For, in fact, God hath set the stomach in our bodies as a kind of mill, giving it a proportionate power, and appointing a set measure which it ought to grind every day. If therefore one cast in more, remaining undigested it doth injury to the whole body. Hence diseases and weaknesses and deformities: since in truth luxury makes the beautiful woman not only sickly, but also foul to look upon. For when she is continually sending forth unpleasant exhalations, and breathes fumes of stale wine, and is more florid than she ought to be, and spoils the symmetry that beseems a woman, and loses all her seemliness, and her body becomes flabby, her eyelids bloodshot and distended, and her bulk unduly great, and her flesh an useless load; consider what a disgust it all produces.
Moreover, I have heard a physician say that many have been hindered from reaching their proper height by nothing so much as luxurious living. For the breath being obstructed by the multitude of things which are cast in and being occupied in the digestion of such things, that which ought to serve for growth is spent on this digestion of superfluities. Why need one speak of gout, rheum dispersed every where, the other diseases hence arising, the whole abomination? For nothing is so disgusting as a woman pampering herself with much food. Therefore among the poorer women one may see more of beauty: the superfluities being consumed and not cleaving to them, like some superfluous clay, of no use and benefit. For their daily exercise, and labors, and hardships, and their frugal table, and spare diet, minister unto them much soundness of body, and thence also much bloom.
[18.] But if thou talkest of the pleasure of luxury, thou wilt find it to go no farther than the throat: since as soon as it hath passed the tongue, it is flown away, leaving behind in the body much that is disgusting. For do not I pray look on the voluptuaries at table only, but when you see them rise up, then follow them, and you will see bodies rather of wild beasts and irrational creatures than of human beings. You will see them with headache, distended, bound up, needing a bed and a couch and plenty of rest, and like men who are tossed in a great tempest and require others to save them, and long for that condition in which they were before they were swelled even to bursting [293] : they carrying their bellies about with a burden like that of women with child, and can scarce step forward, and scarce see, and scarce speak, and scarce do any thing. But if it should chance that they sleep a little, they see again strange dreams and full of all manner of fancies.
What should one say of that other madness of theirs? the madness of lust, I mean, for this also hath its fountains from hence. Yea, as horses wild after the female, so they, goaded on by the sting of their drunkenness, leap upon all, more irrational than they, and more frantic in their boundings; and committing many more unseemlinesses which but to name is unlawful. For they know not in fact any longer what they suffer, nor what they do.
But not so he that keeps from luxury: rather he sits in harbor, beholding other men's shipwrecks, and enjoys a pleasure pure and lasting, following after that life which becomes him that is free. Knowing therefore these things, let us flee from the evil banquets of luxury and cleave to a spare table; that being of a good habit both of soul and body, we may both practice all virtue, and attain the good things to come, through the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, with Whom to the Father, with the Holy Ghost, be glory, power, and honor, now and ever, and world without end. Amen.
[270] proserrhiphthai.
[271] en parabusto. The parabuston was one of the inferior courts at Athens, so called because it had cognizance only of trivial and obscure matters, and because it was situate en aphanei topo tes poleos, in an obscure part of the city. Hence the phrase. Pausan. Attic. c. 28; Demosth. contr. Timocr. p. 715 Ed. Reiske.
[272] [The author fails to give the full force of this striking phrase. It means "Those whose sleep is a sleep in Christ." C.]
[273] The Manichæans say, "that Christ came in the last times, to deliver not bodies but souls." St. Aug. de Hæres. §. 46. They argued against the resurrection of the body from such texts as 1 Cor. v. 5; xv. 50; see Epiph. Hæres. 66. §. 86, 87. They as well as the old Gnostics, of course, took this line, holding as they did the inherent corruption of matter.
[274] His argument may be thus briefly stated. The Apostle had in the former verses made use of the resurrection of Christ and our resurrection as terms implying one another. If (according to the Manichees) the word resurrection means only liberation from sin, the terms no longer imply one another. For Christ by His divine nature cannot sin. It doth not therefore follow that, if we be not raised, Christ is not risen.
[275] lit. sew up, aporrhapsai.
[276] ouden emauto sunoida. 1 Cor. iv. 4.
[277] This may seem at first sight, especially to the English reader, inconsistent with such texts as Ephes. ii. 1; Coloss. ii. 12, &c. But it will be found that the term nekroi used in those texts, is applied rather to each person's actual sin and its effects, than to the general result of Adam's transgression; and that apothanon, when applied to the latter, relates to the death of the body: as in Rom. v. 15. which is so expounded by St. Aug. de Nupt. ii. 46. [Whatever may be thought of the speaker's view of the former part of this verse, it is clear that he does not make the "all" of the second clause coextensive with the "all" of the first. He expressly excludes sinners. And he is right. Men are connected with Adam by nature, but with Christ by faith and this is the work of grace. Adam and Christ are the two heads of humanity but in a different way. The limitation of the second "all" is further confirmed by the fact that the whole discussion here is about believers. The Apostle says nothing in this chapter about the resurrection of unbelievers. C.]
[278] The partisans of Marcellus of Ancyra, who about the middle of the fourth century taught that the Personal Kingdom of the Son, and indeed His Personality, will cease at the last day, He being such an emanation from the Father as shall be again absorbed into the Father. See S. Cyril, Catech. xv. 27. and others quoted by Bp. Pearson on the Creed, Art. vi. part 2. This error is supposed to have occasioned the insertion at Constantinople of the words, "Of whose kingdom there shall be no end," in the Nicene Creed. It appears that Marcellus alleged this text.
[279] arche agennetos.
[280] polle kechretai te periousia.
[281] asphalizomai.
[282] apekribomenen pros.
[283] oikeiosin.
[284] This distinction, in these terms, is found elsewhere in St. Chrysostom; as on 47 (48) Psalm, v. 1; on 1 Tim. vi. 11; as quoted by Suicer v. basileia.
[285] athetesomen.
[286] timioulkon, Theodotion. sunechon LXX.
[287] The Manichæans, and Gnostic sects.
[288] trophes ou truphes.
[289] exetrachelise.
[290] eutheniais LXX.
[291] spatalosa.
[292] "It is thy own soul, wretched woman, that thou hast lost: the spiritual life gone, thou for a while leadst on a life of thine own, and movest about, wearing thy death upon thee." S. Cypr. of the Lapsed. C. 30.
[293] prin e diarrhagenai.