The Stromata, or Miscellanies

Wherefore the divine law appears to me necessarily to menace with fear, that, by caution and attention, the philosopher may acquire and retain absence of anxiety, continuing without fall and without sin in all things. For peace and freedom are not otherwise won, than by ceaseless and unyielding struggles with our lusts. For these stout and Olympic antagonists are keener than wasps, so to speak; and Pleasure especially, not by day only, but by night, is in dreams with witchcraft ensnaringly plotting and biting. How, then, can the Greeks any more be right in running down the law, when they themselves teach that Pleasure is the slave of fear? Socrates accordingly bids “people guard against enticements to eat when they are not hungry, and to drink when not thirsty, and the glances and kisses of the fair, as fitted to inject a deadlier poison than that of scorpions and spiders.” And Antisthenes chose rather “to be demented than delighted.” And the Theban Crates says:—

“Master these, exulting in the disposition of the soul,
Vanquished neither by gold nor by languishing love,
Nor are they any longer attendants to the wanton.”

And at length infers:—

“Those, unenslaved and unbended by servile Pleasure,
Love the immortal kingdom and freedom.”

He writes expressly, in other words, “that the stop to the unbridled propensity to amorousness is hunger or a halter.”

And the comic poets attest, while they depreciate the teaching of Zeno the Stoic, to be to the following effect:—

“For he philosophizes a vain philosophy:
He teaches to want food, and gets pupils
One loaf, and for seasoning a dry fig, and to drink water.”

All these, then, are not ashamed clearly to confess the advantage which accrues from caution. And the wisdom which is true and not contrary to reason, trusting not in mere words and oracular utterances, but in invulnerable armour of defence and energetic mysteries, and devoting itself to divine commands, and exercise, and practice, receives a divine power according to its inspiration from the Word.

Already, then, the ægis of the poetic Jove is described as

“Dreadful, crowned all around by Terror,
And on it Strife and Prowess, and chilling Rout;
On it, too, the Gorgon's head, dread monster,
Terrible, dire, the sign of Ægis-bearing Jove.”

But to those, who are able rightly to understand salvation, I know not what will appear dearer than the gravity of the Law, and Reverence, which is its daughter. For when one is said to pitch too high, as also the Lord says, with reference to certain; so that some of those whose desires are towards Him may not sing out of pitch and tune, I do not understand it as pitching too high in reality, but only as spoken with reference to such as will not take up the divine yoke. For to those, who are unstrung and feeble, what is medium seems too high; and to those, who are unrighteous, what befalls them seems severe justice. For those, who, on account of the favour they entertain for sins, are prone to pardon, suppose truth to be harshness, and severity to be savageness, and him who does not sin with them, and is not dragged with them, to be pitiless. Tragedy writes therefore well of Pluto:—

“And to what sort of a deity will you come, do you ask,
Who knows neither clemency nor favour,
But loves bare justice alone.”

For although you are not yet able to do the things enjoined by the Law, yet, considering that the noblest examples are set before us in it, we are able to nourish and increase the love of liberty; and so we shall profit more eagerly as far as we can, inviting some things, imitating some things, and fearing others. For thus the righteous of the olden time, who lived according to the law, “were not from a storied oak, or from a rock;” because they wish to philosophize truly, took and devoted themselves entirely to God, and were classified under faith. Zeno said well of the Indians, that he would rather have seen one Indian roasted, than have learned the whole of the arguments about bearing pain. But we have exhibited before our eyes every day abundant sources of martyrs that are burnt, impaled, beheaded. All these the fear inspired by the law,— leading as a pædagogue to Christ, trained so as to manifest their piety by their blood. “God stood in the congregation of the gods; He judges in the midst of the gods.” Who are they? Those that are superior to Pleasure, who rise above the passions, who know what they do— the Gnostics, who are greater than the world. “I said, You are Gods; and all sons of the Highest.” To whom speaks the Lord? To those who reject as far as possible all that is of man. And the apostle says, “For you are not any longer in the flesh, but in the Spirit.” And again he says, “Though in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh.” “For flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither does corruption inherit incorruption.” “Lo, you shall die like men,” the Spirit has said, confuting us.

We must then exercise ourselves in taking care about those things which fall under the power of the passions, fleeing like those who are truly philosophers such articles of food as excite lust, and dissolute licentiousness in chambering and luxury; and the sensations that tend to luxury, which are a solid reward to others, must no longer be so to us. For God's greatest gift is self-restraint. For He Himself has said, “I will neyer leave you, nor forsake you,” as having judged you worthy according to the true election. Thus, then, while we attempt piously to advance, we shall have put on us the mild yoke of the Lord from faith to faith, one charioteer driving each of us onward to salvation, that the meet fruit of beatitude may be won. “Exercise is” according to Hippocrates of Cos, “not only the health of the body, but of the soul— fearlessness of labours— a ravenous appetite for food.”