Homilies on the Statues

^13. And that this is true, and that many would have gone back to their former supineness, if we had been released from the whole difficulty at once, is manifest from this circumstance; that while yet the remnants of the calamity are left, while the sentence of the Emperor is yet doubtful, and those who conducted the affairs of the city are all in prison, many of our fellow inhabitants, through their inordinate desire of bathing, run to the river, there making endless merriment, behaving wantonly, leaping, dancing, and dragging women after them. What pardon can such be worthy of? What kind of excuse can they offer? Or rather, what kind of punishment and vengeance do they not deserve? The head of the city is in the public prison; our members are in exile; the sentence concerning them is doubtful; and do you, I ask, dance, sport, and laugh? “Why, we could not endure,” says some one, “to remain without the bath?” O shameless disposition, sordid and perverted! How many months, I ask, how many years, have past? You have not been as yet shut out from the bath for twenty days; and you are as much distressed and discontented, as if you had continued without washing for a whole year! Tell me, was this your state, when thou were expecting an attack from the military, when thou were daily anticipating bring put to death, when you fled to the deserts, and wast hurrying to the mountain tops? If any one had then proposed to you to remain “a year” without the bath, so that you might be rescued from the impending distress, would you not readily have accepted the proposal, and submitted to it? When, therefore, it were becoming that you should give thanks to God, Who has freed you from all these things without any loss, do you again grow wanton and contemptuous; and when the fear has passed away, turn back afresh to a worse state of negligence? Have these dire events really touched you, and yet are you so desirous of the baths? Why, if the bath had been permitted, would not the calamity of those who are yet in confinement have been sufficient to persuade those who are not in the same grievous condition to be forgetful of every luxury? Life itself is at stake, and do you remember the baths, and desire to be luxurious? Do you despise the danger because you have now escaped it? Take heed lest you entangle yourself in the necessity of a greater punishment, and call back in larger measure the wrath which is removed, and experience the very thing which Christ declared concerning the devils. For He says, that “when the unclean spirit is gone out, and afterwards finds the house void and swept, he takes seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and enters into the soul, and the last state of that man is worse than the first.” Therefore let us also fear, lest now we are liberated from our former evils, we afterwards by our listlessness draw upon us those which are greater! I know that you yourselves are free from this folly; but you should restrain, punish, and sober those who walk disorderly, that you may always rejoice even as Paul commanded, that both for our own good works, and for our forethought for others, we may enjoy both here and in the life to come an abundant recompense; through the grace and lovingkindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom, and with Whom, to the Father, with the Holy Ghost, be glory, honour, and adoration, now and ever, and world without end. Amen.