De arte praedicatoria

If the preacher wishes to instruct his hearers in fleeing lust, he can take his beginning from this authority: flee fornication. The Lord says in the Gospel: Let your loins be girded, and lamps burning in your hands.¹ Paul says: Fornicators and adulterers God will judge.² Solomon: A harlot is a deep pit; she lies in wait on the road like a robber; she kills those whom she sees unwary.³ Jesus son of Sirach: Do not give a woman power over your soul, lest she enter into your strength, and you be brought to confusion.⁴ Jerome: "Woe to him who set the boundary of his lust only where his life ended. For among riches chastity is hardly kept safe: gleaming skin reveals a filthy mind; and among silks and fine garments lust holds dominion. Whoever lives in lust is dead while living, and whoever is drunk is dead and buried." Gregory: "While the belly is stretched with fullness, the sting of lust is stirred up." Whoever restrains the pleasure of a lustful suggestion does not pass over into consent to lust. If the pleasure of fornication delights the mind more than the love of chastity, sin still reigns in that man. All unclean pollution is called fornication: it is better to die than to fornicate; it is better to die than to be stained by lust. Lust plunges a man into hell. Lust burns more fiercely the one it finds idle; go nearer to a burning fire than to a young woman, when you yourself are young. Since material monsters are to be fled and are horrible, spiritual monsters are to be fled and driven away all the more. What monster is more monstrous than lust, which bears on its head the face of a virgin and the image of pleasure, in the middle a she-goat of foul-smelling lust, and at the end a she-wolf, plundering virtue. This is that plague which bears a close resemblance to hell. In hell there are three things: a foul stench, the gnawing worm of conscience, a burning flame; so lust stinks through infamy, burns through conscience, scorches through desire. This is a plague more ruinous than any monster, which empties the purse, weakens the body, intoxicates the mind, unmans the state of the soul, stains the mind, destroys reputation, offends one's neighbor, loses God. This is that plague in which what delights passes quickly away, while what torments remains without end; whose appetite is anxiety and madness, whose act is abomination and disgrace, whose outcome is regret and shame. In this plague, three things are to be cursed: the burning at its approach, the effort in its execution, the stench in its completion. See how base, how full of filth are the fellowships of lust! a famished satiety, a pleasure full of regret, a momentary delight, an eternal bitterness. This is the plague that hates the light, seeks the darkness, looks for a covering, and posts a doorkeeper at the gate. This is the fly that ruins the sweetness of ointment; the fly is born from dung, and stays among filthy things; the place where it settles becomes infected. This is lust, which is the daughter of gluttony, a stench born from the dung-heap of the flesh, an odor produced from the mud of the body. It feeds on filthy things, and delights in carnality. The true ointment, however, is chastity, in which there are, as it were, aromatic qualities: purity of mind, cleanness of body, modesty in bearing, decency in dress, restraint in food, reserve in speech. This ointment is corrupted by lust, because it defiles the mind, stains the body, loosens one's bearing, unmans one's dress, increases one's appetite, dissolves one's speech; and so lust storms chastity with its own weapons, which are:

Sight and conversation, touch and kisses, the deed.

When lust first entices a man through sight to desire, it attacks chastity; second, through conversation it heaps insults upon chastity; third, through a kiss it spits in the face of decency; fourth, through touch it strikes down decency; fifth, through the deed it kills it. The fight against lust must be entered into in the manner of the Parthians: just as the Parthians rout their enemies by fleeing, and conquer by turning their backs, so lust must be routed by fleeing and cut down by withdrawing. This is that plague which encompasses those three things through which a man is thrown out of his house, namely, smoke, a dripping roof, and a quarrelsome wife. The wife is carnality, the dripping roof is the fluid instability of lust, the smoke is the enormity of infamy. These three things drive the soul from peace of heart, from serenity of mind, from tranquility of spirit. O man! read in examples what the vice of lust brings about, so that the actions of others may be your lesson. David through lust fell into homicide; Ammon through incest felt the sword of Absalom; Daniel through chastity earned understanding of dreams, Joseph through chastity earned the primacy of Egypt, Jezebel through harlotry felt the ruin of death; the blessed Virgin through virginity earned the bearing of God. Do you wish to avoid lust? beware gluttony, which is the kindling for lust, the prologue to incest, the bridge to shamelessness, the preface to incontinence.

O man, this is lust, through which the imagination grows numb, the senses grow dull, the intellect is darkened: indeed, to say more, it changes a man into a beast; indeed, man degenerates through it to below the beast, since a beast keeps to its seasons of mating, while you desire at every hour; a beast keeps to its nature, you rage against yours; a beast keeps to one mate, you run after many.