousness, theft, and the other sister and related vices,
which flourish by nature around his murderous heads, which if you root
out with the aid of Christ, you will receive, as it were, divine heads,
and will bloom with the crowns gained from the dragon. For it is
our duty to prefer and to set forward the best things, who have
received, above the earth-born, a commanding and voluntary mind, and
one free from all necessity, so as to make choice like masters of the
things which please us, not being in bondage to fate or fortune.
And so no man would be master of himself and good, unless selecting the
human example of Christ, and bringing himself to the likeness of Him,
he should imitate Him in his manner of life. For of all evils the
greatest which is implanted in many is that which refers the causes of
sins to the motions of the stars, and says that our life is guided by
the necessities of fate, as those say who study the stars, with much
insolence. For they, trusting more in guessing than in prudence,
that is, in something between truth and falsehood, go far astray from
the sight of things as they are. Whence, if you permit me, O
Arete, now that I have completed the discourse which you, my mistress,
appointed to be spoken, I will endeavour, with your assistance and
favour, to examine carefully the position of those who are offended,
and deny that we speak the truth, when we say that man is possessed of
free-will, and prove that
“They perish self-destroyed,
By their own fault,”2746
choosing the pleasant in preference to the expedient.
Arete. I do permit you and
assist you; for your discourse will be perfectly adorned when you have
added this to it. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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