Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

itterly than Eve; and not only your mind but also your body has been defiled. Even that
last horror has come to pass which I shrink from saying, and yet cannot leave unsaid, for it
is as a burning and blazing fire in my bones, and I am undone and cannot endure. You
have taken the members of Christ and made them the members of a harlot. 2132 This is an
evil with which no other can be matched. This outrage in life is new. “For pass over the
Isles of Chittim and see; and send unto Chedar and consider diligently, and see if there be
such a thing. Hath a nation changed their gods which are yet no gods.” 2133 But the virgin
has changed her glory, and her glory is in her shame. The heavens are astonished at this,
and the earth is horribly afraid, saith the Lord, for the virgin has committed two evils; she
has forsaken 2134 Me, the true and holy Bridegroom of holy souls, and has betaken herself
to an impious and lawless destroyer of body and soul alike. She has revolted from God, her
Saviour, and yielded her members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity. 2135 She forgot
me and went after her lover 2136 from whom she will get no good.
4. It were better for him that a mill-stone had been hanged about his neck, and that he
had been cast into the sea, than that he should have offended the virgin of the Lord. 2137
What slave ever reached such a pitch of mad audacity as to fling himself upon his master’s
bed? What robber ever attained such a height of folly as to lay hands upon the very offerings
of God, not dead vessels, but bodies living and enshrining a soul made after the image of
God? 2138
Who was ever known to have the hardihood, in the heart of a city and at high noon, to
mark figures of filthy swine upon a royal statue? He who has set at naught a marriage of
man, with no mercy shewn him, in the presence of two or three witnesses, dies. 2139 Of how
much sorer punishment, suppose you, shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden under
foot the Son of God, and defiled His pledged bride and done despite unto the spirit of virginity?
2140 But the woman, he urges, consented, and I did no violence to her against her
will. So, that unchaste lady of Egypt raged with love for comely Joseph, but the chaste youth’s
virtue was not overcome by the frenzy of the wicked woman, and, even when she laid her
2132 1 Cor. vi. 15.
2133 Jer. ii. 10, 11.
2134 cf. Jer. ii. 12, 13, LXX.
2135 cf. Rom. vi. 19.
2136 cf. Hosea ii. 13.
2137 cf. Luke xvii. 2.
2138 St. Basil has no idea of the image and likeness of God being a bodily likeness, as in the lines of Xenophanes.
2139 i.e. by the old Jewish law. Deut. xvii. 6. Adultery was not capital under the Lex Julia, but was made so
by Constantine.
2140 cf. Heb. x. 29.
To a fallen virgin.
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