Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XXI
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
XXI.
It is
perfectly clear that no one can come near the purity of the Divine
Being who has not first himself become such; he must therefore place
between himself and the pleasures of the senses a high strong wall of
separation, so that in this his approach to the Deity the purity of his
own heart may not become soiled again. Such an impregnable wall will be
found in a complete estrangement from everything wherein passion
operates.
Now pleasure is one in kind, as
we learn from the experts; as water parted into various channels from
one single fountain, it spreads itself over the pleasure-lover through
the various avenues of the senses; so that it has been on his heart
that the man, who through any one particular sensation succumbs to the
resulting pleasure, has received a wound from that sensation. This
accords with the teaching given from the Divine lips, that “he
who has satisfied the lust of the eyes has received the mischief
already in his heart1495
”; for I take
it that our Lord was speaking in that particular example of any of the
senses; so that we might well carry on His saying, and add, “He
who hath heard, to lust after,” and what follows, “He who
hath touched to lust after,” “He who hath lowered any
faculty within us to the service of pleasure, hath sinned in his
heart.”
To prevent this, then, we want
to apply to our own lives that rule of all temperance, never to let the
mind dwell on anything wherein pleasure’s bait is hid; but above
all to be specially watchful against the pleasure of taste. For that
seems in a way the most deeply rooted, and to be the mother as it were
of all forbidden enjoyment. The pleasures of eating and drinking,
leading to boundless excess, inflict upon the body the doom of the
most dreadful sufferings1496
| 1496 ἀναγκὴν
ἑμποιοῦσι
τῶν
ἀβουλητῶν
κακῶν,
πλησμονῆς ὡς
τὰ πολλὰ
ἐκτίκτουσης,
κ. τ. λ., removing the comma
from πλησμονῆς
(Paris Edit.) to κακῶν. | ; for
over-indulgence is the parent of most of the painful diseases. To
secure for the body a continuous tranquillity, unstirred by the pains
of surfeit, we must make up our minds to a more sparing regimen, and
constitute the need of it on each occasion not the pleasure of it, as
the measure and limit of our indulgence. If the sweetness will
nevertheless mingle itself with the satisfaction of the need (for
hunger knows how to sweeten everything1497
| 1497 Cf.
Cicero, 2 De Fin. Bon.: “Socratem audio dicentem cibi
condimentum esse famem; potionis sitim;” so Antiphanes (apud
Stobæum), ἁπάνθ᾽ ὁ
λιμὸς γλυκέα,
πλὴν αὑτοῦ,
ποιεῖ. | ,
and by the vehemence of appetite she gives the zest of pleasure to
every discoverable supply of the need), we must not because of the
resulting enjoyment reject the satisfaction, nor yet make this latter
our leading aim. In everything we must select the expedient quantity,
and leave untouched what merely feasts the senses1498
| 1498 κατὰ τὸ
προηγούμενον, principaliter. Cf. Clem. Alexand. Strom.,
τὰ
ὀνόματα
σύμβολα τῶν
νοημάτων
κατὰ τὸ
προηγούμενον, i.e. of general concepts. | .E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
